Showing posts with label Maxim Vengerov. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maxim Vengerov. Show all posts

Tuesday 23 February 2016

The best of duo partners (Part I) : The music is almost an excuse to hear them play

Part I of a review of Maxim Vengerov in Recital, with pianist Roustem Saïtkoulov

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


21 February

This is the delayed¹ Part I of a review of Maxim Vengerov in Recital [Part II is reviewed here], which he gave with pianist Roustem Saïtkoulov at Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, on Saturday 20 February at 7.30 p.m.

The first part of the recital that Maxim Vengerov gave at Saffron Hall (@SaffronHallSW) with pianist Roustem Saïtkoulov comprised two sonatas for violin and piano. [Part II is reviewed here.]

They were written in the first two decades of the nineteenth century and within fifteen years of each other (although Schubert was more than a decade, and his work was not to be published until 1851, which, if it is the publication-date that we notice, might make us fail to realize that he lived his live almost entirely within Beethoven's life-time).



Programme (Part I) :

1. Franz Schubert (1797-1828) ~ Sonata for Violin and Piano (‘Grand Duo’)

2. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) ~ Sonata No. 7



Franz Schubert (1797-1828) ~ Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major (‘Grand Duo’), Op. Posth. 162 (1817), D. 574

1. Allegro moderato
2. Scherzo : Presto
3. Andantino
4. Allegro vivace


In the Sonata’s opening Allegro moderato, the tone of Roustem Saïtkoulov’s playing was open, as if of song accompaniment. The writing for violin, meanwhile, was developing into complexity, with expressive cadences, and with Maxim Vengerov using a great variability of string-tone between, say, feeling free or sweet, exuberant or jolly. With the repeat, ease was the overriding sense, leading into a hint of nostalgia, and then new (agitated) material, with loud piano gestures. Momentarily, the duo chose to hesitate over the recurrence of the original theme, and then brought the movement to lively and uncomplicated close.


A horn-like motif, as if acting as a fanfare, opened the Scherzo (and was to make further appearances, following boisterous gestures the next two times). Schubert next variously gave us (punctuated by use of the fanfare) a passage built around repeated and syncopated notes, and a sinuously flexible line for Vengerov, whilst the piano had a sort of trotting pattern : that sound had already reminded of another composer, and, when the horn-call had come back triumphantly, the piece then duly transformed, in its ending, into a piece of Beethovenian theatre.


The third movement had a song-like opening from Vengerov. That theme was ultimately to be passed to Saïtkoulov, but a feature of this Andantino was trills on piano, violin adornments, and modulations. Those modulations, when the theme was on piano, led to harmonic uncertainty, and then it was passed back for a mood of mellifluousness that alternated with one of earnestness. More modulations, and trills, first on piano, came before the movement concluded, but with a slight feeling of irresolution.


Having once read Jo Kirkbride’s programme-notes, one necessarily listened with awareness that it was youthful Schubert. The Allegro vivace opened with what seemed to be a variation of the start of the work, with a ‘jogging’ passage connected to it (a little like the earlier ‘trotting’ figure ?). Just before a theme was passed to the violin, one was aware that the piano part was reminiscent of Schubert’s later style in keyboard sonatas.

Generally, this movement seemed more mature than the others, with a feeling of equal partners, and it had energy and dramatic tension, from performers and composer : Schubert’s piano-writing is sympathetic, and both Saïtkoulov and Vengerov brought a lightness of touch to this finale, but coupled with expressiveness. Schubert ends the piece with enthusiasm, but it is unannounced, in the usual ways, in the writing, and so catches us somewhat short.


As with the Sonata that we were about to hear, this was playing engaged on a passionate purpose, with sympathy and communication between the players, and much appreciated by those who had been listening at Saffron Hall.




