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First Metropolitan United Church
March 12, 2010
"There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead."
By his own criterion the French-born Swiss composer Artur Honegger, who died in 1955, should, by now, be a shining success.
Musical fashion is a fickle thing, though, and whereas he was once celebrated (and vilified) for his tone poem Pacific 231, depicting a railway engine in action, and for his cantata King David, today it is his five symphonies which are performed and recorded most frequently.
The second symphony is perhaps Honegger's greatest, possibly his finest single achievement; it is, as few could mistake, a product of wartime - Honegger, although a Swiss citizen, chose to remain in Paris during the occupation and even joined the resistance. (Ironically, after the war, his music was for a brief period banned in France, as he had been "too successful" under the Nazis.) Honegger's Second is, indeed, one of the greatest string orchestra works of the twentieth century.
Friday evening's concert by the Victoria Chamber Orchestra and Yariv Aloni concluded with a superb performance of the symphony, a far from easy work, technically. But the musicians not only mastered the notes, they also delivered a performance of considerable emotional depth and impact.
After a slightly tentative opening chord, the first movement's introduction set the scene with the plaintive solo viola of Marian Moody. The sturdy allegro which ensues was launched on its way by pounding cellos and basses, its several tempo shifts deftly handled by Aloni.
The second movement provides the work's emotional heart, a portrait of a suffering continent, with its dark opening, complete with desolate cello solo - Mary Smith on good form here. The long, anguished central crescendo was excellently-controlled: Honegger might well have entitled this movement (as he did the finale of his third) De profundis clamavi (Out of the depths have I called).
The scurrying finale, taken at a steady tempo, was wonderful. It is full of polyrhythms, which were played with confidence and accuracy; admittedly there were a couple of moments when the performance seemed "on the edge", but it never once teetered over.
The icing on the cake is the final chorale, worthy of the great Johann Sebastian himself, a shaft of light piercing the gloom.
Honegger marks the trumpet part as optional, but surely nobody who has ever heard it can imagine performing the work without it. Michelle Footz was a delight here.
I have waited some 45 years to hear this music performed live and this was a performance worth waiting for. Unlike some "name" conductors Aloni did not try and smooth out the bitonal aspects of the music, instead he delivered a bracing and moving performance. My thanks to everyone concerned.
Joseph Haydn was no virtuoso and, possibly as consequence, his concertante works are, on the whole, rather less interesting than those of Mozart.
The notable exceptions are his two concertos for cello; in both cases Haydn wrote for a particular player - the principal of the Esterházy orchestra, Joseph Weigl and Anton(in) Kraft respectively.
The concerto in C, the first of the pair, was composed in the early 1760s but lost and not rediscovered until 1961. It is a delightful work, full of melody.
Ryan Gajek, winner of this year's Louis Sharman Concerto Competition, was the dazzling soloist in Friday's performance. His playing was confident - as witness his first entry - bold, spirited and fluid.
The outer movements - taken at near-ideal tempos - were full of life and Gajek's double-stops were excellent. In the slow movement, his first solo emerged seamlessly from the orchestral backdrop.
In addition, the unfamiliar cadenzas in the first two movements proved to have been written by Gajek himself. They were both interesting and stylistically appropriate.
We shall hear more from this young man.
The evening opened with Grieg's "Holberg" Suite, a charming piece given a charming performance, with sterling solo contributions from concertmaster Yasuko Eastman, violist Marian Moody and cellists Mary Smith, Janis Kerr and Trevor McHattie.
It may be (alright, it is) a cliché, but the Victoria Chamber Orchestra go from strength to strength.
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