OXFORD MAY MUSIC
This Page contains reviews of Oxford May Music concerts and related events organised by physicist Professor Brian Foster and violinist Jack Liebeck held in Oxford since 2005. The selection of subjects and views expressed are personal and reflect my own tastes and prejudices.
Oxford May Music, Holywell Music Room, 27 April to 2 May 2016.
For the ninth year Oxford May Music presented its usual mixture of science, music and the arts. This year the twin themes were darkness and women composers. Unfortunately, I was only able to attend the three concerts which I report here.
The Festival opened with a lecture by Jim Al-Khalili, well-known for his lucid expositions of modern scientific subjects, most of which he finds ‘incredible’. This topic, which drew a full house was Life on the edge: the coming of age of quantum biology. This was followed by the opening concert: Something of the Night. This was a fascinating mixed programme of music by Boccherini, Borodin. Lili Boulanger, Fanny Mendelssohn, Chopin and Schoenberg. The performers were the Goldner String Quartet supplemented by Gérard Caussé (viola) and Thomas Carroll (cello), pianist Katya Apekisheva and the Trio Dali. Trio Dali, which has appeared in many previous festivals, consists of the marvellous pianist Amandine Savary with violinist Jack Liebeck, artistic director of May Music, and cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca.
The concert started with a Boccherini Quintet entitled Night Music on the Streets of Madrid, a set of six pieces depicting a night on the town. It was performed as entertainment with the leader entering during the playing of the first movement and had the cellos played lying on the knees. Great fun! This was followed, more seriously, by Borodin’s second String Quartet. This is famous for its third movement Notturno but otherwise undistinguished, though it received a persuasive performance. Lili Boulanger, a composer of immense promise who died in 1918 aged just twenty-four, was represented by the last piece she was able to write down herself D’un Soir Triste. This was performed by the Trio Dali. It is a fairly short piece, holding the attention developing from a starting dialogue of cello and violin. It left one wanting to hear far more of her music.
The first half of the concert ended with three piano pieces played by Katya Apekisheva. There could not be a greater contrast between her and Savary. It was almost as if they were playing different instruments. Apekisheva has been well-known to Oxford audiences for many years and has made appearances in the Oxford Chamber Music Festival with Priya Mitchell and in a memorable performance of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata with Liebeck in May Music in 2014 Her national and international reputation continues to expand both in concert and on disc. With formidable technique and undoubted musicianship, her playing is always very loud, making no concessions to the size and acoustic of the Music Room – her style is more appropriate to the Festival Hall or the Barbican. Extreme delicacy of pianissimo, not even of piano, has no place in her musical palette. Here she played three nocturnes, a Notturno in G minor by Fanny Mendelssohn and Chopin Nocturnes, Op. 62 Nos 1 and 2. The programme note quotes an unnamed contemporary reviewer: The Nocturnes are veritable reveries of a soul hovering from emotion to emotion in the quiet of the night. Regrettably, for me, not in this performance.
The final work was Schoenberg’s early masterpiece Verklärte Nacht in the version for string sextet. It was a marvellous performance. The work is one which grows in stature each time one hears it. It is extremely moving. There is nothing quite like it. It was inspired by a poem by Richard Dehmel in 1896 and was written three years later. The thirty-five lines translated by Brian Foster as Transfigured Night is printed in the programme booklet. It tells the tale of two lovers walking in the forest at night. She confesses to him that she is bearing another man’s child. He is reconciled to the situation. Thus, it reads like an episode from EastEnders – even though verklärte. The evening programme on the second day of May Music, entitled Piano Central contained three works: Joseph Haydn Piano Trio No. 39 in G major – the one containing the Gypsy Rondo, and two piano quintets – one, in F sharp major by the American composer Amy Beach who lived from 1867-1944 – and Antonin Dvořák’s second, in A major. The demure playing of the first two movements of the Haydn Trio did not prepare us for the torrent of notes from the pianist in the Gypsy Ronde which followed in an immaculately controlled rendering. This recalled the recent recital by Angela Hewitt in the SJE Piano Series. Is it a new style for Haydn’s fast movements?
The Beach quintet was a real find. Although showing the influence of Brahms, it spoke with a voice of its own, lighter than Brahms and unlike any other of his successors. The nearest comparison is the even lighter Richard Addinsell of the Warsaw Concerto and Dangerous Moonlight. It was played by Trio Dali with Dimity Hall (second violin) and Gérard Caussé (viola). Is it only because of her gender that this is not part of the small piano quintet repertoire, alongside Schubert’s Trout, Schumann, Brahms, (obscure) Fauré, Elgar, Shostakovich and Ian Venables? The Dvořák was played by a different ensemble: Apekisheva, Liebeck, with Sarah Trickey (violin), Caussé and Julian Smiles (cello). Although warmly received by the audience, frankly, I did not enjoy it, despite some exciting and vivid playing particularly in the scherzo. The piano was far too loud, almost insufferably so. The strings had to struggle in make themselves heard resulting in some raggedness in their playing.
There was much else in the Festival I would have liked to be able to attend, contrasting men and women composers. Additional items were a return of Rainer Hersch’s recreation of the legendary Victor Borge and the Phronesis Jazz Trio playing Pitch Black in total darkness. The Festival Finale was yet another example of imaginative programme building. The first half featured harpist Catrin Finch in three French works. A dazzling Fantasie for violin and harp by Camille Saint-Saëns with Jack Liebeck, violin, was followed by a piece of programme music by André Caplet (1878-1925) for string quartet and harp. This atmospheric piece is based on the Edgar Allen Poe story The Mask of the Red Death in which a mysterious cloaked figure infects the inhabitants of a house of pleasure thought to be insulated from a surrounding plague, a story well known from the cult movie. The players were then joined by Clément Dufour, flute, and Maximiliano Martin, clarinet, in a fine performance of Maurice Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet and string quartet. In conclusion, we heard a spirited performance of the Tarantella for flute, clarinet and piano by Saint-Saëns with Amandine Savary and a wonderfully laid-back rendering of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet.
Once again, Administrative Director Brian Foster and Artistic Director Jack Liebeck have put together a fascinating programme of music and lectures. Once again, their immense efforts, ably assisted by Sue Geddes, have paid off, attracting wide audiences from both worlds.
For the ninth year Oxford May Music presented its usual mixture of science, music and the arts. This year the twin themes were darkness and women composers. Unfortunately, I was only able to attend the three concerts which I report here.
The Festival opened with a lecture by Jim Al-Khalili, well-known for his lucid expositions of modern scientific subjects, most of which he finds ‘incredible’. This topic, which drew a full house was Life on the edge: the coming of age of quantum biology. This was followed by the opening concert: Something of the Night. This was a fascinating mixed programme of music by Boccherini, Borodin. Lili Boulanger, Fanny Mendelssohn, Chopin and Schoenberg. The performers were the Goldner String Quartet supplemented by Gérard Caussé (viola) and Thomas Carroll (cello), pianist Katya Apekisheva and the Trio Dali. Trio Dali, which has appeared in many previous festivals, consists of the marvellous pianist Amandine Savary with violinist Jack Liebeck, artistic director of May Music, and cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca.
The concert started with a Boccherini Quintet entitled Night Music on the Streets of Madrid, a set of six pieces depicting a night on the town. It was performed as entertainment with the leader entering during the playing of the first movement and had the cellos played lying on the knees. Great fun! This was followed, more seriously, by Borodin’s second String Quartet. This is famous for its third movement Notturno but otherwise undistinguished, though it received a persuasive performance. Lili Boulanger, a composer of immense promise who died in 1918 aged just twenty-four, was represented by the last piece she was able to write down herself D’un Soir Triste. This was performed by the Trio Dali. It is a fairly short piece, holding the attention developing from a starting dialogue of cello and violin. It left one wanting to hear far more of her music.
The first half of the concert ended with three piano pieces played by Katya Apekisheva. There could not be a greater contrast between her and Savary. It was almost as if they were playing different instruments. Apekisheva has been well-known to Oxford audiences for many years and has made appearances in the Oxford Chamber Music Festival with Priya Mitchell and in a memorable performance of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata with Liebeck in May Music in 2014 Her national and international reputation continues to expand both in concert and on disc. With formidable technique and undoubted musicianship, her playing is always very loud, making no concessions to the size and acoustic of the Music Room – her style is more appropriate to the Festival Hall or the Barbican. Extreme delicacy of pianissimo, not even of piano, has no place in her musical palette. Here she played three nocturnes, a Notturno in G minor by Fanny Mendelssohn and Chopin Nocturnes, Op. 62 Nos 1 and 2. The programme note quotes an unnamed contemporary reviewer: The Nocturnes are veritable reveries of a soul hovering from emotion to emotion in the quiet of the night. Regrettably, for me, not in this performance.
The final work was Schoenberg’s early masterpiece Verklärte Nacht in the version for string sextet. It was a marvellous performance. The work is one which grows in stature each time one hears it. It is extremely moving. There is nothing quite like it. It was inspired by a poem by Richard Dehmel in 1896 and was written three years later. The thirty-five lines translated by Brian Foster as Transfigured Night is printed in the programme booklet. It tells the tale of two lovers walking in the forest at night. She confesses to him that she is bearing another man’s child. He is reconciled to the situation. Thus, it reads like an episode from EastEnders – even though verklärte. The evening programme on the second day of May Music, entitled Piano Central contained three works: Joseph Haydn Piano Trio No. 39 in G major – the one containing the Gypsy Rondo, and two piano quintets – one, in F sharp major by the American composer Amy Beach who lived from 1867-1944 – and Antonin Dvořák’s second, in A major. The demure playing of the first two movements of the Haydn Trio did not prepare us for the torrent of notes from the pianist in the Gypsy Ronde which followed in an immaculately controlled rendering. This recalled the recent recital by Angela Hewitt in the SJE Piano Series. Is it a new style for Haydn’s fast movements?
The Beach quintet was a real find. Although showing the influence of Brahms, it spoke with a voice of its own, lighter than Brahms and unlike any other of his successors. The nearest comparison is the even lighter Richard Addinsell of the Warsaw Concerto and Dangerous Moonlight. It was played by Trio Dali with Dimity Hall (second violin) and Gérard Caussé (viola). Is it only because of her gender that this is not part of the small piano quintet repertoire, alongside Schubert’s Trout, Schumann, Brahms, (obscure) Fauré, Elgar, Shostakovich and Ian Venables? The Dvořák was played by a different ensemble: Apekisheva, Liebeck, with Sarah Trickey (violin), Caussé and Julian Smiles (cello). Although warmly received by the audience, frankly, I did not enjoy it, despite some exciting and vivid playing particularly in the scherzo. The piano was far too loud, almost insufferably so. The strings had to struggle in make themselves heard resulting in some raggedness in their playing.
There was much else in the Festival I would have liked to be able to attend, contrasting men and women composers. Additional items were a return of Rainer Hersch’s recreation of the legendary Victor Borge and the Phronesis Jazz Trio playing Pitch Black in total darkness. The Festival Finale was yet another example of imaginative programme building. The first half featured harpist Catrin Finch in three French works. A dazzling Fantasie for violin and harp by Camille Saint-Saëns with Jack Liebeck, violin, was followed by a piece of programme music by André Caplet (1878-1925) for string quartet and harp. This atmospheric piece is based on the Edgar Allen Poe story The Mask of the Red Death in which a mysterious cloaked figure infects the inhabitants of a house of pleasure thought to be insulated from a surrounding plague, a story well known from the cult movie. The players were then joined by Clément Dufour, flute, and Maximiliano Martin, clarinet, in a fine performance of Maurice Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet and string quartet. In conclusion, we heard a spirited performance of the Tarantella for flute, clarinet and piano by Saint-Saëns with Amandine Savary and a wonderfully laid-back rendering of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet.
Once again, Administrative Director Brian Foster and Artistic Director Jack Liebeck have put together a fascinating programme of music and lectures. Once again, their immense efforts, ably assisted by Sue Geddes, have paid off, attracting wide audiences from both worlds.
Oxford May Music 2015: Trio Dali and Friends, Rachel Podger and
Maggie Cole, Holywell Music Room, Oxford, 29 April to 4 May
Owing to an
overcrowded schedule, I am unable to report on more than two concerts from this
year’s Oxford May Music held from 29 April to 4 May. I regretted missing in
particular Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet, a day devoted to Borodin both as composer
and chemist and Schubert’s Trout Quintet.
The stimulating programme of associated lectures included another appearance by
Brian Cox and, postponed from last year, Sir Tim Hunt on The Cell Cycle.
