“Think Globally, Act Locally” is an old city-planning saw that is now so well traveled — from grassroots environmental group rallies to international corporation boardroom meetings — that no sooner is the mantra uttered than the heretofore attentive listener may be instantly overcome by a sense of gloom and detach himself from any material to follow out of sheer self-preservation. Yet it is this very phrase, gentle reader, that comes to mind — fresh, hopeful and without its customary baggage — when I reflect back on the weeklong Risør Chamber Music Festival, held for the nineteenth year this past June in the picturesque former Norwegian fishing village cum tourist destination.
First to the global thinking. The theme of this year’s festival was “Revolution.” Musically, that translated first and foremost as lots of Beethoven. There were performances of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony, Diabelli Variations, incidental music from Egmont, selected piano trios and violin sonatas, and more. Also, Shostakovich’s Six Poems of Marina Tsvetayeva and Prelude and Scherzo for String Octet; Stravinsky’s Histoire du soldat; Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces; as well as generally revolutionary works by many other composers, including Antheil, Bach, Eberl, Mahler, Mozart, Piazzolla, Schumann, Schubert, Richard Strauss and Rolf Wallin; and a sneak preview of Pictures Reframed, a work that reconsiders Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. This collaboration between Norwegian pianist/Risør Festival director Leif Ove Andsnes and South African-born visual artist Robin Rhode will receive its proper world premiere at New York’s Lincoln Center — the commissioning institution — on November 13.
As to the local action, the Risør Festival brings with it an unparalleled level of local enthusiasm. All the town’s residents appear to either attend the concerts, volunteer in aid of them, or both. The vast majority of concerts take place at a wooden Baroque church, with the four hundred or so seats always filled — largely with Norwegians from nearby and far away. The increasing heat, which, with the presence of the midnight sun, remained through the evening concerts, ultimately necessitated opening the church doors during performances, but with everyone gathered within, the silence outside was unbroken apart from the occasional call of a seagull. When not sweating it out in the church, the musicians were stationed on a nearby ship (hotels being expensive in Norway), where they rehearsed and dined together.
The last-minute cancellations, due to illness, of two scheduled soloists — violinist Lisa Batiashvili and cellist Truls Mørk — brought down the level of musicianship at the festival. But if the concerts tended to disappoint this concertgoer, the Norwegian audience (for whom the unison clap is a staple ovation) remained fiercely supportive, and there were, in any case, a number of worthy highlights. Oboist François Leleux played the Bach Concerto for Oboe and Violin without violin (Batiashvili, his wife), but with wondrous control and passion, reminding us why we always come back to Bach. Andsnes delivered thoughtful performances of two fugues by Anton Reicha from the composer’s 36 Fugues for Piano. Famed actress of Fassbinder films and Sprechstimme singer Barbara Sukowa electrified in a theatrical set of Lieder by Schubert and Schumann, Im Wunderschönen Monat Mai, artfully orchestrated, arranged and conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw. The incidental music for Egmont was also given a welcome dose of theatricality, with narration by the popular Norwegian actor Bjørn R. Sundquist.
The festival’s closing concert took place outdoors, on an island less than a mile away, where a former lighthouse is now a restaurant. The concert included Andsnes’s account of Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata and the bracing brass playing of a diminutive Norwegian trumpeter, aptly named Tine Thing Helseth. A few concerts also took place on the mainland at a third location known locally as Holmen, a cavernous former fish-processing plant, including the preview of Pictures Reframed.
* * *
Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, written in 1874, was inspired by an art show the composer saw in St. Petersburg of works by his late friend, Viktor Hartmann. The piano suite imagines an observer touring the exhibition, with each movement alluding to a different work of art and an interspersed “Promenade” theme depicting the viewer’s walks between works. Pictures has had plenty of interlopers over the years. Early orchestrations by Mikhail Tushmalov and Henry Wood disappeared in the wake of Ravel’s masterful arrangement, whose gorgeous coloration makes his orchestration the most performed and recorded version of the piece. Later arrangers include conductor Leopold Stokowski, jazz genius Duke Ellington, English progressive rock band Emerson Lake & Palmer, and Japanese electronic-music composer Isao Tomita.
Given the source of inspiration for the suite, the addition of a visual component to the music does not seem foolhardy (or even revolutionary). For the late-night, packed-house preview at the fish factory (insert sardine or to-the-gills joke here), a different stop-action film or series of stills was projected onto a screen behind the pianist for each movement, with five additional screens angled at him but not used for projection purposes. Andsnes was saved the artistic restriction of playing “on the click” to the visuals thanks to a behind-the-scenes technician who could speed up or slow down the imagery to match the pianist’s tempo — allowing, notes Robin Rhode, “for a more organic ending and beginning, and room to maneuver.”
