On Monday evening I went to Paul Hall to hear the opening night performance of Juilliard's 2016 Chamberfest, a series of recitals given every January by Juilliard musicians and their coaches, all of whom pass up a week of winter vacation in order to practice and rehearse. The program on this occasion featured works by Stravinsky, Ligeti and Mendelssohn.
The evening began with Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat (1918) performed by Kako Miura, violin; Zachary Hann, clarinet; Joseph Lavarias, bassoon; Brian Olson, trumpet; Addison Maye-Saxon, trombone; Nicholas Kleinman, double bass; and Jake Darnell, percussion. The musicians were coached by faculty members David Chan and Raymond Mase. The work, one of the first products of Stravinsky's neoclassical period, was originally conceived as a theatrical presentation with libretto by Swiss writer Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz. Written at a time when Stravinsky was in dire financial straits - his funds from Russia had been cut off in the aftermath of the Revolution - it was a sort of mini-musical, a far cry from the lavish Ballets Russes productions whose scores he had composed only a few years earlier. The storyline, a variation on the medieval danse macabre, was adapted from an old Russian folk tale that told how the Devil sought to trick an unsuspecting soldier into parting with his violin. The setting gave Stravinsky a golden opportunity to display his satirical wit. It also provided him a chance to explore the idiom of jazz, a genre he had only recently discovered. As he related in Expositions and Developments:
"My choice of instruments was influenced by a very important event in my life at that time, the discovery of American jazz. . . .The Histoire ensemble resembles the jazz band in that each instrumental category—strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion—is represented by both treble and bass components. The instruments themselves are jazz legitimates, too, except the bassoon, which is my substitution for the saxophone. . . .The percussion part must also be considered as a manifestation of my enthusiasm for jazz."
One wonders what jazz Stravinsky could have come across in 1918 Europe while World War I was still in progress. He later claimed: "My knowledge of jazz was derived exclusively from copies of sheet music, and as I had never actually heard any of the music performed, I borrowed its rhythmic style not as played, but as written." The music that resulted had a distinctive if unsettling sound that in one movement at least was almost carnival-like. Midway through the performance there was a pause as violinist Kako Miura stepped offstage to replace a broken string.
L'Histoire du Soldat premiered in 1918 in Lausanne where it was conducted by Ernest Ansermet, another Ballets Russes alumnus and himself a great admirer of jazz. In addition to the suite for the original seven instruments performed here, Stravinsky also completed an arrangement for clarinet, violin and piano.
The next work was Ligeti's Trio for Violin, Horn, and Piano, Hommage á Brahms (1982) performed by Patrick Doane, violin; Emily Schaefer, horn; and Vatche Jambazian, piano. Their coaches were Sylvia Rosenberg and Eric Reed. This was really the most interesting piece on the program. Before the ensemble began playing, pianist Vatche Jambazian briefly addressed the audience and emphasized the influence Latin and Caribbean rhythms had had on Ligeti's music at this point. He then dedicated the performance to the late Pierre Boulez.
Even if the subtitle described the work as a homage to Brahms, the connection would at first appear limited to the use of the same instrumentation in both works. Nevertheless, the two composers, each in his own way, had to deal with the same problem - balancing the brassy sound of the horn so that it did not overwhelm that of its two partners. But the destabilizing effect of the horn was precisely what Ligeti here sought to exploit. Beyond that, the composer, at an impasse after having composed Le grand macabre, may have been looking to Hungarian folk music for inspiration just as he had in his early Concert Românesc in which two horns introduce the opening material of the third movement. Moreover, the use of the horn in the trio's elegiac final movement, marked lamento, added a unique element of pathos that would have been difficult to duplicate with other instrumentation. In the event, the piece evidently did help the composer find his way forward. As the Wikipedia article notes:
"The Trio was a turning point in Ligeti’s career. It is considered to be the watershed moment that opened up his "third way," a style that Ligeti claimed to be neither modern nor postmodern."
After intermission, the program closed with a performance of Mendelssohn's Piano Sextet in D Major, Op. 110 (1824) performed by Annika Jenkins, violin; Emily Liu, viola; Alaina Rea, viola; Keith Williams, cello; Douglas Aliano, double bass; Qilin Sun, piano. The coach was Daniel Phillips, best known as violinist with the Orion Quartet. In spite of the high opus number (the work was published posthumously), the sextet was an early work written when Mendelssohn was only fifteen years old. For a composer of any age the instrumentation here was unusual. Schubert had used something similar in his Quintet in A major a few years earlier, but it's doubtful that Mendelssohn had had an opportunity to hear that work. It may have been simply that Mendelssohn chose the instrumentation he felt would show the pianist, his sister Fanny, to best advantage. Despite his youth, Mendelssohn already had an excellent grasp of chamber composition. He would write his famous Octet only a year later. But the sextet was not as substantial an effort as the Op. 20. It did have an attractive sound, however, and was important for having been the first piece in which the composer recalled music from an earlier movement (the menuetto) in a later one (the closing allegro vivace).
All the musicians worked hard to give the best possible renditions of their respective pieces. Considering how short a time they had to rehearse together the level of virtuosity they displayed at the performances was nothing short of amazing.
No comments:
Post a Comment