Prominent in this year’s concert programme were the Trio Dali whose first appearance in 2014 so impressed and Australian clarinettist Paul Dean. The concert on the Friday, billed as Trio Dali and friends consisted of four contrasted works by Mendelssohn, Hummel. Boccherini and Mozart. It opened with Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No 1 in D minor played by the Trio Dali, brilliant young French pianist Amandine Savary, OMM Artistic Director, violinist Jack Liebeck and cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca. This was an outstanding performance, even eclipsing the memory of the second Trio played last year. Marvellous ensemble playing, underpinned by the pianist’s effortless virtuosity left such an overwhelming impression that it was almost impossible to concentrate on what followed. Why did it not conclude the concert? There followed a Clarinet Quartet in E flat major by Hummel – a pleasant enough work, though lacking the biting humour which characterises his best work.
In the 1950’s the quintets of Luigi Boccherini were very popular thanks to the early LP recordings and concert tours of the Quintetto Boccherini (heard in Cambridge) but recently have almost disappeared from view. It was very nostalgic to hear again the String Quintet in E Major Op. 11 No. 3 which contains the famous minuet, often played out of context on Classic FM.
But then came disaster! Clarinettist Paul Dean and viola player Gérard Caussé joined Savary in a performance of Mozart’s Kegelstatt Trio. ‘Performance’ is the word. Clarinettist and violist, both standing, confronted each other duel-like in bodily gymnastics in a display of incredible bad judgement and bad taste. Even the pianist, who played on imperturbably, could rescue nothing. Worst of all it trivialised Mozart as a lesser composer than Hummel. Rather than risk exposure to a similar exhibition I cancelled my attendance at the Festival Finale to hear an arrangement for clarinet and piano quartet of Mozart’s Serenade for Wind Instruments K361.
A great occasion on the Sunday was a rare appearance in Oxford of baroque violinist Rachel Podger with the harpsichordist Maggie Cole. Indeed, I can only recall one previous visit by Podger, at a Sunday morning Coffee Concert in 2006 playing Mozart with Gary Cooper, fortepiano. The programme of music by JS Bach comprised two Sonatas for violin and harpsichord, the first Partita for harpsichord solo and a transcription by Podger of a Flute Partita in A minor for solo violin in G minor.
The six Sonatas for solo violin and keyboard are music for private performance. The general pattern is two slow movements each followed by a quick movement. Usually the slow movements consist of a sequence of modulations through the keys of a simple motif on the keyboard, accompanying melodic variations from the violin; the quick movements are in three-part counterpoint – violin, left and right hand of the keyboard. While providing endless fascination for the performers, the problem in public performance is to strive to project a balance between the instruments, particularly in giving equal weight to the three voices in the contrapuntal movements. This was stunningly achieved by Podger and Cole. The harpsichord was in no way swamped by the violin. But, most revealing was Podger’s phrasing in the slower movements. It was brought home that in all the years I have played these works we have only skated over the surface of what is rhythmically possible, in varying the stress and in varying the length of infinitesimal pauses between phrases. We shall return to them with renewed inspiration!
The works for solo instrument are more extrovert in nature intended for public performance, albeit to a select private audience. As with the sonatas, the Holywell Music Room proved a perfect location for such music with its warm acoustics and its intimate ambience. The keyboard partita was played with immaculate attention to detail, while the transcription of the Flute Partita suited the violin perfectly. (Bach.s writing for the flute transcribes naturally to a stringed instrument, unlike the works of Mozart and Haydn which do not. The latter composers take full advantage of the lung capacity of the flautist to write very long-drawn out phrases, more than a bow’s length of the violin!)
The appreciation of the packed audience for this concert fully justified the sense of occasion. May these musicians come back soon.
Prominent in this year’s concert programme were the Trio Dali whose first appearance in 2014 so impressed and Australian clarinettist Paul Dean. The concert on the Friday, billed as Trio Dali and friends consisted of four contrasted works by Mendelssohn, Hummel. Boccherini and Mozart. It opened with Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No 1 in D minor played by the Trio Dali, brilliant young French pianist Amandine Savary, OMM Artistic Director, violinist Jack Liebeck and cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca. This was an outstanding performance, even eclipsing the memory of the second Trio played last year. Marvellous ensemble playing, underpinned by the pianist’s effortless virtuosity left such an overwhelming impression that it was almost impossible to concentrate on what followed. Why did it not conclude the concert? There followed a Clarinet Quartet in E flat major by Hummel – a pleasant enough work, though lacking the biting humour which characterises his best work.
In the 1950’s the quintets of Luigi Boccherini were very popular thanks to the early LP recordings and concert tours of the Quintetto Boccherini (heard in Cambridge) but recently have almost disappeared from view. It was very nostalgic to hear again the String Quintet in E Major Op. 11 No. 3 which contains the famous minuet, often played out of context on Classic FM.
But then came disaster! Clarinettist Paul Dean and viola player Gérard Caussé joined Savary in a performance of Mozart’s Kegelstatt Trio. ‘Performance’ is the word. Clarinettist and violist, both standing, confronted each other duel-like in bodily gymnastics in a display of incredible bad judgement and bad taste. Even the pianist, who played on imperturbably, could rescue nothing. Worst of all it trivialised Mozart as a lesser composer than Hummel. Rather than risk exposure to a similar exhibition I cancelled my attendance at the Festival Finale to hear an arrangement for clarinet and piano quartet of Mozart’s Serenade for Wind Instruments K361.
A great occasion on the Sunday was a rare appearance in Oxford of baroque violinist Rachel Podger with the harpsichordist Maggie Cole. Indeed, I can only recall one previous visit by Podger, at a Sunday morning Coffee Concert in 2006 playing Mozart with Gary Cooper, fortepiano. The programme of music by JS Bach comprised two Sonatas for violin and harpsichord, the first Partita for harpsichord solo and a transcription by Podger of a Flute Partita in A minor for solo violin in G minor.
The six Sonatas for solo violin and keyboard are music for private performance. The general pattern is two slow movements each followed by a quick movement. Usually the slow movements consist of a sequence of modulations through the keys of a simple motif on the keyboard, accompanying melodic variations from the violin; the quick movements are in three-part counterpoint – violin, left and right hand of the keyboard. While providing endless fascination for the performers, the problem in public performance is to strive to project a balance between the instruments, particularly in giving equal weight to the three voices in the contrapuntal movements. This was stunningly achieved by Podger and Cole. The harpsichord was in no way swamped by the violin. But, most revealing was Podger’s phrasing in the slower movements. It was brought home that in all the years I have played these works we have only skated over the surface of what is rhythmically possible, in varying the stress and in varying the length of infinitesimal pauses between phrases. We shall return to them with renewed inspiration!
The works for solo instrument are more extrovert in nature intended for public performance, albeit to a select private audience. As with the sonatas, the Holywell Music Room proved a perfect location for such music with its warm acoustics and its intimate ambience. The keyboard partita was played with immaculate attention to detail, while the transcription of the Flute Partita suited the violin perfectly. (Bach.s writing for the flute transcribes naturally to a stringed instrument, unlike the works of Mozart and Haydn which do not. The latter composers take full advantage of the lung capacity of the flautist to write very long-drawn out phrases, more than a bow’s length of the violin!)
The appreciation of the packed audience for this concert fully justified the sense of occasion. May these musicians come back soon.
2014
Oxford May
Music 2014
Oxford May Music was held this year from 30 April to 5 May, the usual mixture of music, entertainment, arts and scientific lectures. I was only able to attend five concerts, one lecture and a double bill of Alfred Brendel reading his own verse and a return visit of the comedian Rainer Hersch (whose previous visit I had missed). The lecture was one given, in a change of programme, by Professor Peter Braude on mitochondrial disease, in which I have a personal interest, with particular reference to so-called ‘three parent families’ recently in the news. This was a brilliantly clear tour d’horizon not only of the scientific and medical problems but also of the social, legal, ethical and emotional aspects.
The first two concerts involved the recently formed Trio Dali, the first on their own, the second with additional string players. In complementary programmes, each contained contrasting works from three centuries: from the eighteenth, a Haydn Piano Trio, and a Mozart Piano Quartet, from the nineteenth, early and late works for piano and strings by Mendelssohn and a duo by Spohr and, from the early twentieth, a piano trio by Fauré and a sextet by Frank Bridge.
The cellist in the Trio Dali is Christian –Pierre La Marca with Liebeck (violin) and young French pianist Amandine Savary. Savary could claim to be this year’s Musician in Residence. With amazing and subtle digital dexterity, she was equally at home in classical, romantic and modern music. From utmost clarity in the Haydn (more than most a string-accompanied piano sonata played at a speed probably far greater than possible on the composer’s fortepiano) she switched to the rustling accompaniment at the opening of the Fauré. This late work was played with a coherence often missing in performance. The Mendelssohn Trio was played with great panache, again starting at great speed but with fitting variations in tempo, not the headlong rush it often becomes. This mature work was contrasted, in the second concert, with the sixteen year-old composer’s Sextet for Piano and Strings, already requiring virtuoso piano technique. The unusual string combination of violin, two violas, cello and double-bass gives the work, previously unknown to me, an attractive sonority beautifully realised. The Bridge Sextet likewise was very easy listening but with very little contrast between its three movements. The Spohr Duo played by Liebeck and Victoria Sayles was a tour de force, though the tone of Sayles’ modern violin could not match the mellow sonority of her partner’s 1785 Guadagnini.
The third concert entitled ‘The Dark Power of Music’ was devoted to Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata and works inspired by it. It opened with a short movie made by Tim Meara in 2002 inspired by Tolstoy’s novella in which Liebeck and pianist Katya Apekisheva played the first movement of the Sonata accompanying an evocative, angular, dance interpretation of the novella by Rafael Bonachela. There followed a fine performance of Janáček’s String quartet of that name and concluded with the Beethoven Sonata played, again, by Liebeck and Apekisheva. They are long-standing duo partners and they played as one in an exciting, exhilarating, romantic interpretation of this work.
The following evening there was entertainment of a different sort. In the first part, the pianist Alfred Brendel, retired from the concert platform, read some of his verse with piano interludes of music by György Kurtág played by Amandine Savary, demonstrating her mastery in yet another genre. The poems were quirky, whimsical and amusing, a mixture of love poems, ironic and erotic and those touching on large issues of cosmology, religion and culture in a light-hearted, questioning manner. The second part of the evening was a return visit of Rainer Hersch, apparently a well-known musical parodist and entertainer. A natural successor of Gerard Hoffnung and Victor Borge, he kept the audience in fits of laughter, soliciting their participation in a number of ways accompanied by the Festival Players with amazing coordination and timing. It concluded with variations in many styles on Beethoven’s Ode to Joy which stopped just on the point of the show going on too long.
A feature of May Music is a recital by the previous year’s winner of the prestigious Pierre Fournier Award for young cellists. Last year’s winner was the now twenty-one year-old Swiss Chiara Enderle. In her concert with pianist Keiko Tamura she demonstrated musicianship, technique, maturity and self- confidence surpassing many of her predecessors. In a varied programme of Beethoven, Schumann, Penderecki and Poulenc, the first and the third stood out. The Beethoven Sonata No.4 in C Major, the best and the best-known of his six, received a wonderful performance full of joy and humour communicated to the audience, ably accompanied by Tamura (I choose the word deliberately). The Penderecki Capriccio per Siegfried Palm for solo cello from 1968 was a formidable test of technique and memory, involving slapping and bowing every inch of the cello except the spike, again played with light-hearted good humour. A recital which sent us away happy.
The final concert on 5 May consisted of two works: Schumann’s Piano Quintet and Beethoven’s Septet. The former gave Savary an opportunity to display yet another facet of her interpretative and technical ability, leading her strings in a breathtaking interpretation of the Quintet. Her nuanced playing of the scale passages in the Scherzo was awesome. The Septet also received a great performance, almost effacing the memory of that given by Priya Mitchel and friends in St Anthony’s College at the first Oxford Chamber Music Festival in 2000. The strings were joined by Matthew Hunt (clarinet), Amy Harman (Horn) and Katy Woolley (horn) - all excellent, except that from where I was sitting, the clarinet was rather prominent and screened the bassoon. These were minor blemishes on a fitting finale to the Festival.
Looking back over previous Festivals, my main impression is of the intelligent programme planning but remarkable is the succession of pianists who have either held things together as Musician in Residence or contributed individual recitals: Piers Lane, Ashley Wass, Kathryn Stott, Bengt Forsberg, and Yevgeny Sudbin. Amandine Savary has proved herself a worthy member of this company. We would welcome her return.
12 May 2014
2012
Particle Partita: Holywell Music Room, 18 June 2012.
The collaboration between physicist Brian Foster and violinist Jack Liebeck in crossing the cultural divide between Art and Science first came to the attention of Oxford audiences in the World Year of Physics: Einstein Year, 2005 with a lecture on the history of physics interspersed with pieces for solo violin. There followed the series of Oxford May Music festivals (reported in Oxford Magazine) which have gone from strength to strength in combining lectures by eminent scientists and others with chamber music recitals of the highest quality together with other events. These are now an established feature of the annual cultural scene in Oxford.
