a shot of high culture

When I got back from eight weeks of vagabondism round Europe, with the only music my own rough guitar, and the bright radio  in overnight motorway toilets... Well, I felt half-feral so far as high culture was concerned. So when I visited family in Sussex I made the most of my opportunities.

Half delirious from lack of sleep, I just made it to my sister Annika's birthday lunch and her treat for me:  "Mozart's Court: Opera arias & Chamber music" at the Kino-Teatr in St Leonards-on-Sea (part of the new Hastings Early Music Festival). I'll never forget the rush of feeling, of something like relief, or return, when the Rautio Piano Trio struck up their arrangement of the overture to The Marriage of Figaro.

Then Kirsty Hopkins stepped up for "Un moto di gioia" (also from Figaro), and thus we were off, for an afternoon of trio movements interspersed with arias and extracts from Mozart's letters. According to the programme, these piano trios were written around the same time as the operas.

I find Mozart both familiar and enigmatic, like memories of childhood, like scenes I attended but am no nearer to understanding. It's no disrespect to this music, quite the opposite, to confess that at length, in one of the Kino's comfy chairs, I began to drift through lost times...


Overture to The Marriage of Figaro [YouTube].
"Un moto di gioia" (Susanna), from The Marriage of Figaro [YouTube].
"The soprano feels a moment of joy in her heart which tells her that happiness is on the way despite her fears and worry. Fate and love are not always tyrants, she says knowingly." (From the concert programme.)
Trio in C KV 548, Allegro [YouTube].
"Deh vieni non tardar" (Susanna), from The Marriage of Figaro [YouTube].
"Susanna is dressed up as the Countess and pretends to sing a rapturous love song to the Count but the aria is not 'fake' because she's really singing it to Figaro. The aria is full of sensual references to nature: ''Here, everything entices one to love's pleasures. Come, my dear, among these hidden plants. Come, come! I want to crown you with roses'."
Trio in G KV 564, Andante [YouTube].
"Batti, batti" (Zerlina), from Don Giovanni [YouTube]. "In Don Giovanni, after Zerlina is accused of cheating by her fiancé, Masetto, she sings her flirty aria 'Batti, batti o bel Masetto', teasing him by asking him to punish her, beat her, and pull her hair."
Trio in G KV 496, Allegretto [YouTube].
"Vedrai, carino" (Zerlina), from Don Giovanni [YouTube]. The flirty Zerlina promises to soothe her fiance's bruises after he's been beaten up. All he needs to do is put his hand on her beating heart, and he'll feel better (but is she really talking about her heart?!)."
Trio in B flat KV 502, Larghetto [YouTube].
"Ah! Chi mi dice mai" (Donna Elvira), from Don Giovanni [YouTube]. "Donna Elvira, one of Don Giovanni's conquests, gives voice to her anger at being abandoned and vows revenge - 'Ah, who will ever tell me where that scoundrel is for whom I loved and disgraced myself... I will rip his heart out!'."
Trio in B flat KV 502, Allegro [YouTube].
"Porgi, amor" (Countess), from The Marriage of Figaro [YouTube]. "In this heart-breaking aria at the beginning of Act 2 of The Marriage of Figaro, the noble Countess laments her husband's infidelities. 'O Love, give me some remedy for my sorrow, for my sighs! Either give me back my darling or at least let me die'."
Divertimento Trio in B flat KV254, Adagio [YouTube].
"Ch'io mi scordo di te", concert aria KV 505 [YouTube]. "In this passionate concert aria, the singer speaks directly to her lover 'You ask that I forget you? But how could I attempt to warm myself to another flame, to lavish my affections on another? Ah I should die of grief! Fear nothing, my beloved, my heart will always be yours'. She berates the stars for being so pitiless and invokes 'fair souls' to tell her whether her faithful heart can endure parting."



The Rautio Piano Trio (see them in action):

Jane Gordon, violin
Victoria Simonsen, cello
Jan Rautio, piano

with

Kirsty Hopkins, Soprano

*

A week later I was with Annika again, at a free coffee concert in the Baptist Church in Battle: the Hastings Philharmonic Wind Quintet (seasoned professionals all, but I seemed to understand that this was their first gig together as a quintet).

Sofia Castillo, flute
Olivia Stone, oboe
Laurie Truluck, horn
Ben Exell, bassoon
Boyan Ivanov, clarinet


We heard:

Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006), Sea Shanties  (1943). A standard of the WQ repertoire. [YouTube] Early composition, while Arnold was still playing trumpet in the LPO. A prolific composer for movies, depressive and alcoholic, his personal life became more turmoiled as time went by. His light music remains admired, also the twenty concertos (often for instruments that didn't have many), and the more personal symphonies.
J.S. Bach (1685-1750), Goldberg Variations. The aria and about seven of the variations, ingeniously arranged by bassoonist Ben Exell; this worked brilliantly.
Paul Taffanel (1844-1908), Wind Quintet.
(Taffanel, born in Bordeaux, was a celebrated flautist, conductor and instructor. This was the Quintette in G minor, written in 1876, a popular piece in the WQ world.) [YouTube]
Jacques Ibert (1890-1962), Trois pièces brèves. Composed in 1930. Ibert was a prolific, elegant and often light-hearted composer. His music was banned by the Vichy government, his presence in June 1940 on the Massilia, bound for Casablanca along with members of the deposed French government, being framed as "desertion".  They were also inclined to regard him as a Jewish composer -- apparently a mistake.  [YouTube]
Jim Parker (b. 1934 in Hartlepool), From "Mississippi Five". Parker graduated as an oboist. He's best known for his television work, but this is a concert piece for WQ.

*

This concert was part of an impressive weekend of concerts for the Battle Festival of Arts and Music. The evening before, I went with my Mum and Dad to hear Roman Kosyakov's piano recital at St Mary's Church. (An unexpectedly excellent acoustic!)

We heard:

J. S. Bach, Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor, BWV 903
(We didn't know the piece and it rather took us aback... Bach is full of surprises.) [YouTube]
Franz Schubert (1797-1828), Four Impromptus D 935. The impromptus, eight in all, were composed in 1827. This set, because it begins and ends in F# minor, has sometimes been considered a hidden sonata. I knew some of these quite well, but it's different when it's live. Not that we could see much, despite taking care to sit on the left; everyone else had the same idea. Of course, we were duly impressed by the hand-crossings in No. 1. [YouTube]
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), Preludes Op 23, nos 2,3,4, and 5. No. 5 is the famous G minor Prelude Alla marcia [YouTube].
Samuel Barber (1910-1981), Sonata Op 26. Written in 1949; my personal musical highlight of the whole week; Barber in formidable modernist mode. My word-rhapsodies afterwards (a foggy, clanking Hudson river) possibly didn't persuade Mum and Dad. [YouTube]

What we all agreed was that the 25-year-old Roman Kosyakov was a pretty superb musician. His youth made us notice how old the rest of us were.

Roman Kosyakov, piano (see him in action).

The YouTube links are here to allow me (or anyone else who's interested) to revisit the music I heard. I've mostly gone for concert performances, but of course the musicians are different, sometimes more stellar (Cecilia Bartoli, Brendel, Schiff...). And the Mozart opera extracts are mostly with full orchestra...