Catherine Leonard, Camerata Pacifica
NCH, Dublin
Induce a dozen and more high-ranking soloists to take time out of their busy global schedules to give chamber-music concerts in California, and you have the miracle of modern artistic organisation that is Camerata Pacifica.
Three of its members happen to be Irish: clarinettist Carol McGonnell, principal violinist Catherine Leonard, and principal flautist and founding artistic director Adrian Spence. So too is the ensemble's associate composer, Ian Wilson. Though Camerata Pacifica is now in its 19th season, this is its first international tour, taking in the wider US, Ireland and England.
Wednesday's appearance at the National Concert Hall had also been billed as a Composer's Choice concert for Wilson. Yet, owing not least to the forcible idealism of Spence's programme notes and spoken introductions, it took on wider proportions.
It was a celebration of 10 years since the Good Friday Agreement, it was the fulfilment of lofty mission statements, and it was a powerful assertion of the relevance of contemporary composition.
Above all, it was music-making of the highest quality.
The programme, which totals barely an hour's listening, is calculated less to appeal than to challenge. John Harbison's relentlessly objective Piano Quintet (1981) creates an emotional hunger that's more than satisfied by Wilson's richly subjective Messenger (1999/2006).
Originally scored for full orchestra, this four-movement violin concerto was given its first performance by Leonard in 2001. Now condensed for 13 instruments, the latest version reduces the forces, but not their intense effectiveness.
It's a memorable piece for many reasons, but especially for strongly idiomatic solo writing that places the traditional virtuosities - gliding position changes, cantilenas, trills, double stops and dazzling passages - in newly poignant surroundings.
Wilson can be optimistic that it will be more widely taken up. How many violinists will bring the solo part nearer to perfection than Leonard does is harder to predict.
ANDREW JOHNSTONE
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Yesterday, after being in Ireland for a couple of days, I finally arrived. The first days, in Dublin, were lovely, with good walks some great conversation with friends who live there. Ireland seems so easy and comfortable for an English-speaking visitor that the place doesn’t feel all that foreign.
After shaking off the worst of jet lag in Dublin, we boarded a bus for Derry. We passed by the sorts of rolling green hills you’d expect to see in Ireland, with happy sheep and cows and picturesque little towns. (At one intersection we saw four absolutely identical old houses on the corners; the bus driver explained that these were gifts from a fairness-obsessed father to his four daughters.)
In Derry our hotel was a short block away from the church-like Guildhall where we would play our first concert in Ireland. Next to the Guildhall is the old walled city of Derry, the last walled city built in Europe and one of the few places where city walls survive intact. Our bus arrived at the hotel at dusk, and even though it was rainy and darkening, Agnes Gottschewski and I were eager to see the old city, so we quickly stashed our luggage in our rooms, grabbed our umbrellas, and raced over to walk along the walls.
Stairs led us up to the top of the wall, and we walked along the top for a while, until a closed gate forced us to turn back. From the top we could see the narrow streets of the old town inside the walls, and outside the walls city lights twinkled prettily. We got back to the hotel, our cuffs and shoes a bit soggy, just in time for me to join a dinner expedition. Jordan Christoff’s research had turned up a nearby Chinese restaurant. The food was decent, and it was the first time I’ve been in a Chinese restaurant without seeing a single Chinese person. (Our waiter sounded Indian or Pakistani.)
The next morning, before rehearsal, I went back to walk the full circumference of the city walls. The rain had stopped. Even though I paused often to take pictures, it took only about half an hour. The wall is about 1.5 kilometers in diameter; these medieval towns were tiny. In places the wall is wide enough for a truck to drive along the top. Cannons bristle from various points, and trees are line some sections. At one corner of the old town is a gorgeous church, the first cathedral built in these parts after the Reformation; the sea captain who wrote “Amazing Grace” worshipped here.
It’s a lovely walk. Along the way plaques describe important features and events, and I got the impression that Derry is still celebrating victories and licking wounds that go back to the 1600s. (Maybe it’s a little like those places in the American south where people are still grumpy about the Civil War.) The city walls were never breached, though a famous siege took place here. During the Troubles, which started in Derry, a city gate might become a checkpoint that could delay and harass people on their way to work.
Derry has two names that reflect historic divisions in Northern Ireland. I think the town’s first name was Derry, but when the English settled here they renamed it Londonderry to affirm their ties to England. Which name to use? Lately, in an attempt to please, people have called it “Derry-stroke-Londonderry.” More recently a radio announcer shortened that to “Stroke City.”
