By Giannis Svolos
(from Eleftherotipia, Tuesday, 20 September 2011)
Last July, like in 2009, we had written our evaluations of the Spring Music Festival of Paxos. Last week, for the first time, we followed the festivities of the totally different "mother" organization, which centers on basic repertoire.
Paxos September Music Festival is the benign fruit of private initiative. This fertile cultural organization was created in 1986 by Londoner, John Gough (1930 -2006), a music lover and friend of Paxos. Moved by genuine, knowledgeable love for music, he combined a healthy organization genious with private sponsoring and cooperation with the British Guildhall School of Music and Drama organizing very successful concerts, which in time activated also local forces leaving a very strong footprint in local society.
Uninfluenced
Contrary to most of the Greek provincial summer music festivals, the one in Paxos preserves a steady mark and repertoire, uninfluenced by ideological definitions by third parties or by popularity falsifications. Surpassing financial and other difficulties, the festival realized itself for the 25th continuous year and included 5 concerts and works from baroque age to the 20th century (8 to 17 September). Richer and more imaginative in choices than all the annual Athens chamber music production, the programs were constructed around very important works under the logic "something for each one" but at the same time targeting stimulating style contrasts. We watched the first two concerts in the hall of the old elementary school in the village port of Loggos, with full house every time.
The first concert (8/09/2011) started off with Mozart's "Eine kleine nacht music" in its authentic form for string quintet and it continued with a circle of songs by Faure ("Le bonne chanson" in its developed version for voice, piano and string quintet, the "Ombra mai fu" aria from "Xerxis" by Handel and the very popular "Trout Quintet" by Schubert. The second concert (10/09/2011) included the "quartet no 36, the sunrise" by Haydn, "Meditation" from Thais by Massenet, "Viola sonata" by the English violinist and composer Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979), Schubert's song "by the river, d.943", Szymanowski's "Myths" for violin and piano and a circle of songs composed by the 30year old Michail Palaiologou called "Kaonas" (=seagull in local dialect) for tenor, piano and string quartet.
Like always, the works were performed by a multinational team of talented young students and associates of London Guildhall School. This year we saw: Bartosz Woroch and Pablo Benedi (violin), Rosalind Ventris (viola), Paolo Bonomini (cello), Siret Louist (double base), Lara Dodds-Eden (piano) and John Bacon (tenor).
Serenade
All performances without exception were of high quality and were characterized by clear, on the target differentiations, which corresponded to the style of each composer and served the expressive palette of each piece. The Mozart serenade, which was executed in its original instrumentation for string quintet with the participation of a double base and Haydn's quartet possessed the necessary elegance, sound clearance and articulation punctuality, effortlessly bringing to notice the balanced emphasis in structure and contradictions in dynamics.
In "Trout" their performance appeared more adventurous and dynamically intensified, organizing in depth each paragraph of musical continuity through a broad spectrum of graduations/contradictions in force and speeds. Owner of a healthy, bright voice and solid technique, the tenor served conscientiously the representative French mark of Faure's songs performing them with a careful, almost uplifted sound and easy to mold, liquid phrases.
In correspondence, both the obviously impressionist compositions of Rebecca Clarke - the musicians' tribute to English music - and that of Polish, Karol Szymanowski were performed with an emphasis ideally divided between the atmospheric effects and the muscular melodism of the works' writing.
The circle of 5 songs by composer Palaiologou was commissioned by this year's festival on parts of poems (kantsonete) by poet and nowadays mayor of Paxos, Spyros Bogdanos. Listening to this piece revealed an interesting, expressively balanced writing, which combined lyric directness, laconic expression and condensation of form in Vebern's style along with an imaginative handling of sound.
Faced with a difficult, contemporary score, which projected special techniques and expressive demands, the tenor utilized his typically English - a la Peter Pears - voice in an artful and alert way, achieving an integral, whole result.