Beethoven ~ Sonata No. 7 in C Minor (1802), Op. 30, No. 2 :

1. Allegro con brio
2. Adagio cantabile
3. Scherzo : Allegro
4. Finale : Allegro ; Presto




Beethoven gives us, in the opening Allegro con brio, a pair of note-clusters that, with their contrasting note-values, balance a third, longer one, and Vengerov and Saïtkoulov clearly relished this rhythmic material. The composer’s assurance in writing and handling it was matched by theirs in bringing it to us, and, in co-curating the performance with him, and so a march-like passage felt rendered quite anew when it returns.

To some extent, elements of music inevitably, if well imprinted on the first occasion, will feel fresh when the composition has it repeated, by virtue of the differing context. Yet this was all part of the performers’ nuance and intonation, to have us take in themes in passing : at another point, we would be able to notice that Vengerov used under-statement before the material reappeared – both men were clearly feeling alive to the sensitivities and revelations in the Sonata. So, musically, the group of three vigorous down-strokes on violin need to fit where we hear them, and, if they do (as they did when Vengerov played them), they do not resemble gratuitous loudness (or even aggression ?), but make musical sense.

When that martial utterance comes back one final time, before a gloriously confident end to the movement, does it now seem to pre-figure what we hear in the so-called 'Eroica' Symphony ? (The Symphony No. 3 in E Flat Major (1804), Op. 55, was completed within a year of its publication*.)


When Roustem Saïtkoulov opened the next movement (marked Adagio cantabile), Maxim Vengerov was observing him keenly, during the introduction for solo piano : one had the sense that he wanted to absorb, with all available senses (not just that of sound), how this was being played, and, when he made his entry, it was with a most beautiful tone on violin, and phrased for the light piano chords.

There was the intonation and feeling of close duo partners, with Saïtkoulov performing figures, below Vengerov’s playing, and of an overall effect that, as the writing is, was balanced, with grace amidst a sense of solemnity. Just as with those three lively down-strokes from Vengerov in the Allegro con brio (please see above, in the penultimate paragraph), so Beethoven puts two massive rumbles into the piano-writing (in the form of pairs of very abrupt scales) : maybe curious in itself at first, but, with delicate violin following and adding to it, there was a devotional feel to how we heard violin with piano.


By now, although we still had two movements to be heard, they are (in a typical performance) shorter in length, put together, than the preceding Adagio cantabile. Yet music is not, of course, to be ‘sold by the pound (or kilo)’, and so, just as the emotional centre of a work may be found in a relatively short Adagio (because of what has come before it, and prepared for it), so the effect that these last movements can have will be built and be sustained by our experience of the earlier part of the Sonata.

The Scherzo movement opens with what, to Western ears could be an erratically accented dance-line (maybe in homage to the its fellows and its Tsarist dedicatee² ?), from which players and Beethoven extract thematic material. At times, with Saïtkoulov following Vengerov, it sounded imperial in nature; at others, perhaps more like a hymn of thanks – radiant and glorious.


Of course, it is not actually that the Scherzo is any more brief than is typical with any other movement so marked, but that the Finale is no longer. However, with rhythmically inventive writing and playing, and more use of syncopated off-beats, almost everything (please see below) about the tone and structure of the movement is predicated on its doing as we expect :

Beethoven makes a fugal use of a form of the theme, and we could see and sense the satisfaction of both men, in this music and in the performance, as they built from this point. Despite indications to the contrary, in a moment of almost stasis near the end, with violin and piano moving strophically, a Presto coda, signalled by Vengerov, was to bring the Sonata to a close, and to very much applause and sincere appreciation from Maxim Vengerov and Roustem Saïtkoulov on stage at Saffron Hall.



The link here is to the review of Part II of the concert


End-notes

¹ By way of explanation for this Part (Part I) of the review not appearing when intended :




² The publication of this set of three Sonatas, Beethoven's Opus 30 (dedicated to Tsar Alexander I of Russia), had been in May 1803 (they had been written between 1801 and 1802).




