Joanna Dann and David Neild – a feast of ‘cello-and-piano presentation at St. Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St, Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Lunchtime Concert series
JOANNA DANN (‘cello) & DAVID NEILD piano)

ROBERT SCHUMANN – Fantasiestücke Op.73
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Sonata for ‘Cello and Piano No. 4 in C Op. 102/1
SERGEI RACHMANINOV – Andante (third mvt.) from Sonata for ‘Cello and Piano Op.19
FRANZ SCHUBERT (arr. David Popper) Du Bist die Ruh (Rückert -1823)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Wednesday, 16th July, 2025

Some blithe spirit must have quietly done the rounds and spread the word  regarding this particular recital, with  St.Andrew’s Church close to being more-than-usually packed by eager lunchtime-concert-goers, as noted by the organiser who welcomed us and introduced the artists – it would have been especially heartening for both cellist Joanna Dann and pianist David Neild upon entering to encounter such a veritable sea of eagerly awaiting faces! The programme was, of course, a drawcard in itself, containing the kind of music which would warm both senses and sensibilities in a direct “simply add water” kind of way – and so it proved, judging by the warmth of the reception the pair’s playing of these works drew from the audience at the end.

Robert Schumann’s Op.73 Fantasiestücke opened the concert – is there another composer whose music always so quickly betrays its creator’s identity? Both performers drew forth lovely, light-and-lyrical tones from their instruments, moving easily between the major and minor modes, and with neither instrument claiming any ascendancy – the cellist almost uncannily “matched” the piano tones whether in lyrical tones or quicker figurations, producing a kind of seamless interplay. This continued throughout the second movement’s “lebhaft – licht” (Lively – light), in which the players achieved an almost fairy-like grace with their interactions, the pianist’s gossamer-like tones mirroring the similarly “will-o-the-wisp” peregrinations of the cellist. I was, however, expecting rather more forthright sounds than we got in the “Rasch und mit feuer” finale, where I began to crave more cello tone expressing Schumann’s more assertive writing, his ardour and muscularity which contrasts with those passages where, once again, the interplay between the voices seemed like a “marriage of minds” – but in other places  I couldn’t help feeling  like a kind of Oliver Twist, asking the cellist for more!

Beethoven, in his five ‘Cello Sonatas of course transformed the previous role of the cello in this genre from being either a solo instrument with extemporised “accompaniment” by one or more players, or an obbligato instrument for a keyboard sonata. His first two Cello Sonatas (Op. 5) were written in 1796, and in fact designated “Two Grand Sonatas for the Harpsichord or Pianoforte with a Violincello obbligato”, but unlike those earlier “obbligato” sonatas, both of the Op.5 works had through-composed cello parts which in places were independent of keyboard figurations. By the time he had reached his two Op.102 Cello Sonatas in 1815, the composer had embarked upon his “late” period of composition, so that these works readily display those characteristics we’ve come to recognise as typical of that time, such as unconventional form, and deeper, more probing expression.

His Fourth Cello Sonata begins with a ‘cello solo, beautifully voiced, gently joined with by the piano, the lines concentrated and sonorous, seemingly “captured from the air” rather than composed, the instruments gently nudging the sounds together, until a sudden vigorous unison breaks the spell! Here the forceful piano somewhat dominated the ‘cello, whose notes one had to strain to hear in all but during the occasional quieter episodes, somewhat negating the composer’s intention of giving the instrument more of a “voice”! What I could hear of the cellist’s playing sounded true in terms of rhythm and intonation, but the piano was so much to the fore, it sometimes couldn’t help giving an impression that the cellist was playing more for herself than for us.

The Adagio brought the ‘cello back to us again, the players each giving us enough to better balance the sound, with the long sombre lines of the opening, and the beautiful exchange between the instruments that followed working really well in relative terms – though I thought there was still scope for the ‘cello to “sing” even more in places. The finale’s beginning with its playful exchanges made a properly whimsical impression, and the ‘cellist bought out some of the darker lines, but the higher, brighter melodic exchanges needed to bubble and sizzle more equally more often! One could hear there was a fine interpretation there, but it was simply a question of coaxing more tone from the ‘cello for the music’s course to sustain its full and glorious effect!

The Rachmaninov ‘Cello Sonata’s  Andante movement in places brought out the best qualities in both players, with the wonderful major/minor key sequences of the piano’s opening paragraph gorgeously realised, as were plenty of subtle gradations enticing our ears further and further into the piece; while the ‘cellist replied in kind with much sensitive articulation of those long melodic lines – though the tone lessened as the line moved up the stave she chose to give her lines a quieter, more reflective sound, even though I could occasionally have done with more “outward push” in some of the phrases – but still, what gloriously vibrant music emerged in places from these players’ efforts (I should have liked to have heard the whole sonata, accustomed as I am to wanting more of such things!)

Instead we got what was surely the highlight of the programme for most people – this was cellist David Popper’s arrangement for ‘cello and piano of one of Franz Schubert’s most beautiful songs  – the composer’s 1823 composition “Du bist die Ruh”. Both the pianist and ‘cellist by turns realised this music to exquisite degrees – a beautiful piano introduction was gorgeously augmented by the ‘cellist’s tones in her opening phrase – has anybody composed anything more heart-rendingly beautiful than this? When it came to the song’s climax, that glorious ascent towards a celestial high note, we were taken by the composer and his two musicians to some kind of Elysium-like place for a moment, not once, but twice – and of course there are as many ways to “sound” that final note as there are musicians! Between them, Joanna Dann and David Neild gave us untold pleasure with such moments – a most satisfying way to end any lunchtime’s music-making!

A double bill from Wellington Opera which pulled no punches – Dame Gillian Whitehead’s Mate Ururoa, with Ross Harris’s Notes From the Front

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ROSS HARRIS – Notes from the Front (texts by Vincent O’Sullivan)
DAME GILLIAN WHITEHEAD – Mate Ururoa (libretto by the composer)

ROSS HARRIS  –  Song-cycle “Notes from the Front”
Richard Greager (tenor), Matthew Ross (violin), Emma Sayers (piano)

DAME GILLIAN WHITEHEAD – Chamber Opera “Mate Ururoa”
Cast: David Tahere (Captain Roger Dansey)
Brent Allcock (Commanding Officer)
Ariana Tikao (Whaea / Taonga Puoro)
Director: Sara Brodie
Theatrical Designers: Jacob Banks/Rebecca Bethan Jones
Conductor: Hamish McKeich
Stroma Contemporary Ensemble

The Hannah, Wellington

Friday, 11th July, 2025

Wellington Opera has surely brought off a kind of coup with these two works, Gillian Whitehead’s opera Mate Ururoa and Ross Harris’s song-cycle Notes from the Front being brought together for performance at a time when people everywhere on our planet surely have no greater, nor more urgent cause to question the rationalization, antecedents  and vindication of war.  Each of these stories draws from the same source, the conflict known as the First World War (1914-18), in which millions of people, mostly soldiers, but also civilians, perished, and which, ironically, drew in significant participation from the country geographically furthest from the actual conflict – Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Of these two works the earlier (2014) and first-performed was Ross Harris’s Notes from the Front  (the title in this context practically self-explanatory), with the text of the seven songs drawing from the letters “home” of Dunedin-born Alexander Aitken, who enlisted with the Otago Infantry as part of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. The letters were written in places where he served in action, from Gallipoli to the Somme, at which latter place he was wounded. Aitken was particularly remembered for smuggling a violin into his “kit” to take with him and play on occasions in between the sequences of  “action” (the instrument miraculously survived all of this and was brought home, to be later donated to the Otago Boys School, where it is currently on display).

Though not all verbatim quotes from Aitken’s letters, poet Vincent O’Sullivan based the songs’ texts on the latter, summarising the soldier’s traumatic (and in places even surreal) experiences while on active service, and poignantly rounding the sequence through a declaration to Winifred, his future wife, whom he had met when a student, and with whom he subsequently emigrated to Scotland, taking up a mathematics professorship at Edinburgh University.

Aitken’s feelings regarding the war and its effects upon humanity in general were here laid bare in the first, and in places hallucinatory song  Visions, much later, which delineate the psychological traumas that haunted him throughout his life – “nightmare seizes me – the veiled figures…….I count on nothing more….”  – words hauntingly voiced by tenor Richard Greager, and underpinned by pianist Emma Sayers’ beautifully-focused touch, along with violinist Matthew Ross’s wraith-like postscript. The second song The Notes depicts Aitken hauntingly playing his violin in situ, “between concussions”, the latter suggested by short, sharp piano irruptions – along with bemused “that’s his violin” comments from his listeners.

Bitter irony and  savage underlinings characterise the third song’s outbursts, the piano subdued, its notes almost cowering, as the singer describes the hell of the trenches, a nightmare like nothing described in official dispatches – “it’s the blood – and the guts – and the stink of the flies!….that’s how you tell we’re Anzacs!…….” – Richard Greager grips our sensibilities as he describes people he knew from home – “Harry..…the bloke from Tuatapere……the sun turns black!….” as these people’s lives are destroyed, and the bitterness reaches its peak at the words  “…..it’s a change from Gallipoli, soldier, when you reach the Somme….”

The violin begins the elegiac fourth song On a Different Note as if playing “Deutschland Uber Alles”, accompanied by a deep piano rumbling which then breaks off – the notes the violinist plays reminds the singer of Haydn’s tune, heard at another Christmas from a German’s violin –“….a single line, defying war…..”  expressed in deep-throated tragedy. The next song Pretty Much Verbatim is the blackest irony possible, as the singer and piano characterise a fellow-soldier “Clark of Dunedin” with a description of how this friend sacrificed himself against a live grenade, holding it hidden from his mates –  “…….it is pride enough to tell I was there…..what I breathe is his….”.  Though more rhapsodic, the sixth song  Close as this is just as unsparing, describing the soldier’s imagined reunitement with a friend killed on the battlefield, but alive, back in Otago – “on the peninsular……we met where one of us had no shadow, one of us living, one of us dead….close as this……”

The last piece, Song for Winifred is a tribute to Aitken’s wife and an impassioned hope for a return to a normal life together – begun by the violin and joined by the piano, the singer passionately declaims “….Love, love in any weather….in the summer grass – and God! – the seasons pass……”  – beautiful and intensely moving. The work’s but one all-too-eloquent example from Ross Harris’s and Vincent O’Sullivan’s group of resounding collaborations regarding the subject of war’s inhumane ambition and senseless carnage.

Besides its own intrinsic qualities the Harris work made the perfect introduction to Gillian Whitehead’s Opera Mate Ururoa (a title translated as “fight bravely” or “fight to the death”, and taken from a Maori  whakatauki, or proverb “Kaua e mate wheke, mate ururoa” (Don’t die like the octopus  (that gives up easily), die like the shark (that keeps on fighting)). Whitehead undertook to write the work at the behest of David Tahere, a US-based Maori baritone whose whanau, he discovered, had close historical connections with that of Roger Te Kepa Dansey, the central character of the opera who enlisted as a member of the “Native Contingent” formed here when Britain declared war on Germany in 1914.

Dansey’s wartime story tells of the humiliation of both the Maori and Nepalese Gurkha soldiers being regarded as “second class” by the British hierarchy, and relegated to performing menial jobs like digging trenches – only when the casualty lists at places like Gallipoli deemed it necessary were Maori and Gurkhas allowed to fight. Promoted to the rank of captain, Dansey then fell foul of his commanding officers by refusing to follow orders which would result in his men facing certain and pointless death, resulting in his disgrace through accusations of cowardice and desertion, in the wake of his famous assertion regarding fighting a “white man’s war” where soldiers were “sent into” battle rather than “the Maori way” of men led by their chiefs from the front.

Thanks to the efforts of influential Maori politicians of the time Dansey’s true qualities of leadership were recognised and he was reinstated. After returning to the frontline in France at the Somme, he was gassed and had to be sent to England to recover – he remained in Europe for the next nine years, working on rehabilitation schemes in Belgium before returning to New Zealand in 1927 and settling in Rotorua, where he died in 1938 of complications resulting from his war injuries.

Whitehead wrote her own libretto for this work, intending at first for it to be a “working draft”, but deciding as she developed the piece further to retain it as a strong “from scratch”  initiative, one  creating its own on-going tradition. She was assisted throughout by David Tahere’s knowledge through his connections with Dansey’s surviving whanau, and by director Sara Brodie’s enthusiasm. respect and feeling for the project However, preparations for the first performance of Mate Ururoa at Carnegie Hall, New York, in November 2021 were unexpectedly thwarted by the Covid epidemic, so the “premiere” had to be rescheduled, not inappropriately, to its Southern Hemisphere origins.

