Scriabin and Rachmaninov from Tony Lee – a piano-fancier’s ultimate dream concert?

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ALEXANDER SCRIABIN – Preludes –  Op.11 No.1 in C Major
Op.17 No.5 in F Minor
Op.16 No.1 in B Major
Etude – Op. 2 No. 1 in C-sharp Minor

SERGEI RACHMANINOV – Piano Sonata No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 28

Tony Lee (piano)
St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Wednesday, 22nd April, 2026

Perhaps the use of the word “ultimate” in the heading unfairly inflates the overall impact of what was, in anybody’s language, a sensational recent display of piano-playing in all aspects of the art-form.  This was delivered by Australian pianist Tony Lee at one of St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace’s free and absolute “mana-from-heaven” lunchtime concerts regularly enjoyed by the capital’s music-lovers. The “ultimate” description would of course be contested hotly by lovers of piano-playing over the choice of repertoire in practically every individual case – and even in regard to technical wizardry opinions would differ as to which pieces might be accorded the most elevatedly challenging places in the pianistic pantheon.

Enough to say, the repertoire chosen by Tony Lee amply demonstrated the pianist’s complete and utter mastery of the keyboard challenges posed by the music of two composers, Sergei Rachmaninov and Alexander Scriabin. Each were themselves virtuoso pianists, Rachmaninov gaining the higher honours from the Moscow Conservatory with the “Great Gold Medal” for piano-playing, whereas Scriabin had to be content with the “Small Gold Medal”. Their own music took markedly different paths even though each was greatly influenced by Chopin, with Rachmaninov evolving a rather more conventional kind of individuality, and Scriabin being more the “innovator”, increasingly exploring chromaticism and tonality to almost mystical degrees in his later music. He famously told Rachmaninov at one point that a passage in the latter’s music (the opera “The Miserly Knight) perfectly accorded with his, Scriabin’s “colour-theories” relating to musical keys – when Rachmaninov expressed his disagreement, Scriabin replied, “…Your intuition has unconsciously followed the laws whose very existence you have tried to deny!…..”

Though their musical inclinations continued to evolve in different directions, with Scriabin actually criticising Rachmaninov’s playing at one point as “earthbound”, Rachmaninov was determined, after Scriabin’s death, to promote his friend’s music, performing it almost exclusively on a tour of Russia, and donating the proceeds to Scriabin’s family. Since then, the two composers musical reputations have continued to pursue different courses, with each being  in entirely different ways misunderstood – rather like with Liszt’s music, much of Rachmaninov’s output has had a near-instant popularity in parallel with strains of outright critical contempt in some quarters, whereas Scriabin’s music has gradually risen in stature from bewilderment and misunderstanding to increased fascination and acceptance on the part of the listening public.

Today’s concert underlined significant aspects of each composer’s creative achievement in terms of the piano, though, somewhat surprisingly, not in relation to larger forms – Scriabin actually wrote no less than nine piano sonatas, though none were played here as a comparison to the first of Rachmaninov’s two efforts in the genre. Instead we got the former figure as a kind of miniaturist, the pieces being from larger collections, though each beautifully self-contained in effect. While it would have been interesting to have compared the two composers regarding their respective use of sonata form, for example, there was still sufficient utterance from these exquisitely-crafted  morceaux to convey their creator’s intentions. I couldn’t help but note my responses to some of the music regarding what I felt were influences (surprisingly, more so in Scriabin’s case than in Rachmaninov’s).

First came Prelude Op. 11 No. 1 in C Major, based on a lyrically floated phrase repeatedly used, here, with great sensitivity and imagination, both poetic and passionate in utterance, and reminiscent for me of Debussy’s early music Then came Prelude Op 17 No 5 in F Minor with stormy cascadings, impulsive gallopings and unbridled agitations, the pianist splendidly maintaining the wildness and passions of the opening throughout until the sounds came exhaustedly to rest at the very end – it all had something of the energy and drive of Chopin’s very first Op. 28 Prelude, but seemed uncannily to me as if the work might just as well have been Rachmaninov’s.

The two figures that the following Prelude Op.16 No. 1 in B major recalled for me were Grieg and Schumann, with sounds resembling  the former’s piquant harmonic explorations venturing into and mingling with the latter’s poetic evening semblances – though as with all of these there was a feeling of a growingly independent spirit already taking flight and pushing out its own capabilities.

I couldn’t help but be instantly reminded by the opening of the last of the Scriabin pieces, the Etude Op. 2 No, 1 in C-sharp Minor, of Rachmaninov once again – and not the stormy C-sharp Minor manner of the latter’s most famous of his Preludes, but of a similar kind of obsessiveness with the opening rising melodic motif, used by him in other pieces, such as the well-known B Minor Prelude’s constant reiteration of its opening. Such vividly concentrated playing! – Lee’s performances would, I feel have won Scriabin’s music some new friends on this extraordinary showing.

Then, after a short break came a different kind of “extraordinary”! I had heard Rachmaninov’s two piano sonatas played many years ago on a recording by the legendary John Ogdon, and remembered how “overwhelmed” my then relatively jejune ears felt after listening to what seemed cascades and cascades of notes! Today, those same cascades seemed, in Tony Lee’s hands, to sound-sculpt a magnificently “alive” and spontaneously driven plethora of musical impulses, instantly proclaiming a real sense of beginning an epic journey, and demonstrating the means by which this would happen – the portentous themes, the flashes of brilliance and the ever-burgeoning sense of expectation which drew us further into the music’s world, a sense which reminded me of the opening of the Liszt Sonata, though with themes that took more time and space to coalesce. The big repeated-note theme was allowed to sing and resound, majestically suggesting a Faustian kind of spirit, both tremulous and eager in regard to any impending journey, drawn irresistibly by a rolling, agitated triplet theme elaborated with great “presence” and remarkable poise and control by the pianist. Opposing this, a rising. arpeggiated idea suggested aspiration to a “higher goal”, again a Faust-like evocation, one of conflict between competing urges and impulses, between passions and ideals, which built to a majestic climax (how does Rachmaninov do it?) and then seemed to, for the moment, expiate itself – and at that point I heard the unmistakeable echoes of the Third Piano Concerto, the two-note major-key repetitions whose minor-key transition produced an inwardly rising lump-in-the-throat effect as the movement came to its close.

Rachmaninov had reputedly began this work with Goethe’s “Faust” in mind, with each of the movements inspired by the main characters in the  latter’s version of the legend – though the composer was to later downplay the specifics of his inspiration, the movements certainly fitted the “Faust/Gretchen/Mephisofeles” programmatic order, with the second movement’s tenderness and lyricism readily suggesting the innocence and beauty of Gretchen – a perfect foil for the dark turbulence and brooding self-doubt portrayed in the opening movement. Here, Lee allowed  the music to drift, dream-like out of the silences, the oscillating figures framing a gentle song whose sinuous and mesmeric trajectories could ensnare any adventurer, its spell gradually growing in insistence, resembling a flow of openhearted longing and unfulfilled desire, and reaching a point where it cascaded over and down, again fleetingly sounding those echoed reminiscences of the Concerto! Lee then gently and patiently revisited the composer’s lines of the opening dream, this time building gradually towards a kind of effervescent frisson, whose almost-visionary moment glowed and then sank into what some listeners might have described as a post-orgasmic reverie at the end.

Came the finale – a “wild-horse-ride”, tremendously exciting, and a performance which seemed to us in the audience to give every tone, every impulse, every NOTE its due place in the music’s texture, impregnating EVERYTHING with its particular significance, so that we were caught up by the music and the playing and transported by the work itself to realms of wonderment and vividly-wrought realisation! The Dies Irae theme, one of the composer’s trademarks, leapt into the fray, its trajectories defiant and remorseless under Lee’s fingers, before its Mephistofelean spirit suddenly wavered at the appearance of a plaintive descending theme, a wholehearted counterweight to the music’s infernal business! – wonderful, heartfelt playing, with the pianist balancing these strains against the Spirit of Denial and his combatative roisterings! The sudden return of the Sonata’s opening music sounded a warning to the questing spirit, as a beautiful new theme was sounded as if from on high, but was brusquely interrupted in turn by the malevolent Dies Irae theme which then waged a war of sorts with a three-note theme in part derived from this beautiful new interloper – Lee’s energies seemed superhuman at this point in the discourse as the warring elements raged, and the “Yearning” melody returned – again the opening theme was sounded, as if peace had been restored – but then, almost as if Heaven was shutting its doors, the Dies Irae theme came roaring back and laid all to waste with a series of coruscating descending chords! We were agog as our pianist’s energies hurled the final chords at us with stupendous irrevocability!

Wow! – what a work and what a performance! And though (as I’ve had occasion to mention a few times previously in relation to other St.Andrew’s concerts) considerations such as appetite and hunger seemed well-nigh dwarfed by what we all experienced with Tony Lee, it was, certainly, a lunchtime to remember!!

Gary Wilby – To those who dwell in realms of day…….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

REFLECTIONS, MINIATURES, AND SOUNDSCAPES  by Gary Wilby – FUTUNA CHAPEL 2026
Gary Wilby – electric piano
Petrina Wu, Tina Wilby (‘cellos)
Natasha McMillan (violin)
Julie Coulson (narrator)
Futuna Chapel, Friend St., Karori, Wellington
Sunday, 19th April, 2026

Gary Wilby himself regards his sound-creations as “miniatures and intimate”, echoing in a real sense something of poet William Blake’s respect for small things, with the latter’s  words “a world in a grain of sand”, reflecting Wilby’s own reflection of the worth that can be found, as he himself says, “…..sometimes in a small cell….”.

At Futuna Chapel in Karori we were invited to join In Gary’s “looking back” presentation of his own soundscapes and miniatures, often in interactive tandem with well-known works by some of the “greats” in cases when there’s been particular empathies with certain of these pieces – to the point where cross-fertilisation delightfully bubbles over like a babbling fountain. He actually used the music of JS Bach both to introduce and “round off” his concert, playing for us on an electric piano the theme from the “Goldberg Variations” and some impulsive “variants” which any Baroque composer transported to the twenty-first century would have surely recogtnised as viable connective musical tissue!.

Futuna Chapel, of course, needs no introduction to many Wellington concertgoers since its “induction” into the process of becoming a music-performing venue. Its wonderfully-vaulted ceiling acoustic gives the sound a “bloom”, and its striking stained-glass window configurations a visual ambience which together beautifully enhance the atmospheres generated by the efforts of modestly-numbered groups of musicians, both instrumental and vocal. Wilby cherishes a particular connection to the venue as a great and singular honour, in the form of his previous association with sculptor Jim Allen whose work in the chapel brilliantly enhanced the designs of the original architect John Scott.

After the Bachian introduction to the concert we next head a recording made by two string instrument players from Aotearoa New Zealand when visiting another far-off part of the world, the Monastery of Santa Maria in Sobrado dos Monxes. I’m guessing that one of these string players was a ‘cellist, but am unsure whether the other was a violist or violinist, or even another ‘cellist! Whatever the case Gary Wilby’s ensuing “Chant Futuna Connections” composition was given its first hearing in this country via the recording, haunting sounds putting something of a girdle about the earth!

