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First Unitarian Church
June 8, 2014
Max Reger was a man of notoriously large appetites; once, after a performance of Schubert's "Trout" Quintet, a lady admirer sent him a freshly-caught trout. In his note of thanks, Reger enclosed the date of his next concert and the programme, which included Haydn's "Ox" minuet. (Now known not to be by Haydn at all, but by one Ignaz, Ritter von Seyfried, 1776-1841, but that's another story.)
Anyone familiar only with Reger's reputation as a composer of turgid, academic, densely chromatic music would have been surprised, nay shocked, by his Serenade for Flute, Violin and Viola, Op.141a, as performed in Sunday by Richard Volet, Terence Tam and Kenji Fusé; for the music is, and the performance was, charming and a continuous delight.
The trio, who performed standing, brought out the wit and vitality of the outer movements, their irreproachable tonality leavened with sudden surprising chromatic lurches. The wistful slow movement was another matter: it is a thoughtful piece, thoughtfully played and the sheer beauty of the tone colours alone would have made the performance worthwhile.
Reger wrote a lot of chamber music (including six quartets, nine sonatas for violin and piano, and eleven for solo violin) during his relatively short life (he died, aged just 43, of a heart attack - perhaps unsurprising, given his appetites); I can only hope that more of it will be explored locally in future.
The Reger was unique in Sunday's programme in that it did not involve any cellos, whereas the other three works all included not just one, but two.
Anton Arensky's String Quartet No.2 was composed in 1894 as a memorial to his friend and mentor, Tchaikovsky, who had died the previous year.
The original version of the quartet was for violin, viola and two cellos, although he later rescored the work for a conventional quartet and also arranged the theme and variations second movement for string orchestra, and it is probably in this form - as the Variations on a Theme by Tchaikovsky - that the music is best-known (or, perhaps, least unknown).
To close the programme, it was real treat, as well as a genuine rarity, to hear Arensky's first thoughts and to hear them played with such dedication and persuasiveness.
The two cellos gave a wonderfully dark hue to the opening, so redolent of Orthodox chant; the four players produced a wonderful collective tone and the quicker music built to an impressively impassioned climax.
The slow movement, with its seven variations was exceptional, from the restrained emotionalism of the statement of the theme, taken from the fifth of Tchaikovsky's Sixteen Children's Songs, Op.54, to the final statement the theme distributed between the four players, all was beautifully played.
The finale may be the weakest music, and Russian composers are hardly known for their fugues; nonetheless, it holds the attention throughout, especially when played with this level of commitment.
A fine close to a fine afternoon's music making.
The programme had in fact been reordered in order to put the Arensky last - a wise decision, in my opinion.
The first "half" therefore consisted of two quintets by Boccherini, framing the already-discussed Reger serenade.
Boccherini was a cellist himself and rarely, if ever, used just one cello when he felt that he could use two. He wrote, for example, over one hundred string quintets for two violins, viola and two cellos (and, before you ask, he died two decades before Schubert wrote his quintet).
The concert opened with his Flute Quintet G,442 (the last of some two dozen quintets for flute and strings); it is a work often described as being "with cello concertante", a fact which would surprise few, if any, in Sunday's audience: there is even a cadenza for the instrument in the finale. Here and elsewhere, Brian Yoon demonstrated just why he has been called "Canada's next cello superstar". Which is not to say that his colleages were any less impressive, merely that they were given fewer opportunities to - let's call a spade a spade - show off. No doubt Luigi intended these parts for his own use.
The other Boccerini work, one of those hundred string quintets, has the subtitle "Fandango". His Guitar Quintet, G.448, also bears this sobriquet; it is an arrangement of two movements of his quintet G.270 and both movements of this quintet.
The opening minuet - well, it's a minuet and there isn't that much to say about it, except that the trio slips, rather charmingly, into the minor. Oh yes, the composer tends to use the violins as a pair, ditto the cellos, thus leaving the poor viola on his own for much of the movement.
It is the second and final movement which gives the quintet its name: after a grave opening, it dashes into a Tempo di Fandango, initially a stately dance, albeit with a distinct hint of something altogether racier in prospect, before accelerating into the real thing, with lots of col legno slaps and, just when you feel that it needs a pair of castanets to complete the mood, the first cellist (Yoon again) lays down his instrument and picks up - well, actually, I think it was a pair of spoons, but the effect was suitably castanetish (and let's see what the spellchecker makes of that, shall we?).
I doubt if anyone would claim great profundity for any of Boccherini's music, but nobody could deny the excitement of this quintet, which was played with consummate skill and evident enjoyment.
The audience response at the close was all the players could have wished. I don't think anyone actually shouted "¡Olé!" (I admit to being tempted), but would not be at all surprised to learn that they had.
All in all, a glorious opening to the twenty-seventh season of Ein Kleine Summer Music.
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