Interviewed a couple of days before the premiere, the triumvirate of composer, director and lead singer delineated aspects of their respective journeys towards the oncoming performance.  Whitehead, with several music-theatre pieces of different kinds under her belt, was calmly philosophical regarding outcomes, emphasising the phenomenon of a work existing only in the moment of performance, and expressing quiet confidence in the extent to which her colleagues would help successfully realise these outcomes. For Brodie there was “a humbling satisfaction” at what she felt privileged to be part of (she and Whitehead had previously worked together on a 2016 music-theatre piece of the latter’s, Iris Dreaming).  Tahere characterised the opera as resembling something presented in a kind of “dream state”, with many “fragments” of the protagonist’s experience brought into play in vastly differing situations involving diametrically-opposed cultures, drawing attention to the composer’s representation of these differences, with the used of both conventional instruments (and taonga puoro (Maori instruments), straightaway giving an extra dimensional feel to these different worlds.

As with the earlier Ross Harris song-cycle, the presentation of the opera generated its own singular ambience of almost claustrophobic intensity in its depiction of a single individual pitting himself against almost insuperable odds with courage and resolve……my notes are as follows: Upon entering this wonderfully indeterminate but pliable performance space finely modulated by designer Rebecca Bethan Jones, and ambiently lit by Jacob Banks, David Tahere’s presence as Captain Roger Dansey flows into its world like a beam of light awakened by the taonga puoro “call” from one of the bird-song-like indigenous instruments played by Ariana Tikao, the singer’s words making reference to his birthplace, near Ohinemutu, in Rotorua – “Here the steam rises – my home, my resting place”…. and at once we realise that here is a man looking back over his life, the first reminiscence being his confrontation with Brent Allcock’s stiff upper-lipped Commanding Officer accusing Dancey of defying orders at Gallipoli in order to save the lives of his men. Conductor Hamish McKeich keeps his Stroma Ensemble forces on the boil throughout, their frequent interjections representing both the establishment and the individual, tracking the exchanges between both personalities and the interaction of modern instruments and taonga puoro to underline the conflict between not only Pakeha and Maori but officers and enlisted men.

The mention of a “white man’s war” and Maori’s progress from being an “enemy” of the British to an “ally” brings great declamatory tones from Tahere, and a distinctive “conch shell-like” call from Ariana Tikao’s taonga puoro instrument accompanied by the cracking together of percussive stones. As Dansey recounts his people’s history of interaction with the British, McKeich and his players elaborate with music that fuses sounds of warfare with ceremonial regimental-like calls – and the singer intones the opera’s theme ”Kaua e mate wheke, mate ururoa!”  (Die not like an octopus, but like a hammerhead shark!) before breaking into the famous haka, followed by a lament, in Maori “Let me weep for my dead! – they are not like the cabbage tree that springs up again!” (according to witnesses the haka by the soldiers apparently took place on the beaches at Gallipoli….).

Seemingly unimpressed, the British Officer again appears demanding an explanation for Dansey’s disobedience, to which, to the accompaniment of the taonga puoro  Dansey refutes the charge and sings about the chiefs in Maoridom “leading their warriors into battle” – unlike in the “white man’s war” where soldiers alone are sent to slaughter! His explanation is ignored, and he is dismissed and sent back to New Zealand – sostenuto wind tones then are sounded to haunt the words  “I saved many lives”, to a ferment of instrumental affirmation!

From here the music and the scenario becomes almost transcendent, with Tahere recounting his subsequent reinstatement due to intervention by influential Maori politicians of the time, his return to Europe and his experiences in the trenches at the Somme, where he is gassed and has to be relocated to England to recover – we witness his delirium (a bull-roarer sounding what seemed like a heartbeat as he struggles to rid himself of the poison in his system) – the players blow soundlessly through their instruments to further depict the desolation – and he imagines being comforted by his mother (who is sung by Ariana Tikao), her words foretelling his recovery and his work in post war Belgium, helping people recover their lives.

The Soldier sings a duet with his mother – these exchanges have a “time standing still” feeling, as we sense when she sings to him he has since returned to his present back in New Zealand and is near death. “You will stay here beside the rippling waters of Lake Rotorua – Kua wheturangatia” – words which means “Return to the celestial realm of your ancestors”…… –  What gave this particular performance a unique turn at this point was the voice of an audience member suddenly replying with a poropororoaki (a farewell to the dead) to the singer playing Dansey and then the rest of the assembled whanau of the story’s dying man standing and singing  “Aue Ihu tirohia”, the official hymn of the 28th Maori Battalion….. and so we sing the displayed words with them…

The lights eventually do come up and we applaud, most vociferously when Gillian Whitehead comes to the stage to acknowledge our tribute – a redolently memorable glimpse into aspects of our nation’s past that continue to give crucial relevance to our somewhat tumultuous present!

 

Flinders Quartet and Michael Houstoun’s singular “Of itself and part of…” concert

Posted on by Peter Mechen

 

Wellington Chamber Music Sunday Concert –
Flinders Quartet and Michael Houstoun

BEETHOVEN – String Quartet No. 11 in F Minor Op. 95 “Serioso”  (1810)
DEBORAH CHEETHAM FRAILLON – Bungaree (for String Quartet) – 2020
DVOŘÁK – Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major Op.81 (1887)*

Flinders Quartet – Elizabeth Sellars and Wilma Smith (violins), Helen Ireland (viola),Zoe Knighton (cello) – *with Michael Houstoun (piano)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Sunday, 6th July, 2025

Now here was an enterprising programme, with cosmopolitean content allied to a distinctly trans-Tasman flavour supplied by the Melbourne-based Flinders Quartet, whose second violinist today was Fijian-born ex-New Zealander Wilma Smith  – and was joined in the programme’s second half, by a Wellington audience favourite, pianist Michael Houstoun. Contributing to the “Antipodean” feeling of the occasion was the Quartet’s presentation of the New Zealand premiere of a work by Aborigine Australian composer Deborah Cheetham Fraillon, a beautifully ambient work for string quartet with the title “Bungaree”, a musical characterisation of one of the most significant “First Peoples” in early colonial Australia, and of whom there’s more later in this review.

Firstly, though, came music by the acknowledged “everyman” of composers, Ludwig van Beethoven, though here in an uncharacteristic, less-than-all-encompassing mood, with a quartet he himself described as “never to be performed in public”. This was his Op.95 F Minor Quartet which takes its nickname from the composer’s own designation of the third movement – Allegro assai vivace ma SERIOSO (my emphasis), a description that eminently suits the remainder of the work as well, such as  its intensely wrought opening. The composer’s determinedly experimental features included a fierce condensation of expositional material,, unpredictable modulations and incendiary contrasts as if fuelled as much by anxiety and fury as by any exploratory impulses.

I thought the Flinders Quartet utterly “possessed’ these same impulses from within, particularly throughout the first three movements – the players’ quick-fire dynamic and trajectorial  contrasts during the first movement were to be relished, as with both the viola’s and cello’s gorgeously lyrical playing of the second theme, and, later, the wonderful “sting” of the violins’ off-beat notes during the coda, followed by that almost unnervingly quiet ending to the music! And in the second movement I thought the themes compellingly “shaped” (a lovely, plaintive tone from the viola in particular in the fugue, for instance). It seemed the later “ornamentation” of the fugue here was more “shadowy” than I’d often heard, more, perhaps of an “intimate” quality, and suggesting further that the composer was primarily writing the music for himself. Compelling, too, were the lovely free and floating tones of the ‘cello in the introduction’s return, and with those “wrong note” cadences here sounding wistful and remote rather than self-consciously attention-grabbing.

Those same “quick-fire dynamics” helped launch the Scherzo, into which the players plunged with tremendous forward drive, and whose momentums all the more underlined the almost vertiginous “upward lurch” into the Trio, the winsome sounds having a kind of improvised, “out of the air”  quality. I did enjoy the Scherzo’s return on each occasion for the players’ heightened sense of overlapped “gambolling” and the “what now?” reappearance of the Trio, this time very much aware that its time was limited (as was the Scherzo’s itself!).

The “sighing” opening of the finale held our expectations momentarily in suspense before transforming its tentative two-note concluding phrase into quicksilver. – suddenly the trajectories galvanised with the theme urgent and agitated, the group superbly bringing together the strands for the vortex-like repetitions from whose clutches the music wrestled its way forwards and into moveable space – incredible twice-times over excitement, but all done by the players here with as much whimsy as desperation! They put a bit more “schwung” into the strong, resolution-like phrases which took the work to its softly-voiced, enigmatic, “out-of-nowhere” F-major chord releasing the music from its slough of despond, and taking us all here at breakneck speed into an ending which one commentator described as “absurdly and deliberately unrelated” to the work as a whole. I liked the programme’s reference to American composer Randall Thompson’s remark re the ending that “no bottle of champagne was ever uncorked at a better time!”

The programme’s next item would have been for many people in the audience something of an unknown quantity, as would have been its composer – Deborah Cheetham Fraillon, born in 1964, is an Aboriginal Australian soprano, composer, playwright and educator who has worked ceaselessly to help re-establish her and her people’s First Nations Australian heritage. Separated from her birth-mother when only three weeks old, she grew up with adopted parents in Sydney, discovering only later that many of her original First Nations family members were musicians – and so music became an integral way of reconnecting at what she called “a much deeper level”. She now champions the voice and visibility of indigenous musicians by means of the example of both her own pioneering work as a creator and an organiser, and of her many achievements and awards in these same performing arts, as well as her continuance as an instigator and director for the development of indigenous artists.

Cheetham wrote Bungaree in 2020, a work named after the historical figure Bungaree, a leader of the Garigal clan at Broken Bay, north of Sydney, one whose intelligence and ability to interact with the growing colony of Europeans enabled him to quickly learn English and befriend English explorer Matthew Flinders and travel with him as an intermediary with indigenous people they would meet on Flinders’ circumnavigation of the Australian continent in 1802-03. Afterwards Bungaree became a familiar figure for colonists in the Sydney/Port Jackson area, together with his “principal” wife. Karoo (also known as Cora Gooseberry). He was patronised by the Governor, Lachlan Macquarie and granted an allotment of land at George’s Head, achieving a kind of celebrity status as “Chief of the Broken Bay Tribe, though his importance was arguably seen through colonial eyes as “quaint” rather than significant for his people and their cultural heritage. He died in 1830.

I was fascinated, while exploring the resources I needed to build up a “picture” of this singular personality, to encounter frequent “cautionary” messages intended for indigenous people who might similarly encounter this material which “contained names, images and voices of deceased persons” – obviously a cultural “non-practice” practice, similarly alluded to in the programme note when it points out the musical depiction of Bungaree’s name is something that in itself deserves sensitivity in relation to certain people. This was here how the work began – the three lighter instruments playing long-held notes, while the ‘cello in recitative style “sounded” the name – the violins and viola then played melismatic elaborations of the held notes, elaborating on the ‘cello’s solo, all strangely and satisfyingly ritual-like to my ears! Motifs were sounded variously as pizz. and arco, continuing to frame the sonic landscape as the variations seemed to push out the boundaries. The music had a hypnotic quality of energy and timelessness, with the cello’s repeating of the “name” sparking some energies which ranged from playful to furious – in places I was reminded by the sharp-edged tremolandi figures of Sibelius’s “Lemminkainen in Tuonela” and I wondered whether these and further were suggestive of Bungaree’s and Flinders’ experiences while circumnavigating the continent.

The second movement, Kaaroo, was a depiction, we were told, of Bungaree’s wife, highlighting her “beauty and strength of character”, which the rhapsodic nature of the ensuing music lost no time in
declaiming, upon all the instruments, with the ‘cello then adding a separate voice, and the “portrait” incorporating passages of agitation suggesting movement, action, and even conflict. These were repeatedly alternated with sequences recalling the beauty and tranquility of the piece’s opening – a stunningly vibrant and feisty personality, perhaps? A brief pause brought in the final section “Navigating the Truth”, whose “totality” I confess puzzled me a little (perhaps here I’m like the concertmaster in cellist Zoe Knighton’s story, who played those famous violin solos in Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben brilliantly without ever realising they were “about” something specific!) – Cheetham  began the piece in epic-like fashion, depicting a great vista and suggesting the beginning of a journey. But though the melodic detail developed plenty of variation, and the players began to increasingly “dig into” the material towards the end I found myself wondering (perhaps like the hapless concertmaster at the end of his terrific solos) just where the music had taken us to – I was expecting some kind of obvious transformative revelation, (as suggested by the title), but  Cheetham’s “way” was perhaps too subtle for me to glean on a single hearing from this music, all of which left me with the desire to hear the work again. with more (fewer?) open-minded expectations!

I was on surer ground with the concert’s concluding item, a favourite chamber work I’d known since my student days, Antonin Dvořák’s adorable Piano Quintet, his second and more satisfying attempt at the form (he’d initially planned to revise his earlier (Op. 5) Quintet, but thought better of it, deciding to start afresh!) This new work begins beguilingly with a cello theme accompanied by the piano, before the other instruments burst into the picture, the players relishing the contrasts between the music’s lyrical and energetic sequences. I loved the “openness” of Dvořák’s textures, even in the most heavily-scored places, and the enchantment of exchange  in those passages where, firstly, the first violin replies so tenderly to the piano’s reiteration of the opening, and then when the first movement’s “second” theme (introduced beautifully by the viola) undergoes all kinds of changes before the instruments gather in the trajectories as the piano plays haunting diminished-note flourishes which bring in the development – Dvořák is so gorgeously exploratory, throughout, and  the sense these players give of journeying with us through these fascinating sound-vistas is palpable, right to the movement’s end!