Wilby then played a piece which he had come to associate with the Erebus Air New Zealand disaster, as the first music that came to his mind after hearing news of the tragedy – a teaching colleague from the UK whom he had got to know while at the same school during her time in New Zealand was among those killed in the disaster. The piece played was Chopin’s C Minor Prelude Op.28 No.20 – the lively and energetic variation was intended as a reprise which reflected Wilby’s recollection of somebody replete with an abundance of life and energy.

He then dashed into a kind of medley which he had given the title “Mashup” and which featured pieces with a similarly recurring harmonic pattern  – I didn’t list the pieces whose transmorgrifications  I still recognised, but the exercise seemed as much fun to play as to listen to! The following piece by Darius Milhaud then gave us one of the dances “Sorocaba”, from a Suite of the Saudades do Brazil Op.67 – this was the first of the dances which hearkened back to Latin American dance rhythms, though more wry and nostalgic than I was expecting from the composer.

I did enjoy Richard Rodney Bennett’s “A Week of Birthdays” characterising the famous nursery rhyme describing different “birthday” attributes, stimulating and picturesque little “character-sketches”, one for each day of the week. Footnote: – I remember once checking out my own actual birth week-day and vaguely remembering it might have been Wednesday – oo-er!!  – still, Bennett’s “Wednesday’ piece is not unlike in character and mood a couple of Dmitri Shostakovich’s more “moody” Preludes from the Op. 87 set, so I’m perhaps in good company!  I had not previously heard the Ravel piece, to my shame (and I thought I knew all of the composer’s keyboard works!) – Wilby’s description of this brief piece mentions its “notational ambiguity and surprising dissonance” which seemed to sum up what we heard most enchantingly and disconcertingly.

True to instinct, his next piece was very much a concerted effort on the part of some fellow-musicians – it was named “Compassion Chant” resulting in a spontaneously-composed outpouring of feeling in response to the Island Bay Home of Compassion ‘s Sisterhood making a ‘millenium gift” oi a substantioal lease owed the Home by the adjoining Marae, Taput e Ranga, for the purchase of land some years earlier. The piece was first performed for the ceremonial Millenium handover which took place late in December 1999.

The occasion’s “reimagined” piece featured violinist Natasha McMillan playing a “prelude” to Julie Coulson’s spoken introduction to the work, followed by cellist Petrina Wu, whose instrument sounded the “chant proper”, before being joined in duet by the second  ‘cellist, Tina Wilby – the recitative-like line became animated, even agitated in places, but then returned to a more peaceful and considered tone, imparting an awareness for us of the emotional range and scope of the situation.

Next, Gary Wilby reiterated William Blake’s idea of “a World in a grain of sand” with his “Three Contrasts”, pieces by turns whimsical, wry, deft, off-beat and abrupt, and then followed by a more extended collection of shortish characterisations, one which he had called “Simple Simon”, and based on a series of three descending notes.  Two of the seven  pieces (I think they were the last two) continued to resonate afterwards, each reminding me of Russian music –  the bass resonances of one of the pieces brought Mussorgsky’s more reflective parts of his “Pictures” to mind, while the following piece featured a wayward-sounding Russian song with off-beat accompaniments, like a Tchaikovsky “Troika” gone slightly awry!

Perhaps the most esoteric of the presentations was ‘Water, Voice, Pulse”, three separate sound-bytes brought together on a pre-recorded “take” whose repeated character certainly garnered a mesmeric kind of effect, and with the rhythms gradually slowed down, leaving at the end a kind of “lost in space” effect – the chords resonate as the voice murmurs indistinctly until only single sounds are left, in the original repeated note form, followed by silence.

All that was left was the return of the “Goldberg Variations” theme,  itself having now been “seasoned” or “grounded” by the concert’s multifarious influences one realised upon hearing the results of such exposure that things for the relatively straightforward theme could never be quite the same again, as the player’s musings and impulses demonstrated. Sincere appreciation to Gary Wilby and his candidly-expressed musical revelations, the afternoon’s peregrinations giving us all something to think about, and think about again……..

Two far-flung universalities from the Orpheus Choir – Mozart and Christopher Tin

Posted on by Peter Mechen

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART – Requiem
CHRISTOPHER TIN – To Shiver the Sky

Emma Pearson (soprano), Charlotte Secker (mezzo-soprano),
Ridge Ponini (tenor), Robert Tucker (bass)
Orpheus Choir, Wellington
Children’s Choir (Samuel Marsden  Collegiate School, Wellington Girls’ College,
Wellington East Girls’ College)
Orchestra Wellington
Brent Stewart (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Saturday, April 18th, 2026

Music can readily speak to us from across the ages, especially with word-settings of frequently-performed choral works, from Renaissance and Baroque times, throughout the classical and romantic eras and into and including works up to the present day. Tonight’s presentation featured music from, firstly, the classical world of Mozart, his poignantly unfinished but still resounding Requiem, and from the present day, a work by American-born composer of Chinese descent, Christopher Tin –  his choral work “To Shiver the Sky” an epic, time-traversing tribute to human flight in various aspirations and forms.

Firstly came the Mozart – a work that’s grown partly out of legend wrought by confused, incomplete documentations and by the transcendence of the work itself (its genesis was a request from a dilettante nobleman wanting to pass the work off as his own, though Mozart’s health had declined to the point where he became convinced he was writing his own Requiem). He died with parts of it unfinished, leaving his pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr, to finish the uncompleted sections so that the promised fee would be paid to Mozart’s widow, Constanze. What Süssmayr did has since been hotly debated by scholars in regard to its extent, with even further revised versions appearing that reduce the latter’s contributions and reconstruct certain parts based on the composer’s own structural and harmonic style  – which, to be fair, is what the much-maligned Süssmayr reconstructions themselves partly succeeded in doing anyway!

Some performances have presented what Mozart wrote and no more, though the outcomes have come across as more pedantic than musical – so the tradition of an unfinished piece of music completed by one or more helping hands has become firmly entrenched, probably to the relief of the majority of listeners in this case!. Heard this evening in a brilliantly-wrought performance by conductor Brent Stewart with a nimbly sonorous Orpheus Choir and full-blooded responses complementing exquisite detailings from Orchestra Wellington, the results were eminently satisfying. Only the solo singing was variable in a couple of places –  the women’s voices, the ever-pleasing soprano of  Emma Pearson and that of her enthusiastic and capable mezzo counterpart Charlotte Secker, were a consistent joy throughout, but both men, tenor Ridge Ponini and bass Robert Tucker seemed, I thought, to have to work surprisingly hard in their delivery of some of the orchestra-accompanied text. The tenor was a new name to me but I had previously heard and enjoyed Robert Tucker in a number of roles (a wonderful Noye in Britten’s “Noye’s Fludde” for instance), so  I was, for instance, surprised at my difficulty in picking up some of his lower notes in passages such as his “Tuba Mirum” solo, admittedly treacherous that they are to sing.

Brent Stewart maintained a lucid balance between orchestra and choir throughout, with vocal lines and orchestral detailing alike maintaining a splendid clarity. The fugal “Kyrie Eleison” was well-sprung but not rushed, allowing us to revel in the delicious energies of the singing’s contrapuntal passagework. I liked the impetuousness  of the beginning of the “Dies Irae”, plunging into the ferment of terror and dread conjured up by text and music immediately at the end of the “Kyrie”, the different sections engaging a multitude of responses from solo and choral voices, with the “Tuba Mirum” sequence bringing all the soloists into play – bass Robert Tucker sounding splendid with his very opening declamation, while tenor Ridge Ponini stylishly delivered “Mors stupebit” (what wonderful poetry these words make!). Charlotte Secker’s mezzo was suitably awe-struck at the judge’s entrance (“Judex ergo cum sedebit”), bringing into relief soprano Emma Pearson’s heartfelt “Quid sum miser”, the voices harmonising beautifully for the verse’s final “Cum vix justus sit securus” plea for justice and mercy.

As for the choir, the voices responded as readily to their conductor’s encouragement of majestic tone from the men with “Rex, tremende majestatis”  as with beseeching and  piteous pleas at “Salve me fons pietatis” uttered by the women.from the women’s voices. Such a dramatic, almost theatrical contrast with adjoining passages was repeated with the men’s plunging into “Confutatis maledictis” with sterling orchestral support, and the women’s almost ethereal plea “Voca me cum Benedictus” in response. Even more ethereal and atmospheric was the wonderfully spooky “Oro supplex et acclinis” for the whole choir, sung sotto voce, with the trombones helping to colour the accompanying chords in the most downcast and submissive manner for the concluding “Gere curam mei finis” (Help me in my final condition!)

All Requiem roads lead, of course, into and through the “Lacrimosa” the pity of which was beautifully captured here, emphasised by the haltingly staccato-ish delivery of the rising notes of “Qua resurget ex favilla” – the “rising from the ashes”  of all humanity – a particularly heart-stopping moment bursting into full-blooded  feeling came with “Judicandus homo reus”  – when Man shall be judged! Such depth of feeling needed a stirring and well-focused end-point which was delivered with a splendidly rock-solid “Amen”.

No rest, however, was accorded the forces, the immediately following sequence a driving and exciting Offetorium,  “Domine Jesu Christe”, with music and texts urgently and agitatedly delivered, first by the choir and then by the soloists summonsing up the celestial standard-bearer St Michael to lead the way (“Sed signifier Sanctus Michael”). But even more thrilling were the exhortations for the redemption of Abraham and his descendants  – here, presented as and duly given exciting contrapuntal treatment from both voices and players (“Quam olim Abrahae”) to absolutely exhilarating effect!

The following “Hostias” wrought the changes most effectively – the music’s pacing was more meditative, though the voices varied their dynamics tellingly throughout alternating both complete lines and short phrases of text with dramatic “loud-soft” changes. But the sudden, theatrical return of “Quam olim Abrahae” as before was brilliantly handled, with the contrapuntal lines tossed exhilaratingly back and forth until the music cried “enough!” with a final, hushed “et semini ejus!”.

Then came the grandly-voiced “Sanctus”, here an outpouring of glorious acclamation, though with a surprisingly abrupt fugal treatment of “Hosanna in excelsis”. However, the “Benedictus” which followed was here so exquisite one could forgive the composer the seeming rush to immerse everybody in such beauteous strains – again the women’s voices had a “presence” which the men couldn’t quite match, though both bass and tenor had solo moments allowing their voices space in which to “sound” – and, together with some noble brass playing, the general effect gave considerable pleasure to all.

More scalp-prickling contrasts were afforded by the “Agnus Dei”, with emotionally astringent opening chorus tones heightened in retrospect by hushed responses of “Dona eis requiem, the third beautifully elongated with the word “sempiternam”. Back came the music of “Te decet hymnus”  from the Introitus, again sung by the soprano – “Lux Aeterna lucceat eis” (Let eternal light shine”), leading to a reprise of the “Kyrie” fugal music for the work’s concluding “Cum Sanctus tuis in aeternum” – vigorous, confident and fulfilling, as befitted the final moments of such a work.

