Volume 21 Issue 1 - September 2015

DISCOVERIES | RECORDINGS REVIEWED
DAVID OLDS
With the late Labour Day this year at times it has seemed
happily like an endless summer. Unfortunately, with the
opening of the CNE I am reminded it’s time to get my nose
back to the grindstone and tell you about some of the most interesting
discs to come my way over the past three months.
First up is a first-class documentary
about Canada’s contemporary diva Barbara
Hannigan, last seen in these parts as the
featured soloist in works by George Benjamin
and Hans Abrahamsen at last spring’s New
Creations Festival hosted by the TSO. Barbara
Hannigan – Concert & Documentary
(Accentus Music ACC 20327) was filmed
in August 2014 at the Lucerne Festival
where Hannigan was artiste étoile, singing,
conducting and giving masterclasses. The
DVD includes concert footage with the Mahler
Chamber Orchestra featuring an overture by Rossini, three Mozart
arias, Ligeti’s surprisingly traditional Concert Românesc, Fauré’s
Pelléas et Mélisande and Hannigan’s signature piece, Mysteries of the
Macabre also by Ligeti.
Hannigan is certainly not the first singer to turn to conducting, but
I’m not aware of any in the modern era that have undertaken to do
both at once. We get insights into the development of this dual career
and the particular challenges it offers in the candid documentary I’m
a creative animal – Barbara Hannigan directed by Barbara Seiler. We
get intimate glimpses of the artist as an accomplished chef (she travels
with her own kitchen knives), going for daily runs with pop music in
her ear buds, on horseback and in yoga class, but first and foremost as
a diligent and dedicated musician with an incredible breadth of vision
and accomplishment.
We hear Hannigan in her own words discussing growing up in
rural Nova Scotia, her studies at the University of Toronto where her
mentor (Mary Morrison, although unnamed in the documentary)
opened her eyes and ears to the world of contemporary music, the
trials and tribulations of living out of suitcases, the dangers of being
revered as a “superhuman” and her aspirations for the future. We also
hear from members of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra about working
under her direction and from her vocal coach about fine tuning and
maintenance of Hannigan’s superb vocal instrument. This 45-minute
portrait is a stunning look at a stunning artist and consummate musician.
Not to be missed. Concert note: Barbara Hannigan returns to the
stage at Roy Thomson Hall in the dual role of soloist and conductor in
music of Nono, Haydn, Mozart, Ligeti and Stravinsky with the TSO on
October 7 and 8.
In the tradition of full disclosure I will say
that Canadian pianist and musicologist Dr.
Réa Beaumont is a colleague whom I often
encounter through the activities of the Toronto
New Music Alliance (with which I am affiliated
in my position as general manager of
New Music Concerts) and who is an occasional
contributor to WholeNote’s DISCoveries
section. As a matter of fact you can find her
impressions of the new Gryphon Trio compact disc further on in
these pages.
That being said I want to tell you about A Conversation Piece, a
CD that was released late last year by Beaumont’s Shrinking Planet
Productions (reabeaumont.com) featuring works by R. Murray
Schafer, Jean Coulthard, John Weinzweig and Maurice Ravel. Of
particular interest to me is the first track, Beaumont’s own Shattered
Ice, which combines compositional prowess with her concern for the
environment in an ominous work depicting the fragile ecosystem of
the Canadian Arctic and the dangers posed by human intrusion.
The first movement of John Weinzweig’s 1950 Suite for Piano No.2
gives the disc its title. This dialogue between the two hands is followed
by a sombre lullaby and a brief, lively and angular toccata. Coulthard’s
contemplative Threnody is followed by Polytonality, Schafer’s first
published work, a sort of homage to Poulenc. Netscapes (2000) is one
of Weinzweig’s very last works, evidently inspired by the experience
of browsing the Internet and discovering a number of melodic fragments,
which are juxtaposed in the composer’s distinctive wry style.
The second half of the disc is devoted to Ravel’s five-movement
Miroirs from 1905, an extended work which heralded the French
Impressionist movement. It is a perfect companion piece for the
selected Canadian repertoire, with its poetic and visual images transferred
to the keyboard. Beaumont’s touch is well suited to the delicate
textures and the intricate passages as well as the quirky rhythms that
surface in the Ravel and Weinzweig selections. The program is well
balanced and the sound is immaculate thanks to the production by
David Jaeger and the team at Glenn Gould Studio.
It is always a treat to discover a new
Canadian ensemble and this summer I was
introduced to the Clearwater String Quartet
through its recording of music by Michael
Matthews (Ravello Records RR7910 ravellorecords.com).
This is not to say that Clearwater
is recently formed, but simply that I had not
been exposed to their accomplished playing
before. Comprised of the principal string players of the Winnipeg
Symphony Orchestra they have been performing as a quartet for more
than a decade and have a busy schedule as the in-house ensemble for
the Winnipeg Chamber Music Society. Matthews is also an integral
part of the Winnipeg music scene, having been a founding director of
Groundswell, the contemporary music organization which resulted
from an amalgamation of the city’s new music groups back in 1991.
He recently retired Professor Emeritus from the Faculty of Music at
the University of Manitoba and also served as Composer-In-Residence
with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra from 2002 to 2004.
In the extended (six-page) essay by Max Fleischman in the accompanying
booklet we are told that Matthews is a voracious reader
and a listener whose compositions reflect this. He goes on to say
that “Judged against the prevailing 21st-century aesthetic this literateness
tars Matthews as deeply conservative in his ethos and art.
In particular, his music finds itself at odds both with the rancorous
anti-intellectual streak in North American culture and with its sense
of ‘cool.’ This music is serious. It is complicated. It is human, and
speaks in the miraculous and improbable language that Europe has
been working on since Gregorian times…. This music is earnest: it
demands (and deserves!) multiple hearings. And it is sober, speaking
the language of Holocaust, totalitarianism and uncertainty, and
speaking it like a native, or at least like the literate child of witnesses
and survivors.” With this emphasis on conservatism and heritage we
might expect to hear liturgical-based melodies along the lines of those
“Jewish” compositions of Srul Irving Glick, but make no mistake, it is
the intellectual rigour of Western art and philosophy that is the focus,
and the music is more reminiscent of the Second Viennese School and
Shostakovich. That is to say “good old-fashioned new music.”
Matthews, who was born in Gander in 1950, seems to have come
to the string quartet fairly late in his career. Although his earliest
acknowledged compositions date back to the early 1970s, he didn’t
write his first quartet until 1999, since which time there have been
three more, plus a set of miniatures for the medium. The disc includes
String Quartet No.3 (2008, revised 2013), a work in four contrasting
movements lasting more than half an hour, the eleven Miniatures
(2000) and String Quartet No.2 (2003) with its brooding, extended
last movement and echoes of Bartók’s night music. These are all very
strong works immaculately played by some of Canada’s finest string
players, Gwen Hoebig and Karl Stobbe (violins), Daniel Scholz (viola)
and Yuri Hooker (cello). I hope we hear more from them soon.
58 | Sept 1 - Oct 7, 2015 thewholenote.com