The slow movement’s opening is so very Bartok-like for any ex-piano student (on hearing that melody I could practically “see” the title page of my “For Children” Bartok piano-book all over again!) – and here, adding to the nostalgia of remembrance was the beauty of the viola’s “reply” to the piano’s plaintive opening phrase. The players moved the music to a happier place, with ingratiating pizzicato trajectories from the violins, the ‘cello then taking a richly-toned turn at solo before the music jumped suddenly into activity with a vigorous jig-like tune! – one that, when we’d all breathlessly welcomed the melancholic three-note theme back, we realised it was actually the same tune, but on “speed” or something similarly enlivening! For Dvorak this is, conversely, something of a Brucknerian movement in terms of its scale, with the players here beautifully sustaining its mood and variety of energies and utterances.

Then came one of those Dvorak movements – a scherzo – that can’t help but delight with every hearing! – after the strings and then the piano trip the light fantastic opening, the ‘cello gets the brief but gorgeous second tune, before the opening returns, the piano so effervescent with those wonderful “top of the keyboard” notes that I always listen out for. Each of the violins has alternated turns at the winsome second theme – BUT WHAT A GORGEOUS TRIO! – solemn and chordal but gently rhapsodic in a heart-rending way, before the scherzo dances back in and whirls us all about to its conclusion.

The finale’s ”get ready “ introduction primed us up for more fun – though I’ve a soft spot for the “rustic jollity” approach, I’ve always enjoyed the “brilliant and breathless”, with exhilaration and energy rather than bucolic charm on the menu. I must admit the mid-movement fugato is very exciting at this speed – a kind of “hang on tight” approach that works really well – afterwards the players saved their great crowning gesture of effusive homecoming for the coda proper with the strings and piano then enjoying the concluding rush of energised celebration. We in the audience took our cue from this and joined in at the end with like acclaim!

Superbly-wrought varieties from The Chamber Pot-Pourri Ensemble at the Long Hall

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Comfy Concert No. 4,  from The Chamber Pot-Pourri Ensemble

FRANZ SCHUBERT – Allegro for String Trio in B-flat Major (1816)
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH – String Quartet No.10 (1964) – dedicated to Moshe Weinberg
Elegy from “Lady Macbeth of Mtensk”
Polka from “The Golden Age” Ballet
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN – String Quartet in D Major, Op.76 No. 5 (1797/8)

Helene Pohl and Anna van der Zee (violins), Nicholas Hancox (viola), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

The Long Hall, Roseneath, Wellington
Saturday, June 2nd 2025

This was the fourth concert in the series of Helene Pohl’s and Rolf Gjelsten’s inspirational “Comfy Concert” presentations at Roseneath’s eponymously-named “The Long Hall”, a venue whose “comfy” aspect per se might be regarded by some as an imagination-stretch, but whose musical rewards have been unanimously acclaimed by attendees I’ve spoken to on each of the occasions so far. Central to the undertaking have been performances by Helene’s and Rolf’s variously-constituted “Chamber Pot-Pourri Ensemble” of a number of Dmitri Shostakovich’s string quartets, as a way of  commemorating the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death. However, the fare we’ve enjoyed has intriguingly involved additional concert items, all enhancing our appreciation of the Shostakovich works through fascinatingly different viewpoint perspectives.

Certainly this concert’s entertaining varieties possessed more to them than met the ear – at the time we were highly diverted by the “quantum leaping” between realms which at first seemed chalk-and-cheese, as with the plunge from the beautiful pliabilities of Schubert’s adorable String Trio Allegro into a world of ever-present unease embodied by Shostakovich’s music in general and in particular his string quartet-writing, then tangentially to Haydn’s domain of “invention, fire, good taste and new effects” circa 1798 – and with a delightful “extra” at journey’s end in the form of a 20th century return to Shostakovich at his most sardonically playful, the famous “Polka” from the ballet “The Golden Age”.

Even more diverting was the idea that the concert might have included an item from the First Smile Gamelan ensemble, whose instruments are housed at The Long Hall, and whose gong had on earlier occasions been ceremonially resounded as a kind of taslismanic beginning to these concerts – alas, indisposition of personnel put paid to such an appearance, depriving us of further colourful variance!

Still we were able to bear our loss thanks to the riches whose rewards were securely sounded – and despite the differences mooted above one could easily equate certain through-lines connecting the pieces by taking larger views of the juxtaposings – Schubert, for example, was no stranger himself to unease of a different but still existence-threatening kind, even if his music could cheerfully and stoically step outside his very real fears (as Shostakovich also did on occasions, such as here with his outrageously irreverent “Polka”). And Haydn’s ambitious treatment of form and substance in his Op.76 No.5 work resulted in the music acquiring the name Friedhofsquartett (Graveyard-Quartet) on account of the slow movement’s extended length and remote F♯ major key, characteristics that align the work with much of Shostakovich’s string quartet output.

With these thoughts in mind my memories of this concert resonate all the more – Helene Pohl began proceedings by warmly welcoming us to the Hall and drawing our attentions to the programme note concerning the music-teaching organisation Arohanui Strings, of which she herself is Patron, referring to the inspirational work done by affiiliated music tutors in many parts of the Wellington region with youthful musicians, and to the support which concerts like these can give via people’s donations to such a cause.

Then came the music, beginning with Schubert’s Allegro for String Trio (violin, viola and ‘cello), a work that broke into song immediately, while ensuring sufficient strong and definite statements around which the melodies could be adorably placed. Here the dialogue (or, “trialogue”) between the instruments was so ear-catchingly “give-and-take” it gave one an almost-naughtily enjoyed frisson of well-being, a pleasure in sound akin to relishing a portrait or landscape whose structures and hues have a kind of mutually-assured compatibility of a striking and memorable kind. With the development section we were straightaway drawn into what seemed like new page of upwardly-modulated wonderment, with the previously-voiced themes being given different aspects to explore –  the playing flowed seamlessly into the recapitulation, an absorbing same-but-different journey homewards, a lovely “did we dream you or did you us?” kind of experience.

Violinist Anna van der Zee then joined the group for the Shostakovich Quartet No.10, a work introduced by Rolf Gjelsten, whose words “music that’s never truly comfortable” seemed aptly to characterise the whole of the composer’s output – certainly all that I’ve heard, anyway. He described the Tenth Quartet as something of an enigma, music by someone “who has been through darkness and tragedy”. Part of the work’s enigmas is the violently aggressive second movement, Allegretto furioso which gave rise to a quote repeated by Rolf (and whose source I’ve not been able to find) that the movement, for instance, contains “not a single human note in the music”. After this there’s an elegy in Passacaglia form consisting of eight variations, and to finish, a fourth movement Allegretto whose dance-like manner variously revisits parts of the work then returns us to the notes with which the quartet commenced.

Beginning with a kind of bugle call, part quirky dance, the first violin opened the work, the three other instruments commenting nonchalantly on the tune, which returned on the violin as the others continued their responses. These included a more resonant ‘cello melody and an eerie sul ponticello viola passage presaging the return of the bugle tune with pizzicato and gently-retiring arco support, all ambiently and pin-pointedly placed.

Any such vestige of tranquility or delicacy was then exploded in the violence of the Allegretto furioso’s attack, the violin playing an aggressive theme punctuated by stinging chords from the others. The onslaught then continued as it began, with the players often pairing for a double-edged effect – such as  violins grotesquely repeating the opening together, then screaming with anguish against tremolandi from cello and viola, before taking up stinging mirror-phrases against those of the cello and viola, the latter groaning heavily against the two violins’ shrieking repeated-note patterns – and so on, until a brutal concerted repeated-note unison lambasted its way to a relentlessly hammered out ending! We sat there, gobsmacked!

The Adagio began its Passacaglia – eight variations, promising at least some visceral if not emotional relief, judging from the passionately-played opening – apart from a brief major key flirtation with a first violin phrase the mood remained sombre and dark-browed throughout, until the viola began the first few measures of the Allegretto finale – a dance which grew out of the last variation’s sustained tones and with which the second violin joined. The momentums were by turns wafted and coloured by drone-like notes, then jogged along more gratefully by various pizzicato accompaniments, the players gradually turning up the tensions as the forward moment became more restless and volatile!
We found ourselves “leaning into” the trajectories more and more with the players as the violins emphasised their running rhythms and the violist and cellist punctuated the textures with sforzandi, the music splendidly threading these elements together – gradually it all fell back until we registered to our surprise that the first violin’s reiterations of the jogtrot rhythm had become mere fragments, leaving only the music’s remnants and then silence.

The interval gave us sufficient time to readjust to the here-and-now, and for more Shostakovich! This was a precious remnant of the composer’s infamous opera “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District”, the work which had sparked a serious falling-out for Shostakovich with Josef Stalin, who found the work not at all to his taste (the Soviet newspaper Pravda published a review of the opera, allegedly written by Stalin at the time, called “Muddle instead of Music” – it was later proved to be the work of  a “ghost writer”) but at the time Shostakovich found himself a near-outcast of the establishment, with all the attendant fears one associated with being “out of favour with the Great Leader”). It took, of course, the writing of the composer’s Fifth Symphony to win back the Leader’s approval!

Wellington audiences will have the opportunity to experience at first hand some more of the actual “Muddle” in question (though, alas, not the whole work!) when Orchestra Wellington performs excerpts from the Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District opera as part of the orchestra’s concert series in October of this year! For now, we had to be content with a transcription (by the composer)  for String Quartet of the “Elegy” from the opera – an arrangement of the heroine Katarina’s aria from Act One, Scene Three of the opera, in which she is lamenting the boredom and oppression of an unhappy marriage.

The aria’s melody is taken up by the first violin – sad, desolate, bitter-sweet, almost lullabic in places, but with an agitated middle section. A more elegiac sequence after the music’s climax is faintly reminiscent of parts of Schoenberg’s “Verklarte Nacht” – there’s a kind of cadenza for the viola before the violin recommences the melody, the music rising through the strings before a final kind of “Amen”.

The concert’s bounteousness wasn’t yet exhausted – no less than a delectable Haydn String Quartet awaited our attention, a counterweight of sorts (or so I imagined would be the case), to the gravities exerted earlier by the Shostakovich Quartet. One of Josef Haydn’s Op.76 Quartets, it was No, 5 of the set, thus one of the last such works the composer completed. Its key is D Major and there are four movements, the first being somewhat unusually in variation form. The 6/8 opening movement began brightly and breezily, the composer beginning simply and then elaborating detail within each of the variations in ear-catching ways. The second variation, begun by the cello at the same tempi as the opening, suddenly gathered its garments and broke into a mad galloping sequence, returning at the behest of the viola who was then able to “lead off” another round at a sensible tempi, but had to put up with individual instruments “making a dash for it” every now and then! Most diverting of all was the final variation, played attacca, in which everybody simply put their ears back and went for it, up hill and down dale! Very satisfying!

The slow movement, Largo, Cantabile e mesto, was rich and strange merely in terms of its somewhat contradictory markings – “lyrical and melancholy” which reflected something of the music’s capacity  to generate both contentment and sobriety or pensiveness, and accounting, of course, for its aforementioned nickname in some countries. Without recourse to any kind of tragedy or profound sadness the music demonstrated a capacity for affectiveness regarding a more-than-usual range of poignant sensibility.

Haydn then gave us a sprightly, eager, and even thrusting kind of Minuet (but not too much so, as per the marking!), one with lovely off-beat downward trajectories in places, and with a Trio that again expresses a greater emotional range of expression that one might normally expect – all beautifully realised, here with the players alive to those mood-variants and making them “tell”. The finale is one of those that “begins with an ending!” – those two opening notes would make a most exciting conclusion to any piece! in fact, come to think of it, the whole Quartet could seem in some moods as if it was composed in reverse! This was in effect the most enchanting game of chase, and was thrown off with incredible skill by the players, to the considerable enjoyment of all of us present.

And, of course, one mustn’t forget the afternoon’s “star turn” as regards pure entertainment! This was another Shostakovich arrangement for string quartet, one which even more resoundingly, I thought, proclaimed the composer’s genius as a writer for strings. Normally one hears the world-famous “Polka” from the Ballet “The Golden Age” with all its orchestral accoutrements, including a colourful range of percussion, without which the work might seem somewhat plain and lacking in essential surface impact. Here? Not a bit of it! Despite having played the original countless times as a “party piece” recording for guests (one which never fails to extract visible signs of pleasure) I got as much enjoyment and delight and titillation from the efforts of the four quartet players and the sounds they produced from their instruments as I’ve ever done – I was expecting to be entertained, but was left literally and truly beside myself with almost unspeakable pleasure!