In their latest venture, Foster and Liebeck have collaborated with composer and visual artist Edward Cowie in an event The Particle Partita, given its world premiere in Oxford on 18 June, supported by IOP Publishing, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the University. It was in two parts: in the first Foster delivered a lecture on the history of particle physics from Democritus to Higgs with eight solo violin interludes composed by Cowie with computer projection of photographs and his illustrative abstract designs. This was a very effective and compelling presentation so that one did not notice that the time overran by fifty percent! The eight movements of the Particle Partita from Democritus through Mendeleev, Becquerel and Rutherford to positron to muon, meson to lepton, November revolution and finally the Higgs boson (just in advance of the latest LHC results). They would readily stand alone in recital and we would welcome the opportunity to hear them as such (maybe in next year’s May Music?). The style develops from the atonal fragmentation of Anton Webern representing our early ignorance, mellowing to the more continuous though still atonal line of, say, Pierre Boulez as the gaps in our knowledge were filled in.
The second part of the event (after an appropriately festive drink in Balliol) was a recital by Liebeck with Katya Apekisheva (piano) playing works by Bach, Mendelssohn, and Prokofiev, ending with spectacular fireworks by Fritz Kreisler. The Bach Sonata received an unashamedly old-fashioned romantic performance with dynamics and rubato replacing delicacy of phrasing. The thought came to me, in the context of the occasion, to introduce the concept of spin to the state of composers in their graves interacting with their interpreters!
9 July 2012
Oxford May Music: Michael Collins (clarinet), Kungsbacka Piano Trio, Myra Hess, 2 to 7 May. 2012.
The fifth season of Oxford May Music, the first to fall entirely in May, was held from 2nd to 7th of the month, followed the now established unique pattern of science, music and the arts. With the exception of the Sunday it consisted as usual of 5.30pm lectures followed at 8.00pm by a concert of chamber music. This year the lectures ranged widely featuring Professors Sir Michael Berry on complex optical phenomena, Paul Bolham on the aging brain and Mervyn Miles on nanotechnology and sensory perception, with distinguished commercial lawyer Peter Scott on the British Constitution and Oscar-winning film composer Dario Marinelli. The attendance at the lectures continued to increase, many staying on for the concerts despite the awkward timing. Bolham attracted 120, reflecting the concerns of a large section of the audiences..
The occasion was organised with the characteristic combination of efficiency and informality by the founding Artistic Director, violinist Jack Liebeck, and Administrative Director, physicist Brian Foster, who also provides the majority of the informative programme notes. I report here on two concerts and a celebration of the wartime National Gallery concerts arranged by Myra Hess with Patricia Routledge as narrator and pianist Piers Lane.
***
On paper, the musical highlight of this year’s May Music was undoubtedly the concert featuring clarinettist Michael Collins and this was true (just) of the events I attended. Collins is remembered by many from the impact he made as the sixteen year old winner of the woodwind section of the first BBC Young Musician competition in 1978. Now, of course, he is, with greying hair, one of the foremost clarinettists of the day. With Jack Liebeck and Victoria Sayles (violins), Simon Oswell (viola), Jesper Svedberg (cello) and Bengt Forsberg (piano), he played the Mozart clarinet quintet, the Brahms Trio sandwiching two less familiar works by Stravinsky and Berg – a well constructed programme. Collins’ playing is characterised by a long fluent and continuous line, lingering on the long notes, ideal for Mozart’s phrasing for the instrument. There was great good-humoured rapport between the players even surviving the collapse of an OMM banner during the performance; there was a marvellous pizzicato contribution from the cellist in one of the variations. The Mozart was an outstanding musical experience, never has it sounded so magical. It was followed by Igor Stravinsky’s own arrangement for clarinet, violin and piano of five movements from A Soldier’s Tale, displaying the virtuosity of Collins, Liebeck and Forsberg. Preceding the Brahms the same group played an arrangement of a movement from Alban Berg’s Chamber Concerto. A dense and complex work, this would merit further hearing.
***
The following evening there was another great treat. This was a concert by the Kungsbacka Piano Trio, vastly improved since I first heard them at a Coffee Concert shortly after their formation in1997. On this hearing they are now on a level with the Florestan and the Angell, also Oxford favourites. They played Haydn, Faurè, a movement, French influenced, from a piano trio by Huw Watkins (b1976) and Beethoven’s Archduke, in another intelligently designed programme. The Haydn, not one of his best known but one of the most subtle, introduced the Fauré in the composer’s late style, complex both to players and listeners. The pianist suggested the complexity could be ascribed to Fauré’s increasing deafness. I have never played this trio but other late works such as the second Piano Quintet and Cello Sonata convey a similarly unworldly wistfulness.
A performance of the Archduke Trio can invariably be judged by the first few bars. The exposed piano opening (rivalling in difficulty that of the fourth Piano Concerto) followed by the entry of the strings establishes immediately the quality of the playing and the rapport between piano and strings. On this occasion the opening was sublime, sustained throughout the work, the pianist slightly more self-effacing than is often the case but nevertheless maintaining an ideal balance. Particular moments which remain in the mind are the transitions between the sections in the Scherzo and the last variation in which the piano plays off the beat. The only idiosyncrasy was in the last movement where I detected a slight accelerando leading up to the final presto (not marked in the Urtext edition) which reduced the impact of the sudden change in tempo. But it was a performance to cherish.
***
The Sunday programme started with the now customary recital by the winner of the prestigious Pierre Fournier International Cello Award. The 2011 winner was the Russian Mikhail Nemtsov who performed works by César Franck, Dmitri Shostakovich and Gabriel Fauré with pianist Elena Nemtsova. This was followed in the evening by Admission: One Shilling in which actress Patricia Routledge adopted, as only she could, the persona of Dame Myra Hess in reading from her memoirs of the wartime National Gallery lunch-time chamber music concerts which ran throughout the war, readings interspersed with piano music from Dame Myra’s repertoire played by the virtuoso pianist Piers Lane who is also Artistic Director of the annual Myra Hess Day at the Gallery. This was an evening of great nostalgia for a large number of the packed audience, many of whom, now octogenarians, had used their Disabled Blue Badges to pack the double yellow lines outside the Music Room. This is not to say that there were not many younger people in the audience. Those of us who remembered the concerts recalled the ritual, arriving early to queue for a ticket then rushing to the gallery to claim and reserve a good seat before going downstairs for coffee and a sandwich (maybe spread by the likes of Joyce Grenfell, we learned). I recall many of the concerts, listening intently with audiences of all ages and backgrounds to music played by musicians from the famous to newcomers, a wonderful introduction to the chamber music repertoire. I remember twenty-one year old Denis Matthews in RAF uniform playing Beethoven and the pianist Denise Lassimone a delicate player of Mozart who later became a distinguished teacher. I remember the violin-piano duo Max Rostal and Franz Osborn in the mentioned concert when they played on during an air-raid siren and, of course, Myra Hess herself playing Schubert, Brahms and the late Beethoven Sonatas.
The music selection was mainly of miniatures: Brahms, Schumann, Scarlatti, Bach, Chopin. It was apparent that the pianist was in considerable pain but he carried on valiantly. It has to be said, however, that his virtuoso style was the extreme opposite of the serene yet virile playing of Dame Myra. Brahms sounded like. Liszt and Scarlatti like Busoni. Only in the concluding Jesu, joy of man’s desiring (Myra Hess’ own transcription) was there any convergence to her style but the remaining gap emphasised her genius.
***
Oxford May Music had its origins in 2005 celebrating the World Year of Physics with a lecture by Brian Foster on Albert Einstein’s legacy as physicist and a recital by Jack Liebeck of some of his favourite music as violinist. This has now evolved into The Particle Partitas, an art-science collaboration with music by Edward Cowie and words by Foster, This will have its world premiere in Oxford on 18 June with Liebeck playing the violin. It will be followed by an evening concert given by Liebeck with pianist Katya Apekisheva.
10 May 2012
Oxford May Music was held this year from 30 April to 5 May, the usual mixture of music, entertainment, arts and scientific lectures. I was only able to attend five concerts, one lecture and a double bill of Alfred Brendel reading his own verse and a return visit of the comedian Rainer Hersch (whose previous visit I had missed). The lecture was one given, in a change of programme, by Professor Peter Braude on mitochondrial disease, in which I have a personal interest, with particular reference to so-called ‘three parent families’ recently in the news. This was a brilliantly clear tour d’horizon not only of the scientific and medical problems but also of the social, legal, ethical and emotional aspects.
The first two concerts involved the recently formed Trio Dali, the first on their own, the second with additional string players. In complementary programmes, each contained contrasting works from three centuries: from the eighteenth, a Haydn Piano Trio, and a Mozart Piano Quartet, from the nineteenth, early and late works for piano and strings by Mendelssohn and a duo by Spohr and, from the early twentieth, a piano trio by Fauré and a sextet by Frank Bridge.
The cellist in the Trio Dali is Christian –Pierre La Marca with Liebeck (violin) and young French pianist Amandine Savary. Savary could claim to be this year’s Musician in Residence. With amazing and subtle digital dexterity, she was equally at home in classical, romantic and modern music. From utmost clarity in the Haydn (more than most a string-accompanied piano sonata played at a speed probably far greater than possible on the composer’s fortepiano) she switched to the rustling accompaniment at the opening of the Fauré. This late work was played with a coherence often missing in performance. The Mendelssohn Trio was played with great panache, again starting at great speed but with fitting variations in tempo, not the headlong rush it often becomes. This mature work was contrasted, in the second concert, with the sixteen year-old composer’s Sextet for Piano and Strings, already requiring virtuoso piano technique. The unusual string combination of violin, two violas, cello and double-bass gives the work, previously unknown to me, an attractive sonority beautifully realised. The Bridge Sextet likewise was very easy listening but with very little contrast between its three movements. The Spohr Duo played by Liebeck and Victoria Sayles was a tour de force, though the tone of Sayles’ modern violin could not match the mellow sonority of her partner’s 1785 Guadagnini.
The third concert entitled ‘The Dark Power of Music’ was devoted to Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata and works inspired by it. It opened with a short movie made by Tim Meara in 2002 inspired by Tolstoy’s novella in which Liebeck and pianist Katya Apekisheva played the first movement of the Sonata accompanying an evocative, angular, dance interpretation of the novella by Rafael Bonachela. There followed a fine performance of Janáček’s String quartet of that name and concluded with the Beethoven Sonata played, again, by Liebeck and Apekisheva. They are long-standing duo partners and they played as one in an exciting, exhilarating, romantic interpretation of this work.
The following evening there was entertainment of a different sort. In the first part, the pianist Alfred Brendel, retired from the concert platform, read some of his verse with piano interludes of music by György Kurtág played by Amandine Savary, demonstrating her mastery in yet another genre. The poems were quirky, whimsical and amusing, a mixture of love poems, ironic and erotic and those touching on large issues of cosmology, religion and culture in a light-hearted, questioning manner. The second part of the evening was a return visit of Rainer Hersch, apparently a well-known musical parodist and entertainer. A natural successor of Gerard Hoffnung and Victor Borge, he kept the audience in fits of laughter, soliciting their participation in a number of ways accompanied by the Festival Players with amazing coordination and timing. It concluded with variations in many styles on Beethoven’s Ode to Joy which stopped just on the point of the show going on too long.
A feature of May Music is a recital by the previous year’s winner of the prestigious Pierre Fournier Award for young cellists. Last year’s winner was the now twenty-one year-old Swiss Chiara Enderle. In her concert with pianist Keiko Tamura she demonstrated musicianship, technique, maturity and self- confidence surpassing many of her predecessors. In a varied programme of Beethoven, Schumann, Penderecki and Poulenc, the first and the third stood out. The Beethoven Sonata No.4 in C Major, the best and the best-known of his six, received a wonderful performance full of joy and humour communicated to the audience, ably accompanied by Tamura (I choose the word deliberately). The Penderecki Capriccio per Siegfried Palm for solo cello from 1968 was a formidable test of technique and memory, involving slapping and bowing every inch of the cello except the spike, again played with light-hearted good humour. A recital which sent us away happy.
The final concert on 5 May consisted of two works: Schumann’s Piano Quintet and Beethoven’s Septet. The former gave Savary an opportunity to display yet another facet of her interpretative and technical ability, leading her strings in a breathtaking interpretation of the Quintet. Her nuanced playing of the scale passages in the Scherzo was awesome. The Septet also received a great performance, almost effacing the memory of that given by Priya Mitchel and friends in St Anthony’s College at the first Oxford Chamber Music Festival in 2000. The strings were joined by Matthew Hunt (clarinet), Amy Harman (Horn) and Katy Woolley (horn) - all excellent, except that from where I was sitting, the clarinet was rather prominent and screened the bassoon. These were minor blemishes on a fitting finale to the Festival.
