Expressions of joyful energies – JS Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos from the Amici Ensemble

Waikanae Music Society presents:

The Amici Ensemble
JS BACH – The Six Brandenburg Concertos

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday, 23rd July 2023

Time can easily wrong-foot one’s perceptions of things through distraction and/or inattention  – to read in Sunday afternoon’s Waikanae programme featuring the splendid Amici Ensemble that the group is currently in its 34th season was for me something of a jaw-dropping realisation, not the least because the performers themselves all seemed as imbued as ever with youthful zest and boundless enthusiasm! – how on earth could it be so many years’ worth? Where did all the time go?

And if that wasn’t enough, what a stupendous undertaking it all was on this present occasion! – one with which a music ensemble could justly demonstrate its capabilities and proclaim its calibre! I don’t know whether this was actually the first time all six of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos had been performed in a single concert in this country, but the music’s sheer variety of invention and its technical and interpretative challenges seemed to me the perfect vehicle with which a group could make a “who-we-are” and “what-we-do” statement that would resonate so readily and widely among audiences.

Pretty well every instrumental ensemble worth its salt world-wide would have had a “go” at the Brandenburgs at one stage or other, and the recordings on all kinds of carriers are, of course, legion! Longer-term listeners like myself have found ourselves living through different “eras” of style and performance practice that have variously established and then turned on their heads ways of doing things over the duration, but leaving us, I think, enriched in the process. I still treasure my 1950s Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra LPs of these works, for example, while being newly invigorated by some of the later and totally different efforts of various modern-day ensembles.

As is the case with all music performance the listener’s “individual preference” factor continues to lend a fascination to hearing performances that can differ to what’s hoped for and/or expected. Of the performances we heard, I can say that I unreservedly enjoyed every one of the “middle” concertos, Nos 2, 3, 4 and 5, while finding myself responding positively to PARTS of the First and Sixth Concertos – I simply didn’t want to feel quite so “rushed” in either of the latter two’s opening and (in the First Concerto) closing movements. (I’ll get such subjective niggles out of the way, first, in order to be able to express my unreserved joy regarding the rest of the concert!)

I did think the playing order that the group devised made good sense, particularly concerning No. 1 being placed last, this being the grandest of all of the concertos, with the most instruments and the greatest number of movements. It was an obvious choice for the concert’s finale, and especially with the horns making their only appearance across the entire set, and, in a sense stealing the show with their spectacular playing. Still, here, I wanted the tempi for the first and last movements to be “chunkier”, more bucolic and rustic-sounding, and not create quite such a “hurried along” impression as I gleaned. I found myself thinking “Why rush through such delightfully detailed music?” as, to me, if felt that that this performance of the “grandest” of the works didn’t evoke quite enough grandeur…..

My other bout of “modified rapture” came with the opening of No. 6, where I wanted the violists to phrase more “affectionately” and relaxedly together, instead of the crisp repartee it seemed we got – (this is a “preference” of course, as I’ve said) – and I straightaway must add that violists Nicholas Hancox and Beatrix Francis beautifully dovetailed their phrasings in the finale, which more than  made up for the impression of undue haste in the first movement – I particularly enjoyed the ensemble’s’ wholehearted  “plunge” into the minor-key section of the finale – real “temperament” at work here, and most enjoyable!

As I’ve said, the rest of the concert was sheer undiluted delight! Beginning with No. 2, and its joyous and energetic opening, we were enchanted by the stellar playing of trumpeter Michael Kirgan, whose dexterity upon his instrument was little short of wondrous, both here and in the finale, a single note during the latter at one point failing to “sound” being neither here nor there!  His fellow-soloists (Donald Armstrong, violin, Bridget Douglas, flute, and Robert Orr, oboe) were not to be outdone in this work, as the slow movement gave them the opportunity to bring out a most touching melancholy, so creating something of this great music’s “eternity” in their evocations of sounds amid a deep sense of stillness.

No. 5 seemed to lap up the musicians’ energies with glee, with flutist Kirsten Eade and violinist Donald Armstrong at first sharing the solo limelight with harpsichordist Michael Stewart, whose “concerto” this work ostensibly is, and whose solo cadenza on this occasion was momentarily “held up” by a page-turning mishap which necessitated some quick rearguard action by the player to regain his place in the music before launching into the movement’s cadenza – which he eventually did with what seemed like unflappable surety! – (I noted one of the ensemble helping him out by becoming his page-turner for the next little while!) The slow movement of this work – harpsichord, flute, violin and cello – was gorgeously done; while the gigue-like Allegro finale resembled a dance to which all the players gradually joined, with both spring and girth making an irresistible combination of buoyancy and energy!

I remember my first “live” encounter with these works in earlier days was through the Third Concerto, a kind of Baroque “Concerto for Orchestra” played at an NZSO concert, though I can’t remember who conducted – in any case, it all made for a vastly different sound-world to the one which the Amici Ensemble recreated here at the second half’s beginning, a briskly energetic, light-footed dance with crispy-wrought lines and plenty of tonal and textural variation in the strings-and-harpsichord sound. It all worked so well, especially the finale, whose wonderfully-wrought crescendi were irresistibly grown out of the molto-perpetuo rhythms before scintillatingly breaking at their apexes like finely-modulated oceanic waves – all very exciting and visceral an experience!  Incidentally, the  famous “chordal modulation” that constituted the slow movement was made into a satisfyingly “mysterious and enigmatic moment” from which the work’s finale whirled us into those “other realms” outlined above.

This was followed by the contrasting No. 4, one probably vying in popularity with No. 3, and perhaps even surpassing the latter in terms of having singable melodies! Two flutes (Bridget Douglas and Kirsten Eade) and a solo violin (Donald Armstrong) were the soloists, supported here by strings and harpsichord. Light and vivacious on its feet, the music featured delectable duetting from the flutes, and some violin pyrotechnics from Donald Armstrong that caused sparks to fly, both in the first and last movements. In between were sequences of exchange between flutes and strings, creating a fanciful aura that evoked exchanges between mythical beings, such as Echo and Narcissus, Apollo and Daphne, or Pan and Syrinx. The finale brought the strings into the limelight via a brilliant Presto, during which all the instruments adroitly interwove their lines, while revelling in the sharing of songful expressions of joyful  energies.

Certainly, such “songful expressions” and “joyful energies” were readily brought out by the musicians, keeping my sensibilities on the boil for practically all of the concert, a response obviously shared by the Waikanae audience, judging by their prolonged applause at the concert’s end. I haven’t mentioned all the musicians by name thus far, and want to pay tribute to both their individual and collegial skills in helping to make this “Brandenburg journey” such a delightful and resounding experience – Anna van der Zee (violin/ piccolo violin), Malavika Gopal (violin/viola), Andrew Thomson (violin/viola), Ian Greenberg (‘cello), Ken Ichinose  (‘cello), Damien Eckersley (bass), Louise Cox (oboe), Michael Austin (oboe) Justin Sun (bassoon), Alex Hambleton (horn), Kate King (horn). All deserve acclaim for their part in making these works for our pleasure at once a wondrous evocation of an era and such living, thrusting expressions of timeless human relevance.

“Sing Joyfully” sings its name – The Tudor Consort’s 400th-year anniversary tribute to William Byrd

The Tudor Consort presents:
SING JOYFULLY –

A 400th Year Celebration of the works of William Byrd (c.1540-1623)

Mass for Four Voices
– Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus & Benedictus, Agnus Dei
Ave Verum Corpus
Ne irascaris Domine satis
– Civitas Sancti tui
The Great Service
– Kyrie, Venite, Credo, Benedictus, Te Deum
Praise our Lord all ye Gentiles
Sing Joyfully

The Tudor Consort
– sopranos:  Erin King, Jane McKinlay, Melanie Newfield, Rebecca Stanton
–  altos:  Emma Drysdale, Alexander Granville, Tahlia Griffis. Kassandra Wang
–  tenors:  John Beaglehole, Peter Liley, Joshua Long, Herbert Zielinski
–  basses:  Brian Hesketh, Joshua Jamieson, Matthew Painter, Isaac Stone

Music Director;  Michael Stewart

Instrumentalists (The Great Service)
–  Cornetti:  Andrew Weir, Paula Weir
–  Sackbuts:  Jonathan Harker, Byron Newton, Peter Maunder, Luke Spence

Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul, Molesworth St.

Saturday, 1st July 2023

Being a music-lover but still made occasionally aware of certain “gaps” in my knowledge of and love for various musical eras and their characteristic styles, I was forced to confront head-on such a one of these unchartered spots over recent days when asked to review a concert presented by the Tudor Consort, one devoted to the music of William Byrd on the occasion of the latter’s 400th anniversary. I make this statement knowing fully well that my opinions as expressed below of the quality of music-making I heard at the scheduled concert inevitably consist more of the fruits of nascent revelation than of prior knowledge or experience. Rather than striving to somehow “paper over” such gaping holes in my musical education I thought I would readily acknowledge my defects and seek to present my “delight in discovery”, hopefully, in the process of doing so conveying a measure of the extent to which the performers brought the music to glorious life for everybody present, including the uninitiated, such as myself.