 

Wellington City Orchestra – a Matariki celebration of nature, legend and art

Posted on by Peter Mechen

JENNY McLEOD – Three Celebrations for Orchestra (1986)
ANTONIN DVORAK – The Noonday Witch B.196
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Triple Concerto for Violin, ‘Cello and Piano Op.56

The Ghost Trio – Monique Lapins (violin), Ken Ichinose (‘cello) Gabriella Glapska (piano)
Hamish McKeich (conductor)
Wellington City Orchestra (concertmaster, Paula Carryer)

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

Sunday, 22nd June 2025

Why have I never before encountered Jenny McLeod’s cheekily iconic “Three Celebrations for Orchestra”? – particularly as the pieces are each so heartwarmingly “grounded” in atmospheres that readily recall my own childhood memories, of forests, beaches and rural celebrations that proclaim a uniqueness of experience with tradition that’s in danger of disappearing as life here becomes increasingly “global”. I thought also that it’s music that “connects” with other examples of composers’ depictions of environments and activities worldwide – the opening “Journey through Mountain Parklands” for me strongly echoed parts of Finnish composer Jan Sibelius’s “Legends”, as well as similar landscape evocations from American composer Aaron Copland – and the final ”A&P Show” was startlingly redolent in places of the latter’s ballet “Rodeo”.

As a sometimes-conductor of the Wellington contemporary music ensemble Stroma, today’s conductor Hamish McKeich was able to draw from his performing experience to recall for us Jenny McLeod’s earlier compositions as being “rather different” in style and flavour to what we were about to hear from this, a later period of her work. By then she had turned away from the avant-garde and towards more “populist” styles, declaring at one point that “both writing and performing music should definitely be enjoyable!” – a disarming attitude that has earned her compositions increasingly diverse interest and respect from audiences.

Here, we revelled in the epic, voyaging opening of the “Mountain Parklands” journey, the trajectories straightaway moving the ground beneath our feet as the textures pushed out the vistas and spectacularly opened up the scenarios – exhilarating! Those Copland-like impulses further detailed our responses, the saxophone bringing to the ambiences shimmerings of romantic allure and the piccolo chirruping its delightful birdsong, before the Sibelius-like brasses brought a renewal of the adventurous nature of our journeying, accompanied by “music blasting away on the car stereo” – (the composer’s own down-to-earth comment on the proceedings at that point!). It all made for something terribly nostalgic for me – at times I was flashbacking to those family holidays in the car again, following railway lines, traversing hills, crossing bridges and catching sight of those, my own, mountains of memory……..

Next we found ourselves “At the Bay”, the cor anglais setting a different scene, with mellow winds dancing a slow waltz with a ‘cello – such lovely wind decorations and with the horns adding beautiful colours. Strings and percussion and then horns poured out the emotion, the mood enlivening gradually and spreading though the orchestra – the brass seemed to be enjoying themselves hugely, while the percussionists kept things rolling. As the mood quietens a slow dance ensued, coloured by wood-block-like beats – everything had a relaxed “by the sea” feel, with the winds encouraging a solo cello then joining in themselves with counter-themes and decorations. it all built up to a burst of emotion from strings, brass and percussion, and then, like memory sometimes does, slipped almost mischievously back into hiding with piano-and bassoon-notes, a sliver of percussion and wind, all as elusive as a dream….

To finish, how wonderful to have an A&P Show here documented! – I loved them so much! Like one’s own pent-up youthful excitements, the music was full-on, right from the start – a big, striding theme,  buoyed by strutting brass and a sinuous saxophone (the latter, incidentally, played superbly throughout by Tessa Frazer, whose name unfortunately wasn’t listed in my programme’s orchestra personnel lineup!). The winds played a kind of chirpy cakewalk, and we caught the sounds of a distant hoe-down, but here, mixing in with cameo-like episodes of different side-shows, we had a kaleidoscopic experience of images as well as sounds, everything very “outdoor” and mixing fairground excitements with more pastoral ambiences. But, like the real thing, it was all over too soon, as a percussion flourish steered us excitingly into and through that world of fantastic entertainment, everything working like a well-drilled whole – ha! – another hoedown! –  taking our sensibilities for a final ride with a wind-and-orchestra gesture of all-too-familiar satisfaction and regret!

Having had our own national identities reaffirmed we were then transported to the diametrically opposite realms  of Central Europe, and to a world of folkloric atmosphere marked largely by unease, superstition and brutality  – Antonin Dvořák spent the last few years of his compositional life returning his attentions almost exclusively to the folklore of his native Bohemia, writing orchestral music inspired by verses from the nationalistic poet Karel Jaromir, who had published a collection called Kytice (Bouquet), one of which was Polednice (The Noon Witch). a tale which, if not exactly bloodthirsty in a visceral sense was still blood-curdling!

Though all of Dvořák’s orchestral music has a readily recognisably Bohemian character, he hadn’t before fully exploited a penchant for descriptive orchestral writing in the manner of his fellow Czech composer Bedrich Smetana with his out-and-out nationalistic work Ma Vlast  (“My Country”) – it was only after Dvořák had completed his From the New World Ninth Symphony that he turned to the musical form of the “tone poem” that had been introduced by Franz Liszt and then ceaselessly pilloried by conservative critics such as the notorious Eduard Hanslick, who, up until this time had praised Dvořák’s “pure, absolute music” compositions.

In fact Polednice (“The Noon Witch”) is a masterpiece of musical description! – it’s basically, a “cautionary tale” of a mother whose child is so badly behaves she threatens him with the spectre of a witch who traditionally appears during the hour before midday to steal naughty children away. Inevitably, the Polednice DOES appear, and a battle ensues between the mother and the witch over the child, which ceases when the midday bell sounds and the witch disappears. But when the father returns home he finds his child lifeless, smothered in the arms of his unconscious wife.

The orchestral winds opened the story in deceptively charming folk-tale style, with firstly the clarinet and then the oboe depicting the naughty child and his toy cockerel. The mother’s anger burst forth from the strings, agitating in fine style, the whole orchestra then plunging into a splendidly vivid evocation of what the Polednice would do to the boy if she came to claim him! Seemingly undeterred the child sounded his toy cockerel again and the mother reiterated her anger and frustration at his naughtiness, further describing what sounded like a veritable “witch’s ride” in the orchestra.

Suddenly an ominous note on the lower brass introduced a sinister passage as the witch DID enter! – the splendid lower brass playing sounded uncannily like the dragon, Fafner, in Wagner’s “Siegfried” emerging from his cave! A kind of “fate” motif was ominously sounded by the orchestra as the witch advanced on the mother and child, the strains repeated by the clarinet and strings, and further hurled out by the brasses. We held onto ourselves or to each other as the witch came closer, orchestral momentums scarily depicting the mother’s struggles to keep hold of her child – until the noon-bell sounded and the spectral figure vanished.

In the wake of all of this, how carefree the homecoming father’s music sounded at first! And how uneasily the oboe and clarinet put the questions in his mind as to why his house seemed so silent! A brief moment of relieved recognition was followed by the unfortunate man’s rapidly escalating anxiety at finding his wife unconscious and then his ultimate horror to discover his child was dead! The orchestra’s whiplash-like concluding chords were here merciless, brooking no help or pity!

The interval provided extra entertainment for those who chose merely to stay put/or to stand and stretch their legs in front of their seats, enabling a life-enhancing view of various orchestral members and “behind-the-scenes” helpers “moving” the piano from its place up on the next platform down to a central front position for the Beethoven Concerto which was to follow – an operation performed with the utmost aplomb on the part of all concerned.

Something of the concert’s opening “holiday” mood had returned, now that the strictures of the Dvorak piece had passed, with the arrival on the platform of the soloists for Beethoven’s adorable “Triple” Concerto (violin, ‘cello and piano) one of the composer’s happiest creations! Though not ideally spacious as a performing venue (underlined by the extra space required for the three soloists!) the church’s layout ensured an extra “intimacy” of music-making, an almost “cheek-by-jowl” performer/audience situation, which gave the experience a uniquely treasurable flavour for the memory to lock away!

The first two movements gave me, quite simply, undiluted pleasure! Hamish McKeich’s direction brought forth an exciting and ear-catching range of dynamics at the beginning, getting the lower strings to “murmur” the opening phrase as if all the players were awakening the music from a dream, sounding the brief crescendo just before the top of the phrase, falling back to a whisper, and then springing the sounds forth with a start at the “rise and shine” call of the horns! All was then galvanic action, as the music snowballed into the first tutti, the energies joyous, the interplay delightful! As for the soloists, Ken Ichinose’s cello and Monique Lapins’ violin by turns sang their opening lines as irresistible invitations to “come and play”, to which pianist Gabriela Glapska responded in kind with gleeful eagerness, the three dovetailing their parts winningly in their concerted passages.

In response, the second orchestral tutti, though brief, was all whole-hearted agreement, as well as introducing a new theme, on which the soloists pounced with glee, Ichinose’s cello (as per usual in this work) leading the way, Lapins’s violin following with a winning  “anything you can play I can play higher!” kind of aspect, and Glapska’s piano retorting with a “Well, I’m going to play something else – follow me if you dare!” kind of spirit! It was such a celebration of teamwork, both in the accepted “trio” sense and in the interplay of the soloists with the orchestra. I loved, too, the ebb and flow of the work’s intensities, how the lines and figurations could express something so simply and beautifully, and yet within a few seconds be pushing the musicians’ fingers into and through intensely-wrought variants of the same and emerge still in tandem at the end!

The slow movement brought lovely “covered” tones from the orchestral strings at the outset, and playing to “die for” from the soloists – firstly Ichinose’s particularly radiant lines throughout his extended opening solo, and properly concomitant responses from firstly Glapska and then Lapins, in duet with Ichinose. The movement’s a remarkably short one, and part of its time is spent “shaping up” towards the finale, which, here was taken at what could be described as a “good lick” – I even wrote down the phrase, “a “devil-may-care” tempo”, at the time! This was followed by another phrase, hastily scribbled – “Wow! – they (the soloists) are flying along in those running passages! – Very exciting!” Which was true in places, though being “The Ghost Trio” they were always in remarkable, and often enchanting accord, as with the “whose turn is it?” passages where they toss pairs of notes between each other in what seem like delightfully random “first to pick up” fashion!

The orchestra played along suitably in the exchanges as well, but at times I felt Hamish McKeich and the band would noticeably move the finale’s various tutti along, rather than pick up the soloists’ way with those delicious polacca rhythms – Ichinose, Lapins and Glapska gave the movement plenty of delicious “schwung” in their solos and ensembles (and which Beethoven actually seems to indicate for the orchestra as well by including a grace-note “kick” in their descending figure that leads to the minor-key beginning of the Polacca section). It’s a small point, but I always enjoy, as here, soloists in this work who give those trajectories in the finale something of a playful character which the orchestra can respond to in kind. But hey! – far more important was all of the acclaim, such happiness and such bubbling excitement both throughout and at the concert’s end (I sat next to two people I didn’t know at all, and soon found myself chatting enthusiastically with them about the music and the playing in between each of the items!) – it was that sort of occasion, and one that the orchestra and its members and organisers and friends should definitely consider a great and resounding success!

 

 

 

Atmospheric production, ingratiating voices, gentle updating – NZ Opera’s “La Boheme” in Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Elena Perroni as Mimi and Ji-Min  Park as Rodolfo
Photographer; Andi Crown

Giacomo PUCCINI – La Boheme (Opera in Four Acts)
Libretto by Luigi Ilica and Giuseppe Giacosa

Cast:  Ji-Min Park (Rodolfo)
Elena Perroni (Mimi)
Samuel Dundas (Marcello)
Emma Pearson (Musetta)
Benson Wilson (Schaunard)
Hadleigh Adams (Colline)
Robert Tucker (Benoit/Alcindoro)
Chris McRae (Parpignol)
Joseph Haddow (Sergeant)

The Freemasons Foundation NZ Opera Chorus
Te Whanganui-a-Tara Children’s Voices
Chorus Director: Michael Vinten
Orchestra Wellington
Conductor: Dionysis Grammenos

Director: Bruno Ravella
Set Designer: Tiziano Santi
Costume Designer: Gabrielle Dalton
Lighting Designer Paul Jackson

St.James Theatre, Wellington

Wednesday, June 18th, 2025

I was interested to read in the splendid programme provided by New Zealand Opera for this production of “La Boheme” the director’s notes, headed by a paragraph in which appeared the statement containing the words “making La Boheme anew”. Having been by turns intrigued, delighted and dispirited over my years of going to opera by different directorial decision-making regarding production outcomes, I wondered to what extent the director here, Bruno Ravella, was planning to “refresh” the work’s familiar scenarios, characterisations and outcomes to a point where “La Boheme” might no longer be recognisable as such!  I needn’t have worried, as it turned out – though the setting here was designed to reflect an immediately post-World War Two ambience, the story remained in Paris, and the opera’s essential theme – the fragility of youthful relationships – emerged via the cast’s interactions with their director as whole-heartedly and with as much sweetness, volatility and vulnerability as it ever has.

