English suites and others no. 25

The final stop on our Celtic tour of the British isles is The Isle of Man. Man is a small island, famous more for its tailless cats than its music. The Bee Gees were born there, but they didn't stay long, and they're of no use to me anyway. The only classical composer I could find from Man was Haydn Wood (1882-1959), who was not Manx by origin, but who spent most of his childhood living there, and remained fond of the place. His catalog includes several Manx-inspired works, of which the best is a tone poem for symphonic band titled Mannin Veen, which means "Dear Isle of Man." The U.S. Marine Band, of all people, do it justice.

Like Edward German's Welsh Rhapsody, this is a single movement, rather than a suite, based on a series of contrasting folk tunes. But it's organized differently. Wood presents all four of his themes in the first half of the work, and then elaborates further on them in the second half. With the timing of their first appearances, they are The Good Old Way (Methodist air) (0.01), The Manx Fiddler (reel) (2.23), Sweet Water in the Common (3.25), and The Harvest of the Sea (Manx fishermen's evening hymn) (4.50).

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After this, I have a few favorite haunts in continental Europe ...

concert review: Danish String Quartet

The four blond men with the three blond beards who made a hit at Menlo a few years ago, and whom I subsequently reviewed in Berkeley, are back, with what the presenter proudly advertised as their first San Francisco performance - their previous local concerts were outside the city limits, so you can technically get away with this claim.

They played the Bartok First in a late-late-Romantic style, making it sound garrulous, and the First Razumovsky* in a proto-proto-modernist style, making it sound choppy. Though I admit the Adagio molto hit a level of profundity that would do credit to Op. 132.

The program was filled out with the quartet's own arrangements of a series of Danish, Norwegian, and Faroese folk songs. The arrangements were delicate and tentative, with light vibrato-less melodies over one or two lines of counterpoint or soft chords. Listening to these made me feel as if I were relaxed at the Freight instead of tense at Herbst.

Through all of this, seated behind me were a pair of young boys who, from the noises they were making, were thunderously bored. Why were they there at all? This was not a beginners' program.

*If the Bartok First is the first quartet by Bartok, is the First Razumovsky the first quartet by Razumovsky? No, it's the first of three by Beethoven that were commissioned by and dedicated to Count Razumovsky, and they're just called that for convenience's sake. Classical snobs expect each other to know things like this. The Paganini Rhapsody isn't by Paganini either.