Month: May 2010

Alliance Française Concours de la Chanson

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

 

(French Singing Competition)

Wellington June 19-20, 2010

In association with the Cultural Service of the French Embassy, NZ School of Music and NZ Opera Society.

To celebrate the international Fête de la Musique (World Music Day), the Alliance Française Wellington invites entries from singers aged 18- 30 years for the inaugural Concours de la Chanson to be held in Wellington the weekend of 19-20 June, 2010. The competition comprises two categories: modern chanson and classical mélodie. A prize of $1500 will be awarded to the winner of each category, consisting of $1000 plus a scholarship of two terms’ tuition at the Alliance Française Wellington. Entries close June 6, 2010. Information and entry forms available at www.french.co.nz

Rules:

1. The competition is open to solo singers aged 18-30 years. Only accompaniment by a single live instrument is permitted. No recorded accompaniments.

2. All songs must be sung in French.

3. There are two categories of competition:

i) modern chanson as epitomised by the work of popular singers like Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens, Edith Piaf, Charles Aznavour, Barbara, Léo Ferré and Serge Gainsbourg.

ii) classical mélodie, that is, classical art song written in French for solo voice and piano in the style of French composers of the 19th century or later such as Berlioz, Massenet, Duparc, Chausson, Chabrier, Fauré, Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc.

4. Entrants may enter both categories.

5. Entrants will be judged on accuracy of language and appropriate style for the genre as well as singing performance.

6. An elimination round may be held on the afternoon of Saturday 19th June.

7. Final at St Andrews on the Terrace, 7.30pm Sunday 20 June.

8. 1st prize in each category is $1000 plus a scholarship for two terms’ tuition at Alliance Française Wellington (not transferable).

9. Enquiries phone 04 475-9909

Entries:

By June 6, 2010 by post, email to alliance@paradise.net.nz or delivered to our Wellington office with the following details:

Name, date of birth, address, telephone, and email.

Teacher’s name and contact details if applicable.

Title of song, composer and approximate length.

Dame Malvina Major and the NZSO – a concert of commitment

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ANTHONY RITCHIE – French Overture

GIUSEPPE VERDI – I Vespri Siciliani “Merce dilette amiche”

GIACOMO PUCCINI – Tosca “Vissi d’arte”, Madama Butterfy “Un bel di vedremo”, Gianni Schicci “O mio babbino caro”

VINCENZO BELLINI – Norma “Casta Diva”

EDWARD ELGAR – Symphony No.1

Dame Malvina Major (soprano)

Tecwyn Evans (conductor)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday, 14th May, 2010

I was originally going to “roll two reviews into one”, as Dame Malvina Major was performing on consecutive days with the orchestra in Wellington; but after thoroughly enjoying the first of the two concerts I made an executive decision to write about the two events separately, so as to properly “place” the tumbling profusion of impressions that the first event alone landed upon me. What struck me most forcibly about this concert was the sheer commitment shown by all concerned to the task of getting the music across to us. From the opening strains of Anthony Ritchie’s beguiling “French Overture”, through the beautifully-delivered operatic arias bracket by Dame Malvina Major, and finally to the stirring blaze of Sir Edward Elgar’s first, epoch-making symphony, I thought the musical responses had a whole-heartedness and sense of purpose that drove to the heart of each of the works presented. Even when one could quibble with this detail here and that emphasis there, the sense of everybody’s involvement in the music-making carried the day, resulting in a most successful and heart-warming concert.

Centrestage was Dame Malvina Major, bringing to her performances of several well-known and much loved operatic arias an amalgam of stylishness and simplicity of utterance that  served the music well throughout. Backed to the hilt by stellar playing from the orchestra, expertly guided by New Zealand’s most prominent and currently successful overseas-based conductor, Tecwyn Evans, Dame Malvina successfully brought each of the operatic heroines to life on the concert platform for us. Perhaps she struggled at the very beginning of the recital to produce enough tone and heft to project the vigorous aria sung by Elena in Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliani, “Merce, dilete amiche”; and her rendering of Tosca’s “Vissi d’arte” which followed, ideally also needed a bit more juice at its climax. But in other ways the latter was so well-focused, so detailed and heartfelt in depicting the character’s desperation, that we forgave the lack of amplitude at one or two cardinal points.

One registered the beautiful phrasing and sensitively-weighted line in Bellini’s “Casta Diva”, singing which seemed to expand naturally and unforcedly into golden outpourings at the big moments, that same elegance of vocal production shaping the lines of “O mio babbino caro” so unerringly as to melt the stoutest paternal heart. Only in the more strenuous moments of Madama Butterfly’s famous “Un bel di vedremo” did one sense a voice having to be content with less that what the music seemed to require; but the sheer musicality of Dame Malvina’s more subtle delineations of Cio-Cio San’s character revealed for us the artist that she remains.

Framing the Dame, so to speak, were two orchestral excursions, the concert beginning with Anthony Ritchie’s intriguingly-titled “French Overture”, a work which the composer wrote while on study leave in Paris in response to a commission by conductor Tecwyn Evans. Ritchie modelled his work on the form of a French baroque overture, with its slow-fast-slow scheme, as well having recourse to characteristic dotted rhythms and fugato form to strengthen the traditional connections. What struck me about the work (as with Ross Harris’s two pieces in the recent “Made in New Zealand concert) was the music’s overall surety of shape and focus throughout, allied with its splendidly-modulated use of detail, leading the ear ever-onwards in a more-or-less continuous exploration of melody, rhythm and colour. The opening brass-and-percussion flourishes set the scene splendidly, as if proclaiming a kind of historical pageant to follow, the mood of the introduction by turns stern, epic, lyrical (a beautifully soaring theme on the violins over the lower strings’ dotted rhythms), and noble (golden horn tones warming the textures).

Throughout the work I felt that forms such as fugue were being used in ways that related to what had come before, either by osmotic transition or well thought-out contrast – here the fugal impulses which seized the strings mid-work seemed to have been waiting in the wings since the beginning, and so were readily integrated into the later “workings-out” of revisited and enriched material. Thus the return of the imposing opening music’s mood is enriched with a darker, grander statement of the fugal subject, after the winds had earlier roared out a somewhat livelier version, again in tandem with or in close proximity to a soaring string tune shedding stratospheric light on a tattooing timpani rhythm. I loved the folkish “slur” on the lowest reach of the flute-and-strings tune, repeated by the lower strings when they had their turn – and the strings-and-timpani conclusion to the work, with the sounds slowly emptying out through the ether, felt profoundly satisfying.

