Victoria International Arts Festival
Keyboard poetry Christopher Langdownpianoforte recitalThere is nothing more enjoyable and rewarding than a well-chosen and balanced piano recital; a programme that allows the listener to be drawn into the spirit of the music, gradually and pleasurably,...
Keyboard poetry
Christopher Langdown
pianoforte recital
There is nothing more enjoyable and rewarding than a well-chosen and balanced piano recital; a programme that allows the listener to be drawn into the spirit of the music, gradually and pleasurably, making the most of contrasting styles and content.
Christopher Langdown's piano recital on July 4 fitted the bill perfectly. Mozart, Moszkowski, Elgar, Ravel, Langdown and Rachmaninov made up a lovely no nonsense and straight down the middle recital that somehow seems to be a particularly British tradition. When a sensitively wrought programme is coupled with sensitive articulation, elegant phrasing and an interpretation that captures the emotional colour of the piece being performed, then we have the perfect formula. I will, however, dwell for a while on Mr Langdown's own composition, Deo Omnis Gloria, which in its spiritual evocation and warm colour was the revelation and highlight of the evening.
Divided into three movements - Hymn, Lake of Gennesaret and Resurrection, it is so reassuring to know that not all composers today have to resort to painfully atonal gobbledygook to be original. We had here a perfectly intelligible progression of tableaux: church bells, organ and choir rising in tiered intensity during some great religious ceremony, showers of arpeggios reflecting the wind kissing the surface of the shimmering lake and a climactic rise and fall of powerful octaves making up a broad hymnal melody making up a truly intellectual abstraction of the Resurrection and all it stands for both religiously and culturally.
The other very interesting piece played was Elgar's Concert Allegro Opus 46 which has a rather chequered history as it had been lost for decades before being unearthed in 1968 and played for the first time by that poor ill-fated genius John Ogden. Elgar had composed the Concert Allegro in 1901 for Fanny Davies and while its complex structure and molten melodic lines are unmistakably Elgar, its overall effect is one of great brilliance. Mr Langdown played the Concert Allegro with great panache allowing the great music to speak for itself.
I really felt that I had been transported in some time-machine to a foyer of some splendid hotel on the Venice Lido at the turn of the last century while listening to Mr Langdown's delightfully warm performance of Moszkowski's Four Moments Musicaux Opus 82. The opening Adagio from Mozart's K282 Sonata will haunt me for a long time; it was like watching a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon; so delicate and yet natural was its development. The two Rachmaninov Preludes 2 and 5 Opus 23 were dazzling. The march-like theme of the No. 5 in G Minor was hammered out in phrasing of great splendour while the deep lyricism of the second subject was poetically unfolded in tender cascades of unsurpassed beauty.
The Ravel Sonatine was sheer magic. I don't think that words can ever express the emotional thrill that Ravel's music inspires; especially when performed with Mr Langdown's precise but never showy panache. Those metallic cascades of minute ornamentation combined with his sinuous melodic lines and startling colour are a miracle in themselves. I can never listen to the Mouvement de Menuet without Velasquez's Las Meninas appearing in my mind's eye; an ethereal little dance composed for a little Infanta in a huge hooped dress and long golden hair waiting patiently to turn into a swan queen. Poor little Margarita Teresa, dispatched to Vienna to marry her uncle Leopold when little more than a child and destined to die in childbirth when still in her teens, lives on forever in Velasquez's magical canvases and Ravel's music.
An intellectually moving performance
Daniel Veis, Helena Vesova
violoncello and pianoforte recital
I had, during last year's festival, reviewed the cello performance by Simon Veis, a young man of prodigious promise who among other things played Brahms's second F Major cello sonata Opus 99. The young man was then accompanied by his mother Helena. This year the organisers managed to procure Daniel Veis, Simon's father, a Tchaikovsky International Competition 1978 silver medallist and one of ex-Czechoslovakia's finest cellists. Mr Veis was accompanied by his wife Helena.
When I say accompanied I must clarify. Helena Veisova is a pianist of the highest order and even though it always seems as if the stringed instrument is taking centre stage in these sonatas it is undeniable that the piano parts are anything but an accompaniment but are just as integrally dazzling and deeply intellectual as that of the stringed instrument as in the Brahms Opus 38 Sonata in E Minor which was the centerpiece of the Veis's performance at the festival.
