Perry So with the VSO

Conductor Perry So made a welcomed return to Vancouver this weekend, conducting the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. I was moved by So’s music-making at his first Vancouver appearance, when he substituted for the scheduled conductor. He was a sensitive partner to Louie Lortie in Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, and gave an incandescent reading of Sibelius’ Symphony No. 1 in E minor. This time around, the programme chosen probably had less popular appeal, which unfortunately accounted for the many empty seats in the Orpheum Theatre last evening.

The first piece on the programme last night was Jocelyn Morlock’s Earthfall. Morlock is the orchestra’s Composer in Residence, and many of her compositions have been performed often by the orchestra. Earthfall is a brilliantly colourful and evocative work - one that I hope will be repeated often. In her talk before the performance, the composer shared her experience playing in a gamelan ensemble, which influenced her composition of the present work. Indeed, the gentle, rhythmically pulsating beginning of the work did indeed remind me of that beautiful instrument from Bali. The opening of the work is almost minimalistic in style, with changes taking place slowly over time and with slowly building tension. The texture and tension build to a climax, after which came a quieter section (the tension remains though), with violins playing in the high register, almost to provide colours, set against the woodwinds and brass. There was a beautiful theme for the second and then first violins, and the music came to a tranquil ending with the lower registers of the violins set against the fluttering sounds of the winds.

It is often difficult to judge a performance based upon a first hearing of an unfamiliar work, but I believe So and the orchestra captured the essence, the changing moods, as well as the colourful nature of the work. Yesterday’s performance confirmed my impression of So as having a great command of the orchestral resources. The orchestra responded well under his direction, and all its “departments” outdid themselves with their outstanding playing in this technically demanding and musically challenging work.

Violinist Alexandra Soumm made her debut with the orchestra in the same concert with Edouard Lalo’s colourful and virtuosic Symphonie espagnole, Op. 21. I was as impressed with So as a gallant accompanist as I was with Soumm’s tempestuous playing.

I loved the weighty string tone So evoked at the beginning of the 1^st movement (Allegro non troppo). For the first time, the strings were well balanced against the brass instruments of the orchestra. Soumm has a rich, luxuriant and vibrant sound that could cut through the orchestral texture, and she certainly rose to the challenge of the colourful and demanding string writing with aplomb.

Similarly, I was taken with the quality of the string tone at the quiet beginning of the 2^nd movement. In this movement (Scherzando: Allegro molto) I appreciated the soloist more for the virtuosity of her playing than for capturing the Spanish flavour and rhythm of the music. Her playing in this movement was somewhat metronomic and did not “move” enough rhythmically.

The orchestra began the 3^rd movement with great energy, and again with a sense of weight in the string tone. Soloist, conductor and orchestra captured the inflections of the Spanish rhythm, and the timing between soloist and conductor was perfect. Here, Soumm also highlighted the richness of her tone, especially in the lower register of the instrument, and she also highlighted the more rhetorical nature of the music.

I appreciated the spaciousness of the opening of the 4^th movement. In fact, I think I heard some of the best brass playing by this orchestra in a long time. Here, our soloist showed her lyrical side, playing with a wonderful intimacy. The few brief orchestral outbursts were also wonderfully played.

I would have wished for a little more lightness in the joyful 5^th movement of the work. The playing was colourful and exciting here, and the orchestra, under So, highlighted all the rhythm and colours inherent in the music.

Schumann’s Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Op. 120 is, I believe, a challenge for conductor, orchestra, and audience. A great performance of this work requires virtuosic playing from every member of the orchestra. Last year, I heard a never-to-be-forgotten performance of this same work by the Chicago Symphony under Ricardo Muti, a performance whose sound I have been carrying in my head.

I believe So’s interpretation of this difficult work is an indication of a young musician still figuring things out. Yes, he is enormously talented and musical, but I believe he is now thinking through his interpretations.

But, better this than taking the easy way out for any musician.