As well as with this performance, conductor Tecwyn Evans had amply demonstrated earlier in the month his commitment to contemporary New Zealand composition with his directorship of both the NZSO/SOUNZ Readings, and the “Made In New Zealand” concert to his credit. Now, to set beside his skills as an operatic accompanist, Evans then gave notice of his abilities as a symphonic conductor with a stirring performance of one of the great late-romantic symphonies, Sir Edward Elgar’s 1908 Symphony in A-flat. Right from the beginning of the work one could sense the care with which the “great tune” was shaped and nurtured, with beguiling touches of wind counterpoint brought out in a sensitively colouristic way and the “pomp and circumstance” of its repetition on the full orchestra splendidly hurled forth, if just missing that final touch of swagger in evidence on the very greatest performances on record. Especially notable in the first movement was the conductor’s balancing of the music’s purposeful energies with its more lyrical and winsome aspects (such an intensely beguiling grace given to that repeated melismatic phrase which sits at the top of a solo violin’s upwardly striving tendrils – on each occasion a moment of real orchestral frisson, catching the sllghtly “wind-blown” effect to perfection).

Terrific playing from all concerned gave the scherzo real bite and colour (received wisdom has it that Elgar’s writing for orchestra is an exemplar for any budding composer wanting to study instrumentation). The trio section in this performance conjured up sound-worlds of evocation in line with the composer’s description of the melody as “something one hears whistled down by the river”. And the transition from this to the slow movement was a sequence to die for, as much for what it promised as what was fulfilled, the string textures warming and ripening, as the players found themselves given plenty of time to “breathe” their lines deeply and richly. A Brucknerian horn chord introduced the movement’s main theme, with its characteristic falling interval, whose sigh of contentment or regret or both is goosebump-making when played, as it was here, with sufficient heartfelt intensity. Even more heart-rending was the strings’ soaring transformation of the opening theme towards the movement’s end, the rhapsodisings melting back regretfully into a final, beautifully rapt clarinet phrase. At the risk of sounding like a musical Pooh-Bah I confess to cursing the gaucheries of that section of the audience which applauded during the silence that followed, and had to stop myself springing to my feet and “shushing!” in response to the outburst, well-meaning though the show of appreciation undoubtedly was.

Nevertheless, the finale’s brooding, rather sinister opening “got back” the atmosphere quickly and surely, the allegro urgent and strong, perhaps the tiniest bit splashy ensemble-wise, but settling to allow the violas to dig into their striding theme with plenty of outdoor vigour. Perhaps the conductor pushed the staccato theme too quickly when it first appeared (it slows down anyway as it peaks), but the ensuing bustle and tumult of “working out” were extremely exciting, and the ennobling of that same theme by the strings had all the romantic sweep one would wish for. When the symphony’s motto theme returned at the end, after fighting its way through the various agitations and galvanic irruptions, the effect was thrilling; and at the detonation of the very last chord, we in the audience were able to at last express our pent-up excitement and pleasure at witnessing such a brilliant and committed performance.

Zephyr Ensemble plus Diedre Irons at Lower Hutt

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Chamber Music Hutt Valley

Mozart: Quintet in E flat for piano and winds, K.452
Ken Wilson: Woodwind quintet
Luciano Berio: Opus Number Zoo
Francis Poulenc: Sextet for piano and wind quintet

Zephyr Ensemble Wind Quintet (Bridget Douglas, flute; Robert Orr, oboe; Philip Green, clarinet; Robert Weeks, bassoon; Edward Allen, horn; with Diedre Irons, piano)

Little Theatre, Lower Hutt

Thursday, 13 May, 8pm

When there is a delightful programme, a thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying performance and players of the calibre of these NZSO members and a pianist of international stature, there is really not much for a reviewer to say.  Each of the musicians played perfectly, as far as I could tell.

The Mozart quintet is quite well-known, and was claimed at the time by its composer to be “the best thing I have so far written”.

From the first moment, the sound from the winds was warm; the ensemble was superb.  This is a most gracious and beautiful work which it was gratifying to hear, opening the programme.

Ken Wilson’s wind quintet was written in 1966, and recorded by the Concertante Ensemble in 1986.  The four movements are all very fresh and playful sounding.  Although I have the LP, this was the first time I heard the work live.

The music is lively and spirited, with moments of contemplation.  Many close intervals are featured.  The third movement, allegro marziale, was fun and made me think of a child creeping into a room and surprising the people there.

This is a foremost piece of New Zealand music, and deserves to be heard more often (it is occasionally broadcast on RNZ Concert).  Its craftsmanship, melody and harmony are very individual; it was great to hear it.

Luciano Berio’s Opus Number Zoo I have heard before from this ensemble; it was a late off-course substitute for the scheduled work by Sir William Southgate, which could not be played for copyright reasons (despite it being commissioned by the Hutt Valley Chamber Music Society a number of years ago).

Berio’s sparkling musical humour and the whimsical texts by Rhoda Levine make for great entertainment.  Despite being first performed in 1971, it does not appear in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980; reprinted 1995).

The words are worked into the music, with each of the music speaking lines in appropriate pitch and rhythm (and at times with appropriate action and facial expressions).  All the musicians did this well, but Bridget Douglas excelled both in clarity and expression.

The titles of the movements, Barn Dance, The Fawn, The Grey Mouse and Tom Cats, indicate the sort of words and music that might be heard, although the Barn Dance is not for people but for a ‘poor silly chick’ and a fox, while The Fawn is a reflection on war, and men who ‘blast all that is lively’.

Exciting playing and the wonderful words tellingly told made for a most enjoyable experience.

Poulenc was superb at writing for winds, and this work was among his best.  After a startling opening, we were treated to a sprightly, stimulating and intriguing work.  All the playing was animated and first-class, but notable early in the piece was the horn, and the fine bassoon playing.

Sentimental in places (or was it merely pensive), the music traversed energetic moods also.  The final movement was lyrical as it moved from passionate to gentle mood.

This was an interesting programme before an enthusiastic (but not large) audience.  The Hutt Valley Chamber Music Society had considered folding, on account of small audiences.  This was a larger one than is sometimes seen.  Let us hope that the decision to continue will be rewarded with greater patronage.  The concerts presented certainly deserve it.

