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.

50th Anniversary in Los Angeles

On January 15^th, 1961, a young conductor named Zubin Mehta arrived in Los Angeles to rehearse the Los Angeles Philharmonic in preparation for a series of concerts. Mr. Mehta was almost completely unknown to orchestra or audience in Los Angeles. He had just been appointed music director designate for the Montreal Symphony, but who in Los Angeles had ever heard of the Montreal Symphony in 1961? Mehta’s appearance with the orchestra was the result of a cancellation by Fritz Reiner, who was supposed to have conducted.

At both rehearsals and concerts, the chemistry between conductor and orchestra was apparent from the start. The day after an especially successful concert, the orchestra administration offered Mr. Mehta the post of “associate conductor”. There have been many versions of the events that transpired next, but what eventually happened was that Georg Solti, the orchestra’s music director designate, was offended that he was not consulted about Mr. Mehta’s appointment, and resigned before he even began his tenure with the orchestra. Suddenly left without a music director, and seeing Mehta’s incredible success with both orchestra and audience, they offered the job to him instead. For the next 16 seasons, Mr. Mehta elevated the Los Angeles Philharmonic to a world class orchestra, with successful concerts throughout the musical world and recordings that still remained cherished items among music lovers.

This past weekend, the Los Angeles Philharmonic celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the beginning of Mr. Mehta’s tenure as music director of the orchestra. The programme was a re-creation of the concert he conducted as music director – the Busoni version of Mozart’s Overture to Don Giovanni, which incorporates the use of trombones as well as music from the end of the opera, Hindemith’s Mathis der Mahler Symphony, and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 7.  It is a serious programme, certainly far from the “showy” pieces Mr. Mehta has been accused of favouring.

Mr. Mehta’s 16-year tenure with the orchestra was not all smooth sailing. Despite his chemistry with the orchestra and popularity with audience, he would, for years, receive scathing reviews from the Los Angeles Times and its chief critic, Martin Bernheimer, who seemed to have devoted much of his career to (unsuccessfully) destroying Mr. Mehta’s reputation. Indeed, in his younger days, Zubin Mehta did not seem to have much luck with the critics, the main complaints being the conductor’s apparent superficiality, a lack of discipline and “depth” in his interpretations. I remember one reviewer, praising the conductor’s recording of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies, adding that, “Alas, he is good for nothing else.” Such a statement is not only an insult to Mr. Mehta’s talents, but also disparaging towards the music of Liszt.

I have had the good fortune to hear Mr. Mehta in person on several occasions. In those occasions, and in listening to the conductor’s many recordings, I find the complaints from the gentlemen of the press entirely unjustified.

Is Zubin Mehta a great conductor? Certainly.  Is he the “greatest”? I do not know, because I do not know what the word means. From listening to his music making, I can only say that Mr. Mehta is a hugely talented and extremely serious musician. Yes, he did conduct the by now famous “Three Tenors” concert, but then so did James Levine, whose reputation did not seem to have suffered from such an association.

In recent years, critics seem to have been kinder, at least fairer, to Mr. Mehta. Perhaps he will now receive what he has always deserved, to be judged by the merits of each performance, and not by the preconceived and malicious stereotypes.

Rather than relying on the words of the “distinguished” critics of the Times, maybe we could end by recalling the words of Arthur Rubinstein, who said, “Some of my most joyous and inspired performances have been in collaboration with Zubin Mehta.”

Endorsement indeed, coming from a pianist who had probably played with most of the greatest conductors of the 20^th century.

The Czech Nonet

It was an embarrassment of riches last night in Vancouver – the opera presented their second performance of La Bohème, Paul Lewis played a recital of late Schubert sonatas, and the Friends of Chamber Music presented the Czech Nonet in a programme of Wagner, Prokofiev, and Dvořák.

Formed in 1924, the nine players of the Czech Nonet, a combination of wind and string players, play a wide array of repertoire, from the Baroque to the 20^th century. Of great interest to me was their performance of Richard Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, one of the composer’s most lovable and loving works. I had only heard the work performed by a full orchestra, and so I was very curious to hear this scaled-down version of the piece (the original score was scored for 13 players.)

Siegfried Idyll was beautifully executed by the Nonet. However, I do have a quibble with extremely slow tempo they set for the opening which, to me, went against Wagner’s marking of bewegt – lively, or with motion, roughly translated. For me, the tempo of a piece of music is of secondary importance, as long as the players can maintain the tension within the music. In this case, however, the extremely leisurely opening tempo makes the tempo relationship with the other sections irrelevant. Shortly after the opening, Wagner writes Noch mehr zurückhaltend – still more holding back, which became difficult since the opening tempo was already so “held back.” I feel that Wagner is warning us against the danger of the piece becoming too static, since he fills the pages of this relatively short work with instructions in tempo changes. Only in the final bars did Wagner use the word langsamer – slower. Again, this becomes less meaningful since the opening bars were already played so slowly.

Sergei Prokofiev’s Quintet in A Minor for Oboe, Clarinet, Violin, Viola, and Bass, Op. 39 shows the composer at his sardonic best. To me, the sense of humour found in this work is almost an extension of the black humour one finds in the scherzo movements of Mahler symphonies; bits of the writing for winds even reminds me of Webern. I remember the delight Prokofiev took in imagining how the players look when they play certain passages. I think the composer would have been pleased and tickled by the performance last night. The players obviously relished the many technical and musical challenges the work offers, and brought out the sarcasm and humour that is inherent in every one of the six-movement work.

After the interval, the entire ensemble returned and essayed Antonin Dvořák’s Serenade in D Minor for winds, cello and double bass, Op. 44. According to the programme notes, Brahms was impressed enough with the work to have recommended it to his friend Joseph Joachim. The charm of the piece is that it does not pretend to be more than what it is – a simple but beautiful piece of music that aims to delight. From the opening march, reminiscent of Mozart’s wind serenades and Schubert’s German dances to the jubilant finale, the players conveyed their love for the score, and performed it with all charm and gusto. The slow movement, marked Andante con moto, brought out especially ravishing playing from the wind instrumentalists.

Considering all the musical events that were available last evening, the concert had a fairly good house. In this difficult economic climate, I do hope that the Friends of Chamber Music, now in their 65^th season, will continue to bring Vancouver audiences this purest form of music making.