Happily, much of the background information relating to the concert was provided in a pre-concert talk by the Tudor Consort’s Director Michel Stewart, who outlined some of the flavour of the times in which William Byrd lived and worked as a musician and a composer in England. It was of course a period dominated by religious and political upheavals brought about by both the Reformation and the changes in succession to the English throne, resulting in the older Roman Catholicism having to eventually give way to Protestantism as decreed by the Monarch of the time. Byrd, who was a devout Catholic, found himself unable to publicly practise his faith when the 1559 Act of Uniformity forbad the celebration of the Catholic liturgy. He was fortunate, however, that Queen Elizabeth I, who had taken the throne and firmly established the Protestant Church of England, was herself a music-lover and musician, and was at first tolerant of both Byrd’s and his fellow-composer (and former teacher) Thomas Tallis’ religious beliefs. Both composers were members of and wrote for the prestigious Chapel Royal, Byrd continuing to produce a substantial amount of English liturgical music, among which can be found numerous English Anthems, and “The Great Service”. The latter was not published in Byrd’s lifetime, about which there has been considerable conjecture – was this due to potential difficulties for Byrd caused by increasing anti-Catholic sentiment, even though the work was probably his most significant contribution to the Anglican liturgical world? He was, as well, engaged in writing settings of the Latin mass after he’d left London, removing himself from the scrutiny of the Queen’s “informers” regarding his participation in and contributions to secret Catholic rites of worship.  He continued to write settings in English as well, both sacred and secular, though his music’s Latin texts frequently made allusions to the plight of the Jews in Biblical times, relating the same to the English Catholic community’s present privations. After living for a while at Harlington, in Middlesex, he eventually moved his family to Stondon Massey in Essex where he died 400 years ago.

Michael Stewart drew our attention to several examples of what the evening’s programme would present us with, beginning with the “Catholic” first half, and mentioning in particular an item which the Consort had performed in their inaugural 1986 concert – the five-part motet Ne Irascaris Domine – Civitas sancti tui (Be not angry, O Lord…). The text consists of verses from Isaiah (64:9,10) interpolated into the Mass, an example of text derived from Scripture which could easily pertain to the situation of Catholics wanting to practise their faith in England at Byrd’s time. Another, earlier interpolation in the mass was the motet “Ave Verum Corpus”, for centuries a “forbidden pleasure” in England, being a Catholic work, but more recently a staple of what one might describe as almost interdenominational worship – and at Evensong, no less (all of this according to what I’ve recently read about the work!)

Regarding the concert’s “Anglican” second half, Stewart spoke of Byrd’s “The Great Service”, telling us that the evening’s performance would be augmented by instrumentalists in places (along with an accompanying organ, there were to be cornetts and sackbuts) as was sometimes done (and, according to some accounts I read, to the “indignation” of some more Puritan listeners!).  A particular feature of tonight’s performance was that, as well as two cornetts, it featured no less than four sackbuts accompanying the singers, and (as one of the players told me) was the first time so many of these particular instruments had been assembled for a concert in this country!

So it was with a good deal of anticipation that we awaited the arrival of the Tudor Consort voices for the concert’s first half, sixteen soloists in groups of four per single part, to firstly perform for us Byrd’s Mass for four voices. This was probably the first of his three Mass settings to be written, but the exact dates are unknown, due to the composer’s reluctance to publish these works in complete form at a time when such pro-Catholic activity was a potentially punishable offence. This also explains in part the simpler resources required for this music compared with those compositions by the composer for the Chapel Royal.

The opening Kyrie was exquisitely realised, sounded with a delicacy that suggested an awakening – with the following Christe came an increased sense of space, not merely from the cathedral acoustic, but a kind of widening of vocal possibility, as if after an awakening came a flowering.  The Kyrie’s return imparted a strengthening of this resolve, and a plaintiveness whose edge could be felt amidst the sound’s beauty, fully drawn by the end.

A tenor solo introduced the Gloria, an announcement followed by some concerted vocal excitement, even, I felt, a touch of urgency here and there, the lines thankfully binding together at Gratias agimus tibi, and building joyfully towards the soprano line at Deus Pater Omnipotens. The voices brought out Byrd’s different portrayal of Jesus Christi as unigenite (Only Son) and Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) – in other words as a sacrifice! And what ritualistic beauty and wonderment the ensemble imparted to Qui tollis peccata mundi, an amalgam of radiance and faith, all the more intensified by Qui sedes a dextram Patris, with its sense of majesty. By contrast, the juices start to run with  Quoniam tu solus sanctus, building up to exhilaration at Cum Sancto Spiritu right through to the conclusive Amen!

It seems as though Byrd intended his movements of his masses to be interspersed with other material, perhaps randomly, perhaps in conjunction with various feast-days on the liturgical calendar, Whatever the case, the Tudor Consort chose firstly the motet Ave Verum Corpus, written by Byrd for the feast of Corpus Christi, a holy day outlawed in England following the Reformation, but still celebrated secretly – which circumstance would have given rise to its insertion in a Mass, as here. Its beautifully harmonic blend of tones at the opening has a resonance and richness befitting the sacredness of the image – Ave verum corpus natum – Hail, the true body! – while the voices’ incisive, pinpoint attack upon the words at Cuius latus perforatum (from whose pierced flank) readily pierced the flesh of one’s listening sensibility. And what a touching contrast we heard with O dulcis, O pie, O Jesu Filii Mariae, the lovely thirds of Miserere mei giving a real sense of mercy implored. The repeat of O Dulcis, and Miserere Mei was even more “covered” and replete with intent, which the defiant and resolute Amen strengthened splendidly.

The Credo, announced by the tenor once again, began with the women’s voices in a canon-like opening exchange which filled out as the men’s voices joined the mosaic-like textures of Patrem omnipotentem  and the abstracted word-painting of visibilium omnium et invisibilium with celestial assurance. I relished all over again my distant but still well-remembered delight in “bouncing” some of these words back and forth as a child in our penny-plainchant parish church version – Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum, de deo vero…. Such quasi-celestial pleasures were brought down to earth at Qui propter nos homines, the singers allowing a haze of luminosity to descend from the heights via a lovely cascading soprano line at de caelis. The almost lullabic Et in carnatus est was beautiful, culminating in a swaying factus est from the sopranos and tenors, before the pitiless announcement of the Crucifixus  darkened the spirits. What relief the announcement Et resurrexit tertia die here brought! And how thrillingly visceral was Et ascendit in coelum, along with the roulades of tone that accompanied Sedet ad dexteram Patris, and the reassuring cujus regni non erit finis.  Then the ceremonial declaration of faith at “Et unam sanctam catholicam Ecclesiam” gave all the more more life and overt purpose to the final Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum, which made leaps and bounds through Et vitam venturi saeculi to a resounding “Amen”.

By way of another break from the liturgical narrative we then heard the motet Ne Iracaris Domine – Civitas sancti tui (Be not angry, O Lord…), whose commentary regarding the plight of the Jewish people at the hands of  the oppressors would have resonated in the hearts and minds of Byrd’s fellow Catholics under a similar yoke of oppression. It received a performance from the Consort which, in my humble opinion produced the most beautifully sustained singing of the evening – begun by the male voices, the opening “Be not angry, O Lord” registered as a gentle lament rising from the depths, the words repeated with the entry of the women’s voices, the music growing in intensity as the “iniquities” of privation are mentioned, and bursting forth at Ecce, respice (the building’s resonances wondrously activated at this point!), continuing the beseechment with populus tuus omnes nos (Behold, we are all your people!) – everything long-breathed and intertwined, as if the whole world was raising its voice! The motet’s second part, Civitas sancti tui (Your Holy City),refers to the resultant desolation of Jerusalem (Zion), the music imparting more sorrow than anger throughout, and in places seeming to evoke memories of past glories and the iniquities that have brought desolation to the place of these glories.

I thought the Sanctus strangely austere and lament-like at first, the singers solemnly and intensely drawing us into the ceremonial realm, with the Hosanna at last bringing us some relief! All very beautiful……similarly, the Benedictus invited us to contemplate, at first, the “one who comes”, before giving voice to joyful energies with the concluding Hosanna. The Agnus Dei seemed like an extended return to the opening Kyrie at first, with the women’s voices beautifully filling out the two-part textures; but the music morphs into perhaps the most moving part of the whole Mass with the intensification of tones and textures towards the third Agnus Dei and its beautiful Dona Nobis Pacem at the end.

This was, as previously outlined, very much a concert of two halves, and it was possible to sense a different kind of excitement regarding the Consort’s presentation of the second part, featuring Byrd’s “The Great Service”, in addition to two “interpolations”, the 1611 “Praise Our Lord all ye Gentiles”, and the earlier anthem “Sing Joyfully”, both written for use in the Anglican service. What galvanised one’s interest was the appearance of the instrumentalists, whose task was to accompany those parts of “The Great Service” performed this evening – incidentally, two of these, the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, were omitted, to be included instead at the Cathedral‘s Evensong service the following day.