Whatever criticism might be levelled at the much-maligned Sussmayr for his “completions”  Brent Stewart and his forces gave the kind of performance that disarmed any thoughts of inadequacy or inappropriateness relating to the overall effect of the work – one was reminded of that great Mozartean Sir Thomas Beecham who once caustically remarked upon certain freshly discovered “edits” relating to Haydn’s music with the words “Are they scholarly or musical?” At the conclusion of this performance I felt more than readily inclined to credit Mozart’s posthumous Requiem’s editor with a  completed task worthy of Beecham’s approval!

A different world awaited us in the concert’s second half, enthusiastically introduced by conductor Brent Stewart, and featuring American composer Christopher Tin’s work “To Shiver the Sky”. The composer himself describes the work as “an oratorio about the history of flight, and mankind’s quest to conquer the heavens”. Tin used texts from eleven sources and in different languages, the writings of astronomers, inventors, visionaries and aviators themselves – the work’s title was taken from a poem by Rudyard Kipling, one whose subject was actually the ill-fated “Tower of Babel” which the poet describes as built “to shiver the sky and wrench the stars apart”. Significantly, some of these efforts included in the work described disastrous failures and/or destructive rather than life-enhancing purposes, though the over-riding theme is one of adventure, progress and outward-looking aspiration.

I felt I was suddenly in a “minority” in the concert-hall, as many of the audience audibly resonated with Brent Stewart’s description of the work as having connections with a video game, Civilization IV, one whose theme music was used in the opening section of tonight’s presentation, the “Sogno di Volare”. Though a conventional orchestra and choral forces were used, the music had a definite kind of “New Age” flavour and excitement, one to which my rather more old-fashioned sensibilities still managed to positively respond in all but one particular instance!

Beginning with the aforementioned Sogno di Volare (Dream of Flight), a setting of writings of Leonardo da Vinci, the orchestra launched into an excitable repeated rhythmic pattern to which the choir firstly contributed a recitative-like refrain describing the poet’s aspiration towards imitating what birds can do, and thus achieving the heart’s desire – to fly! Choir and orchestra then moved majestically towards imagining mankind’s great joy at achieving what the birds achieve, and “filling the universe with wonder and glory”.  The subtitles were difficult to read from where I was sitting, and the programme notes impossible due to the dim light in the auditorium – so following specific ideas from the text during the performance posed difficulties! However, the sheer energies of the singing and playing enabled one to be caught up in a kind of torrent of inspiration, even when reference-points were difficult to decipher!

The 11th-Century mystic Hildegarde of Bingen was the next librettist, with “The Heavenly Kingdom”, the words describing how the birds in flight expressed devotion to heavenly things, and in doing so expressed heavenly love – a smaller group of women’s voices intoned timeless-sounding  melismatic phrases describing the seeming devotion of birds,  strings and winds gradually adding their supporting strains, then joined by  larger groups of voices, the effect almost canonical when intertwining their lines with the women’s voices, their interactions bedecked by shimmering percussion and excitable winds in places before allowing the smaller group of voices the final say.

The first truly dramatic sequence darkly followed, a setting of Ovid’s account in “Metamorphosis” of Daedalus and Icarus attempting to escape their imprisonment on the island of Crete by King Minos, through the use of bird’s feathers made and shaped into wings and held together by wax and flying to freedom. Daedalus warned his son Icarus to take a “middle course” when flying, neither too high nor too low, but Icarus disobeyed his father, exulting in his powers of flight and soaring upwards towards the sun – when the wax melted and the feathers were lost Icarus plunged into the sea and drowned. A darkly urgent and fearful orchestral opening  introduced Daedalus outlining his plan to his son – though tenor Ridge Ponini gave his all to the text the ever-mounting orchestral forces made it difficult for us to decipher his words, though we still got the sense of the father warning the son, and the excitement felt by the boy at being able to fly like a bird! – the sense, firstly of exhilaration, and then of impending danger, were ardently conveyed by orchestra and choir. The most heart-rending moment was Daedalus’s despairing cries of “Icare! Icare!” after the boy had fallen – the women’s voices continued the despairing lament for Icarus with a repeated percussion- accompanied sequence (which, though initially moving, I thought by the end somewhat too much of a good thing!)

It followed that the fourth poem “The Fall” from Dante Alighieri’s “The Divine Comedy” eminently suited the sense of loss and failure which followed the fall of Icarus, equating it with the larger principle of success often being accompanied by failure. The words from both soloist and choir were unclear throughout, but a general sense of lamentation came across as paramount.

The fifth sequence, Astronomy, with lyrics by Nicolaus Copernicus, was given a passionately-delivered  performance by the choir, sparklingly punctuated with percussive scintillations, the words a paean of homage to the heavens, their beauties fully revealed through observation, as “the work of God”. A strikingly colourful contrast came with the setting which followed, that of Jules Verne’s “De la Terre a la Lune”  – I enjoyed the spaciousness of the orchestral textures and the lightness of the singing from the children’s choruses – the music had an engagingly innocent, almost naïve quality about its buoyancy and confidence, and made an even more telling variance with what then followed, harsh, aggressive tones introducing words attributed to German inventor Ferdinand von Zeppelin regarding the use of aircraft for peaceful human interaction between nations, and concluding with the despairing words “Oh, the Misfortune!” – a nightmarish sequence mercifully relieved without a pause by humming voices introducing (or transitioning) to the next sequence!

This was a setting of aviatrix Amelia Earhart’s poem “Courage”, one which, though heartfelt, didn’t, in a sense, for me, convey sufficient real and palpable sense of the loneliness and solitude which would have been part-and-parcel of the explorer’s experience. It seemed intent, instead, upon morphing into a kind of show-stopping aria-like outpouring of emotion, almost a stock-in-trade moment which I thought missed some of the essence of what was Earhart’s achievement – however, others will (and seemed to at the time) feel differently! What however, garnered an undisputed unanimity of response was the following setting – an incredible evocation of implacable power, might and destruction far beyond ordinary human experience  – this was “Become Death” , J.Robert Oppenheimer’s famous quote from the Sanskrit Bhagavad Gita, upon witnessing the first nuclear bomb test in the United States in the 1940s, sung in the original language. Its effect was indescribable, remaining in my mind long after all other sounds from the work had ceased to resound – incredible in a kind of nihilistic way….the ghostly opening voices were followed by mournfully beseeching string tones, leading to sudden ghoulish reiterations of the voice representing Death the Destroyer, as the percussion incessantly roared and winds repeatedly shrieked, until all that was left was a piercing single note which died into nothingness…….

Just as impactful, but in an entirely different way was the composer’s treatment of the words of space’s first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, a soulful statement of humanity that transcended national boundaries and  spoke for all peoples. I liked Tin’s “growing” of the voices from the men’s very matter-of-fact beginnings and burgeoning into a whole-choir paean of love and respect for Planet Earth, and the desire to “preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!”, then finishing with an evocation of “the power of the spirit” in mankind. It was, I thought in retrospect,, one that might well have provided a fitting climax to the work! However…….

The final setting was of words drawn from President John F. Kennedy’s famous  “We choose to go to the moon” speech in relation to the United States space exploration programme. While it seemed like a great idea for a setting in theory,  I actually found parts of it somewhat uncomfortable to listen to – though the sentiments expressed may have been worthy ones in their original context many of the words seemed to me here to be forced into a hasty marriage with a kind of all-purpose Disney-like musical surface sheen. Parts of the text did for me work, responding to music-setting more readily than did others – the section ‘We set sail on this new sea…..” down to “….the progress of all people” shared with the words a rhythmic swing and a lyrical unanimity of purpose – as did some of the section leading up to “….a theatre of war”……with appropriately baleful orchestral accompaniments.  And the rhetoric associated with weapons and hostile flags was appropriately mitigated by mention of “the banner of freedom and peace”. But so much of the rest of it (even the Mallory story, for example, containing the mountaineer’s well known reasoning for climbing Mt.Everest – “Because it’s there!”) seemed to me like earnestly-delivered note-spinning – words simply out of kilter with their music!

Obviously my reaction will not be shared by many, judging by the ovation the work received at the end – I am even finding myself at odds with younger generation family members who also heard the work!! And I did think Tin’s work in general an astounding achievement in its range and scope, despite what I thought were the occasional longeurs, and the final setting’s “in-places intractability”. The sheer impact, and the underlying message of the “Become Death” sequence, for one, will haunt my sensibilities for a long time to come, and I would readily go back to many of the other evocations to enjoy, once again, the various librettists’ inspirational words and Christopher Tin’s insightful elaborations through his inspired settings of almost  (in my opinion) all of them!

Very great credit to conductor Brent Stewart for his unflagging energies and inspirational direction – and to his performers, vocalists and instrumentalists, who manifestly “gave it all” throughout the evening – the coupling of “established” with the “new” was a great success, truly inspired and engaging, and the results as performed and received were nothing short of tumultuous tumultuous!

 

 

 

Saxophone opening up the chamber vistas – Simon Brew with the Amici Ensemble at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music Series 2026 – Simon Brew with the Amici Ensemble

RUSSELL PETERSON (b.1969) – Quintet for alto saxophone and strings 2003
MAX RICHTER  (b.1966) – On the Nature of Daylight (2004)
ELLEN TAAFFE ZWILICH (b.1939) – Quintet for Saxophone and Strings
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) – String Quartet in F Major K.590
ASTOR PIAZZOLLA (1921-1992) Winter and Spring from The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (arr. Mary Osborn)

Amici Ensemble (Saxophone Quintet)
Donald Armstrong (violin), Anna van der Zee  (violin), Nicholas Hancox (viola), Andrew Joyce (‘cello), Simon Brew (saxophone)

St.Andrews-on-The-Terrace
Sunday, 12th April 2026

The saxophone as a musical instrument has made quite a journey – its inventor, Adolphe Sax, intended his instrument as a kind of “missing link” between winds and brass in the symphony orchestra, wanting  to combine the power of brass instruments with the flexibility of woodwinds, though the earliest saxophones tended to find their way into French military bands because of their ability to project their sounds outdoors. The instrument did appear in some nineteenth-century classical compositions, mostly by composers with names unknown today (has anybody previously heard the names of Jean-Baptiste Singelée, who wrote a Premier Quatuor  for Saxophones in 1857?- or Jules Demersseman, the composer of an 1860 Fantasie for Saxophone and Piano? ) but also with a number of “pioneering” examples of usage, such as in George Bizet’s incidental music for the play “L’Arlesienne” (1872), in music by Delibes (the 1876 ballet “Sylvia”) and in Massenet’s operas (“Le Roi de Lahore”, “Herodiade” and “Werther”) the earliest of these in 1877.

Of course since the turn of the century the orchestral gates have occasionally opened to admit the saxophone, with concertante works from composers such as Debussy, Glazunov and Ibert, and significant contributions from the instrument in works by Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Strauss, Vaughan Williams, Richard Strauss and Ravel (via Mussorgsky) among others. In chamber music, too, the saxophone has noticeably figured, both in original works for the instrument and different kinds of arrangements, each of which were featured in this afternoon’s presentation by saxophonist Simon Brew and the Amici Ensemble.