The concert was rather shorter than usual, but this may have been on account of the necessary substitution to the programme.

NZSM voice students at St Andrew’s for lunch

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Voice students from the New Zealand School of Music, accompanied by Emma

Sayers: Imogen Thirlwall, Xingxing Wang, Laura Dawson, Thomas Barker,

Bridget Costello, Olga Gryniewicz 

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 12 May, 12.15pm

We are in the season of mid-year, students’ recitals from the New Zealand School of Music; in this, we had five women and one man in a programme that was varied and delightful.

Though I missed the first three songs, from Imogen Thirlwall and Xingxing Wang, they both reappeared later so that I could gain some impression of their talents.

Laura Dawson had just begun Der Nüssbaum from Schumann’s cycle Myrthen as I entered and I was at first enchanted by the simple beauty of her voice and its easy delivery, even in quality throughout its range; her style was appropriate, warm and lyrical. But in her second song, Jemand, her relaxed and rather unvaried interpretation didn’t meet its demands so well. It needed a little more energy.

Baritone Thomas Barker sang what turned out to be the centre-piece of the concert: Ravel’s three songs, Don Quichotte à Dulcinée. They come at the end of Ravel’s life, yet offer no hint of any fall-off in inspiration or liveliness; they were an entry to a competition for music for Pabst’s film Don Quixote which featured Shaliapin. Ravel was slow and the award was eventually given to Ibert. But it is Ravel’s songs that have lived.

I had just been reading a chapter on Ravel by Australian critic and composer Andrew Ford. “Perhaps it s the restraint that endears this composer and his music to an age that shows little restraint of its own. … he never harangues us, never forces an emotional response, never tells us what to think or how to feel…Instead he offers us his expensive distractions, which are always made to he highest standard. And he keeps his distance.” I love ‘expensive distractions’; I have long felt that Ravel’s music is one of the best of all possible models to present to aspiring composers: not for the young the voluptuousness of Daphnis et Chloë, but rather the brilliance, clarity and restraint of the piano music, and the precisely captured images in the chamber music and songs such as these.

Barker is on the way; while he sounded uneasy taking the corners of the first song, Chanson romanesque, his Chanson à boire was confident, his voice strong and even; a riotous little triumph. And Emma Sayers played a brilliant piano part. 

I last heard Bridget Costello at this church last September, and again enjoyed her singing. Duparc’s Chanson triste is mature music that probably comes more easily to a singer with more years of experience and pain; yet this seemed a fine Duparc voice in the making, still a bit thin at the top but expressing a calm and sincere emotion.

Later she sang a song by Dorothea Franchi, one of New Zealand’s most talented song-writers: Treefall. The air of awe at the danger, the magnitude and monstrousness of the act were more than hinted at. 

Xingxing Wang was a voice new to me. Though Mimi’s Act I aria is so familiar its difficulties are real and they were evident in this performance; she did well, but the creation of a steady, legato line sometimes eluded her. And her interpretation captured little of Mimi’s shyness and vulnerability, and the intimacy of her self-revelation.

The extravert ‘Je veux vivre’ from Roméo et Juliette suited her far better; at this stage it’s her soubrette quality that is most conspicuous, and she carried it off with a carelessness that is the essence of Juliette’s feeling in this scene.

Olga Gryniewicz has had a high profile in the school’s performances and while her voice still displays shortcomings, the top of her register and her agility are striking. Two Rachmaninov songs, in Russian, offered strong contrast: the panic of Loneliness, conveyed through some taxing, very high, florid passages; and ‘How beautiful this place’, much more romantic and lyrical yet still calling for some stratospheric notes.

I’d have liked to hear Imogen Thirlwall in Roussel’s Le bachelier de Salamanque which was the first item on the programme, for I was a little disappointed in her singing Pamina’s aria, ‘Ach, ich fuhl’s’ from The Magic Flute. An attractive voice, but her intonation was shaky occasionally and she has yet to gain confidence in expressing emotion – the loss and perplexed pain that Pamina feels at this point.

Fantasy and reality – New Zealand School of Music Orchestra Concert

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SCHUMANN – Piano Concerto in A Minor

SHOSTAKOVICH – Symphony No.11 “The Year 1905”

Diedre Irons (piano)

Kenneth Young (conductor)

New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wellington

Wednesday 12th May 2010

This concert reinforced my feeling that there is a pressing need in Wellington for an alternative mid-sized venue for concerts. Ensembles such as amateur and student orchestras, whose following wouldn’t perhaps stretch to filling with audience an auditorium such as the Town Hall, nevertheless deserve to play somewhere that’s more acoustically grateful to orchestral sound than is St. Andrew’s on-the-Terrace Church. Throughout both of the orchestral concerts I’ve attended at the church this year, I found myself thinking how much more musical both bands would sound if playing in an acoustic less bright, analytical and constricted than what they and their audiences have had to cope with.

I’ve no wish to denigrate such a wonderful church as a concert venue for solo recitals, chamber groups and smaller vocal and instrumental ensembles, and have enjoyed many concerts there given by those kinds of forces. Like many churches, the intrinsically theatrical layout and performance ambience of St.Andrew’s makes it an ideal place to listen to and enjoy an enormous range of music performances, as the recent series of March Concerts which ran parallel to the International Arts Festival richly demonstrated. But try to jam a sizeable orchestra or the forces required for a major choral work into the performing space and then listen to them perform – the resulting sound reflects all-too-obviously a lack of ample space for effective large-scale music-making.

As an ex-player in an amateur orchestra I often used to reflect on the phenomenon of the performances I took part in sounding considerably more mellifluous when our group performed in public, compared to the sounds we made at our rehearsals, the difference being largely a warmer and better-balanced acoustic at our regular concert venue than what we had to endure in our cramped practice rooms. A pity that both the Wellington Chamber Orchestra and the NZ School of Music Orchestra don’t have the luxury of a similar sound-metamorphosis. One could reflect by way of compensation that we live in a troubled, less-than-ideal world, and making and listening to music in a less-than-ideal acoustic environment could perhaps be regarded as a metaphor for our troubled times.

The music featured on the programme for this concert mirrors some of the issues associated with “troubled times” – the Schumann concerto is a romantic, almost escapist evocation of a world removed from irreconcilable conflict and darkness; while its pairing with the Shostakovich symphony in the concert could epitomize the chasm between an ideal and the reality of life. The latter work all too graphically depicts the constraints placed upon individual activity and happiness by a regime prepared to brutally sacrifice human life to maintain the status quo. Certainly the contrast between the two halves of the concert couldn’t help but make upon listeners an enormous impression of distance traversed, and of experience both enjoyed and resolutely confronted.