The almost lugubrious opening theme of the Brahms E Minor Sonata processes solemnly into a long and mainly sombre development that brought out into sharp relief the deep emotional and intellectual rapport between the performers. Complex counterpoint expressing almost tragic emotion played with a cerebral precision created a practically mesmerising experience. The instrument played by Mr Vies was of such miraculous sonority that I could well believe it was a Guadagnini as was told to me afterwards. The actual miracle was that despite the grand piano which, if like is compared with like could never be up to such dizzy heights, still held its own and even though sometimes there was a clarity problem, especially here in the Brahms, one could easily overlook it because of Mrs Veis's complete control and consummate artistry. It was the delicate scoring of the Menuetto that again highlighted the deep understanding between this enchanted couple with its waltz-like second subject before exploding into the fugal pyrotechnics of the finale.
Schumann's fritillaric frissons preceded the sublime sonorities of the Brahms with his Phantasiestucke Opus 73. I have actually read that Schumann's music was considered to be so emotionally unsettling that young girls were at times forbidden to listen to it. This was in the days when western society was so prudish as to drape billiard table legs in velvet skirts to prevent morbid flights of the imagination!
This was at a time when Byron's poetry was thought to be unwholesome and people never realised that it was in fact the tight corsets that were the cause of many a swoon and not hothouse sensibilities. We have indeed come a long way since then and not by a long shot does anyone pass out with emotion when listening to Schumann's music or Byron's poetry anymore; however, we still can put our mindset in the right mode to assimilate the raw passion that lurks beneath the restless rhythms, frenetic melodies and thematic inventiveness that epitomises Schumann's music and be thrilled and moved by it. The Veises performed this emotionally demanding piece with a rollicking emotion hallmarked by crisp and articulate prestidigitation from the piano and almost unbelievable speed and precision from the cello, making the third movement crackle and pop like an electrical storm and propelling deep sweeps of melodic invention in the calmer bits, conveying a mood of unsurpassed serenity.
It was definitely the Shostakovich Sonata in D Minor Opus 40 that was the highlight of the evening. The composer's particular style, that reminds me of an implacable glacier with menacing inner fires, was prevalent throughout this wonderful sonata full of inventive and sometimes bizarre effects and soaring lyrical passages that shatter in almost painfully moving climaxes. It was this sonata that showed off the fine-honed skills and experience of this gifted couple; each sweep of the bow, each vibrato, each chord, each trill and each octave was a complete aural delight combining to produce a finely articulated performance that was unforgettable. The utterly black mood of the Largo, so grim and tragic, rising and falling in shimmering tiers, will long remain engraved in my memory while the tempestuousness of the finale, with its odd quirks and unexpected twists and turns, brought this wonderfully interpreted performance to a dazzling conclusion.
Delights for strings
Duo Taus
violin and cello recital
Straight from the land of the fjords, bringing a breath of cool air to the sun-baked island of Gozo, was the Duo Taus made up of Liv Hilde Klokk playing violin and Torun Saeter Stavseng on the cello. These two attractive young ladies performed a programme that was as discussable as it was brilliantly played; a mélange of the baroque interspersed with the type of uncompromisingly modernist works that somehow creep surreptitiously into programmes in the hope that one day the penny will drop and what has always been incomprehensible will become as intelligible and appealing as Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik! Dream on ladies and gentlemen. I will briefly dwell on the Schnittke and Ysaye pieces and get them out of the way before extolling the merits of the others.
Schnittke's Stille Musik which I would imagine means Silent Music for Cello and Violin was anything but. Totally atonal it began with these menacingly long chords that, at least to me, conjured up images of things I would rather not know about; a negation of harmonious beauty, a depiction of a solar system gone totally awry, played of course with spell-binding technique but creating a mood of deep black depression. Much as I tried to marshal my memory and get to grips with some fleeting melodic line rather like a drowning man clutching at straws, the more the harmonious and melodic silence of Schnittke's strange creation eluded me completely. Half way through I gave up and sat and suffered as the piece went its quixotic way to tortured end. The Ballad for Solo Violin by the legendary violinist Eugene Ysaye was not a piece that I would like to listen to again as it was splendidly awful; going all over the place in labyrinthine passages of technical bravura signifying nothing very much. At times it sounded just like a film-score for a horror movie and despite the fact that Liv Hilde Klokk played it with such mastery, again I was longing for it to end.