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Sunday 21 February 2016

The best of duo partners (Part II) : The music is almost an excuse to hear them play

Part II of a review of Maxim Vengerov in Recital, with pianist Roustem Saïtkoulov

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


20 February

This is Part II of a review of Maxim Vengerov in Recital, which he gave with pianist Roustem Saïtkoulov at Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, on Saturday 20 February at 7.30 p.m.


After a dark concert-suit in the first part of the concert (to a review of which this links), a change of repertoire and ambience was signalled by a change of suit for Maxim Vengerov, a grey lounge suit with a black collar



Programme (Part II) :

3. Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) ~ Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2

4. Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931) ~ Violin Sonata No. 6

5. Wilhelm Ernst (1812-1865) ~ The Last Rose of Summer

6. Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) (arr. Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962)) ~ Theme and Variations on ‘I Palpiti’





Ravel ~ Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2, in G Major (1923-1927), M. 77

1. Allegretto
2. Blues. Moderato
3. Perpetuum mobile. Allegro


The Sonata's opening Allegretto, from which the central movement is often detached (please see below), felt full of mystery and allusiveness : maybe there was birdsong in the discords, maybe car-horns (tying in with apparently invoking Gershwin in the last movement ?), but resolving into harmonies. From composer and performers, a sense of conjuring something into existence with this sound-world…


The central movement is often heard outside its place in the whole work – typically with great relish of the passage with that bluesy ‘bent’ note (if to the exclusion of much else ?). After extreme pizzicato gestures to begin with, Maxim Vengerov was then rightly relatively restrained with that familiar passage :

One can only appreciate what has been singled out to be known by accepting it to be so, when fitting it back into its musical context. Afterwards, as the piano ‘muses’, he used very much more gentle pizzicato to bring in subtle timbres, and, when it came to the often unacknowledged sub-theme, carefully accented it to bring the line of melody within it out to us. A little more pizzicato, this time with intensity, came before Ravel’s quiet, and somewhat moody close.


In the final movement, the Ravel of Gaspard de la nuit (1908), especially ‘Scarbo’ (its third movement), seemed evident here : the exactly terrifying effect of a moto perpetuo when put alongside the edginess of his piano-writing.


Remission came in the form of overtly jazzy piano (from which we might infer - wrongly¹ - that Ravel is quoting George Gershwin, in An American in Paris), and the violin skating above it, only to return to the anxiety of the moto perpetuo against chords from Saïtkoulov. A recurrence of that jazz-infused material then relieved us - now, the parts of piano and violin came to us in a more integrated form (and, although finishing the piece with the gesture of a closing cadence, Ravel seemed to do so without a harmonic resolution ?).



Ysaÿe ~ Violin Sonata No. 6, in E Major (1923), Op. 27


Eugène Ysaÿe


This solo work seemed to have - as the first encore was likewise to suggest - a Neapolitan character to it (and perhaps, near the end, even a reference to Carmen ?) : now playing alone, Vengerov’s virtuosity and ease of playing were being exploited, and tested.

However, amongst all that was going on and being asked of him, everything proved - played with this level of skill and insight - to be part of the whole. The adornments and extras were there, not for themselves, but in the service of lyricism, and of the music’s emotional content.



Ernst The Last Rose of Summer² (Étude No. 6) (1864) : Introduction, Theme, Four Variations, and Finale

After an introduction, we would have recognized the theme, complete with left-handed pizzicato. By 1846, the status of the song ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ had been established for decades (since Beethoven had used it twice, the first time in Irish Songs (1816), Vol. 2, WoO 153)². As the work progressed, we could hear how a variation would go away from, and come back to, home – or of the theme’s expressive enhancement (if almost to disintegration ?).


