Sir Andras Schiff and the Seattle Symphony

Sir Andras Schiff spent this last week in Seattle, conducting and playing with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, as well as giving a solo recital. I missed Sir Andras’ solo recital, but I had the pleasure of attending his appearance with the orchestra. 

The concert opened with J. S. Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No. 3 in D major, BWV 1054, a reworking of the composer’s Violin Concerto in E major, BWV 1042. It is apparent in this concerto how much the period instrument practice has seeped into performances with modern instruments. The strings played with minimal vibrato, and there was a lightness in the string playing that kept the musical line taut and buoyant. Schiff’s playing was, not surprising, a marvel to behold. In the faster passages, every note is beautiful and expressive, like a precious pearl within a perfect string of pearl. The lightness of his playing matched that of his colleagues in the orchestra. In the slow movement (Adagio e sempre piano), I was amazed at the beautiful legato and the sound he was able to achieve without any use of pedal (I sat on Row 1). The third movement (Allegro) was filled with a joyful spirit that this music calls for. Throughout the performance (and even in the performance of the Beethoven concerto), Schiff almost subsumed the sound of the piano within the texture of the orchestra, making it almost like a piano obbligato. This, for me, is concerto playing at its finest, a sort of glorified chamber music.

Equally memorable was Schiff and the orchestra’s presentation of Beethoven’s miraculous Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58 – a Dionysian presentation of one of Beethoven’s most Dionysian works. The piano playing was expressive and expansive. It was not a Toscanini-like metronomic Steeplechase, but more of a Bruno Walter, stopping-along-the-way-to-smell-the-flowers approach to this great work. Schiff took time to let the music speak for itself. The opening phrase of the 1^stmovement had a recitative-like, confiding quality to it. Throughout the movement, I was reminded of the beauty of Beethoven’s writing for the winds, especially the bassoon. At six measures after letter H, the piano playing had an extra depth of feeling, almost an ecstatic quality to it. Schiff is a conductor who reminds us that conducting really involves the power of suggestion. He coaxes rather than demands in his approach to directing the orchestra. As in the performance of the Bach, Schiff did not come off as the “famous soloist” playing against the orchestra, but integrated his playing within the orchestral texture. It was only during the cadenza that he rid himself of the orchestral shackles and allowed his considerable virtuosity to shine through.

In the slow movement, Schiff set a tempo a little faster than most performers, with sharper articulation in the strings. This is actually in line with the composer’s Andante con motomarking, con motobeing the operative word here. That said, there was no lacking in tension or tautness in the music; there was, however, very much a sense of forward motion – it was a perfect balance between the horizontal and vertical aspects of this music. I appreciated the space Schiff allowed between each orchestral outburst and the piano entry. The long passage of trill at the end of the movement was filled with urgency and a pleading quality, an appropriate contrast with the silence that followed.

I had always thought that this particular Beethoven concerto could not do without a full-time conductor. Well, Schiff and the orchestra obviously rehearsed this work very well, because the ensemble between pianist and orchestra, as well as all those tricky entrances, was done to perfection. This was especially apparent in the 3^rdmovement. I liked the way Schiff played all the sforzandonotes in the right hand (the passage at Letter A, for instance), giving it a feeling of surprise, but never forced or hammered. 

At the end of the Beethoven, soloist and orchestra received a deservedly rousing ovation from the audience, whereupon he returned with Menuet I and IIas well as the Giguefrom Bach’s Partita No. 1 in B-flat major, BWV 825. Schiff’s brief performance was musical in every note, as light and breathtaking as one could hope for, and he really highlights the quirkiness of Bach’s melodic writing. 

Schiff returned as a full time conductor in the second half, and led the orchestra in a deeply felt reading of Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, Sz. 116, BB 123, yet another miraculous masterpiece, this time from the 20^thcentury. It never fails to amaze me that this beautiful, optimistic and life-affirming work should come during such a dark time not just in human history, but in the composer’s life as well.

He beautifully shaped the melodic idea in the celli and basses at the outset of the work, and really allowed the music to build towards the Allegrovivace(rehearsal number 76) main section. I liked how he shaped the angular melody in the violins, really giving it a great deal of character. There was a real sense of grandeur and excitement in the canonic passage for brasses at rehearsal number 313. Throughout this long first movement, there was an organic unity that led to that final F for the entire orchestra.

In the Giuoco delle coppiemovement, Schiff infused the opening music with real humour, and inspired the bassoonists in some inspired playing. There was heroic and very beautiful trumpet playing in the extended passages for the instrument by the Seattle musicians. The conductor painted a real picture of varying shades of grey (certainly more than fifty) in the Elegia movement. The“outburst” by the strings at rehearsal 34 had a desperate quality to it, almost like a cry for help. Leonard Bernstein once said that a lot of Bartok’s melodic writing is related to the unique sounds of the Hungarian language. This passage, and the way the musicians played it, reminded me of Mr. Bernstein’s statement.