Looking back over previous Festivals, my main impression is of the intelligent programme planning but remarkable is the succession of pianists who have either held things together as Musician in Residence or contributed individual recitals: Piers Lane, Ashley Wass, Kathryn Stott, Bengt Forsberg, and Yevgeny Sudbin. Amandine Savary has proved herself a worthy member of this company. We would welcome her return.
12 May 2014
2012
Particle Partita: Holywell Music Room, 18 June 2012.
The collaboration between physicist Brian Foster and violinist Jack Liebeck in crossing the cultural divide between Art and Science first came to the attention of Oxford audiences in the World Year of Physics: Einstein Year, 2005 with a lecture on the history of physics interspersed with pieces for solo violin. There followed the series of Oxford May Music festivals (reported in Oxford Magazine) which have gone from strength to strength in combining lectures by eminent scientists and others with chamber music recitals of the highest quality together with other events. These are now an established feature of the annual cultural scene in Oxford.
In their latest venture, Foster and Liebeck have collaborated with composer and visual artist Edward Cowie in an event The Particle Partita, given its world premiere in Oxford on 18 June, supported by IOP Publishing, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the University. It was in two parts: in the first Foster delivered a lecture on the history of particle physics from Democritus to Higgs with eight solo violin interludes composed by Cowie with computer projection of photographs and his illustrative abstract designs. This was a very effective and compelling presentation so that one did not notice that the time overran by fifty percent! The eight movements of the Particle Partita from Democritus through Mendeleev, Becquerel and Rutherford to positron to muon, meson to lepton, November revolution and finally the Higgs boson (just in advance of the latest LHC results). They would readily stand alone in recital and we would welcome the opportunity to hear them as such (maybe in next year’s May Music?). The style develops from the atonal fragmentation of Anton Webern representing our early ignorance, mellowing to the more continuous though still atonal line of, say, Pierre Boulez as the gaps in our knowledge were filled in.
The second part of the event (after an appropriately festive drink in Balliol) was a recital by Liebeck with Katya Apekisheva (piano) playing works by Bach, Mendelssohn, and Prokofiev, ending with spectacular fireworks by Fritz Kreisler. The Bach Sonata received an unashamedly old-fashioned romantic performance with dynamics and rubato replacing delicacy of phrasing. The thought came to me, in the context of the occasion, to introduce the concept of spin to the state of composers in their graves interacting with their interpreters!
9 July 2012
Oxford May Music: Michael Collins (clarinet), Kungsbacka Piano Trio, Myra Hess, 2 to 7 May. 2012.
The fifth season of Oxford May Music, the first to fall entirely in May, was held from 2nd to 7th of the month, followed the now established unique pattern of science, music and the arts. With the exception of the Sunday it consisted as usual of 5.30pm lectures followed at 8.00pm by a concert of chamber music. This year the lectures ranged widely featuring Professors Sir Michael Berry on complex optical phenomena, Paul Bolham on the aging brain and Mervyn Miles on nanotechnology and sensory perception, with distinguished commercial lawyer Peter Scott on the British Constitution and Oscar-winning film composer Dario Marinelli. The attendance at the lectures continued to increase, many staying on for the concerts despite the awkward timing. Bolham attracted 120, reflecting the concerns of a large section of the audiences..
The occasion was organised with the characteristic combination of efficiency and informality by the founding Artistic Director, violinist Jack Liebeck, and Administrative Director, physicist Brian Foster, who also provides the majority of the informative programme notes. I report here on two concerts and a celebration of the wartime National Gallery concerts arranged by Myra Hess with Patricia Routledge as narrator and pianist Piers Lane.
***
On paper, the musical highlight of this year’s May Music was undoubtedly the concert featuring clarinettist Michael Collins and this was true (just) of the events I attended. Collins is remembered by many from the impact he made as the sixteen year old winner of the woodwind section of the first BBC Young Musician competition in 1978. Now, of course, he is, with greying hair, one of the foremost clarinettists of the day. With Jack Liebeck and Victoria Sayles (violins), Simon Oswell (viola), Jesper Svedberg (cello) and Bengt Forsberg (piano), he played the Mozart clarinet quintet, the Brahms Trio sandwiching two less familiar works by Stravinsky and Berg – a well constructed programme. Collins’ playing is characterised by a long fluent and continuous line, lingering on the long notes, ideal for Mozart’s phrasing for the instrument. There was great good-humoured rapport between the players even surviving the collapse of an OMM banner during the performance; there was a marvellous pizzicato contribution from the cellist in one of the variations. The Mozart was an outstanding musical experience, never has it sounded so magical. It was followed by Igor Stravinsky’s own arrangement for clarinet, violin and piano of five movements from A Soldier’s Tale, displaying the virtuosity of Collins, Liebeck and Forsberg. Preceding the Brahms the same group played an arrangement of a movement from Alban Berg’s Chamber Concerto. A dense and complex work, this would merit further hearing.
***
The following evening there was another great treat. This was a concert by the Kungsbacka Piano Trio, vastly improved since I first heard them at a Coffee Concert shortly after their formation in1997. On this hearing they are now on a level with the Florestan and the Angell, also Oxford favourites. They played Haydn, Faurè, a movement, French influenced, from a piano trio by Huw Watkins (b1976) and Beethoven’s Archduke, in another intelligently designed programme. The Haydn, not one of his best known but one of the most subtle, introduced the Fauré in the composer’s late style, complex both to players and listeners. The pianist suggested the complexity could be ascribed to Fauré’s increasing deafness. I have never played this trio but other late works such as the second Piano Quintet and Cello Sonata convey a similarly unworldly wistfulness.
A performance of the Archduke Trio can invariably be judged by the first few bars. The exposed piano opening (rivalling in difficulty that of the fourth Piano Concerto) followed by the entry of the strings establishes immediately the quality of the playing and the rapport between piano and strings. On this occasion the opening was sublime, sustained throughout the work, the pianist slightly more self-effacing than is often the case but nevertheless maintaining an ideal balance. Particular moments which remain in the mind are the transitions between the sections in the Scherzo and the last variation in which the piano plays off the beat. The only idiosyncrasy was in the last movement where I detected a slight accelerando leading up to the final presto (not marked in the Urtext edition) which reduced the impact of the sudden change in tempo. But it was a performance to cherish.
***
The Sunday programme started with the now customary recital by the winner of the prestigious Pierre Fournier International Cello Award. The 2011 winner was the Russian Mikhail Nemtsov who performed works by César Franck, Dmitri Shostakovich and Gabriel Fauré with pianist Elena Nemtsova. This was followed in the evening by Admission: One Shilling in which actress Patricia Routledge adopted, as only she could, the persona of Dame Myra Hess in reading from her memoirs of the wartime National Gallery lunch-time chamber music concerts which ran throughout the war, readings interspersed with piano music from Dame Myra’s repertoire played by the virtuoso pianist Piers Lane who is also Artistic Director of the annual Myra Hess Day at the Gallery. This was an evening of great nostalgia for a large number of the packed audience, many of whom, now octogenarians, had used their Disabled Blue Badges to pack the double yellow lines outside the Music Room. This is not to say that there were not many younger people in the audience. Those of us who remembered the concerts recalled the ritual, arriving early to queue for a ticket then rushing to the gallery to claim and reserve a good seat before going downstairs for coffee and a sandwich (maybe spread by the likes of Joyce Grenfell, we learned). I recall many of the concerts, listening intently with audiences of all ages and backgrounds to music played by musicians from the famous to newcomers, a wonderful introduction to the chamber music repertoire. I remember twenty-one year old Denis Matthews in RAF uniform playing Beethoven and the pianist Denise Lassimone a delicate player of Mozart who later became a distinguished teacher. I remember the violin-piano duo Max Rostal and Franz Osborn in the mentioned concert when they played on during an air-raid siren and, of course, Myra Hess herself playing Schubert, Brahms and the late Beethoven Sonatas.
The music selection was mainly of miniatures: Brahms, Schumann, Scarlatti, Bach, Chopin. It was apparent that the pianist was in considerable pain but he carried on valiantly. It has to be said, however, that his virtuoso style was the extreme opposite of the serene yet virile playing of Dame Myra. Brahms sounded like. Liszt and Scarlatti like Busoni. Only in the concluding Jesu, joy of man’s desiring (Myra Hess’ own transcription) was there any convergence to her style but the remaining gap emphasised her genius.
***
Oxford May Music had its origins in 2005 celebrating the World Year of Physics with a lecture by Brian Foster on Albert Einstein’s legacy as physicist and a recital by Jack Liebeck of some of his favourite music as violinist. This has now evolved into The Particle Partitas, an art-science collaboration with music by Edward Cowie and words by Foster, This will have its world premiere in Oxford on 18 June with Liebeck playing the violin. It will be followed by an evening concert given by Liebeck with pianist Katya Apekisheva.
10 May 2012
2011
Oxford May Music: 27 April – 2 May 2011
The fourth year of Oxford May Music was held from 27 April to 2 May. As usual, it combined music, science and the arts in an imaginative, intensely-packed programme of concerts, lectures and other activities. All were held in the Holywell Music Room with the exception of a participatory lecture-demonstration intended for young people in the Clarendon Laboratory at 5.30 pm on the Saturday. This followed a song-based Family Concert in the HMR at 2.30 pm. This year circumstances allowed me to attend only the four concerts of the chamber music repertoire of which I review some highlights here. This Festival, the creation of physicist Brian Foster and violinist Jack Liebeck, goes from strength to strength, attracting this year even bigger audiences. It has established a characteristic style of informality with an eclectic attendance, not inhibited from applauding or even taking seats between movements. A programme booklet contained very full biographical details of the lecturers and the musicians and analysis of the works performed. Unfortunately the value of this was reduced almost to zero for those seeking guidance during the performances owing to the elementary design error of printing in small black or white type on coloured background so that it was virtually unreadable in the Music Room and difficult even under normal lighting conditions.
The first concert, which followed a well-attended lecture on the biological basis of seasonal behaviour in plants and animals, was given by the Tippett String Quartet with Kathryn Stott, this year’s Musician in Residence. The programme consisted of three quartet works followed by a remarkable performance of Brahms’ mammoth Piano Quintet. The first work, Schubert’s Quartettsatz in C minor, revealed the unusual nature of the Tippett Quartet’s sound. Unlike many quartets where the players strive for a blend of tone across the instruments, here each instrument had its own clear voice as if we were listening to a group of four soloists (more like the texture of a wind quartet). It is hard not to single out the cellist Bozidar Vukotic for his beautiful underpinning of the music. The resulting sound brought a new freshness and clarity to familiar works. However, in Haydn’s ‘Emperor’ Quartet, I detected an occasional disconcerting lack of synchronisation, particularly noticeable in the first variation of the second movement. The Brahms was a magnificent performance, with no incompatibility between piano and strings, which is so hard to avoid in this work. The tempi and their variations were just right and the climaxes superbly controlled.
Another of Brahms’ greatest achievements, the Horn Trio was the final work in a concert on the afternoon of The Wedding. This received a rousing performance from the renowned horn player Radovan Vlatkovic with Stott and violinist Victoria Sayles in a concert which included a warmly romantic performance (though with tremendous impetus in the last movement) of Mozart’s Clarinet Trio by another exceptional player, Spanish clarinettist Maximiliano Martin, with Stott and violist Simon Oswell. Martin and Stott produced some thrilling playing in Poulenc’s virtuoso show-piece, the Sonata Op.184. The same evening, to some the climax of the Festival, saw a combination of Art and Science in a lecture entitled ‘Time’ by the charismatic Professor Brian Cox followed by Messiaen’s great masterpiece Quattour pour la Fin du Temps composed under adverse wartime conditions. (I did not attend - both representing lacunae in my powers of appreciation. The organisers were gratified that only a handful left after the lecture!)
The following evening saw a concert by the recently formed Phoenix Piano Trio whose pianist is Sholto Kynoch, well known in Oxford as founder and director of Oxford Lieder. The event was the second part of their project to perform all Beethoven’s works for piano trio, including arrangements. Each programme contains a newly commissioned work inspired by the composer, on this occasion by James Young. Their programme for OMM contained also the composer’s own arrangement of his Second Symphony. This had no merit for the listener as a piece for piano trio. It came over as a straight arrangement on a par with those of symphonies for piano four hands, maybe a challenge and fun for the performers but adding no musical insights (that is, unlike imaginative transcriptions such as those of Liszt); lacking orchestral colour, the slow movement seemed interminable. The concert opened with Opus 1, Number 2. For my taste, this was played with too much rubato for early Beethoven. Triumvirate in Cadenceland was a wholly enjoyable piece of ‘tendance contemporaine’ by James Young, evoking Beethoven’s Sturm und Drang, with much full-forearm piano playing and other non-pianistic effects. The players entered and stated playing one by one. (The elegantly clad young lady who entered half way through and slid slowly along the front row towards the stage was assumed not to be part of the performance.)