The orchestra had the inestimable benefit of pianist Diedre Irons as soloist for the Schumann concerto, a work with whose performance she’s been identified over the years. She certainly commanded the keyboard to thrilling effect in places, such as in the first-movement cadenza, and during those joyously abandoned moments in the work’s finale, when piano and orchestra match momentums stride-for-stride. Perhaps the immediacy of the acoustic had something to do with it, but I was surprised her playing seemed very insistently-projected in places where I was expecting more light-and-shade, more limpid and withdrawn tones, as with the first movement’s main theme (I did write in my notes at that point, “piano very full-toned – but we are all very close, and this IS a full-blooded romantic piano concerto!”). Having said this, I thought the slow movement beautifully phrased throughout by piano and orchestra alike, a highlight being the gorgeous tones of the ‘cellos in their “big tune” mid-way through the movement, which the rest of the strings joined in with and shared. The winds, while not always DEAD in tune throughout, negotiated some lovely exchanges with the piano at the very end of this movement. And all credit to both oboe and clarinet, in the first movement voicing their respective first-and second-subject themes clearly and gracefully, and to the horns for their great calls at the reprise of the finale’s main, leaping theme.

In general, I thought the musicians captured the joy of the music, if not all the poetic nuances of the writing – I was able to witness a huge wink from conductor Ken Young to his soloist after she had completed a surging flourish leading into one of those full-blooded orchestral tutti in the finale, an exchange which nicely summed up the collaborative spirit of the performance. No such joy and tumbling warmth was in evidence during the concert’s second half, featuring Shostakovich’s mighty Eleventh Symphony – whatever collaborative spirit celebrated by the music was indeed a grim, resolute affair, the symphony’s subtitle “The Year 1905” providing a clue as to the work’s intent and physical and emotional terrain. Having heard Ken Young expertly conduct a similarly harsh and confrontational work last year, the Sixth Symphony of Vaughan Williams, I was prepared to have my sensibilities similarly laid bare by the Russian composer’s all-too-palpable depictions of violent oppression and untoward human suffering.

The symphony is one of a number of Shostakovich’s works which has acquired over the years a certain negative reputation for politically-motivated bombast. True, in certain hands, these works can sound empty and over-inflated, but rarely when interpreted by Russian conductors like Mravinsky and Kondrashin, who get their players to cut through the hollow-sounding rhetoric to the nub of the matter. In a sense, everything is already in the music (as with Michelangelo’s “releasing the angel from the stone”) and the musicians simply work to set it all free. For me, this is just what Ken Young’s conducting and the playing of the student musicians (helped by a handful of NZSO players) managed to do throughout the work. The Symphony emerged as the searing, universal testament of human suffering and fortitude that its composer would have wanted it to be.

Each movement’s prevailing character was sharply etched – the hushed opening, with its ghostly brass fanfares (both trumpet and horn by turns capturing that paradoxical sense of enormity of distance in time and space, and oppressive, impending menace, the occasional split note mattering little in such an atmosphere), the flute duo’s melancholy song, and the constant suggestions from orchestral groupings of underlying suffering, despair and menace, set the scene for the nightmarish coruscations to follow. Young beautifully controlled the second movement’s swirling foretaste of the ensuing tragedy, and got the utmost out of all sections during the pitiless fugal passages and the savage three-against-two brass-and-percussion onslaught, everybody, the audience included, collapsing with exhaustion at the end, the trumpet calls having a proper “angel-of-death” ambience, with strings and winds offering little consolation.

Over portentous pizzicati the violas beautifully sang their third-movement lament, joined by violins (playing lower!) to great effect, the ensuing quasi-Wagnerian textures (shades of Siegfried and Fafner!) dissipated by conciliatory strings, Young building the intensities with his players to almost-unbearable thresholds of pain and angst, before the short-lived respite offered by the return of the viola theme. Still, nothing in the performance surpassed the players’ commitment to the “Tocsin” finale (my notes feature scribbled exclamations such as “wonderful punch and spike”, “like a series of hammer-blows”, “slashing violin lines”, “roaring, stuttering brass”, and “shattering climax”, one’s critical senses obviously too dumbstruck by the onslaught to resort at the time to anything more than cliches!). It didn’t matter that, in the final uproar, I couldn’t hear the climactic tubular bells being rung at all – there was simply no room in the crowded soundscape – it was that feeling of having witnessed musicians at full stretch playing music which activated one’s capacities for total involvement which was lastingly treasurable and made the most impression.

Bach’s organ music illuminated by Nicholas Grigsby on new organ at St Paul’s Lutheran

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Lecture-recital “Variations on J.S. Bach: The Lutheran Chorale Partita and Fresh Perspectives on the Enigma of a Musical Genius”

Nicholas Grigsby (organ)

St.  Paul’s Lutheran Church

Sunday 9 May, 5pm

Nicholas Grigsby is Director of Music at Wanganui Collegiate School, and a fine organist.  This event was obviously designed to showcase the brilliant new two-manual organ at St. Paul’s Lutheran church.  It is a small but incisive instrument.

Grigsby covered only the early years of Bach’s career, and illustrated his talk with illustrations from archives and published scores, as well as at the organ.  He stated that Bach must have taken on board many influences in his youth.  Part of a long lineage of musical Bachs, some of whom would have been important influences, he nevertheless is known to have gone to great lengths (literally) to hear noted composer-organists of his day.  Examples of some of these people’s compositions were played.

The first was by Nicolaus Bruhns, who died at about the time J.S. Bach was born. Prelude and Fugue in E minor was brilliant music.  Next was Georg Böhm’s Chorale Prelude Vater unser in Himmelreich. Not nearly as showy as the Bruhns work this was beautifully played; a delicate piece with lovely ornamentation.

Reincken, whom Bach went from Lüneburg to hear in Hamburg, was mentioned, but not played.

From Lüneburg Bach moved to Arnstadt, and from there he walked to Lübeck to hear Buxtehude play.  Archival photos showed us the Marienkirche that stood in that city (and its organs) until bombed in 1945.   Buxtehude’s Fugue à la Gigue was refreshing; as Grigsby said, “like taking a shower in the morning”.  The registration of flutes, with pedals only at the end, was delightful.  This work was followed by the same composer’s Prelude, Fugue and Chaconne, which in contrast, opened with pedals only.  Taken at a brisk pace this was a very satisfying sequence of contrasting movements.

