Category: Reviews

VSO Audience Celebrates 100 Years of Standing Ovations

23 September, 2018

Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s 100th Season Concert

A number of years ago, I attended a touring performance of the St. Petersburg Symphony at the Théâtre des Clamps-Élysées in Paris, and what struck me most was the audience. Accustomed as I was here in Vancouver to a steady diet of competent yet unremarkable performances followed by overwhelmingly enthusiastic standing ovations, I was stunned by the restraint of the Parisians. Not that the St. Petersburg Symphony was lack-lustre—anything but! Perched on the edge of my seat, I thought “For sure everyone will go nuts at this!” I’d heard how capably Russian string sections played—the incisive attacks, soaring phrases, and turn-on-dime responsiveness like those sky-blackening murmurations of starlings—so I fully expected all-out pandemonium from the audience when the music stopped. But no. Polite yet sustained applause, and then to the exits.

Which is why when we went to hear the VSO’s 100th anniversary season opener, it was the unbridled enthusiasm of the audience that made the evening so memorable. Here’s what we heard.

Edward Top (image courtesy Donemus Publishing)

Helix by former VSO resident composer Edward Top set out into more intellectual waters—some sort of references to DNA double helices, I think—but even if you didn’t get the underlying science, the music was full of warmth and cohesion as swirling strands of sound twisted heavenward out of the orchestra.

It wasn’t too long ago that a new commission was greeted with muted horror by audiences preferring a diet that did not stray too far outside the Mozart-to-Rachmaninov spectrum. But applause was hearty and generous. For me, Top’s music holds a lot of subtlety so I thought that if the orchestra had a few more cracks at the score, it would certainly realize Top’s ideas better. World premiers are a risky affair so bravos all ’round.

Next up, the concerto. This one provided us with a double Dutch treat: Arthur and Lucas Jussen. These two lads performed Poulenc’s youthful Double Piano Concerto with as much pouty impertinence as Poulenc’s score demanded (which was a lot—and they had a lot). Here, the orchestration sparkles, bright optimistic melodies suddenly sour into petulance, while pilfered memes from Mozart fly by with artless grace. But even before all this could happen, the flaxen-haired boys had sailed onto stage clad in little more than matching skin-tight military, er, jumpsuits, so it was foregone that the audience would swoon.

The Jussen boys  (image courtesy The Georgia Straight)

Lest I give them the looks-over-talent treatment that many attractive female celebrities must contend with, I’ll add that their command of the material was superb and their communication with each other, the conductor, and the orchestra kept everything snappy and focused. Even so, during intermission I overheard one patron remark their performance was “bordering on homoerotic”. That it was, Blanche.

Marc Chagall, model for the curtain in the first act of “The Firebird”.

Stravinsky’s Firebird was the highlight of the programme (not that you’d know from the seats vacated along with the departure of the Dutch boys—I guess they were the real draw). Back in ’65, we were told, the VSO performed the Firebird under the baton of none other that the old bird himself—Igor Stravinsky. Way back then, we were also told, the VSO just performed the Suite from the Firebird (as if that were a simplified version suitable only for school orchestras or something). In truth, there’s a reason why Igor created a concert suite from the full ballet—to be performed on concert stages when no dancers were to be had. I thought perhaps new conductor Otto Tausk might have created a compelling vision of the piece but instead it had a bit of a sitzprobe (cue-to-cue) sound as individual players and sections executed their entrances with precision but without the overarching cohesion needed. But “No matter” concluded the audience as it leapt to its feet in a shameless orgy of applause…

Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, champions the idea of “one-buttock playing”, an approach which I translate to mean playing on the edge—daring to take a risk. In the Firebird, there were indeed moments that shone with unparalleled beauty (by the first violin section) and might  (by the low brass), and Concertmaster Nicholas Wright’s violin solos were sublime. But in this performance, I found that too few of the players sounded like they were ready to risk anything, certainly not a buttock. Perhaps in the next 100 years or so, we can look forward to some of that VSO audience enthusiasm rubbing off more on the players themselves. Bravo audience.

Standing Wave’s “Acousmatic” – a Synæsthesiac’s Feast

24 April, 2016

Synaesthesiac

Adventurous. Uncompromising. Inimitable. Sought-after. How great to hear so many superlatives in Vancouver—that are justified. As violinist Rebecca Whitling welcomed us to their “Acousmatic” concert at the Orpheum Annex last Sunday, she seemed to tear up at the prospect of finding even more superlatives with which to thank her fellow musicians. Standing Wave has been around for a long time—long enough to have either earned those superlatives legitimately or to have them dashed on the rocks of hyperbole—but tonight they were well warranted.

