This recital, given by the winds of Ensemble 360 and pianist Tim Horton, was an all-Czech, 20th-century affair. It was a balanced programme, in more ways than one, with two masterpieces by Leoš Janáček juxtaposed with two considerably less well-known compositions by his one-time pupil, Pavel Haas. But, looked at differently, one could see the first half of the evening – Haas’ Suite for Oboe and Piano and Janáček’s finest piano work, In the Mists – as an expression of grief, anger and a kind of brooding claustrophobia. The second half of the programme, consisting of Haas’ Wind Quintet and Janáček’s effervescent wind sextet, Mládí, by contrast moved us from darkness to light, from grief to joy. It was a great pity that the auditorium was less than half full, because those who didn’t attend missed an evening of exceptional music performed with these musicians’ characteristic flair and engagement.
Oboist Adrian Wilson, introducing Haas’ suite, sketched in the relevant historical background. It’s a work from 1939, expressing Haas’ rage at the Nazi invasion of his homeland. The markings of the first two movements, Furioso and Con fuoco, make clear the sentiments being expressed. Interestingly the work began life as a suite of poems for female voice and piano, but the vehemently pro-Czech, anti-Nazi texts were prudently set aside in favour of the wordless oboe lines. Wilson’s playing emphasised the vocal quality of the writing, though this was declamatory at least as much as it was lyrical. Quotations from the Hussite hymn Ye who are God’s warriors in the second movement and the St Wenceslas chorale in the third made Haas’ allegiances clear even without the words.
Following this piece with Janáček’s In the Mists sustained the sombre mood. Beforehand, Horton quoted approvingly from Thomas Adès’ remark that in this suite, “the solo piano becomes a narrow space with four solid walls”. Horton gave an excellent performance, making the most of Janáček’s obsessive keyboard writing, its continued worrying over the repetition of four- or five-note melodic cells. Only in the final Presto did the tension relax, with echoes of gypsy violin and the metallic clang of the cimbalom hinting at the outdoor music to come in the second half of the evening.
Wind band music had been associated with Bohemian musicians since at least the early 18th century, and the works for wind quintet and sextet that Haas and Janáček wrote within five years of each other in the newly-independent Czechoslovakia in the 1920s clearly drew on that tradition. Haas’ Wind Quintet dates from 1929 and its largely sunny mood felt worlds away from the oboe suite. The quintet’s outer movements are rooted in the folk modalities of Moravia, but it was the two central movements that made the bigger impression, a tender and impassioned prayer and then a playfully quirky Ballo eccentrico with its parts for piccolo and E flat clarinet. Bassoonist Guylaine Eckersley, standing in for Emily Hultmark, underpinned the texture with unerring clarity.
But it was Janáček’s radiant Mládí, his 70th birthday present to himself celebrating “youth, golden youth”, that crowned the evening. Janáček’s scoring is revelatory. The addition of a bass clarinet to the traditional wind quintet thickens the texture without muddying it, by turns stentorian, playful and noble. Guest performer Peter Sparks made the most of being liberated from the instrument’s usual role as a novelty Sugar Plum Fairy turn. The whole piece, ringing in the enclosed space of the Crucible Playhouse, was performed with life-affirming vitality.
