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Review: Quintessentially Russian

Tenor Andrew Goodwin
Canberra International Music Festival: Concert 13, “Silent Songs” and Concert 14, “The Sealed Angel”, at  Albert Hall, May 16, 2012

Reviewed by Clinton White

TWO contemporary Russian composers, two Australian premieres, but two very different pieces featured in concerts at the Albert Hall; which still looks beautiful without those acoustic-killing drapes that apparently are on their way back to cover up the elegant architecture of the magnificent windows.

To continue my whinge, there was trouble with the piano; the sustain pedal was squeaking.

Festival director, Christopher Latham, tried to rescue the problem with a can of lubricant.  Thinking the squeak was tamed, the concert began, but it resumed its melancholic owl-like call, which continued – and distracted – through the entire performance of “Silent Songs”.

Then, half way through “Silent Songs” the noisy air conditioning roared to life like a jet fighter, completely disrupting the mood.

Enough whingeing.  Back to the music.

For the first concert, “Silent Songs”, the hall was kept in near darkness, with only soft lighting falling on Marion Mahony Griffin’s averted eyes at the back of the main stage, while two groups of candles at the front of the very large temporary stage gently flickered, effectively reducing it to a size small enough to accommodate just the two artists and the piano.

The piece introduced, pianist Daniel de Borah and tenor Andrew Goodwin were welcomed warmly, but, in effect, they were little more than silhouettes, with most of the available light behind them.

It didn’t matter a jot, though.  In fact, it was perfect.

“Silent Songs”, by Valentin Silvestrov (b 1937) is written in the post-modern style.  In other words, back to the melodic and the tonal.  It’s a song cycle of 24 pieces, using mainly Russian poetry, but with a touch of English, too.

The name came because Silvestrov’s music was not allowed to be played in its day and the composition was intended to be played only in private.  The mood that was created at the Albert Hall, especially by the lighting, made it so.

The accompaniment is minimal – open, quiet, slow, with a theme centred on a gentle dotted rhythm.  At times the accompaniment was so quiet it was almost absent.  There were a couple of forceful chord-structured entries, but they soon gave way to the relative silence of the main theme.

The poems are beautiful, carrying every emotion from the joyous to the mystical, love to despair, life to death.

De Borah handled the accompaniment beautifully.  I still am perplexed by how he was able to get some of the notes sounding so softly they were barely audible.

Goodwin’s performance was magnificent.  His flawless control belied the extraordinary difficulty of the task.  He was able to evoke beautiful sensitivity for the music and the words and the moods created by the two.  His crystal clear tone effortlessly reached the heights and depths called for in the piece.

This was a concert of peace and serenity.  I was scared it would lull me to sleep, but the music – played and sung – hovered over us so tantalisingly, I was more scared I would miss something.  No doubt in the seven years the two artists spent studying in St Petersburg would have given them some valuable insight to the spirit of Russia.

The last poem in the cycle, by Vasily Zhukovsky,  sums it all up beautifully:

Those sweet companions, thanks to whom

Our time here can be called a life –

Say not, in sorrow, They are not,

But say in gratitude: They were.

The second concert featured a choral masterwork by “Russia’s living treasure”, Rodion Shchedrin, born in December 1932.

His work, “The Sealed Angel”, is as intriguing for its secrets – even deception – as it is for the music.  It’s really a Mass that celebrates the 1,000th anniversary of Russia’s conversion to Christianity, but is narrated as the story of “an icon whose beauty and power are so formidable that the authorities determined that it should be sealed up”.

Large forces were on stage for the performance, including flautist, Virginia Taylor and soloists tenor, Andrew Goodwin, heard in the previous performance, counter-tenor, Tobias Cole, treble, Gabriel Cole and mezzo, Lanneke Wallace-Wells.

The Canberra Festival Chorus was drawn from SCUNA, Llewellyn Choir, Canberra Choral Society and Oriana Chorale.

It was all conducted by director of The Song Company, Roland Peelman.  A member of the choir did a very fine job as narrator.  Sadly, he was not acknowledged at the end of the performance.

Virginia Taylor provided the only instrumental contribution.  It included some beautiful, almost mysterious, solo passages and, occasionally, some lovely accompaniment subtly integrated with the singing.

The choral work, though, largely was unaccompanied, after the style of Rachmaninoff’s “Vespers”.  The choir kept pitch quite well throughout with only some minor drift a couple of times.

At times the sopranos did not quite pitch to the higher notes initially, but Peelman pulled them up there discreetly.

The basses provided excellent foundation, finding and holding some wonderful, if impossibly low notes with confidence.  They certainly aroused thoughts of a Russian male choir.

The balance across the choir generally was superb, Peelman controlling tempi, volume, phrasing and flow expertly, only occasionally having to do some fine adjustments across the choir sections along the way.

“The Sealed Angel” was quintessentially Russian.  The melodies, moods and rhythms took us fairly and squarely into Russia’s very heart and soul, attracting a sustained standing ovation at the end.

I would have loved to hear the piece in a livelier acoustic, with Virginia Taylor’s flute soaring like an angel above the sustained voices.

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