Evanescence

The first work, Gordon Fitzell’s Evanescence, was presented as but an amuse-bouche for the ears (amuse-oreille?). This was perfect as my ears needed time to adjust. I’ve been to enough electro-acoustic concerts to know that the batting average for electro-acoustic music isn’t that good—either it fizzles out due to technical glitches or the two media never quite reconcile leading to a cage match. But thanks to some excellent planning and artistic leadership from Giorgio Magnanensi and others, Evanescence proved how satisfying electro-acoustic can be. Surrounded by waves of intriguing sound and my ears sufficiently amused, I was ready for more.

Red Arc / Blue Veil

Although I missed the promised palindrome in John Luther Adams’s Red Arc / Blue Veil, I revelled in all the visuals implied by the work’s title. For the record, synæsthesia had once been my friend until the day I discovered that I was alone in the assumption that each of the four Brahms symphonies had its inherent colour (Number 1 is blue, 2 is yellow, 3 is a dusty pink, and 4 is avocado-green). So it was gratifying for Adams to permit me to let my ears once again see colour.

John Luther Adams is to music what Edward Burtynsky is to photography. To convey the enormity of the landscapes of his native Alaska and his concerns over the deterioration of our natural world, Adams is now writing music intended for performance out-of-doors. To get a sense of the titanic forces Adams wrestles with, listen to his riveting talk, “Music in the Anthropocene” (given last year at the Banff Centre), in which he described the role of the artist in a world of Climate Change. Against such a canvas, Red Arc / Blue Veil was a comparatively small and intimate meditation on “those inner sounds that are the life of the colours” to quote Kandinsky.

Subject / Object

Foreshadowing the physical comedy that was to come in his music, James O’Callaghan slunk onto the stage nervously for his talk about Subject / Object. Percussionist Vern Griffiths was quick (and classy) to put O’Callaghan at ease allowing us to get in touch with his kinesthetic approach to sound. Not at all a grammar lesson as its title implied, O’Callaghan’s Subject / Object was an attempt to “rationalize the irrational” by turning objects into subjects. It’s as if Standing Wave’s Pierrot-plus instrumentation wasn’t quite enough for O’Callaghan, so he poked and prodded about the stage looking looking for more stuff to play with—usually to great comic effect.

While the players diligently performed their parts, an array of surreal theatrics ensued. Balloons popped inside the piano, a kitchen chair was dragged dramatically across the stage and then subjected to other indignities from the percussionist’s toolkit, and we all squirmed as a bucket of “water” was tipped into the open piano (although electronics came to the rescue just in time with appropriately watery sounds). Nothing overlooked, even the click of flutist Christie Reside’s high-heeled shoes was employed as musical counterpoint (I’m not sure if a composer who’s comfortable referencing Ren & Stimpy would be aware of this, but Reside’s transit across the stage was a perfect homage to Michael Snow’s Walking Women). Bravo to that.

O Superman

The featured work of the evening was an electro-acoustic adaption of Laurie Anderson’s 1981 art rock hit O Superman set for Standing Wave by Vancouver composer Alfredo Santa Ana.

I suspected that some form of calculated risk was involved in casting Veda Hille to sing this role (and I don’t mean a box office calculated risk, although that may have accounted for fifty percent of the audience), but why substitute Anderson’s deadly accurate chops for Hille’s folksy peeping except to avoid, as Santa Ana put it, casting “one of those Art Song singers”?

While her vocal range may comprise the full octave the song demands, vocal quality and diction were moot as she leaned heavily on the FX processor, intended in the original as an expressive device. Veda Hille, O Veda Hille. It’s like walking into the room in time for the laughter but too late for the punch line.  Still, Santa Ana artfully exchanged phrases from violin to flute to bass clarinet and onward giving the art rock original an air of chamber music without sacrificing the sensibility of the source material.

Finale

Even if Standing Wave had lower standards or were perhaps more weird, they would still retain their hold as Vancouver’s premier new music ensemble with their ability to seamlessly integrate solid musicianship with glitchless electronics.

In addition to all the gear and high production values, their kitchen-party warmth—whether the informal extemporizing of Vern Griffiths or pianist Allen Stiles’s comic timing—helped ensure that they could programme pretty much whatever they please and still come across as refreshingly accessible.

