MiV Home
University Centre Auditorium
March 18, 2016
A buck or doe, believe it so, a pheasant or a hare
Was set on earth for everyone quite equally to share
So poachers bold, as I unfold, keep up your gallant hearts
And think about those poachers bold, that night in Rufford Park
In 1851 a group of around forty poachers gathered in Rufford Park in Nottinghamshire, in protest at what they saw was the unfair monopoly of game-hunting by wealthy landowners. They were set upon by ten gamekeepers and in the ensuing fracas ("pitched battle" might be a more appropriate term) one of the gamekeepers had his skull fractured; he later died. Four of the poachers were convicted of his manslaughter and sentenced to deportation and penal servitude.
In 1908, Mr. Joseph Taylor of Lincolnshire sang the song describing the incident (and several others) for a Gramophone Company cylinder. It was this version which came to the attention of Percy Grainger, who used it as the third movement of A Lincolnshire Posy, widely acknowledged as the twentieth century's finest work for wind band.
In 1937, when the work was first performed, it was missing this third and the fifth movement — not because they had not been completed (as, for example, was the case with Walton's near-contemporaneous Symphony No.1) but because they were considered too difficult technically.
You would have had a hard time realising this as the University of Victoria Wind Symphony, under the direction of "Graduate Assistant Conductor" David P. Gagnon, played the work near-flawlessly in their Year End Spectacular! (the exclamation point is theirs) in the Farqhuar Auditorium.
From the jaunty opening to the work's final flourish, this was a most impressive achievement. I thoroughly enjoyed the horns' playing boldly across the rhythm (a reworking of an earlier work, "The Duke of Marlborough's Fanfare") in the opening Lisbon; Horkstow Grange's slow build to its exciting climax; the sinister melancholy of the aforementioned Rufford Park Poachers and much more.
If the performance as a whole had a fault, it was that it was all rather too polite and constrained. The fifth movement, Lord Melbourne, for example, is a nightmare for the conductor with its ever-changing time signatures (including some "unusual" ones such as 1.5/4 and 2.5/4) and Gagnon and his ensemble coped extremely well with this aspect of the music. But the movement is subtitled "War Song" and wars usually involve rather more violence than was on display here. I'd have happily accepted a few rough edges in exchange for a little more aggression.
In sum, though, this was a fine achievement and any minor shortcomings should be set beside the fact that the UVic Wind Symphony of 2016 is eminently capable of playing what apparently defeated the cream of the American Bandmasters Association back in 1937.
The evening opened with Earl Fralik's wind arrangement of Godfrey Ridout's Fall Fair, conducted — as was everything but the Grainger — by Gerald King.
Fall Fair was also the opening work in the first concert I ever reviewed in Victoria (twenty-four years ago next month). As on that occasion, it put me in mind of National Film Board of Canada movies ("Wheat Farming in the Prairies!") I recall from geography classes as a schoolchild — even though the music was actually commissioned by the CBC. The band arrangement is more than competent and King imbued the music with plenty of bounce; balances were good and the ending had the requisite snap.
Where the music of Eric Whitacre is concerned, I am not an unreserved enthusiast by any means. The Seal Lullaby is — if only by virtue of its comparative brevity — one of the more rewarding of his pieces I have encountered. It was charmingly played and proved to be as gentle as its title would suggest, although I still do not understand why the composer felt the need for a piano.
The concert was divided into two parts, the first (which concluded with the Grainger) being serious, the second rather more frivolous.
Leroy Anderson's The Typewriter is undoubtedly less than serious, although still constructed with great care and skill. And although I cannot have heard it for several decades, its one-time popularity meant that every note was familiar. The very jolly performance was enlivened by soloist D.J.S. Loch playing — so we were informed — a Smith-Corona obtained from Value Village.
I could not help but wonder how many of his fellow musicians had ever even seen a typewriter before.
I have something of a blind spot when it comes to the music of P.D.Q. Bach. Blame my English upbringing (or perhaps the famous Hoffnung concerts of half a century ago) but the humour of Peter Schickele's alter ego has always seemed to me rather heavy-handed with a tendency, like many American comedians, to go on (long) after the joke has worn off.
And so it proved with his Grand Serenade for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion (again, the title is mildy amusing the first time, but rapidly becomes tiresome, as does the fact that each movement's title contains the word "Grand"); no matter how well played — and it was, very — the music's charm wore off very quickly and the smile on my face became forced.
Perhaps the highlight for me was the third movement, with its piccolo and tuba duet on Stephen Foster's "Old Folks at Home" complete with lugubrious counterpoint.
On the whole, though, I'm afraid that this confirmed my impression that the most amusing thing about P.D.Q. Bach is the name.
Rudy Wiedoft's Saxophobia was, by contrast, short (less than two minutes) and quite dizzying in its busy-ness. I particularly admired the multi-coloured bow ties worn by the members of the solo quartet and definitely smiled (in totally unforced fashion) at the brief burst of "La Cucaracha" in the middle of the piece.
The final work was The Ringmaster's March from John Mackay's 2013 suite The Soul Has Many Motions.
In his spoken introduction King promised us that this was "very much a Charles Ives" circus march and, while perhaps it lacked the sheer iconoclasm of Ives' own The Circus Band, I could see what he meant.
The music — complete with not one, not two but (count 'em) seven percussionists — was noisy and great fun.
It provided a suitable conclusion to a most enjoyable evening and showed that wind-band music is certainly alive and well here in Victoria.
MiV Home