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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
January 15, 2011
There is a rather poignant "Peanuts" cartoon from around fifty years ago, showing Schroeder searching through a large pile of music. Eventually he admits defeat and says "I'm sorry, Charlie Brown. I guess Beethoven didn't write anything for electric guitar and piano."
Nor, come to that, did he write anything for trumpet and cello. In fact, until 1958, nobody did. And, arguably, nobody has since.
And it was with that solitary 1958 work, Yves Chardon's Sonata for Trumpet and Cello, Op.21 that Pamela Highbaugh Aloni and Louis Ranger closed Saturday night's fascinating Faculty Recital.
The work is - to say the least - unusual, indeed almost (but read on) unique. There were occasional hints of other composers - especially Stravinsky's Petrouchka in the opening trumpet fanfare, and of Les Six - but for the most part the piece left this listener, for one, somewhat adrift on a sea of unusual timbral combinations.
The second and fourth movements are short (in the case of the latter around ten seconds) slow movements for cello alone - at the initial reading Chardon (who was playing the cello) apparently felt that he had not given his trumpeter sufficient time to breathe and so improvised these two interludes, both lovely and both beautifully played.
But it was the rarely-heard combination of cello and trumpet which sticks in the mind even when, as occasionally in the finale, Highbaugh Aloni and Ranger seemed to be playing two different pieces (exceptionally well, mind you).
I don't expect to hear this piece again any time soon and so I am grateful for this opportunity, although I have to say that I can't see trumpet-and-cello becoming a combination composers turn to in vast numbers.
For an encore the (temporary) duo played "the rest of the repertoire" - actually for flugelhorn and cello - Carson P. Cooman's Un regard éloigné, commissioned to mark the centenary of the birth of Claude Lévi-Strauss (not the creator of denim jeans, but author of inter alia "Structural Anthropology").
This was slow and enigmatic music and, as with every item on the bill of fare, very well played.
The evening opened with another rarity, albeit for an entirely different reason. In this case the music - Mozart's Horn Concerto No.3, K.447 - was familiar, but we are not accustomed to hearing it played on a flugelhorn.
As Mozart is known to have actually composed a concerto for trumpet - alas, destroyed in a fire - the horn concertos are probably fair game for trumpeters, although with its somewhat mellower tone, the flugelhorn is doubtless more appropriate. Its sound is also a little more "precise" than the horn, although arguably in its lowest register it is also a little less elegant.
Ranger and pianist Bruce Vogt made a fine case for this unauthorised version, with a stylish first movement, fluid romance and a very jolly finale.
I must own that his sonatas are not among my favourite Chopin: large-scale sonata forms were not his strong point (how much more convincing are his scherzo and ballades, comparable in length to a sonata movement, but not constrained by conventional structures); and, while I can entirely understand and sympathise with cellists' gratitude that theirs was the one other instrument for which he chose to composer a sonata.
Having said all that, I have to confess that Highbaugh Aloni and Vogt's account of the sonata was as convincing and enjoyable as any I've heard - and more so than most.
The opening movement was an emotional whirlwind, the scherzo robustly energetic, and the finale, although arguably the least convincing movement, energetic and fluent. But the standout movement, for me, was the delectable largo, which found both players at the peak of their form. When it closed, my notebook bore the words "too short!!", a verdict I see no reason to moderate.
Last, and very from from least, Vogt played three pieces by Liszt.
Fine though his accompanying was earlier in the programme, Liszt seems closer to Vogt's heart and lifted his playing to an altogether special level.
Liebesträume may not be quite so ubiquitous a piece as it once was, but for anyone above a "certain age", it is still horribly familiar. Vogt managed to strip away all the sentimentality which so often weighs the music down, while revealing the piece to be both "bigger" and more serious than one had remembered.
The transcription of Schumann's "Widmung" (alas, I am not familiar with the original) sounded totally convincing quatranscription.
The highlight of the group, however, was the final piece Elegie: Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth, Liszt's fourth and final (1880) version of a piece originally composed almost four decades earlier.
Both musically and as a performance, this was magnificent. Liszt's sparse yet profound late style was given eloquent voice by Vogt's rapt pianism.
For those who, even in this bicentenary year - and what a superb way to begin the year this was! - refuse to accept Liszt's rightful place among the pantheon of the truly great, I heartily recommend the late piano music.
And I can but hope that other celebrations of his 200th birthday (and I trust that there will be many) will be in this class, although Vogt has certainly set the bar extremely high.
On paper, at any rate, Saturday's recital looked to be something of a mixed bag. While it was undoubtedly heterogeneous almost to a fault, it actually worked extremely well and the degree of commitment and skill on display from the musicians should surely have provided unity enough for anyone.
A marvellous evening.
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