Byrd wrote the work for the Chapel Royal, which accounts for the elaboration of the writing, both vocal and instrumental, compared with that for his Masses – he therefore had sufficient scope for six, eight and even ten-part counterpoint, often contrasting solo and small-ensemble lines with the larger groupings for dramatic and structural effect. According to what I’ve read Byrd was not averse to sackbuts and cornetti accompanying the voices alongside the organ, though various commentaries and reviews seem to differ on this point. My only comment as to their use in this present context is that their presence certainly contributed to the overall magnificence of the music’s sound, but made it even more difficult for the actual words to be deciphered – in the voluminous spaces of Wellington Cathedral, size (i.e., the number of performers) is one of the considerations which does seem to really matter!

For this reason most of the second half was a markedly different listening experience to that heard before the interval – the exceptions were the aforementioned “interpolations”, the texts of both of which I could follow more readily, as with the Mass and the motets we heard before the interval. In a less cavernous acoustic I would imagine we could experience (and enjoy) much of the added magnificence of the wind-and-brass sounds without sacrificing the clarity of the words to the same extent. After the deliciously light and airy opening “O come, let us sing unto the Lord”, the full range of voices and instruments in most of the other movements created an overwhelming impression which one simply had to relish for its own, (admittedly at times thrilling!) sonorous qualities. The sound by no means lacked variety, but the contrasts in tone and colour I found difficult to pinpoint in the text. I wasn’t alone in this as my companion similarly attested afterwards to a strain throughout in making out where the voices had gotten up to in the ensembled passages.

The difference became obvious with the following unaccompanied Praise our Lord all ye Gentiles, in which the singing and word-pointing had such an infectious sense of unbridled energy throughout, as if “all ye peoples” around the globe were helping to make it spin, the final “Amen” being particularly vertiginous for all concerned, with the acoustic actually heightening the sense of abandonment.

Next was the Creed, introduced by the tenor, then with voices uplifted at first to God alone, then with the sounds opened up to creation at And of all things visible and invisible  (my familiarity with the text here helping to identify the words!).The Almighty was suitably solemnised at God of Gods, Light of Light, Very God of very God, the voices then descending and imparting a more human voice at who, for us men, then celebrating at and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost. The voices beautifully resonated the words He suffered and was buried,  the day of resurrection “grown” within the music as if by divine will, as was the following and ascended into heaven, drawn upwards by the airborne voices.

I found both the Benedictus and  the Te Deum from “The Service” more difficult to follow through unfamiliarity with each of the texts, despite having the words to hand, though there were compensations afforded by the music’s kaleidoscopic textures, the constant shifting of form, pattern and colour in the music making for endless fascination, especially as these qualities were so writ-large in such a listening environment, if at the expense of the words’ clarity. The instruments themselves never obtruded in an unseemly or ill-balanced sense – as an orchestral texture they blended richly and colourfully, providing a fascinatingly flavoured contrast with the other music in the evening’s programme. Perhaps because of my relative inexperience with these genres, I had no “puritan” objection whatever to the presence of the instruments, which, if performed in a less resonant location would have given more ambient space to word-sounding while still making a world of difference.

Happily, I also took away from the concert the impression made by the programme’s second-to-last item, the name of which, incidentally, Sing Joyfully, was  given to the presentation by the group – an impression of joyful immersion in singing and musicality from all concerned, and of communication to listeners via sound, aspect and movement. I had an opportunity to briefly talk with one of the singers afterwards whose only complaint regarding what they’d done was that they were only getting one chance at performing the music – quite apart from any idea that they might be able to “improve” things that didn’t quite come off as hoped, the singer lamented the “end” of the experience as it was, rather than having the opportunity to do something all over again that was so wonderful! Apart from the sadness at it coming to such an abrupt end, I thought the sentiment paid a richly-deserved tribute to the composer and his music and to the excellence of what was achieved by those who took part – Tudor Consort Director, Michael Stewart, and his wonderful singers and (for the second half) instrumentalists. It’s a tribute I’m pleased to be able to endorse as a listener new to this music and duly captivated by the beauty and lasting relevance of it all.

 

Bravo NYO!

ENIGMA
NZ National Youth Orchestra 2023
Conductor: Giancarlo Guererro

Nathaniel Otley – The convergence of oceans
Aaron Copland – Billy the Kid: Suite
Edward Elgar – Enigma Variations

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday 30th  June 2023

This year’s NYO conductor started playing in the local youth orchestra in Costa Rica, where he grew up, before studying percussion and conducting at a university in Texas. He was an inspired choice for the NYO, given the percussion-heavy first half of the programme, and they clearly enjoyed working with him.

Nathaniel Otley is this year’s Conductor-in-Residence. He has already received a Fulbright Scholarship and a scholarship from the Sydney Conservatorium, and in 2019 won the Todd Corporation Young Composer’s Award. The convergence of oceans was written with the percussion section in mind, featuring what the composer called ‘novel techniques’ and a huge array of percussion effects, including sounds made by ‘found instruments’. Unfortunately, from my seat in the back of the stalls it was impossible to see what was being played, so I cannot explain what made the various bangs and hisses unless it was clearly evident: the tam tam, the whip, bowed timpani. The composer encouraged the percussionists to assemble a trap table of objects that might be picked up along the shore, so it’s anyone’s guess. Bottles? Rocks?

The convergence of oceans was a 10-minute work that felt longer. It is composed in short sections that feature many different effects (a harp glissando, a sussuration of lightly bowed higher strings that becomes a rumour of sound, mouthpiece pops from the brass) without adding together into a whole. It certainly didn’t sound like the convergence of oceans to me, which is both continuous, noisier, and considerably more chaotic. I can imagine that it was a complex and frustrating work to rehearse. The large (six desks each of first and second violins) and highly competent (led by Peter Gjelsten) string sections didn’t have much to do. Even the harpist (Harrison Chau) was under-employed, with occasional single notes and once or twice a glissando. I would have liked the work more if it had been half the length and a bit more horizontal. But the orchestra was fully committed to the performance.

Billy the Kid is the orchestral suite Copland wrote based on the ballet score of 1938.  It’s a perfect work for a youth orchestra, being both attractive and crammed full of solo opportunities for everyone. It demands a large orchestra (four horns, bass trombone and tuba, contrabassoon, lots of percussion) but the music is eminently accessible. The sad story of Billy the Kid can be discerned from the music, but the hero of the work is the Wild West itself. From the spacious opening featuring a wistful oboe solo (Milli Manins) and muted trumpets, to the movements that capture the journey westwards by the settlers, all jaunty tunes, wild rivers, and long days in the saddle (woodblocks!), Billy the Kid evokes both a period and a myth.

The orchestra clearly enjoyed the work, and rose to the playing demands it imposed, which are essentially solo after solo after solo, with complex rhythms and fast tempo changes. I loved it, especially the gunfight scene, with volleys of shots from bass drum, timpani, xylophone, and side drum, assisted by shot notes from the trumpets. Impressive too were the big crescendos, and the careful detail of the build up and down. Some gorgeous playing from the lower brass, especially the bass trombone (Tavite Tonga) and tuba (Sam Zhu). Guerrero is a detailed and sensitive conductor without being fussy. There was evidence of a lot of careful work during rehearsals that resulted in a crisp and atmospheric performance.

The work after the interval was Elgar’s beloved Enigma Variations. Oh to be a young orchestral player, coming to the work for the first time!  The NYO played it as though they had fallen in love with it. There was a change of concertmaster, with Hazuki Katsukawa, the co-concertmaster, taking over from Peter Gjelsten. The string sound was gorgeous, rich and golden, and the tempi were well chosen. Once again, terrific timpani playing (Camryn Nel and Ciaran Wright) and a very beautiful warm horn sound (Evan Metcalfe, Maia O’Connell, Caspar Adams, and Hannah McLellan), well supported by the bassoons, trombones and tuba.

My favourite movement is ‘Nimrod’ (Variation IX), and I was delighted by the way it grew from almost-silence into a stately inevitability, tender and loving, never rushed. There was a very nice bassoon solo from Tor Chiles, with excellent lower brass and timpani, and a glorious string sound. I suspect Guererro’s tempo was well under Elgar’s marking of adagio, but there was absolutely no sense of strain in the playing, just an elegant crescendo, then a beautiful diminuendo e ritenuto. Still, Variation XII gave Nimrod a run for its money, featuring gorgeous solos from Benjamin Carter.

The last movement began with textures of Sibelius (lovely horn playing), and finished with a beautifully controlled crescendo, pulled as if from nowhere. This was a reading that was more subtle and better played than most performances I’ve heard from professional English orchestras.

Of course, the almost full Michael Fowler Centre went wild.  For the third curtain call, Guerrero came out and stood with the flutes and oboes to take the bow, expressing his solidarity with the players, whom he had called ‘truly inspiring’. Bravo!