Act One opened depicting the garret in which four young artists lived, the set conveying as much bohemian ambience as one would expect, its dimensions framed by huge canvasses and an enormous skylight – I did think some of the furniture set back too far (the  stove, for example) on a voluminous stage, distancing us at first from the various characters as they made their gradual appearances and revealed their personalities. Ji-Min Park’s Rodolfo and Samuel Dundas’s Marcello made an engaging pair, playing off one another throughout interactions such as their burning of the “drama” in the stove, all the while their vocal tones “colouring in” for us their sympathies and differences. They were ably complemented by Hadleigh Adams’ Colline and Benson Wilson’s Schaunard, and with each of the four voices benefitting from movement towards the front-of-stage,  particularly with the “landlord-asks-for-rent” episode, and a hilariously pathetic characterisation of the unfortunate Benoit, here, by Robert Tucker. Though Wilson’s Schaunard and Adams’ Colline didn’t project the full amplitudes of their fellow Bohemians, their ensemble during the landlord’s gulling and eventual ejection by the resourceful tenants had all the energy and humour required.

The entrance of Mimi (Elena Perroni) completely altered the ambient trajectories of the story – which took place after the Bohemians apart from Rodolfo had gone out to celebrate Christmas Eve with the ill-gotten gains of the rent money, while Rodolfo, with an article to finish for his newspaper, had stayed behind. A knock at the door, and a neighbour, a beautiful, pale-faced young girl dressed in blue appeared, asking Rodolfo for a light for her candle. Perroni’s voice was at first tremulous and faint, but upon finding she had somehow dropped her key and anxiously coming forwards, the tones suddenly blossomed and filled the spaces, as it did gloriously in her aria “Mi Chiamano Mimi” (though appreciative applause greeted Park’s earlier “Che gelida manina” the offstage banter of the Bohemians with their ”hurry up” calls broke into the spell created by Perroni’s equally ardent efforts and gave the audience no time to respond!). But an atmospheric touch was the appearance of the snowflakes descending from the dark all around the departing lovers at the act’s end.

The Momus’s Café scene opened with its traditionally swinging gusto, the crowd-choruses placed well forward and voices projecting strongly, though seemingly light on numbers,  This was in part made up for by designer Gabrielle Dalton’s eye for “period” among the crowd’s general dress-code, from which Chris MacRae’s Parpignol and his followers, the children, were differentiated with “threads and patches” – the truly amazing voices and characterisations of the Wellington Children’s Chorus members delighted with their energies and vocal clarities! Amid the merriment Marcello’s quick anger at the sound of his ex-girlfriend Musetta’s voice was tellingly conveyed, even if I didn’t think the surtitles needed to be vulgarised as much as they were in places by way of indelicate comments regarding Musetta’s moral character – this was supposedly 1947 and not 1974!

Emma Pearson as Musetta
Photographer: Andi Crown

I thought Park’s and Dundas’s voices came increasingly into focus here, Park’s tenor gradually clearing its slightly splintered first-act tones, and ringing out more truly to my ears, as did Dundas’s Marcello similarly gain in authority in response to his flighty sweetheart Musetta’s appearance. Emma Pearson’s Musetta was a show-stealer, ably reinforced by her manner, her eye-catching crimsonly-drenched costume and the pathetically-wrought attentions of her “sugar daddy” Alcindoro (Robert Tucker again, after a quick change from the hapless landlord’s attire!). From the moment of her entrance onwards, it was her “scene”, her voice by turns playfully “kittenish” and redolent with longing. Her deportment on the lowered swing became the centre of everyone’s attention, as were her antics with the shoe to break her former lover Marcello’s resistance, and win back his affections. And with an almost Mahlerian touch – the arrival of a military band on stage, playing with superb swagger and ceremony – the act marched to its picturesque end!

The most intense of the Opera’s four acts is the third, set in the dead of winter, in bleak surroundings and with a mere handful of participants, underlining the desolation of the scene and its bitter-sweet human tragedy. Cameo appearances by a guard-soldier checking people’s papers reinforced the sense of winter’s oppression, as the opera’s four principal characters met variously, conveyed their purpose and then withdrew to “winter out” the cold. Marcello and Musetta spent the time quarrelling, as Mimi and Rodolfo heartbreakingly decided they could no longer live together and would go their different ways, but not until spring’s arrival. We relished every moment of Musetta’s flirtatious behaviour and Marcello’s jealousy, while feeling both Rodolfo’s and Mimi’s initial despair at the latter’s failing health and eventual acceptance of their destinies, a scenario of contrasts beautifully judged by the composer and characterised here most ambiently by the singers and players. In particular, Ji-Min Park’s Rodolfo and Elena Perroni’s Mimi together gave us phrases and tones in places such as “Vuoi che aspettiam, la primavera ancor?” (Shall we wait until spring comes again). that in the opera’s time-honoured ways touched our hearts.

The finale returned us to Act One’s bohemian garrett, with what seemed almost like déjà vu – Rodolfo and Marcello both at work, but thinking and singing about their respective loves in absentia. A “here before” feeling was heightened when the other two Bohemians arrived, again provoking horseplay and high spirits, until Musetta’s sudden arrival with an obviously ailing Mimi put everybody into  earnest, if quietly-despairing emergency mode, leaving Rodolfo and Mimi alone together reminiscing about their past life and voicing dreams of possible continuance. The friends returned with touching accoutrements, including a muff for Mimi’s hands – but all too late! Without the music the scenario would have seemed unbearably contrived and sentimental, but Puccini’s music worked its usual magic and brought the usual oceanic breakers of emotion to the moment of the hapless heroine’s passing and the resulting consternation of those all around her.

Over three of the four acts I couldn’t fault the settings and their ambiences – a tribute to the visionary deportments of structure and detail on the part of designer Tiziano Santi, and in close conjunction with the lighting skills of Paul Jackson.  Act Two started and finished resplendently, though I missed the sheer unbuttoned festivity remembered from other production’s crowds in the opening coming-and-going scenes – and towards the end the bastions of Café Momus for me didn’t quite lift from the ground with the impact of Musetta’s Waltz song’s climax as I’ve previously experienced; still, those superb young chorus voices and the military band provided enough complementary swagger to give the scene its own distinction. I came away from the production, however, with the sounds of those voices of the opera’s four principals in Act Three stuck in my memory, superbly conjured up by conductor Dionysis Grammenos and his Wellington Orchestra players, everything passionately emoting through the contrasting bleakness – the music forging with the city’s wintry desolation an unforgettably poignant partnership.

 

Éblouissant! John Chen’s recital of French piano music

Posted on by Peter Mechen

John Chen –  French Piano Music Recital
(presented by Wellington Chamber Music)

FRANCIS POULENC – Three Novelettes (1928)
HENRI DUPARC (transcr. John Chen) – 4 Melodies (1869)
CÉSAR FRANCK – Prelude, Chorale et Fugue (1884)
GABRIEL FAURÉ – Theme and Variations in C-sharp Minor Op.73 (1895)
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS – Six Etudes Op.111 (1899)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Sunday, 15th June 2025

In his biographical note accompanying the programme John Chen was described as having “a passion for twentieth-century French music”, even though only one of the works in today’s recital – Francis Poulenc’s Three Novelettes of 1928 – would have qualified for inclusion in that category. On the basis of the overwhelming success of this concert one could justifiably conclude that the pianist’s sympathies had definite historical precedents in this repertoire, with playing whose style, brilliance and commitment extended backwards to works whose influence on twentieth-century French composition was undeniable.

It was, therefore, ironic in a sense that Chen’s recital today opened with music that was the programme’s sole direct twentieth century representative. Poulenc’s first of his Three Novelettes began with a beguiling sense of weightlesness, of “floating” with the music throughout the opening paragraph, in parallel with a wealth of counter-themes – a minor key episode brings a wistful touch that cheers up when firstly a toy-soldier marches by and then a clockwork dancing couple strut their stuff, before the music returns to the opening.

Chen played the next piece very much akin to the “frantic scherzo” description, with stinging attack suggesting reckless abandonment, a dimension of energy extra to how I’d previously heard the piece delivered (and blowing the cobwebs from the rafters of my idea regarding the music’s droll ambient humour in spectacular fashion!). Amends were made to my sensibilities with the last of the three pieces having a beautifully flowing, almost “grateful unfolding” kind of trajectory with its sights set upon a profound serenity.

Next came four of Henri Duparc’s 1869 Melodies, but with a difference – these were the pianist’s own transcriptions of the songs, realisations whose apparent sympathy with the ethos of the originals would surely place them in the category of a precious gift for any recitalist.  The first, L’Invitation au Voyage is a setting of Charles Baudelaire’s sensuous plea to a lover to accompany him on a journey of ”abundance, calm and sensuous delight”, the music around the melody all gratuitous suggestion and scintillation. The second with its title Elégie resembles Rachmaninov’s similarly “charged” depth of feeling for keyboard texture in its rendering of words by Irish poet Thomas Moore describing the pain of a bereaved lover.

Chen’s gift for story-telling irradiates the somewhat gothic “layers” of Duparc’s setting of Francois Coppée’s La vague et la cloche (“The wave and the bell”), a dream depicting a hapless adventurer’s storm-tossed sea-voyage and a somewhat macabre bell-tolling episode in a remote bell-tower. Finally, in a rather more conventionally romantic scenario, the final Extase is a sinuously-crafted setting of a poem by Jean Lahor expressing the feelings of a lover sleeping on his beloved’s breast.

César Franck was long considered a somewhat sanctimonious and sentimental figure who composed primarily for the organ, achieving fame with his setting of the sacred song “Panis Angelicus”, which for many years hampered even his D Minor Symphony and the popular Symphonic Variations for (piano and orchestra) from being taken seriously. But the re-emergence of works like the Violin Sonata , the Piano Quintet, the String Quartet, and solo piano works such as the present Prelude , Chorale and Fugue has allowed a far more important and significant creative figure to emerge and be given his proper dues. His piano works in part represent his early career as a keyboard virtuoso with their formidable technical demands, though this work (1884) dates from his maturity as a composer and the emergence of many of those works on which his reputation now stands.

As with the later solo piano Prelude, Aria et Final, this present work features the composer’s potent amalgam of mystical solemnity, robust structural strength and a fluent melodic gift – Chen enabled both its declamatory strength and fluid animation to coexist at the Prelude’s beginning, all the while keeping to the fore that enlivening spirit, a kind of ineffable energy bent on searching for a purpose.  The opening strands having explored the terrain, they then regrouped to acclaim the first strains of a chorale theme (one perhaps inspired by the bells in Wagner’s “Parsifal’) buoyed up by arpeggiated chords which moved from section to harmonic section with majestic assurance in Chen’s hands!

From this ever-increasing splendour grew a Lisztian passage that tipped the excitement over into the fugue, a descending opening figure whose explorations Chen took on a totally absorbing journey, involving different registers and inversions, building towards a sonorous climax, at which point a cadenza like passage called forth the wonderful “Bell” chorale theme and the fugue’s subject together in a stunning peroration-like coda, the notes flailing amid fanfare-like cascades before the crashing concluding chords – what more could we ask of a work and its performer but that?

There was plenty to talk about at the interval, so much so that when the pianist reappeared we all had to break up our discussions and scurry back to our seats so that the concert could “get on”! The second half began with a work that was actually new to me, and to which I had listened from a recording and failed to really enthuse about – I thought at the time the music, Gabriel Faure’s Op. 73 Theme and Variations, all a tad tired-sounding, and so was inclined to share the blame between composer and performer. To my surprise, right from John Chen’s playing of the first phrase I was made to prick up my ears as if I was hearing a different piece of music! Here the opening was strongly delivered and finely shaped, the theme not so much “solemn” in character as forthright and determined.

The variations also seemed to have acquired stronger, more characterful outlines, so that instead of waiting for each one of them to end I found myself here eager for a new one to begin! Variation One has Chen meticulously balancing the theme in the bass with gentle filigree patternings in the treble register. Next is a scherzo-like piece with contrasting energies, at first madly rushing about, then looking about to see who else might be listening, an activity which then morphed into earthier, more vigorous “jumping” figures with onlookers shaking heads in disbelief and despair! Even more exploratory were the next variation’s far-flung figurations, decorative and demonstrative, and attention-grabbing. Then came a great roulade of sounds turning like a ferris-wheel, as onlookers watched from below, craning necks as the wheel turned.

I found the sixth variation equally arresting, pinpointing both stratospheric and near-subterranean notes with great arches between them, and the seventh filling the spaces thus created with regular note suspensions run up and down like ladders. The eighth variation was a beautifully wistful and thoughtful version of the same, complete with onlookers’ “oo-er-ings”, while the ninth was even more rhapsodical and far-thinking via its creation of hitherto unglimpsed views. A restless spirit then overtook the music for the tenth variation, an insouciant up-and-down ride pushing back the boundaries of adventure to the point where the composer’s zeitgeist must have intervened at the point of such excess with the next and final variation, lifting the music suddenly beyond all striving and searching, and quietly exulting in a fulfilment of serenity.  Such a different experience to my first hearing of the work, and so very rewarding…….

Camille Saint-Saens was, of course in temperament something of the joker to Faure’s philosopher. Saint-Saens was ten years older, and the relationship began as master and pupil, but it lasted sixty years, and ended as one of compositional contemporaries. They had their differences, Saint-Saens’s tastes being the more conservative, but the latter was always solicitous towards the younger man’s music, though disapproving of some of his colleague’s enthusiasms.

