A tale of two composers

Once upon a time, in the years before the First World War, two musicians, sometimes together and sometimes apart, travelled throughout Hungary collecting folksongs and dances. They were ethnomusicologists, although the word hadn’t been coined yet. The subsequent musical direction of each was profoundly affected by their youthful enthusiasms. Their names are Béla Bartók and Zoltan Kodály.

The Hungary of that time was much greater than today’s. The eastern part of the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire, it included some of present day Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia and Poland. Some of Imperial Hungary had even been part of the Ottoman Empire. The folk music was as diverse as languages. 

Bartók went on to become among the greatest composers in the tradition of Western Classical Music. Kodály is best known as the author of a landmark method for teaching music in the schools, but was also a brilliant and accomplished composer whose works are revered in Hungary.

I will share with you two orchestral works which demonstrate the extent to which their travels, collections and studies influenced their music. 

Bartok’s Dance Suite dates from 1923, the middle of his composing career. He has taken material which he collected and transformed for his own purposes. There is always a certain edginess, rawness perhaps, to Bartók’s music and there is plenty of each in evidence here. The tempo and mood of the piece shifts dramatically. Dances are presented, abandoned while contrasting music is played, and then return. Although it isn’t obvious, I have it on good authority that it is also very difficult for the orchestra and conductor. The work owes very little to the Late Romantic Music in which the composer was schooled. It is very much a work of the Twentieth Century.

Dances from Galanta is another orchestral tour de force based upon Eastern European folk tunes, but how different! While clearly a Twentieth Century work, there are echos Brahms and Lizst and Johann Strauss, of Hungarian Rhapsodies and and the Fledermaus Csardas. Kodály, like his colleague, chose and modified dances that fit his musical purpose. The form is similar to Bartók’s Dance Suite but the effect entirely different.

Each work is about 16 minutes in length. If you can listen to them together, I encourage you to do that. If you can’t spare that much time, listening to a few minutes of each will still make my point. 

Classical and Popular Concerts are Two Different Things

Is there a way to attract a wider public to classical concerts? Much has been written about Bandur Brönnimann's response to a Jonny Greenwood interview. Here is my looney's worth.

The audience should feel free to applaud between movements. Because they feel like it? Any semi-literate person can figure out, through a cursory examination of the program, how many individual bits there are in a composition and when it ends. This is probably targeted at concerti, which frequently have showy first movements or symphonies whose movements are often long and have strong endings. What about ballet or dance suites? Song cycles? Do you really want folks applauding every movement? I've been in the audience for amateur performances in which that was exactly the case and the concert went on for-ev-er and it wasn't because the music was too long. All the music that has been written since Mahler began the practice of remaining quiet between movements more than a hundred years ago was composed with the expectation that there would be no applause to break the mood.

Orchestras should tune backstage. The strings, especially, like to tune where they can hear the other players. There'd have to be a big room available backstage. Otherwise it's everyone on his own with an electronic tuner. What about the necessary tuning between the movements of long piece? Will you be going off-stage to do it?

We should be able to use mobile phones (in silent mode). What for? I thought you paid money to listen to live players play live music, not to play with your phone.  The capture from you phone will be crappy anyway and you'll probably never look at it again. And the screen of your phone, in a relatively dark environment, is bright and distracting for everyone (who also paid money etc.) around you. Anyway, this is the opposite of mindfulness. If you really need to use your phone, go out in the hallway.

Programs should be less predictable. Well... You should at least play what you've programmed. If you want to tack a bonus piece onto the end of the first half or at the end of the concert I mightn't mind. But, frankly, I decided to come to this concert on the basis of your publicity. If you don't play the pieces I came to hear I'm not going to be very happy.

You should be able to take your drinks inside the hall. If your concert hall has cup-holders on the seats it's different from ones I've gone to. You're not going to die of thirst. It won't kill you to wait an hour for that lager. Spare the cleaners mopping up dried cola tomorrow or the venue having to have the fabric seats cleaned. Or you your neighbour's suit.

The artists should engage with the audience. That's what they're doing when they play music. There's already too much chatter at classical concerts. Don't give a performer (including, perhaps especially, a conductor) a microphone. Everyone knows what happens. Anything important enough to mention (aside from emergency announcements) can be written in the published program. Shut up, sit down and play.