Our concert began with American composer Russell Peterson’s 2003 Quintet for Alto Saxophone and Strings, the music beginning plaintively with strings only, then hauntingly continuing with the saxophone’s disarmingly dulcet tones – a sombre, processional-like exposition with gently melancholy dialogues and concerted passages – whose ambiences were then briefly but arrestingly galvanised by an impassionedly rising saxophone sequence, the music falling back to the previous subdued manner , only to again arch splendidly and disconcertingly – one was transfixed anew by the saxophone’s arresting power of utterance when at “full throttle”! –  I enjoyed the movement’s following dance-like, somewhat exotic-sounding sequences, despite a  “sameness” about the saxophone’s repeated “rise-and-fall” aspect to the music.

The second movement’s Bartok-like dance rhythms brought repeated-note patterms, more saxophonic declamations and running figurations, with the violin’s folkish lines echoed by the cello’s soulful responses. What appeared to be a third movement was begun by the saxophone, partnered by the ‘cello in a kind of  sombre and almost canonic duet, whose musings were broken into by the viola, beginning a fugal-like sequence, and joined by the second violin, the mood remaining sombre until the first violin burst in with a more dance-like line, inspiring the ‘cello to begin a spirited, “running” kind of response to which the saxophone joined, the pace of the music quickening until the opening chords of the second movement returned. This then sent the music into a kind of “spin”, the saxophone pursuing a kind of orgiastic folk-theme, whose cries brought the strings running towards and executing as one a brilliant concluding flourish!

The contrast with Max Richter’s meditative and “slow-chapp’d”  work for strings On The Nature Of Daylight,  which followed couldn’t have been more profound – at first, not unlike the opening of Strauss’s “Metamorphosen” the music almost straightaway developed in a different, more esoteric direction, beginning here with three players delivering long, slow, mesmeric and suggestive chords, until a fourth enters with a melody that derives wholly from these chord progressions. The piece’s popularity has actually begun to generate a kind of reaction to its over-use by film-makers, a counterproductive kind of  “bleeding the piece dry” effect, though Richter’s powerfully simple evocation will, like so many over-used pieces of music have previously done, doubtless survive its unselfconscious fecundity and remain fixed for future generations. I couldn’t imagine a more “centred”, sensitively-judged performance than we got here from our quartet of string-players.

The first half’s highlight for me was the Ellen Taafe Zwilich work, a 2008 Quintet for Saxophone and Strings, one with its opening Beethoven Grosse-Fugue-like beginning announcing its credentials and intents before setting off to a jogtrot-like journey throughout vistas of ear-catching detail. At first, the strings trod measured steps while the saxophone undertook a “whistling an air” kind of attitude, but with the group occasionally varying the trajectories, moving between a kind of lyrical wonderment, spontaneously impulsive gesturings and a droll “take it as it comes” manner.

Short, sharp impulses aplenty set the second movement on its intriguing course, in-and-out of occasional sequences which “papered over the cracks” in the music’s sustained lines (some evocative saxophone outpourings in places!). Our ears were kept engagingly activated by these wonderfully benign conniptions of expression, and highly entertained by an amusingly po-faced set of false “endings” to the movement leading up to the music’s true one!

The cello took up a nostalgic rocking rhythm at the third movement’s opening over which the saxophone sang a lullabic refrain, the strings joining in with a repeated-note accompaniment – fabulously ear-catching! As the saxophone began to energise its voice, the strings caught the mood and adroitly “syncopated” the exchanges, until the opening rocking rhythm made a sudden reappearance on the strings – saxophone and violin rhapsodised over the import of the moment, which intensified as the “chugging” rhythm also returned. The opening chord of the work then resounded, and echoed, before the players decided to have done with the past with a few terse, no-nonsense chords. I sat at the end, unexpectedly enchanted by it all!

After the interval, Mozart proved to be a perfect re-entry point to the concert with one of his “Prussian” Quartets (K.590 in F Major), albeit one of his greatest compositions, and one fraught with “might-have-beens” at the time the quartet was written – the circumstances have conspired to give this quartet a particularly distinctive flavour in a number of respects. At the time of writing this work the composer was in financial straits due to a recession in the Austrian economy caused by a drawn-out war with Turkey, resulting in fewer concerts and commissions. He had, in 1789, travelled to Berlin to meet the Prussian monarch Friedrich William II, an amateur cellist, hoping to make a good impression on the music-loving monarch, but instead had to be content with meeting the King’s Director of Chamber Music, the ‘cellist Jean-Pierre Dupont.

Afterwards he wrote to Constanze, his wife, that he had received money and commissions for six string quartets and six keyboard sonatas after performing for the Queen on a second visit. But there is no entry in the Court records for either money or commissions being made, and researchers have concluded that Mozart probably borrowed the money from friends, and invented the story regarding the visit and the commissions so he would have something to show for his efforts on his return to Vienna! He did complete three string quartets, two of them during 1790, the year following the Berlin visit, the second of which we heard today.

It’s an extraordinary work in itself, right from the beginning – two soft introductory notes and then a third louder and more insistent, followed by a scampering and unresolved unison descent – the whole then balanced by a repetition with solo violin, the dynamic contrasts softened, and the descent harmonically resolved. Mozart then uses that same three-note pattern and the scampered descent throughout the movement, the playing here of the Amici’s strings as deft and tonally varied as one might wish.

The following Andante has a hymn-like beginning, to which each instrument adds an embellished dance-like variation, leading to a stratospherically piquant ending. The Menuetto’s lively dance is characterised by an oscillating accompanying figure which passes from voice to voice throughout and in places moves up-and-down in almost vertiginous chromatic ways, while the Trio makes much of gawkily-witty grace-notes at some of the phrase-ends – charming! As for the finale it thrives on fluidity of utterance and quicksilver reactions, with several of the modulations seeming to flirt with atonality in places, while leaving our ears to actively wonder whether the lines would actually “find” one another again – such extraordinarily forward-looking juxtaposing of rhythms and harmonies! And what a delightfully po-faced concluding cadence – a wonderful sleight-of-hand ending!

Simon Brew brought his soprano saxophone with him this time, to conclude the concert with music by Astor Piazzolla, and featuring two excerpts from a work I’d not previously heard and was looking forward to – Piazzolla’s “The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires”. The composer originally wrote and scored the pieces separately between 1965 and 1970 for his own ensemble, which featured his own instrument, the bandoneon (a kind of accordion). Like much of the composer’s music they have been arranged for all kinds of combinations, including a version by Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov for string ensemble which occasionally quotes from Antonio Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.

The Amici players performed two of  these “seasons”, winter and  spring, the first Invierno Porteño (Winter),having a gorgeous melancholic flavour, with much languishing at the piece’s beginning, and then with the saxophone tones bring out a truly exotic flavour to the textures and tones. Both pieces use the term Porteño, a word referring to a native of Buenos Aires, so that the Spring is given the name Primavera Porteña –  the music’s somewhat livelier than the first piece, though the players here give even the slower middle section’s rhythms plenty of “heft” . We enjoyed the experience so much we were able to persuade the ensemble to return to the platform and give us some more Piazzolla, a characteristically sultry opening, with the strings sighing as the saxophone literally took flight, the lines soaring like a bird, before the instrument brought these impulses back to earth, joining the strings for a soulful concluding melody in luscious thirds. Gorgeous sounds! – we couldn’t have helped enjoying the ensemble’s wonderfully cosmopolitean adventurings throughout a variety of times and places – a real treat for the senses in every way!

Resonances from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra – suggestive Ravel, effusive Dessner and harrowing Shostakovich

Posted on by Peter Mechen

André de Ridder conducting the NZSO – image Latitude Creative/NZSO

RAVEL – Pavane pour une Infante Défunte / BRYCE DESSNER  Trombone Concerto
SHOSTAKOVICH – Symphony No. 8 in C Minor Op.65

David Bremner (trombone) New Zealand Symphony Orchestra / André de Ridder (conductor)
Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Thursday, April 9th, 2026

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s latest concert brought together three disparate works under the generic title ”Resonance”, demonstrating orchestral music’s well-nigh infinite variety of evocation in drawing from both specific and integral sources.

The most directly effusive of these was American guitarist and composer Bryce Dessner’s trombone concerto, one substituting for  a similarly-conceived work (Slip: Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra) by American composer Andrew Norman, one intended as a premiere! – disappointinngly, the original  soloist, Dutch virtuoso Jörgen van Rijen (who’s principal trombonist with Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra), was prevented by injury from presenting the work. However, the NZSO’s own principal trombonist, the deservedly popular David Bremner, gave at short notice the inspired substitute choice of Dessner’s work with a truly sparkling performance that merited an enthusiastic “local hero” audience ovation.

At the orchestral helm for this presentation was André de Ridder, the NZSO’s Music Director Designate for 2027, due to take over from Gemma New at the conclusion of her five-year tenure in the position. De Ridder began the concert with the orchestra in fine fettle for Maurice Ravel’s sheerly beautiful Pavane pour une Infanta défunte, procuring winsome solo lines from firstly a horn (a shade late, I thought, in sounding its opening note, but flawless thereafter), and winds and strings, each counterbalancing the music’s meticulous symmetries, until the whole orchestra lustrously returned to the piece’s opening melody, the harp as before gently caressing the piece’s breath-catching luftpauses. Conductor de Ridder’s ear seemed as fastidious as the composer’s in realising the music’s beguiling textures throughout.

Bryce Dessner’s Trombone Concerto certainly put player and instrument through their respective paces, even if the end result seemed for much of the work’s duration a kind of compendium of capabilities on the part of a skilled player of a distinctive-sounding instrument rather than an expression of distinctive pictorial, emotional or philosophical content. Perhaps the slow movement focused more directly on the solo instrument’s attempts to cohere with its sonic surroundings, a kind of metaphor for modern life’s isolation – with orchestral backdrops in places withdrawn and spectral- sounding, and in others contesting the ambient spaces with the soloist. And the third movement broke into different “dance” trajectories in places, seeming to invite (or perhaps “dare”) the trombone to join in (with trombone and trumpet actually sharing a few slinky measures of roguish alliance). I thought the work more entertainment than anything else, as befitted the traditional role of a concerto, Davd Bremner and his instrument well-nigh inseparable in their shared ownership of the work’s capabilities!

No two works could have made more of a contrast with Dmitri Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony which took up the concert’s second half. Written in 1943 and following the enormous success of the composer’s Seventh Symphony as a wartime statement of patriotic resistance, the Eighth was straightaway a different kettle of fish. This work completely and utterly turned its back on the Seventh’s triumphal aspect and its glorification of the Russian people’s resolve in the face of the Nazi invasion – instead Shostakovich called the new Symphony “a poem of suffering”, and  “an attempt to reflect the terrible tragedy of war”.

Consequently, its Moscow premiere in November that same year, by the work’s dedicatee, Evgeny Mravinsky, though acclaimed by the audience, brought only tepid critical reviews, and savage official disapproval, which resulted in the work being withdrawn until its second-only Moscow performance in 1956! Since then, it’s gradually clambered towards a position of near pre-eminence among the composer’s symphonic works, as much for its historical range of ambiguities as its overall singularity of purpose. To a violinist in one of the early performances who remarked to Shostakovich on the wonders of the C Major passage that began the finale, the composer replied, “My dear friend, if only you knew how much blood that C Major cost me!”