During his brief time at Mulhausen following Arnstadt, Fugue à la Gigue, which Grigsby played next, may have been written (though Grove calls it ‘spurious’). Bach and his family then moved to Weimar.  It is possible that the Variations on ‘Sei Gegrüsset, Jesu Gütig’ were written at Weisenfels, where the Weimar court had its winter residence.  Both palaces had large and excellent organs.  Bach had time at Weimar, with a generous employer, to write a lot of music.
The Variations began solemnly, featuring good phrasing and articulation from the organist, though at the beginning the rhythm was occasionally a little wayward.  There was admirable contrast in registrations between the variations.  The full organ sound at the end made the organ sound like a much bigger instrument.

Songs My Mother Taught Me – Mother’s Day Music from Nota Bene

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Music for Mother’s Day

Music by Grieg, Bruckner, Pärt, Tavener, Holst, Gounod, Biebl, Gorecki, Dvorak, Haydn, Vautor, Hely-Hutchinson, Hrušovskŷ, Richard Puanaki, David Childs, David Hamilton, Carol Shortis

Nota Bene Choir

Frances Moore (soprano) / Julie Coulson (piano)

Christine Argyle (director)

Lyndee-Jane Rutherford (presenter)

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Sunday 9th May

Christine Argyle’s “Nota Bene” Choir got the mix right for their Mother’s Day concert,  with a programme of music whose first half did strong, sonorous homage to Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, before paying tribute after the interval to ordinary, everyday mothers, with songs of affection, remembrance, and wry humour – and finishing with “Rytmus”, Ivan Hrušovsky’s well-known “choral etude” in praise of Eve, the first human mother, as a brief, but exciting finale. With a waiata-like guitar-accompanied opening (actually called “Ka Waiata” and written by Richard Puanaki), and featuring greetings and spoken commentaries by theatre and television personality Lyndee-Jane Rutherford, the event kept an appropriately light touch throughout, the music expressing an attractive amalgam of fun, energy, sentiment, nostalgia and profundity in nicely-gauged doses.

The programme skilfully rang the contrasts throughout, so that we had juxtapositionings such as solemn, Wagnerian Bruckner leavened by excitable, energetic Aarvo Pärt, and then David Hamilton’s West Indian rhythms next to Henryk Gorecki’s rapt, richly-harmonised mesmeric lines. The choir’s configuration would often change between items (womens’ voices only for Gustav Holst’s “Ave Maria”, for example), and soprano Frances Moore contributed several solo items accompanied by pianist Julie Coulson, which were interspersed throughout the concert.

After the opening preliminaries,  Grieg’s “Ave Maris Stella” demonstrated the choir’s finely-nuanced control of tone and texture, not over-moulded, so that those piquant harmonies of the composer’s sounded as fresh as ever – a far cry from the rich upholstery of Bruckner’s very Wagnerian writing for voices (like something out of “Lohengrin”) in his “Ave Maria” setting, featuring some testing top-of-the-stave lines for the sopranos, who emerged from the encounter with credit. All the more excitable, then, seemed Aarvo Pärt’s hymn to the Virgin “Bogoroditse Djevo”, very “Slavic” in its energy and love of contrast.

I equally enjoyed the work of another “holy minimalist”, John Tavener, whose conversion to Russian Orthodoxy inspired works such as the chant-like “Hymn to the Mother of God” (the narrator touched briefly on the importance of Mary in the Eastern Orthodox liturgy), here delivered with wonderfully suffused resonances, the choir relishing the clustered harmonies and glowing evocations of worshipful prayer. The sparer textures of Gustav Holst’s music (sung by womens’ voices) exposed a touch of stridency during the more “striving” lines of the opening, but the withdrawn ambiences at “Et benedictus fructus tui Jesu” readily captured the setting’s beauty.

Frances Moore’s turn was next, with Julie Coulson providing admirable support for her soprano partner in Gounod’s perennial favourite “Ave Maria” – a lovely performance by both musicians, the singer having plenty of upward heft and true tone on the high notes, though her breath-taking was a bit obtrusive in places. Still more changes were rung by the next item, Franz Biebl’s “Ave Maria” setting, in this performance for men’s voices only, the singers arranged with a trio of voices set apart, and soloists within the choir, giving the textures a degree of spaciousness and making for lovely antiphonal effects. Each exchange between the voices had a slightly different character, varying dynamics and colours in a perfectly delicious-sounding way. The trio of voices (tenors Nick McDougal and Andrew Dunford, with baritone Isaac Stone) got a rich ground-sound, while the higher-voiced group had more plaintive, almost reedy tones which emphasised their placement and their different lines.

Music by two New Zealanders and two “Davids” followed, firstly David Childs’ “Salve Regina”, an attractive minor-key setting with a soprano soloist, Gilian Bruce, from the choir, some momentary ensemble imprecisions of little moment when set against the heartfeltness of the singing. The last few utterances  were notable for the terracings of the words “O clemens, o pia” and “dulcis virgo”, the descriptions nicely differentiated.The work made a good pairing with the “other” David’s piece that followed, the “Carol of the Mother and Child” by David Hamilton, the Caribbean rhythms fetching up some delicious syncopations from out of the setting’s infectious gait.

Concluding the concert’s first half was Henryk Gorecki’s sublime “Totus Tuus”, a hymn of devotion to the Virgin Mary, written to commemorate Pope John Paul’s third visit to his homeland of Poland in 1987. “Totus Tuus” translated from the Latin means “totally yours”, and was the Pope’s apostolic motto, the opening words of a prayer declaring utter devotion to the Virgin Mary and the Holy Trinity. Declamatory and arresting at the beginning, with cries of “Maria”, much of the work was rapt and devotional, using conventional but extremely rich harmonies which varied in colour and intensity as the piece progressed. The contrast was marked between the work’s forthright opening and utterly mesmeric conclusion, the word “Maria” at the end repeated more and more softly, like the conclusion of “Neptune” from Holst’s “The Planets, with the womens’ voices disappearing gradually into the ether. The effect was of having undertaken a significant journey through realms of timelessness, thanks to the strength of the voices’ response to Christine Argyle’s confident, patient direction throughout.