I thought that the slow introduction of the 1^st movement (Ziemlich langsam) called for far more tension than the musicians delivered. The descending scale at mm. 18 to 21 should be played with far more intensity and greater weight in the sound. As well, I missed a real sense of build-up in the few brief measures (mm. 22 to 28) to the 1^st theme (Lebhaft) at m.29. At m. 29, the articulation needed to be clearer in the strings, because there was some muddiness in the sound, and the off-beat accents at m. 35 should have been much sharper. I believe that at Letter E, there could have been more of a sense of forward propulsion.

I missed the sense of inevitability in the transition to the second movement, a Romanze (Ziemlich langsam). I wished for more of a “glow” in the sound of the oboe solo, and more of a feeling of innigkeit in the playing. Also, the triplet figures of the 1^st violins needed to be liberated a little, and perhaps more soloistic playing.

On the whole, the 3^rd and 4^th movement worked much better, and orchestra and conductor seemed to have hit their stride here. The weight of sound I missed in the 1^st movement was evident from the outset of the 3^rd movement. There was much more of a sense of urgency throughout the Scherzo (Lebhaft). The first violins played the eighth-note passage (m. 476) beautifully. I loved the wonderful transition into the 4^th movement, as well as the build-up of tension into m. 660 (Lebhaft). Throughout the movement, the balance was good, and kudos to the brilliant playing of the VSO brass. The woodwind playing at m. 815 to 826 was magnificent. So led a great transition into the final bars of the movement at m. 831 (Schneller), and the orchestra in turn gave him truly wonderful playing here. I feel that the ending would have made a greater impact had the final chord been written as a quarter note instead of a long whole note.

The audience gave the orchestra and conductor what I would call an ambivalent ovation. This was unfortunate, because it really took courage to programme this difficult symphony, a bold movement by a guest conductor still making an impression. I hope that management of the VSO would invite him back as a guest conductor on a regular basis. I would be very interested to follow the career and artistic development of this young conductor and musician.

Patrick May

February 6, 2018

Glorious Chamber Music

Hearing great soloists play chamber music can be exhilarating. In the case of one of the most celebrated trios in recent history, the Rubinstein-Heifetz-Piatigorsky trio, the personal tension (even dislike) between Rubinstein and Heifetz paradoxically made for some sizzling and white-hot music making.

Last Sunday afternoon, the Tetzlaff Trio, made up of violinist Christian Tetzlaff, cellist Tanja Tetzlaff, and pianist Lars Vogt, gave us an afternoon of glorious chamber by Schumann, Dvořák and Brahms.

I wasn’t sure if the musicians were getting used to the acoustic of the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, but in Schumann’s Piano Trio No 2 in F major, Op. 80, the balance (from where I sat) certainly did not favour the cello. In many parts of the stormy opening movement (Sehr lebhaft), I could hardly hear the cello, even though I saw her working very hard. The piano sound blended very well within the ensemble. Things improved a bit in the slow movement (Mit innigen Ausdruck), where the beautiful cello playing of Tanja Tetzlaff was slightly more prominent. Strangely enough, I had no trouble with the balance of the musicians for the rest of the concert.

The musicians’ performance of Dvořák’s great Piano Trio in E minor, Op. 90, nicknamed the “Dumky” was sensational from beginning to end. Once again, Tetzlaff’s playing of the rhapsodic opening (Lento maestoso) was ravishing. In the second dumka, the trio expertly managed the many subtle shifts of colours and moods. The playing of one part, with a beautiful cello line, echoed by the piano and the violin, especially moved me. At the ending of the elegiac fourth dumka, there was a hushed quality in the music making, where there was a magical interplay between members of the trio. Throughout the performance of this great work, the musicians were at one in their interpretation, and were perfectly matched in their musicianship and virtuosity.

I liked the tempo the trio set for the opening movement of Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major, Op. 8, since it keeps the forward momentum of the music, and prevents the music from sounding heavy or grounded. On the whole, there was more warmth in sound from the strings than the piano. In the B section of the scherzo, I thought that the piano chordal theme could be a slight bit more prominent. In the extended cello and piano dialogue in the slow movement, I decided that Tanja Tetzlaff’s relatively more intimate cello sound perhaps accounted for the lack of balance between the instruments in the Schumann that opened the concert.

