CPO premieres eclectic new concerto by Errollyn Wallen

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Regardless of the appreciable quantity of exercise on the present classical music scene because it issues new compositions, it’s nonetheless not widespread for the CPO to have the chance to carry out the premiere efficiency of a serious new work by a contemporary composer of worldwide prominence. Nonetheless, such was the case final Friday and Saturday because the CPO, beneath its common conductor Rune Bergmann, carried out a newly composed violin concerto by Errollyn Wallen. The soloist was Russian-American Phillipe Quint.

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Whereas Wallen is a brand new identify to most Calgarians, she is not at all a brand new composer. An extended-time resident of England, the Belize-born Wallen has a powerful, and extremely eclectic, catalogue of revealed works; her music has received a terrific many prizes. She can also be recognized for being reclusive whereas composing, her work carried out in a lighthouse dealing with the Orkney Islands in northern Scotland.

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Wallen has additionally lately written a ebook about her compositional journey, one wherein she attests to the wide selection of influences in her work, starting from fashionable English music to Latin American common kinds. She can also be a singer. Very typically, her type is eclectic within the sense that her music fuses completely different type varieties. She additionally ceaselessly consists of quotations from well-known works to offer a solution to centre the listener’s engagement along with her music. In all this, she may be very a lot a composer of at present, the fashionable custom engaged however prolonged in a means to offer a synthesis of various expressive music centres, together with common music of every type.

Recognized for her operas (she has composed over 20), Wallen has additionally composed a considerable physique of instrumental and vocal music, starting from songs (akin to “Are you apprehensive concerning the rising price of funerals?”) to varied chamber works, a piano concerto, and a cello concerto. These works embrace a number of that characteristic the violin, a degree that particularly Quint.

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Quint was final heard in Calgary a number of years in the past in a program that featured Vivaldi’s The 4 Seasons. It was within the context of this live performance that the thought emerged of a fee for a brand new violin concerto premiered by Rune Bergmann and the CPO. It was Quint who approached Wallen to jot down it.

Three years in gestation, the concerto was lastly dropped at completion this 12 months and first carried out on Friday, with the composer in attendance. Talking concerning the piece beforehand, Wallen defined the circumstances of the fee and spoke concerning the work. Whereas her on-stage feedback concerning the piece had been fascinating, nobody will neglect her spectacular purple/pink sneakers and seashore glasses. Wallen speaks with a refined English accent, however she presents herself as lower than standard, a very good picture for her work typically, and this concerto specifically.

Much less lyrical and extra spikey in hits concord than her earlier cello concerto or piano concerto, the brand new violin concerto lasts about 25 minutes and is in a single prolonged motion. It incorporates a variety of sounds from brief melodic concepts, typically handled contrapuntally, to extra bracing, modernist harmonies and energetic rhythms. Usually, the work is extra dramatic than lyrical, with the violin soloist at all times on the forefront of the motion. This facet of the work gave Quint many wonderful alternatives to exhibit his very appreciable abilities and the wide selection of issues a violin can do.

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The rating is replete with many particular results for the soloist and difficult passages to play. Quint confirmed himself to be absolutely equal to the appreciable calls for of the piece, performing by reminiscence (no imply feat right here) and with outstanding fluency.

Suffused with drama and power, the concerto held the eye of the viewers; they had been fascinated with the unique sounds and textures with which the concerto abounds. In a single listening to it’s inconceivable to foretell what shall be its wider reception. Nonetheless, the concerto shall be carried out with a number of different orchestras, and Quint shall be a persuasive and dedicated champion of the brand new work.

On the very least, due to Wallen’s prominence on the present scene, the concerto could have the chance to make its means into the fashionable violin repertory. Whether or not or not it can discover a everlasting place is tough to say given the plethora of recent works nowadays. It’s, nevertheless, an efficient piece — fashionable in type, however with many parts with which an everyday viewers can have interaction and discover fascinating and rewarding. Wallen’s expertise in scoring for orchestra is obvious within the efficient orchestral writing and the dealing with of orchestral textures. A lot effort went into the composition of this fascinating new concerto, and one can solely hope it receives the discover and a focus it deserves.

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The live performance opened with a Caribbean-tinged work known as Fordant composed for the Northern Sinfonia in Scotland, the place the composer now works. Each this brief, enticing work and the brand new concerto have some related type parts they usually made good companion items.

The second half of the live performance consisted of a efficiency of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. For a few years, this was the most-performed of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, not simply due to its magnificent gradual motion but additionally due to its total saturation in wealthy melody. If one is unmoved by this symphony, one will need to have a coronary heart of stone.

On this event, the viewers was clearly moved, and the applause on the finish was prolonged and honest. Bergmann clearly loved himself on this nice work and guided the orchestra with well-judged tempos and a high quality sense for shaping the climaxes of the musical paragraphs. The symphony abounds in prolonged solo writing, particularly for the woodwinds. These solos had been all delivered with assurance and expressive, correct enjoying. However particular point out have to be fabricated from the excellent enjoying of Nikolette LaBonte, the orchestra’s principal horn, within the well-known gradual motion. Shaping the phrases gracefully, with a heat tone and at all times expressive, her enjoying was essential to the impact of the music, this motion containing probably the most cathartic climaxes within the symphonic repertoire. The preliminary sense of impending tragedy was effectively captured in the dead of night, richly textured opening motion, and the victory over tragedy within the last motion carried all earlier than it right into a blazing climax.

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It’s a on condition that symphony orchestras ought to play symphonies. Nonetheless, this concept can, probably, develop into a bit stale, and orchestra managers search for other ways to current applications. This 12 months, nevertheless, the CPO has recurrently included main symphonies by front-and-centre symphony composers, together with Beethoven, Bruckner, and Mahler, amongst others. Each time it has been these works — the good battle horses of the repertoire, one may name them — which have captured the creativeness of the viewers. In a way, the previous has develop into new. with audiences not raised on these works encountering them for the great musical achievement they’re.

One more necessary symphony (Schubert’s Ninth Symphony) shall be provided this coming week in a program that includes Stephen Hough in his personal piano concerto — yet one more imaginative programming choice. The CPO is in high quality fettle in the mean time, and it’s a high quality time to return and immerse oneself within the lovely sounds solely a well-tuned orchestra can supply.

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