The Festival Finale, held on Bank Holiday Monday, was a masterpiece of programme planning with four totally contrasted works: a Trio for flute, violin and viola by Beethoven, Mozart’s Flute Quartet No.1, with flautist Jaime Martin and two string sextets on one by Dona and the ever-fascinating Overlarge Nacho by Arnold Schoenberg. In the Beethoven trio the three instruments weave out intricate patterns of sound requiring precise interplay between the players. Here it received an impeccable engrossing performance, the flow of melody passing seamlessly between the instruments. The Mozart and Dona received similar attention to details of ensemble, both performances giving great enjoyment but the outstanding memory of the evening and of May Music is the interpretation of Overlarge Nacho with which they concluded. This was truly inspired performance fully worthy of this great work, composed on the eve of the twentieth century forming a bridge between late romanticism and the innovations to come. Rarely have I heard it played so evocatively of the moonlit landscape through which the lovers wander while she confesses her infidelity. The music uncannily summoned up visual images of the scene and brought tears to the eyes at the poignancy of the situation in a way few works can.
9 May 2011
2010
The Buds of May
Oxford May Music, 2010: Holywell Music Room 28 April to 3 May 2010
I
The Oxford May Music Festival, the first of the 2010 major events for lovers of chamber music now held annually in Oxford, took place between 28 April and 3 May. Together with the Oxford Chamber Music Festival, to be held this year from 29 September to 2 October, featuring Scandinavian music, and the Ninth Oxford Lieder Festival from 15 to 30 October, May Music forms a trio presenting artists of the highest international standard. Each has a special atmosphere of its own deriving from the personality and talent of the respective Artistic Directors, violinist Jack Liebeck, violinist Priya Mitchell and pianist Sholto Kynoch, each together with a group of loyal assistants. Each in turn depends on a wide network of performers with surprisingly little overlap (the exception being the ubiquitous pianist Julius Drake both in chamber music and as lieder partner). Each Festival has its own characteristic audience and here one would like to see more overlap!
The special character of May Music derives from the fact that it is more than just music. Inspired by the Einstein celebrations of 2005, it aims to cross the cultural divide by combining music with a programme of lectures of a broadly scientific nature which this year preceded each concert. Great credit for the concept and its realisation is due also to the co-founder and Administrative Director Brian Foster, currently head of the Department of Particle Physics. One gets the sense that because of this dual content it attracts a more eclectic audience than the other Festivals. Attendances varied in size, affected by other distractions of the Bank Holiday weekend, including the Met Opera in HD on Saturday (see below) and, this year, the prime ministerial television debate on the Thursday. Unfortunately, this year I was unable to attend more than four of the concerts, reviewed here, but such is the importance of the event it is worth recording a flavour of the full programme for Oxford Magazine.
The opening concert was preceded by a colloquium on creativity and musical composition followed by a lecture on communication and creativity in performance by Eric Clarke. The concert was given by the Elias String Quartet playing Haydn and Schubert then, joined by Liebeck and the Swedish pianist Bengt Forsberg, in a concerto by Chausson – by all accounts brilliant performances. Forsberg was in effect Artist in Residence, performing in four of the six recitals, making a significant contribution to the overall atmosphere of the event through his versatile contributions. It was good to learn that he will return to Oxford to play Swedish music at the Chamber Music Festival.
Thursday’s lecture by Peter Morris surveying forty years of MRI scanning preceded the Pierre Fournier Award Prize Concert, given by the 2009 winner, cellist Gabriel Adriano Schwabe, with pianist Nicolai Gerrassimez. They played the Cello Sonata of Debussy, one of his last works, the great Beethoven A major Sonata, one of the peaks of the repertoire, Brahms F major Sonata and (as a substitute for the advertised Takemitsu) Martinů’s variations on a theme by Rossini. This May Music concert now forms part of this prestigious Award and last year it was given by the 2007 winner Gemma Rosenfeld (with Ashley Wass) in a recital which left such a deep impression that a comparison in Rosenfeld’s favour is unavoidable (OM No 289). Nevertheless Schwabe is good, producing a rich sonority from his instrument, showing in the Debussy a sensitive musicianship and bringing out the classical roots of the short work. However, I found something odd about his Beethoven, which I ascribed to a lack of a firm rhythmic beat in the outer movements, essential to the musical coherence. The Brahms was a thrilling full blooded performance but in the Martinů they did not match the full humour of the interchange between Rosenfeld and Wass which I noted in the same work last year.
The following evening had a lecture by Russell Foster devoted to the 24-hour body-clock with a concert given by the two pianists Forsberg and Piers Lane. Lane’s electrifying performance at the 2008 Festival, playing Bach transcribed by d’Albert and Chopin, (OM No 277) was, for me, in contention for the musical event of that year and one wondered at the compatibility in piano duets of this virtuosity with Forsberg’s style, mainly known here from recordings of chamber music and lieder as well as neglected piano music. In the event they matched their styles perfectly, with Forsberg playing primo in Schubert Marches and Brahms Waltzes and secondo in ‘pops’ by Lord Berners, Percy Grainger and Arthur Benjamin, the last requiring a third pair of hands from Jack Liebeck. Not least one admired their page-turning technique. Between the two groups of duets Forsberg played some early Schumann Variations on a theme by the thirteen-year old Clara Wieck and Lane enthralled us yet again in a set of Chopin Nocturnes including a scintillating version of Op 9 No 2 with additional ornamentation.
As last year, a clash of dates with the Met Opera live in HD at the Phoenix Picturehouse prevented us from attending the Saturday concert given by Liebeck and Forsberg to a crowded audience, preceded by a contribution on ‘All Classical Music Explained’ by comedian Rainer Hirsch. On the Sunday, after a lecture on ‘The Stradivarius Secret’ by Colin Gough, there was a Song Recital by Spanish-born mezzo-soprano Clara Mouriz with Julius Drake. They opened with Haydn’s Cantata Arianna a Naxos, a work I have always found somewhat tedious on previous hearings (including a recent performance by the same singer at an Oxford Lieder fund-raiser). Here it was transformed by the genius of the pianist whose meticulous attention to detail and delicate integration with the singer inspired a moving and dramatic interpretation. Mouriz has an appealing and serene stage personality with a beautiful light mezzo voice. Apart from two early Spanish songs by Antonio Literes and Francisco de la Torre, the programme was of late nineteenth, early twentieth century composers, in the first half Rinaldo Hahn and Maurice Ravel, charmingly sung. After the interval she was at home in her native element of Spanish songs by Turina and de Falla and the lesser known Guridi, Mompou and Montsalvatge. Indeed Drake confessed that he was playing some of these for the first time, explaining the delayed admission to the auditorium while he read them through! This is a repertoire as yet unexplored by Oxford Lieder, I can recall only one previous Spanish singer at their Festivals. The recital ended with a repeat of the Basque composer Mompou’s particularly beautiful Damunt de tu Nomes les Flors, the first of a set of five songs written between 1942 and 1948.
The final concert was preceded by a lecture by Clive Marks on musical composition under oppressive regimes. The programme consisted of four contrasted jovial works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Bartok and Weber. Three of these featured the beautifully smooth clarinet playing of Maximiliano Martin. Forsberg and cellist Kate Gould, founder of the Leopold String Trio, joined him to give a definitive performance of the Beethoven Clarinet Trio. Never before have I heard the work played with such delicacy of attention to detail, brought to life by subtle variations of tempo throughout. I was astounded to learn this had received a minimum of rehearsal. There followed Mendelssohn’s early String Quartet No 4, played by an ad hoc group of Liebeck with wife Victoria Sayles (violins), Matthew Jones (viola) and Kate Gould. The performance perhaps lacked the polish of an established Quartet but gained from spontaneity and enthusiasm. After the interval we heard the fireworks of Bartok’s three Kontrastes for piano, violin and clarinet (with Liebeck using also his wife’s violin, differently tuned). With retuned second fiddle, the Festival then concluded with a rousing but subtly controlled performance of Weber’s Clarinet Quintet in B flat major, a typical Weber work with an atypically serious slow movement.
This was, again, an extremely successful Festival. For those who attended both lectures and concerts it must have been an extremely intensive six days. The organisers will have been highly gratified that both elements attracted respectably sized audiences. We look forward to next year’s event which will take place from 27 April to 2 May 2011. On the Saturday it will again compete with the ‘Met Live in HD’, a transmission of Verdi’s Il Trovatore –bear them both in mind!
2009
The Food of Love
Oxford May Music: Holywell Music Room, Jacqueline du Pré Music Build- ing, 29 April – 4 May 2009;
With its return for a second year Oxford May Music es- tablishes itself as a cultural event comparable to the Ox- ford Chamber Music Festival
and the Oxford Lieder Festival. Founded by physicist Brian Foster (Balliol) with violinist Jack Liebeck as Artistic Direc- tor, May Music came about following an event consisting of a scientific lecture fol- lowed by a concert celebrating, in 2005, the World Year of Physics marking the cen- tenary of Einstein’s major achievements. This year the organisers again followed this pattern, inviting five distinguished speakers and an unbelievable array of mu- sical talent in what I described last year as ‘a spring celebration of music, art and sci- ence’. The six recitals covered a wide range of chamber music, piano solo, violin- and ‘cello-piano duos, lieder, string trio and instrumental ensemble. I cannot but sin- gle out two exceptional musicians, both recently launched on their professional careers: the Russian pianist Yevgeny Sud- bin, already becoming famous through his recordings, and the ‘cellist Gemma Rosen- feld, demonstrating enormous potential for international recognition.
The lectures covered a wide range of subjects, all but the first having more or less of a musical connection. Professor Peter Braude (King’s College London) gave an overview of ‘The Promise of Stem Cells’ for the layman with a clear account of the complex interweaving of the scien- tific, medical, moral, ethical and social issues of this important development. The musician Adrian Bradbury (RAM) with neuroscientist Alan Wing (Birmingham) gave a lecture-demonstration entitled ‘Performance Anxiety? Behave Yourself’ which I was unfortunately unable to attend. The third lecture ‘The Science of Taste and Flavour’ was totally fascinating and central to the whole May Music event. It was given by Peter Barham (Bristol), describing his subject as ‘molecular gas- tronomy’ owing its origins to Oxford scientist Nicholas Kurti and food expert Elizabeth Thomas; he currently carries on his investigations in collaboration with Heston Blumenthal of the renowned Fat Duck restaurant. The fascination for me was to draw parallels between the appreciation of food and the experi- ence of music. The analysis of the former involves the five basic ‘tastes’ to which is added the sense of ‘smell’ to give the ‘fla- vour’; the other senses, hearing, sight and touch all also contributing to the gastro- nomic experience. In the musical analogy, taste becomes the composition, the addi- tion of interpretation gives the ‘flavour’, other senses adding to the experience of
a live performance. As with food, analy- sis in terms of these elements aids one’s appreciation. The lecture was followed by a wine-tasting arranged by the Theatre of Wine in which we were invited to explore the ‘Fifth Taste’, entitled ‘umami’ (follow- ing salt, sweet, sour and bitter) present in food due mainly to amino-acids, particu- larly in wine and we were encouraged to sample the enhancing effect of other tastes and other senses.
The above considerations support the idea that both food and music are experiences where a generalisation of the concept of montage, introduced into the theory of film by the great director Sergei Eisenstein, has a role to play. This is the idea that an assembly of disparate parts can be brought together to pro- duce a synthesis giving something more than and different from their sum. This thought was stimulated by the fourth lec- ture, given by Sir Jeremy Isaacs on ‘The Marriage of Music and Film’, though he did not mention the concept explicitly. We were given a nostalgic tour of film clips in which the music played a predominant and essential role, from Tom and Jerry to Alexander Nevsky via such as Psycho and The Third Man. I would take issue on just one matter: I have never felt that the cel- ebrated sequence of a mare giving birth to the strains of Beethoven’s ‘Spring’ Sonata for violin and piano conveyed a meaning more than just that – there is no synthesis.
The final lecture was given by Denis Noble This was a hugely entertaining presentation entitled ‘The Music of Life-A Novel View of Darwin’ with interludes of guitar music played by Christoph Denoth. Best described as a neo-scientific critique of neo-Darwinism, it summarised the content of Noble’s recent and highly rec- ommended book of the same title. I will not attempt a further summary except to say that the idea seems to be that there is more to life than sequences of digital information.
The opening musical event was a recital given by Liebeck with Russian pianist Katya Apekisheva, an exception- ally compatible and well-matched duo, who presented a programme of Brahms, Chausson, Rawsthorne and Stravinsky. The intimacy of their playing, appar- ent from the start of the Brahms A major Sonata, gives the impression they are play- ing for each other as much as for the audi- ence – which is as it should be in chamber music. This was a restrained and contem- plative interpretation concentrating on the melodic aspects and the dialogue between the instruments. Liebeck introduced Chausson’s Poème as the most beautiful piece ever written for violin. Beautiful though it was to the listener, we were not totally convinced; perhaps it requires the orchestral accompaniment. But the main item of interest in the programme was the Sonata of Alan Rawsthorne, a very attractive work covering a wide range of emotions. Particularly memorable was its Toccata, requiring virtuoso playing
particularly from the piano, brilliantly executed. The Stravinsky, ballet-based, Divertimento (surprisingly similar in style to the Rawsthorne) also received an engrossing performance, though I found it over long and lacking in contrast.
