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St. Elizabeth's Church, Sidney
January 13, 2012
One of the newspaper announcements advertised four concertos: three by the Baroque composers Vivaldi and Albinoni, and one by Grieg. People whose minds tend to drift when Baroque music is being played might have hesitated to attend this particular event just for the sake of Grieg. I still remember huddling in a freezing cold church in Venice at Christmas time, desperately wishing that the Vivaldi concert would end so that I could return to my hotel and immerse myself in a hot bath. My mind has been cool to Vivaldi's music ever since, at least until yesterday.
The first pleasant surprise of the Four Concerto Evening was that works by Bartok and Morricone, as well as arrangements by the artistic director, Stephen Brown, had been added to the programme.
The second pleasant surprise was Vivaldi's Concerto for Two Cellos in G Minor. Surely it is not uncommon for a concert-goer to experience a sudden epiphany when listening to a piece of music for the nth time that has previously left him or her unmoved. On this occasion, the Second Movement made me breathless with its unspoken yet intimate message across the oceans of time, as if Vivaldi himself were talking to me (perhaps apologizing in person for that frigid performance in Venice). The epiphany was undoubtedly triggered by the excellence of the cellists - Joyce Ellwood and Laura Backstrom - as by my own perseverance.
The other Vivaldi piece - Concerto for Two Guitars in G Minor - was originally composed for two mandolins. To the modern listener, the guitars might add a welcome note of masculine weight to an otherwise rather airy composition. Alas, the sound of the guitars, skillfully played by Bradford Werner and Michael Dias, was often overpowered by the orchestra.
Oboist Russell Bajer brought home to me why the Oboe Concerto in D Minor is one of the most popular works in Albinoni's prolific output.
Grieg wrote his Norwegian Dance No. 1 for the piano à quatre mains. On this occasion it was to be dominated by Eugene Dowling playing the tuba in Öystein Baadsvik's adaptation. Having listened to a recording of the adaptation beforehand, I was skeptical how it would turn out this time, since the tuba in the recording had sounded a lot like the Titanic signalling to icebergs to get out of the way. I must concede, however, that Dowling's sensitive rendition complemented rather than overwhelmed Grieg's playful and sometimes cheeky harmonies in the orchestral background.
Stephen Brown included his own arrangements for strings of four of Bartok's 10 Easy Pieces (originally composed for the piano) as well as four mediaeval pieces. The off-and-on discord among the violins that pervaded the concert was particularly grating in these arrangements. I would like to think that the acoustics of the church were to blame, but of this I am not entirely convinced.
To conclude the concert, Brown had asked for ideas how the soloists - the two guitars, the two cellos, the oboe and the tuba - might be brought together to play a piece with the orchestra. Dowling suggested his tuba adaptation of Morricone's main theme Gabriel's Oboe from the 1986 movie The Mission. The oboe and the cellos were found to fit right in, and as a substitute for the original harp, Brown wrote an arrangement for two guitars. During the first half of the theme, the tuba and the oboe alternated beautifully, while in the second half they came together in harmonic perfection. One would have to be tone-deaf not to appreciate the mournful beauty of the theme. It earned a standing ovation from the audience and prompted the orchestra to offer the second half as an encore.
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