Their musical differences were heavily underscored by John Chen’s staggeringly brilliant presentation of Saint-Saens’s Six Etudes Op. 111, music that revelled in a number of aspects of spectacular technical display. Beginning with Tierces Majeures et Mineures (Major and Minor Thirds), the right-hand figurations’ gossamer delicacy was then eschewed by those for the left-hand in favour of a more turbulent character, after which the Traits Chromatiques (chromatic figurations) seemed to let loose a whole swarm of Rimsky-Korsakov’s eponymous Bumble Bees! Prélude et Fugue grandly acknowledged JS Bach’s pre-eminence in this form, giving a forthright theme an insistently varied accompaniment between the hands, and a fugue which followed more conventional lines while tossing in toccata-like touches such as the irresistible flourish right at the end.

The Lisztian Les Cloches de Las Palmas (which, in places, recalled for me Jack Body’s Five Piano Pieces!) is simply replete with resonances as if Saint-Saens had unlocked some kind of deeply  archetypal stimulus to memory inside the listener which somehow transcends the title’s specific geographic reference. Different evocations rang out in No.5, Tierces majeures chromatiques (Chromatic major thirds) whose particular sonorities readily conjured up whole swathes of the macabre in feeling and sensation long before film composers turned such devices into cliches (Chen’s astonishing finger-dexterity here garnering jaw-dropping awe from his audience which, if anything, turned into childlike bemusement at the piece’s throwaway ending!

But all of this had to defer to the composer’s outrageously indulgent self-pillaging of a previously completed work in the concluding Toccata d’après le 5e Concerto (Toccata from the finale of the Fifth Piano Concerto)! Dedicated to one of the most eminent French pianists of the time, Raoul Pugno, the piece’s ebullient virtuosity draws from different sequences in the concerto’s finale, mingling near- exact passages with more extended and rhetorical ones while keeping the pulses and energies of the original at fever-pitch, the solo piano at the very least rivalling the soloist-and-orchestra combination in the concertante original.

Fired-up as our enthusiasms were at this point, our sensibilities were mercifully allowed to gradually reinhabit less rumbustious living-spaces by the concert’s end, with John Chen giving us the adorable slow movement of Mozart’s Piano Sonata in C Major K.330, which I knew, but couldn’t place, name-wise – the pianist came to my rescue! It closed, quite perfectly, an afternoon of uncommonly sublime music-making which will linger in my memory and in that of others – what a telling and resonant advertisement for the need many of us crave (and occasionally voice) for more piano recitals! Thank you, John Chen!

Revolution, Innovation and Fantasy from Russia new and old

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Dmitri Shostakovich

Orchestra Wellington with Marc Taddei rehearsing Shostakovich

FAVOURED SON – Orchestra Wellington 2025

SHOSTAKOVICH – Symphony No.2 in B Major, Op.14  “October”
TCHAIKOVSKY – Piano Concerto No. 3 in E-flat Major Op. 75
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV – Scheherazade Op.35

Jian Liu (piano)
Orpheus Choir of Wellington (Music Director: Brent Stewart)
Orchestra Wellington (Concertmaster: Amalia Hall)
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 7th June, 2025

It goes without saying these days, you might think – but there was very little that was usual or routine about this latest Orchestra Wellington concert. And even when everything might seem pre-announced and sewn up and ready to go, there’s always something that feels special in the air, a kind of anticipatory excitement involving what COULD happen, or emerge from up the collective sleeve of the orchestra and Marc Taddei. So, this was the case when we all trooped into the MFC for the year’s second Orchestra Wellington concert featuring a work by Dmitri Shostakovich in honour of the composer’s 50th anniversary year, and this time alongside two works by fellow-Russian composers of a previous era, Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov – on paper alone, a colourful combination indeed!

We knew a piano concerto was scheduled, a happening almost always figuring as part of a concert’s first half – but where was the instrument? – languishing, unattended, to one side, as if forgotten, or its accustomed role perhaps topsy-turveyed! Something was definitely afoot, as up above, a stream of choristers were filing into their choir positions – were they here as listeners? It didn’t seem so as the figures stood alert, and waiting – and on came conductor, Marc Taddei, acknowledging the applause, but without any further ado, turning to the orchestra, and almost imperceptibly, setting the music in motion (the choir would surely have sat down, though I can’t remember them actually doing so) – like everybody else in the hall I was mesmerised by, firstly, the silence, and then what seemed like a distant subterranean rumbling, the origin of which was the bass drum softly beginning the work  before being joined by the lower strings of the orchestra! Such rapt playing! – a charged quietitude with a quality not unlike that which I remember Russian conductor Vassily Petrencko getting from the NZSO players during the first movement of the same composer’s “Leningrad” Symphony, back in 2011! Incredible concentration on the part of all of these musicians, something one seemed to “feel” as well as actually hear……

By this time we had figured out the game-plan, this music by Shostakovich actually being a New Zealand premiere of the work, the playing as committed to the composer’s cause as it seemed possible to be! Those pianissimo sounds gradually coalesced into something which seemed as much “interior” as “other-worldly”, as if from either deeply within or a long distance away, the sounds gradually quickening their impulses as the strings make their entrances section by section, creating a “muted hive of activity” to which the brasses joined in what sounded like the same manner – most extraordinary! – only the trumpet plays something that could be called a “theme”, gradually joined by the flute and piccolo’s similarly protruberant lines, and with the tuba adding its sagacious voice to the commentary – gripping stuff!

Suddenly, the lower strings began a dancing rhythm which gradually built up as the trajectories spread throughout the orchestra, like a kind of “danse macabre”, capped off by a fusillade of percussion, the timpani goading firstly the lower strings and then the tuba into droll responses. After a great circular wave of scintillating impulse broke through and over the entire orchestra, the solo violin began what sounded to my ears the work’s most extraordinary sequence, an impudent dance-like, fugal-sounding elaboration into which the players joined one by one, the music again ‘”gathering in” the instrumental voices as the augmented body of sounds swept onwards and into a percussion-led precursor (?) of something like a “Movietone News” trailer – outrageous, but totally mesmerising!

Consternation! – had these trajectorial efforts sapped the music’s strength? Were the pulses fading? What were these desolate tones and hollowed- out brass notes? Had all hope faded? The clarinet elaborated further, joined by the solo violin, the music then climbing into the ether as if in farewell – it was the kind of moment which could have either completely broken, or reached out and salvaged human resolve! Into the void came a crashing blast of percussion and a factory siren! – sensation aplenty, as the choir leapt to its collective feet and began to intone the (dreadfully banal) words of the poem extolling Lenin and Socialism! But to my non-understanding sensibilities those massed vocal tones sounded splendidly forthright, optimistic and noble, the orchestral instruments boldly and grandly colouring the utterances, leaving one’s imagination to freely invent felicitations of meaning and import in accord with one’s own inclinations – not unlike a Catholic worshipper who would admire the beauties of the old Latin Mass though unable to understand a word of it!

I loved the instrumental passages where the horns’ heroic calls were augmented by the trumpets and lower brasses, all decorated by the winds – all very uplifting! A cymbal crash and the choir ecstatically re-entered, the full orchestra panoply helping the voices to celebrate! The music flirted briefly with the return of the opening “hive of activity” music before being redirected by the factory siren to the business in hand! More exultation, culminating in a “Listen to this announcement” percussion roll, the voices forcefully shouting rather than singing the words of praise for “October, the Commune and Lenin”. Massive Mahler-like crashes, wailings from the siren, and a final brass-led peroration brought the work to a tumultuous close! In every which way this seemed to me a fantastic performance, taking the music where its composer intended, far and beyond the platitudinous dogmas of the words and into the Beethoven-like realms of the human spirit. It was a moment to remember and treasure.

How was the remained of the evening’s programme going to fare after such a singular and distinctive outpouring? Part of the answer was to “ease” into more “established” kinds of expression (e.g. the aforementioned piano concerto!) – but not just ANY concerto, any “random rabbit pulled out of the hat” affair! This was a different-again kind of novelty, one continuing the enterprise of Orchestra Wellington in a tangential direction, though maintaining a “Russian” profile. Tchaikovsky’s Third Piano Concerto has always had “Cinderella” status compared with its two far more worldly sisters through being styled as something of an “unfinished failure” right at the outset of its career, even by the composer, who wrote on the score of the completed first movement “The end – God be thanked!”. All of this has prompted less-than-enthusiastic attitudes towards the work, despite it receiving some superlative recordings (which I’ve spent a bit of time this morning checking out!). Before the concert I had even been wondering whether something else could have been found, another, perhaps more rewarding concertante work with a Russian flavour (a list including works by Arensky, Lyapunov, Rubinstein, or even Stravinsky’s “Capriccio”.). As it turned out, I simply needn’t have worried!

Marc Taddei introduced our soloist to the platform, one who had recently received a good deal of independent acclaim after being proclaimed as Te Manu Taki Tuauki o te Tau – Best Classical Artist in the Aotearoa Music Awards 2025. This was Jian Liu, already a favourite with audiences through numerous previous appearances, though his award made this occasion all the more special and eagerly awaited. Thanks to his brilliant pianism and the sterling support of conductor and players, I was able to “rediscover” this somewhat maligned Tchaikovsky work fragment and regard it afresh as a jewel worth preserving.

All through the lyrical passages of the opening, shared by both soloist and orchestra, it made just the right kind of “sit-up-and-take-notice” impression, which continued into the dance episodes instigated by Liu’s dancing fingers the excitement reinforced by Taddei’s and his players’ support. The orchestral tutti that followed made the most of the melodic fragments created by these interactions, after which the piano gave us an elaborate cadenza, jaw-dropping in some of its demands, even if, towards the end one sensed the repetitions began to take something of a desperate “where’s the way out?’ kind of aspect for the composer! It was a case of the cavalry to the rescue, as the pianist’s scintillations descended from the keyboard’s precipitous heights to be gathered in by the orchestra and danced all about in triumph! A heartfelt “sighing” theme was shared by Liu with the players until the timpani called everybody to order for a final dance, one we’d previously heard and welcomed like an old friend, one in which piano and orchestra seemed to link as partners for a last hurrah before the culminating unison chords brought down the music’s curtain.

The pianist was justly recalled to the platform after the concerto, electing then to delight us even further by playing an encore – one which both bewitched and frustrated me because of the piece being something I “knew” but simply couldn’t name – was it Schumann, or Grieg, or, perhaps, Dvorak? I had to be “helped” in this instance (thanks are due to Marc Taddei!), because it was actually more Tchaikovsky , and from a work I had heard but obviously didn’t know well enough – “Autumn” from “The Seasons” (some editions call it “The Months”, as there are twelve individual pieces) – this one was enchanting in every way!

By that stage, it was obviously OK for the concert to revert to “standard repertoire, more of which in a moment –  firstly, yet another “surprise” was in store for us, with Marc Taddei paying both a spoken and musical birthday tribute to one of Orchestra Wellington’s staunchest supporters, John Comerford, by directing a rendition of Igor Stravinsky’s “Greeting Prelude”, which uses the well-known “Happy Birthday” tune in what it’s composer described as a kind of “singing telegram” (Stravinsky had originally written it for the conductor Pierre Monteux, who had conducted the premieres of both Petrouchka and The Rite of Spring!). Elsewhere he had referred to the music’s use of serial techniques in a diatonic kind of context as “a very learned prelude, all fugue and canon”! For most of us it was enough that the famous natal day tune was even recognisable!

From these cerebral hi-jinks we then switched to one of the most popular of all classical repertoire pieces – but what repertoire! Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” has been a “go-to” piece for me over the years, never losing its charm or magic! – and in a good performance it can define a “gold standard” of romantic orchestral achievement. It got away to an excellent start this evening with the appearance of the orchestra’s concertmaster Amalia Hall clad in a stunning red dress as befitted her “storyteller with violin” status – in terms of apparel that was as far as she needed to be different in her role, especially as the history of “Scheherazade” on record over the years is bedecked with a series of LP covers that feature very much “of-their-time” culturally cringe-like images of definitely non-Arabic-looking women, each of whom was masquerading as a bona fide Scheherazade!

To the music! – and Marc Taddei conducted what I thought was a richly-detailed performance, bringing out many a salient detail to enhance the piece’s general atmosphere and story-telling ambience – the Sultan’s fearful motto theme right at the work, for instance, had plenty of menace warning Scheherazade to be on her guard and keep her husband-slash-executioner entertained, interested and eager for more – Amalia Hall’s violin entry as Scheherazade was the most silvery and enchanting one could imagine, enhanced by the harp’s equally magical accompaniment. Detailed though it all was I thought the music’s trajectories in the first movement depicting Sinbad’s ship a little sluggish at first, wanting some “setting out on the voyage” kind of excitement and urgency in places – though the strings “dug into” their phrases, I wanted a bit more forward-surging rise and fall from the ship going through those waves as palpably as could be made. But the various instrumental solos – solo ‘cello, horn, flute, oboe, clarinet – were superbly taken, and the solo violin never missed a storyteller’s nuance as it all unfolded – and the second big “tutti” had more oceanic urgency to match the girth, with the trumpets capping off the tumultuous figurations most excitingly.

