CANADIAN CAPERS IN CHAMBER MUSIC
Ottawa Quartets, Recitals in Ecstatic
Density
By Paul Hertelendy
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music
and dance
Week of Aug. 2-9, 2011
Vol. 13, No. 120
OTTAWA, CANADA---Canada's
capital is abuzz with activity these balmy summer days and nights.
However
austere its architecture, the city offers abundant flowery parks,
picturesque
waterways, ceremonies, even smiling cops, who for some reason insist on
humoring
us visitors from afar.
Multiple
events cram the schedule, with two music festivals this month alone.
Long
forgotten were winter days of frigid skating on the frozen canalways;
the
sudden blooming of shorts, sandals and bicycles are the current order
of the
day. Now a symposium a propos the 200th anniversary of composer Franz
Liszt
offers a four-session-a-day schedule, while the Ottawa Chamberfest will
have
eight daily events. In addition to the usual, the Chamberfest also
offers
street entertainments, mimes, handbell choirs, even the outrageous
Asphalt
Orchestra marching band from New
York
in all its choreographed irreverence. Basically, something for every
taste.
As
for
chamber music, even in this its 18th season the Chamberfest still has
to make
do in adapted venues, mostly churches, with the expected problems of
obstructing pillars, too low a stage, limited ventilation and no lobby.
Performances
to date have at least been interesting, at times engrossing.The
award-winning
(Canadian) Cecilia String Quartet showed an elite sense
of refinement, precise intonation and
admirable ensemble, ideally suited for the Haydn Quartet No. 26, which
I'd
gladly go off to hear in a flash. But I wish the group were willing to
get
their hands a bit dirty delving into the nitty-gritty of late Beethoven
and the
great Berg Lyric Suite. Perhaps it's time for the all-female foursome
to chuck
those ball gowns, which might suggest emphasis on elegance more than
intensity.
Surely the Beethoven Quartet (#16) is bursting with passion, given the
aged
composer's inscriptions all over the manuscript ("Difficult
decision;" "Must it be?...It MUST be!").
Similarly
with the Berg Lyric Suite-------How else to interpret all those
headings of
“amorous,… passionate, ….delirious, ….mysterious, …ecstatic?” This is
one of the most famous coded love letters of all time, not
deciphered
until many years after the death of the
composer and his long-surviving widow.
It calls for fervent attacks, letting your hair down, and
building in
little pauses to spotlight the nebulous billets-doux intended for Hanna
Fuchs-Robettin, the long-standing secret beloved. In the last movement,
Berg
refers to a love poem by Baudelaire; in addition he intertwined the
initials or
himself and Frau Fuchs, leaving it to much later musicologists to
ferret out.
But
give
the Cecilia players credit for plumbing the enigmas of this
unconventional
piece and rendering it with conviction.
Also
on tap
was the New Zealand String Quartet, a gutsy group beset by adversity.
But don’t
blame the players, blame the composer. In the scherzo of his String
Quartet No.
9-----yes, yet another one of what may
or may not be covert protest pieces against his rigid Soviet
overlords---
Shostakovich had called for vehement plucking of the violin’s E string.
The
string of second violinist Douglas Beilman broke---and not for the
first
time---resulting in a 10-minute repair delay wielding pliers, while
audience
and fellow players waited patiently until this whirlwind tour de force
could
resume in all its gravity and fire.
Overall,
the NZSQ gave a fine account of itself, carrying off with conviction
the
Beethoven “Rasoumovsky” Quartet, Op. 59, No. 1, one of the longest in
the
repertory (43 minutes), where the spotlight falls repeatedly on the
cellist
(Rolf Gjelsten). If the group has a flaw, it is with the two males
tending to
dominate the play rather than blending consistently into the ensemble.
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RECITALS
The
highlight of the 10 concerts we attended was the piano recital (July
31) by the
Canadian virtuoso Marc-Andre Hamelin, notable not just for his forceful
play,
but also his unusually demanding repertoire. Hamelin has emerged as a
leading
recitalist on our
continent, with a veritable galaxy of
works at his fingertips by composers both
known and obscure.
Hamelin
eschews the obvious. Instead of chronological sequences of pieces, he
will
reverse the format, leading off with the moderns, then circling back to
Liszt.
Alban
Berg’s Sonata No. 1 offered a lonesome
reverie, with amiable rivulets of sound flowing to a sea of late
avant-gardist Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Klavierstuecke IX”
provided flurries, departures and packets,
reminding me of abstract paintings by Klee or Miro, yet still played
with heart
and soul, poetically committed.
Then,
one
of the great virtuosic tours de force, Ravel’s sonata “Gaspard de la
nuit,”
culminating in a fire-eating “Scarbo” finale to bring down the house.
Earlier
on,
the Chamberfest had featured a piano recital by the late-blooming New York
recording artist
Simone Dinnerstein. What I heard of her Schumann and Bach showed a
powerful,
percussive approach, but none of the interpretive prowess for which she
had
received raves on her various Bach recordings.
MISCELLANY
Percussionists
have located the
fountain of youth. Or maybe the vigorous activity keeps them eternally
young.
How else to explain that half the players (Bob Becker, Russell
Hartenberger)
are also founding members of the 40-year-old Nexus percussion ensemble?
The
senior Canadian group made no concession to age in a vigorous,
wide-ranging concert, marked by
shuffling dozens of their instruments about the stage after each work.
Beyond
the usual arsenal of orchestral instruments, the players brought
African ones
from the Shona and Dagomba traditions (gourds, shakers, steel-drum
variants),
and added electronic feedback enhancing the live play where needed. The
oddest
was still John Cage’s “Third Construction” from the early 1940s,
dominated by
found objects, coffee cans, the “lion’s roar” and the “jawbone of an
ass” (I am
not making these up!). The lion’s roar sounds remarkably similar to a
note
blown on a tuba.
Music
of Liszt was widely
performed, a propos the composer’s bicentennial. Liszt was the Telemann
of the
19th century, producing a huge volume of works, certain ones of which
warrant
retention and rehearing. Though best known for his flamboyant and often
outlandish piano pieces, which he played quite gloriously in his day,
he went
much further afield, as an evening of his sacred choral works by
Lisette
Canton’s Ottawa Bach Choir demonstrated.
Foremost among these was a stunning and low-key “Ave Maria,” full of
counterpoint, reflection, and pensive
moments. In the broad overview, Liszt came out as a musical chameleon,
able to
show multiple personae, even inspiring Wagner to indulge in borrowings
that the
latter never admitted to. Not a
commendable way to treat one’s father-in-law!!
Ottawa
Chamberfest July 23-Aug. 5, concurrent with a Liszt symposium July
28-31. For Chamberfest info: (613)
234-6306.
Or go online.
©Paul Hertelendy 2011
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Paul Hertelendy has been
covering
the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with
relish
-- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never
weakly)
will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with
forays
into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local
artists as well.
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