This presentation from the NZSO was one to resound in the memory – André de Ridder briefly introduced the work to his audience, relating the music’s intents and purposes to the prevailing misery and hardship faced by people in the world’s present-day troublespots, and then plunging the orchestral strings into the dark-browed ambiences of the work’s at once sonorous and incisive beginning. Under his continued direction the sounds coalesced slowly and purposefully, the strings leading the way for similarly-wrought wind-playing, gradually building the tensions up to the movement’s series of utterly cataclysmic crescendi with their overwhelming evocations of widespread suffering caused by war and oppression. These were acknowledged eloquently by the extended cor anglais solo (here superbly delivered) which followed the orchestral maelstroms, and in tandem with the strings whose sounds seemed to us to emanate from the very souls of all who thus suffered. A brief brass fanfare attested to the human spirit’s refusal to accept defeat before returning to the lament, whose wrung-out intensities occasioned, at the end, the feeling of a  huge but guarded exhalation of breath!

Such an evocation brought forth not just one scherzo-like response, but two diametrically different reactions – the first, an Allegretto, was given amazing sweep and grandiloquence dressed up as grotesquerie, the irony savage in its futility, here brilliantly depicted by the winds, especially the piccolo and bassoon, and later joined in the onslaught by the percussion, with strings and brass gleeful collaborators. Then came the third movement Allegro non troppo, a savagely insistent orchestral toccata, here given the most trenchant performance I’d ever encountered since hearing Russian conductor Kyril Kondrashin’s 1960s Moscow recording – this was a fiercely relentless assault punctuated by a macabre circus-like sequence for solo trumpet and side-drum (brilliant, burlesque-like playing!), the energies veering in effect between wild exhilaration and fraught anxiety, and with de Ridder encouraging his players to occasionally push the intensities further forwards. It was a sequence culminating in some almost destabilising timpani-playing driving the needle into the red at the music’s climax while simultaneously giving birth to a sombre fourth-movement Passacaglia.

Here, the music’s previous agonies were echoed in a new and terrible kind of tranquility, called by one commentator “an expression of timeless grief”, and leading up to the  numinous impact of that C major chord which brought a ray of hope . De Ridder and his players performed as if inspired, here, with the sounds lifting us from out of the slough, reinvigorating energies and teasing out sensibilities as well as plunging us once more into a brief reiteration of those hellish first movement depictions of destruction and terror wrought by war and brutal dictatorship. After this we were dazedly brought back to our senses by a trio of instrumental voices whose superbly-wrought equivocal interactions and powerfully muted orchestral responses seemed to suggest that life for each one of us, despite its vicissitudes, would nevertheless go on.

Pianist Otis Prescott-Mason – an unexpected but precious gift for us of Schubert’s heavenly G-Major Sonata D.894.

Posted on by Peter Mechen

FRANZ SCHUBERT – Piano Sonata in G Major D.894

Otis Prescott-Mason (piano)
St.Andrews’-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Wednesday, 8th April, 2026

Firstly, a bit of background, which I gleaned from the concert’s programme leaflet  – pianist Otis Prescott-Mason has recently completed his undergraduate studies with Dr.Jian Liu at the New Zealand School of Music here in Wellington. During this time, he’s taken part in several competitions throughout the country, winning firstly the 2020 New Zealand Junior Piano Competition and then both the 2022 PACANZ National Piano Competition, and the Lewis Eady National Piano Competition in Auckland that same year. More recently, in  2025 he won Third Prize at the National Concerto Competition in Christchurch with Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto, and has performed with various regional orchestras such as the Christchurch Symphony, Orchestra Wellington, and the Auckland Philharmonia.

Now having completed his undergraduate studies, Prescott-Mason is looking forward to his next step on the pianistic ladder, taking him to a course of study further afield at the prestigious Yale School, of Music in New Haven, Connecticut, USA during the 2026-27 academic year, and working towards a Master of Music with the great Boris Berman, a Professor at the school, and a pianistic “hero” for the young musician. He joins a prestigious group  of past keyboard-achievers from these shores who have similarly  ventured outwards to seek further artistic and musical fulfilment.

I had seen and heard Otis play before on occasions which included a memorable 2020 St. Andrews’ solo recital (review at https://middle-c.org/2021/11/firstly-sparks-and-then-a-conflagration-pianist-otis-prescott-mason-in-recital/), as well as a “shared” recital with other solo pianists (actually a ”preparation”  concert for the aforementioned 2020 NZ Junior Piano Competition, which Prescott-Mason won!), and a sparkling lunchtime concert duo recital (four hands) with Sunny Cheng in 2021. In all, my expectations had been suitably primed by the above to regard this concert as something not to be missed!.

Upon making his appearance, the pianist explained to us that, rather than fronting up with his originally-planned programme of predominantly virtuoso pieces (which I was expecting to hear) he’d felt of late much more like spending time with an audience in the company of a composer like Schubert – so to my special delight (and partly also because I had already heard him play a couple of the originally-scheduled items, and this was something very different!) he’d decided to play the Schubert Sonata in G Major D.894, a work I’d become particularly fond of in recent times thanks to Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter’s daringly leisurely (and, for me, utterly mesmerising!) performance, especially in the case of the work’s first movement.

Though Prescott-Mason didn’t attempt to emulate Richter’s “near-timeless traversal”
of the first movement’s oceanic-like expanses, he caught at the very outset the music’s unique blend of surety and resonant utterance which the slightest hint of any haste or impatience or anything mechanical in a performance can deaden and neutralise. In fact, at the work’s very beginning the pianist “set the scene” for all of us so very beautifully by adopting the once-fashionable opening gesture of playing a series of gently-modulating figures (sometimes chordal, sometimes arpeggiated) as a kind of “storyteller’s introduction” to what was to follow. (Those readers who know of and have heard the late, great Roumanian pianist Dinu Lipatti’s legendary “farewell” recital, recorded “live” as long ago as1950, will be familiar with this enchanting and heartwarming practice!).

Schubert’s own opening chords were then gorgeously-voiced, the whole introduction entirely and disarmingly spontaneous in effect – even more elfin-like were the sounds of the following contrasting sequence, both hushed and beautifully darkened by the deeper bass notes. The music then “opened up”, gloriously amplified through its newly- burgeoning joy and intensity. Though Prescott-Mason seemed to allow the ensuing flowing trajectories of movement at first “play themselves”, he made the following filigree right-hand decorations dancing above the music’s gentle progress utterly captivating. And the timing of these decorations’ sudden downward movement was superb, generating just enough sense of momentum, strength and spontaneity to underline the sense of a kind of “arrival” at the exposition’s end, though with things remaining yet to be fully understood.

Throughout the repeat we found ourselves as entranced by the pianist’s concentration as before, the music unfolding as delightfully and spontaneously, with the descent into those declamatory chords leading to an enchanting postlude resonating with even greater gravitas and resonance this time round. Of course, the development’s sudden pitiless onset of dark-toned attack opened up a new world of frightening disturbance, from which the music’s furtive moments of “escape” into desperately-sought gesturings of consolation get beaten back by the composer’s own demons. We heard one or two instances of near-derailment as the pianist wrestled with these dark forces before managing by sheer effort of will to endure their grim purposes with sufficient patience – though I thought the recapitulation of the opening here could have conveyed a deeper, more spacious and exhausted sense of the “trauma of experience” the music conveyed so vividly in those throes of despair.

All was well by the time the coda was reached, with Prescott-Mason’s re-entry into the music’s trance-like world bringing out those almost archway-like “gates of heaven” utterances with what seemed like wonderment and gratitude, surely and generously taking us with him, as the descending phrases concluded this first part of the journey.

What enchanting song-like lines we then heard at the Andante’s beginning, the tones engaging and the mood almost joyous in its reiteration of full-throated lyrical phrasings – then, how dramatic a plunge into the second group of utterances we got here! Some  detailings seemed to have a couple of out-of-focus moments in the more beseeching parts, but the pianist kept his head and steered the music back on course  – along with the occasional unexpectedly “repeated” phrase, these felt like “corrections” of things originally mistimed…… (perhaps a by-product of the programme’s relatively late re-alignment for the recital?)

Far more important was Prescott-Mason’s maintaining of the music’s overall character, the reprise of the movement’s opening was again beautifully elaborated, with just enough suggestibility and insinuation for us to register the lasting impact of the various plungings into more shadowy and stressful sequences, a wonderful exposition of a relationship between well-being, conflict and eventual resolution. The dramatic Menuetto/Scherzo, too, was delivered with telling contrast between the opening’s muscular purpose and the wryly piquant responses, an interaction which largely dominated the movement – a lovely moment is the occasional quixotic reprise of the opening in more muted tones and with occasional wry grace-notes (as if the more bumptious manner of the opening can occasionally exhibit a more personable “inner” character, one which is brought out here to perfection. As for the Trio, it was pure enchantment on this occasion, almost like a “sleepwalking” sequence displaying an alternative side of the same coin, an “echt-Schubert” moment!

The finale here is surely one of the composer’s happiest creations, an utterly disarming instance of a composer “coming to terms” with the demons lurking in some of the music’s earlier recesses. Prescott-Mason beautifully captures the music’s charm and good humour of the opening, his technique having the spring and pliability that readily give these qualities an irresistible demeanour. And he has the gift of a delightful insouciance, which adds to the music’s appeal while keeping its significance in the larger scheme of things intact and resonant – his playing doesn’t erase memories of the journey but adds to the composer’s own achievement in  deepening the impact of the whole as a living entity. Implicit in this was his simple and heartfelt playing of the work’s final phrase, whose silences that followed were true resonances of memory. What a way to spend a lunchtime! – one, at the end of which we were left feeling such gratitude to both composer and performer!

 

 

Music from the memory, in the air and on the wing – all from Wellington City Orchestra’s opening 2026 concert!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington City Orchestra’s 2026 concert series – a fresh and adventurous beginning!

LILI BOULANGER – D’un Matin de Printemps *
LOUISE WEBSTER – Violin Concerto (In Hollowed Bone I hear the Seas Roar)
LILI BOULANGER – D’un Soir Triste
SERGE PROKOFIEV – Ballet “Romeo and Juliet” – Suite No. 2

Helene Pohl (violin)
Justus Rozemond (conductor)
Virginie Pacheco (assistant conductor)*
Wellington City Orchestra

St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Saturday 28th March, 2026

This opening Wellington City Orchestra concert of 2026, brought to its audience a truly engaging and stimulating  programmme. Conductor Justus Rozemond and his WCO musicians here followed up their enterprising 2025 concert of works by Nicolai, Rachmaninov and Berlioz with an even more exploratory selection – two compositions by the tragically short-lived French composer Lili Boulanger (the first of which was directed by the WCO’s Assistant Conductor. Virginie Pacheco and which opened the concert), followed by a Violin Concerto from Auckland composer Louise Webster, here played by the work’s first performer in 2016, Helene Pohl – and with the composer in the audience! – and finally, a Suite of dances from one of the most beloved of twentieth-century ballets, Serge Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet”.

Assistant Conductor, Virginie Pacheco (who had made such a positive first impression in last year’s concert series), took the rostrum for the concert’s beginning and launched her players enthusiastically into the opening wide-eyed spring-like strains of Lili Boulanger’s D’un Matin de Printemps, (A Spring Morning). This was one of the last works the composer completed before her untimely death in 1918 at the age of twenty-four – she had written several chamber versions of the piece for different instruments, but wanted its “full-orchestra” expression as the piece’s last word.

