Proms at Cardiff: Carion Wind Quintet (15.08.22)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

13:00 Monday 15 August 2022
Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama

György Ligeti: Bagatelles
Carl Nielsen: Wind Quintet
Igor Stravinsky: Suite No. 2 (arr. David M. A. P. Palmquist)

Carion Wind Quintet Wind Quintet

‘These young players are just the best there is,’ says Sir James Galway. No chairs, no music stands, playing from memory, and with every performance exuberantly choreographed, the five members of Carion Wind Quintet make all their performances fresh and unique. In this lunchtime concert at Cardiff's Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, their programme centres around Nielsen's Wind Quintet, a mesmerising kaleidoscope of colours that's deservedly become a cornerstone of wind repertory. There are some ingenious games courtesy of György Ligeti to begin with; an arrangement by their horn player David Palmquist of Stravinsky's Suite no 2 which exploits the contrasting characters of the wind instruments provides a sparkling finale.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Bumping this one, as the Cardiff Chamber Prom is only a few hours away.

[edashtav]

Bumping this one, as the Cardiff Chamber Prom is only a few hours away.

I missed it, but you’re bump caused me to catch up.

György Ligeti: Bagatelles

Bagatelles are free-form, short, rather inconsequential and, possibly humorous.
How to create a coherent set?
Ligeti used pitch sets: one for each bagatelle, each one having one pitch more than its predecessor
Humour like the extraneous note at the end of #1 is almost a constant fact in his output.

I. Allegro con spirito (C, E, Eb, G)

II. Rubato. Lamentoso (Ab, B, C#, D, F, G)

III. Allegro grazioso (Ab, A, Bb, C, D, Eb, F, G)

IV. Presto ruvido (A, B, C, C#, D, E, F#, G, G#)

V. Adagio. Mesto (A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, F, F#, G#)

VI. Molto vivace. Capriccioso (A, A#, B, C#, D, D#, E, F, Gb, G, G#)

The Carion quintet were fine advocates for the group: each instrument having its own character but blending and adding to the whole. I thoroughly enjoyed their performance.

The Nielsen Quintet is vintage stuff from 1922 written for friends and inspired by Mozart’s Wind Quintet. The players captured well the sunny, summer holiday, relaxed atmosphere of the first movement, despite the horn having slight issues with his ‘lipping’. Like Ligeti, Nielsen liked a good laugh, although Carl’s tended more to rustic, bucolic belly-laughs.

The second movement chirruped along, full of freshness and rhythmic vitality.

Then came a change of mood with some sombre chords darkening the atmosphere. The flute continued to ignore the tenor of debate until a sombre Lutheran hymn-like tune called for order, imposing some discipline through variation without full success because cheekiness kept surfacing. All this was well characterised despite the horn struggling manfully on his ‘iffy’ day.

Stravinsky’s Second Suite was arranged by the Carion’s ‘hornspieler’, David M.A.P. Palmquist, from Igor’s piano original

The work opens with plentiful references to the Circus. The second miniature is rather French, polytonal like Darius Milhaud. The third comments on a horn call. Then follows an infectious romp and a final fanfare.

All good fun in the worst of all possible taste. Les Six go to the Ballets Russes.

The encore was delicious: Shostakovich Waltz #2 .

Steam radio 3 did not allow me to appreciate the lack of scores or the group’s choreography.

[oddoneout]

I missed it, but you’re bump caused me to catch up.

György Ligeti: Bagatelles

Bagatelles are free-form, short, rather inconsequential and, possibly humorous.
How to create a coherent set?
Ligeti used pitch sets: one for each bagatelle, each one having one pitch more than its predecessor
Humour like the extraneous note at the end of #1 is almost a constant fact in his output.

I. Allegro con spirito (C, E, Eb, G)

II. Rubato. Lamentoso (Ab, B, C#, D, F, G)

III. Allegro grazioso (Ab, A, Bb, C, D, Eb, F, G)

IV. Presto ruvido (A, B, C, C#, D, E, F#, G, G#)

V. Adagio. Mesto (A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, F, F#, G#)

VI. Molto vivace. Capriccioso (A, A#, B, C#, D, D#, E, F, Gb, G, G#)

The Carion quintet were fine advocates for the group: each instrument having its own character but blending and adding to the whole. I thoroughly enjoyed their performance.

The Nielsen Quintet is vintage stuff from 1922 written for friends and inspired by Mozart’s Wind Quintet. The players captured well the sunny, summer holiday, relaxed atmosphere of the first movement, despite the horn having slight issues with his ‘lipping’. Like Ligeti, Nielsen liked a good laugh, although Carl’s tended more to rustic, bucolic belly-laughs.

The second movement chirruped along, full of freshness and rhythmic vitality.

Then came a change of mood with some sombre chords darkening the atmosphere. The flute continued to ignore the tenor of debate until a sombre Lutheran hymn-like tune called for order, imposing some discipline through variation without full success because cheekiness kept surfacing. All this was well characterised despite the horn struggling manfully on his ‘iffy’ day.

Stravinsky’s Second Suite was arranged by the Carion’s ‘hornspieler’, David M.A.P. Palmquist, from Igor’s piano original

The work opens with plentiful references to the Circus. The second miniature is rather French, polytonal like Darius Milhaud. The third comments on a horn call. Then follows an infectious romp and a final fanfare.

All good fun in the worst of all possible taste. Les Six go to the Ballets Russes.

The encore was delicious: Shostakovich Waltz #2 .

Steam radio 3 did not allow me to appreciate the lack of scores or the group’s choreography.

When I read about the choreography it did make me wonder about how you set up the equipment to record the performance, and whether having the instruments moving around altered how the pieces sounded to any degree. I don't know any of the works well enough to judge that aspect. I agree about the encore.

[bluestateprommer]

When I read about the choreography it did make me wonder about how you set up the equipment to record the performance, and whether having the instruments moving around altered how the pieces sounded to any degree. I don't know any of the works well enough to judge that aspect. I agree about the encore.

I noticed a few fractional note slips, which perhaps may tie in to the stage choreography (i.e. a case of "walking and chewing gum at the same time", as it were). Those minor slips aside, yet another very enjoyable and fine "Proms Chamber Music" presentation here, well showcasing two 20th century masterworks for wind ensemble. I'd heard the Ligeti at the time, but had to break off and miss the rest, so I re-listened late in the game from the start.

One meta-joke about the choice of encore is that it implicitly compares two major composers from Saint Petersburg, the one who stayed and who had a tremendous gift for melody and the long line coupled to rhythmic flair, vs. the one who got out and lacked that native gift for long-lined melody. (I loosely paraphrase Robin Holloway's commentaries on both composers here, but unlike RH, I'm a DSCH fan.)