 

 

 

 

Worlds of difference and sympathy – rapturous Beethoven and Saint-Saens from the Wellington City Orchestra

Wellington City Orchestra presents
BEETHOVEN and SAINT-SAENS

BEETHOVEN – Violin Concerto in D Op.61
SAINT-SAENS – Symphony No. 3 in C Minor “Organ” Op.78

Helene Pohl (violin)
Max Toth (organ)
Wellington City Orchestra
Rachel Hyde (conductor)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church, Wellington

Saturday 24th June, 2023

Small wonder that this concert drew what seemed like a full house to St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church in Wellington on Saturday afternoon. – not only were the two featured works on the programme sure-fire drawcards, but each presentation had the kind of “ädded value” that made their pairing difficult to resist.

The lately-renamed Wellington City Orchestra’s second 2023 outing was this time with the much-respected Rachel Hyde taking her turn on the podium. First up was Beethoven’s adorable Violin Concerto, with great interest centred around the soloist, none other than Helene Pohl, the leader of the internationally renowned New Zealand String Quartet. Having heard Pohl lead her ensemble with enormous distinction through complete cycles of the composer’s string quartets I was naturally intrigued to hear how she would tackle the very different role of a concerto soloist, albeit in the same composer’s music .

What first grabbed my attention.however, was the sharply-defined focus of the orchestra’s introduction to the work, once the slight uncertaincy of the timpanist’s opening strokes had passed – Rachel Hyde secured finely-wrought dynamic contrasts between tutti and chamber-like passages with solo wind lines imparting great character. It was playing that created great expectancy regarding Pohl’s first, ascending-octaved entry, her tones beautifully “growing” out of the orchestral ambiences that had preceded the solo violin’s arrival.

I loved the “elfin” quality of Pohl’s tone throughout, with its shades of expression whose every utterance seemed to simultaneously evolve from whatever she had previously played and respond to whatever solo or ensembled phrases accompanied hers. Her instrument’s voice had a silvery quality which took on a more burnished- golden aspect in places where Beethoven’s thoughts were at his most profound, then returning to a diaphanous quality when, in places, dancing with similarly delicate orchestral solos. For their part, Hyde and her players both supported the soloist and took the lead when necessary, splendidly initiating and controlling the tensions leading up to the tutti outbursts leading to the movement’s solo cadenza.

Pohl’s sounding of this was like a prayer, chordal-like ascendings, followed by playful duettings of themes, and heroic passages in thirds, before her summonsing of the orchestra once more, true greatness in her playing of the melody’s valediction, and of the single note which sang out so purely at the top of the phrase’s final contouring – exquisite!

Hyde got her string players to sound the slow movement’s first trance-like phrases with wonderful “innigkeit”, horns, and then clarinets confidently taking over from the strings and preparing the way for the soloist’s birdsong-like rhapsodisings. Even more rapt was the movement’s central section, Pohl’s playing resembling a kind of hymn to existence, even more so when orchestral pizzicati provided an enchanting backdrop for the solo violin’s spell-weavings.

An orchestral call to arms, and a short, cadenza-like flourish from the soloist brought in the work’s finale, the orchestra taking a while to settle into the soloist’s rhythm, possibly the result of the players having, like the rest of us, “blissed out” during the heavenly Larghetto! Pohl took it all in her stride, alternating a characterfully rustic treatment of the main theme with more quixotic-like poise when repeating the same an octave higher. Then, in the more pensive minor-key second subject, the line was delivered with great emotion, ably supported by the bassoon – and, when the opening returned Hyde seemed to have reawakened her players so that they were with their soloist all the way, building those horn and wind fanfares into a mighty cadenza-welcoming shout! This was one to which Pohl responded with a cadenza I wasn’t as familiar with as I could have been, but which, using material from the finale itself, built quickly and spectacularly to the point where the orchestral cellos and basses were INVITED to make a “what do we think?” comment on the proceedings! – duly satisfied, soloist and orchestra here exchanged, syncopated, inverted and brought things to a by-then ecstatic close!

During the interval that followed, I gleaned. from all sides of where I was sitting. that things had been extremely pleasing thus far, the performance having created a suitable buzz in the minds of my neighbours, young and old. It seemed to augur well for what was to follow next, the orchestra having meanwhile “growed” some extra personnel for the second-half performance of Camille Saint-Saens’s well-known “Organ” Symphony, an undertaking obviously sparked by the not-too-distant (April 2021) refurbishment of the St.Andrew’s church organ.

I was a bit surprised that the organist for this occasion, Max Toth, was not given a special mention in the printed programme – though to be fair Saint-Saens’ work is not a “concerto” with a star soloist, but a “symphony”, and with works described as such individual instrumentalists’ names are normally mentioned only in orchestral listings of players. And the organist’s name was certainly there, even if the noise he conjured up from his splendid instrument was out of all proportion to his modest rank-and-file listing – a minor matter, and certainly in the light of the “special ovation” he was accorded at the piece’s end, at the prompting of Rachel Hyde herself…

As to the piece we were about to hear, Saint-Saens once remarked of himself that, as a composer he produced music as an apple tree produced apples, though he obviously meant he had great facility, and not that he considered his work facile and repetitive. The “Organ” Symphony was something of a biological “sport” for its time – the only reference I have found to a previous use of the organ in an orchestral symphony (1877) is by the nearly-forgotten Austrian composer Johann Ritter von Herbeck (1831-1877), though the fame of Saint-Saens’1886 work spawned a number of imitators, most of them French!

Right at the beginning, Hyde and her players opened up the work’s spaces, the strings’ first floating chords answered first by the oboe and then the flutes, their upward phrases drifting into what seemed like a void, but sparking a response from pizzicato strings and winds which suddenly and excitedly awoke the rest of the strings whose tumbling, chattering phrases spread through the textures galvanising the entire orchestra.

Hyde’s direction imparted just enough urgent impetus for the movement to maintain its course and for the players to keep the syncopated rhythms together, which they did most impressively throughout. And I enjoyed the occasional bedecking of the textures with detailed impulse, such as the tuba making its presence “tell” for a moment of glory, along with the brass and timpani, in underlining the importance to the work of the composer’s use of the “Dies Irae” variant by capping the climax of the excitement with great elan.

The slow movement was beautifully “prepared” for by pizzicato strings and brass, the organ establishing the requisite mood for the strings to fill the spaces with gorgeous tones, then allowing the wind and brass the chance to sing the same melody, the organ judiciously providing the transitions between the different orchestral forces’ sequences. Apart from some slight imprecision between the string “voices” in the duet-like-like sequences, the players delighted us with the beauty and focus of their playing of the movement’s gorgeous outpourings. At first I thought the organ pedal during the lyrical theme’s last great reprise not robust enough, but its deliciously tummy-wobbling aspect began to tell as the music soared to its conclusion – moments of glorious, ultra-Romanticism, capped off by the authentic-sounding reediness of the organ’s registrations at the end.

In terms of commitment from the players and cool-headed control from the conductor, the symphony’s Scherzo was for me a highlight of the performance (also bringing back vivid memories of my days as a percussionist, and our orchestra in Palmerston North tackling this work!). Strong, vibrant attack at the opening was capped off by on-the-spot timpani, and vibrant playing from the winds – Hyde kept the tempo steady, allowing her players room to shape and “point” the rhythms. As for the Trio, it was very properly a riot of impulse every which way, with the piano’s tumbling figurations adding to the excitement. The players did so well with these vertiginous rhythms and syncopations – while not every detail was perfect, the few spills simply added to the excitement and dare-devilry of the whole.

Both the Scherzo and the opening of the Trio were repeated, the latter dominated by the brass, with the winds capering all about underneath, and the strings steadying the euphoria with some meltingly beautiful playing, joined by the winds and brass, with the “Dies Irae” ominously sounded by the basses below – after all of this one could easily forgive the not-quite-together wind chord which prefaced the finale!

The voices awaiting within those organ pipes to sound their utmost simply burst forth magnificently as organist Max Toth activated the instrument! How emotional it all seemed, with the C major melody (the much-lauded “Babe” tune as garnered for use in the eponymous movie!) firstly stealing in via the strings and piano duettists underpinned by the deep organ pedal notes, then allowed its full magnificence with organ and orchestra each given its head, cymbal crashes, bass drum thwacks, brasses and all replying to the organ’s splendour! The strings made a sterling job of their fugal passage which followed, taken up vociferously by the brasses and then quelled by the lines being allowed to soar and “float” by the strings and winds, as a respite from the energies and excitements already unleashed and still to come. Enough to say that the performance of the rest fully expressed the “cri de coeur” of the composer: – “I gave everything to it I was able to give! – what I have here accomplished I will never achieve again….”

It seemed fitting that, right at the end Rachel Hyde gave the last voice to the organ, allowing the instrument to hold the final chord for a few moments after the orchestra had ceased playing (a gesture I’d not previously heard made in this work, but which certainly had its effect – not unlike the organ chord which continues sounding at the end of the opening (!) of Richard Strauss’s tone-poem “Also Sprach Zarathustra”). But the glory was as much the Wellington City Orchestra players’ and conductor’s as the organ’s, and of course the music’s. Both composers and their respective works were on this occasion certainly done proud.