Not surprisingly, the concert’s second half had a rather more secular feel, with the focus directed firmly towards earthly mothers, beginning with a song written by David Hamilton “When My Mother Sings To Me”, featuring a unison opening verse, whose words were then given canonic, and then harmonic treatment in subsequent verses. A natural ally for this item was, of course, Dvorak’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me”, here sung by Frances Moore, tremulous, and with some breathless phrase-ends, but sweet-toned and with wonderfully secure high notes. Her two other solo items, a folk-song by Josef Haydn and a somewhat quirkily theatrical setting of the “Old Mother Hubbard” nursery rhyme by Victor Hely-Hutchinson, were brought off with aplomb, the Haydn song-birdish and radiant, and the Hely-Hutchinson setting mock-Handelian with a dash of dramatic rhetoric, singer and pianist relishing the fun of it all. A pity the quintet of voices which came together to perform 17th-century composer Thomas Vautor’s “Mother I will have a Husband” didn’t bring more temperament, more “spunk” to their otherwise nicely-sung performance – it all needed to be a bit more boldly characterised.

But the highlight of the second half of the concert was a piece composed by Carol Shortis, in response to a commission from one of the Nota Bene choir members, Judy McKay. This was for a work dedicated to her mother, Dulcie Reeve/Coutts, described as a “pianist, piano geacher, gardener, mother, grandmother, homemaker and friend to to many – generous of Spirit, loving of Heart”. The music was to a text by the Bengali poet and author Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), a poem called “My Song”. Pianist Julie Coulson’s arabesque-like figurations made for an atmospheric, almost bardic beginning to the music, the voices exploring a wide range of expression, from whispered to full-throated tones, colourings subtly changing as the composer gently drew together the choir’s cluster-harmonies (with a particularly telling harmonic “shift” towards the end). The whole work was suffused with glowing feeling, by turns radiant with the soprano soloist soaring aloft, before gliding gently downwards, and a softer tranquility of remembrance and wonderment which lingered after the sounds had ceased to be.

Benefit duet for mezzo and piano

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Felicity Smith (mezzo-soprano) and Catherine Norton (accompanist) Benefit Concert

 

St. Mark’s Church. Lower Hutt

 

Saturday 8 May, 3.30pm

 

A delightful recital by two well-qualified young musicians, both already having quite impressive track-records took place on Saturday.

 

Felicity Smith has a strong voice, well supported, with warm and full tone.  Her opening aria, ‘Parto, parto’ from La Clemenza di Tito by Mozart made a stirring opening.

 

The church’s acoustics are good, and it was notable (compared with some recent venues for recitals) that it was not too resonant, enabling the accompanist to have the piano lid on the long pin. 

 

The balance was good at all times between the two performers.  However, the acoustics could not cope with announcements of the items made far too quickly and quietly.  There were over 60 people in the audience; they all need to hear what the items are.  A larger building demands slower speech; conversational speaking will not do, nor will speaking at the bottom of the voice.  (I obtained the titles and composers of some of the items after the concert).

 

Three Roger Quilter songs were very expressive, and the words clear. They were ‘Now sleeps the crimson petal’, ‘Weep you no more’ and ‘Fair house of joy’ (as a poem, probably better known by its first line, ‘Fain would I change that note’.)  The accompaniments were beautifully realised throughout the recital, but especially in these songs.  The accompaniment for the Mozart aria, being written for orchestra, does not come off so well on piano.

 

A piano solo followed: the first movement of Mozart’s sonata K.333.  While well played overall, some notes, particularly at the ends of phrases, were indistinct, and pedalling occasionally blurred the line.

 

The aria ‘O ma lyre immortelle’ from Gounod’s opera Sapho, followed, sung in excellent French (which Felicity Smith studied for her BA).   The singer projects well, which is so essential in an opera singer.  Perhaps she needs to relax a little; a  slight tension appeared sometimes reflected in the voice, and in noisy breathing as the recital wore on.

 

Purcell’s lovely song ‘Music for awhile’ was sung with beautiful control, including the singing of ornaments.  It was followed by a spirited rendering of an aria from Handel’s Giulio Cesare.

After the interval, Chopin’s enchanting Berceuse was sensitively and attractively played by Catherine Norton.

 

This was followed by three folk-songs arranged by Benjamin Britten: ‘The Ash Grove’, ‘Ca’ the Yowes’ and ‘The Brisk Young Widow’; these were very effective, and featured sympathetic expression of the words.  Then, also in the 20th century, Prokofiev’s lively piano solo Sarcasm, an excellent piece in bracing style.

‘Spiel’ auf deine Geige’ by Robert Stolz about a gipsy violin and ‘Youkali’, a French song by Kurt Weill about a utopia, ended the programme.  The former revealed very characterful singing, while the latter, which employed a large range from contralto into soprano, was quite charming, and provided a lovely ending to the recital.

 

This was a very musical presentation by a fine singer and a very good accompanist.  We can but wish them well in their overseas studies and their careers to follow, and hope that they return to New Zealand before too long.

 

Further concerts will take place: 9 June, 12.15pm at St. Andrew’s on The Terrace (Felicity), 2 July (tbc) St Peter’s Willis St (Felicity), 1 August, St. Andrew’s on The Terrace (Catherine’s farewell concert), mid-late August (date and venue tbc), Felicity’s farewell concert.

 

NZSO demonstrates a century of New Zealand music

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra: In a New Light

Concert of New Zealand music by Arnold Trowell (The Waters of Peneios), Ross Harris (Violin Concerto; The Floating Bride, The Crimson Village), Claire Cowan (Legend of the Trojan Bird), John Psathas (Seikilos)

Conducted by Tecwyn Evans with Anthony Marwood (violin)

Wellington Town Hall

Friday 7 May, 7.30pm

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra made a striking contribution to New Zealand Music Month.  It attracted a pretty full house, perhaps many freebees, but at least they came.  And I spotted a couple of Auckland music critics too. Instead of the usual concert of New Zealand music, devoted to music of the past 20 years, at most, this exposed a near-century-old work by a very obscure composer who was a much more famous cellist, and one born in Wellington: enterprising!

A common thread was Greece, as three of the pieces had reference to Greek myth and music.