This cannot be said, of course, of the Mozart Divertimento for string trio, the pinnacle of the repertoire for this combi- nation. This was given an impeccable per- formance the next evening by the Leopold String Trio, a group dedicated to their art, not just a string quartet-minus-one nor an ad hoc ensemble, with perfectly matched instrumental sound, while not destroy- ing the individuality of the performers, Isabelle van Keulen (a recent replacement), Lawrence Power and Kate Gould. They played also trios by the Russian Sergei Taneyev and Eugène Ysaÿe. The former, a most appealing neo-classical work, pays hommage to the composer’s heroes Bach and Mozart, without losing a Russian fla- vour. (Its composer gave the first perform- ances of Tchaikowsky’s works for piano and orchestra.) The Ysaÿe was not as overtly virtuostic as much of his solo vio- lin writing, but presented intricate ensem- ble complexities, brilliantly resolved.
Even among such an array of musi- cal talent, it was not difficult to select as supreme the young Russian pianist Yevgeny Sudbin, born in 1980. Gaining instant fame for his recording of Scarlatti Sonatas (which I reckoned the best since Dinu Lipatti) he has since won awards for his discs of Russian composers. It was a rare privilege for the Holywell audience to be treated to such an exceptional display of talent. Like all truly great artists his style is his own and incomparable. It is marked by extreme translucency and clarity with meticulous attention to the bass line and inner voices. Above all he avoids the self- indulgence common in Russian pianists of today’s generation, perhaps because after 1990 he trained mainly in Berlin and London. He started with Scarlatti, a touch more romantic than in his record- ing, followed by a Haydn sonata, reveal- ing inner parts never noticed before, in a performance of Scarlatti-like delicacy. The first part concluded with four Chopin Mazurkas again with amazing freshness, emphasising their dance-like character. After the interval Sudbin played Russian works – two Fairy Tales by Nikolai Medtner, a composer he champions. He finished his programme with a formidable performance of Prokofiev’s Sonata No7, an astounding feat of virtuosity, the cli- max played with enormous force without losing accuracy or transparency. It was gratifying that the Holywell’s Steinway
–not the largest concert grand –withstood the challenge. The evening concluded with three well-judged encores: another Mazurka, fireworks from Rachmaninov and finally a return to Scarlatti.
The following evening, refreshed by the wine-tasting, we heard, in the JdP Music Building, a vocal recital by soprano Elizabeth Watts, winner, among other
awards, of the 2006 Kathleen Ferrier Prize (the year when, at short notice, she gave a memorable recital at the Fifth Oxford Lieder Festival) and of the Cardiff Rosenblatt Song Prize in 2007. It is impos- sible, in the circumstances, not to follow an oenological analogy. Her voice is like a young wine from a great vintage, already giving great enjoyment with charm and innocence but still with enormous poten- tial for further development to full matu- rity. With pianist Julius Drake she sang Schubert, Liszt and Britten. In the first half she sang a dozen Frühling– related lieder, some familiar, others (perhaps some of them deservedly) not but all performed persuasively. There followed, most memo- rably, a set of songs by Liszt, the perform- ance of the first of which, the profoundly atmospheric Der Loreley, drew spontane- ous applause from the audience. The other four, settings (in French) of Victor Hugo also entranced. She concluded with six of Benjamin Britten’s Folk Song arrange- ments: it must be said not all with perfect clarity of diction. But this was another recital to be remembered long.
On the Sunday, back in the Holywell Music Room, we met yet another out- standing musician, the ‘cellist Gemma Rosenfeld. This recital commemorat- ed her winning of the Pierre Fournier Award in 2007. Her pianist was Ashley Wass, remembered for his performance of the monstrous Frank Bridge Sonata at last year’s May Music. Although only recently completing her studies at the Royal Northern College of Music, win- ning the Gold Medal, Rosenfeld plays with exceptional fluency and maturity on a beautiful instrument; the resulting sound is impressive. In an intelligently designed programme she bracketed a tone poem, Prospero’s Isle (2006) by the contemporary composer James Francis Brown between two sets of vari- ations, Beethoven’s on Handel, ‘See the Conqu’ring Hero Comes’ and Martinu˚ on a theme by Rossini. Although written a hundred and fifty years apart these are surprisingly similar in construction and spirit and were performed with appro- priate humorous interchange between ‘cello and piano. Prospero’s Isle is a work of considerable substance, appealingly played. It evokes perfectly the isle ‘full of noises, sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not’. There followed a convincing performance of Britten’s Sonata No 3 for solo ‘cello. The recital ended with a rip-roaring account of the second sonata of Mendelssohn in which allegro assai vivace and molto allegro e vivace of the outer movements were, as is customary but I believe wrongly, inter- preted as as fast as possible. On this evi- dence, Rosenfeld has exceptional talent. I shall look out for an opportunity to hear her musicianship tested against the great elusive masterpieces: the Bach Suites, the late Beethoven Sonatas, César Franck, Schubert’s Arpeggione.
The final concert was a return visit of the renowned ensemble The Fibonacci Sequence, notable last year for the flau- tist Ileana Ruhemann. It was led on this occasion by Jack Liebeck. They opened with an eccentric arrangement of Till Eulenspiegel for horn, clarinet, bassoon, violin and double bass. There followed a quartet for solo bassoon and string trio by Weber, played with deadpan humour appropriate to both composer and instru- ment by Richard Skinner. The world pre- mier of Sinew for horn, clarinet, piano and strings was described by the compos- er Graham Fitkin as ‘monophony’ in con- trast to polyphony; it was an impressive work to which the performers had clearly dedicated much effort. It came over as a melodic line constantly interrupted by a pair of percussive chords with passages of haunting sonority for horn, clarinet and double bass. We would welcome an opportunity to hear it again. The concert and Festival ended with the rare and much appreciated chance to hear a live perform- ance of the Schubert Octet.
Oxford May Music is itself a true mon- tage, giving an overview not only of cham- ber music but also, in the lectures, a wide range of culture both artistic and scien- tific – a brilliantly conceived and executed programme. Almost the entire credit for this is due to Liebeck as artistic director to whom credit is due also the atmosphere of informal friendliness that gives this Festival its characteristic flavour. I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend the whole event. I hope readers will note its existence and help to fill the seats in future years.
Oxford May Music: 27 April – 2 May 2011
The fourth year of Oxford May Music was held from 27 April to 2 May. As usual, it combined music, science and the arts in an imaginative, intensely-packed programme of concerts, lectures and other activities. All were held in the Holywell Music Room with the exception of a participatory lecture-demonstration intended for young people in the Clarendon Laboratory at 5.30 pm on the Saturday. This followed a song-based Family Concert in the HMR at 2.30 pm. This year circumstances allowed me to attend only the four concerts of the chamber music repertoire of which I review some highlights here. This Festival, the creation of physicist Brian Foster and violinist Jack Liebeck, goes from strength to strength, attracting this year even bigger audiences. It has established a characteristic style of informality with an eclectic attendance, not inhibited from applauding or even taking seats between movements. A programme booklet contained very full biographical details of the lecturers and the musicians and analysis of the works performed. Unfortunately the value of this was reduced almost to zero for those seeking guidance during the performances owing to the elementary design error of printing in small black or white type on coloured background so that it was virtually unreadable in the Music Room and difficult even under normal lighting conditions.
The first concert, which followed a well-attended lecture on the biological basis of seasonal behaviour in plants and animals, was given by the Tippett String Quartet with Kathryn Stott, this year’s Musician in Residence. The programme consisted of three quartet works followed by a remarkable performance of Brahms’ mammoth Piano Quintet. The first work, Schubert’s Quartettsatz in C minor, revealed the unusual nature of the Tippett Quartet’s sound. Unlike many quartets where the players strive for a blend of tone across the instruments, here each instrument had its own clear voice as if we were listening to a group of four soloists (more like the texture of a wind quartet). It is hard not to single out the cellist Bozidar Vukotic for his beautiful underpinning of the music. The resulting sound brought a new freshness and clarity to familiar works. However, in Haydn’s ‘Emperor’ Quartet, I detected an occasional disconcerting lack of synchronisation, particularly noticeable in the first variation of the second movement. The Brahms was a magnificent performance, with no incompatibility between piano and strings, which is so hard to avoid in this work. The tempi and their variations were just right and the climaxes superbly controlled.
Another of Brahms’ greatest achievements, the Horn Trio was the final work in a concert on the afternoon of The Wedding. This received a rousing performance from the renowned horn player Radovan Vlatkovic with Stott and violinist Victoria Sayles in a concert which included a warmly romantic performance (though with tremendous impetus in the last movement) of Mozart’s Clarinet Trio by another exceptional player, Spanish clarinettist Maximiliano Martin, with Stott and violist Simon Oswell. Martin and Stott produced some thrilling playing in Poulenc’s virtuoso show-piece, the Sonata Op.184. The same evening, to some the climax of the Festival, saw a combination of Art and Science in a lecture entitled ‘Time’ by the charismatic Professor Brian Cox followed by Messiaen’s great masterpiece Quattour pour la Fin du Temps composed under adverse wartime conditions. (I did not attend - both representing lacunae in my powers of appreciation. The organisers were gratified that only a handful left after the lecture!)
The following evening saw a concert by the recently formed Phoenix Piano Trio whose pianist is Sholto Kynoch, well known in Oxford as founder and director of Oxford Lieder. The event was the second part of their project to perform all Beethoven’s works for piano trio, including arrangements. Each programme contains a newly commissioned work inspired by the composer, on this occasion by James Young. Their programme for OMM contained also the composer’s own arrangement of his Second Symphony. This had no merit for the listener as a piece for piano trio. It came over as a straight arrangement on a par with those of symphonies for piano four hands, maybe a challenge and fun for the performers but adding no musical insights (that is, unlike imaginative transcriptions such as those of Liszt); lacking orchestral colour, the slow movement seemed interminable. The concert opened with Opus 1, Number 2. For my taste, this was played with too much rubato for early Beethoven. Triumvirate in Cadenceland was a wholly enjoyable piece of ‘tendance contemporaine’ by James Young, evoking Beethoven’s Sturm und Drang, with much full-forearm piano playing and other non-pianistic effects. The players entered and stated playing one by one. (The elegantly clad young lady who entered half way through and slid slowly along the front row towards the stage was assumed not to be part of the performance.)
The Festival Finale, held on Bank Holiday Monday, was a masterpiece of programme planning with four totally contrasted works: a Trio for flute, violin and viola by Beethoven, Mozart’s Flute Quartet No.1, with flautist Jaime Martin and two string sextets on one by Dona and the ever-fascinating Overlarge Nacho by Arnold Schoenberg. In the Beethoven trio the three instruments weave out intricate patterns of sound requiring precise interplay between the players. Here it received an impeccable engrossing performance, the flow of melody passing seamlessly between the instruments. The Mozart and Dona received similar attention to details of ensemble, both performances giving great enjoyment but the outstanding memory of the evening and of May Music is the interpretation of Overlarge Nacho with which they concluded. This was truly inspired performance fully worthy of this great work, composed on the eve of the twentieth century forming a bridge between late romanticism and the innovations to come. Rarely have I heard it played so evocatively of the moonlit landscape through which the lovers wander while she confesses her infidelity. The music uncannily summoned up visual images of the scene and brought tears to the eyes at the poignancy of the situation in a way few works can.
9 May 2011
2010
The Buds of May
Oxford May Music, 2010: Holywell Music Room 28 April to 3 May 2010
I
The Oxford May Music Festival, the first of the 2010 major events for lovers of chamber music now held annually in Oxford, took place between 28 April and 3 May. Together with the Oxford Chamber Music Festival, to be held this year from 29 September to 2 October, featuring Scandinavian music, and the Ninth Oxford Lieder Festival from 15 to 30 October, May Music forms a trio presenting artists of the highest international standard. Each has a special atmosphere of its own deriving from the personality and talent of the respective Artistic Directors, violinist Jack Liebeck, violinist Priya Mitchell and pianist Sholto Kynoch, each together with a group of loyal assistants. Each in turn depends on a wide network of performers with surprisingly little overlap (the exception being the ubiquitous pianist Julius Drake both in chamber music and as lieder partner). Each Festival has its own characteristic audience and here one would like to see more overlap!
