Van Bloss/London Octave - Handel, Mozart, and Bach, 27 May 2013

St Martin in the Fields

Handel – Solomon: ‘Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’

Mozart – Piano Concerto no.13 in C major, KV 415
Bach – Piano Concerto no.7 in G minor, BWV 1058
Mozart – Adagio and Fugue in C minor, KV 546
Mozart – Serenade in G minor, KV 525, ‘Eine kleine Nachtmusik’

Nick van Bloss (piano)

London Octave

Andrew Watkinson (director)

 

 

The LSO’s free Berlioz concert in Trafalgar Square coincided awkwardly with the first half of this concert at St Martin in the Fields; one’s heart went out to the performers. In the circumstances, a desire to rush through The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba was not entirely unforgivable; once one’s ears adjusted to the very quick tempo, there was cultivated playing to be heard from the members of London Octave, twelve-strong, despite the name. Intonation was more of a problem during parts of Mozart’s neglected C major Piano Concerto, KV 415. (It doubtless suffers from comparisons with two brothers in the same key.) Fortunately, Nick van Bloss offered compensation with the piano part. True majesty was imparted to the first movement, despite the lack of trumpets and drums (and woodwind). A more yielding approach announced itself during each movement’s cadenza. The slow movement in particular offered ample evidence of the pianist’s skill in spinning a line; as long as it lasted, it was sung, with not a hint of the choppiness that bedevils so much contemporary Mozart performance. A fine balance, moreover, was struck between the ‘hunting’ high spirits – never, of course, unalloyed in Mozart – and the minor mode Adagio material in the finale. Whilst it would hardly be plausible to claim that the other orchestral instruments were not missed, they were missed less than one might have expected.

 

Van Bloss was on better form still in Bach’s G minor Piano Concerto; the orchestra too seemed more at ease, with few tuning problems this time around. This was, especially so far as the piano was concerned, a muscular performance, eager to communicate Bach’s harmonic rhythm, and very successful in doing so. One hears the music very differently from the original violin version (up a semitone), not least because of the piano’s left-hand part, which here helped greatly in generating and sustaining impetus in performance. The slow movement benefited from judicious application of left-hand octaves, Busoni’s example followed in the best spirit. Onward tread was not impaired but rather incited by the gravitas engendered. The joy of the dance was fully experienced in the finale, though without any of that hard-driven quality so fashionable in so-called ‘authentic’ performances.

 

Mozart’s great C minor Adagio and Fugue offered an apt pendant, speaking as it does of Mozart’s absorption in the contrapuntal example of Bach and Handel – and in the chromaticism of the former. It is certainly one of those works in which Mozart stands mid-way between Bach and Schoenberg, and that is for the most part how it felt here, though there were again certain aggravations in terms of tuning, especially during the fugue. Eine kleine Nachtmusik certainly seemed to appeal to elements of a somewhat restless audience, and much of the playing could be enjoyed, though it takes a more inspired rendition – most likely with a conductor – to elevate this all-too-familiar music to the stature it deserves. Still, with the exception of a fast minuet – surely too fast for ‘Allegretto’ – tempi were judiciously chosen, and the music progressed without fussy interruption.

Nick van Bloss - Bach, Goldberg Variations, 22 March 2013

Ciné lumière, Institut français

Goldberg Variations, BWV 988

Nick van Bloss (piano)

 

 

An exciting occasion in many respects, not only in terms of this concert itself, but also the weekend it opened, ‘It’s all about Piano!’ subtitled, ‘a festival celebrating all forms of piano,’ hosted by the Institut français du Royaume-Uni in South Kensington. There is an embarrassment of riches, including recitals by Imogen Cooper (Schubert) and Cyprien Katsaris, a duo recital from Katya Apekisheva and Charles Owen (including the four-hands version of The Rite of Spring), a ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ series (just one of which, performed by Antoine Alerini, offers Maurice Ohana, Félix Ibarrondo, Stockhausen, and Jonathan Harvey), and film (including the world premiere showing of a filmed version of Poulenc’s La Voix humaine from Felicity Lott and Graham Johnson). For further details, please click here. It is certainly to be hoped that so enterprising a festival will become a regular feature of London’s musical life; I only wish that I had been able to attend more events myself.

 

Nick van Bloss offered a scintillating account of one of the very peaks of the piano literature, the fourth part of Bach’s Clavier-Übung, as we never call it, or the Aria with diverse variations, as we equally seldom call it, commonly known as the Goldberg Variations.  Composed ‘to refresh ... [the] spirits’ of ‘music lovers’, it certainly did so here. Indeed, I had to marvel that something like an hour and a quarter had passed, for I could happily have listened to work – and performance – immediately again. There will always be a multitude of ways in which this work may be performed, even if we leave aside – with relief – the non-question concerning the instrument. Sir Thomas Beecham's celebrated description made the harpsichord sound more interesting than it is; those of us without antiquarian fetishes welcome the modern piano with open arms and ears. There was certainly no question that van Bloss was willing to exploit the modern instrument to the full, Bach's two manual 'effects' transferring with added brilliance and bravura to the Steinway. Not that anything was merely ‘pianistic’ for its own sake; indeed, the overriding impression was, however ideologically loaded these terms may be, was of a masterpiece of ‘absolute music’. There was not the slightest temptation to read anything programmatic into work or performance; the canvas of Bach’s musical imagination was more than enough for us to grapple with. For who would ever dare to think that he had somehow finally ‘understood’ this work in its entirety? At best one comes a little closer, ‘at best’ requiring an excellent performance such as this.

 

Van Bloss’s approach was not to adopt, still less to impose, a unifying æsthetic. Unity instead arose out of diversity, out of those ‘diverse variations’. Even when there were instances when I might have cavilled, for instance a couple of very ‘dry’, almost defiantly non-lingering, conclusions to particular variations, the point was immediately clear, and made fine retrospective sense in terms of preparation for the following variation. (I should probably add in this connection that, whilst the Ciné lumière undoubtedly offered an intimate performing space, its acoustic must also have presented a challenge, here skilfully surmounted.) Whilst tone was fuller, more piano-oriented, than anything one would be likely to hear in, say, Glenn Gould’s recordings, some variations enjoyed a more clipped and rhythmically strict performance, whereas others, not least Wanda Landowska’s ‘black pearl’, the 25^th, looked forward – or should that be back? – to the Romantic period that so adored and rejuvenated Bach’s music. Though the shift is not straightforwardly linear by any means, the general developmental impulse within the score toward greater complexity, if only in cumulative terms, registered clearly and convincingly. The Quodlibet was as limpid, and yet as contrapuntally meaningful, as what one would hear from Murray Perahia. Finally, the Aria da capo sounded just as it should, a return to the beginning, yet anything but. Bach’s material was transformed by the very act of performance as well as by his own extraordinary powers of musical transformation.