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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
February 7, 2016
In Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell's indispensable tome "The Worst Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time" the highest-ranked Canadian entry is the Guess Who's "America Woman", which makes number thirty-eight, beating its only compatriot rival (Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69") by a solid eight places. And, let me assure you, the competition was tough.
Describing it as the band's "most outrageously wrongheaded single" Guterman and O'Donnell further write that "by 1970, criticism of the American government in a pop song had become old hat...but that was the only hat at the store when the Guess Who went shopping, so they tried to make it fit".
Making the musical equivalent of a silk purse from a sow's ear is nothing new, the exemplar being Beethoven's response to Diabelli's "cobbler's patch" of a waltz, although I am neither comparing the Guess Who to Diabelli (I'd rather listen to an hour of Diabelli than hear "These Eyes" again), nor, for all her undoubted talents, am I comparing Juliet Palmer to Beethoven, who is, of course, sui generis. Nevertheless, Palmer's "American Woman" transcends the banality of its "inspiration".
Scored for soprano accompanied by piano, viola, flute, bass clarinet, doublebass and percussion, Palmer's "American Woman" proved, for all its stuttering deconstruction of the original text, brilliantly performed by Anne Grimm, to be a lyrical lament - I particularly enjoyed the scoring for vibraphone - albeit one with a fairly violent close. An interesting, enjoyable piece - unlike its "original".
Palmer also provided the concert's eponym, "The Truth and the Truth", performed by the remarkable Corey Rae, a fascinating work for solo percussionist. Or, to be absolutely precise, solo snare-drummer, as that - apart from Rae's voice and body (more on this below) - was the only instrument involved
As in American Woman, Palmer breaks down her texts (quotes from Franklin D. Roosevelt, Barbara Bush and St. John's Gospel) to the syllabic level, which the player must utter while playing the drum with brushes, with sticks, while beating his breast rhythmically (it looked like an exercise for developing the abs) - leading to the irreverent question: does the material from which his shirt is made matter at all? And if so, is it specified in the score?
The piece closed with a fabulous piece of musical theatre, in which the player places what I presume were ball-bearings onto the head of the drum, picks it up and rolls them around while reciting "And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free" before doing precisely that and letting the ball bearings fall onto the stage. (A potential safety hazard which I presume was removed during the interval.)
An engrossing, powerful work.
The evening opened with ...when expectations end by Leonie Holmes.
This featured what I suppose we must refer to as the Aventa Piano Trio - pianist Tzenka Dianova, violinist Müge Büyükçelen and cellist Alasdair Money.
This was an intensely lyrical work, mostly slow and quiet, with the occasional violent outburst; the piano part was sparse and there was much use of string harmonics.
The overwhelming mood of the piece was tranquil, even those violent outbursts never really felt threatening. I was riveted throughout and, judging from conversations during the interval, I was not alone.
The second piece by Holmes was Recitative II, for viola and percussion.
Mieka Michaux and Corey Rae gave a sizzling performance, full of rhythmic vitality. Again Holmes made considerable use of harmonics - in this instance harmonic glissandos; her treatment of the percussion (mainly marimba and vibraphone) was also more than interesting.
Another most entertaining work.
Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosphicus opens with the upbeat of Proposition 1: "Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist" ("The world is everything that is the case") but closes, after almost 160 pages of elaboration of the first six propositions, with the terminal downbeat of Proposition 7: "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen" ("Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent").
Proposition 7 was the last of five texts set in Eve de Castro-Robinson's Quiet at her window, which was receiving its first performance.
The accompaniment to these five miniatures consisted of a more-or-less conventional chamber orchestra, with strings, wind and brass, although there was little enough of the conventional in the music itself.
The opening setting, of Len Lye's Prefossils was slow and ominous, bass drum brushed with the hands, piccolo and left hand piano underlying a chant-like vocal line. The spectral second piece, Alex Taylor's fur cage had the piano strings being plucked inside, the eerie sound of a doublebass being bowed below the bridge.
The composer writes of Denys Trussell's "sound within sound" - "a monotonic voiced [pitted] against slowly rising strings...dissolves into a crystal glass drone and birdlike string glisses" - and, for once, that was a perfect description of what we heard.
The Wittgenstein quote was superbly done: the susurrating of the flute, the bass drum once more brushed by hand, leading to the almost inaudible repeated gong which closed the work.
Once again Grimm dealt with the manifest vocal challenges with aplomb and Bill Linwood maintained his usual firm hand upon the tiller.
It is just over a century since the first modern work for solo flute appeared in the shape of Debussy's Syrinx. A number of other composers have followed in his footsteps, most notably Edgard Varèse, Arthur Honegger and Luciano Berio.
Knife Apple Sheer Brush is de Castro-Robinson's contribution to this niche genre; it required Mark McGregor not merely to play the instrument, but also to speak and sing (into the flute).
The three short movements, each "setting" a brief text, were fascinating and McGregor's performance mesmerising.
Another inspiriting evening from Aventa.
Aventa Ensemble: Müge Büyükçelen: violin; Mieka Michaux, viola; Alasdair Money: cello; Darren Buhr, doublebass; Mark McGregor: flutes; Russell Bajer, oboe; AK Coope: clarinets; Darnell Linwood, horn; Louis Ranger, trumpet; Tzenka Dianova: piano; Corey Rae: percussion; Kirk McNally, audio.
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