The music’s remarkably verdant textures were conveyed here throughout the “spring morning” opening section with a judicious amalgam of elan and delicacy – a more sombre set of sequences followed, featuring strings and wings in forest-murmur-like “nature-exchanges’, which built up through a splendid crescendo, becoming at the end a kind of exultant processional exuberantly capped by a splendid harp flourish – wonderful, atmospheric playing!

The front violin-desks were then moved back to make room for the concerto soloist – this was Helene Pohl, who had given the premiere performance of Louise Webster’s Violin Concerto as long ago as  2016 with Auckland’s St.Matthews’ Chamber Orchestra. The composer was originally going to write an “overture-like” piece for the concert with passages for a solo violinist, but when she discovered who the violinist was going to be, the present concerto simply “growed”, inspired by Webster’s regard for Pohl as a musician. Incidentally, Webster subtitled the work with the quotation from Ruth Dallas’s poem about the  sea – “In hollowed bone I hear the seas roar” – AFTER the music had been written, a truly organic, rather than “made-to-order” gestation!

The following year, Pohl was due to reperform the work with the NZSO as part of the SOUNZ readings of music by New Zealand composers, but conflicting schedules meant that NZSO violinist Yuka Eguchi had to step in to perform the work instead. Now, ten years after that first SMCO performance Pohl was delighted to have the chance to revisit the concerto in concert – she recalled being particularly struck by the work’s fusion of emotional expression with colourful pictorial detail, making the concerto all the more pleasurable a prospect to go back to.

The work’s beginning instantly arrested one’s attention – over a low orchestral pedal-point the solo violin entered with an ascending theme, the orchestra repeating the theme at a quicker pace. The violin’s “similar but different” wandering, soulful theme, joined by the flutes, gradually energised things, elaborating on certain phrases, rising to stratospheric heights – a beautiful sequence!  From there on the movement played host to sequences alternating tensions and exaltations, all joined in a kind of accord which  featured the soloist reacting to and interacting with both single/smaller groups and with larger orchestral forces – however, a brief confrontation sequence with the orchestra brought forth echoed phrases, sharp pizzicati, percussive “slaps”, and piled-up-note patterns, cautioning against easy conquest!

In other places the interactions of the violinist with smaller groups had an intimacy and candour that suggested something of a “friend in the wilderness” relationship – the soloist frequently parleyed with winds such as the flutes or piccolo, or tenderly mused with the clarinet, or larger groups of sostenuto strings, as well as gentle wind chorales with pizzicato accompaniment – the violinist soared above the winds’ ostinato -like figures in a beautiful passages reminiscent of Holst, sometimes echoing, and at other times supporting each of the soloists phrases and “frontings up” with similarly-derived figures. Another gorgeous “wind chorale” sequence encouraged the soloist to break into a kind of dance, joined in with by the orchestra – something which seemed for a few treasurable moments to unify the music’s questing spirit.

It came across to me as much as a kind of re-exploration or reassessment of deeply-felt experience and feeling.  various both tension and exultation.  The writing for the orchestra in places spare and uncompromising, seemed still  to respond to the soloist with things she already knew, echoing or elaborating phrases and impulses from the solo instrument’s own plethora of realities.  At the end  even the strings gave the soloist moments of reassurance in return to her oputpourings, however brief the rhythmic impulses and guarded sighings, leaving a solo ‘cello and then a viola to offer the soloist concluding impulses of companionship.

Conductor Justus Rozemond got the second movement to grasp the trajectories and flex plenty of orchestral muscle, bringing out a swinging theme that was punctuated by various wind, brass and percussion irruptions. The violin danced at first, then after letting the orchestra echo the dance, re-entered, soaring and swooning beguilingly as the winds amicably chattered away. Eventually the orchestra decided to join in with the violin, grasping the mettle with force and energy, trajectories riding upon surges of almost joyous collegial abandonment. Honour satisfied, the momentums sank to rest – so that when the violin tried to revitalise the dance the orchestra abruptly called a halt!

The third movement, written for soloist and strings alone, drifted into being like a half-realised dream, solo violin harmonics floating into and out of the bleak sostenuto orchestral string textures. The orchestral strings remained glacial as they built an impassioned climax (reminiscent in places of the slow movement of Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony). The solo violin toyed with other solo lines, all wanting to fill the ambient soundscapes, all trying in places to break through a kind of expressive stranglehold, but constantly being brought back to order by the sheer intensity of the orchestra’s impassive response.  The solo violin returned briefly to its world of spectral, half-lit tones and muted impulse, so that the work proverbially ended “not with a bang but with a whimper”. Whew!

A delighted composer came onto the platform at the end to congratulate the musicians and acknowledge our applause – what a work, and what a committed performance! And what an inspiration Helene Pohl’s incredible mastery of the solo instrumental writing would have obviously been in terms of enabling the music to work its spell – all due credit to all concerned!

We needed an interval to take it all in sufficiently, of course, and especially in view of having another of Lili Boulanger’s heartfelt final compositions to give our attention to in the concert’s second half. I was wondering whether we would get Virginie Pacheco back to conduct the second Boulanger piece, D’un Soir Triste but it was Justus Rozemond’s turn as conductor to guide the players through the second of the composer’s pieces. It proved to be the diametrical opposite of the joyous “Spring Morning” piece we had enjoyed – though its title gave us some warning of what was to follow, the music unequivocally takes the word “Triste” in the title to near-unbearable depths of despair.

The piece began with a faint heartbeat rhythm whose trajectories awoke the senses with firstly the winds and then along with the strings beginning what seemed like a death-struggle with oncoming darkness. Each of the music’s upward-thrusting agitations took us towards a remorselessly grinding climax, in which percussion and brass savagely intoned their despairing message. The haunting throbbing of drums and a cello solo clothed in mourning delivered a scenario of intense sorrow, given tongue by the strings and winds. A harp and piano added to whatever consolation the music seemed capable of giving, though the brass and percussion didn’t hesitate to imbue the same themes with sterner, more fateful and sharper-edged accents. The strings aided by the winds continued their threnody of consolation, though the increased intensities led to tragic outcomes and eventual darkness.

The piece’s ending here seemed an incredible evocation of bravery and raw courage from a composer in the midst of the gathering darkness of impending death. Adding to the poignancy of it all was music-making from conductor and players which responded to the work’s heartfelt emotion with focus and commitment that was itself moving to experience at first hand.

Even so, after such rawly-unmitigated emotion, one was almost grateful for the relative distance and paradigmatic tragedy of the “Romeo and Juliet” story, as expressed by the variety of feeling, colour and action in Serge Prokofiev’s music for his famous eponymously-named 1935 ballet. Renowned as much for its initial neglect when first completed, the ballet had to wait until a 1938 production in Brno, Czechoslovakia, for its first public staging, and until 1940 for its first presentation on Russian soil by the Kirov Ballet. The composer meantime had resorted to compiling suites of dances from the complete work to be played in symphonic concerts, as well as extracting ten pieces arranged for solo piano, as a means of getting the music known.

We were given the composer’s arrangement of a second suite of dances from the work, beginning with the portentous “Montagues and Capulets” sequence of orchestral crescendi which serves as a prelude to the “Dance of the Knights” from the ballet’s first act. These famous crescendi were delivered with tremendous gusto by the brass and percussion here, with the sudden hushed ambiences leaving the string tones floating beautifully. Justus Rosamond took a wonderfully portentously tempo for the “Dance”, conveying the arrogance and brutality of the Capulet Knights and the contrasting minuet-like sequences depicting the disguised Montagues at the ball. And how wonderful to briefly hear the timbres of the saxophone taking up the resumption of the Knight’s Dance music towards the end.

The strings made an outstandingly nimble and winsome job of Juliet’s music, Rozamund allowing the clarinet no respite in the alternate sequence (beautifully played!), but relaxed expansively for the touching flute-and-solo-cello portrayals later. In his music Friar Lawrence was a younger, more vigorous priest than I’d been accustomed to, a refreshing alternative – the portrayal got lovely bassoon work, and was ably supported by the horn and the strings. A whimsical favourite of mine has been the “Dance of the Five Couples”, one in which the various players scampered about to great effect.

More expansive was the “Romeo and Juliet before Parting”, with gorgeous, lump-in-the-throat flute playing at the start, and beautiful replying strings, before the horn splendidly made its presence felt, along with the various winds, each “launching” the lines with real presence, such as with the viola solo, nicely animated and properly demonstrative.
The more concerted reprise of the “farewell” music was properly full-blooded, with the occasional “bloop” adding to the desperate, heartfelt nature of the scenario, setting in poignant relief the ostinato-like accompanying lines from the winds and strings as the lower instruments growled an ominous foretaste of the tragedy to come in the bass registers – a splendidly-wrought scenario!

More poignance was to be had with the old-fashioned-sounding “Dance of the Maids from the Antille”, here touchingly characterised by both solo and concerted violins, and contrasting clarinet and saxophone contributions. Came the  inevitable “Death of Romeo and Juliet”, the players digging into the rawly-wrought lines, and the brasses making a properly anguished array of tones, and the cellos and violins throwing out the lovers’ ill-fated theme with heart-wrenching resonance – the whole orchestra’s delivery of the “funeral procession” sequence made for a highlight of the afternoon’s presentation. All that was left at the end were the bleak, comfortless tones of the strings and piccolo, sounding without words the refrain – “for never was a tale of such woe/than that of Juliet and her Romeo”….

All in all, the concert made a truly memorable start to a year’s eagerly-awaited music-making, with every item representing and delivering “moments per minute”, rather than the other way round! A touching “extra” occasion-moment was the marking of Rowena Cullen’s retirement from ten years’ Presidency of the Wellington City Orchestra with a presentation and a warm-hearted ovation. But the afternoon’s music was splendid and special in many ways, not least of all due to composer Louise Webster and violinist Helene Pohl. And, to conductor Justus Rozemond, and his concert assistant conductor Virginie Pacheco, and to all the players, well done for a great beginning to 2026!

 

 

 

Still more musical miracles reported and evidenced in Wellington, this time at Roseneath’s The Long Hall!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The creative spirit continues to work wonders in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa – (“Kei te ora tonu te wairua auaha ki Te Whanganui-a-Tara o Aotearoa”)

Peter Gjelsten tackles a Bach Violin Sonata (No. 2 in A Minor BWV 1003) at The Long Hall, Roseneath

The Chamber Pot-Pourri Ensemble
A Kaibosh Food Rescue Benefit Concert

ROSS HARRIS – 2 Micro-Trios (2020)
Helene Pohl, Peter Gjelsten (violins), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)
NICCOLO PAGANINI – Caprice No. 9 for solo violin
JS BACH – Sonata for solo violin in A Minor BWV 1003
Peter Gjelsten  (violin)
CRAIG UTTING – Four Wellington Dances for violin and cello
Helene Pohl (violin), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)
FRANZ JOSEF HAYDN – String Quartet in G Major Op.33 No. 5
Helene Pohl, Peter Gjelsten (violins)
Sophia Acheson (viola), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

The Long Hall, Point Jerningham, Roseneath
Saturday 21st March, 2026

Fresh from attending my first St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace lunchtime concert earlier in the week, I had the good fortune to catch another. not dissimilar kind of musical happening – this one a 2026 “first” for the capital of a series instigated a year ago by violinist Helene Pohl at Roseneath’s “The Long Hall”, situated on the Point Jerningham lookout reserve next to Roseneath Primary School. The concerts are designed to alternatively support the Kaibosh Food Rescue charity, and the Arohanui Strings, the Sistema-inspired early intervention music education programme. The Kaibosh charity makes a significant difference to food and energy waste and carbon emissions, enabling thousands of kilos of food to be redistributed to community groups, resulting in renewed efforts by the same musicians over the present in continuing and supporting an eminently worthwhile venture.