Given its popularity, then and now, it was illuminating to hear the theme so variously treated, with, after a ‘straight’ form of variation, next more left-handed pizzicato, but performed as a kind of ‘twang’, almost as if to undermine a serious bowed line. (Some other effects were read as comic, rather than in the nature of further challenging technique, with a number in the audience actually laughing – not that smiles or laughter are to be banished at the door of the concert-hall, but it was unclear that what we heard was meant to be taken that way.)



Paganini (arr. Kreisler) ~ Theme and Variations on ‘I Palpiti’ (1819), Op. 13 (arr. publ. 1905)

Again, a piece in variation form, but, coming from a celebrated violinist, it seemed employed to the end of conveying character through, rather than in, the chosen matter, and with the relative simplicity of the part for piano. The balance of the piece, and of the performer, was between the elements of ornamentation and bringing out its qualities of expression, and Kreisler’s importance and memory were clearly close to Vengerov’s heart (not just because the first two encores were by Kreisler, but in his approach and playing).


Fritz Kreisler, with his dog, in October 1930


Encores :

(1) The Caprice viennois, Op. 2, was given to feel and be reverential of Kreisler, but in a dreamy, if also matter-of-fact, way [Kreisler seems, judging by this recording from around 1942, to have chosen to play it with orchestra].

By contrast, in Kreisler’s (2) Tambourin Chinois³, Op. 3, Vengerov was obviously enjoying himself, with its pentatonic taps or fast bow-strokes. Yet, even more so, the tempo of the slower, central section – with its richness of tone, it was reminiscent of moments in the Ravel.



In retrospect, it was a shame not to have started a ripple of applause to second the sentiment that Maxim Vengerov wished that there could be more concert-halls like Saffron Hall (@SaffronHallSW).


Finally, a very well-known piece, (3) the ‘Méditation’ from Massenet’s opera Thaïs (where it originally served as an intermezzo) : Vengerov is a great player, but there was not a sense of ego here, but of loving the music, and loving playing it. As earlier in the recital (e.g. with the Ravel), what was well judged was in seeing what is lovely about it – the depths of expression, rather than exploiting it for its familiar capacity to move to tears.

Here, the concert concluded (as signalled by the duo coming back to the stage violinless) : in any case, one would not have wanted anything else to follow this choice. Many of the audience who had not already stood took the opportunity to do so, and take one last curtain-call with these performers.




The link here is to the review of Part I of the concert


End-notes

¹ I.e. that when, in 1928, Gershwin composed An American in Paris (after his second trip to Paris), he was the one paying tribute. It is a story often told that Gershwin and Ravel were in correspondence (before Gershwin's first visit, in 1926), because Gershwin wanted to take lessons in composition from him. When, however, Ravel saw what the other was earning as a composer, he joked that he should be taking lessons from Gershwin.

On meeting Gershwin in 1926, Ravel did not find himself able to teach him, and suggested Nadia Boulanger as a teacher. (Gershwin was not to meet her until the second trip : almost as famously, she urged on him that, true to himself, he was already a first-rate Gershwin, and should not try to become a second-rate [version of] Ravel.) In between, Gershwin helped persuade Ravel to make a lucrative concert-tour to the States, and the further contact between the men led to Ravel's making a generous commendation of Gershwin to Boulanger.

² The traditional tune ‘Aislean an Oigfear’ (‘The Young Man's Dream’) had been transcribed in 1792 (by Edward Bunting). The poet Thomas Moore then not only set words to it (i.e. his poem ‘The Last Rose of Summer’), but published Bunting’s transcription (in A Selection of Irish Melodies (1813), Vol. 5).

What one finds is that Ernst was by no means alone in finding it an attractive musical subject : we may well know of Britten’s arrangement, but, in the intervening two centuries, it has proved one to dozens of other composers, amongst them Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Kuhlau, Glinka, Gounod, Reger, and Hindemith.

³ Vengerov announced it as a second Caprice by Kreisler, setting one’s heart racing at the idea that he might, as Kreisler did, have passed off one of his works as that of another…




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)