I was greatly intrigued by the unearthing of this very interesting piece by the Wellington-born composer Arnold Trowell (his real name was Tom – he adopted Arnold as a more ‘artistic’ name), who was the object of largely unrequited adoration by the young Kathleen Beauchamp (Katherine Mansfield), a year his junior. He was already a gifted cellist and inspired Katherine to take it up; Trowell’s father was the teacher and she displayed considerable talent too, to extent that music as well as writing became a serious ambition. Both Trowell and Beauchamp went to London around 1903 and the relationship continued for about six years, he sending her his compositions.

As a student I remember cello pieces, either composed or arranged by Trowell; I still have one.

The Waters of Peneios (the river that flows through the Vale of Tempe in Thessaly) was written when Trowell was about 30, by then a renowned cellist, and Katherine had only about five years to live.

It proved an attractive tone poem of quite singular accomplishment. If it suggested orchestral colours of Debussy, perhaps a facile (in the listener’s mind) connection with Debussy’s faune, as shimmering strings in the opening passages underlay a flute, and then oboe, that is fair; but just as conspicuous were touches of Delius and Strauss and of the climate of the more advanced music to the First World War.

In a time when originality is something of an obsession, audible influences of predecessors are sometimes deprecated, but in all previous eras it has been the way a composer learns his trade; and it is surely to be expected of a composer who had not written much orchestral music. In the central stormy episode there were strains of melody and orchestral colour that were Straussian, and the later river evocation might have been akin to Siegfried’s Rhine episode.

According to the pre-concert talk by the work’s discoverer, Martin Griffiths, it was first performed in 1917, and as many as 27 times since then, including one by New Zealand conductor Warwick Braithwaite, and last in 1976. He said there were many other extant orchestral pieces by Trowell. Though his New Zealand connection obviously became tenuous, their exploration and recording by the NZSO could be an interesting exercise.

It offered musical images of water, of a river in calm and turbulent modes, though hardly of the character that were displayed on the big screen behind the orchestra – mountain tops, mighty waterfalls, racing clouds: to my mind an unfortunate, distracting, even quite misleading element.

The music seemed to show a composer fully conscious of the need for careful shaping of ideas and of the overall structure. And so it held the attention, offered much delight, throughout its revelatory quarter hour.

The playing of New Zealand music or at least music by New Zealanders, needs to reach back to earlier generations. The orchestral music of Alfred Hill, 20 years older than Trowell and whose string quartets are now getting attention, is still ignored by our orchestras: there are a dozen symphonies. There are other composers of the years before Lilburn and in two decades after him who are neglected, giving the false impression that Lilburn came out of nowhere and that it has taken till the last quarter century for composers of comparable talent to appear.

Though the screen was used again to accompany both the music of Claire Cowan and John Psathas, with little more purpose, it was thankfully absent from the first performance of Ross Harris’s Violin Concerto. Here in fact was a highly impressive performance – a huge credit to orchestra and conductor – of a highly impressive work, commissioned by Christchurch arts patron Christopher Marshall.

Its opening called up more hints of a 20th century violin concerto such as Berg’s, Szymanowski’s or Ligeti’s than of neo-romantic examples by Barber or Korngold, Khachaturian or Shostakovich: its quiet opening in wide-spaced pitches, from harmonics to sonorous G string bowings, then a more lyrical comment on similar material from clarinet. These fragments slowly coalesced with the increasing involvement of the rest of the orchestra, heaping layer on layer till a full, almost opulent, string chorus took over.

Written in one movement, through a 20 minute span, its story passed through phases of fragmentation and reassembly, in predominantly fast tempi and highly virtuosic writing both for the violin, brilliantly realized by English violinist Anthony Marwood, and for the orchestra under the assured command of Tecwyn Evans. Contrasting episodes of agitation, even frenzy, and lyrical, pensive moods and later a magnificent, rich brass chorale, in which scraps of themes slowly came to be recognized, maintained the feeling of a narrative, and of a satisfying form; the violin often adorned, with dancing, Mefisto-like, the ideas as they evolved in the orchestra.

The common device of employing the opening ideas in modified form at the end did indeed serve the piece well, bring a sense of peace and resolution.

After the interval Jenny Wollerman sang Harris’s orchestral incarnation of the set of songs to poems by Vincent O’Sullivan, inspired by Chagall’s paintings. I heard her sing these in Nelson at last year’s Adam Chamber Music Festival, accompanied by Piers Lane at the piano. Naturally, the richness of an orchestra transformed them into songs of more immediate attractiveness, and it was easy to be seduced by the beauty of the scoring, transparent, very supportive both of the imagery in the poems and of the voice. Silly as such a comment might seem, there was a quality in the orchestration that brought reminders of another work inspired by paintings – Mussorgsky’s in Ravel’s garb: in the fourth song, The Rabbi, for example. The orchestration of Give me a Green Horse was particularly entertaining, while the evocation of As the Night in low woodwinds helped form a picture of deep Chagall blue.

Wollerman’s voice is in fine shape, and carried easily over the generally discrete orchestra; if sensuousness was not very required or available, her singing was expressive and her diction clear, though the words, sensibly, were in the programme.

The concert ended with two further programmatic or narrative works. Claire Cowan’s Legend of the Trojan Bird was accompanied by no mention of the significance of a Trojan bird, or a source in Homer: I can recall no mention of a bird in The Iliad; yet the music stands on its own feet. One was free, perhaps with the help of some poetic lines by the composer, to conjure one’s own pictures; what was not helpful was the reappearance of someone else’s images on the screen, either sadly literal or irrelevant.

The music was tonal, skillfully orchestrated, coloured by several excellent solos from orchestral principals, episodes that were variously aerial and ethereal, earth-bound and ominous, droll and sensuous.
Finally a twelve-year old piece by John Psathas, written for performance by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, based on a verse etched on an ancient Greek tombstone with rudimentary hints of its accompanying music. The message of the verse is ‘live for the day’; Seikilos is vintage Psathos, rich in orchestral effects, especially percussion, strong, complex rhythms, it radiates boisterous joie de vivre, and this was really the only time that the visuals, mainly a sparkling sphere that exploded like sunspots from the sun, and swelled and contracted to reflect comparable emotions in the music, its outbursts of delight and their subsidence.

I don’t think I had heard the work before and was intrigued to contemplate the endurance of the orchestral hallmarks in his music. Psathas is a striking example of a composer who found a voice fairly early and has seen no reason to abandon it significantly.  It serves very well to create images through tuned percussion and the more subtle metal and wood percussion instruments, as well as often beautiful string choruses. Its success as a piece of latter-day impressionism lay in the inconspicuous construction of its musical evolution, ending in fading undefined murmurings.

