Month: September 2009

Lunchtimes in Wellington churches

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

1 Organist David Trott for lunch at Old St Paul’s

A recital of popular classics on the organ

Tuesday 15 September

Lunchtime concerts at Old St Paul’s and St Andrew’s on The Terrace have taken on certain characteristics. While St Andrew’s has tended towards the more serious repertoire, catering for those whose interest in classical music is reasonably wide, Old St Paul’s seems to aim, at least some of the time, at the popular end of he spectrum.

David Trott’s organ recital was a good example of the latter. There was no printed programme and he introduced each piece in a friendly, casual tone, laced with anecdotes that sometimes had less to do with the music than with his own musical life.

If his selection was not entirely familiar, it offered no challenges. Generally they were well suited to the light, attractive registrations available on the church’s organ; such as the piece by 18th century organist and pedagogue Michel Corrette that employed a glockenspiel-like stop, and popular Bach pieces – Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring (‘Jesu bleibet meine Freude’) from Cantata 147 (Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben) and the Air from the Third Orchestral Suite (‘On the G String’). These suited the instrument and its player admirably; but less successful was his little arrangement of the main theme in the last movement of Saint-Saëns’s Third Symphony which demands far more dramatic weight that could be found here.

Trott played a distinctly odd-ball arrangement that combined elements of the Water Music and the Royal Fireworks music; his treatment of Pachelbel’s Canon went overboard with changes of registration in almost every bar: perhaps it was intended as a spoof.

Checking first that there were no priests present who might take offence, Trott played Mendelssohn’s splendid War March of the Priests from his incidental music to Racine’s Athalie. It used to make a regular appearance on programmes like Dinner Music at 6pm on the old YC network of my youth; its dramatic harmonies sound so good at the organ and though, again, a grander organ would have made it more exciting, it came off, nostalgia giving it an extra burst.

2. New Zealand School of Music voice students at St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 16 September

I missed the first four items in the St Andrew’s concert next day from the vocal students at the New Zealand School of Music: It meant that I didn’t hear either Laura Dawson and Sophie Kemp who did not sing again later. The rest exhibited admirable features.

Rachel Day has a voice that projects well, but her Richard Strauss song ‘Ich trage meine Minne’ needed greater refinement of tone and dynamic control, and those were the qualities that most of the singers still need to acquire.

She returned later to sing the Jewel Song from Faust, where she conveyed the giddy excitement, ‘hitting’ the notes but missing the interspersed lyrical touches.

Bridget Costello did well to sing the ‘Pie Jesu’ from Fauré’s Requiem, managing dynamic variety well though the piece demands more polished legato singing. She sang a song by John Ireland, Spring Song, with a more reined-in voice, some delicacy and carefully displayed emotion.

Bryony Williams tackled a long aria from The Creation: ‘On Mighty Pens’. It was a strong, convincing performance, showing her dramatic sense and a reasonably controlled top, but her voice wearied towards the end. She balanced that with the rather sentimental Elégie by Massenet (it’s from the incidental music, for cello and orchestra, to Leconte de Lisle’s play Les Erinnyes).

Bianca Andrew won marks for choosing an aria from Barber’s Vanessa (the opera that Kiri Te Kanawa made her mark in a few years ago) ‘Must Winter come so soon?’. She returned to sing the big coloratura aria ‘Non piu mesta’ from Rossini’s La Cenerentola, preceded by the recitative ‘Nacqui all’affano e al pianto’; she moved about sensibly, sang at a reasonable pace and so got all the notes; Emma Sayers’s lively pulse at the piano contributed delightfully.

Kieran Rayner sang three items, each with Emily Mair at the piano. First, Strauss’s ‘Ruhe meine Seele’, which impressed me, though I only caught the last of it; then Ashley Heenan’s arrangement of the sea shanty ‘Lowdown Lonesome Low’ (familiar to radio aficionados in Donald Munro’s performance). It’s a challenge to bring off such songs without embarrassing artifice and Rayner has the personality to do it convincingly, varying the tone and using dynamic variety with intelligence.

He was given the honour of bringing the little concert to an end with the aria he sang in the Wellington Aria contest in August, ‘O vin, dissipe la tristesse’ from Thomas’s Hamlet; not perhaps the therapy that a psychologist would recommend, but Rayner made an excellent case for it.

What’s happening with the Wellington Orchestra?

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

What’s happening with the Wellington Orchestra?

