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St. Peter's Anglican Church
November 9, 2011
"Arrangements are made for these instruments from operas or other music, that actually has another use, because so far an adequate number of original compositions is lacking."
The words are those of Heinrich Christoph Koch writing in the 1802 Musikalisches Lexicon, the article in question being on Harmoniemusik.
Harmoniemusik began in the early 18th century as a sextet - a pair each of oboes (or clarinets, when they came along), bassoons and horns. Much music was written for this combination.
But in the spring of 1782, the Austro-Hungarian emperor Joseph II decreed that his "table music" should in future be performed by an octet (pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons and horns) drawn from the Court Theatre Orchestra. This new "standard" was rapidly adopted by other European courts. (Around 1800, a contrabassoon was added.)
There was just one snag: there was no music for this combination of instruments.
Enter the arrangement for "harmonie".
Over the half-century after Joseph's decree, some 10,000 works for harmonie were created - many of them not original works, but arrangement: operas were a favourite (Mozart himself arranged his Die Entführing aus dem Serail), but anything which was popular with the public was fair game.
Wednesday's first-rate concert by the Ensemble Pacifica and George Corwin consisted entirely of music both composed and arranged (although not by the composers) during this Golden Age of harmoniemusik.
The concert opened with the (somewhat shortened) overture to Beethoven's Fidelio.
The opening was beautifully crisp, as Corwin insisted on adding the timpani, which were in the original score but not the arrangement; this was undoubtedly a wise move, as wind instruments, no matter how good the players (and the Ensemble Pacifica are, very, good) cannot produce the attack which is so necessary in Beethoven's music.
What followed was, as always with Corwin, beautifully paced and textured.
Johann Nepomuk Hummel appears to have had a somewhat ambivalent relationship with his greatest contemporary: at one point Beethoven wrote to him "Keep away. You are false and fit for the knacker". (Of course, as Beethoven was notoriously capable of falling out with his friends, this probably says more about him than about Hummel.) Nonetheless, Hummel served as a pallbearer at Beethoven's funeral.
The major work in the first half of the evening was the music from Hummel's Die Eselshaut (The Donkey's Skin), an incredible farrago of a fairy tale, whose plot contains some extremely dubious elements, probably making a revival unlikely.
The music, though, is delightful, from the wonderfully dark-hued opening of the overture - the combination of clarinets, bassoons and contrabassoon producing a marvellously subterranean sound - to the jolly finale.
In fact, if there was one word which appeared more frequently in my notebook than any other, it was "jolly", along with "charming", "perky" and (just the once) "insouciant".
As throughout the evening, the ensemble's playing was excellent, although I doubt if even performances of this quality are likely to elevate Hummel's stature beyond that of an also-ran.
Indeed, the difference between talent and genius was immediately displayed by the open bars of the overture to Don Giovanni, which, both musically and narratively, is worlds away from the Hummel.
Perhaps the highlight of the four extracts was the famous duet, "Là ci darem la mano", in which John Larsen's bassoon and Katrina Bligh's oboe stood in - beautifully - for the Don and his intended victim Zerlina.
Probably the greatest work ever arranged (or most of it) for harmonie was Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. "The apotheosis of the dance", Wagner famously called it, summoning to mind an irresistible image of him dancing on the piano, to the accompaniment of his father-in-law playing his piano transcription.
The mystery of the harmonie transcriber's identity will perhaps never be known, although as Corwin pointed out in a brief talk after the first movement (to give his players a chance to catch their breath - literally), while Beethoven might have approved the first two movements, it is impossible to envisage his giving his imprimatur to the removal of the repeat in the scherzo or the severely truncated finale.
In the case of an almost overfamiliar work like the Seventh Symphony, one of two things is required to shed new light: an arrangement of the music for different forces or an unusually perceptive conductor.
Wednesday's performance scored on both counts.
There was a definite sense of "bigness" about the slow introduction, a stately inevitability (despite the slight disagreement about tempos at one point) and the unfamiliarity of the overall sound merely served to remind one of the music's stature.
After a somewhat surprising (in view of the players' breathing requirements) exposition repeat, the development was very exciting, even if the recapitulation did really require the full orchestra to make its proper impact.
The famous allegretto also came off beautifully, taken at a flowing tempo and lovingly contoured.
The omission of the second repeat of the trio in the scherzo is unfortunate but is not unique (Stokowski does the same in his 1927 recording); it does, though, rob the music of one of Beethoven's jests. Nevertheless, both scherzo and trio were taken at very good tempos and the "joke" ending - the trio appears to be about to be played for the third time (second in this cut version) and just as the audience is thinking "oh, surely not!" the movement abruptly finishes - worked as well as could be expected, and the final chords were marvellously precise.
Had the arrangement not severely truncated the finale (the entire development is missing) I should have thought Corwin's opening tempo a little too much too soon, as it were.
In the event it proved - of course it did - perfectly chosen for the entire movement (as much of it as remains) to feel like a single huge crescendo, with the final climax (complete with Robyn Jutras's growling contrabassoon and Rich Lang's pounding timpani) almost making one rise from one's seat.
For a Wednesday evening, this was a gratifyingly well-attended event; as indeed it should have been. A programme of both the unfamiliar and the familiar in unfamiliar guise, all played with exquisite taste, skill and gusto.
What more could one ask?
The ensemble: Katrina Bligh, Patrick Conley: oboes; Jacqui Sullivan, Melanie Pare: clarinets; Annie Caverie, Karen Hough: horns; John Larsen, Bonnie Smith: bassoons; Robyn Jutras: contrabassoon; Rich Lang: timpani.
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