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Alix Goolden Performance Hall
February 16, 2008
If I may be allowed to adapt Dickens: it was the best of concerts, it was the worst of concerts.
The opening was good as Vivaldi's Tempesta di Mare was given a convincing performance. The recorder, played by Teresa Hron, was a little overwhelmed in the tutti sections of the outer movements. In the slow movement the recorder stood out better, which was good, because Hron wove a lovely line with a spontaneous lyricism. The orchestra was bright and tight throughout. Perhaps the storm could have been a little more tempestuous.
Then things got bad. Very bad. I am not a huge fan of new music, so you may want to be sceptical about what I have to say next. I think, however, that I am a competent judge of the music on offer and everyone with whom I spoke (some of them experienced musicians) had a similar reaction to Hron's new compositions. Brian Groos, the Festival organizer, told me that he heard only good things about the works. All I can say in response is that Victoria is home to lots of polite but disingenuous people.
After the opening piece, we were given a musical representation of another storm at sea: the horrific Boxing Day tsunami. This was the first mistake: it is not possible to treat this topic in music without setting up the composition as victim art: art that cannot be criticized without seeming to be insensitive or politically incorrect. Well, I am going to criticize it anyhow.
Stravinsky once quipped that Vivaldi wrote the same concerto 500 times. I was reminded of this quotation because one might say in reply that some contemporary composers have written the same piece of new music about 5000 times. We were treated to a typical piece of atonal music for strings. We got the usual glissandi, tapping on strings with the wood of bows, the harpsichordist sounding strings without using the keys, and so on. To my mind, it sounded rather like Dory (in Finding Nemo) calling out to a whale. Unfortunately, the whale did not come and the piece went on for some time.
If that had been all, I might not have minded so much. Unoriginal, I might have thought, but inoffensive. The short recorder part was also fairly inoffensive. It simply played, in Morse code, the tsunami warning signal. But then we got several extended voiceovers of text written by one of Hron's poet friends, Robert Glick. This was what really ruined things. I know good poetry when I hear it and this poetry is doggerel. Recorder virtuoso though she is, Hron's reading only sounded stilted and pretentious. There was no discernable relationship between the spoken words and the accompanying music. This was a rotten thing to do to baroque music aficionados and people who had come out to hear their children sing.
I ached for the Vivaldi concerto that was up next. But I was to be disappointed because I had not read the programme carefully. The slow movement of Il Gardellino was replaced with another of Hron's original compositions. This one included a machine that played back parts of the recorder part while Hron recited more from the William McGonagall school of narrative poetry, this time by Celeste Doaks. This was just hubristic vandalism.
I needed a drink after the first half. Fortunately, Phillips Brewery was on hand with samples of one of their ales. Unfortunately, it was served in cups too small to do me any good.
Things took a turn for the better right after the interval. The sorbet that erased the taste of the first half was Albinoni's Sonata Op. 6, No. 6. Yesterday I noted that Albinoni was at heart a composer of vocal music and this was readily apparent in the aria-like slow movements. These were rendered beautifully. The opening movement, marked "grave adagio", was particularly touching. The decision to realize the basso continuo only on harpsichord enhanced the sense of fragility. The quick movements gave Destrubé opportunity to display his formidable technique.
Then came the main event, the one we had all been waiting for: Vivaldi's Gloria, RV 589. Usually this piece is performed with adult choristers and soloists, but it was written for the girls of the Pio Ospedale della Pietà. In an effort to recapture the original beauties of the piece, it was sung here by the Victoria Children's Choir. (The performance was not entirely authentic: a couple of boys somehow sneaked into the Pietà for this performance.)
I cannot say enough good about the Choir, but I suspect that a lot of the credit is owed to their director, Madeleine Humer. She had thoroughly prepared her charges for this performance. Still, it was the children who rose to the occasion. Each movement was individually characterized and dramatic. The diction was excellent throughout. And they were so confident and composed.
Just before the performance I listened to the wonderful 1988 Arkiv Produktion recording of the Gloria by the English Concert and Choir, directed by Trevor Pinnock. The soprano soloists on that recording are Nancy Argenta and Ingrid Attrot, who now live in Victoria. (Coincidentally, I ran into Nancy Argenta at the interval and exchanged pleasantries with her.) The contrast of this performance with the Arkiv recording was striking. Obviously the soloists were not in the same league as Argenta and Attrot, but once one adjusted one's frame of reference, the results were very satisfying. There was a musicality, innocence, vulnerablity and sincerity about the VCC soloists' performance that rendered them utterly compelling. I didn't miss Argenta's lovely singing - not too much, anyhow. I am not sure that I would want to hear the Gloria this way all of the time, but it was a treat on this occasion.
The Orchestra was at the top of its game for the Gloria, Destrubé's conducting was emphatic, and we were afforded another opportunity to hear the wonderful oboe playing of Washington McClain in the Domine Deus.
By the time the Gloria was over, I had just about forgotten the debacle of the first half. And, frankly, I cannot think of higher praise.
Brian Groos deserves an immense amount of credit for bringing the Pacific Baroque Festival to Victoria. The decision to include works by Hron marred the Festival, but did not prevent it from being a big success (with Sunday's evensong yet to come). I encourage Groos to remember that this is supposed to be a festival of baroque music. Groos and Destrubé are kidding themselves if they think that the audience appreciates the sort of new music on offer on this occasion. They can, however, include the VCC in the festival anytime as far as I am concerned.
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