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Alix Goolden Performance Hall
September 27, 2014
According to the old saw, "those who can, do; those who can't, teach". (When I was studying for my degree in education, we pointedly extended the saying with "those who can't teach, lecture; those who can't lecture, write books on the Philosophy of Education" - you had to be there.)
If we accept the veracity of the saying, then clearly none of Saturday night's performers has any business teaching at the Conservatory, as each of them is manifestly an executant of great skill.
The whole of Saturday evening's Jubilee concert was dedicated to the music of a single composer, Robert Schumann.
I must admit that Schumann is a composer to whom I only warmed relatively late in life and he is certainly not the first I should choose to spend an entire evening with.
However, when the performances are at the level of the three we heard on Saturday night, reservations must be withdrawn and plaudits distributed in their place.
Carnaval is a relatively early work and is intimately related to Schumann's first engagement, to Ernestine von Fricken. Ernestine was from the town of Asch (now in the Czech Republic) and Schumann based the work on the notes corresponding to the letters A-S-C-H (Es being E flat and H being B natural in German notation) and S-C-H-A the same notes in the order they occurred in his own surname.
Because of this connection and despite the fact that she is also portrayed within the music, Clara Schumann is reputed to have detested Carnaval which was apparently the one major work of her late husband that she never performed in public.
Robert Holliston, unflagging despite having spent the entire first half of the evening as accompanist, brought this first celebratory evening to a close with a distinguished and notable affectionate performance of Carnaval.
From the commanding opening to the final March of the Davidsbundler against the Philistines (one of the things that can put one off Schumann is his tendency to self-romanticise) Holliston did not put a foot wrong; his tone colours were eminently suited to the composer's idiom, his rubato was very fine, the dancing movements really did dance and, for once, the movement entitled Chopin (who neither cared for Schumann nor his music and reportedly described Carnaval as not music at all) almost sounded like the great Pole.
This was, in other words, a performance of considerable virtuosity and no little insight; it deservedly brought the audience to its feet.
Liederkreis means "song cycle" and Schumann, who wrote a considerable number of songs, used it more than once. Moreover, he tended to collect into cycle songs which had little in common other than the writer of their lyrics.
Such an example is his Op.39 cycle, settings of poems by Joseph Eichendorff.
Eichendorff appears to have been something of a gloomy gus, with a particular aversion to marriage: each time a wedding party appears in the poems you just know that something bad is going to happen - and it does. Schumann reacted to this poetry with a cycle whose second cheeriest song is the one entitled "Melancholy".
When I say, then, that I was riveted by Ingrid Attrot's singing of the cycle (and me with my known dislike of vocal music) I am paying her the highest compliment I can. Each song was wonderfully characterised: as an example, even without reading the words to the fourth song, "Die Stille" (Tranquility) which opens "No one knows how happy I am" there could have been no doubting that the singer was hugging her secret knowledge to herself.
Throughout Holliston's accompaniment was exemplary; it was pity, though, that during the pellucid "Mondnacht" (Moonlit Night) someone not far from me decided to unleash the Unwrapping Torture on everybody in the vicinity.
I must be careful; if this continues I shall develop a taste for lieder.
Maärchenbilder (Fairytale Pictures) is a late work, composed in 1851 just three years before Schumann's final, catastrophic breakdown. As Holliston pointed out in his commendably brief spoken introduction, it is only recently that Schumann's late works have begun to emerge from the shadow of his mental illness and to be seen as something other than the products of a deranged mind.
Michael van der Sloot played three of the four movements of this charming, short work. Throughout he displayed a fine tone (although in quieter passages his bottom string tended to be overshadowed) and sensitivity to the music.
I particularly enjoyed the lively bounce of the second piece and the delicious pizzicato with which the entire work ended.
If such a thing were even remotely possible, I'd be tempted to say that Victoria has a surfeit of first-class violists. But, as every sensible music-lover is well aware, you simply cannot have too many violists. Not of this calibre.
A delightful, rewarding evening. Clearly the Conservatory's faculty are in fine shape to begin the next half-century.
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