Our morning rehearsal in the Guildhall was also surrounded by history. Warren Jones had been reading the beautiful stained glass windows, which include panels donated by the various craft guilds (including a panel donated by the musicians of Derry!), commemorations of the founding of the city, memorials to soldiers who fought in World War II, and a recent addition memorializing innocent victims of the Troubles.
After rehearsal six of us took a cab to the Giant’s Causeway, one of Ireland’s most famous natural sites, about an hour away on the sea. On the way we stopped to see an old ruined castle perched on a crag above the ocean. Apparently the kitchen of this castle abruptly fell into the sea one night, during a huge dinner party back in the 1700s.
At the Giant’s Causeway I was glad to breathe ocean air and walk in the sunshine between the cliffs and the water. The first part of the path reminded me of northern California, with craggy outcrops and fallen boulders. But then we came to the place that makes this site so famous. It’s easy to believe that this landscape was built by some giant: hexagonal pillars of rock rise from the ground in tightly-bound clusters, making bizarre hillocks for climbing, flagstones for walking, organ-pipe-like groupings for admiring. It’s the sort of landscape my son might build out of legos. A wide path of these hexagons reaches out into the sea, like a huge ramp. As at every other tourist site on this trip, I saw visitors lifting their digital cameras, as though making a ritual gesture to preserve the memory. Our little group did our share of documenting the Giant’s Causeway, too.
With this brief but intense experience of a uniquely beautiful and strange landscape, I finally began to feel like I was someplace.
Back in Derry in time for a short nap before the evening’s concert, I strolled to the Guildhall and had a brief chat with Kevin Murphy, who runs the concert series. I had met him years before at Apple Hill, the New Hampshire music camp that brings together musicians from conflict areas, including Northern Ireland, to make music together. Kevin has hosted the Apple Hill Chamber Players for “Playing for Peace” workshops in Derry; he is a fine example of a musician using music to help the cause of peace and understanding.
The concert at Derry, like all the performances so far, made a good connection with the audience, and this audience seemed extra friendly. I talked with audience members who were moved and impressed. Ian Wilson’s Messenger Concerto, despite its modern-sounding thorniness and its density, seems to touch people’s hearts quite consistently.
After the concert Kevin led us to a local pub where traditional Irish music is often played. The atmosphere was friendly, the crowd seemed happy. Three musicians were playing fiddle, guitar, and banjo by the front window. After a little while Adrian Spence ran to the hotel to fetch his flute so that Suzanne Duffy could sit in with the band. Suzanne plays regularly for contradances in California, and she knew most of the tunes that the Irish band was playing. She started playing slong, and it seemed to me that the energy in the pub lifted. A larger crowd gathered around the musicians, and two people started to dance.
The pub seemed to have people of all ages. One man with white hair and beard tried to tell me something, and it took me a long time to figure out that he was saying “Newport Beach.” His brother lives there, I think. Mostly I talked with our Camerata bunch, but we were surrounded by a lively welcome that, I’m told, is typical of pubs here. The music was too loud, but it didn’t matter, because the overriding atmosphere was so happy. I didn’t notice anybody attempting to be cool or concerned about appearances; this was more like a crowded family gathering than a bar scene.
The pub was festooned with artifacts: wild boar and other animal heads, unidentifiable meats hanging from the rafters along with a pig’s head wearing sunglasses, a very nice-looking bass drum and a head from another bass drum with the name of a flute band, sashes and tools and fish and plaques and memorabilia. This is the kind of place interior designers must be imitating when they try to make a bar or restaurant look homey and Irish, but somehow I think that no interior decorator was involved here. A calendar of Republican martyrs was for sale, along with “Free Derry” patches. Stickers encouraged supporting Palestine and boycotting Israel.
At one point, amid the noise of conversation and loud Irish music, I shouted to Adrian Spence, “Now we’re in Ireland!” He looked happy, holding a properly poured pint of Guinness, surrounded by colleagues who are also his friends.
--John Steinmetz
4/30/08
on the bus from Derry to Dublin
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Well, not only are we in Ireland, we've gotten as far as Derry, NI.
We flew to Dublin over Saturday night, arriving around 6:30 AM Dublin time. The bus we had so carefully reserved was nowhere in sight, but the public bus driver was nice enough to take us directly to the hotel.
Since it was Sunday morning and the hotel was fully booked, we weren't able to check in right away. Some of us took some time to get our Dublin bearings, some of us slept in the lobby, some of us dealt with production issues, etc. We also, thanks to an ear infection, had the chance to experience the Irish health care system! Everyone is fine, and it was interesting to witness that up close.
Dublin's beautiful and it was great to have some time off there, especially following the Morgan Library concert, which was Friday night, and so beautiful. The hall at the Morgan is great for chamber music - you can hear and see everything without it being too live. This was my third time hearing the "Messenger" concerto, and it was the best performance so far - energetic, committed and tight.
