SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Dvořák Extravaganza I: Emerson String Quartet, Menahem Pressler (Piano)*, Koerner Hall, Toronto, 1.10.2009 (PPLL)

Dvořák: Cypresses,Part III, Nos.7-12
Dvořák: String Quartet in C Major, Op.61
Dvořák: Piano Quintet in A Major, Op.81^* 

The Emerson String Quartet - Photo Courtesy of Mitch Jenkins

With over 123 years of history, the Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM) has long been a champion of classical music education in North America. RCM alumni include Glenn Gould, Teresa Stratas and Jon Vickers, and current faculty members include the piano duo James Anagnoson and Leslie Kinton, the principal clarinetist of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra Joaquin Valdepeñas, and the celebrated pianist, conductor and pedagogue Leon Fleisher, who recently delivered a one-night-only performance at the Roy Thomson Hall to great acclaim.

As the global community becomes increasingly aware of the need to nurture young people entering the arts, artistic and musical organizations in the city of Toronto have made great efforts to attract world-renowned artists for the benefit and enjoyment of Canadians. One of these organisations is the RCM which spearheaded a ‘Building National Dreams Campaign’ in the spring of 2004, and this campaign has changed the vision into a reality. On September 25^th 2009, came the inauguration of the new Michael and Sonja Koerner Concert Hall with a concert at the TELUS Centre for Performing Arts. Conceptualized by Florence Minz, Chair of the RCM Board of Directors, and Dr Peter Simon, president of the RCM, the Koerner Hall promises to make Toronto into an important centre for the arts.

In line with the Alice Tully Hall in New York, the Suntory Hall in Tokyo, or the Wigmore Hall in London, the Koerner Hall offers Canadian audiences an attractive concert venue without the need for long-distance travel. With a seating capacity of 1137, the acoustics and the visual experience of the Koerner Hall have been crafted to near perfection, thanks to the collaboration of Anne Minors Performance Consultants, architects of KPMB, and Sound Space Design from the UK. With close to $60 million invested, the Koerner Hall promises to be more than just the “new kid on the block,” as it will offer audiences an integrated experience of visual and technical flexibility that few recital halls can provide. The 2009-2010 concert season (here) has managed to attract some of world’s foremost performers. Thanks to the experience and skill of the Executive Director of Performing Arts, Mervon Mehta, this impressive programme will doubtless be just the first of many.

To start the season’s first chamber recital series, the Koerner Hall had invited the Emerson String Quartet and guest Menahem Pressler to present an evening of chamber works exclusively devoted to the Czech composer, Antonín Dvořák. The Emerson Quartet is currently led by founding member Eugene Drucker, who alternates in the first violin position with Philip Setzer. Viola player Lawrence Dutton and cellist David Finckel complete the quartet.

Opening with Dvořák’s Cypriše, a collection of what were originally18 songs, they played the latter half of the dozen Dvořák adapted for string quartet. Interestingly, both the violinists and violist presented these works standing, perhaps to facilitate the exchange of aural and visual cues. Together with Mr Finckel, seated with his cello, they brought out the tenderness, melancholy and nostalgia that are quintessential to this music.

In 1865, Dvořák wrote to his publisher Simrock describing these pieces as a “young boy in love.” This “young boy” was clearly himself, as the original song cycle expressed Dvořák’s deep affection for Josefina Čermáková, the composer’s piano student, and his anguish when the news of Josefina’s marriage to another man reached him. Philip Setzer alluded in his programme notes to Dvořák’s love for Josefina being so great that quotations from selected songs of the cycle had later appeared in the Cello Concerto Op.104. Examples of the deeply personal qualities evoked by Dvořák’s passion came abundantly clear, especially with the fourteenth song of the original cycle “In Deepest Forest Glade I Stand” (the eighth in the quartet arrangement), where the Emerson Quartetplayed with an intense longing in the true string quartet style. The fourth song “Thou Only Dear One, But For Thee” (ninth in the quartet arrangement) gave an opportunity to hear more of Mr Dutton on the viola and Mr Setzer on the second violin. The sixteenth of the cycle “There Stands an Ancient Crag” (tenth in the quartet arrangement) was performed with a drama which hinted at the gentle conclusion of the final two pieces - the seventeenth song “Nature Lies Peaceful In Slumber and Dreaming” and the eighteenth song “You Ask Why My Songs.” These last two excerpts provided an over-arching sense of joy, within which there was a feeling of serenity, qualities which brought the cycle to an impressive end.

The String Quartet in C, Op.61 from 1881 is an underrated work from Dvořák’s rich collection written for this medium. This Quartet was written during a time when Dvořák’s reputation as a composer was at its peak. Rather than being a composition purely consisting of nationalistic sentiments and folksy elements, the String Quartet also reflected the strong influences of Schubert and Beethoven, where the latter’s String Quartet Op.59 No.1 in particular made a major contribution to the structure of the Finale. In the middle movements, the Emerson Quartet played the Adagio as if they were four distinct voices - sensitively individual with each of their unique range of colours, while the Scherzo displayed ample masculinity and virtuosic strength to match the music’s demands. In the Finale (a stomping Czech dance in disguise), the grandfatherly, rich tone of Mr Finckel’s cello shone impressively under the spotlight. In the final moments of this movement, the four players weaved their parts together like colorful recitatives in unison.

Menahem Pressler - Photo Courtesy of Melvin Kaplan

Professor Menahem Pressler is certainly no stranger to Toronto audiences. It was not very long ago that the esteemed pianist and pedagogue delivered a recital and masterclass as part of the Toronto Summer Music Festival. Reunited with the Emerson Quartetas a special guest, Professor Pressler and his colleagues presented the second (in A+) of two Piano Quintets Opus 81. Overall, this performance combined not only clarity and technical precision, but to an audience familiar with their work there was an instantaneously recognizable blend of tonal depth and richness that superseded even their Grammy nominated “4D recording” from the mid-1990s (on Deutsche Grammophon, 439-868-2). This Piano Quintet in A combined folk-inspired melodies, mingled with an infectious dance rhythm, particularly in the second (Dumka) movement. From the opening Allegro in E-Flat, the musicians established a gentle approach that paralleled the progress of the modified sonata form, and the stark transition in each of the movements blended well in context, paving the way to the blazing ending in the key of A Major. What was memorable about this team of chamber musicians was their ability to make the music seem as if they, and the audience, had come fresh to it.

The evening would have been incomplete without an encore. The audience filled the Hall with their enthusiastic and warm applause. Professor Pressler announced the encore to be a work written by a composer who had had significant influence on Dvořák and this turned out to be the second movement, Andante, from Johannes Brahms’s Piano Quintet Op.34.

For those who missed this concert, there will be another chance to hear the Emerson Quartet when they return on May 5^th 2010 to Toronto in Part Two of their Dvořák chamber programme.

Patrick P.L. Lam