Life and death and music
by Leonard Turnevicius
Special to the Hamilton Spectator
Who: Denise Djokic
What: Elgar Cello Concerto
With: Boris Brott and the National Academy Orchestra
When: Wednesday, June 16 at 7:30 p.m.
Where: St. Christopher's Anglican, 662 Guelph Line, Burlington
Cost: $30, senior $25, student $10
Call: 905-525-7664, ext. 16
FINIS R.I.P.
That's the kind of thing you'd expect to find on a tombstone in some ghost town graveyard.
But that's what Sir Edward Elgar jotted down against the opus number of his Cello Concerto on a works list he made toward the end of his life.
Composed in 1919, the Cello Concerto was Elgar's opus 85. Then 62 years old, Elgar would go on to live for another 14 years during which, however, he published little of real consequence. Some orchestral transcriptions of Bach, Handel and Chopin, a few choral works. Some theatre and brass band music, an aborted Third Symphony. With the Cello Concerto, Elgar knew full well that he'd reached the crest in his creative road.
Can something from that long and creative road be found in the Cello Concerto? At its premiere, Ernest Newman, music critic for London's The Observer perceptively wrote of the concerto as "the realization in tone of a fine spirit's lifelong wistful brooding upon the loveliness of earth."
The work opens brashly with the solo cello voicing a recitative that uncoils ever so softly into a gentle, unobtrusive tune taken up by the viola section. It's a harbinger of things to come in the concerto, and taken metaphorically, also in life.
"A man's attitude to Life" is how Elgar once described the concerto. But don't get the idea that this work is a downer. Nor does it spin its wheels in a rut. The opening movement is latched onto a second movement that frequently changes gears from slow to fast, and contains nervous musical material that distantly echoes his Introduction and Allegro from 1905. A brief, 60 bar Adagio serves as a lament prior to the final movement, which juxtaposes the robust with the contemplative, before ending rather abruptly.
On Wednesday, June 16, at 7:30 p.m. in St. Christopher's Anglican Church in Burlington, the Brott Music Festival opens its 2010 summer season with the Elgar Cello Concerto, Denise Djokic as soloist, accompanied by Boris Brott and his 45-member National Academy Orchestra. The Halifax- born, Boston-based Djokic will perform on her 1901 Romeo Antoniazzi cello.
Though unaware of Elgar's FINIS R.I.P. notation, Djokic is nonetheless well acquainted with the concerto's mood swings and inner workings, having taken its pulse numerous times since her teens.
"I feel like it comes full circle from a very sort of lamenting, very kind of sombre first movement to a very kind of joyful, hopeful second movement, then almost yearning, reminiscing third movement, very romantic, and then almost fatalistic last movement, " said Djokic over the phone from Halifax. "It's sort of a very dark ending, but there are moments of light that show themselves now and then. I guess you could say it's sort of like a lifetime, this piece, going over the course of a lifetime, or maybe somebody's experience."
Elgar's Cello Concerto will be experienced along with Beethoven's Leonore Overture no. 3 and Symphony no. 1 in C Major, which complete the bill. Tickets are $30, senior $25, student $10. Call 905-525-7664, ext. 16.
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Sunday at 3 p.m., Symphony Hamilton-Symphony on the Bay performs in St. Matthew's Anglican, 126 Plains Rd. E., Burlington. Sabatino Vacca and Arpad Josephson are the soloists in Mendelssohn's Concerto for Violin, Piano and Strings, while special guest Valerie Tryon performs Chopin's Andante spianato et Grand polonaise. Also works by Caplet and Mozart. Advance tickets: $25, student/senior $12, child $5. At the door: $28, senior/student $15, child $5. Call 905-526-6690.
Sunday at 7:30 p.m., Jack Mendelsohn's chamberWORKS! holds its Grand Finale concert in the Lincoln Alexander Centre, 150 King St. E., with works by Mozart, Prokofiev and Farrenc. Tickets are $30, $25, senior $25, $20, student $10. Call 905-308-3446.
Leonard Turnevicius writes on classical music for The Spectator