Orchestras shouldn't play in tail suits. I couldn't care less. As long as they're dressed uniformly, so that no one player sticks out, I'm not interested in how they dress.

Concerts should be more family friendly. Some concerts are. They're called Family Concerts and are specially programmed for an audience that includes children. Otherwise, most children have neither the preparation nor the attention span required to sit through serious performance without fidgeting. And I'm sure your young Nigel has been going to concerts since he was knee-high but he's the exception. Children have to be trained and you can't start doing it at a TSO performance of Verklärte Nacht. Sorry to return to a theme, but other people have spent good money with certain expectations of their experience.

Concert halls should use more cutting edge technology. I expect the author is addressing the situation at his own orchestra's concert hall: big screens, real time video, etc. I'd be surprised if most symphony concert providers aren't looking into or haven't looked into all the suggestions he makes.

Every program should include a contemporary piece. Depends on the context. Speaking as a living, breathing composer, it's hard to have a problem with this. If, however, I went to see the Mozart Requiem or an all-Beethoven program I mightn't be wooed by a shorter-than-ten-minutes piece played first in the program or at the end. Just doesn't fit, somehow.

Have you 30 minutes? You owe it to yourself to listen to this!

Are you a musician or serious music lover? If you don't know this piece and have 30 minutes you owe it to yourself to listen.

I have loved the Rachmaninoff Piano Concertos 2 & 3 and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini since I was a young musician. The music just sounds right to me, has always sounded just right. There's not a note out of place.

Rachmaninoff himself didn't call this a Cello Sonata i.e. a solo cello piece with piano accompaniment. He called it Sonata in G Minor for Cello and Piano, preferring to show the equal partnership of the two players.

The piano writing is startlingly similar to that of the concerti. It's virtuosic, exploiting the full range or the instrument, technically and expressively.

The cello sometimes plays the role the violins play in the concerti, taking the themes while the piano accompanies. Sometimes it plays the orchestral cello lines, playing countermelodies in the middle register while the piano takes the leading ones. It frequently sings melodies, melodies sometimes chant or folk-like, or those that push forward and upward in repeated rhythms or sequences.

This work captures the same excitement that is to be found in Rachmaninoff's big works for piano and orchestra. Hearing it for the first time is like discovering a work which is strangely like that other piece that you already know yet different and unique.

Here's the sonata with the score for those of you who read music. It's the way I like to listen to music like this.

Enigma Variations, Grieg Piano Concerto at the Brott Festival

It was to be a special occasion, a concert in honour of the Maestro's and pianist's birthdays, each ending with a 0 (zero).

So we went last night (Thurs. July, 24) to the MacIntyre Theatre at Mohawk College to hear  Boris Brott conducting the National Academy Orchestra and to hear Valerie Tryon play the Grieg Piano Concerto.

The audience learned in Jacqui Templeton Muir's introduction, that she and Valerie Tryon (her sister) have been friends with Boris since 1971 when he was the Conductor of the Hamilton Philharmonic. Valerie has since played in each of the 27 seasons of the Brott Music Festival.

Valerie Tryon

Valerie Tryon has had a remarkable performing career performing as a recitalist and as a soloist with major orchestras since her student debut in 1953. She will leave for England shortly to begin yet another recital tour. Her recording of De Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra will shortly be released. Since 1971 she has been based in Hamilton and had a long association with MacMaster University.

The National Academy Orchestra was founded by Brott in 1988. This isn't a student orchestra in the usual sense. It is described in the program as a "professional training orchestra", and is made up of advanced students and young professional players who haven't yet got an orchestral job. Judging from the wonderful sound and accuracy of the playing, Maestro Brott must have his choice of the crème de la crème of young Canadian instrumentalists. As well, the principal string seats are occupied by professional players. For example the concertmaster is Alex Read, principal first violinist of the Montréal Symphony.

They opened with a stunning performance of Elgar's Enigma Variations. The work is in 14 variations which are character pieces describing individuals from Elgar's family and inner circle. Whatever they are variations upon was never made clear by Elgar and no theme is ever presented. Apprentice conductor Ben Kepes led the first six sections and then Maestro Brott took over for the next eight.

