It has been quite a year for musical anniversaries, but the 400th of Giovanni Gabrieli was the focus of this well planned concert from the Royal Academy of Music Symphonic Brass and their conductors, Elgar Howarth and Mark David. Howarth took the opportunity to compose a tribute not just to Giovanni Gabrieli but to his uncle, Andrea, and the city of Venice itself.
The concert took as its focal point the Canzona, the form perfected by the family as a piece of about five minutes sowing the seeds for development of tonal centres in music. Often written for two or more brass 'choirs', and using anything from four to twenty two players, they are striking pieces, taking distinctive musical motifs and working them in to a tapestry of melody and constantly moving harmony that must have worked incredibly well in St Marks's Venice, the place for which much of the Gabrielis' music was written.
The Royal Academy brass kept a consistently high standard throughout the first piece, Canzoni Duodecimi Toni 10 a 2, from Giovanni's celebrated volume of sacred works with and without voices, the Sacrae Symphoniae. This was in four parts, the ideas exchanged between the two pairs with some enthusiasm.
Howarth's piece was next, conducted by the composer in typically unassuming manner. Written for four singers in the traditional SATB form, and two brass choirs, situated either side of the stage facing each other, it was a striking piece that was cleverly structured to include two interludes around the text, a simple but effective roll call of the city's artistic heritage. Imaginatively Howarth included two specially written Canzonas himself, written in more obviously contemporary harmonic language but paying clear homage to the older composers. It was an affectionate and heartfelt tribute, as was the distinctive motif that was repeated over and over, a melody that stacked up on itself to create a sonorous but lightly dissonant chord, hanging in the air.
There was then a piece from each of the Gabrielis, Giovanni's Canzona per sonare no.1 (La Spiritata), a bright piece for four instruments with a distinctive episode in triple time. This was preceded by Andrea's Ricercar del Duodecimo Tuono, exploring sonic variations and overlaps between his two choirs of two.
Howarth stepped up once more to conduct the brief but vividly descriptive Charles Ives piece for brass and percussion, From The Steeples and the Mountains, which pits a descending sequence of bells against a depiction of the vast mountains beyond. Before long the two elements occupy the same viewpoint, Ives' favourite technique of juxtaposing two very different styles of music to make a third in evidence. The eight students in this performance concentrated fiercely to secure a strong interpretation, notable for its striking sonic pictures.
Then it was time for perhaps Giovanni Gabrieli's best known piece, the Sonate pian e forte from the Sacrae Symphoniae. This is one of the first known instances of dynamic control in music, exploring the architecture of St Mark's through the sound of two brass choirs. Here a characterful interpretation could perhaps have done with being a bit slower, for some of the quicker counterpoint became a little rushed and lost its definition. That said the brass put plenty of verve in to their performance.
Elgar Howarth was the dedicatee of the next piece, Kenneth Herbert's Music for an Idle Moment, written in 1956 when the two were studying together at Manchester University. This was an arranged version that the composer had travelled from Switzerland to see, and with three pairs of trumpet and trombone the Academy brass enjoyed the exchange of ideas and motifs, almost as if engaged in light banter on the school yard. The charming piece had all six players as winners!
Finally the coup de grace in the form of Giovanni Gabrieli's Canzon XX, a late work for no fewer than 22 brass instruments. Here they performed in six choirs, their counterpoint busy but still distinguishable, so that the ear could latch on to any number of melodic fragments and follow their progress. The Academy Brass were superb here, David conducting clearly and varying the dynamics just enough to get a sense of rise and fall in the intensity, before all 22 went through a crescendo in the final chord, which rang across the hall. In doing so the Academy Symphonic Brass completed a very fine concert, and as a footnote Alison Balsom was on hand to present a trust award to fellow trumpeter Imogen Hancock. That Balsom should feel move to express her delight at the concert on Twitter afterwards said it all – a wonderful hour's music that did full justice to one of the true greats of the Renaissance age.
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