15 September 2009

Perhaps the major news story of Wellington music in the past month has been the announcement that longtime general manager of the Vector Wellington Orchestra, Christine Pearce, had resigned.

In comparison with such events in most other areas of entertainment, particularly pop music, television and film, the reasons for this sudden severing of what had seemed a most successful relationship, have remained out of sight and all concerned have been tight-lipped.

What is most clear is the continuing excellent relations between Pearce and Musical Director, Marc Taddei. There has never been such a happy and successful team; which makes unbelievable, speculation about some sort of putsch against Taddei. The orchestra has never been as successful as it has under the guidance of Pearce and Taddei.

Previous attempts to establish a subscription series have rather failed, but in the past two or three years, well-conceived programmes, together with Taddei’s entertaining, colourful presence on the podium, have filled the Town Hall time and again. And no season has met with success comparable to that of 2009, with pianist Michael Houstoun playing all the Beethoven piano concertos.

There have been speculations about the orchestra’s size in recent concerts; for example, in the Last Night of the Proms which did seem to suffer from a lack of weight in several of the items that called for dramatic impact and sheer depth of sound.

Was the orchestra’s financial penury preventing it from engaging extras, as it usually has, to cope properly with big Romantic works?

Christine’s successor has been appointed – Diana Marsh – and her record in musical administration does offer the hope of continued lively and successful management and artistic policy.

Is the orchestra properly funded?

Whatever has triggered this situation, it seems likely that inadequate funding is a not unimportant element.

Of the four professional ‘regional’ orchestras, Wellington’s has always been the least well funded per capita. Creative New Zealand’s largest musical client is, naturally, the Auckland Philharmonia, with $1.8 million (the NZSO, of course, is funded directly, like the Royal New Zealand Ballet, by the Ministry of Arts, Culture and Heritage); whereas the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra used to receive perhaps 50% more than the Wellington Orchestra, it now receives more than twice as much ($600,000). The Wellington Orchestra received $285,000 in the current year, while the Southern Sinfonia in Dunedin gets $265,000.

When you compare the total budgets of orchestras, these funding levels take on a different look.

The Wellington Orchestra’s total budget is around $1.6 million while the Southern Sinfonia’s is between $700,000 and $900,000.

Thus the Dunedin orchestra gets around a third of its income from State sources; the percentage in Wellington’s case is about 17%.

The other revenue sources for Wellington are 29% from hiring by opera, ballet, musical theatre, choirs etc, and 25% from its own concerts.

That leaves around 30% (say $530,000) from other sources – mainly commercial sponsorship. The largest of those are Vector, the New Zealand Community Trust and the Lion Foundation.

It has a always been assumed that Creative New Zealand has tended to feel that with the NZSO based in the city, the need for a second orchestra is not great.

Nothing could be more wrong.

The role of the Wellington Orchestra

Even though the NZSO is based in Wellington, most of its concerts are elsewhere and that is obviously the reason for its far greater budget and level of State support. Thus the other city-based orchestras are in very much the same relationship with the NZSO as is the Wellington Orchestra, and accordingly there is no reason for the big difference in funding levels (on a percapita basis) among them.

The orchestra has an indispensable role as a pit orchestra for opera and ballet, for oratorios and other choral performances, for musical theatre, and most importantly, to take classical music to other centres in the lower North Island. One should also be able to count among its major functions the taking of music to schools, but the orchestra’s activities in that sphere are confined to bring groups of school pupils in to a municipal hall; that is in sharp contrast to the work of the Auckland Philharmonia which is able to run a quite lively educational programme.

Now that the school curriculum has sidelined music as a core subject, has ceased to provide musical instruments and tuition in primary schools, the burden of getting some small amount of classical music into schools falls almost entirely on the independent musical bodies such as orchestras, opera companies, Chamber Music New Zealand (and of course on the sort of support that dedicated and energetic music teachers in schools can inspire from their principals and colleagues to undertake musical activities outside school hours).

Here is another, and very persuasive reason, for providing much larger funding to these not-for-profit organizations.

The other major area of misunderstanding is the need for a part-time orchestra to give as many of its own concerts as possible, in order to maintain technical and artistic standards.

Self promoted concerts are vital, and the happy development in the last two or three years has been to have finally awakened quite a big following for the orchestra’s own subscription series, and occasional individual concerts such as the Last Night of the Proms.

But every concert, even with a full house, runs a deficit; the beloved economic notion of economies of scale works in reverse: the more you do the more you lose.