The slow movements (including the celebrated Nimrod) are built upon a string choir foundation and the sound of the strings of this orchestra was magical. The several viola solos were played beautifully by Kitchener Waterloo Symphony principal Natasha Sharko. There were also passages of tutti brasses which, in this hall, could nearly lift you from your seat.

In the second half, they began with Psalm by Srul Irving Glick. The piece was commissioned by Brott for the HPO in 1971. It has some interesting contrasting passages but their relationship, one to the other, is not clear and the work, in spite of the detailed preparation and clear performance, seemed rather shapeless. Special mention must be made of trumpeter Kathyrn Clarke and hornist Jonathan Astley both of whom soloed to fine effect.

The final scheduled work was the Grieg. It is among Valerie Tryon's favourite concerti and she played beautifully, sometimes delicately and at others times with great panache. The orchestra responding thrillingly in their tutti sections. Principal cellist and Hamiltonian Rachel Mercer played her solos nicely with a fine full sound.

When it was all over and the audience had stood and clapped in unison at Brott's urging, Valerie Tryon returned and played, for her adoring audience, Lizst's Liebestraum #3, perhaps the best known of that master's solo piano works .

If you enjoy music for piano and orchestra, you'll want to hear Ian Parker play Rachmaninoff (The Second Piano Concerto and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.) The orchestra is also performing the Mussorgsky-Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition. That's on Thursday, August 7th at the MacIntyre Theatre. The link in paragraph three will take you to the website.

Roberto Devereux at the COC

We saw Roberto Devereux at the Four Seasons Centre last night (Tues. April 29) and, in the immortal words of Jerry Lee Lewis there was a "whole lotta shoutin' goin' on". Perhaps not actual shouting, but too close for this opera goer.

I hadn't heard or seen this opera before, but with surtitles and a familiar composer (Donizetti) working in a standard form, preparation proved to be unnecessary.

It was presented on a single set, meant to evoke the Globe Theatre. There was a large platform that occupied most of the mid-stage around which most the action took place. This forced the singers to its periphery most of the time, either on the sides or right downstage. There was, as seems usual, some singing while lying down. At one point Devereux, in a duet with Sara, for no reason I could fathom, dragged himself across the platform as if his legs didn't work. In another peculiar choice, Nottingham apparently goes on to rape his wife after the end of their duet. I could also have done without the manikins in display cases during the overture and at the end of the opera.

This is an opera in the bel canto tradition. The phrase means, literally, beautiful singing but refers to much more than that for example, evenness and clarity of sound and articulation and tasteful absence of excess. What we heard in Hercules was bel canto. Much of what we heard last night was more appropriate to Trovatore or dare I say Tosca, far too heavily influenced by the style of singing that became acceptable later in the 19th century. Donizetti may not be Rossini, but he's not Verdi either and is surely not a verismo composer.

The main culprit was the prima donna, soprano Sondra Radvanovsky as Elisabetta. She has spectacular high notes and the ability to project her chest voice. She also has a middle voice which is not as strong. As a result, in a long descending octave scale, the top and bottom were loud while the middle didn't match. Moreover, last night at least, she wasn't able to manage the crispness and accuracy which the frequent coloratura in this repertoire demands. It simply sounded messy.

She is, however, an exceptional actress, and in the last act, when the coloratura pyrotechnics were over and the music was more dramatic, her vocal issues were no longer a problem. Indeed, she did some glorious pianissimo singing. The last scene, artificial and manipulative as it is, and made more so by this production, was truly moving and drew well deserved approval from the audience.

As the Duke of Nottingham, Baritone Russell Braun's singing in the first act suffered from similar problems. At one point, in the midst of some running passages, I actually lost track of what key he was singing in. Again, the runs were not clean and accurate while the highest notes were stentorian. I've heard him sing other repertoire beautifully and he has never sounded like that.

Tenor Leonardo Capalbo sang pretty well the taxing title role sounding like... an Italian tenor. He sings duets with both leading ladies and in ensembles besides, having to maintain a rather high tessitura throughout. He was obviously tiring by his final act scene, and no wonder.

