Just perfect music

There's so much that goes through your head after a decent concert. This was the Canberra International Music Festival and the concert was Bach (with some ring-ins) and we could only leave with beaming smiles and a rollicking gait. Firstly, we were talking of the Albert Hall as a concert venue, and how it's so good for chamber work of this size with an audience to sop up the reverb: live but not soppy; clear voices and ringing baroque trumpets; perhaps a little bass heavy (Max McBride was alone but filled the bottom end). And the experience is so European concert hall with an architectural experience that is so out of place in our new metropolis, with the large windows and suggested columns with Ionian scrolls and hinted flowers. Then the music. A jazzer said to me in passing that "he sure can write", meaning Bach can compose. It's an ironic throwaway line, of course.

I'd read that the Magnificat was originally written in Eb (the current version is D major). It was first performed at Christmas 1723 with two other new works. Bach had arrived in Leipzig in May that year and had already written 30 cantatas by Christmas. Genius. Magnificat (D major, BWV243) is ~27 mins in 11 movements for 5 voices and 5 instrumental parts. It starts with a joyous, vibrant canon on "Magnificat anima mea Dominum" (My soul magnifies the Lord), through various solo sung parts; two very different sopranos, perhaps over oboes or strings; bass over a ponderous but amusing accompaniment of cellos and double bass; countertenor and tenor with lyrical melody over violins with pizz bass and short cello. Always the lanky but sinuous Roland Peelman conducting by feeling every nuance. I can understand the value of a conductor when I see this man. Through more choir with a sudden stop (on 1+?) and an end with baroque trumpets and timpani; a 3/4 introduced with violins and cello responses, and again that neat, square and brisk bass; then countertenor with pure flute tones; three females singing over one cello and organ; a vocal canon starting elephantine and rising through male to male to female to female, dignified, then into an exultant final Gloria with trumpets and timp. This is not all, but an impression. Half an hour of the most perfect of music. I'd first thought this is the most perfect music during the final movement of the previous work, Bach Concerto for violin and oboe in Cmin BWV1060. This is three movements, instrumental with two solo melody instruments, with a middle movement in 3/4. It is fabulous and beautiful and unrelenting and sequenced, but it's also a piece I've heard a billion times on ABC RN LNL so it has the advantage of being ridiculously familiar. Elizabeth Wallfisch was to solo, but had fallen off a bike so was replaced by Matthew Greco at short notice. He did a great job, although he was often a bit quiet for the oboe. A fabulous work and very well done. I'm thinking European familiarity with this music, now. Albert Hall suited the baroque with intimacy and acoustics, but also the informality, reminding me of unexpectedly casual canteens at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Berlin Concerthouse.

What else? Before the interval was a short fanfare, Handel Battaglia from his opera Rinaldo, all trumpets and timpani and suggestions of battle (I missed this) and agitation and ferment. Then a change to the program due to Elizabeth's bike accident. Another Bach was replaced with an oddly unexpected but fascinating duo playing 900yo Armenian music of Gurdjieff and the Silk Road. These were two tunes played on duduk and organ: Grigor Naretski Fowl of the air was a mutating scale over a single note organ drone; Khatchatur Taronetsi Mystery profound had a more complex duduk melody over small organ chords. I heard lots of long notes; (I guessed) flat 3s and 6s but the scales changed; slithering legato and strangely Mid-Eastern vibrato. Lovely, diverse and meditative. Then one more Bach, his Cantata Es erhub sich ein steit (There arose a war) BWV19. It's magnificent but I don't hear the war reference without reading the German. As for performers, I couldn't help but love the baroque trumpets and timpanis when they let fly. I admired all manner of instruments - strings, oboes who had several featured passages, the lovely baroque organ, the cellos and bass that also had their features. But most of all I loved the voices. This was the Song Company presumably with a friend or two and they were glorious, as solo voices or intertwined in a canon. Precise and beautiful voices, both men and women. So, this was a huge pleasure and more coming.

