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University Centre Auditorium
October 4, 2013
On May 12, 1937, a new King-Emperor was crowned in Westminster Abbey. The event had long been planned, the music especially composed, and the coronation went ahead with just one small wrinkle: the plan had been to crown Edward VIII; instead, it was his younger brother who would be crowned George VI.
Given the unfortunate unavailability of Elgar, who had inconsiderately died in 1934, the task of providing some "Pomp and Circumstance" fell to William Walton, whose Crown Imperial March, although unflatteringly compared to Elgar's marches at the time, was successful enough to make a reappearance at the next coronation, of Elizabeth II, in 1953.
Walton's original was for full orchestra, but it was the wind band version (not by the composer, but by one W.J. Duthoit) which opened Friday evening's concert by the UVic Wind Symphony under the direction of Eugene Dowling.
The introduction, with a commendable spring to its step, heralded an excellent performance, nicely paced and with good dynamics; the trio, with its "big tune" - it may have been no "Land of Hope and Glory" but how many of us could hum the main melodies of Elgar's other four marches? - found the ensemble producing a warmer, mellower sound.
The only surprise is that Walton, author of some of the century's most inventive percussion in "Belshazzar's Feast" six years earlier, should have been so oddly unsubtle here. Although the glorious combination of tubular bell, tam-tam and cymbal at the close (almost) compensated.
From the opening notes of the next work, Gustav Holst's Moorside Suite, it became clear that its composer had a feel for the wind band which Duthoit simply did not. (Indeed, the Walton was noticeably the least idiomatically written for band.)
The beautifully-layered orchestration of the opening Scherzo, full of both joviality and subtlety, was given full reign by Dowling and his players. The Nocturne has that particularly English pastorality that serves to underline Holst's connection with his best friend, Ralph Vaughan Williams. Or it does when played this sympathetically. The finale, a much more varied piece than its simple "March" title would suggest, culminated in a sweeping peroration.
A salutary reminder that there is far more to Holst than The Planets.
We tend to think of unusual and uneven time signatures as a 20th century phenomenon, hence the fact that the Serenade by Derek Bourgeois (composed in the 1960s) is in 11/8 scarcely seems surprising and dovetails neatly with contemporaneous experiments in compound times by groups such as the Grateful Dead (in a song entitled, somewhat unimaginatively, The Eleven). However, as long ago as the 19th century, we find Modest Mussorgsky effectively using an eleven-beat rhythm in the Promenade to Pictures at an Exhibition, even though it is notated as alternating bars of 5/4 and 6/4. And of course there is the famous single bar of eleven in The Rite of Spring.
The joy of eleven, of course, is that it can be subdivided in several different ways: Mussorgsky as 3-2-3-3, the Grateful Dead as 3-3-3-2 and Bourgeois as 3-3-2-3. (Stravinsky, ever the iconoclast, has eleven beats of equal emphasis: 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1, as it were).
The Bourgeois turned out to be a delicious, charming piece (just as well, really, as it was composed as the recessional for his own wedding) and, without Dowling's pointing it out, many would probably have not realised that the metre was anything unusual, so smoothly and naturally was it performed. Bourgeois even briefly extends the bar to 13 beats (as also employed in the 1960s by avant-garde jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp and psychedelic rock band The Soft Machine) which, once more, you had to be listening for in order not to miss it.
Superb. And Dowling made it look easy.
In the second half we were treated to Phillip Sparke's Orient Express, which was definitely "train music", complete with the sound of the conductor's and the train's whistle - although I could not help but feel that emulating these sounds by the use of - let's be frank - whistles was perhaps not quite playing the game. It was a fun piece though and the orchestra clearly enjoyed playing it.
Finally, Gordon Jacob's An Original Suite (thus emphasizing the fact that its melodies were not in any way traditional) demonstrated that, while not of the top flight, Jacob is definitely a composer who should be heard more often.
The jolly opening movement, unmistakably English for all its "originality", featured some marvellously crisp percussion; the second movement intermezzo was mellow and lyrical, leading to a powerful but never coarse climax, thanks to fine playing from every section. The finale, busy and almost raucous in places, was leavened with some gloriously bubbling flute and clarinet passages before bringing the evening to a spritely close.
I find it quite extraordinary that, in over two decades of reviewing here in Victoria, I have never attended a Wind Symphony concert before. (I did once attend a dress rehearsal, in the days of George Corwin, because they were doing Grainger's Lincolnshire Posy and I couldn't attend the actual performance - even though a dress rehearsal isn't the real thing.)
But the sheer quality and exuberance of Friday's performance - both conducting and playing - will ensure that it will not be two more decades before I attend another one.
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