Meetings with Great Composers II

Crail Church, 29/6/2024

Belfiato Wind Quintet, Boris Giltburg (piano)

The afternoon of 29th June, Crail Church was the venue for a strange programme pairing two very different works for very different instrumentation by two very different composers who were friends in their teens when they played in the same orchestra, but lived very different professional lives thereafter, only meeting again when they were much older.  In a programme titled ‘Meetings With Great Composers II’, the East Neuk Festival presented the Belfiato Wind Quintet and pianist Boris Giltburg, in Anton Reicha’s Wind Quintet in E-flat Op.88 No.2 and Beethoven’s Sonata in B-flat Op.106 ‘Hammerklavier’ respectively.  In his introductory remarks to the Reicha, the Festival’s Artistic Director, Svend McEwan-Brown, spoke of the frustrations that had delayed the presentation of the piece since it was first planned as part of the 2020 Festival, including a pandemic and illness of the horn player. 

Back in March, I heard the first two movements of the Quintet played by the instrumentalists accompanying the Spring Concert of the Garleton Singers, whetting my appetite for the full 4 movements. The first movement unfolded with Mozartian charm, but with quirks of playful individuality at every turn.  Perhaps unsurprisingly for a flautist composer, Reicha gives prominence to the flute, but all the instruments have moments of virtuosic prominence, including some astonishingly agile writing for both horn and bassoon. The second movement is the minuet and trio, a simple songlike melody provided a conversation between the instruments no less charming than in the string quartets of Haydn. Flute and oboe conversed in the very short, elegant trio. A short mischievous fugato passage in the reprise of the minuet seemed to wink at the listener. The Andante opened with a quasi-operatic aria on the oboe, accompanied by the others. I thought “that is perfect variation material” and, indeed, a set of imaginative characterful variations followed. The first, for flute with clarinet comments in the minor key, was followed by a flute cadenza, handing back to the oboe and a characterful clarinet variation. The next variation was a surprise, a well-constructed majestic fugue, started on bassoon, with clarinet, flute, oboe and horn entering in turn.  Fabulous. A faster anxious staccato variation with flute prominent and answering phrases from the other instruments gave way to the final variation, the horn restoring arioso calm.  A first hearing for me of a great piece of wind writing, performed with great flair.  The Finale, marked Allegretto, sounded brisker and was a cross-country hunt in fast triple-time with fantastically agile, virtuosic playing. Some lovely phrase imitation between clarinet and oboe raised a smile.  A sprightly, witty end to a great piece. It is easy to see why the Belfiato Quintet have made a speciality of Reicha’s music – they are its greatest advocates.

Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ sonata is an extraordinary piece of music.  It is uncompromising and edgy in its merciless demands on both performer and instrument, not only operating at the very limits of technique and physical stamina of the performer and the capabilities of the instrument, but also in terms of the raw fragility of its exploration of a troubled mind, taking the performer (and, in the best performances, the listener) close to the edge of the void and daring them to peer into it. This danger permeates the work, but it is in the long, slow third movement, Adagio sostenuto, that the obsessive and increasingly incoherent Beethoven drifts closest to a nervous breakdown, and hovers longest at the edge of the precipice. Making sense of this almost unperformable music is not within the art of all, or even many, of the great performers. Recordings that have come closest, in my opinion, include an old mono Emil Gilels recording, Bernard Roberts (I have his box set of the 32) and Daniel Barenboim. But even these hold back something, a last non-negotiable fragment of self-preservation.  They do not lack courage, but they cannot face the possibility of never being able to make the journey again, self-care that every professional artist owes to themselves.  Until the 29th June, I had never heard a live performance that came close to meeting Beethoven’s challenges. On 29th June in Crail Church in the East Neuk of Fife, Boris Giltburg held nothing back. He delivered the ultimate performance of the ‘Hammerklavier’. I was there. It was spellbinding, disturbing and terrifying. And it was magnificent. In a festival of many superb performances, it was, for me at any rate and by a long chalk, the highlight of the Festival. It has taken me a few days to assemble my thoughts into something resembling coherence and try to describe how he did it.

The first movement of the ‘Hammerklavier’ is Beethoven at his most confident and ebullient. It is not meant to be pretty music, but it is honest, in that it sets out, with not a little chutzpah, that what follows will be in-your-face, warts-and-all, and an uncompromising manifesto for the future of the piano, pianism and piano music and he, Beethoven, and only he, is the man to do that. Any questions?  Boris faced this challenge head-on and, crucially, presented the lyrical elements with undiminished edginess, not relaxing the tension for a moment, even when the dynamics and tempo have to do so, generating the impression of an irrepressible and rebellious life force refusing to be tamed or quelled. This must have required phenomenal concentration and been exhausting, but you would never have known. The brief Scherzo, which could be a dance if not subverted by irregular phrase lengths, wild outbursts and rhapsodic excursions, stops suddenly, as if Beethoven says, “I’m bored with that now; so let me tell you what’s really on my mind”.

The Adagio sostenuto starts in a tenderly remorseful and meditative vein, following a quasi-improvised stream of consciousness, tonally anticipatory of Chopin in places, but fragile and incoherent in others, hinting at suppressed passion. Time and again, achingly beautiful moments of great tenderness feel like they might crystallise around a kind of resolution, but they slip away and the rambling incoherence presents instead deep regret and a sense of loss. Side by side Beethoven presents depth of feeling and numbness, reaching out and turning away. Boris Giltburg embraced these contradictions, internalised and presented them as lived experience, his and ours. Rather than struggle to ‘make sense’ of it, he let it speak with almost unbearable directness of pain and loss, Beethoven speaking directly to the listener, not making a lot of ‘sense’, yet truthful, cathartic and revelatory, so when the movement reached its uneasy non-conclusion, it stopped because all had been said. An unforgettable experience.

Of course, emotionally drained or not, there was still the finale to negotiate. I can’t pretend to know how he managed that, but it was absolutely stunning. An uneasy introduction that could be going anywhere is stopped by a savage sforzando. Two abortive improvisatory but empty starts dash off and halt almost as soon as begun. Third time lucky with the theme of what will be a massive fugue of fiendish complexity, almost falling over itself at times, yet Beethoven in his element and defiant again. Less driven moments, like in the Grosse Fuge, are short-lived. The finale can and did make perfect sense, but only because of the Purgatory of the Adagio sostenuto. What happened at this year’s East Neuk Festival? Loads of things … oh, did I mention the definitive ‘Hammerklavier’?  Perfect.