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St. Paul's Anglican Church, Nanaimo
June 23, 2017
Naming a string quartet after Emily Carr makes sense in the B.C. context, but who came up with Trio 211, you might ask. Guitarist Alec Pearson offered the following explanation: There once was a duo (i.e. 2) comprised of Blary and Pearson. Then Lisa Lebeda joined, bringing two new instruments into the mix (i.e. 1 + 1). Now you have 2 + 1 + 1, or 211 for short. Get it?
Lisa Lebeda introduced Blary's rendition of the Turkish March from Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 11. This lively and somewhat hackneyed piano piece practically begs to be adapted to other instruments so as to showcase their versatility, and Trio 211 did it justice.
An adaptation of Astor Piazzolla's Histoire du Tango followed. This is a fascinating piece in four movements which capture the changing mood of the dance in 30-year intervals beginning in 1900. The first of these is called Bordello 1900; it paints a picture of the cheeky bantering of the women who populated Argentine bordellos as they teased the policemen, thieves, sailors, and riffraff who came to pay them a visit. In Café 1930 the music turns less hectic and more melodious as people developed a preference for listening rather than dancing to the tango. Night Club 1960 follows with bossa nova undertones. Finally, in Modern-Day Concert, the tango takes on the edgy dissonances of Shostakovich. There are passages where the violin and the flute play in unison — an eerie sound effect that could be jarring but becomes as sparkling as crystal in the competent hands of Lebeda and Blary.
The Bachianas Brasileiras No.5 is the most famous of Heitor Villa-Lobos' nine suites that attempt to combine Brazilian folk music with Baroque harmonic and counterpoint structures. It was originally scored for soprano and cello, and later for soprano and guitar. Although the Trio 211 adaptation was enjoyable, I missed the human voice and the wistfulness à la Chants d'Auvergne that it conveys.
As an encore, the Trio broke away from the South American theme by playing a distinctly czardas-inspired piece by the Romanian violin virtuoso and composer Grigoraş Dinicu (1889–1949).
The Emily Carr String Quartet opened with Feathers, a work on the theme of birds commissioned by the quartet from Vancouver Island composer Tobin Stokes. Mieka Michaux preambled each movement with a reading from Emily Carr's writings. One of the five movements derives its inspiration from birdsong during nesting. Another movement poses the question what happens to the birds after they leave the nest, and is answered in that uniquely non-verbal but perfectly understandable manner that only music can provide. Another movement captures Emily Carr's moods during her stay at a sanatorium, where the gloomy atmosphere of human suffering is dispelled by the haunting song of a bird that she had never heard before. (During a visit to England in 1902 she reportedly collapsed with acute anaemia and was interned in the East Anglia Sanatorium in Suffolk for health reasons that have never been adequately explained or identified.)
After all the preceding 20th century textures, Mendelssohn's String Quartet Opus 13 No. 2 was a welcome flashback to the early Romantic period. The Quartet's rendition of the lullaby-lilting second movement was particularly soothing. You need a bit of classical music to clean out your ears from time to time.
Watching Müge Büyükçelen's footwork accompaniment is always a joy, ranging from ballet to tap-dancing. Contrast that with Alasdair Money's rock-like posture, like a planet surrounded by two moons and a comet.
The two concerts formed part of the Seventh annual Vancouver Island Chamber Music Festival which also included separate events featuring brass, woodwinds, percussion, and a voice plus cello duo. The percussion instruments, consisting of marimbas, a xylophone and a variety of drums, filled the entire stage of Nanaimo's Harbour City Theatre. Watching the musicians pack up their kit in record time to clear the way for the next concert was almost as breathtaking as the music itself.
It would have been helpful if the program handouts had associated the players with their respective instruments, the more so since some of the performers played more than one instrument. But this is a minor gripe. The organisers, under the leadership of Pippa Williams as Artistic Director, are to be congratulated for enriching Nanaimo's musical scene, and the audiences enthusiastically applauded the promise of another festival in 2018.
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