Saturday 18 March 2000 Victoria Concert Hall |
FAMILIAR FAVOURITES Baroque Classics/Bach 250th Anniversary Commemoration |
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Henry PURCELL (1659-1695) Suites from The Gordian Knot Untied and Abdelazer Henri CASADESUS (1879-1947) Viola Concerto in B minor (after Handel) Luigi BOCCHERINI (1743-1805) Cello Concerto in G major, G480 Johann Sebastian BACH (1685-1750) Brandenburg Concerto No.4 in G major, BWV1049
GUAN Qi viola |
OVERALL NOISE RATING: 0 (so quiet for such an unsatisfying concert)
The Noise Rating Index is a partially-objective measurement of pager and handphone blasts, 9pm and 10pm watch beeps, coughing-during-the-pianissimo-bits, intra-audience conversation and other mind-bogglingly inept noises emitted in the concert hall during actual performance of music. It is measured on a scale of 0 to 5, in increasing annoyance.
by Chia Han-Leon
In the tradition of classical concertising, it is often assumed that the guest conductor (especially the foreign conductor) is often - "good". Or at the very least better than home conductors. I came to this concert with this presumption, and got the rudest shock of my life. American guest conductor Michael Charry's conducting created some of the most tedious, uninspired and directionless performances of Baroque (and thereabouts) music I have ever encountered.
Some conductors choose to play Baroque in modern style, and there is nothing wrong with this so long as the musical intention produces meaningful, musical and pleasing results. But here, not only was the style Charry used tired, out-dated and nondescript, it displayed a very disappointing shortage of vibrancy and sense of beauty. If Baroque music lacked these qualities, there isn't much else to bank on.
But no, beauty was not entirely missing. During the Purcell pieces, the strings were allowed to sing with impressive body of tone, playing the overtures with feeling, the slow music with ample British melancholy. However, I think this was more a simple reflex from the SSO strings, reacting to the long melodic lines.
Henry Purcell (right) - one of Britain's greatest composers - is himself one of the oldest victims of unHIP leadweight playing. This 17th century master of theatre music is also the greatest musico-linguist of the English language that ever lived (meaning: no one has set the haphazard English language to music as skilfully and as convincingly as he has). Purcell demands great attention to colour by virtue of his dramatic sense of instrumental timbre; as well as in phrasing, because he was the absolute master of inflection and rhythmic nuance.
So, my worst fears were realised when Charry and the SSO proceeded to reduce the string parts to sawing drones, the slow music to aural sleep; despite the many appearances of the word "dance" in the programme notes, that vital element was completely missing in these performances. The interpretations were dumbfire, uncreative, with a bulldozer approach that reproduces the score well, but is frighteningly boring precisely because of that.
Even when it came to the famous rondeau which Britten used in Young Person's Guide, I was ashamed to hear the music reproduced in mechanical manner, note for note, beat for beat. Listening to a metronome is more pleasing.
Once again, as they do each season, we come to the obligatory
Baroque concert - plus some extra mileage the company earns by doing a
Brandenburg so that it becomes a "Bach 250th Anniversary
Commemoration", not that there's anything particularly commemorative
about it I can see. Nor could Luigi Boccherini be strictly considered
Baroque, anymore than, say, Haydn - but we'll let that pass, too.
American conductor Michael Charry gave the pre-concert talk to an
audience of a hundred and fifty - the biggest attendance for any
pre-concert talk this season so far, and quite scholarly it was, too.
This made the performance itself later all the more surprising, which
was not wholly quite persuasive.
To be fair, Charry had some good musical ideas but perhaps these
were found wanting in the execution. I mean, the music-making was
enjoyable in an easy-going way but its personality was
unidiomatic and the sense of joie de vivre somehow failed to be
communicated across.
The concerto works were not much more inspired, although Charry did
provide very sympathetic accompaniment for his soloists. In the
beginning of the Brandenburg he was simply beating time and
giving the orchestra its own head (and not on a silver platter, either!), a sensible approach given that baroque music was never written to
be conducted from the podium with a stick.
The soloists each dispatched their respective parts with little
technical fuss - it's hard to see how these works could be anything
but difficult for players on the calibre of Lynnette Seah (violin,
Brandenburg Concerto) and Liu Peng (cello, Boccherini). Violist
Guan Qi played with exquisite string-tone in the Handel-Casadesus
concerto, and the flautist duo, Jin Ta and Evgueni Brokmiller
acquitted themselves well with sharp articulation.
Much less could be said of the programme book, though. Music
director Lan Shui has distinctly said in an interview last year that
among the improvements he hopes to bring are better programme notes;
yet, it seems, if anything we seem to be going in the opposite
direction. Whatever happened to the erudite writing of Stephen
Whittington, Marina Tan or even Tony Hung ?
Ignoring typos such as Guan Qi being listed as "Associate Principal
of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra" and George Burrow misquoted in
"every dog has its day" ("it" should be "his"), most of the notes
about the music were, frankly, a confused tangle of unhelpful
gobbledigook.