There was an exciting moment in the Harbison when the players stopped one by one as they realized that Richard had broken a string. While he was offstage replacing it, Warren took advantage of the opportunity to tell a story about the only time he had ever broken strings...on the piano, apparently, when he was eight years old and his practicing wasn't going as he hoped.
That intensity is still with Warren, and his Brahms on Friday night was especially poignant and gorgeous. Following the concert, the Consul General of Ireland, Niall Burgess, held a reception for musicians and their guests at his incredible apartment with views of New York on three sides of a breathtaking terrace. Am doing my best to post some pictures of all these events!
So, we're in Derry. Today's bus ride was beautiful, all the scenery we expected from Ireland, and even more green than I could have imagined. The Guildhall concert is tomorrow night, I'll be back after that, if not before.
Messenger Concerto at the Morgan
Warren plays Brahms
Niall Burgess and Adrian Spence
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Hi there,
We're in Dublin and I'm more than a little disoriented about what time it really is. Once I get that sorted out, I'll be back to tell you all about the concert at the Morgan, which was beautiful.
Meanwhile, here's the review from the Washington Post on April 25:
Camerata Pacifica
Camerata Pacifica is a Santa Barbara, Calif.-based chamber music ensemble, though you would never know it from the surface trappings of its Thursday evening concert at the Library of Congress. The program and most prominent players lent the impression that the group might call Northern Ireland home. At the center was a bracing account of a violin concerto by Ian Wilson, the group's resident composer and a Belfast native, and the bold concert was part of a tour with stops in London, Dublin and, yes, Northern Ireland.
These Irish ties come from the Camerata's artistic director, Adrian Spence, himself a former Northern Ireland resident. Spence told the good-size audience that the astringency and density of Wilson's concerto, "Messenger," flows from the composer's firsthand war experiences such as the 1999 airstrikes in Belgrade, Serbia. In the brooding account, sliding glissandi conjured dark visions of falling bombs, while compact textures evoked tense atmospheres. Through these dissonant sound blocks weaved the focused violin of Catherine Leonard, emerging like a lone voice amid remorseless terror. A lullaby in the second movement came off more gritty than soothing, and little light came into a more quiescent finale.
The group's American roots peeked out in the performance of John Harbison's Piano Quintet, which subtly integrates the percussive thrusts of Shostakovich and the meditative gentleness of Messiaen within a larger cast of American-style, angular modernism. The Camerata brought out the piece's human side, at once searing and tender. Pianist Warren Jones's rhapsodic account of Brahms's E-flat Intermezzo from Op. 117 accentuated the ability of Harbison and Wilson to paint emotional calm amid storm and stress.
-- Daniel Ginsberg
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Hello friends,
This blog is a little reluctant to accept pictures, but I'm working on it. A few from Gala night below.
Last night's concert in DC was amazing - attended by about 300 people who loved the music. The ensemble was tight and the hall at the Library of Congress is fantastic - it's very live, while still feeling intimate.
So here's a true story about the excitement of being on the road:
Some of you have seen our beautiful tour program books, which include information on the Messenger project, our sponsors, dates and venues, etc. We're all really proud of those books and eager to get them to our audience.
So we decided to ship them ahead to the various venues. Being the clever non-profit employees we are, we also decided to save money, and eliminate one possibility for disaster, by consolidating the shipments. So I sent 500 books to DC, with the idea that we'd bring half of them to New York.
Books were shipped from Ventura on Tuesday and arrived yesterday morning in DC, which should have been the end of the story. I called the Library producer with a tracking number and name of signatory, and forgot about it...until.
Until, a few hours later, I called another producer at the Library, who immediately said to me "Oh....I heard the bad news."
!!!
"the bad news?"
"About your program books? She didn't call you?"
She had not, in fact, called me. I knew something had gone wrong, but didn't know what, so I weakly played my only card -
"but - but I have a TRACKING NUMBER."
Yeah. Well, my sad little tracking number can't sway the forces of government. The books did not make it to the show last night, because they were being held -
AND CHECKED FOR ANTHRAX.
As, apparently, is all mail that comes to government offices in DC, which would have been nice to know. But it gave Adrian a chance to talk about the "Messenger" concerto from the stage, which the audience liked, and the Library was nice enough to print our program page and distribute it at the concert.
Happily, there were still a few program books in Ventura, which we had FedExed to New York, where I'm happy to report we are, and they are, and it's a magnificent beautiful city.
Morgan Library concert tonight.
the people on the bus
Ani gets ready
backstage at the Cathedral
Hope to post more soon, including pictures of the huge crowd!
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