Schiff highlighted the almost Mahler-like sense of irony in some of the music in the Intermezzo interrotto movement. The violas played their beautiful theme at rehearsal 43 with great warmth as well as a depth of feeling. Conductor and orchestra pulled out all the stops in the very exciting final movement. The opening horn solo had a real sense of occasion to it, and conveyed the feeling of the beginning of something momentous. The rapid passage by the first and second violins had a real Hungarian, almost gypsy, flavour, to it. Yesterday afternoon, every musician in the orchestra rose to the occasion responded to Bartok’s technical and musical challenges with aplomb and absolute assurance.

From first note to last, yesterday’s performance by Schiff and the Seattle musicians made for a rich and rewarding musical experience. It was a performance of total commitment on the part of the musicians, as well as one where all the elements came together to make for a very memorable afternoon.

Patrick May

Symphonic Masterworks

The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra welcomed back Maestro Kazuyoshi Akiyama, its Conductor Laureate, in a concert celebrating our Central European roots in music.

The evening began with the Overture to Mozart’s Don Giovanni, K. 527. I had the good fortune last summer to attend a performance of Don Giovanni at Prague’s Estates Theatre, where the opera premiered. It was amazing that the orchestra for that performance was made up of only about 50 to 60 musicians, but in that acoustically ideal hall in Prague, Mozart’s music never sounded bigger or more dramatic.

That said, Akiyama’s reading of the famous overture had much to offer, from its dark and somber opening to the brisk and charming ending. Wanting to watch the Maestro working from close up, I had asked for seats on Row 3 of the hall. Under Akiyama’s hands, the music took on a three-dimensional quality, and orchestra played with great subtlety, elan and style.

Violinist Isabelle Faust joined the orchestra in a scintillating performance of Bartok’s Violin Concert No. 2. I had heard Ms. Faust before in a recital of Beethoven violin sonatas, and it was good to have had an opportunity to hear her as a concerto soloist. In this concerto, Bartok really exploited (in the best sense of the word) every facet of the violin’s possibility, from the almost savagely wild, to the most gentle and cantabile playing. Faust is a master violinist, in control of every aspect of her playing, from the rhapsodic opening of the first movement, to the lyrical middle movement, to the fireworks of the final movement. What was equally satisfying was Akiyama’s reading of the score, conjuring a lush orchestral fabric through which the solo violin was able to weave and made the performance complete. It was truly a collaborative effort between soloist, orchestra and conductor.

Although not as immediately accessible as the famous New World Symphony, or as charming and tuneful as the eighth symphony, Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70 is, from a standpoint of musical craftsmanship, a superior work to its better-known siblings. According to Zubin Mehta, it is one of the more difficult works in the orchestral repertoire. Akiyama’s reading of this symphony was astonishing, and had a sense of totality and complete control from first note to last. In the rather Brahmsian 1^st movement, I had rarely heard the VSO strings sound so lush and rich. The orchestral playing was especially beautiful in the solemn and tranquil second movement. The rhythmically tricky third movement was handled with panache by the orchestra, and in the dramatic final movement, with its blazingly triumphant ending, the orchestra truly sounded like the great ensemble that it is.

Attending a concert by Maestro Akiyama is like witnessing a lesson in pure musicianship.

In the last decade or more, every visit by this remarkable musician in has resulted in memorable performances. I was saddened to read that we won’t have him in our midst next season. I hope that the management of the orchestra would get their act together and book him for many appearances in the orchestra’s coming seasons.

First Encounter

First encounters are often sweet. My first encounter this afternoon with Paul Lewis and the Vertavo String Quartet was delicious. I had heard a great deal about pianist Paul Lewis, since he had previously graced our stages on many occasions, but this was my first experience hearing him. Lewis appeared in Vancouver today in a programme of chamber music with the young Vertavo String Quartet, formed in Norway in 1984. There is a special connection between Paul Lewis and the quartet, as he is married to cellist Bjørg Lewis of the ensemble.

The programme began with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 12 in A Major, K. 414, in the composer’s own arrangement for string quartet and piano. Originally scored for orchestra, with the usual complement of strings, with two oboes and two horns, Mozart probably arranged the work for a smaller performing force to make the score more marketable. Composers, from Mozart to Chopin to Debussy, often rescore their works for smaller ensembles to make performances of their works easier in terms of “manpower” required.

