Music at close quarters

A Sunday afternoon chamber concert took place yesterday at a private house to which we were lucky enough to be invited. Three professional musicians from Montreal, Sara Laimon (piano), Jonathan Crow (violin)—same age as our son George—and John Zirbel (horn), drove to Ottawa to perform Ligeti's Trio - Hommage à Brahms (1982), Schumann's Adagio and Allegro for Horn and Piano and Brahms' Horn Trio in E flat, Op.40.

It's not every day we get the change to listen to a solo horn although there's a good repertoire for this instrument out there. Whereas Schumann had written his (earlier) piece for a "well-tempered", valved horn, Brahms retrogressed to a valveless horn, because he wanted a bugle-like effect in the sound, where the pitch of the notes can only be changed by the horn player sticking his fist inside the instrument and subtly waggling it about (we were given a demonstration before the performance began). Ligeti, who died last year, also wrote for the "natural" horn in his Hommage to Brahms, deliberately aiming for "primitive, wild harmonics" and a "raw experience" for the listener. A western ear has to forget its knowledge of what a 7th and a 13th should sound like because Ligeti's intervals sound as if the horn is playing in quarter-tones. Anyway, we had been warned.

I have found an obituary for Ligeti that talks about his "laments" (the last movement of the Trio is labelled lamento adagio).

when he was like this the keening, and the density of it [...] could leave listeners quite wrung out.

Lamenting for what? The dislocations of a catastrophic century? The loss of living traditions, the destruction of his cultural homeland? The murder of his gifted younger brother by the Nazis? No message, and anyway not our business. The music is enough actually. But Ligeti was not a happy man.

Anyway, this was chamber music as it should be heard; I was sitting so close to Mr Zirbel's stand that I could have knocked it over, certainly close enough for me to follow the lines of music. Having watched many professional chamber musicians performing I've come to the conclusion that they actually know the pieces they play by heart more often than not, and only have the sheet music there in case their memories fails them. The vivacissimo molto ritmico pages from the Ligeti, for example, had been printed in very small font and stuck to boards, so that the violin and horn players wouldn't have to cope with the challenge of turning them!

Another challenge for the horn player was to get enough breath in his body for the penultimate movement of the Ligeti piece; we saw him deliberately hyperventilating like a diver about to take the plunge without an oxygen mask before he tackled the long note that accompanied the violinist at that point.

Our host had taken the precaution of inviting his neighbours to the concert as well as us; the decibel level must have been high enough to carry the music right down the street at times, especially since the grand piano had its lid up. The pianist had once studied with Ligeti, so wasn't inhibited by the jarring, atonal parts of his Trio. They did resolve, however. I saw Ralitsa Tcholakova in the audience and talked to her afterwards, when everybody gathered in the kitchen to feast on some homemade refreshments, asking her if she knew the two Trios. She had performed the Brahms herself and knew the Ligeti, telling me it was popular among professional violinists. I also asked one of the musicians whether they regularly played together and apparently they have done so before but don't yet have a name for their ensemble. I was put on the spot by being asked if I could suggest a name for them. The Ligeti Trio?