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First Metropolitan United Church
October 12, 2007
The influence of teachers is often underestimated; but there must be some explanation for the mini-renaissance of music in England in the mid-twentieth century. One possible reason is the presence at the Royal College of Music, of Reginald Owen - invariably known as "R.O" - Morris.
Although Morris's own music is scarcely known - and he never even spoke about it himself - it is through his pupils that he is today remembered, pupils who included Michael Tippett, Constant Lambert, Edmund Rubbra, Jean Coulthard - and Gerald Finzi.
Finzi's Five Bagatelles for clarinet and - in this modern arrangement - strings was one of the undoubted highlights of Friday evening's season opener from the Victoria Chamber Orchestra.
Patricia Kostek was the excellent soloist in a performance which, I am sure, won new friends for the composer. The music, composed in 1943, is resolutely diatonic, melodic and superbly constructed. Kostek's gorgeous, limpid tone offset the smoothness and body of the strings to perfection. The third movement, "Carol", scored for clarinet and string quartet, was simply exquisite.
I can only echo the words of one fellow audience member: my only complaint was that the piece was too short. Quite where Yariv Aloni's affinity for English music derives from I cannot say (nor can he, it must be added) but that affinity is evident and strong. If he is contemplating adding Finzi's Clarinet Concerto to the VCO's repertoire I, for one, can only say "yes please!"
By 1883, when Niels Gade composed the original version of his Novelettes for String Orchestra, his friend and mentor Felix Mendelssohn had been dead for 35 years; Brahms had completed two symphonies, Bruckner six (or eight, depending on how you count them), Mahler had composed his first mature work, Das klagende Lied; Schoenberg, Ives and Holst were nine years old.
Yet, despite the passing of the years and the rapidly-shifting musical sands, Mendelssohn was clearly still the model for his younger friend.
The Novelettes also involve seven-part string writing, with violas and cellos also divided into two; this, in and of itself, is challenging enough (particularly when you only have four each of violas and cellos to begin with) but Gade's writing, while admirably idiomatic, is also far from easy.
From the work's sunny yet somehow defiant opening to the jolly, busy finale, the performance was a delight and Gade's own particular idiom - including a distinctly Nordic tinge to the Mendelssohnian harmonies - captured mavellously; the close of the opening movement, for instance, is simple, yet stunning effective: there is a big, apparently final chord, which ends to reveal the violas holding their note; the real end is marked by pizzicatos from the other instruments. And Friday's pizzicatos had commendable precision and depth.
If I have concentrated on the lesser-known music in the programme, it is precisely because it was lesser-known - although I imagine that shares in Gade & Finzi will have taken something of an upward surge after Friday evening.
The other two works in the programme, Handel's Concerto Grosso, Op.6 No.4 and Mendelssohn's String Symphony No.1, may have been more familiar, but they received performances every bit as committed and worthwhile as did the Gade and Finzi.
Tempos and balances were excellent in the Handel, with nicely contrasted solo work from principals Yasuko Eastman, Sue Innes and Mary Smith and tastefully unobtrusive harpsichord continuo from Peter Smith.
And whenever one finds oneself finding fault, however slightly, with the Mendelssohn, the thought that he was just twelve years old when he wrote it, is enough to dismiss any such heretical thoughts out of hand.
Once again, Aloni directed a performance of charm and life. There were a couple of moments, in the second movement, when the rapidly-running passagework did put something of a strain on intonation. But these moments were few and isolated.
I mean no disrespect to the other fine musical offerings that were available on Friday evening, when I say that I am surely glad I chose to attend this one.
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