Thanks to the inspiration, skills and capacity for hard work of Helene Pohl and ‘cellist Rolf Gjelsten, the 2025 concert series was a great success. The two musicians, aided by various colleagues, were able to simultaneously commemorate and take advantage of composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s 50th death anniversary, performing a number of the composer’s chamber works in tandem with a wide range of other pieces, including a couple of contemporary works written specifically for these concerts (and therefore both world premieres!) by composers currently both on-and off-shore, Ross Harris and Gao Ping, respectively.

Now, to begin the 2026 series the Long Hall’s opening Kaibosh Food Rescue programme paid appropriate homage to some of the previous year’s delights, including works by “resident” composers (two of whom were present today!), as well as instrumental solos which illustrated the power of a single voice’s communication, and a string quartet by the composer who effectively defined the form and whose efforts provided all kinds of “springboards’ for those others who followed suit.

First up was music representing a kind of timely antidote to Aotearoa New Zealand’s present version of Trumpish madness, two Micro-Trios by Ross Harris, written during the much-discussed lockdown period of 2020 for the Pohl/Gjelsten family members present today. The two works, as if conceived with different personalities in mind, displayed contrasting characters, the first beginning in a restless, slightly anxious 5/4 which developed more forthright impulses befitting a kind of “confused turmoil of being” in response to the isolated circumstances. The second work took a more lyrical approach, with long-linked lines attracting all kinds of impulses which attached themselves to the lines before dropping off the pace and wandering quizzically through unfamiliar vistas (like an ageing process, perhaps – with apologies to the composer!).

Violinist Peter Gjelsten followed up his 2025 performance of Eugène Ysaÿe’s Third Sonata (“Ballade”) for Solo Violin with another work by a virtuoso violinist-composer, perhaps the doyen of them all, Niccolo Paganini – The Ninth of his 24 Caprices for solo violin was given here with plenty of confidence and elan, the opening “hunting calls” resounding their thirds with spirited effect in dynamically-contrasted episodes readily suggesting the shouts of purpose and encouragement from the riders relishing the chase.  The “sport”was given plenty of incident by the violinist’s confident throwing-off a middle-section’s skitterish runs broken by stentorian phrases, suggesting both mishap and success in the pursuit!

Sterner stuff followed these hi-jinks, with Peter Gjelsten giving us JS Bach’s wonderful A Minor Sonata for solo violin, one of three Sonatas for the solo instrument, all of which are often coupled as a performing edition with three Partitas for the same instrument. An all-purpose differentiation between the two titles “Sonata” and “Partita” is that the former is traditionally a four-movement structure which often features linked slow-fast sections  and a fugue, whereas a Partita consists of different types of Renaissance/ Baroque dance movements. True to type this Sonata includes a fugue as the second movement.

First impressions of this work emphasised seriousness over gaiety, the solemn, declamatory opening commanding our attention with the player’s presence of intonation and command of nuance giving his listeners an engaging sense of exploration right to the movement’s final questioning note. The Fugue’s elegance and poise at the outset opens out, Gjelsten finding plenty of room for variations of tone and presenting an astonishing array of different voices – the music’s trajectories buildup and carry us along with wonderful ”heads of steam”, so that the phrases and statements really resonate.

Gjelsten’s control of the Andante’s pulse enabled both melody and rhythm to coexist, often in little more than whisperings, but with an underlying strength of overall purpose. We felt taken to another world by the second half of the movement, with the composer  seeming to allow us a lingering glimpse of his serenity of outlook and purpose of faith – I could imagine a young player in future years delving even further into the music’s timelessness that allow these sounds to linger long after the player ceases. The concluding Allegro is here excitingly launched and teasingly sustained with the antiphonal alternating phrases made here to dance through our sensibilities’ spaces. The rapidly-executed impulses have an exhilarating ring to them, and we’re “teased” with what seems like the approach of a final cadence, but with geyser-like irruptions that suddenly push the boundaries out further – tantalizing playing that keeps us on our toes and  enables us to relish the music all the more.

We had been promised a quick, “straight-through” concert at the beginning, so our kaleidoscopic musical journey  suddenly whirled us homewards via local composer Craig Utting’s engaging “Four Wellington Dances”, for violin and ‘cello (written in 2025 for Helene and Rolf.) The work began with an entirely apposite “Wind Dance”, a nagging 7/8 perpetuo-molto rhythm  by turns driving, teasing and cajoling the notes into sound-impulses whose insistence any Wellingtonians would recognise, and with alternating instruments adding a moaning-sighing figure over the agitations, catching their constant unpredictabilities. Next was the strangely mesmeric “Whale Song”, introduced by spectral “con sordino” violin tones (which set the scene for strangeness) and galvanised further by hauntingly-charged “vocalisings”, firstly in the lower and then upper registers of the ‘cello – an incredible soundscape, tapping into a “natural world” communication, with the instruments conveying a real sense of ambient surroundings and language essentially removed from human interaction.

“Seagulls”, the third dance, has an introduction flecked with further atmospheric touches, such as the ‘cello playing eerie glissandi to the violin’s arpeggiations and rather touching “seafarer’s song”, first played, incidentally, lower than the ‘cello’s accompaniments, though the instruments exchange their roles at certain points – the melody is a real charmer, replete with nostalgia! Finally, the “Habanada” imbues a well-known operatic rhythm with a mischievous spirit during short sequences of dance-tunes and  illicit collaborations with ostensibly unlikely partners such as Saint-Saens’s “The Swan” and Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Bumble Bee”, with even Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” making a brief appearance before falling down the stairs and (thankfully) coming to its concluding senses!

After all of this, what better finale than to be given a masterwork from a composer whose music paralleled the conditions that produced each of the concert’s preceding works – isolation, compositional mastery, instrumental fluency, and a need for entertainment? All these things come together in the string quartets of Franz Joseph Haydn, whose Op.33 set of six string quartets were written in 1781, and became known as the “Russian” Quartets, due to the dedication to the Grand Duke Paul of Russia. Another nickname given to these works is Gli Scherzi  (The Jokes) referring to the replacement of the older style Minuet with a quicker, more dynamic movement.

Here, then was the fifth of the Quartets from this Op.39 set, a work which itself has been nicknamed with the English sobriquet phrase “How do you do?”, drawing attention to the Quartet’s very beginning, a pianissimo galant cadence which actually returns to conclude the movement with which it started. the opening “How do you do?” cadence is only a prelude to the ensuing Molto Allegro, which seizes hold of the argument and propels it excitingly forwards. The mood lightens for the lyrical second subject, only to unexpectedly plunge into the almost “groaning downwards” chromatic modulation towards the end of the exposition. The volatile development dances, swoops and plunges as the music unfolds, releasing almost operatic surges of energy in places, with the “how do you do” cadence realigning the music’s focus for a recapitulation – we are, by this time, agog at the music’s volatilities, and marvel at how quickly the music races to its concluding cadences without missing a beat!

Our heartstrings are tugged immediately by the slow movement’s intensities, most strenuously propelled forwards with almost unrelenting energy, to which one simply has to surrender and allow oneself to be borne aloft and taken somewhere. What a contrast, therefore, with the impishly impulsive Scherzo, filled with all kinds of hesitancies and impulses!  The Trio brings a steadier, more genteel character, as if wishing to reform such excesses, though to no avail when the opening returns, as quirky and ornery as ever, though with a touch, perhaps, of guilt via its almost evanescent ending!

After this, the finale’s music is almost prim and proper, in what seems like variation form, with the first violin decorating and elaborating on the melodic line in both subsequent variation movements, and then, the viola and cello taking turns to decorate the dance steps for a subsequent movement. Finally, there’s a Presto which scampers to a satisfyingly breathless conclusion!

Such a lot packed into a relatively short time! Nevertheless, we were replete – delighted by the music and the playing, and honoured by the good and prestigious company – a truly memorable occasion!

 

Masterpieces from masterly musicians – A St. Andrew’s lunchtime concert, from Rolf Gjelsten and Nicole Chao

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church, Wellington  – Lunchtime Concert Series

BEETHOVEN – ‘Cello Sonata No. 3 in A Major Op.69
TCHAIKOVSKY (arr. Fitzenhagen) – Variations on a Rococo Theme Op.33

Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello) and Nicole Chao (piano)

Wednesday 18th March 2026

Review for “Middle C” by Peter Mechen

“Two masterpieces for the ‘cello-and-piano repertoire, delivered by a pair of musicians regarded as among the country’s top players of their respective instruments” – well, it  sounds like nothing less than a dream prescription for a concert!  Alternatively, the blurb for the occasion could have fixed as easily upon its contrast with present-day scenarios – ranging from world-wide upheavals undermining one’s sense of national and personal security to localised disillusionment and desperation faced with escalating dysfunctional infrastructure and cost-of-living price-hikes – and invited us “to escape from it all into the relative bliss of St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church for a free lunchtime concert of uplifting music”.

However one chooses to view these regular Wednesday lunchtime concert occasions they have given many Wellingtonian classical music-lovers much joy with a stimulating variety of performers and repertoire. In this case we were thoroughly spoilt as regards the concert’s essential ingredients, with cellist Rolf Gjelsten, late of the New Zealand String Quartet, but more recently affiliated with Korimako, a piano/string trio formed with pianist Michael Endres and violinist Helene Pohl, and here joining forces with pianist Nicole Chao, most readily associated with the much-acclaimed Duo Enharmonics together with fellow-pianist Beth Chen.

I had heard Rolf Gjelsten’s solo playing on a couple of occasions, most recently in an absolutely delightful performance of JS Bach’s Third Violincello Suite in C Major at a “Long Hall” Roseneath concert; but I’d not heard Nicole Chao as a solo recitalist since briefly at a 2009 song-recital concert with soprano Nicola Holt, where for an instrumental interlude she gave an atmospheric, by turns finely-detailed and splendidly volatile performance of Chopin’s Fourth Ballade. Though not solo performances this time round, today’s offerings readily demonstrated the technical and interpretative skills of each of the players, brought together beautifully here in St.Andrew’s.

As befitted such a positive partnership, the occasion featured an actual milestone in the repertoire of the solo ‘cello with Ludwig van Beethoven’s ground-breaking Cello Sonata in A Major Op.69. Though this was the third actual sonata of five written for the instrument by Beethoven, this one was the first which gave “equal partnership” status to the ‘cello in a sonata, instead of  (as with the composer’s two Op.5 works, described as “piano sonatas with accompaniment by the ‘cello”) merely providing a supporting role for the keyboard. In fact Beethoven wrote this work for the same cellist, Nikolaus Kraft, who had taken part in the first performance in 1808 of the composer’s Triple Concerto.