A thought-provoking “Cosi fan tutte” from NZ Opera

New Zealand Opera presents:
MOZART – Cosi fan tutte (1790)– Opera Buffa in Two Acts

Cast:  Emma Pearson (Fiordiligi), Hanna Hipp (Dorabella), Jonathan Abernathy (Ferrando)
Julien van Malaerts (Guglielmo), Georgia Jamieson Emms (Despina), Andrew Foster Williams (Don Alfonso)

Director: Lindy Hume
Assistant Director: Matthew Kereama
Set/Costume Design: Tracy Grant Lord
Lighting Design: Matthew Marshall
Chorus Director: Michael Vinten

NZ Opera Chorus Wellington
Orchestra Wellington
Conductor: Natalie Murray Beale

St.James Theatre, Wellington

Wednesday 14th June,  2023

This production of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte opened in Auckland on May 31 for three performances before coming to Wellington mid-June for another three nights, the season concluding in Christchurch in July following another trio of performances. The production coincided with the conclusion of NZ Opera General Director Thomas de Mallet Burgess’s five-year tenure in that role, one which featured plenty of incident and not a little controversy, as well as bearing the brunt of the effects of the pandemic for a good deal of that time. In view of what he called these “extraordinary times” de Mallet Burgess would have been well pleased with having Cosi as a fitting finale to his stewardship of the company, and especially in the light of the critical response garnered in the press by the production’s Auckland season.

Already in Wellington, the reception accorded this, the opening night at the capital’s  splendidly refurbished St.James Theatre has reinforced the general enthusiasm accorded  the new production. Cosi fan tutte has probably been the most trivilised, misunderstood and  belittled of all of Mozart’s operas over time; and even now commentators seem to disagree as to what Mozart’s and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte’s real intentions were in bringing to life a drama whose story-line seems so overtly cynical and even misogynistic. Two young blades make a bet with an older, cynical friend regarding the constancy of their respective lovers, which involves each wooing the other’s amor in disguise – outwardly each succeeds, but with not altogether expected confusions and doubts resulting from the exercise.

Australian director Lindy Hume’s own response to the work has, as she told us in an illuminating programme note, undergone a definite change over the years, one that’s certainly been reflected in other productions I’ve seen and heard from different parts of the world of late, nearly all involving a definite shift in attitude towards human relationships and societal sex-roles. For Hume the essential message concerning the characters and their interactions in the story is conveyed by the “before” and “after” aspects of the various emotional topographies that everybody has tumbled into, which, in effect, turn them all into “strangers to each other”.

As one critic perceptively pointed out, da Ponte might well be accused of misogyny in his libretto, but Mozart in his music more readily refutes such a charge, even given the men’s statement of the “Cosi fan tutte” motto, which rings hollow in the light of both their own connivance, and its undermining of their original partners’ resolve. And the final lines of the work, which propound a “let reason be one’s guide” resolution to the affair, is sung by all of the personalities with bewilderment rather than certainty, conveying the conclusion’s ambiguities with unnerving dismay, rather than falling back on the somewhat relieved “as we were” scenario beloved of countless earlier productions over the years.  Of course both Mozart’s and da Ponte’s work give the listener/observer/reader ample conjecturings along the way, with words and music which seduce and conceal as much as expound and illuminate. What Hume’s production brings out is the extent of the epiphany undergone by all the characters during the evening, disconcertingly made evident at the end.

Set and costume designer Tracy Grant Lord used a fluidly-employed revolving stage brilliantly mirroring the uncongealed nature of the work’s constantly-evolving interactions with the inestimable help of Matthew Marshall’s lighting designs. While from the very beginning the settings established and maintained a contemporariness throughout, other aspects seemed to underline a transformational fairytale air, such as during Act Two’s Garden scene, with shades of The Magic Flute in the appearance of the chorus in animal masks, and the full-length flowing gowns worn by the two girls, in a sense anticipating their transition into proper womanhood which the story and its circumstances bring into bitter-sweet effect.

All involved – soloists, chorus, conductor and orchestra – gave their all in the enterprise, the singers at once doing full justice to the “ensemble piece” aspect of the work (famous sequences such as the gorgeous Act One Terzettino “Soave sia il vento”; and the brilliantly disputatious full-cast finale to Act One were brought off magnificently), as did the various “couples” with their frequent duetting numbers and solos alike. Both sisters, Emma Pearson as Fiordiligi and Hanna Hipp as Dorabella, were nicely differentiated vocally and physically, Pearson’s constancy of character and elegant beauty of voice contrasting well with Hipp’s more adventurous inclinations and her compelling and engaging gusto.

Their lovers, Julien Van Mellaerts as Guglielmo and Jonathan Abernathy were similarly contrasted, the former’s sonorous and outgoing good humour a perfect foil for the latter’s more serious, heroic intensity, qualities which were to be thoroughly put to the test by the plot’s convolutions. Conspirators Don Alfonso (by turns rigorously and urbanely sung by Andrew Foster-Williams) and Despina (with Georgina Jamieson Emms here revelling in not only her character’s upwardly-mobile status promotion as bar-manager, but in her two famous cameo appearances as a doctor and a notary) brought their different kinds of  gravitas and comedy to bear at cardinal moments.

And conductor Natalie Murray Beale’s vital, pliable direction held cast, chorus and orchestra, together with distinction, making the most of the NZ Opera Chorus’s Wellington contingent’s infrequent but always mellifluous and characterful contributions to the settings; and securing from Orchestra Wellington a richly-varied set of reponses, both solo and corporate, to Mozart’s ineffably beautiful score. In this way conductor and players became the fulcrum around which the opera’s equivocations were most successfully and thoughtfully delivered throughout, for our pleasure!

 

Mark Menzies and Michael Endres – linking worlds with violin and piano

Wellington Chamber Music presents
THE MENZIES/ENDRES DUO – Music by Schubert, Schnittke, Fisher and Beethoven

FRANZ SCHUBERT – Rondo in B Minor “Rondo Brilliant”
ALFRED SCHNITTKE – Violin Sonata No. 2 (quasi una sonata)
SALINA FISHER – Mono no aware
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Violin Sonata No. 9 “Kreutzer”

Mark Menzies (violin) and Michael Endres (piano)

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

Sunday, 18th June, 2023

This was a well structured, interesting programme, culminating in Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, perhaps the greatest of violin sonatas. The programme notes the connection of the works on the programme to this Sonata and Beethoven: the main theme of Schubert’s Rondo has reference to the first movement of the Kreutzer Sonata, while Schnittke’s Sonata echoes the structure of  Beethoven’s Op 27 piano sonatas, “quasi una fantasia”. This may be a little far fetched, but undoubtedly the programme built up to the climax of Beethoven, while exploring a range of musical idioms in the violin and piano repertoire.

Franz Schubert Rondo in B minor ‘Rondo Brilliant’

Schubert wrote this work for the Czech violinist Josef Slavik. The latter was compared in his circles to Paganini, and was a friend of Schubert. Schubert was essentially a composer of songs, not one noted for the elaborate structures of his works. This piece has beautiful melodic passages interposed with virtuoso displays. It is joyful music, with suggestions of rustic wind band music in places, but ultimately it was not an entirely convincing reading, being very difficult to bring off. In the dialogues between the violin and the piano, some of the nuances of the exchamges were lost. The placing of the violinist with his back to the pianist didn’t help in places, with the voicings not being ideally balanced.

Alfred Schnittke Violin Sonata No 2 (quasi una sonata)

Schnittke’s Second Violin Sonata is a very challenging work, both for the musicians and the audience.  It opens with powerful, discordant chords, separated by precisely timed pauses. This section is followed by a number of distinct episodes, with references to past musicians, from Bach through Beethoven, Wagner, Stravinsky, to Shostakovitch, though to the listener, hearing the sonata for the first time, none of this is obvious. What is clear is the unrelenting drama, the thought provoking process that pose questions about the nature of music. The musicians have to perform actions that are not part of the normal skill sets of violinists or pianists, free ranging glissandos, unpitched tremolos, drum-like chords.

To add to the drama, one of the strings snapped on the violin. Mark Menzies stopped, walked off the stage, came back with the violin re-strung, carried on, and resumed where had left off. This sonata is one of the masterpieces of the post-Soviet Russian era, but it requires vast preparation and deep understanding. The performance was a true partnership between violin and piano, and whatever misgivings one might have had about the balance of the two instruments in the first work no longer applied.

Salina Fisher Mono no aware

This was a peaceful contrast to the drama of Schnittke’s work. It is a calm ethereal piece of music, simple on the surface, plaintive, a meditation on nature. Is it about the ephemeral beauty of cherry blossoms, an awareness of their fragility and their inherent impermanence, as the composer says in her notes, or is it just a sequel of lovely sounds? It was a “breather” in the midst of an afternoon of intense music.

