Classical composers have found inspiration in folk music for hundreds of years. Think of Béla Bartók's music, infused by Hungarian and Romanian folk melodies; or Aaron Copland, who found inspiration in American folk songs. But it's hard to find classical music that is inspired by Irish folk music, although thousands of traditional Irish songs, jigs and reels exist.
That is one reason why the U.S. premiere of Linen and Lace, a flute concerto by Bill Whelan, was such an unusual and welcome event at the Ravinia Festival on Tuesday night. Whelan is best known as the composer of Riverdance, the Irish music show that step-danced its way into music history 20 years ago.
Flutist Sir James Galway and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered the flute concerto on a program that included much traditional Irish music, and, somewhat incongruously, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.
The CSO gave an impressive performance of Pictures on this, their first concert of the season at Ravinia. Hearing the CSO play an old favorite like the Ravel arrangement of Pictures always yields some new delight; this time I particularly noticed the magnificent brass chords and exciting crescendos in the "Catacombs" movement, marred somewhat by a persistent car alarm that was audible in the silence between the massive chords.
Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya carefully controlled the building crescendos in "Bydlo" and also in the final "Great Gate of Kiev," allowing the orchestra to unleash its full sonic brilliance only at the very end.
Such a display of orchestral color and virtuosity is a hard act to follow, and Sir James Galway had the unenviable task of performing solo with piano accompaniment immediately afterward. He played several traditional Irish favorites including "Star of the County Down."
Galway's reading of these traditional songs was joyful and spirited, but displayed some intonation problems. Especially in the slower passages, Galway had the opportunity to display his lovely golden tone. Here he sounded more like the symphonic musician he is, and less like a traditional Irish flutist. Traditional Irish flute playing is filled with bent notes, dips and embellishments that often give the music a more mournful, haunting quality.
Galway was joined by his wife, Lady Jeanne Galway, on the Carolan Variations. Here the intonation issues continued, marring what was otherwise a lovely duet.
Galway stayed on to play solo flute in "A Lord of the Rings Suite" by Howard Shore, based on music from The Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies by Peter Jackson.
Bringing the flute front and center served to emphasize the folk qualities of this music, making it sound even more appropriate for the tale it was meant to accompany. Galway, like a piper in Hobbiton leading the festivities, played the flute and tin whistle, giving the music greater soulful depth than I am used to hearing in this score.
This is the way this music should always have been. Galway's tin whistle playing was especially affecting, and I marveled again at how an instrument that probably cost $1.95 can have such a lovely tone, especially in the hands of an artist like Galway.
My only complaint about this suite was that it was over too soon. Many audience members thought it was just the end of a movement, not the whole piece. Of course, this suite consisted mainly of music from the score that featured the flute, which is just a tiny percentage of the actual score.
Bill Whelan's flute concerto Linen and Lace began with the first few bars of "My Lagan Love," a folk song that is associated with Belfast, Galway's hometown. Whelan wove folk-like melodies for the flute throughout this movement, among more traditional symphonic music for orchestra. An exception was music that sounded like uilleann pipes, Ireland's national bagpipe, played convincingly on the English horn.
Ravinia featured two introductory videos leading up to the flute concerto. The inclusion of a video statement by figure skater Jason Brown, who won bronze at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, was an unexpected delight. Brown, a Highland Park, Ill. native, skated to "Reel around the Sun" from Whelan's Riverdance during the Olympics.
Both movements of the concerto featured driving, pumping music in the orchestra meant to represent the respective industries of two cities, Belfast and Limerick. The Belfast music even had a jazzy syncopation, which contrasted well with the folk-influenced music that led up to it.
The Limerick movement opened with a brief quotation in the flute of the tune "There Is an Isle." Then sleigh bells announced a much faster section dominated by virtuosic flute playing and driving, pumping music in the orchestra that sounded like sewing machinery clacking.
Galway particularly shone in the slower sections of this music. A moment that was particularly beautiful was the return of the tune "There Is an Isle," played by the horn, while Galway's flute embellished the simple melody.
This movement had many sections of lovely flute music, especially in duet with harp, bells and other instruments. At the end, Galway's final bravura arpeggio up to the heights ran out of steam on the last two notes. But there was much to admire musically in this concerto, which was filled with beautiful folk-influenced flute melodies. One hopes it will be heard again in U.S. concert halls, as one of the rare examples of classical music with a distinctively Irish sound and sensibility.
© 2024 Classicalite All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