With those gargoyles out of the way I am almost at a loss as to how I can convey the sheer loveliness of the other pieces. Handel's stately Passacaglia as transcribed into a set of spectacularly inventive variations by Johann Halvorsen was inimitable and I was absolutely delighted when the duo played it again as a much appreciated encore. It was obvious at the outset that both ladies are technical wizards - or should I say witches? - giving full vent to the melodic richness and dramatic rhythmic structures of the piece itself no matter how bizarre the scoring was; double-stopping contrapuntal fantasy and sharp pizzicato punctuation being the hallmarks of this utterly magnificent piece. No matter how "varied" the theme was, never did it lose an iota of its intrinsic pure-bred aristocratic beauty.
Bach's E Minor Prelude and Fugue from the Well Tempered Clavier was unusually more like an abstraction of the Bach we instantly recognise. It has the same spirit as Beethoven's haunting Cavatina from the Opus 130 B Flat String Quartet; both of them speak in a strange type of shorthand, deftly eschewing literalness and yet conveying elusive and disturbing emotions that not the greatest tomes can fully explain. The Duo Taus tackled this monumental work with the level of devotion to Bach's music that allows its abstract moods to speak for themselves and captivate the listener into a trance-like state of wonderment.
The contemporary Hungarian Gyorgy Kurtag's Five Pieces for Cello Solo were replaced by the first three movements of Bach's first Cello Suite. Ms Stavseng's playing was faultless and most soulful. There is nothing more beautiful in all music than the Prelude to this suite. It is the epitome of Bach's divine creation in which one can hear the voice of God speaking about the joy and perfection of His Creation. Its sublime utterances will forever be etched in the minds of all those who are open to the idea of Bach's universality; the supreme composer who is head and shoulders above all others, past, present and future.
The last work, the crowning glory of a delightfully rich and varied programme, was Ravel's lovely Sonata for Violin and Cello. Ravel was possibly the greatest orchestrator who ever lived. The vivid colours and exquisite shades that he eked out of an orchestral score are unsurpassed. The composition of this particular sonata must therefore have been a huge challenge. To create unforgettably melodic and deft dialogues between two string instruments is no mean feat and yet here Ravel's innovative creative flow streams rhythmic rivers of soul-searching thematic lines of iridescent sound that are coloured by his unmistakable sinuous and metallic timbre. Electrifying were the pizzicato passages of the Vivace that reminded me of the similar electrifying other-worldly moment in his one monumental String Quartet; only in this particular sonata the pizzicato passages were more abstract and more uncompromising. The duo interpreted this wonderful composition with all the panache and verve it deserves, bringing the performance to a triumphant close.
Christopher Langdownpianoforte recital
There is nothing more enjoyable and rewarding than a well-chosen and balanced piano recital; a programme that allows the listener to be drawn into the spirit of the music, gradually and pleasurably, making the most of contrasting styles and content.
Christopher Langdown's piano recital on July 4 fitted the bill perfectly. Mozart, Moszkowski, Elgar, Ravel, Langdown and Rachmaninov made up a lovely no nonsense and straight down the middle recital that somehow seems to be a particularly British tradition. When a sensitively wrought programme is coupled with sensitive articulation, elegant phrasing and an interpretation that captures the emotional colour of the piece being performed, then we have the perfect formula. I will, however, dwell for a while on Mr Langdown's own composition, Deo Omnis Gloria, which in its spiritual evocation and warm colour was the revelation and highlight of the evening.
Divided into three movements - Hymn, Lake of Gennesaret and Resurrection, it is so reassuring to know that not all composers today have to resort to painfully atonal gobbledygook to be original. We had here a perfectly intelligible progression of tableaux: church bells, organ and choir rising in tiered intensity during some great religious ceremony, showers of arpeggios reflecting the wind kissing the surface of the shimmering lake and a climactic rise and fall of powerful octaves making up a broad hymnal melody making up a truly intellectual abstraction of the Resurrection and all it stands for both religiously and culturally.
The other very interesting piece played was Elgar's Concert Allegro Opus 46 which has a rather chequered history as it had been lost for decades before being unearthed in 1968 and played for the first time by that poor ill-fated genius John Ogden. Elgar had composed the Concert Allegro in 1901 for Fanny Davies and while its complex structure and molten melodic lines are unmistakably Elgar, its overall effect is one of great brilliance. Mr Langdown played the Concert Allegro with great panache allowing the great music to speak for itself.