Visuals accompanying music are almost always a distraction and an irritation, especially moving images. I doubt that many composers would really have welcomed it, and wonder whether these composers were particularly happy with an idea that may have sprung from an effort to popularize the music – i.e. to dumb it down, to protect the little darlings in the audience from being bored by plain music.

Static images might have been acceptable, and a friend remarked that the one opportunity to use the screen sensibly was missed – to display the Chagall paintings as each was sung. I agree.

Otherwise, this was an enterprising concert of worthwhile music that demonstrated the reality of a century or more of serious composition by New Zealand composers; it deserved and got a large audience.

A Touch of Spain – Trio Con Brio with Caprice Arts Trust (2010 Concert Series)

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Music by CARULLI, PIAZZOLLA, BRUNI, ALBENIZ, TARRAGO, GRANADOS, and BEETHOVEN

Trio Con Brio

Cheryl Grice-Watterson (guitar)

Martin Jaenecke (violin)

Victoria Jaenecke (viola)

St.Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt

Tuesday 4th May, 2010

It didn’t take long for the Trio Con Brio’s mellifluous combination of guitar, violin and viola to make a lasting impression on this listener. What I heard in the grateful acoustic of St.Mark’s Church in Lower Hutt, all but persuaded me to give myself entirely over to the music of Ferdinando Carulli as if it were among the greatest ever written. I strongly suspect that, attractive though the music undoubtedly was, it was largely the animated elegance of interplay between three fine musicians that captured my attention so wholly, the kind of music-making that’s worth taking a lot of trouble to seek out and enjoy.

The work in question was a Trio Concertante by the aforementioned Carulli, whose name, though not unknown to me, was unconnected with any music I could remember hearing. The programme notes suggested that Carulli’s output was somewhat uneven, though adding that he was at his most inventive when composing chamber music. Though I suspect my listening at this stage of the concert was taken up largely with registering how well the guitar’s limpid tones held up against the brighter, more sustained timbres of both violin and viola, the trio’s adroit balancing of voices allowed the composer’s across-the-board inventiveness to make a positive impression. By contrast with the opening movement the Largo explored softer episodes, the guitar demonstrating its dynamic range as tellingly in its way as could its companions. A final movement, marked “Presto” wasn’t quite that – more “allegro”, but also quixotic and volatile, with a lovely “false” ending that satisfied both one’s capacity for amusement and sense of completion.

Martin Jaenecke’s violin next joined with Cheryl Grice-Watterson’s guitar to realise one of Astor Piazzolla’s redoubtable tangos, one entitled “Continental Cafe 1930”. A slow, languorous beginning, more dreamed by the guitar than played at the start, until awakened by the violin with dance-like impulses, put the work into the category of one “more to be listened to than danced” (although experts might disagree!). A major-key section emphasised the dance rhythms, though sequences from the solo guitar inclined towards the freely rhapsodic, the fascinating interplay between the two instruments suggesting an intertwining of different sensibilities attracted by something ineffable.

The following work was by a composer whose name I didn’t at all know, Antonio Bartolomeo Bruni (1757-1821), a composer of opera in his day as well as of many instrumental works. Italian-born, he spent much of his career in Paris as a violinist, conductor, composer and teacher, having the good fortune to be seen as a supporter of the Revolution, which helped his job prospects – apparently at one stage he was given the task of compiling an inventory of valuable musical instruments confiscated during the Terror!  Martin and Victoria Jaenecke, playing violin and viola respectively, gave us one of Bruni’s many duos, and added plenty of physical excitement to their playing by standing, thus able to almost “choreograph” the music – a flowing, lyrical opening was enlivened with dance-like episodes, switching from major to minor and with lead and accompaniment constantly changing. As one might expect, the teamwork between the players was impeccable, with the finale’s “allegro con moto” adding extra excitement to the interchanges – I particularly enjoyed both the swapping of melodic lines in the same register between instruments, allowing the different timbres of each to tell, and also, towards the conclusion, the “question-and-answer” phrasings in the melodic line.

Concluding the first half was another piece by Piazzolla, “Oblivion Milonga” which was arranged by the Trio themselves to play. A characteristic opening, sultry and laden, with the viola taking the melody initially, before handing over to the violin, subsequently became a duet in octaves, the guitar supplying the rhythmic impetus, the music as potent when delicate and withdrawn as when full-blooded.

Cheryl Grice-Watterson began the second half with a work for solo guitar, the wonderful “Asturias” by Isaac Albeniz, telling us a little about the composer and the work and the “guitaristic’ qualities of the music. Listening to her playing this work, it was difficult to imagine that it was originally written for piano, so “guitaristic” did the player make it sound. She captured the storytelling aspect of the recitative passages with remarkable focus and concentration, her subtle “voicings” of tone compelling our attention throughout. The guitarist was then joined by Victoria Jaenecke, whose viola stood in for the human voice in three song transcriptions, one by Graciano Tarrago (1892-1973),and two by Enrique Granados. In the Tarrago transcription, I felt the viola sounded a shade too “smooth” compared with the forthright guitar-playing – a slightly coarser, more “pesante” approach might have worked better, perhaps? Again, Cheryl Grice-Watterson’s guitar timbres  and rhythmic impetuses really made the Granados songs come alive, the viola nicely encompassing in particular the mood of the first of the two Granados songs, “La Maja Dolorosa” (The Sad Woman).

The concert ended with a Serenade by Beethoven, arranged for the ensemble by a contemporary of the composer’s, one Wenceslaus Matiegka, whom the programme note describes as “a fashionable teacher of piano and guitar in Vienna” (nothing is said about Beethoven’s opinion of the transcription, though there were many such made of the work for different combinations). The players realised the opening’s vein of melancholy, with lovely long lines, the strings in octaves and the guitar a middle voice, before what seemed like a schizophrenic vein of mischief gripped hold of the proceedings, with the composer alternating between a major-key allegro and a quasi-tragic adagio – all very divertingly and entertainingly brought off by the Trio. The second movement, an Andante quasi Allegretto, was charmingly done, by turns poised and deeply-felt throughout a set of variations; while a polonaise-finale with genteel rather than rustic intentions featured golden-toned strings and rousing guitar chords, and a surprise scampering ending, brought off with characteristic style and elan by the three musicians, who thoroughly deserved the acclaim which marked the concert’s end.