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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
March 25, 2017
The oboe, as somebody once famously remarked is "the ill wind that nobody blows any good".
Leaving aside the atrocious grammar and the fact that, famous though the remark is, nobody appears to know the author, the obvious and conventional thing to say at this point would be that said anonymous wit had clearly never had the pleasure of hearing Alexandra Pohran Dawkins play.
But, by golly, sometimes the obvious and conventional thing is the right thing to say, because it happens to be true.
Of course, it was not just her playing that was being celebrated, but her thirty years of passing her musical wisdom on to her myriad students, a number of whom had returned in order to participate.
Too often such celebratory events tend towards the glitzy but superficial. Happily that was not the case here, despite the presence on the menu of a number of world-class performers, they were clearly all present at the service of the music and in celebration of their friend and colleague; moreover, the music itself was as far from the "bleeding chunks of the popular classics" approach as one could wish (and I, for one, would not have wished it to be any closer).
The evening opened with music for oboe and string quartet, but where many would have chosen the obvious work for this combination (Mozart), Pohran Dawkins and the Lafayette String Quartet instead gave us Aulis Sallinen's Echoes from a Play music which, we are told, is "thematically connected" to his chamber opera The Palace, which is itself "loosely based" on Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio (should have known Wolfgang Amadeus would get in on the act somehow).
Knowing this made not one jot of difference to the listener's enjoyment of the music — well, not this listener, certainly. The music itself is very attractive although I imagine few people would be able to identify its composer unless they had an intimate familiarity with his output. It at times put me in mind somewhat of the minimalism of Arvo Pärt; but only at times and only somewhat.
Needless to say (well, clearly not entirely needless, or I should not be writing this review) it was performed beautifully; Pohran Dawkins has a lovely, mellow tone with none of the nasality that can so often seem a feature of her chosen instrument; the oboe line, wistful yet perky, blended wonderfully with the resplendent tones of the quartet. If the music seemed a little too long, it was no fault of the performers.
Aulis Sallinen may hardly be a household name, George Bassingthwaite is, for the vast majority of music lovers, not even a name.
Yet this short-lived (1947-94) Canadian certainly knew his way around a choir; the male voices of the UVic Chamber Singers under the eagle eye of director Susan Young gave us his Prayer of St. Francis for male chorus and English Horn (although the programme told us that the instrument in question was actually the "Engligh [sic] Horn") the oboe's slightly bigger and more plaintive sibling.
The work opens with a solo on the English horn leading to layered voices, first intoning the opening word ("Lord") and then unveiling the text of the prayer as the instrument weaves arabesques around the vocal lines.
The voices were nicely blended, while Pohran Dawkins' English horn both counterpointed and commented upon the text. Unusually, in my experience, this was a piece which actually became more interesting as it progressed, for which I believe the performers can take much of the credit.
When I was a teenager, our French teacher was a mainstay of the local amateur dramatic society, which is why I and some friends attended their production of Chekhov's Cherry Orchard.
After the interval on Saturday, Pohran Dawkins took a slight (and well-earned) breather while Benjamin Butterfield and Arthur Rowe paid tribute to her Ukrainian heritage with a group of five Ukrainian art songs from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
The first of these was The cherry orchard by Mykola Lysenko (it was no evening for household names) and I am delighted to report, as I noted at the time, that it was "a sight more cheerful" than Chekhov's gloomy play (which the playwright, who obviously did have a sense of humour, albeit warped, described as a comedy).
Butterfield almost cures me of my prejudice against singers and Rowe is, of course, a fabulous pianist. Together they made what I imagine to be as persuasive a case for these forgotten gems as is possible. Yakov Stepobivj's Summer Nights was beautifully contemplative, his Not all sorrows have died appropriately stoic and Stanislav Liudkevich's A memory deeply melancholic.
I had been hoping there would be something by Kyrylo Stetsenko on the programme and Evensong, performed in a suitably crepuscular manner, did not disappoint.
To say that I would probably not have dragged myself out on a fairly gloomy evening for a group of Ukrainian art songs is merely to state the obvious. To say that I am grateful for having perforce heard them in any case, in this almost surreptitious fashion, would be to severely understate the case.
Finally, the star of the evening returned with seven friends, colleagues, former students, past and present members of the Victoria Symphony (not all of these categories being mutually exclusive) for an irresistibly infectious performance of Hummel's Partita in E flat.
As is often the case with second-tier composers, the sonata form structure of the irrepressibly perky opening movement was crystal clear (and the development very short). Hummel's writing for winds seems eminently idiomatic and the eight players produced a gorgeous, exquisitely-blended sound.
The andante was a charming triple-timed confection and the finale a jolly rondo, performed with a delicious bounce, although, to be perfectly frank, I was too busy enjoying the music to make many notes.
A tremendously enjoyable evening and a fine tribute to Alexandra Pohran Dawkins who has clearly spent the last three decades more than profitably engaged.
UVic will surely miss her. I know I shall.
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