EIF 2023 Amatis Trio with Thomas Quasthoff Queen's Hall 14th August Review
Photo Credit ©-FoppeSchut.nl-1
Amatis Trio with Thomas Quasthoff, Humanity In War, at the Queen’s Hall Edinburgh, with events that are sadly going on in other parts of the world right now is, even though it is not the subject matter of this concert, a reminder that like Pandora’s box and hope that even during wartime, our humanity must still be the one thing that ultimately halts our descent into utter chaos.
The war in the context of this work is World War I, and so used are we all now to reading the terrible facts about this war (many censored from the public at the time), the unbelievable loss of life on all sides, the horrors of trench life, the devastation on civilian populations, that we are at times in danger of reducing everything to facts, to nothing more than numbers. Behind every number, however, every gruesome statistic, there is a real human being, someone who also had a family and loved ones hoping that they would return from war safely to them.
In a pre-digital world, pen and paper was, if we exclude the then modern inventions such as radio, telegraph and telephones, the only way of communication between those at home and at war. Some people kept journals which were to become first hand witness accounts of events that their authors often found too terrible to speak aloud about, many millions more wrote letters, and it is from these two sources that Thomas Quasthoff reads today, and for a few hours, Private Charles Blackmore (an under age enlistee), Captain Reginald John Armes, Wolfgang Panzer , Frau S and others speak to us from the past.
At first the music for this work appears to be random; but listen closely to the narrative and they are carefully chosen works which Amatis Trio - violinist Lea Hausmann, cellist Samuel Shepherd, and pianist Mengjie Han - skillfully use to complement these voices, these words from a time that has passed but must never be forgotten.
Korngold Much Ado About Nothing, suite for violin and piano, Op 11
Webern Three Little Pieces, Op 11
Schubert Piano Trio No. 2 in E flat, Op 100
Schumann Abendlied, Op 85, No 12
Schubert Notturno in E flat, D 897
Shostakovitch Piano Trio No 2 in E Minor, Op 67
Kreisler Three Old Viennese Dances
Schumann Phantasiestücke, Op 88
Webern Two Pieces, for violoncello and piano
Rebecca Clarke Piano Trio
There is always a connection between the music and the words being read here and sometimes it is evocative of a mood, sometimes of a hope or a desire. The first work, “Much Ado About Nothing” sums up perfectly the opinion of many people in Britain when war was announced, that it would all be over by Christmas. Other works reflect composers whose work was sung by British and German soldiers when in 1914 that brief glimmer of humanity on both sides shone through and a Christmas truce was announced. Only 50 yards of forsaken ground separated both armies and neither up until then had seen each other except on the battlegrounds of mutual slaughter.
Does war bring out at times the best that is in humanity or has that already been lost by all too many people to survive in that war? There is no real answer to this question, but eventually, when all too many people have died or been wounded, war will stop and the task of rebuilding from the death and rubble must begin. It is then that humanity after war, (if not in war) has to be what saves us all, and this work is in the end all about that hope, that spark of humanity that is left in us all.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
The war in the context of this work is World War I, and so used are we all now to reading the terrible facts about this war (many censored from the public at the time), the unbelievable loss of life on all sides, the horrors of trench life, the devastation on civilian populations, that we are at times in danger of reducing everything to facts, to nothing more than numbers. Behind every number, however, every gruesome statistic, there is a real human being, someone who also had a family and loved ones hoping that they would return from war safely to them.
In a pre-digital world, pen and paper was, if we exclude the then modern inventions such as radio, telegraph and telephones, the only way of communication between those at home and at war. Some people kept journals which were to become first hand witness accounts of events that their authors often found too terrible to speak aloud about, many millions more wrote letters, and it is from these two sources that Thomas Quasthoff reads today, and for a few hours, Private Charles Blackmore (an under age enlistee), Captain Reginald John Armes, Wolfgang Panzer , Frau S and others speak to us from the past.
At first the music for this work appears to be random; but listen closely to the narrative and they are carefully chosen works which Amatis Trio - violinist Lea Hausmann, cellist Samuel Shepherd, and pianist Mengjie Han - skillfully use to complement these voices, these words from a time that has passed but must never be forgotten.
Korngold Much Ado About Nothing, suite for violin and piano, Op 11
Webern Three Little Pieces, Op 11
Schubert Piano Trio No. 2 in E flat, Op 100
Schumann Abendlied, Op 85, No 12
Schubert Notturno in E flat, D 897
Shostakovitch Piano Trio No 2 in E Minor, Op 67
Kreisler Three Old Viennese Dances
Schumann Phantasiestücke, Op 88
Webern Two Pieces, for violoncello and piano
Rebecca Clarke Piano Trio
There is always a connection between the music and the words being read here and sometimes it is evocative of a mood, sometimes of a hope or a desire. The first work, “Much Ado About Nothing” sums up perfectly the opinion of many people in Britain when war was announced, that it would all be over by Christmas. Other works reflect composers whose work was sung by British and German soldiers when in 1914 that brief glimmer of humanity on both sides shone through and a Christmas truce was announced. Only 50 yards of forsaken ground separated both armies and neither up until then had seen each other except on the battlegrounds of mutual slaughter.
Does war bring out at times the best that is in humanity or has that already been lost by all too many people to survive in that war? There is no real answer to this question, but eventually, when all too many people have died or been wounded, war will stop and the task of rebuilding from the death and rubble must begin. It is then that humanity after war, (if not in war) has to be what saves us all, and this work is in the end all about that hope, that spark of humanity that is left in us all.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com