At the work’s beginning the ‘cello celebrates its new-found status with its solo announcement of the opening theme, effortlessly floated into being by Rolf Gjelsten  before intensifying the tones with the instrument’s alighting upon a sustained E – to which Nicole Chao’s piano then replies with a lyrical “rounding -off” of the theme and a brief flourish. What follows is an enthralling exchange of ideas which each player acts upon in a sense of both thoughtful contribution and impulsive challenge to the music’s argument – I’ve always loved the music’s ascending runs in this movement, figurations that seem to me to almost “dare” each player (but especially the cellist in the second, higher figuration!) to markedly “sound” and relish these ascents, a kind of “flight of fancy” that’s contrasted with the earthily, no-nonsense agitato plungings into the succeeding episodes by both instruments. The minor-key passage which constitutes the development is delivered with the same focused combination of energy and fancy, breathtaking in its “give-and-take” rapport throughout lyrical and impassioned sequences. And ‘cellist’s and pianist’s instinctive capacity for mutual understanding beautifully bring off the sequence which transforms what sounds like a “third exposition” into the movement’s coda, turning Beethoven’s simplest of phrase-resolutions into a precious kind of homecoming, complete with a “grandstand finish” for the pundits!

The allegro molto Scherzo became something of an “anything you can do” game of syncopated daring, exhilarating to give oneself over to and feel “borne along“ by the players’  sharply-focused trajectories – again, music with contrasting episodes afforded by an obsessively grumbling trio and a po-faced pizzicato coda. No slow movement as such – but an opening sequence of rapt lyrical beauty, wrought by playing that seemed to commune with listeners in mutual enjoyment, before abruptly and mischievously breaking into a precipitous, fleet-fingered (footed?) dance, one which delights as much in contrast of mood as anywhere else in this sonata. So Gjelsten and Chao revelled as much in the music’s “sotto voce” excitement as in the hell-for-leather passages, enabling the energies unleashed by Beethoven to tingle expectantly throughout both exuberant and more circumspect passages – such a COMPLETE performance!

Those of us who had seen the concert’s original listing were expecting the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations to follow, but the printed programme at the church had listed only the Beethoven work – so some people (feeling with every good reason satisfied with what they’d already heard) were getting up to leave when the musicians reappeared for the second item. As well most returned, because the Tchaikovsky work, normally heard in concert played by ‘cello and orchestra, was given simply gorgeous treatment by Gjelsten and Chao, to the point where I found myself preferring the ‘cello-and-piano combination to the original!

I would imagine most cellists are aware of the controversy accompanying this work from its inception, largely due to the activities of its dedicatee, Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, a German cellist and fellow-professor at the Moscow Conservatory, who had given the first performance of the work in 1877. Fitzenhagen had been asked by Tchaikovsky for advice regarding his finished “first-draft” for ‘cello and piano, but the composer wasn’t prepared for the extent to which his dedicatee then “revised” the score with the changes (both in the solo and accompaniment parts) then being incorporated into the published ‘cello-and-orchestra score). Though Tchaikovsky was documented as being furious at Fitzenhagen’s changes, his displeasure never actually translated into action, and the score was published in 1889 in the dedicatee’s version.

Tchaikovsky’s own version of the work wasn’t performed until 1941 in Moscow, but the score of the original had to wait until 1956 to be completely reconstructed, along with the cello-piano arrangement (though even the reconstructed version has been questioned because of the methodology used!). Several recordings have now been made of the original, though the Fitzenhagen version still regularly appears in concert and on record. It wasn’t made clear at today’s concert whether the version used by the musicians was Tchaikovsky/Fitzenhagen, or echt-Tchaikovsky (enquiries to this end are proceeding!).

I grew up with the “Fitzenhagen edition” of the work (used by practically all the  versions on record at the time), as per the recording by Rostropovich with Rozhdestvensky and the Leningrad Philharmonic, and loved it to pieces, though I also heard Janos Starker play the work with the NZSO in the1980s in Palmerston North (also a fabulous concert!). I bought what I believed to be the first-ever recording of Tchaikovksy’s original version of the work, made by cellist Raphael Wallfisch as long ago as 1983, but haven’t played it as much as I have the earlier recording, preferring to my shame the “dark side” territory of Fitzenhagen’s version – it seems to me that the only crime regarding the latter’s rearrangement of the work was that he wasn’t Tchaikovsky!

What we got here from Gjelsten and Chao sounded to my ears pretty well like the version I’d become accustomed to – and the playing gave me such pleasure I hardly stopped for a moment to consider just whose work I was hearing. Undoubtedly the sheer elan and sensitive beauties of the playing here influenced my feelings concerning the matter, but I felt the music in this instrumental format reflected even more deeply the composer’s love for Mozart and the classical style surrounding his work – and the “theme” itself wasn’t an existing rococo or classical melody, but Tchaikovsky’s own.

The work’s two concluding sequences here sounded particularly captivating – the Andante presented a sorrowful minor-key song, with the melodic line augmented by echo-like effects from both instruments, the whole rounded off by piano musings and a wistful ascending ‘cello phrase. It had an intimacy which the piano-and-orchestra version couldn’t replicate. Then, with the Allegro vivo Finale and Coda we got a spirited, exhilarating finish, with the cello’s vigorous utterances made playful by the piano’s counter-melody before both instruments finished the piece with suitably demonstrative gestures. We couldn’t have asked for anything more satisfying from two musicians in absolute accord with one another and with the music!

 

 

 

 

An anniversary concert with delights aplenty from performers, music and venue – Benjamin Britten’s “Les Illuminations”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Benjamin Britten – Les Illuminations  – 50th Anniversary Concert
Gabriela Glapska (piano), Carleen Ebbs (soprano), Jessica Oddie (violin),

St.Michael’s Church, Upland Road, Kelburn, Wellington
Monday 9th March 2026

Review by Peter Mechen (Middle C)

The last time I heard Benjamin Britten’s haunting song-cycle “Les Illuminations” make an appearance in a Wellington concert programme was in 2009, featuring tenor Benjamin Fifita Makisi , with Marc Taddei conducting the Orchestra Wellington Strings. So, already feeling in “overdue  mode” regarding this work “live”, I suddenly found my interest in this particular 50th anniversary tribute to its composer compounded all the more by the prospect of hearing the work from a trio of soprano, violin and piano.

Britten had originally written the work for soprano and string orchestra, though it came to be strongly associated with his long-time partner, tenor Peter Pears, via a famous composer-directed recording! But rather than inhibiting further divergence, “Les Illuminations” has enjoyed almost more interpreters that one could count, and with each that I’ve heard imparting a singular kind of pleasure in bringing out a particular aspect of this music’s many-faceted character.

The opening declamations proclaimed a magnificent unity of purpose from all three musicians – Gabriela Glapska’s piano sounding the fanfares whose exhilarating insistence brought forth soprano Carleen Ebbs’ wonderfully stentorian declaration of confidence –“I alone hold the key to this savage parade”, to which violinist Jessica Oddie’s highlighting of certain of the instrumental lines made a perfect foil in places for both voice and piano, enriching the instrumental texturing, and deepening and diversifying  a character of exchange between the voice and its accompanying phrases on both instruments. In places the “ensemble” between the vocal tones and its accomplices recalled the richness of a chamber group rejoicing alike in an alternation of unity and divergence.

The second verse, “Villes” captures and revels in all kinds of excitable physicalities and profane imaginings  – “Des cortèges de Mabs” generates from voice and players a positive whirlwind of propulsion, while “Les sauvages danset sans cesse” (the savages dance unceasingly) until body and mind remove themselves and us to calm confusion.

Then what a change comes with the following “Phrase”, the eeriness fully captured by violin and piano, as Ebbs’ voice transports us to tremulously ecstatic heights from which we serenely fall without a moment’s discomfort at the end. Her serenade “Antique” has a kind of adoring idolatry, whose longing is betrayed by the loveliness of the descending vocal line, beautifully filled out, here; while the following “Royaute” depicts a kind of commoner’s gentility in a fanciful world of heroic, quixotic music.

I enjoyed Ebbs’ courting impulses of abandonment and confidence in  riding the syncopations in “Marine”, just as I relished her different treatment of the ”savage parade” motif in the following “interlude, sounding “entranced” rather than savage and determined, and imparting poise and feigned indifference at first to the subject of her “Being Beauteous” – a mood that turns to urgency as ecstasy and its darker side crystallise our responses to beauty – piano and violin similarly “play” with the singer’s anxieties.

No time was wasted with “Parade”, with singer, pianist and violinist busily cooking up the sloughs of misery and malcontent, depicting the “cruel procession of tawdry finery” and Ebbs’ voice and characterisation enjoying the deliciousness of the descriptions, the whole scenario put in perspective by the singer’s authoritative “I alone hold the key to this savage parade”. How beauteous, after all of this, was the end, with Ebbs’ voice serenely rising and falling with the instrumental lines, and partly heartbreakingly, partly stoically leaving the instruments to allow the silences to surge softly backwards at the end – all as satisfying as it was harrowing.

On the strength of this I would readily encourage groups performing this work without an orchestra to consider employing at least a violinist to join with the singer and pianist – would a cellist joining such a group work? – Though I found the violin’s addition amply satisfying, one might try, perhaps even with a string quartet! – however, this present trio of musicians made moments of real magic in St. Michael’s with this work – Britten himself could well have been amazed and possibly even delighted with it all!

There were other things on the programme as well, two works in arrangements by Britten and two adorable pieces by Elgar preceding the main work – and afterwards, we heard the trio perform an excerpt from Handel’s opera, from “Theodora – the ravishing  – “O Sleep, why dost thou leave me”; and Reynaldo Hahn’s “A Chloris”, the latter a beautiful setting remarked on by one commentator as “beyond doubt the summit of Reynaldo Hahn’s art as a pasticheur”, so readily does it reflect the Classical world.

The Britten settings, firstly of the folk-song “Down by the Sally Gardens”, followed by an arrangement of Purcell’s “If Music be the Food of Love”, set a delicate, nostalgic folkish sweetness against Purcell’s  wonderfully elaborate concoction, both songs given appropriate vocal colour and elegant “turnings of phrase” to bring out their respective characters, as well as  enabling us to enjoy the sound and vocal artistry of Carleen Ebbs’ voice, further anticipating the major Britten work on the programme.

From another time and place came the two works for violin and piano by Edward Elgar, neither of which I’d heard before as solo violin and piano arrangements. Jessica Oddie and Gabriela Glapska deliciously charmed us with both of these pieces, performed with just the right amount of simplicity and subtlety of nuance that left one hanging upon each note as a kind of object to be savoured – very much a a listener’s delight in small pleasures.

Just as significantly, these introductory items also gave us ample opportunity to enjoy the glorious sound of the human voice as captured by St,Michael’s Church, whose existence as a concert venue I hadn’t discovered until relatively recently, and whose qualities I would certainly enjoy exploring again in the near future. In sum, a delightful and memorable concert experience