I'm not expecting HC Robbins Landon, but Dr John Howard's
academic-sounding text is distinctly not user-friendly, with
constructs such as: "The first air is a duple-time dance, with
straightforward chordal textures in the major mode" and "After a
while, we shift to the dominant, then a more expressive dominant
minor, leading to G minor."
The phrase "dancing about architecture" somehow comes to mind. Not
to mention that these notes are, on occasion, inaccurate. Case in
point: I have to admit I am not familiar with Purcell's music, but
when conductor Charry played the Overture to Abdelazer
at a tempo substantially faster than Howard's description of "begins
with the expected slower music", it was a clear-cut instance of what
in academia has been described as "smoking out", a skill which some
academics wield with great facility.
But no such complaints with Dr John Sharpley, who provided the
write-up for the Brandenburg Concerto: it contained informative
explainations of musical terms and an astute use of intelligent
metaphor ("Bach dazzles us with both right and left brain
brilliance"). The only thing to add is his reluctance to use
paragraphs, but perhaps the editor deserves a share of the blame here.
Playing was swishy and soggy. Charry beat to the music with the undistinguished regularity of an old windmill, with limited opinion on dynamic shadings.
Even the lively 18th century music of Boccherini was reduced to a general blur of Paganinian rambling (that is, characteristic of Paganini's orchestral accompaniment writing). There was no pulse of vitality, no sparkle of brilliance. Acting Principal Cellist Liu Peng saved the Boccherini with his fine performance, which at least showed a dash of personality.
As I have mentioned elsewhere, the physical act of "conducting" Baroque music 'live' is one of the most unnecessary in the modern concert circle. If one must do it, please do it with meaningful intention and direction - otherwise, as here, one only demonstrates the great "Maestro Myth".
The fact that Charry had chosen to split the violins on his left and right - with violas, harpsichord, cello/basses in between - was annoyingly ironic since no attempt whatsoever was made to exploit any multi-part string writing, solo-orchestra contrast, display any Baroque musical architecture, nor transparency of orchestral sound. The upper strings dominated the entire concert with their loud, uncouth playing - the middle voices were absent during the course of most of the music, and even the winds which appeared on occasion were completely drowned. Needless to say, the greatest victim of this style of music-making is always the continuo - simplified and relegated to the bottom, with the harpsichord effectively inaudible in the entire concert.
If you thought that Handel never wrote a Viola Concerto, well you're right. The work in the programme is in fact a pastiche by Henri Casadesus; that is, a work imitating the style of another. So, not-really-Baroque. (Casadesus also wrote the Mozart "Adelaide" Violin Concerto). The finale for example was a merry piece, though more Mozartian/Beethoven Violin Concerto rather than Baroque.
The main plus of the concert (and the main draw, judging by the number of bouquets) were the soloists. By and large they were able players, though their true skills were probably not on display. With a full tone, if a touch sinewy, Guan Qi held his solo with much attention, producing a genial and straight account of the Casadesus work, sometimes sounding more like an exercise in intonation and articulation security.
The most promising work of the night - and the one and only small reason why the concert is subtitled "Bach 250th Anniversary Commemoration" (programming committee, please try harder) - turned out to be another grave disappointment. Let me first say that the two flutists, whom I've praised recently (of which one gave a fabulous performance of the Bach Second Orchestral Suite recently), deserve praise again for their well-blended playing.
That is, when I could hear them. The performance of the Brandenburg Concerto No.4 was a huge din, with no sense of cohesion so vital to the Brandenburgs; the element of cooperation turned more into competition as instruments fought loudness with loudness. Even in the slow Gluckian Andante, the orchestra was inordinately loud and ungraceful, with the soloists covered, except when the solo violin decided to play even louder.
Despite Charry's greater attentiveness in this piece, it seemed ironic that he further reduced his range of gestures - and considering that basso continuo was non-existent, he really could have done something by directing from there. Instead, the absent continuo merely reflects the useless conductor. Here was a reading of one of the pinnacles of Baroque concerto writing, made terrifically unimaginative, played with little sense of purpose and camaraderie. To do this to Bach is the greatest disappointment, and in conclusion, this is by far the worst concert I have attended this season.
Indeed, the main problem in this concert is the oldest problem of pre-1960s, "modern"-style performance of Baroque music: treating the music as Romantic melody. Which it is not.
17 March, Friday.
Second Opinion by William Beh
Boccherini (right) on the other hand, is fairly famous for his cello concerti - but hold on here, Luigi isn't a Baroque composer! He was but 7 when J.S.Bach died, and his style is closer to Haydn and the Rococo than anything else - the man was even nicknamed the "wife of Haydn" because of this. I have no problem with them in a concert programme, except that this concert is entitled "Baroque Classics". Couldn't we have avoided misinforming the public and played Vivaldi instead?
Chia Han-Leon wonders why not just invite a proper Baroque specialist conductor instead of spending money on clueless ah-pehs.
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