East meets West to the beat of tabla

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This article was published 27/10/2023 (734 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE Manitoba Chamber Orchestra served up a big batch of musical stew steeped in cross-cultural flavours Wednesday night, as it welcomed back to its stage multi-award-winning, Sri Lankan-born Canadian composer/conductor Dinuk Wijeratne.

The dynamo shared the limelight with Montreal-based tabla player Shawn Mativetsky — considered one of Canada’s foremost hand drummers and currently serving on faculty with McGill University — in his MCO debut.

Wijeratne performed quadruple duty all night as affable host, conductor, composer and pianist, with his self-described autobiographical program featuring a trio of his original works, as well as several more classically inclined pieces that have played a pivotal role in his eclectic musical journey.

MCO fans may recall the world première of the artist’s Gajaga Vannama — Fantasy Variations on a Traditional Theme from when he last appeared on this stage in October 2019. Co-commissioned by the MCO with I Musici de Montréal, the 15-minute piece scored for piano and string orchestra is inspired by the traditional Sri Lankan song capturing the majesty of the sacred elephant with its eight trunks and 16 tusks, frolicking in lotus ponds of the gods.

It’s also a whole lot of fun, showcasing Wijeratne’s dazzling piano chops and his ability to meld tabla-like dance rhythms, funky jazz riffs, tonal clusters and even extended instrumental techniques into a white-hot combustion of sonic forces, rightfully earning thunderous applause and a mid-concert standing ovation from the enthralled audience of 370.

A second highlight was his A Letter from the After-Life, excerpted from his 2015 string quartet Two Pop Songs on Antique Poems, which garnered both Juno and East Coast Music Association awards in 2016. The boundary-pushing work explores “our place in the universe” and boasts its own heavy metal roots; it begins with a plaintive opening theme that blossoms into more densely orchestrated textures, dramatically capped by a cameo appearance of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden theme from his String Quartet No. 14.

Mativetsky also treated us to his Short Tabla Solo in Teentaal, juxtaposed with Wijeratne’s hypnotic ostinato piano theme, while cellist Benoit Loiselle supplied a drone. Wijeratne quipped afterwards to the string player, “That’s probably the most exciting B flat you’ll ever play.”

Sitting cross-legged onstage, Mativetsky’s fingers flew and danced on his drum skins, often a dizzying blur as he punched out joyously infectious rhythms while grinning ear to ear.

The program kicked off with Kareem Roustom’s Dabke for String Orchestra, which drives forward with pulsing vitality, as the musicians morph into percussionists, beating out rhythms on their fiddles and basses to wonderfully textural effect.

At first blush, Sir Edward Elgar’s quintessentially English Serenade for Strings in E minor, Op. 20 appeared a program interloper. However the U.K.-trained Wijeratne explained that it had been one of the first western classical works he fell in love with after hearing a Mozart piano concerto rocked his then-Asian-based world, ultimately leading to his “lifelong journey of trying to marry eastern and western classical music influences.”

The artist led the compact orchestra with crispness throughout, with its second movement, Larghetto, a luminous, expansive highlight underpinned by lush harmonies, making up for oddly tentative strings during the opening Allegro piacevole, and further redeemed by a satisfying finale Allegretto.

A string orchestra arrangement of Bartok’s Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs (SZ 71), Nos. 7-15 ‘Old Dance Tunes’ saw the musicians digging in hard, with the program wrapping up with Wijeratne’s (Out of the) Karmic Blue, premièred by Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble in 2004, and the “first dabbling” by the composer in blending tabla with orchestra.

Once again, the composer creates a fascinating interplay between all musicians, with his duets between piano and tabla particularly compelling that showcased their simpatico artistry.

In many ways, arts organizations around the globe are still very much feeling their way back to live performance practice after the pandemic shuttered doors for nearly three years. Having an audience remain seated for 95 minutes sans intermission — that’s double the usual length of time for a “first half”— invokes the law of diminishing returns with the pacing of this still highly engaging program becoming its only flaw.

Nonetheless, Winnipeggers are a hardy lot and, as expected, leapt to their feet at the end with a rousing standing ovation and more cries of bravo, well sated by this East-meets-West feast of cross-cultural riches.

holly.harris@shaw.ca