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First Unitarian Church
June 9, 2024
"Unaccompanied Bach is for me one of the severest hardships of the calling of the musical critic. It is probably good, even jolly to play, but to have to listen to it is worse than breaking stones."
While I yield to nobody in my admiration for Sir Neville Cardus — music critic par excellence, doyen of cricket writers and my own inspiration for lo! these past thirty-some years — I'm afraid ol' Nev and I definitely do not see eye-to-eye in this particular regard. For me unaccompanied Bach is one of the purest and most ennobling of all musical experiences.
Ah well, even Homer nods.
And no unaccompanied Bach rates higher than the Chaconne from the D minor Violin Partita, BWV1004. Certainly violinists would agree: for Yehudi Menuhin, the Chaconne is "the greatest structure for solo violin that exists" and according to Joshua Bell, it is "not just one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, but one of the greatest achievements of any man in history. It's a spiritually powerful piece, emotionally powerful, structurally perfect". Nor are violinists alone: the piece has been transcribed for piano at least eight times (three for the left hand alone, once for piano duet), for organ four times, for cello, for guitar and for full orchestra. In fact there are around two hundred [sic] known transcriptions and arrangements.
Small wonder, then, that despite the undoubted attractions of the rest of programme (including a solo violin sonata by Ysaÿe and Mozart's ineffable clarinet quintet), it was the Chaconne which made me determined to attend Sunday's concert, come what may.
Nor was I disappointed. Although I admit to feeling that Isabella d'Eloize Perron's statement of the opening was arguably a tad too forceful, I was soon swept away by her playing. She brought a true Romantic sensibility to the piece — not to mention dazzling virtuosity. This may not be the only way to play the Chaconne, but anybody who maintains that there is only one right way to perform music of such utter transcendence is surely fooling nobody but themselves. This was a performance to refute the notion that Bach's music is unemotional, as witness the fact that, somewhat to my own surprise, I felt a certain dampness around the eyes at its conclusion.
At which point I could happily have gone home feeling that my afternoon had been more than well spent.
Eugène-Auguste Ysaÿe was known as the "King of the Violin" (or, according to his pupil Nathan Milstein the "Tsar"); Pau Casals claimed that Ysaÿe was the first violinist he had ever heard play in tune. Numerous composers wrote for him, perhaps the most notable example being César Franck's glorious Violin Sonata, written as a wedding present. Ysaÿe's quartet also premiered Debussy's String Quartet.
It was hearing unaccompanied Bach (Josef Szigeti playing the G minor sonata BWV1001, to be precise) which inspired Ysaÿe to compose his own six sonatas for solo violin, each dedicated to one of his younger contemporaries.
d'Eloize Perron closed the opening half of the programme with the fifth sonata (by my reckoning, Victoria has now heard half the set over the last two decades: note to local virtuosos, please hurry up, I suspect I don't have another two decades to wait to hear the rest) which is dedicated to a fellow Belgian (although hardly a household name) Mathieu Crickboom, a former pupil who played second violin in Ysaÿe's quartet and, while living in Barcelona, formed his own quartet with Casals playing the cello.
Although gestures like playing a pizzicato with the left hand while bowing with the right may seem old hat today, they were cutting-edge devices in Ysaÿe's day and were used most effectively in the first of the two movements (this is the shortest of the six sonatas), L'Aurore.
The second movement, Danse Rustique, references Crickboom's desire (shared with the composer) for a simple country life — something neither man was destined to achieve. Nevertheless, the title is apt and the music great fun.
d'Eloize Perron cast aside the manifold technical challenges of the music and made me even more eager to hear the rest of the set. A delight, from beginning to end.
"Whether the angels play only Bach in praising God I am not quite sure: I am sure, however, than en famille they play Mozart."
Even for an atheist, there is a ring of truth in Swiss theologian Karl Barth's bon mot and there can be few works in Mozart's extensive oeuvre more suitable to angelic domestic music-making than the Clarinet Quintet in A, K. 581.
It is easy, today, to forget that the clarinet was a relatively new and not altogether established instrument in Mozart's time (he even made two version of the G minor Symphony, K.550, one with and one without clarinets).
Yet with this work and the concerto K.622 (and, to a slightly lesser extent, the "Kegelstatt" trio, K.498), Mozart established the instrument as worthy of the greatest composers.
Sunday's programme closed with an exquisite performance of a work which may have inspired other great quintets (most obviously that of Brahms, although I would also put in a good word for the Reger) but which, ultimately, has never been surpassed. (Or, as many would doubtless argue, even equalled.)
Clarinetist David Boutin-Bourque joined violinists d'Eloize Perron and Philip Manning, violist Kenji Fusé and cellist (and EKSM co-Artistic Director) Laura Backstrom for an account which charmed and delighted in equal measure.
The very opening displayed gorgeous string textures, soon to be joined by the delicious liquid tone of Boutin-Bourque's clarinet. And, in all honesty, any adumbration of the remainder of the performance would quickly become a rather dull sequence of superlatives. The slow movement, for example, was tonally ravishing and I noted with some surprise how quickly it was over — which had nothing to do with the tempo.
And indeed, tempos were superbly judged, with the possible exception of the trio of the third movement's minuet, which I admit to finding a little on the deliberate side and arguably over-accented, but...this imbued it with a slight air of mystery which seemed not inappropriate.
The final theme and variations opened in perky fashion, featured wonderfully bubbly clarinet lines in variation four and closed with the five musicians' affection for the music clearly evident — as it had been throughout.
This was one of those performances which generated as much sunshine inside the hall as there was outside.
As Karl himself would surely have said: heavenly.
Which leaves the three "lesser" items on the programme.
In the first half, d'Eloize Perron was joined by pianist Monica Pfau for two works: the Prayer and Dance of Praise by Elizabeth Raum (the only living composer on the programme) and the Mythes (or, at least, two of the three) by Karol Szymanowski.
The Prayer opened with unaccompanied violin, enabling d'Eloize Perron to display her big, rich tone and improvisatory feel, before Pfau's impeccably elegant piano joined for what soon became truly impassioned and supplicatory, if perhaps a little overlong. I especially enjoyed the ensuing Dance of Praise, with an almost aggressive bounce to its marvellously irregular rhythms.
Szymanowski's music is something of an acquired taste one that, I must confess, I personally have yet to acquire (so much music, so little time...) and I strongly suspect that the errant cell phone which rang during the second piece did not help one whit.
Nonetheless, I was enchanted by the rippling water of the piano and the rhapsodic violin in La fontaine d'Arethuse and enjoyed the obstinately (and aptly) self-regarding violin line in Narcisse, with the piano seeming incapable of moving on, much though it tried.
The second half of the afternoon opened with another rarity, the Variations in G minor, for Two Violins and Cello, by Alexander Borodin.
While trios for this combination are not quite as thin on the ground as the proverbial hen's dentition, neither are they in any way common; moreover, this early work (composed in 1855, when Borodin was in his early twenties) languished in obscurity for almost a century, not being published until 1949, in Moscow.
There was no danger of mistaking the theme — a Russian song entitled "How have I offended thee" — as coming from any other country. The variations were fairly straightforward, each being of the same length as the theme, and tending somewhat towards the Tchaikovskian style of variation (now faster, now slower, now louder...).
It was, to my mind, certainly the most dispensible item on the menu; nevertheless, I am still grateful for the opportunity of hearing it, especially hearing it this well played.
Having missed the entirety of the 2023 Eine Kleine season, due to being in the middle of a lengthy house move, I was delighted to be back and to have returned for such a spectacularly rewarding programme.
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