Three-evening festival pushes the boundaries of chamber music
Vancouver’s regular cornucopia of chamber music is a remarkable part of our classical scene, but this October we’ve got some special events that demonstrate both the significance and diversity of today ’s chamber music possibilities.
In October, the Vancouver Recital Society hosts a glamorous allstar sextet performing works by Tchaikovsky, Strauss, and Schoenberg; and Vancouver New Music brokers a whole string quartet weekend featuring cutting-edge chamber music.
Vancouver’s fascination with chamber music goes way back: while doing some research this summer, I came across what may well be the first local string quartet performance, in 1911, at the long vanished Pender Hall, which once graced the corner of Pender and Howe streets.
Seventy years ago, the establishment of Friends of Chamber Music made us a place where all the world’s greatest chamber ensembles perform on a regular basis, including the Beaux Arts Trio and the Amadeus and Berg string quartets, to drop just a few stellar names.
Grassroots chamber organizations, like Vetta Chamber Music, have been added to the mix, and recently the VSO has added its own chamber component to the concert year. Committed listeners
have a rich set of options yearround.
Specials are another matter. Given our high-quality regular diet they have to be very special indeed to get their share of the limelight.
At Vancouver New Music, Georgio Magnanensi has put together something unique with Quartetti: A Festival of String Quartets, a three-evening festival of new music featuring seven string quartets, domestic — like Vancouver’s own Black Dog String Quartet — and imported.
The attention grabber for the mini-festival is a visitation by Raven Chacon, who gives Vancouver a taste of his Native American Composer Apprentice Project. Chacon does a workshop in advance of the festival, where local Indigenous kids create pieces for string quartet to be aired during the festival. The roster of seven ensembles means lots of diversity in playing styles as well as repertoire; a particular draw is the inclusion of two Italian ensembles. Quartetto Maurice is on the docket Oct. 19 playing Vancouver premieres of three works by contemporary Italian composers, and Quartetto Nous does the same on the wrapup concert Oct. 20.
Home base for the event is the Annex, but there is a run-out: an after-concert session at Deep Blue (255 East Second Ave.). The idea is to let festival musicians and local electronic artists mix and create remixes and improv for strings and electronics.
The Vancouver Recital Society has its own chamber music spectacular in the more conventional space of the Chan Centre: a performance by the Jerusalem String Quartet and friends.
The Jerusalem has enjoyed a productive history with the VRS, solidified by their hyper-intense performance of all 15 Shostakovich string quartets a decade ago in the Chan Centre’s intimate Telus Studio theatre.
They’re in the big Chan Shun Hall this time, and you may have heard of the two friends they’re playing with: the former power couple of our national capital, cellist Amanda Forsyth and violin/ violist Pinchas Zukerman.
The string sextet repertoire is bigger than many realize, but the choices for the matinee are surefire hits: Strauss’ prelude to the opera Capriccio is a perfect starter, and string players love the tuneful extravagance of Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir of Florence, arguably his most popular chamber work.
Then there’s Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night. “Keep Calm and Enjoy a Masterwork” might well be the slogan. Yes, Schoenberg does have a reputation as a composer mainstream audiences love to hate. But not his early masterpiece.
The 1899 single-movement sextet is as lush as Tchaikovsky, but with the emotional intensity of Mahler. And hearing it as Schoenberg intended, performed by a chamber group whose every player could be a soloist, is about as special as a special gets.