Four months after Piazzolla’s “Four Seasons of Buenos Aires” in Lanaudière, the tandem Kerson Leong, on the violin, and Nicolas Ellis at the head of Les Violons du Roy offered us the counterpart: the “Four American Seasons” by Philip Glass. Same musical quality, same exhilaration.
There are few patrons here below to finance discographic programs which are nevertheless “obvious” and which would carry high the musical flame of Quebec and Canada. This is how I Musici passed by Peteris Vasks’ Violin Concerto by Vadim Gluzman and Jean-Marie Zeitouni or that Les Violons du Roy and Stéphane Tétreault were unable to immortalize their hallucinating vision of Presence from the same Peteris Vasks.
Likewise, today, the immortalization of a Glass / Piazzolla coupling by Kerson Leong and Nicolas Ellis would be absolutely essential. First for logic. the 2nd Concerto for violin, strings and synthesizer by Philipp Glass, “Four American Seasons” was born in 2009 in exactly the same perspective as the so-called “Four Seasons of Buenos Aires” blend made from four works by Piazzolla.
Missing item
These “Four Seasons” by Piazzolla are not an idea by Piazzolla but a production (1996-1998) by Russian Leonid Desyatnikov for Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica. The aim was to create a thematic, non-baroque complement with a contemporary flavor to concert programs featuring the Four Seasons by Vivaldi. Glass’s approach in 2009 is exactly the same. It is therefore both artistic and skillfully mercantile.
In his very astute and consensual work (38 minutes: the timing, too, is perfect) Philip Glass – whose Violin Concerto No.1 (1987) is an authentic masterpiece – uses the same process as Peteris Vasks; instrumental soliloquies intersect sections with orchestra. The solo passages are however more rhetorical than nourished by emotional outpourings as in the Latvian.
The orchestra is composed of strings (like Vivaldi) augmented by a synthesizer. It is at this level that the Violons du Roy’s proposal at the Bourgie Hall fails completely. The synthesizer sound was indeterminate and inaudible, except on rare occasions (the passages strong accented at the end of the 1st movement for example). But all its necessary additional colourist contribution complementary to the strings (in the recording of the Chamber Orchestra of Bern at Naxos it is a kind of false electronic harpsichord giving a judicious neo-baroque tint) was evacuated.
On the other hand, the performance of Les Violons du Roy and Kerson Leong was infinitely more colorful, varied, contrasted and nourished than on the available recordings, the last movement, a rare moment of exaltation, striking the audience.
Arnold’s Walton
It was the same with the Sonata for string orchestra of “Walton” whose Final is by far the most successful movement. Nicolas Ellis in his preamble said he liked Lento a lot, a “deep” but long movement which, as far as we are concerned, makes one think of a creator-hamster who goes around in circles by not succeeding in giving birth to the Transfigured night by Schoenberg!
But the funniest point about this work that Nicolas Ellis presented as arranged by Walton from his Quartet n ° 2 at Neville Marriner’s request is to remember that this is the composition that we were recounting the genesis of here last week in our portrayal of Malcolm Arnold. Let us quote again Neville Marriner: “Willy [Walton] was really very lazy. One day, I wanted to convince him to write a work for strings for the Academy. I bought him an overpriced dinner at the Ritz and had to push on the champagne for him to finally agree to orchestrate his quartet. But the bouquet is that he outsourced the job to Malcolm Arnold, just signing the sheet music, and named him Sonata for strings ! “.
The work heard this week at Les Violons du Roy, adaptation of Quartet n ° 2 from Walton, so is Malcolm Arnold! Moreover the Malcolm Arnold Society in Great Britain, which propagated the article of To have to, confirmed the anecdote to us this week.
To open the concert, the musicians chose a poetic and evocative work by Laurence Jobidon, a 29-year-old Quebec composer, some bursts of accents recalling formulas used by Shostakovich in his quartets.