I was especially impressed by how Lars Vogt, normally a barnstorming virtuoso, subsumed his “soloistic” tendency and blended his playing so wonderfully within the ensemble. Of the three, I felt that Christian Tetzlaff played the most like a soloist, magnificent playing though it was. Tanja Tetzlaff’s sound was, to my ears, the most suitable for the intimacy of chamber music.

Within all the wonderful piano concerts February has to offer, this afternoon of chamber music was the perfect intermezzo. I can’t wait for what promises to be a sublime evening of Bach with Richard Goode next Sunday.

The Art of Programming

If nothing else, Jeremy Denk’s solo recital last Sunday at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts should be credited for originality in programming. I would wager that a couple of the composers whose works he played had never before appeared on a recital programme in Vancouver. From Bach’s dance suite to Schumann’s Carnaval that ends the programme, it appears that the entire programme was infused with the spirit of the dance.

Denk begins his concert with J. S. Bach’s English Suite No. 3 in G Minor, BWV 808.  The sound he makes on the piano was beautiful, and he played the music with a wonderful sense of rhythm and forward motion, especially in the extended concerto grosso–like Prelude. I did feel that there was a little over-pedaling, thus sacrificing a bit of textual clarity. The pianist also observes all the repeats in the dances. I didn’t, however, feel that there was enough variation in the way the repeats were played to justify their observance.

The rest of the concert’s first half was, in Denk’s words, a sort of “i-Pod shuffle” of different works. The next item on the programme, Scott Hayden and Scott Joplin’s Sunflower Slow Drag, was played with a great deal of charm, and just the right amount of rubato. It did, to me, sounded a little rushed, slightly breathless, reminding me of Joplin’s complaint that most people played his music too quickly. I would personally have liked him to take a little more time with the music, giving it slightly more breathing room.

The pianist then turned back the clock a few centuries, playing William Byrd’s The Passing Measures: the Nynth Pavian from My Ladye Nevelles Booke. Other than Glenn Gould and perhaps Peter Serkin, I cannot really think of any other pianists who would even attempt these virginal pieces on the modern concert grand. This music is notoriously difficult to bring off, as it is up to the artist to capture the audience’s attention with a variety of sounds and colours. I think Denk is successful in moving the music forward as well as holding our attention in this incredibly beautiful and moving music. As in the Bach, I did feel that the music suffered from a lack of clarity.

Igor Stravinsky’s Piano Rag Music is written for and dedicated to Arthur Rubinstein, as a thank you to the pianist for his financial assistance during a difficult period in the composer’s life.  In the pianist’s entertaining but highly subjective memoirs My Many Years, he gives an account of his reaction to the work.

It took me four or five readings to understand the meaning of this music. 

It bore out Stravinsky’s indication that it was going to be “the first real piano 

piece.” In his sense, it was just that; but to me it sounded like an exercise for percussion and had nothing to do with any rag music, or with any other 

music in my sense.

Rubinstein, although one of the first of the “modern” pianists and a great champion of contemporary composers, probably finds the “percussiveness” of Stravinsky’s score offensive to his sense of aesthetics of what is, or should be, beautiful, in music.

I believe that Stravinsky would have been highly pleased with Denk’s interpretation of the Piano Rag Music. It is certainly as “wild” and colourful as the composer intended it to be. The pianist’s reading of this music reminds me that Stravinsky is, after all, the composer of Le Sacre du printemps, the work that changed music in the 20^th century.

Denk follows Stravinsky’s work with Paul Hindemith’s own “take” on ragtime, in his Ragtime, from the 1922 Suite. Prior to the Suite, the composer had previously experimented with the jazz idiom in his Kammermusik No. 1, where he introduced a foxtrot. In his preface to this Ragtime movement of the score, Hindemith admonishes the pianist with instructions like, “Pay no attention to what you have learned in your piano lessons”, “Play this piece very ferociously, but keep strictly in rhythm like a machine” and, “Regard the piano here as an interesting kind of percussion instrument and treat it accordingly.” Stravinsky would have approved of this work! The pianist certainly takes the composer’s advice to the letter, bringing out (even more than in the Stravinsky) the music’s wildness and savage drive.