The second movement was notable for the many instrumental characterisations – the silvery Scheherazade-violin at the beginning, this time with a touch of excitement denoting a different episode of the story, begun by a great bassoon solo, furthered by the oboe and harp, and then by the strings, delivering the melody with ever-increasing urgency! Great work from the trombone and the trumpet, exchanging calls with the strings and building up terrific excitement! And what a plethora of magical detailings followed! – a clarinet over pizzicato strings, an piccolo piping its presence in  “wait for me” way (and, though I was sure somebody missed an entry here, the music kept up its momentum!), brass and woodwind exchanging signals, strings climbing skywards as if sailors were ascending masts to their lookouts, with calls resounding between brass, winds and strings as the excitement grew – it all drove the story onwards, leaving all of us hanging on for dear life, right up to that forlorn flute solo, echoed by the horn (lovely “stopped” tones!)  violin, and cello, all of which then made way for the whirlwind ending!

I thought the slow movement here (“The Young Prince and the Young Princess”) one of the loveliest I’d ever heard, the melody shaped to perfection, with the prince’s voice neither too ardent nor too languid at the beginning. A pity I found the side-drum accompanying the princess’s reply just too soft to really “tell” –  hard to play and not sound too “percussive” I would imagine! – of course, with the clarinet having the melody, the accompanying “whisperings” were ultra-poetic! And all was extra-gorgeous at the reprise of the Prince’s melody with the “cascading violins” borrowed from Scheherazade’s melody (is THAT where Mantovani got the idea from for his strings?) beautifully “echoed” by the oboe solo, and with the climax given plenty of romantic warmth but not too much! The horn gratefully introduced the “epilogue” (on my very first recording of Scheherazade I remember in retrospect this whole section being cut most cruelly right up to the last descending woodwind phrases), here unedited and complete!

A fast and furious introduction to the finale caused our Scheherazade some consternation, with the Sultan’s theme now sounding impatient and foreboding, and the solo violin suitably agitated in response, and quickly leafing through her diminishing repertoire to come up with something! Then, with a flourish we were off on a wild ride, like a “cops and robbers” chase through a crowded exotic market-place – such infectious excitement! When this ran its course, Scheherazade plunged into her “piece de resistance”, the wrecking of Sinbad’s ship in a furious storm – “the ship is dashed to pieces by the waves on a rock surmounted by a bronze warrior!” Nobody could question the percussionists regarding the vigour of their onslaught, here, but I wondered whether the mighty bass drum hammer-blows could have best been gradually “built up” towards the climactic moment in tandem with the final gong-stroke – here, the energy seemed to have already been spent when the tam-tam was sounded – just a thought!

The epilogue was as satisfying as I’ve ever heard, with the sultan’s voice no longer threatening, but  contentedly rumbling in accord with his storyteller, whose own violin-voice ascended repeatedly and beatifically (more securely with each ascent) into the skies and enshrining her place for all time as a true model of constancy and devotion. We were left ecstatic and transfigured after this, with plenty of agreement afterwards that it had been an evening of remarkable range and scope of repertoire and expression!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The First Smile – 50 years of Gamelan in Aotearoa New Zealand – a celebration!

Posted on by Dan Poynton

The First Smile | Gamelan Ensemble – Rattle Records (2024)
Players: Gerard Crewdson, Chris Francis, Rosalind Jiko, Helen Lowe, Hui Luo, Barbara Lyon, Keith McEwing, Jennifer Shennan

The First Smile is not really a CD, it’s a celebration!
Actually where to start with the celebrations? Nothing less than a list is in order:
*50th anniversary of the heroic role this rustic little orchestra – The First Smile – has played in New Zealand gamelan
*Feast of sensuous and intimate sounds from the rich heritage of Indonesian gamelan
*Carnival of the probing expansion of this tradition by a panoply of Kiwi composers
*Hats-off party to New Zealand’s original gamelan pioneer, patron saint of The First Smile, and all-round lovely man, Allan Thomas
*A marvelling at yet another exquisite artefact from Rattle Records, in an age where such relics have largely been devoured by the rapacious ether.

Allan Thomas – photo by John Casey

Allan Thomas was offered this neglected little village gamelan orchestra (whose origins were at the Sultan’s Palace of Kacirebonan) in exchange for “many bags of rice”, while he was studying traditional music in Cirebon, northwest Java, in 1974. The only condition was that the gamelan would be played, not just displayed. Allan was to treat this promise as a solemn oath and over the last 50 years the ancient engineering of this Cirebon gamelan has been tested way beyond the call of duty – not bad for a taonga thought to be over 300 years old.

As The First Smile was the very first gamelan to ever arrive on these shores, 2024 was the 50th anniversary of gamelan in New Zealand. Jennifer Shennan, the well-known and loved proponent of Baroque dance and all-round powerhouse of the arts in Wellington, is now the adoring and jealous custodian of the gamelan, as Allan passed away in 2010 (Jennifer also happens to be Allan’s wife, and mother of their two daughters). Jennifer decided something special needed to be done for the gamelan’s 50th, and the result is The First Smile – the CD!

Thanks to Allan’s trailblazing, there are a dozen or so other gamelan in New Zealand these days, not the least of which is Gamelan Padhang Moncar (GPM), a grander courtly gamelan from the Central Javanese tradition, which is housed at the School of Music, Victoria University. When Allan established Ethnomusicology at Victoria, the Cirebon gamelan was the star attraction and the gateway for many students to experience a new musical universe away from the Western tradition for the first time. Later, as demand grew, the larger GPM would become the main gamelan, and when I first joined the gamelan in 1984, under Allan’s inimitably understated and just-let-it-happen guru-ship, the Cirebon gamelan was looking a little battered and not being played so much. Over the summer holidays Allan sometimes organised a leaner “commando unit” to play the Cirebon gamelan at Summer City and other events and festivals in and out of Wellington. The mysteriously smiling Jack Body was never far away either – and many other great Wellington characters. They were fun days.

Nowadays, if you snake down a little path next to Roseneath School, past “Allan’s seat”(complete with a plaque to the man himself), you’ll finally arrive at The Long Hall on a windswept promontory overlooking Wellington Harbour. In this old army barracks you will find The First Smile in pride of place. Jennifer transferred it here in 2011, and was also the mover and shaker behind the renovation of The Long Hall, which is now an active community hub. Events such as Helene Pohl and Rolf Gjelsten’s ongoing concert series now take place there, and Helene and Rolf are so delighted with  The First Smile that they have programmed in a live performance of Ostinato and Cantor’s Infinity from the CD, as curtain raiser for one of the upcoming concerts (see Helene Pohl and Rolf Gjelsten ‘s “The Long Hall” Concert Series – https://middle-c.org/?s=The+Long+Hall)

Gambang ( xylophone-type instrument, struck with soft beaters, and with wooden keys unlike other bronze-keyed instruments of The First Smile gamelan )

Based in this little (and long) fortress, The First Smile has had a true renaissance, and the little group practises and performs here dedicatedly. It is not easy to take the old and precious instruments out, but a generous exception was made in October 2024 for Jack!@80, a celebration of the late Jack Body’s 80th birthday at St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington. Featured as entrance music were Lagu Allan by Jennifer and Lagu Jack by Gerard Crewdson, especially written for the occasion (see Jack!@80 at https://middle-c.org/?s=Jack+Body).

But enough history! To the CD:

What an artefact! My CDs are now all sadly stored away due to the encroachment of newer, horribly efficient media, but this one has been placed glamorously on my bookshelf, for anything else would be a waste. Such a beautiful thing to hold: The evocative photos by John Casey and contributing artwork from Barbara Lyon…the moving stories about Allan, the composers and others…the ravishing production and design permeated with Indonesian ethos. It’s best described as a mini-coffee table book with a CD – the sort of thing we have come to expect from Steve Garden and Rattle Records, those dauntless promoters of NZ music. And credit must once again go to that most benevolent paternal spirit, The Lilburn Trust, for its grant towards the recording.

Saron — bronze keyed instrument struck with wooden beater ( drawing by Barbara Lyon, photo John Casey )

To play the exacting CD critic for a moment: the one worry is if you open the CD with gusto (probably the case), you are more than likely to witness a UFO as the disc itself catapults across the room. But what a gorgeous orange batik UFO! – so perhaps this was the desired effect from Rattle.

The recording by Warwick Donald is miraculous. The First Smile was transported into my living room, so intimate and whispering are the sounds. Everything speaks as it should, from the piquant and limpid ringing of the bonang and saron to the soul-penetrating gorgeousness of the gong. The sound of the gong obtained here is particularly poignant for, as Allan taught me all those years ago, the large gong is usually only played occasionally at the end of cycles, but contrary to a typical Western hierarchy, it is viewed as the most important instrument, and should only be played by those with the appropriate mana.

The traditional music is the backbone of any gamelan, and for me, this is also the case with this CD. There are only two classical Cirebon pieces on this CD, due to the wealth of NZ composers that had to be packed in, but I was definitely left wanting more.

Dr. Joko Susilo, patron of The First Smile, is a gamelan leader and wayang kulit dhalang (shadow puppet master) and renowned authority on the musics of Indonesia. Joko now lives in Dunedin but is often commissioned to give workshops and performances internationally. On a recent residency at La Musée de la Musique in Paris, working with musicians of the Paris Philharmonic, Joko discovered that the ensemble they play is also from Cirebon, gifted by the Dutch to the French to mark the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution, no less. The implication of this is that the gamelan Debussy, Ravel and Satie famously first heard at the 1899 Paris Exhibition was a Cirebon gamelan. They were all utterly enchanted, and the exotic sounds and ethos were to seep subtly into their own music.

“Javanese music obeys laws of counterpoint that make Palestrina seem like child’s play,” Debussy wrote. “One will find a percussive charm that forces one to admit that our own music is not much more than a barbarous kind of noise more fit for a travelling circus.”

A simpler counterpoint than Palestrina’s is felt in the CD’s first traditional piece Sinjang Kirut (‘crumpled sarong’), but its gentle tintinnabulation, so typical of gamelan, beguiles nonetheless. Also typical is the subtle pulsing accelerando (surely the racing heart of the Cirebonese lady as she discovers her prized sarong has been crumpled?), followed by the homecoming ritardando (the lady realising her sarong is salvageable, and forgiving the delinquent boys responsible?).

Kasturun, the disc’s other traditional number, is usually used as accompaniment for female court dancers and evokes an image of angels descending from heaven. The introduction is more upbeat as it reaches into a sky full of angels, and then drops back to the earth of the balungan (backbone melody). Hypnotic and catchy, the balungan is funkily punctuated by the ketuk, with the accelerando/ritardando patterns coming in waves. In the end things are settled by the traditional final gong stroke, which in this piece comes right on top of the second to last note of the balungan –sounding a little premature and eccentric to my ears. Although, as I was informed, this is actually the accurate way to close this piece, I can see Allan giving us one of his little smiles – and certainly not “the first smile” he gave as a gamelan leader. As he always emphasised, gamelan is community music and is famously flexible with such things.

Gong (l) Kempul (r) : ( photo John Casey)

The CD begins with the solemnly spacious and courtly Lagu Senyum Pertama (“Inner melody of The First Smile”) by Anton Killin, one of the NZ composers on the disc. Anton studied ethnomusicology with Allan at Victoria and has been prolifically involved with gamelan. Composed in 2017 for The First Smile, this lagu is based on codes using letters from each of its members. I admire the restraint of this piece, which doesn’t try to be anything other than what it is.

The world-famed US composer and gamelan expert, Lou Harrison (who in later years was also a park ranger in California) worked with Allan and Jack Body in 1983 when he came to NZ as a senior Fulbright Fellow. On the disc are two of the pieces he wrote for this very Cirebon gamelan, obviously from the hands of a master gamelan composer. Lou dedicated the pieces to Allan and Jennifer.

Lagu Lagu Thomasan sports a poised strolling balungan of decidedly strong backbone, with softly ironic and offbeat punctuation from the ketuk and kenong. A nice representation of Allan Thomas’ spirit, I’d say.

Lagu Victoria, with its understated funky riff on ketuk, and an utterly catchy balungan, takes the prize for sheer cuteness.