I really felt that I had been transported in some time-machine to a foyer of some splendid hotel on the Venice Lido at the turn of the last century while listening to Mr Langdown's delightfully warm performance of Moszkowski's Four Moments Musicaux Opus 82. The opening Adagio from Mozart's K282 Sonata will haunt me for a long time; it was like watching a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon; so delicate and yet natural was its development. The two Rachmaninov Preludes 2 and 5 Opus 23 were dazzling. The march-like theme of the No. 5 in G Minor was hammered out in phrasing of great splendour while the deep lyricism of the second subject was poetically unfolded in tender cascades of unsurpassed beauty.
The Ravel Sonatine was sheer magic. I don't think that words can ever express the emotional thrill that Ravel's music inspires; especially when performed with Mr Langdown's precise but never showy panache. Those metallic cascades of minute ornamentation combined with his sinuous melodic lines and startling colour are a miracle in themselves. I can never listen to the Mouvement de Menuet without Velasquez's Las Meninas appearing in my mind's eye; an ethereal little dance composed for a little Infanta in a huge hooped dress and long golden hair waiting patiently to turn into a swan queen. Poor little Margarita Teresa, dispatched to Vienna to marry her uncle Leopold when little more than a child and destined to die in childbirth when still in her teens, lives on forever in Velasquez's magical canvases and Ravel's music.
An intellectually moving performance
Daniel Veis, Helena Vesovavioloncello and pianoforte recital
I had, during last year's festival, reviewed the cello performance by Simon Veis, a young man of prodigious promise who among other things played Brahms's second F Major cello sonata Opus 99. The young man was then accompanied by his mother Helena. This year the organisers managed to procure Daniel Veis, Simon's father, a Tchaikovsky International Competition 1978 silver medallist and one of ex-Czechoslovakia's finest cellists. Mr Veis was accompanied by his wife Helena.
When I say accompanied I must clarify. Helena Veisova is a pianist of the highest order and even though it always seems as if the stringed instrument is taking centre stage in these sonatas it is undeniable that the piano parts are anything but an accompaniment but are just as integrally dazzling and deeply intellectual as that of the stringed instrument as in the Brahms Opus 38 Sonata in E Minor which was the centerpiece of the Veis's performance at the festival.
The almost lugubrious opening theme of the Brahms E Minor Sonata processes solemnly into a long and mainly sombre development that brought out into sharp relief the deep emotional and intellectual rapport between the performers. Complex counterpoint expressing almost tragic emotion played with a cerebral precision created a practically mesmerising experience. The instrument played by Mr Vies was of such miraculous sonority that I could well believe it was a Guadagnini as was told to me afterwards. The actual miracle was that despite the grand piano which, if like is compared with like could never be up to such dizzy heights, still held its own and even though sometimes there was a clarity problem, especially here in the Brahms, one could easily overlook it because of Mrs Veis's complete control and consummate artistry. It was the delicate scoring of the Menuetto that again highlighted the deep understanding between this enchanted couple with its waltz-like second subject before exploding into the fugal pyrotechnics of the finale.
Schumann's fritillaric frissons preceded the sublime sonorities of the Brahms with his Phantasiestucke Opus 73. I have actually read that Schumann's music was considered to be so emotionally unsettling that young girls were at times forbidden to listen to it. This was in the days when western society was so prudish as to drape billiard table legs in velvet skirts to prevent morbid flights of the imagination!
This was at a time when Byron's poetry was thought to be unwholesome and people never realised that it was in fact the tight corsets that were the cause of many a swoon and not hothouse sensibilities. We have indeed come a long way since then and not by a long shot does anyone pass out with emotion when listening to Schumann's music or Byron's poetry anymore; however, we still can put our mindset in the right mode to assimilate the raw passion that lurks beneath the restless rhythms, frenetic melodies and thematic inventiveness that epitomises Schumann's music and be thrilled and moved by it. The Veises performed this emotionally demanding piece with a rollicking emotion hallmarked by crisp and articulate prestidigitation from the piano and almost unbelievable speed and precision from the cello, making the third movement crackle and pop like an electrical storm and propelling deep sweeps of melodic invention in the calmer bits, conveying a mood of unsurpassed serenity.
It was definitely the Shostakovich Sonata in D Minor Opus 40 that was the highlight of the evening. The composer's particular style, that reminds me of an implacable glacier with menacing inner fires, was prevalent throughout this wonderful sonata full of inventive and sometimes bizarre effects and soaring lyrical passages that shatter in almost painfully moving climaxes. It was this sonata that showed off the fine-honed skills and experience of this gifted couple; each sweep of the bow, each vibrato, each chord, each trill and each octave was a complete aural delight combining to produce a finely articulated performance that was unforgettable. The utterly black mood of the Largo, so grim and tragic, rising and falling in shimmering tiers, will long remain engraved in my memory while the tempestuousness of the finale, with its odd quirks and unexpected twists and turns, brought this wonderfully interpreted performance to a dazzling conclusion.
