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First Metropolitan United Church
October 16, 2015
The composer Gerald Finzi is best-known (or perhaps least-unknown) for his vocal music, including no fewer than nine song-cycles, in which he concentrated on English poets: Hardy, Shakespeare, Traherne. A perusal of the article on Finzi in the New Grove could easily lead one to believe that he had composed virtually no music whatsoever which did not involve the human voice.
And yet he did compose a handful of purely instrumental works, including two completed concertos - he withdrew two of the three movements of an early violin concerto after its premiere.
I have been wanting for years to hear Finzi's Clarinet Concerto; finally, last Friday, that wish was granted me.
Patricia Kostek was the superb soloist in a performance which, while not entirely unblemished, engrossed the listener from its vigorous opening to its final flourish.
Finzi plays the same trick at the opening of both outer movements - a bracing, almost astringent orchestral introduction which is deliciously subverted by the soloist's entry: gorgeously lyrical in the first movement, delightfully perky in the finale. In both instances the orchestra provided rich, full-bodied tone while Kostek's entries were full of life and tonally delectable.
Throughout the work Aloni paid close attention to his soloist and the orchestra responded well (with the exception of a brief hiatus in the second movement which, having mentioned, I now propose to gloss over).
The slow movement provided the emotional centre of the work and built to a powerful climax. Its plaintive melody, Kostek's beautifully woven arabesques and the bewitching close will linger in the memory.
On a purely personal note I must offer a heartfelt "thank you" to all concerned.
Two composers, each in their ninth decade, each witnessing the desolation of his country's losing a world war, react with some of their last music.
But those reactions could hardly be more different: in his Metamorphosen of 1945, Richard Strauss composed a heartrending lament for his country.
By contrast, one might say that in his Octet (also known as the Concerto for Strings) of 1919-20, Max Bruch buried his head in the sand and wrote a work which he could just as easily have composed half a century earlier.
And yet this does not really do Bruch justice: there is no sense in the Octet/Concerto of his "going through the motions", no feeling of compositional fatigue. The music is simply not "of its time", which arguably, almost a century later, is neither here nor there.
Aloni and the VCO closed the concert with a lively, spirited performance of the Concerto - although Bruch did not so name it, it seems useful to distinguish the chamber from the orchestral.
From the opening, on violas, cellos and basses, the orchestra offered some wonderfully lush sonorities and played the music to its Romantic hilt. The slow movement, wistful and nostalgic (perhaps the only clue to the composer's age) was taken at a smoothly flowing tempo and featured a delightful solo from Yasuko Eastman; the finale, a slightly lumbering dance, had tremendous momentum and featured a soaring melody from the violas and cellos.
The music does, I feel, illuminate what is otherwise something of a musical mystery: namely, why is the overwhelming majority of Bruch's output so rarely heard? The answer, I believe, is in his melodies, which can, in the right hands - and these were definitely the right hands - entrance while being performed but which do not stick in the memory.
The concert opened with the Serenade by Dag Wiren, a work which sounds indisputably Scandinavian, although exactly what that entails I could not say for sure.
This is a work the orchestra have played before and their performance - from the busyness of the opening movement to the robust and exuberant final march - was full of confidence and life.
Another marvellous evening from the Victoria Chamber Orchestra.
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