Ludwig van Beethoven Sonata No 9 ‘Kreutzer’

This is, arguable, the greatest violin and piano sonata ever written. It marked the beginning of what is at times termed, Beethoven’s ‘middle period’, beyond the elegant music of the period of Mozart and Haydn, pointing to an era of more expressive, more emotional, romantic music of the years of his Third and Fifth Symphonies. Beethoven had gone deaf, his life was in turmoil, and he wrote some of his most profound music. The Kreutzer foreshadowed the Waldsdtein and Appassionata sonatas, the Rasumovsky quartets. The sonata is so well known that it is a special challenge for performers not to make it just another Kreutzer, to fathom its meaning in their own individual way. Menzies and Endres started with a leisurely opening, flexible, lyrical. They brought out the grandeur and lyricism of the piece, playing it with a nice, controlled tempo. They had a grand conception of the work, bringing out its sublime beauty, particularly in the second, variation movement, with each variation sensitively articulated. The final movement was played with measured energy. It was a very fine performance and both players appeared to share its enjoyment.

For an encore they returned to Schubert with an arrangement of Schubert’s Hark! Hark! The Lark!

This Sunday afternoon concert was notable for its range, the thought-provoking questions it raised about music. No one went home whistling the tunes from the Schnittke Sonata, or even Salina Fisher’s piece,  but everybody left on a high note after the Beethoven.

Both artists, Mark Menzies and Michael Endres, teach at Canterbury University. They both have established international careers.  Mark Menzies taught at the California Institute of the Arts, and gave violin and viola recitals in Los Angeles. He is an advocate of contemporary music, and tours widely.

Michael Endres performs worldwide as soloist and chamber music partner. He has played at festivals in Europe, America, and Asia, including the Beethoven Fest Bonn and the Salzburg Festival.

We are fortunate to have them here in New Zealand.

 

 

 

 

Breaking the piano recital drought – Michael Houstoun at Waikanae

Waikanae Music Society presents Michael Houstoun (piano)

Bach Toccata in c minor BWV 911
Brahms Variation and Fugue on a theme by Handel, Op 24
Chopin Berceuse, Op 57
                 Impromptu in F#, Op 36
Rachmaninoff Prelude in Eb, Op 23, No 2
Prelude in Eb, Op 23 No 6
                              Étude-tableau in  Eb minor, Op 39, No 5
                              Prelude in D, Op 23, No 4
                              Étude-tableau in C minor Op 33, No 3
                              Étude-tableau in D, Op 39, No 9

Memorial Hall, Waikanae

Sunday 11 June 2023

 Piano recitals by renowned pianists, featuring major works of the piano repertoire, are now rare in Wellington. Paul Lewis, one of the leading pianists of his generation, dropped in for a concerto appearance with the NZSO, but though he has recorded all the Beethoven Sonatas and much of Schubert, he was not given the opportunity to play these in a solo recital – a sad state of affairs when one recalls from earlier times  the anticipated pleasure of hearing any visiting virtuoso in both the concerto repertoire with the NZSO and on the solo recital platform.

How grateful, therefore concert goers must be to the Waikanae Music Society for putting on solo concerts such as that recently given by Michael Houstoun. Michael Houstoun is something of an ‘Artist in Residence NZ’, widely recognized for his insightful recordings of the  Beethoven Sonatas and his series of concerts that featured Bach’s 48 Preludes and Fugues. Notably, in this concert, he played also a bracket of works by Rachmaninoff, recognizing the 150th anniversary of Rachmaninoff’s birth and 80th anniversary of his death. However,the first half of the concert was Bach and Brahms.

Bach – Toccata in c minor BWV 911

This is a virtuoso piece that Bach wrote to show off his skills as a keyboard player. It starts with a playful theme, which evolves into a complex substantial fugue.  Houstoun shaped every note, every phrase with care. As a pianist he had complete mastery, but it is the thought behind the notes that stood out, how the work was built up, note by note.

Brahms – Variation and Fugue on a theme by Handel, Op 24

This is one of the monumental works of the piano repertoire, 25 variations on a simple theme that Handel employed for his set of variations. But Brahms’ work is on a much grander scale. It ranges from the whimsical, the simple, playful, to the dramatic, culminating in the fugue that asks profound questions about the meaning of life. It is a mirror of life’s journey with all its various facets. It is Brahms’ tribute to an earlier, courtly age, yet reflecting the deep thoughtful romantic vision of his time. Houstoun weighted every note. His playing of the fugue, the climax of the work, was restrained, he left its grandeur to the imagination of the listener. It was a beautifully articulated playing. One may hear different interpretations of this work, but probably never a more disciplined and clear reading. It was a memorable performance.

Chopin – Berceuse, Op 57 , Impromptu in F#, Op 36

Again, in these well-known pieces every sound was clearly defined. Houstoun left it up to the listener to seek out the magic, the emotion. Both of the works were carefully shaped, with a lot of thought behind every note.

Rachmaninoff – Prelude in Bb, Op 23, No 2,   Prelude in Eb, Op 23 No 6
Étude-tableau in  Eb minor, Op 39, No 5,   Prelude in D, Op 23, No 4
Étude-tableau in C minor Op 33, No 3
,   Étude-tableau in D, Op 39, No 9

These works, both early and middle-period Rachmaninoff, are far less well known than his piano concertos, his Paganini Variations for piano and orchestra, his symphonies, or his big Choral works, but in this anniversary year of Rachmaninoff’s birth it was appropriate to have a glimpse of the pre-American Rachmaninoff, secluded on his estate. Houstoun selected these pieces carefully, three each from his Preludes and his longer  Étude-tableau and he performed them in two sections, suggesting that they formed complementary movements of two larger, sonata-like pieces.  Perhaps, as the program notes say, ‘Rachmaninoff was proud to follow in the footsteps of Chopin’, and these works in some ways harked back to the Chopin of Paris and French romanticism, but they also reflected a very different world, one which Rachmaninoff’s detractors would regularly claim his music refused to enter.

Listening to the first Prelude it was not Chopin, but Moussorgsky that came to mind, as also with the last Étude-tableau in D, Op 39, No 9. These are passionate pieces, but Houstoun played them with characteristic restraint. Not for him the dramatic climaxes, or the swaying emotions – “Just look at the notes, boy, play it as it written!” he seemed to be saying.

This was a fine and memorable concert. It left listeners with lots of thoughts about the meaning of the music that they had just heard. We are fortunate to have Michael Houstoun here as a pillar of New Zealand musical life. He made his listener think not only about the music’s emotions, but also the creative processes reflected by the notes on paper, and from the black and white keys of the piano, from and upon which he gave us his unique interpretations of the music.

Michael Houstoun will be back again later this year, on 27 August, playing with the violinist Bella Hristova in an interesting program of sonatas by Poulenc, Ravel and Fauré.

 

Sounds of Home from man and guitar transcend wet and gloom

SOUNDS OF HOME – Guitar Music from Aotearoa New Zealand

Works by Michael Stoop, John Ritchie, Amanda Riddell,
Kenneth Young, David Farquhar, and Bruce Paine

Christopher Everest (guitar)
at St. Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington

Sunday, 4th June 2023

(Event sponsored by Jack C. Richards, and SOUNZ (Centre for New Zealand Music)

The most obvious thing to say about Christopher Everest’s guitar recital at St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace on a wet and windswept Sunday afternoon on a recent King’s Birthday Weekend would be that so many factors contributed to its sparse audience attendance – arriving as I did with ten minutes to spare, and surveying the half-dozen or so people already in attendance I immediately felt sorry for the artist, who would have obviously put a lot of work into the presentation, for what at first  seemed sparse reward regarding his efforts.

However, two things then occurred to me, one at the point when the guitarist made his entrance, and the other at some unspecified time when a particular ambience involving both the music-making and its reception brought the thought into my head………

Firstly, I became conscious from the volume of applause that greeted the artist that the audience had at least tripled, if not quadrupled, in the time since I entered the church – and however small the number remained there was definitely a mini-buzz of excitement, one which Christopher Everest most positively responded to upon appearing to play, complimenting all of us upon our forbearance in braving such inclement weather conditions.

Then, at some stage after Everest had begun playing – perhaps it was as early as during the first item that the thought visited me – I was struck by the memory of something that, long ago, a visiting pianist, Frederic Rzewski, whom I’d heard give a recital – again, I think, in St. Andrew’s, and to a similarly sparse audience on that occasion – told a radio interviewer, when asked afterwards whether small numbers of audience members at concerts he gave bothered or annoyed him. Rzewski replied that he thought there was, at every concert, always the “right” number of people in the audience.

I presumed he meant that, whether ten or two hundred people were in an audience, he always made sure that he played “for everybody present”, so that no-one was disadvantaged, least of all the artist, who was, after all, there to communicate with the audience, whether they were few or many.  And there in St.Andrew’s was Everest, playing, it seemed, for us all, a few who seemed at that moment  the “right” number of people……..

