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Canada Grieg, Beach, Mozart: Vancouver Symphony Orchestra / Henning Kraggerud (violin/director). Chan Centre, Vancouver, 8.1.2023. (GN)
Grieg (arr. Simen Lund) – Violin Sonata No.3 in C minor Op.45
Beach (arr. Trotman) – Romance for Violin, Harp & Orchestra Op.23
Mozart – Symphony No.29 in A significant Ok.201
In latest years, Norwegian violinist Henning Kraggerud has proven an ideal fondness for play/direct concert events that function string orchestra preparations of well-known violin and chamber items. This provides any orchestra he encounters a way of problem: not solely does the ensemble should accommodate the format, however they’ve to realize familiarity with orchestral transcriptions not beforehand seen. Yet Kraggerud at all times appears to elicit impressed outcomes from an orchestra, fairly in line with the effervescence and magic in his personal taking part in.
On his earlier go to to Vancouver, we heard Bernt Simen Lund’s orchestration of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. This time, it was Simen Lund’s association of Grieg’s standard Violin Sonata No.3 and an orchestral model of Amy Beach’s Romance for Violin and Piano Op.23. There was a pleasant sense of discovery right here, and even the extra acquainted Mozart Symphony No.29 that ended the live performance provided a sense of experiment too.
The Grieg was a real success, attentively executed by the VSO and fairly thrilling in its sweep. One of the main challenges in orchestration is to not undo the pure movement within the unique model for violin and piano. This was achieved by a really tight integration of the solo violin and strings, making the work’s design extra within the spirit of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante (or, a lot later, Tippett’s Corelli Fantasia) somewhat than a violin concerto. Kraggerud properly broke the feel with Grieg’s tender expressive passages, such because the second topic of the opening motion and the opening of the Allegretto, giving them full due with out ever impeding the music’s progress.
It was the considered steadiness between tender and assertive that made this efficiency work, and it gave the sensation that Simen Lund was solely including color and dramatic pressure to the emotional content material of the unique. One may see the piece as quintessentially Grieg, with maybe the identical scale because the Holberg Suite or Lyric Suite, and a final motion (with its energetic ‘trolls’) which parallels the playful emotions in each of them. As one has come to anticipate, Kraggerud’s solo contribution was superbly etched and balanced, probing the inward depths within the lyrical moments with nice purity however totally incisive when the music’s turbulence got here to the fore.
This therapy differed from the violinist’s 2015 Naxos recording together with his Tromsø Chamber Orchestra, the place he performed all three of Grieg’s violin sonatas below the title ‘concertos’ with the identical orchestral association. The interpretative effort there was within the different route: to open up expanded house to present the soloist a typical nineteenth-century expressive palette. But this technique tended to disperse focus and coherence, and within the third sonata particularly, the slower speeds moved the expression outdoors Grieg, maybe within the route of the Bruch or Glazunov concertos. In the present model, all the things was quicker and tighter, and this contains the gradual motion the place the sooner speeds have been liable to sentimentalizing its pretty traces.
The association that opened the live performance was by Amy Beach (1867-1944), and it’s good to listen to extra of her. One of America’s best-known feminine musical pioneers and nearly fully self-taught, she has acquired recognition for nearly a half-century now, maybe courting from when pianist Mary Louise Boehm rediscovered and recorded her Piano Concerto (alongside along with her Piano Quintet) within the early Seventies. Her ‘Gaelic’ Symphony has a robust following, as more and more do her works for violin and piano, the crowning glory being her Violin Sonata Op.34 (1896). The shorter Op.23 Romance dates from three years earlier and is a touching, private composition with robust emotional radiance. While a few of its themes would possibly initially seem sentimental, the piece is developed with such pure ease and fluency that one can simply fall for it. In the orchestral association, a harp is added to reinforce color.
I used to be, sadly, much less taken by the orchestration. While the duo model succeeds by conveying an intimacy of expression, the opulence of the orchestral model forces the violinist’s strategy to be extra public. As a consequence, the numerous craving phrases appeared to ask a considerably overwrought and over-sweet projection, a posture that’s troublesome to maintain over the size of the piece. Perhaps the VSO was accountable to some extent: their taking part in was on the heavy aspect, and the underside strings typically appeared diffuse. Lighter and clear string textures and a refined sense of dynamics are wanted. The harp additionally had issue slicing by this texture, although amends have been made when Kraggerud and Alyssa Katahara, the VSO’s new harpist, received collectively for a scrumptious little duo on the finish of the primary half of the live performance.
The closing Mozart Symphony was an fascinating experiment too, using interval scale (about 20 strings with wind band) however trendy devices. There are a plethora of shades to what one can imply by ‘authentic’ Mozart as of late. According to the violinist, this one considers a small gathering of virtuoso gamers of Mozart’s time doing the symphony with a robust penchant to search out each ardour and ‘dance’ within the music. As in contrast with the extra fluid and sunnier conventional performances (pretty as they’re), this one actually had a spiky, darker hue and better dramatic projection.
The first motion of the symphony was particularly fascinating: after the mild opening, all the following tuttis had the depth that one finds within the composer’s darkish Symphony in G minor No.25. The strategy went surprisingly nicely, giving a way of a battle between daylight and a threatening darkness not normally current in additional swish accounts, and linking the 2 symphonies in a method I had not beforehand acknowledged. Nonetheless, the 2 center actions appeared unsettled. The Andante began from a spikier presentation than regular however was not sustained nicely, forcing a variety of unmarked tempo will increase. The Minuet, with its dotted rhythms and staccato phrases, match completely with the target of eliciting sharp dance accents, however the integration with the Trio didn’t appear fluent sufficient.
The finale was the spotlight, nearly volcanic in its push, velocity and quantity, and seeming to reveal the triumph of unbridled pleasure over the undercurrents uncovered within the opening motion. While the drama and dimension of one of these interpretation will clearly divide opinion, it does have a real grounding and was fairly revealing. I feel the orchestra actually loved taking part in the symphony with out its conventional shackles on although this rendering was not a fully-finished product.
The outing was a really pleasurable journey all advised, and positively a pleasant addition to the Kraggerud model of live performance presentation – a subject he has thought lengthy and laborious about over time.
Geoffrey Newman
Previously revealed in a barely totally different kind on www.vanclassicalmusic.com