Evaluations and proposals are unbiased and merchandise are independently chosen. Postmedia could earn an affiliate fee from purchases made by way of hyperlinks on this web page.
Article content material
Pianist-composer Stephen Hough was the CPO’s visitor artist final weekend for the persevering with Curated Sequence of classical live shows. Hough is not any stranger to Calgary, having given a splendid solo recital a number of years in the past that featured the Liszt nice piano sonata.
As one of many world’s most celebrated pianists, Hough’s go to was a particular occasion for Calgary, and his look drew a big viewers. Hough is, nonetheless, not only a pianist: he’s additionally a composer and arranger. He has composed a number of piano sonatas, many songs, chamber music, in addition to scrumptious preparations of tunes from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals. He’s additionally a printed novelist and author about music. His look in Calgary was to current and carry out his newly composed piano concerto. This was its second-ever public efficiency of the work and the primary in Canada.
Commercial 2
Article content material
Article content material
The musical concepts for the concerto have been born of a never-realized fee for movie music coping with Vienna simply earlier than the Second World Struggle, a interval in tutorial circles generally generally known as Vienna 1900. That is the period when Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Gustav Klimt, Sigmund Freud, Arthur Schnitzler, and a number of different necessary inventive figures have been all lively in Vienna, a interval that fashioned the idea of Stefan Zweig’s well-known guide The World of Yesterday.
Lurking behind these figures because the image of Vienna is the waltz, as exemplified within the waltzes of Johann Strauss, Jr. and Franz Lehar. Taking these concepts as deep background, Hough created a piano concerto that evokes this period of Viennese historical past by way of musical (movie-related) concepts that embody not solely the waltz but additionally the tarantella. These concepts are handled with appreciable variation and thematic transformation, constructing on the finish to an exhilarating climax.
The piano writing attracts from the virtuoso traditions of Brahms, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev, music that has been central to Hough’s success as a concerto pianist. As Hough identified in his feedback, the concerto can also be concerning the concept of a concerto – a superb show for the soloist. All these parts have been evident within the prolonged solo cadenza and efficient orchestra-solo exchanges. The gradual increase of the tempo and the frenzied conclusion urged the emotional world of Ravel’s La Valse, with its employment of the waltz as a logo of a society in decline that dances itself into exhaustion and oblivion.
Midday Information Roundup
Article content material
Commercial 3
Article content material
The music, general, shouldn’t be exceptionally advanced by trendy requirements and was absolutely accessible to a normal viewers. To no shock, the concerto was carried out with outstanding brilliance and elan, Rune Bergmann and the orchestra have been keen companions within the music. Bergmann skillfully guided the orchestra by way of some slightly rhythmically advanced passages and all have been at one with the soloist. The concerto was a lot loved, and Hough acquired a standing ovation.
As piano enjoying, nonetheless, the magic got here within the encore with a rapt, luminous efficiency of To Spring by Edvard Grieg, a monitor from Hough’s Grieg CD that completely occupies a spot in my automotive. No highway journey in our home is taken with out Hough and Grieg as a passenger. Past his spectacular method and trademark readability, Hough has a magical method with encore items, this specific one being the ripest of ripe late romantic drawing room items. Extra ovations adopted.
The rest of the live performance included the Second Symphony by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a Black 18th-century composer from Guadeloupe of noble lineage, who was each a outstanding violinist and a composer. As music, the symphony is slight, sounding slightly like very early Mozart talking in a French accent. Delicate and agreeable, it was given a gracious efficiency, led by Juliane Gallant, the orchestra’s resident conductor, the string part sounding particularly polished and refined.
Commercial 4
Article content material
The second half of the live performance was dedicated to Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 (“The Nice”). Whereas the efficiency didn’t erase the reminiscence of a efficiency of this work by Hans Graf some years in the past, it was a worthy account of this highly effective, slightly lengthy symphony. Beginning with a safe, poised horn solo, the efficiency included many effective solo spots, not the least for the oboe within the second motion. The brass enjoying was spectacular as have been the strings. The violins by no means flagging within the infinite tiddly-poms they need to play within the finale.
Bergmann’s tempos have been barely to the brisk facet, one thing that saved the vitality degree excessive and in addition gave the efficiency a sure lightness of contact. The entice of Schubert-as-Bruckner was averted, and the prolonged finale didn’t outstay its welcome, as is usually the case. Whereas not probably the most particular person of interpretations, this was however a well-balanced, lyrical account of the symphony, the strongest enjoying coming, maybe, within the center actions.
As with the Hough concerto, the viewers drastically loved the efficiency of the symphony and Bergmann and the orchestra have been greeted by very heat applause, a pleasant follow-up to the effective Tchaikovsky symphony heard every week earlier. The orchestra is enjoying very properly as of late, and anybody who hasn’t attended this season may have the chance to listen to it within the highlight on the orchestra program in mid-April and once more on the finish of the month within the well-known Tchaikovsky piano concerto.
Article content material