Unlike the Joplin that he played earlier, I feel that Denk’s playing of William Bolcom’s Graceful Ghost Rag is utterly charming, with a perfect feel for the rhythm and pacing of the music, as well as impeccable taste.

The programme continues in its adventurous vein with Conlon Nancarrow’s Canons for Ursula No. 1, written for legendary American pianist Ursula Oppens. The composer wrote a large number of works for the player piano, thinking that the instrument would be able to bring off even the most complex rhythmic and polyphonic textures. Listening to Denk’s masterful playing of the score, one could easily think that the pianist is (in the best sense of the word) a sort of playing machine. I was stunned at how he manages the incredibly difficult timing and rhythmic shifts in the music. I am very grateful to the artist for introducing us to this score, and to actually playing a work by this elusive composer.

The final work of the first half, Donald Lambert’s arrangement of Wagner’s Pilgrims’ Chorus from Tannhäuser, is a stride piano “look” at this very familiar music. Those who haven’t heard this music (myself including) would probably find it difficult to imagine how effective and wonderfully irreverent it is. Denk’s playing of this music brings the first half of the recital to a spirited finish.

After the adventurous first half, the two works presented after intermission seem positively traditional. Haydn’s Fantasia in C Major, Hob XVII:4 is a delightful romp through many different keys and surprisingly textual changes. Denk’s playing of this work is certainly breathtaking. Perhaps a marginally slower tempo would have given the music a slight bit more clarity, without really sacrificing the humour within the score. At risk of being accused of splitting hair, I feel that the (left hand) octaves at mm. 193-194 and at mm. 303-304 could have been held longer. In both instances, the subsequent entries appear to come too soon.

Robert Schumann’s perennially beautiful and fresh Carnaval, Op. 9, is Denk’s final offering for the afternoon. The spirit of the dance can certainly be found throughout this early masterpiece.

I find that with musicians who are attracted to highly complex music, there is an emotional ambivalence when they approach more “simple” music. This is the impression I get on Sunday with Denk’s playing of Carnaval. Somehow the sum didn’t add up to be greater than its parts, even with the artist’s incredible pianism.

I was surprised when, at mm. 112 to 113 of the Préamble, he sped up the music rather than observing the composer’s ritenuto. I also feel that stringendo marking at the end of the movement could have been done to greater effect, so that there is more of a build up. The rather quick tempo that Denk takes in the Valse noble robs the music of its, well, nobility and dignity, as well as its tension. In Chiarina, again the rather quick tempo, for me, takes away much of the passionato quality of the music. I do feel that the very fast tempo the pianist adopts for the Valse allemande suits the character of the music. He plays it quicker than many pianists I have heard, which is, for me, faithful to the composer’s molto vivace marking.

Denk’s playing of Eusebius and Chopin is, for me, the highlights of his interpretation of the work. In Eusebius, the pianist coaxes a luminous sound from the instrument, and the music comes off as dreamily as the composer would have wanted. In Chopin, Schumann’s deliciously wicked portrayal of the composer, there is an ardent quality that is somehow missing in much of the other sections of the work; in the repeat, there could have been more tonal variance to give more variety in the sound.

Denk’s pianistic abilities are brought to the fore in Pantalon et Colombine as well as in Paganini. His playing of the Marche des “Davidsbündler” contre les Philistins is impeccable. I did not think there is enough build up in tension or in sound towards an orgiastic finish to the music. Perhaps it is a lack of a sense of totality that makes this a less than completely satisfactory realization of the score.

In response to the urgings of the audience, Denk graced us with a limpid and beautiful account of the 13^th variation of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. As in the English Suite that opened the concert, I have the same reservation about over-pedaling, and the repeats just do not have enough variety in interpretation or sound to justify them.