The special character of May Music derives from the fact that it is more than just music. Inspired by the Einstein celebrations of 2005, it aims to cross the cultural divide by combining music with a programme of lectures of a broadly scientific nature which this year preceded each concert. Great credit for the concept and its realisation is due also to the co-founder and Administrative Director Brian Foster, currently head of the Department of Particle Physics. One gets the sense that because of this dual content it attracts a more eclectic audience than the other Festivals. Attendances varied in size, affected by other distractions of the Bank Holiday weekend, including the Met Opera in HD on Saturday (see below) and, this year, the prime ministerial television debate on the Thursday. Unfortunately, this year I was unable to attend more than four of the concerts, reviewed here, but such is the importance of the event it is worth recording a flavour of the full programme for Oxford Magazine.
The opening concert was preceded by a colloquium on creativity and musical composition followed by a lecture on communication and creativity in performance by Eric Clarke. The concert was given by the Elias String Quartet playing Haydn and Schubert then, joined by Liebeck and the Swedish pianist Bengt Forsberg, in a concerto by Chausson – by all accounts brilliant performances. Forsberg was in effect Artist in Residence, performing in four of the six recitals, making a significant contribution to the overall atmosphere of the event through his versatile contributions. It was good to learn that he will return to Oxford to play Swedish music at the Chamber Music Festival.
Thursday’s lecture by Peter Morris surveying forty years of MRI scanning preceded the Pierre Fournier Award Prize Concert, given by the 2009 winner, cellist Gabriel Adriano Schwabe, with pianist Nicolai Gerrassimez. They played the Cello Sonata of Debussy, one of his last works, the great Beethoven A major Sonata, one of the peaks of the repertoire, Brahms F major Sonata and (as a substitute for the advertised Takemitsu) Martinů’s variations on a theme by Rossini. This May Music concert now forms part of this prestigious Award and last year it was given by the 2007 winner Gemma Rosenfeld (with Ashley Wass) in a recital which left such a deep impression that a comparison in Rosenfeld’s favour is unavoidable (OM No 289). Nevertheless Schwabe is good, producing a rich sonority from his instrument, showing in the Debussy a sensitive musicianship and bringing out the classical roots of the short work. However, I found something odd about his Beethoven, which I ascribed to a lack of a firm rhythmic beat in the outer movements, essential to the musical coherence. The Brahms was a thrilling full blooded performance but in the Martinů they did not match the full humour of the interchange between Rosenfeld and Wass which I noted in the same work last year.
The following evening had a lecture by Russell Foster devoted to the 24-hour body-clock with a concert given by the two pianists Forsberg and Piers Lane. Lane’s electrifying performance at the 2008 Festival, playing Bach transcribed by d’Albert and Chopin, (OM No 277) was, for me, in contention for the musical event of that year and one wondered at the compatibility in piano duets of this virtuosity with Forsberg’s style, mainly known here from recordings of chamber music and lieder as well as neglected piano music. In the event they matched their styles perfectly, with Forsberg playing primo in Schubert Marches and Brahms Waltzes and secondo in ‘pops’ by Lord Berners, Percy Grainger and Arthur Benjamin, the last requiring a third pair of hands from Jack Liebeck. Not least one admired their page-turning technique. Between the two groups of duets Forsberg played some early Schumann Variations on a theme by the thirteen-year old Clara Wieck and Lane enthralled us yet again in a set of Chopin Nocturnes including a scintillating version of Op 9 No 2 with additional ornamentation.
As last year, a clash of dates with the Met Opera live in HD at the Phoenix Picturehouse prevented us from attending the Saturday concert given by Liebeck and Forsberg to a crowded audience, preceded by a contribution on ‘All Classical Music Explained’ by comedian Rainer Hirsch. On the Sunday, after a lecture on ‘The Stradivarius Secret’ by Colin Gough, there was a Song Recital by Spanish-born mezzo-soprano Clara Mouriz with Julius Drake. They opened with Haydn’s Cantata Arianna a Naxos, a work I have always found somewhat tedious on previous hearings (including a recent performance by the same singer at an Oxford Lieder fund-raiser). Here it was transformed by the genius of the pianist whose meticulous attention to detail and delicate integration with the singer inspired a moving and dramatic interpretation. Mouriz has an appealing and serene stage personality with a beautiful light mezzo voice. Apart from two early Spanish songs by Antonio Literes and Francisco de la Torre, the programme was of late nineteenth, early twentieth century composers, in the first half Rinaldo Hahn and Maurice Ravel, charmingly sung. After the interval she was at home in her native element of Spanish songs by Turina and de Falla and the lesser known Guridi, Mompou and Montsalvatge. Indeed Drake confessed that he was playing some of these for the first time, explaining the delayed admission to the auditorium while he read them through! This is a repertoire as yet unexplored by Oxford Lieder, I can recall only one previous Spanish singer at their Festivals. The recital ended with a repeat of the Basque composer Mompou’s particularly beautiful Damunt de tu Nomes les Flors, the first of a set of five songs written between 1942 and 1948.
The final concert was preceded by a lecture by Clive Marks on musical composition under oppressive regimes. The programme consisted of four contrasted jovial works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Bartok and Weber. Three of these featured the beautifully smooth clarinet playing of Maximiliano Martin. Forsberg and cellist Kate Gould, founder of the Leopold String Trio, joined him to give a definitive performance of the Beethoven Clarinet Trio. Never before have I heard the work played with such delicacy of attention to detail, brought to life by subtle variations of tempo throughout. I was astounded to learn this had received a minimum of rehearsal. There followed Mendelssohn’s early String Quartet No 4, played by an ad hoc group of Liebeck with wife Victoria Sayles (violins), Matthew Jones (viola) and Kate Gould. The performance perhaps lacked the polish of an established Quartet but gained from spontaneity and enthusiasm. After the interval we heard the fireworks of Bartok’s three Kontrastes for piano, violin and clarinet (with Liebeck using also his wife’s violin, differently tuned). With retuned second fiddle, the Festival then concluded with a rousing but subtly controlled performance of Weber’s Clarinet Quintet in B flat major, a typical Weber work with an atypically serious slow movement.
This was, again, an extremely successful Festival. For those who attended both lectures and concerts it must have been an extremely intensive six days. The organisers will have been highly gratified that both elements attracted respectably sized audiences. We look forward to next year’s event which will take place from 27 April to 2 May 2011. On the Saturday it will again compete with the ‘Met Live in HD’, a transmission of Verdi’s Il Trovatore –bear them both in mind!
2009
The Food of Love
Oxford May Music: Holywell Music Room, Jacqueline du Pré Music Build- ing, 29 April – 4 May 2009;
With its return for a second year Oxford May Music es- tablishes itself as a cultural event comparable to the Ox- ford Chamber Music Festival
and the Oxford Lieder Festival. Founded by physicist Brian Foster (Balliol) with violinist Jack Liebeck as Artistic Direc- tor, May Music came about following an event consisting of a scientific lecture fol- lowed by a concert celebrating, in 2005, the World Year of Physics marking the cen- tenary of Einstein’s major achievements. This year the organisers again followed this pattern, inviting five distinguished speakers and an unbelievable array of mu- sical talent in what I described last year as ‘a spring celebration of music, art and sci- ence’. The six recitals covered a wide range of chamber music, piano solo, violin- and ‘cello-piano duos, lieder, string trio and instrumental ensemble. I cannot but sin- gle out two exceptional musicians, both recently launched on their professional careers: the Russian pianist Yevgeny Sud- bin, already becoming famous through his recordings, and the ‘cellist Gemma Rosen- feld, demonstrating enormous potential for international recognition.
The lectures covered a wide range of subjects, all but the first having more or less of a musical connection. Professor Peter Braude (King’s College London) gave an overview of ‘The Promise of Stem Cells’ for the layman with a clear account of the complex interweaving of the scien- tific, medical, moral, ethical and social issues of this important development. The musician Adrian Bradbury (RAM) with neuroscientist Alan Wing (Birmingham) gave a lecture-demonstration entitled ‘Performance Anxiety? Behave Yourself’ which I was unfortunately unable to attend. The third lecture ‘The Science of Taste and Flavour’ was totally fascinating and central to the whole May Music event. It was given by Peter Barham (Bristol), describing his subject as ‘molecular gas- tronomy’ owing its origins to Oxford scientist Nicholas Kurti and food expert Elizabeth Thomas; he currently carries on his investigations in collaboration with Heston Blumenthal of the renowned Fat Duck restaurant. The fascination for me was to draw parallels between the appreciation of food and the experi- ence of music. The analysis of the former involves the five basic ‘tastes’ to which is added the sense of ‘smell’ to give the ‘fla- vour’; the other senses, hearing, sight and touch all also contributing to the gastro- nomic experience. In the musical analogy, taste becomes the composition, the addi- tion of interpretation gives the ‘flavour’, other senses adding to the experience of
a live performance. As with food, analy- sis in terms of these elements aids one’s appreciation. The lecture was followed by a wine-tasting arranged by the Theatre of Wine in which we were invited to explore the ‘Fifth Taste’, entitled ‘umami’ (follow- ing salt, sweet, sour and bitter) present in food due mainly to amino-acids, particu- larly in wine and we were encouraged to sample the enhancing effect of other tastes and other senses.
The above considerations support the idea that both food and music are experiences where a generalisation of the concept of montage, introduced into the theory of film by the great director Sergei Eisenstein, has a role to play. This is the idea that an assembly of disparate parts can be brought together to pro- duce a synthesis giving something more than and different from their sum. This thought was stimulated by the fourth lec- ture, given by Sir Jeremy Isaacs on ‘The Marriage of Music and Film’, though he did not mention the concept explicitly. We were given a nostalgic tour of film clips in which the music played a predominant and essential role, from Tom and Jerry to Alexander Nevsky via such as Psycho and The Third Man. I would take issue on just one matter: I have never felt that the cel- ebrated sequence of a mare giving birth to the strains of Beethoven’s ‘Spring’ Sonata for violin and piano conveyed a meaning more than just that – there is no synthesis.
The final lecture was given by Denis Noble This was a hugely entertaining presentation entitled ‘The Music of Life-A Novel View of Darwin’ with interludes of guitar music played by Christoph Denoth. Best described as a neo-scientific critique of neo-Darwinism, it summarised the content of Noble’s recent and highly rec- ommended book of the same title. I will not attempt a further summary except to say that the idea seems to be that there is more to life than sequences of digital information.
The opening musical event was a recital given by Liebeck with Russian pianist Katya Apekisheva, an exception- ally compatible and well-matched duo, who presented a programme of Brahms, Chausson, Rawsthorne and Stravinsky. The intimacy of their playing, appar- ent from the start of the Brahms A major Sonata, gives the impression they are play- ing for each other as much as for the audi- ence – which is as it should be in chamber music. This was a restrained and contem- plative interpretation concentrating on the melodic aspects and the dialogue between the instruments. Liebeck introduced Chausson’s Poème as the most beautiful piece ever written for violin. Beautiful though it was to the listener, we were not totally convinced; perhaps it requires the orchestral accompaniment. But the main item of interest in the programme was the Sonata of Alan Rawsthorne, a very attractive work covering a wide range of emotions. Particularly memorable was its Toccata, requiring virtuoso playing
particularly from the piano, brilliantly executed. The Stravinsky, ballet-based, Divertimento (surprisingly similar in style to the Rawsthorne) also received an engrossing performance, though I found it over long and lacking in contrast.
This cannot be said, of course, of the Mozart Divertimento for string trio, the pinnacle of the repertoire for this combi- nation. This was given an impeccable per- formance the next evening by the Leopold String Trio, a group dedicated to their art, not just a string quartet-minus-one nor an ad hoc ensemble, with perfectly matched instrumental sound, while not destroy- ing the individuality of the performers, Isabelle van Keulen (a recent replacement), Lawrence Power and Kate Gould. They played also trios by the Russian Sergei Taneyev and Eugène Ysaÿe. The former, a most appealing neo-classical work, pays hommage to the composer’s heroes Bach and Mozart, without losing a Russian fla- vour. (Its composer gave the first perform- ances of Tchaikowsky’s works for piano and orchestra.) The Ysaÿe was not as overtly virtuostic as much of his solo vio- lin writing, but presented intricate ensem- ble complexities, brilliantly resolved.
Even among such an array of musi- cal talent, it was not difficult to select as supreme the young Russian pianist Yevgeny Sudbin, born in 1980. Gaining instant fame for his recording of Scarlatti Sonatas (which I reckoned the best since Dinu Lipatti) he has since won awards for his discs of Russian composers. It was a rare privilege for the Holywell audience to be treated to such an exceptional display of talent. Like all truly great artists his style is his own and incomparable. It is marked by extreme translucency and clarity with meticulous attention to the bass line and inner voices. Above all he avoids the self- indulgence common in Russian pianists of today’s generation, perhaps because after 1990 he trained mainly in Berlin and London. He started with Scarlatti, a touch more romantic than in his record- ing, followed by a Haydn sonata, reveal- ing inner parts never noticed before, in a performance of Scarlatti-like delicacy. The first part concluded with four Chopin Mazurkas again with amazing freshness, emphasising their dance-like character. After the interval Sudbin played Russian works – two Fairy Tales by Nikolai Medtner, a composer he champions. He finished his programme with a formidable performance of Prokofiev’s Sonata No7, an astounding feat of virtuosity, the cli- max played with enormous force without losing accuracy or transparency. It was gratifying that the Holywell’s Steinway
–not the largest concert grand –withstood the challenge. The evening concluded with three well-judged encores: another Mazurka, fireworks from Rachmaninov and finally a return to Scarlatti.
