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St. Andrew's Cathedral
March 28, 2009
"I couldn't get hold of Flos a bit and was therefore disappointed with it and me. But I'm not disappointed in Flos's composer, because he has not repeated himself. Therefore it is probably either an improvement or something that will lead to one..."
Gustav Holst was not the only member of the audience for the first performance, in 1925, of Vaughan Williams's Flos Campi, who "couldn't get hold of" the music.
For its composer, though, the pleasures of the premiere were twofold: firstly the "ravishing" playing of soloist Lionel Tertis, secondly the discovery that the orchestral players had dubbed the work "Camp Flossie", a nickname which delighted him.
Despite its manifold attractions, the work has barely gained a toehold in the repertoire in the decades since: perhaps because of its "awkward" (i.e. for a concert presenter) scoring: for solo viola, small chorus and small orchestra; perhaps because the music is so difficult to categorise; perhaps, indeed, because of the wordless choral part - it is the longest work with wordless chorus I can think of at present.
Admittedly, Saturday night's performance, which opened the concert, lacked an orchestra; and, while I yield to none in my admiration of Arthur Rowe's pianism, not even his marvellous playing could convey, for example, the fact that the opening duet with the viola should feature an oboe.
But that was the only slight drawback to a performance which, in every other regard was delectable. After a frustrating 20 minutes finding a parking space before the concert, I little imagined that within a few seconds (quite literally) of the music's beginning I would be transported.
Yariv Aloni was also "ravishing" in the solo part - which includes suggestions of both The Lark Ascending of four years earlier and of the Concerto Accademico for violin, on which he worked in parallel with Flos - the UVic Chamber Singers were their usual wonderful selves and Bruce More directed a flowing and coherent performance. The final pages even seemed to hint at the glowing close of his masterpiece, the Fifth Symphony of almost 20 year later.
Lanny Pollet's Two Poems of Reminiscence, which followed, was perhaps the least "accompanied" music of the evening. Not that Francis Pollet's playing was in any way deficient, simply that the piano part her husband had provided was somewhat sparse.
The settings, of two poems of Thomas Hardy, were musically deft and highly attractive, with some marvellous transparent textures. Nor could one easily imagine a more accurate or persuasive performance than we heard.
The death in 1918, at the age of 24, of Lili Boulanger was undoubtedly one of the 20th century's great musical tragedies. The first woman to win the prestigious Prix de Rome, she was also one of the first of a very long and distinguished line of students of her older sister, Nadia.
Soir sur la plaine is utterly gorgeous and inimitably French. Susan Young was a superbly Gallic soloist, Eva Solar-Kinderman provided excellent accompaniment and the singers supplied us with luscious harmonies.
For those who believe in the notion of History As Progress a brief synopsis of the history of the Castelnuovo-Tedescos would be appropriate.
By the 1930s the family was thoroughly - despite the name - Italian, having been involved in banking in Florence for almost 450 years. Since, in fact, the family had left Spain during the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 (and the Inquisition which followed).
A child prodigy, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco had a highly successful career until the Fascist government of Mussolini extended its heavy hand towards the arts and introduced new "racial purity" laws.
The result was that, in 1938, Castelnuovo-Tedesco fled the country which had been his family's refuge for over four centuries and ended up - as did so many European emigrés - in Hollywood, where over 100 films featured his music (albeit often without credit). Alas, few, if any, of the films were particularly distinguished (with the possible exception of "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers").
Romancero Gitano (Gypsy Ballads) was composed in 1951, well into the composer's Hollywood period, yet there is nothing in these settings of poems by Garcia Lorca to indicate that they were written in Tinseltown.
The accompaniment is in the form of a far-from-easy guitar part which is frequently - as the composer, who wrote over 100 works for the instrument, must have realised - almost submerged beneath the choral writing, providing a barely audible colouring. Alexander Dunn was excellent, especially when he could be heard.
This is another work I have heard the Chamber Singers perform before and one that I suspect that I should not enjoy quite so much in other hands; Castelnuovo-Tedesco was a fine and fluent composer but not, I venture to suggest, a great one.
Still, there is much to enjoy in the music, which was extremely well sung, from the gently lilting Memento ("When I die, bury me with my guitar") to the rapidfire vocal dexterity of the final Crotalo. There was also excellent solo singing from Susan Young again (this time indubitably Iberian in tone) and choir members Jeremy Notheisz (tenor) and Alex Granat (baritone).
This was presumably Bruce More's farewell to the choir he founded three-and-a-half decades ago. And a wonderfully appropriate ending it was.
I must just mention an unadvertised yet most unusual aspect of the evening's music-making. Just before the interval, Bruce mentioned that it was his wife, Connie's, birthday (and no, I most certainly did not ask) and we were then regaled by a brief rendition of Mildred and Patty Hill's miniature masterpiece ("Happy Birthday to You") performed in immaculate four-part harmony.
Now that (like much of the Chamber Singers' repertoire) is something you do not hear every day.
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