By Hugh Fraser
Special to brottmusic.com
Burlington -Edward Elgar was nothing if not a English Victorian gentleman. After all he arose Sir Edward as soon as the royal sword of Edward VII dubbed him on each shoulder. His Land of Hope and Glory shores up The Sceptred Isle's fading past and even more fading future as it is leather-lunged into the English mist at every Promenade Concert. And yet at least half his soul and its musical essence was German.
Mendlessohn, Schumann (particularly) but even Brahms and Wagner - enemies to each other but both colleagues as far as Elgar was concerned - were his musical brothers more than any Englishman.
What would happen to this consummate composer's heart and soul when Queen Victoria's grandchildren took their respective subjects by the scruff of their innocent necks and flung them at each others throats in a bloodbath so appalling it was completely unimaginable until it actually happened?
All you need to do is listen to Elgar's Cello Concerto to find out.
Begun in the summer of 1918 as the last drops of blood from the Great War were wrung out onto Flanders' fields it is bewildered, heartbroken agony recited in the language of music.
It was the major work and finale of the first concert of the Boris Brott Music Festival of 2010 and took place last Wednesday evening in St. Christopher's Anglican Church, Burlington.
Where the brilliant young cellist Denise Djokic - she is 20 years old for heaven's sake - found the maturity to so stunningly render this masterpiece, I'll never know. But she unwound the long downward spiraling laments with such tenderness and understanding and soared to the despairing heavens for answers that never came with such utter conviction that it was soon apparent that we were in the presence of someone who understood instinctively what every note of the music meant.
Is there hope in this music? No. There is bravery, even valor but the music is too truthful to give false hope and Djokic too masterful to mispeak. Is it beautiful? Yes. Sublimely so. The man who gave the cello one of its top 10 hits, the Nimrod Variation from the Enigma, can ravish us even as everything he believed in and lived for lies torn to bloody shreds on the battlefield.
Anxiety about technical questions simply faded away as irrelevant.
Djokic was flawless as the music poured out of her and as Brott wrapped this truly magnificent edition of his National Academy Orchestra about her seemingly fragile shoulders.
The piece that should, by concert convention, have ended the evening, Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 in C major ended the first half instead.
Brott was quite right to flout convention and flip the order as it would have made a jarring follower to the Elgar.
Being Beethoven's First Symphony, it naturally shows the most influence of his teacher Old Pappa Haydn. And even though it floats at times with the elegant grace of a courtly dance, you know from the first 12 bars Beethoven is never going to just ram out symphonies like Haydn, who scattered 108 of the things about the place.
Even in this maiden voyage it is plain it just isn't that easy for Beethoven, who crawled, clawed and struggled his way to just nine. Music for him had to be more than just music. It had to mean more, be more, signify more
What this performance really proved was that this year's National Academy Orchestra is one heck of a band. Forget clean, crisp, clear and capable, that's just the beginning, although it was enough to take the breath away at times. They are - in an astonishingly short time - just two rehearsals - becoming a very musical instrument and Brott is revelling in it.
Revelling in his brilliant young musicians, revelling in the gorgeous music and revelling in his own mastery of the whole situation. It is lovely to see and beautiful to listen to. And it is, (this must be kept between us as our little secret lest it spoil the dignity and decorum of the "classical concert") so much darned FUN.
The clean, crisp, clear and capable also just scratches the surface with apprentice conductor Samuel Tak-Ho Tam. He set the mature, dark, profoundly passionate mature Beethoven amongst us with the concert's opening work the Leonore Overture No. 3 with complete understanding and profound musicality. In fact, I think everyone on stage that night knew what every note of the music meant. How often does that happen?