We should all be thankful for Jeremy Denk’s highly varied and original programme. He is obviously a pianist with great pianistic ability, as well as something to say about the music he plays. I hope, in future, to hear him in different repertoire so as to get a more complete picture of his artistry.

Life and Work of a Romantic Composer

With so much of the serious biographical material on Robert Schumann available only in German, a noteworthy book on the composer in English is always most welcomed. In 1985, psychiatrist and musician Peter Ostwald wrote Schumann – The Inner Voices of a Musical Genius, excellent psychobiography of the composer. Dr. Ostwald applied the same clinical analytical methods to his book Glenn Gould: The Ecstasy and Tragedy of Genius, an effort which I thought was less successful.

Hot off the press is German musicologist Martin Geck’s Robert Schumann – The Life and Work of a Romantic Composer, translated by Stewart Spencer (University of Chicago Press, 2013). Professor Geck set out, I think, to write not so much a purely chronological account of Schumann’s life, but more a discussion of the life and art of the composer within the context of the artistic and political milieu of his time. For me, what is even more intriguing is the fact that interspersed between chapters of his book are nine Intermezzi, essays that deal with various aspects of Schumann’s art.

With any biography of a well known figure, musical or otherwise, the acid test lies in whether one can learn something new about that historical figure. Other than facts of Schumann’s life, which are well known to music lovers, I do find the author’s discussions on the composers work and art most insightful.

Although friendly with his famous contemporaries Liszt and Wagner, he was not really close to them as friends or as artists. However, Schumann shared with Liszt and Wagner the belief in the idea of “the total artwork”, and searched for ways “of ensuring that the grand idea of a universal art might acquire a physical, tangible form.” Although it is well known that Schumann was regarded as a composer as well as a music critic, the author reminded me that Schumann viewed his music criticism and his writings on music not as reviews “in the traditional sense but as a form of poetic discourse”, not as criticism but as discussions of art and music.

One also finds within the chapters and in the Intermezzi quite detailed analysis of specific works of Schumann. I find the author’s discussion on the composer’s Kreisleriana, Op. 16, particularly interesting, even exciting. Geck points out that in Schumann’s pianistic masterpiece, the composer was writing

with Kreisler looking over his shoulder, and it is Kreisler who gives him the courage to indulge a fantastical imagination unsupported by any program and to create a cycle that explores what Franz von Schober had called “life’s untamed circle” with a tremendous wealth of ideas but without the sort of safety harness that Bach and Beethoven had at their disposal in the form of an initial theme on which their respective sets of variations are based. It is now Kreisler / Schumann who provides the theme.

Geck also highlights for me two major works of Schumann’s that have been all but ignored by contemporary musicians – his opera Genoveva and the oratorio Paradise and the Peri, as well as some of the composer’s choral works. He goes on to discuss and analyse Schumann’s universally popular Träumerei and argues that the work refutes Hans Pfitzner’s dictum that “Great works of art spring from the unconscious, not from the conscious.” In Träumerei, Schumann “was deliberately flying in the face of the ideal of natural beauty” by having an extremely carefully calculated and constructed work sounding like it was the composer’s “feeling” that “painted” the scene, or the dream.

The composer’s marriage to pianist Clara Wieck, the subject of much misinformation since Schumann’s death, is also handled well by Geck. It is neither the haliographic account of an “ideal marriage between two artists” nor the feminist viewpoint of Clara’s genius becoming completely suppressed by the forces of social convention. The author discusses the role Clara played in the marriage, as well as the challenges faced by women composers in the 19^th century.

Martin Geck’s book on Schumann is not an easy read, but is an intelligent, insightful, and ultimately interesting addition to the literature on the great 19^th composer. The author did not set out to write a biographical study as exhaustive as Ernest Newman’s biography on Wagner, or Henry Louis de la Grange’s massive study on Mahler, but he does provide interested readers much new insight on Schumann’s life and the art, as well as the times in which he lived.