“The Prof”, as we used to secretly call the rather distant David Farquhar when he taught us  composition (extremely dryly!) as professor of music at Victoria University, was not exactly known for the seductive charm of his music, even if he did compose Ring Round The Moon, one of the few “classical” pop hits ever to come out of New Zealand. But with Ostinato, The Prof has produced a gorgeous charmer! It’s definitely one of my favourites on the CD, and shows what an adaptive master craftsman David was. The Prof was an early adopter of Cirebon gamelan, and encouraged his students to play and compose for it soon after Allan first brought it to Victoria. David thought, to be fair, he should have a go himself, and Ostinato is the result. There’s a Spaghetti Western music feel to it – although I’m not sure the movie has been made yet…

Nhemamusasa means “building a temporary shelter from musasa branches for hunters” and Chris Francis has adapted it from mbira (“thumb piano”) music of the Shona people of Zimbabwe. Chris, an old colleague from my GPM gamelan days, has truly had a vision in bringing the people of Cirebon and Zimbabwe together through gamelan. The music works so well, it’s as if the Cirebon gamelan did indeed emerge from the savanna of southern Africa, and the somnolent fade-out at the end seems to evoke the hunters dropping off to sleep, dreaming of friendly cheetahs…

Wetonan Cycle was written in 2017 by Alison Isadora, when she was back in NZ as the Lilburn composer-in-residence after decades of living in Holland. The piece involves a story from the childhood of Joko Susilo (see above). Joko’s father was a dhalang (puppet master) in Solo, and through a timetabling mix-up caused by confusion over the Javanese 5-day week and the 7-day Gregorian calendar, Joko’s father got double-booked. As it was considered bad luck to cancel a booking, the 7-year-old Joko was brought in to replace his father for an all-night show. His celebrated success launched Joko on his dhalang and gamelan career. The 35-day cycle of the two combined calendars is called Wetonan, and Alison has created an intricate tapestry of 5- and 7-note motifs. There are also dancers and the choreography of the players as they come and go to their instruments – surely a feast to behold. The piece is composed by someone who really understands gamelan, but one senses it would be a fuller experience if in the presence of the visuals.

This richest of CDs is given the perfect ending by a real gem: Cantor’s Infinity by Gerard Crewdson. Gerard is a long-time player with The First Smile and here he uses Georg Cantor’s Theorem of Infinity to generate a series of rhythmic cycles potentially expanding into infinity. God (or Cantor) knows how Gerard does this, but magic happens here. The cycles finally morph into an ominous tolling, and Gerard himself on a trumpet wails above, thin and sepulchral, as if the Ghost of Miles Davis has been summoned to accompany The First Smile.

The First Smile and Jennifer, we need more!
How about a follow-up Rattle CD of all-Cirebon traditional music?
Or the definitive performance of Lagu Allan and Lagu Jack coupled with music by Jack Body?

Whatever happens in the recording department, Jennifer and The First Smile are busy sowing fecund gamelan seeds among the young with The Young Smile gamelan, made up of Roseneath School pupils, and The Little Smile, featuring preschool gamelaners – including several of Allan and Jennifer’s grandchildren.

Here are just two reviews of The Young Smile by its primary school members:

I feel so privileged to be able to have such an opportunity and when I found out that I was going to be able to play Gamelan I was so happy. I had just seen it and thought it was amazing but playing it is a whole other story. I also love learning about the history and origins of it and I am just so happy that I was able to do it. I also really hope when all of you reach Year Seven and Eight you get to try this magical experience. (Evie)

My favourite thing about gamelan is that every second of it is something really special. Almost no kids my age get to play gamelan not to mention with an amazing teacher.  Also another really cool thing that happens is the geckos that live in the rafters, sometimes we find their shredded skins on the floor, the patterns are amazing and we’re going to make them into puppets for our gamelan story. The instruments make up a beautiful array of sound but also you can actually feel the music. (Sebi)  

The future of New Zealand gamelan appears to be in good hands.

Henry Purcell’s “Dioclesian” – an illustrious operatic “revival” for Wellington!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

HENRY PURCELL – Semi-Opera “Dioclesian (The Prophetess, or The History of Dioclesian)” 1690
Libretto by Thomas Betterton
The Queen’s Closet / The Tudor Consort
Music and Ensemble Director – Gordon Lehany
Tudor Consort Director – Michael Stewart
Stage Director – Jacqueline Coats
The Hunter Lounge, Victoria University of Wellington
Saturday. 31st May 2025

In 1985, forty years ago at Wellington’s Erskine College, Victoria University’s Early Music School organised, staged and performed (on period instruments) Henry Purcell’s 1690 “Dioclesian (The Prophetess, or the history of Dioclesian)”. It must have created a sensation at the time, though it took a while for memories of the earlier occasion to be sufficiently “jogged” so that this recent undertaking of the work by the capital’s “The Queen’s Closet” and “The Tudor Consort” ensembles could be properly regarded as a “revival” rather than a “first” for Wellington. In terms of impact and excitement it seemed to add even more lustre to the present occasion!

I well remember writing, in a February 2022 review, of a Queen’s Closet’s production which (to quote) “brought to life a world of musical and dramatic expression we don’t often get to experience in such a vivid and well-rounded way” – this was an enterprising representation of an historic “opera contest” in London in 1703 between four composers, each setting music to the same libretto and one emerging triumphant. The libretto was “The Judgement of Paris” the work of playwright William Congreve (he of “The Way of the World” fame), and of the four composers one John Weldon (1676-1736) emerged the victor by popular vote – though the Queen’s Closet cannily used excerpts from ALL FOUR composers’ efforts, thus giving us a richly-endowed “overview” of the original occasion’s range and scope – a splendid achievement!

As I’d expressed the hope that we would hear more along these lines from the Queen’s Closet, I was delighted to hear of the ensemble’s plans to present one of Henry Purcell’s earliest works for the theatre, his “semi-opera” (not through-sung) “Dioclesian” which bore the full title of “Dioclesian (The Prophetess, or The History of Dioclesian”. I did some “ferreting around” (mostly on-line, though the New Grove Dictionary of Opera was also of some help) and managed to glean some idea of what was in store for us. One of the pleasures I keenly anticipated was the involvement of Jacqueline Coats as the stage director, as I had previously enjoyed her work in other productions – though I was annoyed by not being able to find my copy of the programme for “The Judgement of Paris” to check whether she was involved, as my review didn’t mention her name! – details which come back to bite the reviewer!

I also couldn’t remember having previously been to the “Hunter Lounge” at Wellington’s Victoria University, but it turned out to be an excellent venue for the type of presentation accorded Purcell’s work. As with the “Foxglove Ballroom” location for “The Judgement”, this one seemed to fit the presentation like a glove, and with that all-important aspect of the music “being made in the same space as the audience”, ensuring our direct, cheek-by-jowl contact with both singers and musicians. A definite bonus in this case was the presence of a screen at the rear of the stage onto which was projected various images (all very seventeenth-century comic-book-like which raised numerous chuckles and titillations as the evening progressed)), and gave us some idea of the opera’s progression through the scenes and acts as they were played and done.

I remember feeling at first somewhat perturbed at what seemed to be a lack of a printed programme for audience perusal, something which I remember at “The Judgement” helped “take” me right into every aspect of the presentation, providing a wealth of background information regarding the actual contest, a synopsis of the opera’s plot, a cast list, and the titles of the individual numbers and their composers. Consequently, I knew exactly “where” I was at every step of the way through a work I simply knew very little about at that stage.

Here, at the Hunter Lounge, we were “helped out” by the presence of a narrator, Adam Neilson, who readily engaged our attentions with his wry delineations of the various plot-and-character convolutions, even though the complications of what the Grove Dictionary called the story’s “dramatic absurdities” tended to result in more confusion than elucidation on my part regarding both just “who was who” and “what she/he/they were doing”. At the time I felt a NEED to know just WHAT was happening and WHO was singing – but now, in my present state of post-event contemplation what’s staying with me most strongly is the “esprit de corps” feeling generated by the interplay between singers and musicians under the direction of Gordon Lehany and further emphasised by Jacqueline Coats’s production.  Ostensibly a story about a power struggle in ancient Rome, the absurd story-line with its portrayal of the whims and passions, cupidities and cruelties of people vying for the power that leadership brings, and their infliction of the same upon steadfastedly struggling humanity in general seemed to ironically mirror similarly ego-driven, pathologically unempathetic tyrants self-fashioned as rulers all around today’s world, and with the “prophetess” as much a schemer and manipulator as those whose fate she attempts to sway.

Whatever Purcell himself thought of the story, his efforts on its behalf brought him success, and the approval of no less a figure than John Dryden (for whose libretto he was to write the music for another opera, “King Arthur”). So, without a programme to hand I simply “went with” the presentation as best I could, and though detail wasn’t always clear to me as to what was exactly happening, the verve and commitment of the singing and playing never let my interest go elsewhere. I would have liked to have known at the time who the singers were (some of the faces I knew, but certainly not all of the names) and precisely what their characters were for the sake of the story-line. (Being one of the world’s least computer-savvy individuals, I’ve completely failed to notice the Queen’s Closet’s “past performances” page when first writing this review, and am thus posting the link accordingly –  https://thequeenscloset.net/may-june-2025/! ) However, Purcell’s music ultimately triumphed “on the night”, and there were many delights along the music’s way – without going through the whole work, item by item, then, I have these highlights of mine to offer……

First, the players (whom I’m able to name, thanks to their instruments!) – with their bracing sounds the Queen’s Closet players always delight, and this evening’s performance was no exception. The ear picked up on and relished the tanginess of the different timbres, as well as the excitement of the sudden surges of momentum – such as the Gigue-like energies unleashed during the Overture proper’s solemnities (No. 3) before the voices come in, and then, the brass (Chris Woolley and Andrew Weir) and timpani (Ben Whitton) vigorously supporting the singer’s “Come, show your instruments of war”. There was gaiety and charm aplenty from the oboes (Sharon Lehany, Rebecca Grimwood and Luka Reardon) and bassoon (Craig Branfield) supporting the alto voice at “let the soldiers rejoice”, and more festivity at “To Mars let ’em raise” , making a beautiful contrast of feeling with the recorders (Gordon Lehany and Luka Reardon) and joining the cellos (Jane Young and Tomos Christie) in accompanying “Since the toils”. The “Dance of the Furies” was amusingly described in one review I read of a performance elsewhere as “Dance of the Mildly Irritated”, though the strings here (Gordon Lehany, Henry Nicholson, Antonia Grant and Sara Kádas, violins and Miru Shimaoka, viola,) managed with the cellos to generate a suitable amount of “furious buzz” with their figurations! More charm, this time of a melancholic sort, came from the oboes, bassoon, ‘cello, guitar (Peter Maunder) and harpsichord (Michael Stewart) in their instrumental reprises between the tenor’s wistful “What shall I do?” verses, a mood that was then “whisked away” by the nimbly animated “Butterfly Dance”, the dancers equipped with delightfully lepidopteral effigies on the ends of sticks, wings  flitting energetically to the strings-and-winds-led music.

Apart from a slight purple patch during the Act IV chorus “Let all rehearse” (ironically apt at that point!)  the brass let fly with spiritedly and well-rounded fanfares as required, both martial and celebratory (with Gordon Lehany picking up a trumpet at one point and sounding a fanfare solo) – while as the other end of the expressive spectrum was the grace and charm of the Act V country dance. More delightful contrast was generously provided by the lusty Bacchanals, strings and winds propelling the dance forwards with gusto. Towards the end, as the vocal trio sings “Triumph Victorious Love” in honour of amatory order being justly restored between the opera’s principals, the orchestral playing struts its stuff with the soloists, then with a reprise of “Let all rehearse in lofty verse” the full ensemble joins with the singers to reinforce the lovers’ happiness in the most resplendent and appropriately brilliant-sounding way!

And then, there were the voices! – buoyed along by the instrumentalists’ marvellous accompaniments, the Tudor Consort singers certainly gave their all in both a vocal and theatrical sense, whether solo, in duo or trio, or as an interactively-detailed chorus, and making the most of their opportunities as they arose. I found it difficult, in the heat of the dramatic action’s cut-and-thrust, to properly and fairly ascribe which character did or sang what, and so am reluctant to attempt to “match up” the names – as, in Sullivan’s “The Mikado”, the Lord High Executioner KoKo famously sings when listing his victims for execution – “The task of filling up the blanks I’d rather leave to YOU!” – but these were the singers: sopranos, Chelsea Whitfield, Genevieve Gates-Panneton, and Erin King; altos, Alexander Granville, Andrea Cochrane and Kassandra Wang; tenors, Herbert Zielinski, John Beaglehole and Philip Roderick; and basses Joshua Jamieson, Keith Small, Mark Bobb and Thomas Whaley.

I couldn’t fault the choruses or the ensemble numbers in terms of their vocal characterisations and general stage-presence concerted utterances such as in “Praise the Thund’ring Jove”, “Let all Mankind the pleasure share” and the bolstering of the solo “To Mars let ‘em raise”, which all fell upon our ears with appropriate alacrity!  Especially lovely was the 4-part “Let the Priests with Processions”, and later, in Act Five came the ear-catching, beautifully-pointed and somewhat canonic  chorus “Begone, importunate reason” (for me, a highlight!). The smaller ensembles, trios and duos, brought out the singers’ theatricality to entertainingly risible degrees, while the various solos were taken in ways that integrated their characters satisfyingly into the musical flow of the work, some in  a “larger-than-life” manner , which contrasted well with other, more thoughtful and circumspect portrayals.

All of this was refracted through the keenly-modulated stage direction of Jacqueline Coats, and the typically thorough and expertly crafted drilling of the voices by Michael Stewart, the Tudor Consort’s director. However, to the Queen’s Closet director Gordon Lehany goes the credit for instigating and overseeing the production’s excellent musical cohesiveness and period-style efficacy – everything suitably proportioned, flavoursome and communicative – an insightful and enjoyable amalgam of scholarship and insightful reinterpretation.