United Kingdom Gibbons, Aviss, Bridge: Peter Mallinson (viola), Matthias Wiesner (viola). St Bride’s, London, 10.2.2023. (CS)
Orlando Gibbons – Two Fantasias
Peter Aviss – Sonata for 2 violas
Frank Bridge – Lament & Caprice
The repertoire of works for 2 violas is just not in depth. But, with willpower, resourcefulness and creativeness, Peter Mallinson and Matthias Wiesner have got down to do one thing about that. The two members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra have been giving live shows collectively as a Viola Duo since 2013, working too with different musicians to discover repertoire for various mixtures of devices that brings the two-viola sound to the fore. They’ve recorded three CDs on the Meridian Records label, the newest of which, Two Violas Now, launched earlier this 12 months, provides an exploration of 4 modern works to their earlier critiques of 20th-century works and preparations by the good Russian violist, Vadim Borisovsky, Music for Two Violas, and the repertoire of transcriptions made by Lionel Tertis and Borisovsky, A Tale of Two Violas.
This lunchtime live performance at St Bride’s, Fleet Street offered an intriguing programme which positioned the early Baroque Fantasias of Orlando Gibbons alongside works from the early 20th and 21st centuries. What was shocking was how coherent the mixture of this trio of works proved, the modality of Gibbons evoking a shocking modernity which discovered fuller voice within the items by Frank Bridge and Peter Aviss, all of the whereas the more moderen compositions echoed each the haunting magnificence and the close-knit intricacies of Gibbons’ lucid textures.
Mallinson’s and Wiesner’s particular person tones blended warmly within the two Fantasias. Enriched by sparing however considered vibrato, the duo’s sonorous however genteel sound blossomed from quiet beginnings to fill St Bride’s with mellifluous melodies which unfolded with a positive sense of course. Gibbons’s selection appeared infinite and totally logical as motifs developed sequentially. Vigour was garnered by small operating figures which interplayed freely; sections of homophony performed with broad, agency strokes introduced expansiveness and power. In the second of the Fantasias, small scalic figures shaped a fertile dialog, later integrating an intervallic fall and rise which generated even higher dynamism because the music moved purposefully in the direction of its last level of completion – a delicate, mild main third – and relaxation. The duo revealed the summary fantastic thing about Gibbons’s music, but in addition its deep and really human emotion.
Peter Aviss’s Sonata for 2 violas was commissioned by Mallinson and Wiesner and composed in 2021. Anyone acquainted with Aviss’s music would have recognised instantly the skittish rhythms that characterise the opening of the primary motion, Allegretto, the syncopations and metrical mischief given an ethereal playfulness by the duo’s mild lifting of the bow. Quirky wriggling motifs, sul ponticello tensions and vibrant pizzicato gave solution to a extra mysterious central part through which lyrical explorations noticed the 2 devices diverge in register making a meditative high quality, sustained notes fading into stillness. But, the rhythmic counterpoint was not allowed to relaxation for lengthy, and the intertwining voices have been quickly up and dancing as soon as extra.
The central Grave had an elegiac tenderness – echoes of the ‘English’ spirit of Rubbra, Finzi and Ireland at instances, I felt – the violas’ low strings heat however restrained. Here, fairly than interlacing knottily, the 2 devices cast complementary paths, Wiesner’s lyrical melody set in opposition to Mallinson’s rising, intensifying double-stops, then the roles reversing, the music subsiding into quietude. As within the Fantasias we had simply heard, small stepwise motifs conjured raise and power, resulting in higher expansiveness, although the music by no means fairly launched its passions, retaining as an alternative an introspective depth.
In the ultimate Allegro moderato, the 2 violas chased one another friskily in buoyant overlapping conversations which danced animatedly. Frequent transitions between moods have been successfully negotiated, cheeky dissonances enhancing the high-spirited skirmishes, down-bows digging in on the heel to provide a bracing chunk, firmly centred double-stops creating breadth. The work closed with a warm-hearted and theatrical flourish. A viola participant himself, Aviss’s Sonata offers life to the various voices of the viola, and Mallinson and Wiesner made these voices their very own in persuasive and satisfying vogue.
Frank Bridge was, like his pupil Benjamin Britten, a violist, and he composed his Lament & Caprice for himself and Tertis to carry out at a live performance on 18th March 1912. The manuscript didn’t survive although Paul Hindmarsh was in a position to reconstruct the Lament from an almost full sketch within the archives of the Royal College of Music in London. More lately, violist Simon Rowland-Jones has created a performing model of the Caprice, elaborating the composer’s fairly in depth sketches; Mallinson and Wiesner first carried out it in 2018.
Although the Lament begins with a ruminative solo for single viola, performed with pretty sensitivity by Wiesner, it’s the multi-layered textures that draw the listener into their wealthy embrace. The in depth double-stopping was expressively performed, the harmonic shadows soulful and poignant. The Caprice jigged teasingly, round motifs chasing their very own tail, ostinati turning up the temperature, textures ever denser till the entanglements eased themselves right into a joyful launch.
Claire Seymour