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First Unitarian Church
June 10, 2012
The continuing popularity of Eine Kleine Summer Music festival is reassuring. Given the ocean of white hair in the fully packed church hall, one can only hope that the younger generations will also appreciate the festival's marvellous offering in the autumn of their lives. (Once, at an earlier concert, I turned to the middle-aged lady next to me and whispered: "The average age in here seems to be 84½", whereupon she frowned and replied with mock indignation: "Excuse me??") If you want a parking space and a good seat, make sure you join the line-up at least an hour before the concert.
The well-travelled Borealis String Quartet opened with Haydn's Quartet in G Major, Op. 76, No.1. By the time he had completed it in 1797, Haydn fell for the temptation of submitting it to more than one publisher in parallel, offering each the promise of first rights. In the event, it was published in 1799 in both Vienna and London. The Borealis team extracted every ounce of spirit from the cheerful Allegro con spirito, the darker Adagio, the playful Menuetto in 3/4 and 4/4 time, and the rhythmic twists of the final Allegro.
The six Taiwanese Folk Songs that followed resonated wonderfully with the audience. Not only are these melodies from the Far East surprisingly accessible for the Western ear, but the emotional content is equally palpable. Violinist Yuel Yawney introduced each piece by setting the scene: a little girl with a crush on somebody, a mother lulling her baby to sleep, the bustle and commotion in the market square, or the steam engine hurtling through the landscape. Each piece earned enthusiastic applause, with the exception of the fourth song, Heartbroken Flower. According to Yawney, this piece was composed by a father returning home to find his three-year-old child dead. Rather than having the song published, he left it in a drawer, and it was discovered only after he himself had died. The melody, as performed, conveyed his grief in a most heart-rending manner, and the otherwise so cheerful applause became distinctly hesitant and subdued.
Incidentally, the song featuring the steam engine - Diu-Diu-Dong - can be found on YouTube performed by several different choirs. I actually prefer the choir version to that of strings.
During the intermission one had time to reflect on the presence of the pentatonic scale that permeated the songs. Western composers of classical music as well as pop sometimes adopt it to give their work an "Oriental" flavour. In the absence of semitones, you can hardly go wrong with the five simple notes in terms of dissonances, yet they lend themselves beautifully to Western-style harmonic colouring worthy of Rachmaninoff and Ravel. Moreover, unlike the Western traditional heptatonic scale, the pentatonic notes are exactly the same in the major and minor keys, and it is the choice of the tonic that sets the mood (e.g. C-D-E-G-A produces a major, while A-C-D-E-G yields a minor). This was amply borne out by the different Taiwanese Folk Songs.
The second half of the concert was devoted to Beethoven's Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 130. This is one of the most epic works of its kind with six movements. The last of these, entitled Große Fuge, is a massive piece with no fewer than seven sub-movements of its own.
According to Yawney, Beethoven did not attend its first public performance but hung around at a nearby inn, presumably biting his fingernails. After the concert was over, one of the violinists rushed to the inn to report that the Quartet had been a huge success, so much so that the audience insisted on encores of both the 2nd and the 4th movements. Whereupon Beethoven burst out: "And why didn't they encore the Fugue? That alone should have been repeated! Cattle! Asses!"
Beethoven's publisher considered the Große Fuge to be much too heavy for a finale and persuaded LvB to replace it with a lighter and shorter Allegro. The Große Fuge was then published separately as Op. 133. However, the Borealis performers opted to play the Quartet in its original form, Fugue and all, and delivered it with great precision and sensitivity. That said, the composition may be more fun to play and analyze than to listen to. By the time he wrote it, Beethoven had turned completely deaf. If one is so inclined, one can read many things into it: the arcane demands of an inner ear, but also anger, frustration, impatience and sorrow. The strident wail and halting pace reminded me of a lone messenger riding on an injured horse through the eerie remnants of a battlefield during the Crimean War.
By contrast, the Cavatina movement, so filled with serene nostalgia, may one day give pleasure to an even wider audience, because it was the last piece on the "golden record" containing snapshots of human civilisation that was launched into interplanetary space onboard the two Voyager spacecraft in 1977.
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