Mezzo Allyson McHardy, as Sara, Duchess of Nottingham, came closer to bel canto than the other principal singers. Her first aria, in particular, was a breath of fresh air after Sondra Radvanovsky's. She did seem to be darkening and pushing on her lower notes as the performance went on and I wondered whether she and Braun felt the need to be louder to match the big sound Ms. Radvanovsky can produce. I think I'd like to hear McHardy as Cenorentola or Rosina in this theatre.

Allyson McHardy and Sondra Radvanovsky

Owen McCausland sang Lord Cecil nicely and Matt Boehler made some of the loveliest sounds of the evening in the few notes he had to sing as Raleigh.

The COC chorus sang well what little was asked of them and the orchestra played beautifully under conductor Corrado Ravaris.

The audience reacted rapturously at the end of the performance and I wondered whether they were wooed by the theatricality of the piece. I am more concerned with musicianship and singing and didn't stand at the end of this one.

Nonetheless, this production of Roberto Devereux should put bums in the seats. Judging by next season's offerings, heavy on the standard rep (Madama Butterfly, Falstaff, Barber of Seville, Don Giovanni) and Bluebeard's Castle, a proven hit, the company must have decided to concentrate on pot-boiling. Gotta pay the bills.

Hercules in America at the COC

I was wondering how celebrated Stage Director Peter Sellars would make three hours of Baroque opera engaging. The answer is, he couldn't.

Peter Sellars

We spent an awfully long time at the Four Seasons Centre last night (April 16) watching  the COC's production of Georg Friderick Handel's musical drama Hercules. After the first 20 minutes or so I was seriously contemplating whether I'd have to leave at the interval. A substantial number of our fellow patrons did just that.

I'm reminded of Rossini's opinion of Wagner's operas, that he, "has good moments, but awful quarters of hours". Yes, yes, I went to university too, and I know all about Da Capo arias, but when the B section comes around for the second or third reiteration, it's time for some judicious cuts. One doesn't have to omit whole arias, just some of the repeats. After a couple of hearings, we've got the idea. This production could have come in under two and half hours and nothing, nothing would have been lost.

Much of the music was really wonderful. Hearing this unfamiliar work I was reminded of how truly brilliant a composer Handel was. So much variety with limited means. The orchestra, under Harry Bicket played beautifully bringing nuance and detail to the score. Sandra Horst's chorus was sensational, but more about them later.

Peter Sellars staging included quite a lot of lying on the stage while singing amongst a whole lot of musically unmotivated movement.  That's hardly surprising as one has to give the soloists and their stage companions something to do during the many solo arias. You can't really have them just stand (or sit) there. (This opera has only arias and choruses, no solo ensembles at all).

Some of the acting was naturalistic, some stylized. At one point, for example, Iöle put her arms around Dejanira's neck from behind making a snaking gesture with her hands (mirroring the snake mentioned in the text). Then she did it again when the music repeated. Then she did it again when the music repeated. I'm sure you get the idea.

As for the singers, Alice Coote as Dejanira was marvellous and I feel privileged to have heard and seen her again. She has a prodigious technique and acting skills to match.

Alice Coote

Soprano Lucy Crowe, as Iöle,  was also really first-rate, performing most of her first aria in an orange prison jumpsuit with a bag over her head. She mostly sang in the bel canto fashion as she would in other operatic repertoire but sometimes sang longer notes with a straight tone in the (probably erroneous) early music manner. I look forward to hearing her again, in different repertoire.

Lucy Crowe

I've been speculating as to why Counter-tenor David Daniels was cast as Lichas, as Handel chose a contralto. It might be to avoid having two mezzos in the cast. He sang well enough, his voice disappearing on the lower notes as falsetto singers' do. He was very effective acting and singing his last aria describing Hercules dying ordeal.

On the basis of his first act arias, I wasn't very impressed with Tenor Richard Croft's Hyllus. Then, in the second act, he sang a more lyric one with a higher tessitura and we got to hear his lovely Mozartean tenor. He is a very fine singer. I'm sorry now I didn't hear his Ferrando in Così fan Tutte in January. Why he spent the entire opera hobbling about on crutches was never made clear.

Ironically, Hercules is the shortest role in the opera. Bass-baritone Eric Owens was physically imposing but never produced the booming sounds I had hoped for. He also had to perform his final aria lying on his back, upstage, sometimes barking out the music, singing and dying theatrically.