A word about the artist, whom I hadn’t before encountered – beginning his studies as a pupil of Dr. Jane Curry at the NZSM, Everest received a grant to study with the eminent guitarist and pedagogue, Paul Cesarzyck, at Mahidol College of Music in Bangkok, Thailand. Returning to New Zealand, he graduated with First-Class Honours in 2022 from Victoria University, and plans to take up various Masters programmes in various institutions worldwide, while continuing to concertise when he can back in New Zealand as both a soloist and an ensemble member with the New Baroque Generation and the Kowhaiwhai Duo.

So to the concert – whose title “Sounds of Home” suggested a musician suitably well-grounded in music that reflected his place of origin. Everest began with an excerpt from a work by Michael Stoop, who had been one of his composition lecturers at Victoria – the Allegretto movement from Stoop’s Sonatina No. 1. I enjoyed Everest’s voicing of the questioning rise towards the repeated top-of-the-phrase note, a sequence whimsically contrasted with more flowing interludes – making the whole a beautifully reflective piece, touched here-and-there with contrasting timbres.

Next came John Ritchie’s “Whimsies”, three meditations inspired by Shakespeare. The first, “Full Fathom Five” began with slowly rocking rhythmic patternings, suggesting the sea’s action, repetitive notes and chords resonating the “rich and strange” subaqueous atmosphere. “The second “Where is Fancy Bred” features music turning in upon itself, proffering no answer to the question, but implying more fancy, resonating the repetitive melody in different registers towards the piece’s end, with a touch of “Dies Irae” further deepening the mystery. A more energetic “Blow, blow, thou Winter Wind” wasn’t especially “wintry”, more bracingly-textured than bleak and shivery, and of lighter substance, with widely-spaced ritual-like ”knockings” and vigorous strummings – a positive response to seasonal duress, which ends reflectively and philosophically (Shakespeare nay-sayers, take note!).

Further girdles were put around the earth by Amanda Riddell’s work “Vanya’s Lament”, inspired by Anton Chekov’s “Uncle Vanya”, the pieces reflecting an essential mood from each of the four acts of the play – presented as a continuous span, it seemed to me as if the music would work on each listener individually, the titles a “starting-point” rather than an out-and-out description, the sounds by turns quixotic, rhapsodic, wistful and energetic, but seeming to return to a general overall sobriety.  The theme of melancholy persisted with the next item, Kenneth Young’s “Three Sad Waltzes”,  again allowing the listener free rein in characterising emotions by giving the music plenty of contrast. As with Amanda Riddell’s work, Everest brought out the music’s quixotic nature, contrasting more strictly-organised running passages with improvisatory-sounding sequences, very much the “plan” of the first Waltz. By contrast the other two Waltzes expressed their dance-forms more self-consciously, the second’s gentle melancholy the perfect foil for the third’s rather more “insinuating” progressions of rhythm and melodic shaping, such as a deliciously droll bass line.

Everest described David Farquhar’s Suite as the first big “hit” in the New Zealand classical guitar world . It was written in 1966 for Ronald Burt, whose influence as a teacher pioneered classical guitar composition in this country. Farquhar became especially fond of writing for the instrument, his output including more solo guitar and several ensemble pieces, including a guitar concerto (1992).

A work in five sections, the Suite began with a stately opening Prelude, a kind of ritual processional at the outset, though with the sounds taking on a sensuous element, contrasted with a kind of ”tumble down the hill” middle section, before echoing some of the opening’s more haunting sounds.  The following Capriccio, at first restless and exploratory, then took on an almost balladic quality, a strummed accompaniment to a song (with high, harmonic-like sounds in places), before returning to the restless opening.

The Ostinato third movement set repeated notes against discursive, wayward harmonies, creating relationships both combatative and complementary – a “friendly rival” relationship; while the following Rondino seemed to take us some of the way towards the world of Manuel de Falla’s “Three-Cornered Hat” Ballet, Everest excitingly bringing  out the percussive element in a piece where rhythm was all-important. Just as telling in an entirely different way was the piece’s Epilogue, a valediction with a sounding gong marking time in between the musings, not unlike a dialogue between reality and fantasy, or reason and imagination – thoughtful and moving…….

Christopher Everest concluded his recital with a workSeringapatam” (misspelled on the programme cover as “Seringapatum”) by another New Zealand guitarist, Bruce Paine. The piece was written with an historic Auckland homestead in mind, one that came into being through both Scottish and Indian influences, in the latter case from a town of the same name in the Mandya district in the Indian state of Karnataka, the place where the house’s founder, the son of a British Army Lieutenant-Colonel originally from Scotland, was born. The music thus contains both Scottish folk-song and Indian sitar music influences.

The music began in what seemed minstrel-like ways, but with the melody played as if it was “sounded” on an Indian sitar, with the notes having characteristic microtonal “shifts”, giving the folk-song (”The Blue Bells of Scotland”) an additional exotic quality. A more energetic central section evoked something of the exhilarating drive of a characteristic Indian “raga”. The folk-tune then briefly reappeared, and the undulations of the accompaniment gradually faded.

We had, by this time, become totally accustomed to our listening-spaces, and our musician and his instrument, so much so that the concert’s end came as a surprise! In short this presentation had transcended the state of the world outside, so involved we seemed to have become with the music and Christopher Everest’s compelling realisations of it all. Frederic Rzewski had obviously been right all along – “it was, you might say, satisfactory………”

 

Myth and Ritual in everyday life – from Orchestra Wellington

RICHARD STRAUSS – “Dance of the Seven Veils” from “Salome”
ARJUNA OAKES – “Safe Way to Fall”
JOHN PSATHAS – Zahara
BELA BARTOK – “The Miraculous Mandarin”  Ballet

Orchestra Wellington
with……..
Arjuna Oakes (singer)
John Psathas (piano)
Valentina Michaud (saxophone)
Orpheus Choir, Wellington
BalletCollective Aotearoa
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei  (conductor)
Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday June 3rd, 2023

“Myth and Ritual” was something of a concept-bending title, to my initial way of thinking, as a description of the programme Marc Taddei and his musicians put together on Saturday evening (June 3rd). Myth brings to mind legendary figures and events, while ritual suggests some kind of rite to do with religion or culture.

However, with the boundaries pushed out wider, as here, we saw that the concert’s range and scope took in both individual and societal aspects of the human condition, involving both transgressors and victims.

Bookending the evening’s presentation were portrayals of obsession matching that of any mythical hero – while the two central items presented conflict of diametrically opposed kinds, one in terms of individual resolution, and the other in epic, broad brush-stroke happenings putting groups of people at risk.

Not only was the evening‘s content far-flung, but the means by which the performances worked their magic were varied, which was part of sustaining our interest through spectacular orchestral, solo vocal, instrumental, choral and theatrical means.  Perhaps it wasn’t everybody’s “cup of tea” in toto, but it did have a readily-welcomed “different strokes for different folks” sense.

Things began spectacular with the famous “Dance of the Seven Veils” written by Richard Strauss for an episode in his opera “Salome”, which was a setting of Oscar Wilde’s play (written in French) whose subject was the eponymous Biblical character, the beautiful step-daughter of Herod, the Judean king of around the time of Jesus Christ.  Strauss’s set both French and German texts of Oscar Wilde’s play “Salome” which makes mention for the first time of the “Seven Veils” (in Matthew 14 she merely “danced for the guests”).

Wilde designated for Salome a kind of growing sexual obsession with John the Baptist (Jokaanan, in the opera), one which, along with the erotic nature of the Dance Strauss readily took on for the entirety of the character, presenting her as no less an obsessive figure than any mythical hero or heroine bent upon achieving great deeds.

An extraordinary tour de force of composition, the Dance brought forth from Marc Taddei and his players a brilliant response in both corporate orchestral and individual soloistic terms. From the frenetic opening, through the most languid sequences and right up to the final whiplash chords, the playing caught every mood, superbly voicing the chameleon-like progressions with that unique combination of sensuousness and “edge” to themes, rhythms and textures.

What particularly held my attention was the spaciousness of the phrasings in the early stages of the dance by both solo players and sections,  Taddei and his musicians enabling the music’s essential bitter-sweet character to emerge, setting the strings’ almost decadent voluptuousness against the winds’ piquant flavourings, the latter pungently activating the dancer’s growing excitement and urgencies, leading to the unbridled excitement of the concluding section’s abandoned flourishes, the knife-edge wind arabesques, and the cataclysmic whiplash chords at the end – stunning!

Nothing could have been further from these excesses than the concert’s second item, a song for voice, piano and orchestra called “Safe Way To Fall”. Written as a collaboration between singer/songwriter Arjuna Oakes and composer/performer John Psathas, the work grew from a “springboard” award from the NZ Arts Foundation which enabled Oakes to choose Psathas as a mentor, and led to a creative partnership between the two. The pair shared a desire to explore ideas that would “make musical ideas hit home emotionally”, and the song was one of four tracks that emerged from this initial collaboration.

With Psathas himself as the pianist (his debut as a performing pianist in public, he told us afterwards) and the orchestra providing backing of what seemed a “filmic” kind of orchestral texture, Oakes delivered his song via a microphone, words expressing the idea of feelings of vulnerability giving rise to strength in relationships. Psathas’s most telling comment afterwards. I thought, was that collaboration seemed a way for an individual to grow stronger, or in other words, a “Safe Way to Fall”, considering that any creative journey will involve occasional failings and fallings. What I got from the item and its presentation was an insight into creative process that’s outside popular perception of that process, but nevertheless produces a result, whatever one might think of the same as heard here.

