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University Centre Auditorium
April 2, 2016
"For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo."
The danger, one might imagine, with a performance of Tchaikovsky's Overture-Fantasy by an orchestra of young musicians directed by a youthful conductor would be, to employ the terminology of the I Ching, "youthful excess".
And the composer must take some of the responsibility for this: many of the aspects of the music that make it Tchaikovsky's first great masterpiece — the lush melodies, the gorgeous orchestration — can so easily, in the wrong hands, tip over the edge from pathos to bathos (and, just in case you think I'm letting The Bard off the hook, it doesn't take a particularly bad actor to make that opening quote sound, well, bathetic). Tchaikovsky also, apparently taking his lead from the Vincent Crummles School of Shakespearean Production, imposes a happy (or at least triumphant) ending on the tale of woe.
All of which is simply preamble to telling you that if Friday's performance by the University of Victoria Orchestra under "graduate conductor" Evan Hesketh had a fault, it was in a seemingly deliberate avoidance of anything which might be interpreted as going over the top. In today's terminology, this Romeo and Juliet were simply BFFs who were both like, really, really upset to think the other was dead? It may not have been a restrained performance, but it certainly had elements of restraint. And even at my advanced age, I am still able to recall that the word "restraint" is absent from the vocabularies of most teenagers.
However, let us eliminate the negative and instead accentuate the positive: the introduction was poised and featured some excellent bassoon and clarinet playing. The entire orchestral sound was built upon a commendably firm lower string foundation; the brass were excellent, powerful without ever becoming coarse.
Debussy's Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune is one of the seminal works for the orchestra; in the view of Pierre Boulez the work, first performed in 1894, is the beginning of modernity: "the flute of the faun brought new breath to the art of music". (Boulez would also use the poetry of Mallarmé as the inspiration for his own magnum opus, Pli selon pli.)
Hesketh directed a thoughtful and extremely well-played performance. Orchestral textures were commendably transparent and there was some excellent playing from all concerned, especially flutist Cooper Reed.
My only criticism would be that at times Hesketh seemed to be slightly overdoing the languor, so that the music almost became the Prelude to the afternoon nap of a faun.
That minor carping aside — and, in truth, it must be said that the pulse never quite disappeared — this was a delicious experience and the ending was quite lovely.
Hesketh showed himself more than capable of letting his musicians know exactly what he wanted and persuading them to deliver it. Now, if he can just learn to relax a little...
The opening "half" of the concert, which consisted of a single work, the Dance Suite by Béla Bartók, was directed by the orchestra's regular conductor, Ajtony Csaba.
From the lugubrious bassoons and pizzicato lower strings of the opening to the exuberant finale this was a rhythmically vital performance, excellently played. I particularly enjoyed the third movement, with its counterposing of the piccolo and contrabassoon, and the ethereal strings and unearthly winds of the fourth movement.
A most enjoyable evening, although I'm still puzzling over the title...
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