Lori Freedman and the beauty of extremes

10 March, 2016

LoriFreedman-banner

If there were some sort of measuring tool that could compare Classical music with cheeses of the world on a one-to-one basis — where Pachelbel’s Canon would be Cheez Whiz and Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps would be some strain of blue that took you twenty years to work up the nerve to try — well, Lori Freedman’s “Virtuosity of Excess” tour would have to be well off that scale out beyond the farthest margins of Epoisse (a curd so odorous, it was banned from public transport in France), or perhaps even further — can one make cheese from platypus milk?

That’s not in any way to suggest that Lori’s music has anything malodorous about it. Pas du tout. It’s more a comment on her audience, which for deeply nuanced individual reasons has come to revel in her extremes.

It’s arguable that what she’s doing isn’t Classical music anyway. But it draws from many of the same roots, and being a fellow clarinet player who once played bass clarinet alongside Lori back in the last century (it was Le Sacre, which is scored for two bass clarinets), I know her roots. Now I’ve come to get to know her routes.

What is virtuosity?

LoriFreedman-side
photo credits: Jan Gates

I had the good fortune to sit with flautist Mark McGregor who’d come out to the Fox Cabaret to hear, above all else, the Brian Ferneyhough work. He explained Complexity music, which I paraphrase here broadly: The composer, without going beyond the instrument’s physical capability, employs myriad layers of complexity (such as assigning individual contrapuntal lines to different fingers) in an attempt to present to the audience a picture of the performer either breaking down or breaking through psychologically. “So, it’s sort of like a snuff film” I asked and Mark snorted with laughter, “I guess you could put it that way.” The title of Lori’s tour “The Virtuosity of Excess” is a quote from the French composer Raphaël Cendo, referring to the exploration (and sometimes exploitation) of the beauty of extremes.

Enter the “Virtuosity of Excess” tour

And then, before anyone could say, “Release the Kraken”, onto the stage strode Lori brandishing her contra-bass clarinet like a kalashnikov.

As we listened to Brian Ferneyhough’s Time and Motion Study #2 for bass clarinet, I started to get the full measure of Lori’s virtuosity. She puts her entire body, voice, and being into her playing. It’s so immediate and raw because what she’s after is emotional virtuosity.

Paul Steenhuisen’s Library on Fire for bass clarinet followed in what was by now an established pattern of extremes. This multi-movement, multi-music-stand work again showed how Lori transcends the cerebral by laying bare her humanity. Steenhuisen is a deep thinker able to layer complexity with the best of them, so it’s to Lori’s credit how she also brought warmth and humanity to the work — whether mumbling feverishly sotto voce or sucker punching us from the stage.

Steenhuisen’s Library on Fire as performed live in 2015 at The Music Gallery in Toronto

There’s something funny about Lori’s stage presence too—on account of its emotional ferocity. After screaming, squawking, and committing every excess imaginable, she always finished with a perfect little smile and thanked us all for listening. The contrast suggests some sociopathic older sister who’d just strangled her kid brother and now stands before us with one of those can-we-go-for-ice-cream-now smiles. Perhaps that’s why her own composition, Solor for bass clarinet (which she played from memory) lined up best for me. It certainly had its wild and raw moments, but overall I think it came from a more meditative place in her.

What is excess?

Raphaël Cendo’s Décombres for contrabass clarinet and live electronics was the coup de grâce of the evening. It was also the death knell for my ears, but I stood there anyway basking in the sheer monstrosity of it all like I was taking on Niagara Falls full force. To be in the presence of someone so beautifully uncompromising, so committed to her art — what glory!

After the show when people were mobbing her, I went up with the intention of saying something all-encompassing about what it means to be that emotionally revealed in art, but I couldn’t find the words and instead blurted out some nerdy clarinet-player nonsense about how “underneath everything, I could still hear a solid good clarinet sound”. It was entirely true of course — so always tactful — she laughed kindly as if I’d said, “Gee Mr. Pollack, you shure know how to mix them colours good.” It’s probably the most douche-baggey thing I’ve ever said…

Listening to Mark Dresser

17 February, 2016

MarkDresser-listens

What does it take to let go of the past and embrace pure potential? Billions are shuffling about — fearing. Fearing! Clearing the mind takes courage. It takes fortitude.

Not long ago at the Western Front, I heard a great musician—Mark Dresser. I could tell he knew implicitly that we weren’t there for the notes—so he didn’t play any—he was concerned with following the Muse.