John Psathas’s other (somewhat more substantial) contribution to the concert was in a more traditional “inspired by various stimuli” kind of mode, in this case a two-part synthesis of other people’s literary and musical skills. The composer was entranced by author Dean King’s “Skeletons on the Zahara” outlining the historical shipwreck of a group of American sailors off the western coast of Africa in 1815, and their subsequent travails in a hostile desert landscape and at the hands of nomadic tribesmen – so when saxophonist Federico Mondelci, who in turn had been inspired by an earlier concerto for the instrument by Psathas, approached him to write another concerto, it was Zahara which came into being.

Saxophone soloist for the concerto’s performance Valentine Michaud provided considerable visual as well as musical stimulus, appearing on the platform in a stunningly voluminous (social-distancing-style?) orange-crimson dress whose undulating folds seemed to become as desert sands as she launched into the first of the concerto’s four movements,  her instrument straightaway “possessing” the ambience created by the long lines of the ambient orchestral accompaniments, denoting rituals of both physical and spiritual identification.

The concerto moved through these exotic realms with considerable variety, a second movement establishing ostinato-like rhythms as the soloist’s playing gradually “enlivened” the music, the exchanges massively and dramatically irrupting and falling away almost to nothing in attention-riveting ways; and a third movement prayerful and ethereal, the music’s haunting aspect enhanced by the soloist’s playing of multiphonics (two notes played at once) above what seemed to me like enormous blocks of air, as if one was a bird soaring over a landscape far below, before the ostinato rhythm was re-engaged and the soloist rhapsodised with the orchestral winds, oboe, bassoon, and clarinet.

The final movement straightaway re-invoked the whole scenario, creating in my mind a desert environment through winds and brass, over which the strings soared as the sky and beneath which the percussion rumbled as of the deep earth. Valentine Michaud used a soprano sax to scintillate through the movement’s first part, then returned to her tenor instrument to deepen the “earth-connection”, the orchestra keeping the ostinato thread going throughout, and lifting the ambiences into a “cheek-by-jowl” fusion of excitement and oneness with the soloist, all scintillation and coalescence to finish!

Michaud returned us to our lives at Zahara’s conclusion with an encore, playing a fun work which she told us was called “cuku” (a chicken), and further demonstrating her virtuosity with multiphonics, as if two birds were simultaneously calling to one another – a very “rustic farmyard” piece which entertained us most delightfully!

And so, after the interval, we entered the very different world of Bela Bartok’s ballet “The Miraculous Mandarin”, having, incidentally, been warned at the beginning by a “voice-over” announcement that the work we were about to hear contained scenes of rape and sexual violence (one might imagine the present-day general cultural entertainment scene well-versed in such antics, though of course government health warnings are still bandied about, and “live” performances might still shock the unsuspecting with the unexpected!)

Musically, I found the performance as enthralling and satisfying as was the Strauss work in the concert’s first half. The opening vortex of bedlam-like sounds – “humanity’s mad, inhuman noise” (as Alan Jay Lerner wrote in “My Fair Lady” in a somewhat different context) – was superbly and sonorously delivered, though it was disconcerting how, for me, the advent of the dancers (members of “Ballet Collective Aotearoa”) radically changed the focus of my attention to the visual drama (the result of having previously “immersed” myself in the music via recordings).

Each of the clarinet solos depicting the girl’s “luring” of prospective clients to be robbed by her cohorts was superbly wrought as was the orchestral support, given that the visual aspect constantly took one’s focus away from what one was “hearing” to that which was being “watched”. Bartok’s evocation of relative “innocence” in the case of the young boy was touching, as was the girl’s response to him, a situation brusquely ended by the ruffians (who, at one stage seemed to morph as a group into a quartet rather than the original trio).

The dancers conveyed what they could of the different scenarios, hampered as they were by the lack of space which a proper stage would have otherwise afforded. Dramatically, the most effective moment  was the appearance of the Mandarin, who emerged from a trapdoor centre-stage, dressed in a red robe and bathed in bright light. That, and the impact of  the sickly green light which illuminated the Mandarin’s transfixed form after his stabbing by the ruffians were theatrical highlights of the presentation – I only wish someone had thought of deploying an additional light upon the mandarin after he had “embraced” the girl and “satisfied” his desires, at which point his wounds begin to bleed, and he dies – a blood-red spotlight would have provided an apt contrast to the colours that had been previously used.

In all, I thought the presentation was a great success, and especially from the orchestral point of view, in which the flow of the story, the drama and the tension never let up. The Orpheus Choir, too, sonorously and atmospherically played its part, beautifully accompanied by the orchestral violas as the voices gathered intensity, helping to breathe life back into the Mandarin so as to fulfil his destiny with the girl – musically, a scalp-pricking moment, even if hardly the visual embodiment of erotic consummation of desire we had been “threatened with” at the outset.

A definite “feather in the cap” of Orchestra Wellington, then – and the success of “The Miraculous Mandarin” left me longing for the point at which Marc Taddei and his players might again enlist some dancers and give us Ravel’s complete “Daphnis et Chloe” – just a thought, but meant as a compliment for all concerned.

 

 

16 Best Real Estate Chatbots of 2023

How Real Estate Chatbots Can Nurture Leads From Lukewarm To Hot

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I’m also hoping to see better native integrations and higher levels of customer service. MobileMonkey had a kind of cult following so we’ll see if Customers.ai can keep loyal customers happy. Imagine the amount of paperwork it would have taken had you documented each and every reply of each and every lead you have interacted with.

AI will not remedy all our real estate woes – Financial Times

AI will not remedy all our real estate woes.

Posted: Thu, 02 Mar 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

While they can make your life easier in many ways, there is still a lot of work to be done in setting up and maintaining the chatbot’s knowledge base. Its “emotional” capacity is also limited to the amount of emotion and personality you give it. But perhaps the most common (though occasionally entertaining) challenge is bots’ high capacity for misunderstanding.

Qualify sales leads

But with a real estate chatbot, you can offer basic responses and help to clients 24/7. Chatbots can work day and night, weekdays and weekends, to support customers reaching out for immediate answers. Real estate chatbots don’t take breaks and can support multiple customers simultaneously. They can take over simple tasks from real estate teams, such as answering common questions, collecting contact details, and promoting rental listings. Using a real estate bot lets you indirectly connect with more prospects and engage them in a conversational way. AI chatbots excel at understanding customer preferences and delivering tailored recommendations.

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These algorithms browse through market data, property characteristics, and historical trends. They can even predict what will be the future value of the property. If you’ve ever tried your hand at an auction, you know it’s not for the faint of heart. Chatbots can provide real-time auction updates, including current bids, time remaining, and even facilitate the bidding process, making it more accessible. In an increasingly globalized world, offering support in multiple languages is a massive plus. Chatbots can effortlessly handle this, breaking down language barriers and expanding your market reach, fast and without burning a hole in your wallet.

INDUSTRY

Chatbots are already well-known for helping provide a 24/7 service, seven days every week and through the holidays. And the easiest way to suggest they follow you on social media is through AI chatbots. After a chatbot conversation, give the user a chance to follow your different social media accounts and promote your brand. I can integrate AI chatbots with platforms like Botpress, Stack, Zapier, Manychat, and VoiceFlow. These platforms enable seamless interactions on websites, messaging apps, and social media platforms. We at OneClick have over 8 years of experience in real estate chatbot app development solutions.

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Incorporating chatbots in your current applications or websites can save you time, improve efficiency, and offer better ROIs. All professionals in the real estate sector whether they are real estate agents or negotiators, rental managers, or even condominium managers can use these new technologies easily and effectively. While tons of agents are advertising on Facebook and Instagram these days, many skip over one of the best lead generation opportunities. Lead enrichment means is gathering and adding additional data to a lead profile. This builds a complete picture that you can use to qualify leads and be more informed about the ones you choose.

Integrate it into your website and allow the customer to leave feedback for further improvements. An AI chatbot will help you keep records and data of a customer for future references, which is a puzzling task if done manually. With an efficient chatbot, your lead generation figures will boost dynamically. In case of any error or breakdown, you can contact your development partner to make it right.

Bonus points to Customers.ai for the deep analytic reporting on website visitors so that you get to know your audience and tailor your content better. Some agents might get tripped up by some of the integrations, but since the customer service is something Tidio prioritizes, they should be able to help troubleshoot. The Professional plan costs $41 for 1 user and 300 sessions per month. Users on this plan will be able to customize their chatbot, access a message inbox as well as audience and session analytics. With MobileMonkey, you can automate your online sales outreach and generate high-quality leads that convert. Chatra is a cloud-based chat platform focused on creating solutions that help small businesses sell more.

Benefits of Using a Real Estate AI Chatbot

Read more about https://www.metadialog.com/ here.