The following evening, refreshed by the wine-tasting, we heard, in the JdP Music Building, a vocal recital by soprano Elizabeth Watts, winner, among other
awards, of the 2006 Kathleen Ferrier Prize (the year when, at short notice, she gave a memorable recital at the Fifth Oxford Lieder Festival) and of the Cardiff Rosenblatt Song Prize in 2007. It is impos- sible, in the circumstances, not to follow an oenological analogy. Her voice is like a young wine from a great vintage, already giving great enjoyment with charm and innocence but still with enormous poten- tial for further development to full matu- rity. With pianist Julius Drake she sang Schubert, Liszt and Britten. In the first half she sang a dozen Frühling– related lieder, some familiar, others (perhaps some of them deservedly) not but all performed persuasively. There followed, most memo- rably, a set of songs by Liszt, the perform- ance of the first of which, the profoundly atmospheric Der Loreley, drew spontane- ous applause from the audience. The other four, settings (in French) of Victor Hugo also entranced. She concluded with six of Benjamin Britten’s Folk Song arrange- ments: it must be said not all with perfect clarity of diction. But this was another recital to be remembered long.
On the Sunday, back in the Holywell Music Room, we met yet another out- standing musician, the ‘cellist Gemma Rosenfeld. This recital commemorat- ed her winning of the Pierre Fournier Award in 2007. Her pianist was Ashley Wass, remembered for his performance of the monstrous Frank Bridge Sonata at last year’s May Music. Although only recently completing her studies at the Royal Northern College of Music, win- ning the Gold Medal, Rosenfeld plays with exceptional fluency and maturity on a beautiful instrument; the resulting sound is impressive. In an intelligently designed programme she bracketed a tone poem, Prospero’s Isle (2006) by the contemporary composer James Francis Brown between two sets of vari- ations, Beethoven’s on Handel, ‘See the Conqu’ring Hero Comes’ and Martinu˚ on a theme by Rossini. Although written a hundred and fifty years apart these are surprisingly similar in construction and spirit and were performed with appro- priate humorous interchange between ‘cello and piano. Prospero’s Isle is a work of considerable substance, appealingly played. It evokes perfectly the isle ‘full of noises, sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not’. There followed a convincing performance of Britten’s Sonata No 3 for solo ‘cello. The recital ended with a rip-roaring account of the second sonata of Mendelssohn in which allegro assai vivace and molto allegro e vivace of the outer movements were, as is customary but I believe wrongly, inter- preted as as fast as possible. On this evi- dence, Rosenfeld has exceptional talent. I shall look out for an opportunity to hear her musicianship tested against the great elusive masterpieces: the Bach Suites, the late Beethoven Sonatas, César Franck, Schubert’s Arpeggione.
The final concert was a return visit of the renowned ensemble The Fibonacci Sequence, notable last year for the flau- tist Ileana Ruhemann. It was led on this occasion by Jack Liebeck. They opened with an eccentric arrangement of Till Eulenspiegel for horn, clarinet, bassoon, violin and double bass. There followed a quartet for solo bassoon and string trio by Weber, played with deadpan humour appropriate to both composer and instru- ment by Richard Skinner. The world pre- mier of Sinew for horn, clarinet, piano and strings was described by the compos- er Graham Fitkin as ‘monophony’ in con- trast to polyphony; it was an impressive work to which the performers had clearly dedicated much effort. It came over as a melodic line constantly interrupted by a pair of percussive chords with passages of haunting sonority for horn, clarinet and double bass. We would welcome an opportunity to hear it again. The concert and Festival ended with the rare and much appreciated chance to hear a live perform- ance of the Schubert Octet.
Oxford May Music is itself a true mon- tage, giving an overview not only of cham- ber music but also, in the lectures, a wide range of culture both artistic and scien- tific – a brilliantly conceived and executed programme. Almost the entire credit for this is due to Liebeck as artistic director to whom credit is due also the atmosphere of informal friendliness that gives this Festival its characteristic flavour. I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend the whole event. I hope readers will note its existence and help to fill the seats in future years.
2008
May-time
Oxford May Music: Holywell Music Room, 30 April – 5 May 2008.
Jack Liebeck is a young violinist whose career is progressing by leaps and bounds. He is now following in the footsteps of Priya Mitchell of the Oxford Chamber Music Festival, Sholto Kynoch of Oxford Lieder, both now well established, and Sara Johnsson of the Oxford Opera Company in combining his musical talents with those of impresario in the role of Artistic Director of musical events in Oxford. It was a courageous, if not foolhardy, initiative to try to break into our overcrowded chamber music scene with Oxford May Music but such is the pool of musical talent and of potential audiences (albeit at least a generation older) that the gamble was worthwhile. Every event attracted a respectable attendance, if not the full houses merited by the quality of most of the performances.
Oxford May Music is co-organised by physicist Brian Foster (Balliol). It had its genesis in 2005, World Year of Physics, marking the centenary of Einstein’s major discoveries. This was celebrated by the world tour of a lecture on Einstein and the present knowledge of physics by Foster, interspersed by some of Einstein’s favourite music played by Liebeck (Reaching Out, OM 0th week Hilary Term, 2006). The spirit of a shared love of science and the arts imbues this festival with its special character, with an eclectic programme of six recitals of chamber music, four lectures and a public debate on science funding. This last was jointly organised with the Oxford University Physics Society. Unfortunately it was not advertised in the leaflet for May Music so I missed it. I attended four concerts, missing Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata in the Sheldonian and the Elias String Quartet. I attended two lectures, missing Einstein’s Universe updating the Foster Liebeck Einstein Year double act and Florian Leonhard on Great Stringed Instruments, preferring an earlier-booked Rewley House Study Day on JS Bach’s Art of Fugue and Musical Offering.
The opening concert was a piano recital by the Australian Piers Lane. As a display of nineteenth century romantic pianism this was sensational; it was the highlight not only of the May Music but of the year. I have not heard playing like it in the Holywell Music Room since Charles Rosen played Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and Hammerklavier Sonata while George Eastman Visiting Professor in 1987-1988. The highlight of the concert was d’Albert’s arrangement of Bach’s Passacaglia in C Minor, a fiendish arrangement in the spirit of but possibly surpassing the better-known ‘Bach-Busoni’ Chaconne. It was played with an inexorable driving-force, never losing track of the ground among all the intricacies of the part writing. This was followed by two Chopin Nocturnes, played perhaps a trifle heavily, but then a superb interpretation of that composer’s second Sonata. Lane’s playing of Chopin is marked by extreme clarity and precision, reflecting (as he pointed out) the composer’s respect for JS Bach. It reminded very much of the playing of the great Lithuanian born Polish interpreter Vlado Perlemuter: analytical rather than emotional, not to everyone’s taste but powerful and imaginative. The programme continued with Brahms and Schumann and ended with Edward German’s arrangement for solo piano of the latter’s piano concerto played as an encore – another real treat.
A concert given by The Fibonacci Sequence featured, among other gems, the outstandingly musical flautist Ileana Ruhemann who played in various combinations Haydn (one of his rather discursive trios for piano, flute and cello), Saint-Saens, Mozart and the modern composers Robert Fokkens (a work for alto flute and cello) and Carl Vine (a ‘café concertino’ sextet). Ruheman led a beautiful performance of the Mozart Flute Quartet with perfect balance between flute and strings. The other outstanding item on the programme was Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello played by Liebeck and Malcolm Bradbury (a late stand in), a piece requiring not only virtuoso playing but perfect coordination. It was stunning!
The highpoint of a recital by Adrian Brendel (cello) with pianist Charles Owen was a real old-fashioned romantic interpretation of Bach’s G Minor Sonata for Viola da Gamba in the spirit of d’Albert’s arrangement in the opening concert. The programme also included Boccherini and Janáček and concluded with the Grieg Sonata. This last was given a full-blooded Sturm und Drang, German romantic treatment, completely insensitive to the subtle Nordic overtones characteristic of the composer to which Brendel had referred in his introduction - very disappointing.
The closing concert was given by Richard Harrison (cello), Liebeck, Simon Rowland-Jones (viola) and Ashley Wass (piano). Wass played the mammoth Piano Sonata by Frank Bridge, a marathon performance. This work was new to me and the first impression could not but remind of Macbeth’s words ‘Full of sound and fury.......’. This is perhaps unfair – one could detect passages of delicacy buried beneath all the notes. Maybe it repays study. The programme contained two duos for violin and viola the first, by Mozart, arranged for violin and cello, the second, three ‘madrigals’ by Martinú. Both were impeccable performances; Liebeck seems to have a natural affinity with the duo form.
May Music ended with Brahms’ G minor Piano Quartet. For me, this is the greatest of piano quartets and the greatest of Brahms’ chamber works for its thematic richness and subtleties of form, always revealing new secrets. This was not the tidiest performance I have heard: the haunting second movement requires much greater precision and the ensemble appeared almost to come apart at one point in the first. The final Rondo alla Zingarese was played with gusto but did not efface the memory of the extraordinary exhilarating performance driven by Ivry Gitlis with Prussia Cove students heard some years ago.
Of the two lectures I attended, the first was given by James Atlee about his book Isolarion in which he explores East Oxford’s Cowley Road as a microcosm of the multi-cultural world. Unfortunately he chose to talk about his creative process rather than the content of the book, making much of the Swedish origin of the title but apparently remaining unaware that the final ‘n’ is the Swedish definite article. The second lecture (in association with Science Oxford) given by Armand Leroi and entitled Song of Songs, was concerned with the taxonomy of primitive song. It described a research project to find correlations in a 5189 data set of vocal sounds collected around the world to indicate a common origin. We were invited to express astonishment at the similarities of sound emanating from such disparate groups as pygmies, Inuits and Hebrideans and to deduce that this common origin must pre-date language, rather than being a physiological response to a particular physical activity. Classification must concern itself with differences as much as with similarities; we were given no instances of the former.
Liebeck and Foster are to be congratulated on devising the programme for this new cultural format. Oxford May Music will return from 29 April to 4 May next year. May I suggest the by-line A Spring Celebration of Music, Art and Science?
2005
Einstein Year
2005 was designated the World Year of Physics in commemoration of the centenary of Einstein's annus mirabilis, the year of his great scientific advances, including the Special Theory of Relativity, with the aim of bringing the excitement of physics to the public and to inspire a new generation of scientists. The lecture entitled 'Superstrings' by Brian Foster, with musical interludes played by Jack Liebeck, (delivered in an unheated Holywell Music Room) was the last of some thirty performances given by this duo around the world as their contribution to Einstein Year, 2005. The lecture, devised for schools and the general public but not without moments of illumination for those with a scientific background, covered the history of the century of scientific discovery in physics, transmitting not only the sequence of discovery but also the excitement and enthusiasm of those engaged in it. From Einstein's initial concept of Special Relativity, the lecture led us through the development of quantum theory and particle physics (leading to the current quark, lepton, neutrino picture) to the realisation of the basic incompatability of general relativity and quantum theory and current attempts to resolve the matter with the eponymous superstrings in eleven dimensions. The parts of the lecture were divided by movements from Bach's music for solo violin, emphasising Einstein's love of the instrument, and concluded with a duet for two violins by Boccherini, in which the lecturer proved to be no mean violinist himself.
The evening gala concert, celebrating the World Year of Physics, was given by Liebeck in partnership with the pianist Stephen de Pledge. They formed a remarkable duo. Liebeck plays a 1785 Guadagnini violin, which has a very unusual timbre - more that of a viola. Although only four years younger than the Mozart sonata which opened the programme, it was ideally suited to the major work of the recital, Brahms' G major Sonata. (It is recorded that Einstein struggled with this while still at school.) This is one of the most elusive works of the violin and piano repertoire. Its ambivalence is contained in the tempo markings vivace ma non troppo (my underlining) and allegro molto moderato of the first and last movements. To many players, the sonata is calm and contemplative in mood throughout, with the last movement allegro molto-moderato. It will, however, sustain a more vigorous and extrovert interpretation, such as it received here, ending allegro-molto moderato. The programme continued with Five Madrigal Stanzas by Martinö, dedicated to, and first performed, by Einstein; it concluded with a persuasive account of the rarely performed Sonata in F major by Dvoé«k.
All in all the day's entertainment was a splendid example of a Grand Unification of the Two Cultures!