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St. Andrew's United Church, Nanaimo
July 7, 2017
This concert was devoted to Canadian composer Brent Straughan's works. While spending last winter in Italy working on an opera, he became acquainted with the Umbria Ensemble. To cut a long story short, together they found the necessary synergy to arrange a short B.C. tour that would take them to Victoria, Duncan, Nanaimo and Vancouver. In the process, they co-opted members of the Victoria Symphony to form the string nonet needed for the first part of the concerts.
This first part comprised single-movement compositions and arrangements by Straughan. The composer himself introduced each piece, telling anecdotes about historical events that inspired them. I looked forward to hearing the first piece — an adaptation of the ancient Irish ballad commonly known as Danny Boy— so as to obtain a first impression of the composer's style. There have been innumerable arrangements of Danny Boy, most of them soothing to the ear, and some of them very clever. I was not entirely enamoured with Straughan's somewhat jarring orchestration. That said, Andrea Rodall's superb soprano voice conveyed the Celtic nostalgia that one associates with the song.
The next three pieces were arrangements of more or less well-known tunes. No longer hummable but still recognizable, they provided further insight into Straughan's style. One of the highlights was Andrea Rodall's rendition of The Log Driver's Waltz, which she practically danced her way through:
Three of Straughan's compositions that followed were inspired by the micro-cultures on the Gulf Islands. Mayne captures the mood surrounding the infamous 1941 internment of Japanese farmers by the Canadian government, and the subsequent restoration of the traditional friendship. In Galiano, Straughan hypothesizes that the Spanish explorers in the 1790s might have broken into flamenco dances. In Saltspring he "imagines a young girl attending a street dance. She opens her case, fiddles like the wind, dances like a dervish, and through sheer force of nature, compels her audience to listen". (According to the program on the Internet, there is also a string nonet devoted to Saturna, but it was omitted from this concert.)
Personally, I found it difficult to wrap my mind around Straughan's musical syntax during this first part of the concert. While more or less tonal throughout, it struck me as disjointed and aimless, sometimes without any discernible theme or key. Even so, the performance earned a standing ovation before the intermission, so perhaps I missed something.
The Umbria Ensemble performed the second part of the concert, Song of Innocents, a quartet in four movements. Here one follows the plight of John Anietshachist and Kahtkayna, two men from the Hesquiaht tribe unfairly accused by the European rulers of having murdered the survivors of a shipwreck in order to steal jewellery and clothing kept on board. The first movement makes references to lullabies, evoking images of peace and harmony in the Hesquiaht village prior to the shipwreck. In the second movement we hear the ominous engine thump of an English gunboat on the hunt for the accused. The hanging of the alleged culprits was vividly illustrated in the third movement when Andrea Rodall, dressed in black and blindfolded with her hands tied, sang Kathkayna's moving prayer to God. In the last movement we follow the victims' spiritual journey which slowly fades away in a musical depiction of Nirvana.
The concert ended with an encore, a satirical adaptation of Lady Gaga's Bad Romance.
From a musical point of view, I found Song of the Innocents easier to understand than the pieces in the first part of the concert. The stories that inspired the works were variously moving, funny and dramatic, and it was a privilege to hear the composer himself add his personal take on them. For more details about the shipwreck story, see http://composer.webstarts.com/john_bright_affair.html.
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