Weber Iago Quartet + Strings – 18/02/2004, Brussels

Weber Iago – p
Pierre Bernard – fl, alto fl, bass fl
Henri Greindl – el b, b, el upright bass
Tonio Reina – d
+ string quartet

It was my first time out to the Bouche-á-Oreille and we (my girlfriend and I) didn't get lost driving there and found a nearby parking space immediately. Amazing. The venue itself was a rather strange mixture of cabaret and concert hall. We were seated at round tables of four chairs each, the floor was checkered with black and white tiles and there were heavy red curtains, but any illusion of intimacy was shattered by the high ceiling, the sheer size of the room and especially the shoulder-high stage. This made viewing rather uncomfortable and put unnecessary distance between audience and performers. Why the room was arranged in such a way was beyond me.

Weber Iago is a Brazilian pianist who has become something of a regular visitor to Belgium (he declared it to be his sixth trip here) and this concert was celebrating the release of his second album (which I haven't heard) on the local Mogno label. The first five songs went by to tepid reaction: the music was had a kind of unobjectionable and sophisticated prettiness that avoided any excess sentimentality or austerity, but occupied a limp middle ground between good and bad taste, straying neither to one or the other. Iago's melodies seemed over-stuffed, but it was not that there really were too many notes, but rather that there seemed to be little room to breathe or to sing or to remember. I was reminded of an album I reviewed recently, a recording of Hermeto Pascoal compositions which gave that same feeling of an over-flowing of unnatural, too-regular and unmemorable themes. Also, there was little interactivity within the group: the Brazilian rhythms, refined and lightened almost out of existence, were laid down inflexibly; a nascent jagged and blues-tinged piano figure that could have spurred a flute solo to greater heights quickly died down; on several occasions, the band shifted into a looser gear (if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor), but only for a brief coda.

There were bright spots, of course, and brightest among them was Pierre Bernard's flute. Having seen him only in more improvised contexts, I was surprised by the strength of his "traditional" playing: on all of his flutes his tone was strong and even and he had no trouble projecting over the rhythm section. He also added touches of humour otherwise sorely lacking: at the beginning of the second song, he took up the alto flute and played the opening phrase, only to realise that he should be using the regular (soprano?) flute!

After five pieces that seemed to grow increasingly similar, we braced ourselves for a long night. Yet, by whatever magic it is that happens on stage, the evening suddenly took a turn for the better when Iago took a few minutes solo piano to play fast, rumbling arpeggios in the lower register underpinning a pungent melody. When Greindl discreetly joined in, it was to emphasize the more jazz-oriented chords Iago was improvising upon. Suddenly, the music had gained in body and depth and shifted from prettiness to beauty. The audience manifested its increased pleasure. When the band returned to a Brasilian rhythm for the next song, it was with a new bounce in their step and a heavier beat.

The announced string quartet, the main reason for my curiousity, as I had never seen this kind of association live, then took to the stage, and Iago introduced them by reading the four musicians' names from the back of his CD! A first, somewhat overly dramatic piece for the five strings (the quartet plus Greindl's acoustic double bass) passed without too much notice. Then, a grippingly slow lament of great sadness unfolded, expressed especially by the first violin when he played with what sounded like bow applied to strings at only half pressure. The mood lightened as the full octet played together.

The next piece was the only one not composed by Iago, and fully bore out the danger inherent in such a tactic. The delicacy of expression of minor-key nostalgia in Egberto Gismonti's perfectly-titled “Memoria e Fado” easily dwarfed Iago's own compositions. Still, the pianist more or less managed to regain control of his concert by taking a more vigourous tack for the last song before the encore, as a fast and percussive low-register piano figure intricately and repeatedly morphed into a more expressive and harmonically mobile legato in support of Bernard's bass flute.