The various Bach and Handel were performed by the Song Company with guests Sonya Holowell (soprano), Susannah Bishop (soprano), Tobias Cole (counter tenor) and Richard Butler (tenor). Musicians included Elizabeth Wallfisch (violin, unexpectedly not soloing) and the Wallfisch Band, Elizabeth's replacement Matthew Greco (violin) and Leo Duarte (baroque oboe). All around Roland Peelman (conductor). The Armenian players were from the Gurdjieff Folk Instruments Ensemble: Emmanuel Hovhannisyan (duduk) and Levan Eskenian (?) (baroque organ).

Plumb tuckered out

We were cocky about jet lag. It hit us at the Proms. Too bad, because we mostly missed a decent concert. It must have been a few drinks with dinner, but we were out of it. The Proms are an institution, of course. All very English in a delightful, unassuming way. This wasn’t the last night with its singing of stirring songs of empire: Jerusalem and Land of hope and glory and Rule Britannia. This was an idiosyncratically casual outing with artistic validity. I learnt that Prom is a diminutive of promenade and refers to those standing in the dance floor area of Albert Hall. Albert Hall itself is now modern casual, its velveted tiers softened by green floating mushrooms under the grey cement of the dome above. Megan had dressed a little, but no need for that here. People were eating chips (crisps) in interval; no hoyty-toyty here, even if there’s some embrace of nerdity or even upper class twittery (cf Monty Python). These are people with a genuine enjoyment of cultivated music. Tonight’s works were a world premiere of Param Vir’s Cave of luminous mind which was all shivering or ever ascending strings with overlaid snippets of melody and tonality from all instruments. As I remember, the second movement featured a conversation between violin and viola (?) and the third blossomed with ideas all falling over themselves. Very filmic and presumably very hard to read. I liked this one. Then a much more romantic Sibelius Violin concerto in D minor played by Lisa Batiashvili. This seemed much less folky and Scandinavial that I’d expected from Sibelius. She played an encore of violin accompanied by strings and sounding very Russian. After interval, we heard the Celtic Symphony by Bantock with 6 harps and sounding more of rural vistas and lyricism. Then, to end, Elgar’s Enigma variations, an old standard and an apt composer for the Proms. We were nodding off throughout the concert, but it was a joy and a piece of core-Englishness of the times. There are masses of these Proms concerts and they are hugely popular. It’s summer when the Proms are out and about and there’s not a London Phil concert in sight. Worthy and relaxed.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Sakari Oramo at the Albert Hall in Prom 52. Lisa Batiashvili (violin) soloed in Sibelius Violin concerto in D minor, Other works were Param Vir Cave of luminous mind, Granville Bantock Celtic Symphony for six harps and strings and Elgar Enigma variations.

Early elegance restored

Megan and I got an invitation to the launch of the Canberra International Music Festival 2010. This year’s launch was at the Albert Hall, one of Canberra’s earliest public buildings (meaning ~1920s). It’s a small, timber floored, multipurpose hall in a Georgian Revival style with faux classical columns, big windows, a strange little dress circle area over the foyer and a proscenium arched stage. All quite a mixture and odd for modern tastes, but it’s much loved and has been recently restored (although I didn’t notice much difference). There were drinks and hors d’oevres, followed by speeches by Dorothy Danta (Pro Musica Board president), Don Aitken (CIMF Chair) and Chris Latham (CIMF musical director), and the premiere performance of a work by Peter Sculthorpe, Kyrie for cello and strings, performed by cellist David Pereira and the ANU School of Music Chamber Orchestra. Megan described it as dreamy, evocative, wandering music that reminded her of Arvo Pärt. It was nicely played, too, although the massive reverb in the now curtain-free Albert Hall made the orchestra sound less fresh than it should have. We discussed the lack of curtains with some friends. They would have served several purposes in this reverberant hall with big windows in Canberra’s harsh outback environment: managing the sound and limiting extremes of temperature. I bet they will reappear. It was not a young crowd. The ageing of the audience is a concern of classical music. I hope the seriousness of the music will work its magic in the end. There’s just a touch of jazz on the program but it looks interesting: the Sprogis/Woods Jazz Composers’ Competition. It’s advertised as an award for emerging writers from the Jazz Department at the ANU School of Music. Bill Risby, Miroslav Bukovsky and Mike Price are judging. The final is in the Fitter’s Workshop (the venue with the “Stradivarius acoustics”) on 23 May. Check out the CIMF website for the program.

CIMF website