Delights for strings
Duo Taus
violin and cello recital
Straight from the land of the fjords, bringing a breath of cool air to the sun-baked island of Gozo, was the Duo Taus made up of Liv Hilde Klokk playing violin and Torun Saeter Stavseng on the cello. These two attractive young ladies performed a programme that was as discussable as it was brilliantly played; a mélange of the baroque interspersed with the type of uncompromisingly modernist works that somehow creep surreptitiously into programmes in the hope that one day the penny will drop and what has always been incomprehensible will become as intelligible and appealing as Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik! Dream on ladies and gentlemen. I will briefly dwell on the Schnittke and Ysaye pieces and get them out of the way before extolling the merits of the others.
Schnittke's Stille Musik which I would imagine means Silent Music for Cello and Violin was anything but. Totally atonal it began with these menacingly long chords that, at least to me, conjured up images of things I would rather not know about; a negation of harmonious beauty, a depiction of a solar system gone totally awry, played of course with spell-binding technique but creating a mood of deep black depression. Much as I tried to marshal my memory and get to grips with some fleeting melodic line rather like a drowning man clutching at straws, the more the harmonious and melodic silence of Schnittke's strange creation eluded me completely. Half way through I gave up and sat and suffered as the piece went its quixotic way to tortured end. The Ballad for Solo Violin by the legendary violinist Eugene Ysaye was not a piece that I would like to listen to again as it was splendidly awful; going all over the place in labyrinthine passages of technical bravura signifying nothing very much. At times it sounded just like a film-score for a horror movie and despite the fact that Liv Hilde Klokk played it with such mastery, again I was longing for it to end.
With those gargoyles out of the way I am almost at a loss as to how I can convey the sheer loveliness of the other pieces. Handel's stately Passacaglia as transcribed into a set of spectacularly inventive variations by Johann Halvorsen was inimitable and I was absolutely delighted when the duo played it again as a much appreciated encore. It was obvious at the outset that both ladies are technical wizards - or should I say witches? - giving full vent to the melodic richness and dramatic rhythmic structures of the piece itself no matter how bizarre the scoring was; double-stopping contrapuntal fantasy and sharp pizzicato punctuation being the hallmarks of this utterly magnificent piece. No matter how "varied" the theme was, never did it lose an iota of its intrinsic pure-bred aristocratic beauty.
Bach's E Minor Prelude and Fugue from the Well Tempered Clavier was unusually more like an abstraction of the Bach we instantly recognise. It has the same spirit as Beethoven's haunting Cavatina from the Opus 130 B Flat String Quartet; both of them speak in a strange type of shorthand, deftly eschewing literalness and yet conveying elusive and disturbing emotions that not the greatest tomes can fully explain. The Duo Taus tackled this monumental work with the level of devotion to Bach's music that allows its abstract moods to speak for themselves and captivate the listener into a trance-like state of wonderment.
The contemporary Hungarian Gyorgy Kurtag's Five Pieces for Cello Solo were replaced by the first three movements of Bach's first Cello Suite. Ms Stavseng's playing was faultless and most soulful. There is nothing more beautiful in all music than the Prelude to this suite. It is the epitome of Bach's divine creation in which one can hear the voice of God speaking about the joy and perfection of His Creation. Its sublime utterances will forever be etched in the minds of all those who are open to the idea of Bach's universality; the supreme composer who is head and shoulders above all others, past, present and future.
The last work, the crowning glory of a delightfully rich and varied programme, was Ravel's lovely Sonata for Violin and Cello. Ravel was possibly the greatest orchestrator who ever lived. The vivid colours and exquisite shades that he eked out of an orchestral score are unsurpassed. The composition of this particular sonata must therefore have been a huge challenge. To create unforgettably melodic and deft dialogues between two string instruments is no mean feat and yet here Ravel's innovative creative flow streams rhythmic rivers of soul-searching thematic lines of iridescent sound that are coloured by his unmistakable sinuous and metallic timbre. Electrifying were the pizzicato passages of the Vivace that reminded me of the similar electrifying other-worldly moment in his one monumental String Quartet; only in this particular sonata the pizzicato passages were more abstract and more uncompromising. The duo interpreted this wonderful composition with all the panache and verve it deserves, bringing the performance to a triumphant close.