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Alix Goolden Performance Hall
June 22, 2013
Some three decades ago, a British TV advertising campaign for Hovis bread, wishing to emphasize the loaf's traditional aspects, featured sepia-toned footage of terraced back-to-back houses in some Northern City, a brass band playing euphoniously in the background and a broad Yorkshire (possibly Lancashire - it's been a while) voice-over, beginning: "When I were a lad..."
Somewhat surprisingly, the music the brass band was playing in the background was an arrangement of the slow movement of Dvořák's Symphony No. 9, "Z nového světa" ("From the New World").
But perhaps we should not be entirely surprised: after all, the composer himself, in an interview in the New York Herald declared that he found the music of "the Negroes and the American Indians" very similar and indeed "the music of the two races bears a remarkable similarity to the national music of Scotland." It is not, after all, that far from Yorkshire (or Lancashire) to Scotland.
Of course, in these days of almost instant global communications and "World Music", the notion that anyone, much less as talented a musician as Dvořák, should find the music of these three cultures remarkably similar is laughable. However, we should bear in mind that, in each case, Dvořák was experiencing the music at best second-hand and mediated through the distinctly Western sensitivities of others.
Whatever the true inspiration for Dvořák's final symphony, and however much writers may tell us that it is a lesser work than its three immediate predecessors, there can be no doubting its popularity, even in a mediocre performance - which, alas, all too many are.
I was, however, expecting something special from Norman Nelson and the Sooke Philharmonic: "run of the mill" is just not their style. And they did not disappoint.
What I was not quite prepared for was the sheer, visceral excitement and emotional depth of the performance. Of all the "New Worlds" I have heard in two decades of reviewing - and there have been a few - this was incontrovertibly the finest.
It was not, it must be acknowledged, technically perfect, but in just about every other regard it was.
The solemn introduction (violas, cellos and basses) featured excellent intonation and rich tone, followed by the first characterful interjection of the winds. The drama which followed - complete (thank you!) with exposition repeat - was real edge-of-the-seat playing.
The slow movement allowed the members of the orchestra to demonstrate that they can do more than simply play loud - even the brass - and featured some truly delectable playing from all sections. Not to mention a lovely performance of that solo on the English Horn by Jacquelin Kereluk. The close of the movement, in which the composer uses just the first desk of the strings, then solo violin and cello, before closing with a four-part divisi doublebass chord which must strike terror into the hearts of the players (it certainly would have scared me rigid in my days of pretending to be a bassist). A chord which was, in this performance, hushed and really rather lovely.
The scherzo bounced merrily along, with its lilting trio bringing a smile to the face.
The finale is the symphony's most problematic movement; as Robert Layton writes that the movement is "not without its weaknesses: the pace seems a little forced at times and one is not, as is the case in Symphonies Nos. 7 and 8, swept along, barely aware of the actual mechanics of the music's movement."
Normally, this is a view with which I would concur, but not on Saturday, when Nelson directed perhaps the single most coherent performance of the movement I've ever heard in person. True, there was a patch of uncertainty, when those of us who know the music well were probably praying that it would not actually fall apart. But that was a brief moment to set beside the stunning playing of the rest of the movement which, for once, actually lived up to the tempo marking: Allegro con fuoco (literally, "lively and with fire").
An inspired performance.
Earlier in the evening it came as something of a shock to this confirmed operaphobe that all four of the arias which Ingrid Attrot sang with the orchestra had at least a veneer of familiarity and that I could actually have sung along (don't worry, I didn't) with one of them.
Attrot, who after a more-than-distinguished career is now Head of Voice at the Conservatory, is a living refutation of the old adage "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach". Perhaps we need to reformulate it as "Those who can do, and then teach."
With apparently effortless ease, Attrot negotiated the arias - by Cilea, Dvořák, Catalani and Lehár - covering a great deal of emotional territory, perhaps most of all impressing with the sense of sheer vocal power under total control. I had the distinct feeling that had she ever decided to "let rip" the hall's roof would have been in real danger.
Nelson and his musicians provided excellent accompaniment throughout.
Much more of this and I shall have difficulty in maintaining my rigidly anti-operatic stance.
The programme opened with three dances from Smetana's opera (again!) The Bartered Bride. From the first notes the orchestra produced a fine, solid and confident sound while Nelson drove them to their limits and (I gathered from conversations with the musicians later) somewhat beyond, in marvellous, rhythmically vital performances.
It was fifteen years ago, on June 20, 1998, to be precise, that the Sooke Philharmonic first performed in public. To my everlasting regret, I did not attend that concert, but over the years since I have heard them many times; they have never disappointed and the standard of their playing, on a purely technical level, has continued to improve. (Which quite probably would not have been the case had I listened to those members who attempted to get me to join. Fortunately saner heads - mine - prevailed. I shudder to think what that final chord of the slow movement of the Dvořák would have sounded like...)
The level of their enthusiasm and the depth of Nelson's interpretations, however, has never been in any doubt.
Of the musicians who gathered for that momentous concert fifteen years ago, eleven were present in Saturday's ensemble (and I believe that some of them have been with the orchestra throughout). On this special occasion and after this more-than-special performance, I think it worth mentioning their names.
The "Originals": Sue Innes, Joanne Cowan, Don Kissinger, Cathy Reader, violin; Rosalyn Alexander, Lee Anderson, viola; Sonja de Wit, cello; Michael Cochran, doublebass; Alison Crone, flute; George Kereluk, bassoon; Tia Leschke, horn.
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