Eric Owens

In some ways the COC chorus were the stars of the show. Sellars' approach to staging their pieces was unusual, to say the least. They performed choreographed gestures, in the manner of a children's choir, fitted to the text. Some of them were like Sign Language, others more like semaphore. In the contrapuntal passages they all did the movements with their own section, so sopranos, altos, tenors and basses all moved at the same time as their part, but differently from the other three. For the most part, I thought it looked silly. It didn't, however, detract from the excellent singing, so meticulously rehearsed. That being said, surely their performance of the Jealousy chorus at the end of the second act, motions and all, was the highlight of the night.

The chorus reaches skyward

Well, it's Roberto Devereux next. I wonder what surprises the COC has planned for that one?

Karl Jenkins' Stabat Mater with a Cast of Hundreds

I went last night to hear a mixed program presented by the Mohawk College Community Choir who were joined by members of Fanshawe Chorus London (both conducted by U of T DMA candidate David Holler) and the Redeemer University College Sinfonia (led by Music Department Head Paul Thorlakson). The featured work, which was played after a short first half, was Karl Jenkins' Stabat Mater featuring mezzo-soprano Jennifer Enns-Modolo.

The concert took place at West Highland Baptist Church on the West Mountain in Hamilton. The sanctuary, while not as big as it appears from the street, must seat 1200 people in a fan-shaped arrangement of padded pews on two levels. The acoustic, probably designed with microphoned speakers and an amplified Praise Band in mind, was very dry and not well suited to choral singing.

The Mohawk College Community Choir and Fanshawe Chorus London, both sizeable amateur groups, certainly benefited from being combined. As I discovered conducting school groups, unless you're leading the Vienna Choir Boys, a bigger choir is always better.

Redeemer University College Sinfonia is a mixed group which includes community orchestra players, Redeemer Music students, some high school players and a few professional coach-instructors.

They opened with Eclogue by Gerald Finzi, a work for piano and strings. Paul Thorlakson played the solo part very nicely. It's a very understated piece and the style of this most characteristically English composer was evident throughout.  In most student and amateur orchestras, strings, first violins in particular, face the most difficulty with challenging passages and tuning. Here they played surprisingly well as, indeed, they did throughout the concert.

 Johannes Brahms' Nänie, a short piece for four-part chorus and small orchestra, followed. The unforgiving acoustic sometimes revealed some unpleasant sounds from amongst the numerous sopranos, especially on the highest notes. The tenors, the most vulnerable section in amateur groups, fared better.

After the interval, the choirs and Jennifer Enns-Modolo, accompanied by a full Romantic orchestra, including 5 percussionists, performed the Jenkins' Stabat Mater. This composer has had success, first as a jazzman, then in composing advertising themes. He turned to concert music and his mass The Armed Man was a huge classical hit in 2008 on Deutsche Gramophon no less. Here's his best known music, Palladio, adapted from a De Beers Diamond ad.

The choirs sang pretty well although the choral parts didn't seem to be very demanding. The orchestra also coped capably with the music and, again, the strings played much better than I'd expected.

Jennifer Enns-Modolo sang her solo passages beautifully, the almost unaccompanied Incantation in particular. After this quiet movement, she demonstrated a big sound, especially in lower passages, when pitted against the choirs and full orchestra.

I didn't like the piece itself very much. Jenkins' confuses repetitions, with added flourishes and rising dynamics, for variation. Several of the movements could do with considerable pruning as the same musical themes returned, again and again. And the Mother did Weep, in particular, seemed interminable. The big tutti movements, especially the concluding Paradisi Gloria, included short sections that are repeated, over and over again, louder and louder, in a symphony of bombast, all accompanied by tympani, bass drum and two floor toms banging out the beat. Our ears were grateful for the dry acoustic there!

Considering the number of performances this work is getting, lots of influential musicians must like this sort of thing. Last night's audience jumped to their feet at the work's conclusion. But, to be clear, it doesn't employ the type of repetition used in Musical Minimalism. This is something far simpler and familiar from film scores where the primary interest is on the screen. Goodness knows, the time was long past for New Music to abandon the absence of an underlying pulse, but there must be a subtler and more interesting way to achieve it than music like this.

Paradisi Gloria: Final Movement of Karl Jenkins' Stabat Mater