Even with the placement of the piano behind the quartet, the music still points to the piano as a solo instrument, rather than part of the sound picture in a piano quintet. Lewis’s playing of Mozart is dainty or pretty, but rather virile, bold, and colourful, without being heavy-handed. The Vertavo provided a beautiful ensemble support for the soloist, and produced a performance that started the concert in a sunny mood.

The quartet alone then gave us an incredible performance of Bela Bartok’s late masterpiece, the String Quartet no. 6. Written in four movements, each movement begins with a short slow section marked mesto (sad). The pervading sadness that permeates the music is a reflection of the composer’s mood at the time, with the death of his mother, his own failing health, and the outbreak of World War II. In the first movement, Berit Cardas’s magnificent and deeply felt playing of the mournful solo opening particularly moved me. As much as I enjoyed hearing the quartet as a whole, Cardas’s was the sound that remained in my ears long after the performance was over. In the second movement, Bjørg Lewis’s playing of the solo that opens the movement was also memorable. From the first note to last, the performance and ensemble were flawless. The playing of the third movement, the violent, almost savage Burletta, was simply stunning. The music of the fourth movement is beautiful, elegiac and reflective, and the quartet delivered all those qualities in their performance. At the end, the music simply dies away, like the last soft breath of a dying man.

The mood of the concert turned sunny again after the interval, with a delightful performance of Antonin Dvorak’s Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81, B. 155.  In the Mozart concerto that opened the concert, the audience’s attention was always directed toward the soloist. In the Dvorak, the piano sound is melted into and became part of the ensemble’s welter of sound. Paul and Bjørg Lewis played the opening of the first movement, one of the composer’s most enchanting melodies, simply exquisitely.  When first violinist Øyvor Volle took up the same melody, her sound matched the beauty of Lewis’s cello solo. I thought that Paul Lewis played the main theme of the second movement a little too aggressively, thus robbing it a little of its melancholic charm. That really is my only minor quibble of the entire performance. The musicians delivered the scherzo movement, marked furiant, with vigour, but also with a Mendelssohnian lightness that was quite infectious. The performance of the final movement was one of unrelenting energy, like a molto perpetuo, but retaining the lightness that the music also calls for.

I was grateful finally to have heard Paul Lewis in Vancouver, and encountering the Vertavo String Quartet. Mr. Lewis will be performing again later on this season, and I am very much looking forward to that. But I also hope that there will be many more opportunities for Vancouver to hear the Vertavo Quartet on our stages.

Impressive Debut

Founded in 1999, the Ébène String Quartet is a relatively new voice in the chamber music world. The youthfulness of this quartet extends to their repertoire, with works from the core repertoire, contemporary music, jazz and pop music. A quick search on Youtube reveals the ensemble performing music from the film Pulp Fiction as well as a tune by the Beetles.

This talented ensemble made their debut in Vancouver last night under the auspices of the city’s Friends of Chamber Music, in an intense and rather dark-hued programme of quartets by Haydn, Bartok, and Mendelssohn.

In his Quartet in F Minor, Op. 20, No. 5, Haydn establishes the F Minor tonality right at the outset of the work, and this rather dark key colour extends to the Menuetto as well as the fugue of the final movement. Rather unusually, there isn’t much relief in the Haydnesque humour that we so often find in his quartets, symphonies and piano sonatas, but the composer does give us a brief respite from the intense emotion in the beautiful Adagio movement, with its lovely solo for the first violin. In the 4^th movement, Haydn, again unusually, gives us a fugue, thereby taking us away from the 1^st violin-dominated texture of the other three movements. The young quartet played this work with impeccable tightness in ensemble and poise, and the intense and difficult 4^th movement fugue was carried off with panache, leaving the audience breathless from this intense conversation between the four instruments.

It is a blessing that the six quartets of Bartok have now really become a core of the string quartet repertoire. The Ébène gave us the relatively short but intense Quartet No. 3, Sz 85, composed in 1927. The four “movements” are played without interruption, and the effect is that of an uninterrupted stream of consciousness. In some ways, the denseness and brutality of the final section serve as a relief, a catharsis from the tension that had been building from the first notes. The players rose to the technical, musical, and emotional challenges of the work, and gave us a performance that moved as well as stunned the audience.

As much as Felix Mendelssohn is considered a “great” composer, there are so many of his compositions that are not often performed. We can think of the first two symphonies, many of his piano pieces and chamber works, as well as the oratorios, music that never really made it into the standard repertoire of orchestras and solo players. I am grateful to the Ébène Quartet for giving us a beautiful performance of the composer’s Quartet in A Minor, Op. 13. Reading the Quartet’s website, I found out that the players have been championing the quartets of Mendelssohn, both Felix and Fanny. They recorded Mendelssohn’s Op. 13 and 80 Quartets, as well as the only string quartet composed by Fanny Mendelssohn, the composer’s beloved sister.