The Muse always seems a little sad when I encounter him. Sometimes I think it’s my influence—on account of his devotion to the present—that causes his sadness. The Muse has difficulty understanding the human obsession with planning and the constant need to gather up our past possessions. To him, we must seem like idiotic squirrels—burying, then searching.

But Mark Dresser’s contrabass would not sadden the Muse as others do. Why? First, Mark listens—he waits until he can hear the whispers—and then he goes. He clearly has years of experience and technique to draw on, but he didn’t drag any of that out on stage like a bag of old chestnuts. When Mark played, I sensed how my mind would work were it freed of its feverish thinking. As I followed Mark, instead of the usual memory-anxiety machine, my mind became a finely tuned astrolabe constantly adjusting for those moments of inspiration.

Mark’s playing is instructional too. It provides a working example of how to think creatively and spontaneously. Mark follows phrases of his own making only so far as they’re fresh and then, whenever their trajectory hints at turning into stock patterns or set clichés, he abandons them in favour of another direction. I learned (again) that this is how creation works. Let go of cleverness. Let planning go. Defer your inevitable fame and trust that the next impulse is the right one.

But how quickly we’re drawn out of that shaft of light and descend into our infernal calculations. For me they go something like, “Will they like it?”, “Will they like me?”, “I must prove I’m not a fraud.”, “I’ll show them!” So you see, the Muse is frequently sad. He sees all that distraction right away and in that, little hope for anything new or authentic.

Lucky for us though, the Muse is ever hopeful of an opening—he’s the ultimate optimist. Even in the most formulaic calculating turgid undertaking, he’s there, waiting to be called upon. Who knows? With our human knack for calamity, something could go wrong forcing a desperate act of improvisation—and that’s his opening.

We all know our endless planning is little more than a buttressed attempt to avoid that opening. That’s why a sincere artist knows to let go of his craft. First, he knows he doesn’t have anything to prove (something yet to be learned by the unseasoned artist), but more, he learns that the tools (of his craft) are but a means to the end.
I found Mark Dresser a great player because he listens deeper than mere impact. He’s listening to the Muse’s whispers and making visible (or in his case, audible) those whispers for us. With Mark, we can witness the Muse at work and, of course, that’s ultimately why art matters.

—Jason Hall

You had me at gravitas — two concerts

6 February, 2016

St.-Andrews-Wesley-Church

Every Wednesday, three musicians hold a little performance of improvised music inside the cavernous St. Andrew’s Wesley United on Burrard. I went because I’m curious to hear Classically trained musicians who are willing to improvise. The constriction of their music training is such that, when improvising, many highly skilled Classical musicians can do little more than eke out a few trills.

These three musician could clearly do more than eke out trills — despite their Classical training — particularly the pianist Craig Addy who had the capacity to create vast landscapes of sound enough to fill the church and parts of Burrard street as well. Unfortunately for the three, they’re trapped in a new constriction even more asphyxiating to improvisation than Classical music — New Age music.

I listened patiently waiting for something to happen. My mistake. The entire point of New Age music is that nothing should ever happen, and to that degree it was a success. Here’s the core problem. New Age music is already “there”. There’s no getting “there” because it’s already “there”. So it has nowhere to go. New Age Music merely sits in its self-satisfied beauty doing nothing. Occasionally, it’ll glance about and change from a state of serene beauty to beautiful serenity, but that’s about all it can do. It’s a downright infuriating experience if your life contains other hues, which is the case for most people still claiming a pulse. Or in Dorothy Parker’s words, “a striking performance that ran the gamut of emotions, from A to B”.

PuSh2016_Limmediat2_credit-Cyrille-Cauvet-675x449

The other performance, L’Immédiat (part of the PUSH Festival), was something of a circus. There are really no words to compare the two performances, except that I have a few extras so I’m going to try anyway.

L’Immédiat plays in the diametrically opposite court to Craig Addy’s group. Instead of well-worn clichés of peace and serenity, L’Immédiat plays with chaos and to a certain extent tragedy — although not in a way you’d recognize it as such because it’s so absurdly funny.

Mostly, L’immédiat is about gravity. Not the concept of gravity, but the reality of gravity. Spoiler alert: Everything falls down. The sets fall down. The actors fall down, climb up again, then ultimately fall. It’s pure inspired (brilliantly choreographed) chaos.

And the gravity of the thing is that here I could recognize myself. Witnessing the wrenching futility of life pushing against gravity relaxed me in a way that was paradoxically the most uplifting experience I could imagine.