In spite of the string writing that is typical of Mendelssohn - delicate and fleeting runs for especially the violinists - we find in works such as the scherzo movements of his Qctet and the incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream; this is a highly serious work, emotionally as well as musically. I believe that the most telling sign of a great performance is the silence of the audience between movements. Last night, it seemed that the audience did not even dare to breathe during the pauses. At the end of the fourth movement, when Mendelssohn recalls the musical material of the Adagio movement, there was a brief silence before the applause and ovation commenced. The musicians accepted the plaudits graciously, but did not grant us an encore, perhaps feeling that the mood of the three quartets performed would have been broken with an additional work.

As ever, there were empty seats throughout the small hall last night. Where were all the young people in the city who are taking music lessons? Those who missed last night’s concert, perhaps not knowing the name of the ensemble, certainly deprived themselves of a very special musical experience.

An Evening with the Emersons

It is always wonderful to have the Emerson String Quartet performing in our city, as they did last night in a performance of quartets by Mozart, Bartok and Beethoven.

I was most curious because the distinguished quartet had, since May of 2013, a new cellist joining their ranks. From what I could hear and see last night, Paul Watkins has already become an integral member of the ensemble, adding his own distinctive sound to the voice of the quartet.

Mozart’s Quartet in E-flat Major, K. 428, was written at the height of the composer’s powers. This was one of the six so-called “Haydn quartets”, because Mozart had sent these quartets to the older composer, telling Haydn that they were “the fruits of long and laborious endeavor.” With its opening E-flat octave leap setting the tonality of the work, Mozart frames the three chromatic measures that follow it. According to Charles Rosen, the lower and higher E-flats of the octave, being lower and higher than any of the notes that follow, “imply the resolution of all dissonance within an E flat context” and define the tonal space, with the resolution of the dissonances tracing the fundamental tonic triad of E-flat Major. It was a masterful way of establishing tonality.

From this incredible opening of the quartet, through to the impish and humorous final movement, the Emerson’s brought out all the elegance and zest of the work with the characteristic sound. Time and time again throughout the evening, I was struck by how the individual members of the quartet, each with their own characteristic sound, were able to merge with one another and produce a sound that is larger than the voices of each of the four instruments, the sound of, for lack of a better word, a string quartet as a organic entity.

More than any other 20^th century composers, including even Shostakovich, Bartok’s six string quartets significantly extend both the form of the genre as well as the sound that a quartet is capable of producing. The Quartet No. 6, Sz 114, is one of the bleakest pieces of music I have ever heard. Every one of the four movements includes the word “Mesto” (meaning dejected, gloomy, mournful, or sad). The opening of the 1^st movement, with its sorrowful theme, reminds me very much of the opening of the composer’s landmark Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. The sound of the four movements goes from utter dejection and sorrow to savage brutality – there is no sunshine at the end of this work. The members of the Emerson String Quartet served as our guides through the shifting moods and sounds of this great work, and shared with us a performance that was simply stunning. At the end of the performance, the audience rewarded the ensemble not with a burst of applause, but with stunned silence – an unusual occurrence in this city – and a sure sign that the audience was touched by this music.

After the interval came a performance of the very family F Major Quartet, Op. 59, No. 1, of Beethoven. Listening to this all-too-familiar work after the Bartok, I could not help but think what a forward-looking piece of music this must have been for the audience of Beethoven’s time, with its huge canvas, as well as the exploitation of the instruments to the limits of their range and capabilities. In fact, Beethoven said to a musician of the time, that this music was not meant for his time, “but for a later age.”

The ensemble, the timing, and the pacing of the quartet were remarkable throughout the performance of this long and complex work. Again, I was struck by the uniformity of the musicians’ concept of the work and sound, and how the music sounded and felt like it was being played by a über-instrument of enormous range, and not by four individual instrumentalists.

Friends who have been long time patrons of the Friends of Chamber Music in Vancouver told me that years ago, there was a waiting list for buying tickets to these concerts. The many empty seats in the auditorium, even for a distinguished ensemble like the Emersons, reminded me how times have changed. My friend said, “If you can’t fill the hall with the Emersons. There is no hope.” With the large number of young people studying music in this city, surely a connection can be made with the local music schools and teachers, in order to begin to cultivate a new audience for chamber music, this purest and most democratic form of music making.

Vancouver’s Friends of Chamber Music is now celebrating its 66^th season. I hope that they will continue to bring us groups like the Emersons for many more years to come.

It is up to us, the audience, to keep this very worthwhile organization alive.

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