Yet one still hears the philistine contention that elitist cultural activities like classical concerts should pay for themselves. To do so tickets would probably need to be over $200, and orchestra members would outnumber the audience.

L.T.

Jenny Wollerman at Wanganui Spring Festival

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The vocal parts of The Wanganui Spring Music Festival (intended for publishing n New Zealand Opera News)

Five concerts by Jenny Wollerman (soprano), Murray Khouri (clarinet), Simone Roggen (violin), Edith Salzmann (cello), Petya Mihlova and Phillip Shovk (piano)

Royal Wanganui Opera House

Saturday 12 to Monday 14 September 2009

This review may be very belated; and it was not an opera festival, but because it was a rather important initiative which could in future encompass opera (perhaps in association with the regular January New Zealand Opera School), it report is justified.

At this first festival the vocal aspect was represented by operatic soprano Jenny Wollerman.

It happened in one of New Zealand’s most charming old opera houses, a wooden building dating from 1899, familiar to many opera-lovers who attend the concerts of the Opera School.

Nelson has been New Zealand’s top classical music festival town since 1992; next to Nelson as a festival candidate is Wanganui: its history; its river, a good museum, one of the country’s best art galleries, it was spared the worst impacts of 1980s growth with many century-old buildings (though too many are still being lost), and of course there’s the 1899 opera theatre.

Wellington clarinetist Murray Khouri has been running a small, successful chamber music festival in Bowra, a small town south west of Sydney.

A year or so ago Murray decided to try a similar festival in a comparable New Zealand town. Wanganui seemed to have the necessary attributes. The sort of town that, in the northern hemisphere at least, appeals to festival crowds.

Though this first one failed to attract the crowds it deserved, particularly from the city itself, perseverance will pay off.

Naturally, the festival was dominated by chamber music, splendidly played by the top-line artists assembled, including Khouri himself, particularly striking in Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time.

There were five concerts over the weekend, The players were three New Zealanders, an Australian, a Bulgarian and a German resident in New Zealand; Every concert held something special.

Wellington soprano Jenny Wollerman is too little heard in her home town; many of the songs that she sang in her recital, by Mozart and Schubert, were familiar but the experience of hearing them sung with such intelligence and charm, and so delicately accompanied by young Bulgarian Petya Mihneva was like hearing them for the first time.

The Mozart programme was a striking demonstration of the composer’s role in the creation of the German Lied tradition, to show that Schubert did not emerge from nowhere, but that the ‘through-composed’ song that Schubert mastered, existed in a song like Das Veilchen. If Abendempfindung was one of her most beautiful performances, the most striking was the passionate ‘Als Luise’ (K520).

But her programme also showed Mozart as predecessor of the French mélodie, with ‘Oiseaux, si tous les ans’ and ‘Dans un bois solitaire’ (which I heard later, in the Adam Festival in Nelson, from Swedish mezzo Catrin Johnsson). French song was slower to develop because there was no Schubert in France at the time; but a decade or so later Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été was the catalyst (pity he didn’t write as many as Schubert).

Jenny’s evident aim was to show Mozart’s polyglot character, and her recital concluded with a couple of Italian songs: ‘Ridente la calma’ and ‘Un moto di gioia’, which at once seemed to adopt the colour of the contemporary Italian opera.

The Schubert half of the programme likewise showed Wollerman’s characteristic intellectual curiosity. After that most gorgeous of all songs, An die Musik, which she lit with seductive, complementary body-movement, there was delight, pensiveness (with ‘Du bist die Ruh’), passion, engaging narrative (Die Einsame) and simple pleasure in the familiar Die Forelle and Gretchen am Spinnrade.

Though this first festival could have been better supported, it will surprise me if Wanganui’s attractions and the chance to hear top-rate musicians in great and beautiful music does not bring much bigger audiences in future. Make a diary note for next year’s festival!.

 

Young Musicians Twelfth Annual Concert with NZSO players

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Michael Monaghan Young Musicians Foundation

Twelfth annual concert, conducted by Peter van Drimmelen and Kenneth Young

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Sunday 13 September

It had been announced some time before the concert that this one was the last under the current arrangements; arrangements that began in 1996, with the formation of a trust to remember an NZSO violinist, Michael Monaghan, inspired by violist Peter van Drimmelen, with the first of the annual concerts in 1998.

They have consisted of performances by eight secondary-school, and occasionally younger, musicians, accompanied by players from the NZSO and others. All concerned have given their time free while other costs have been met from supporters and sponsors.

Peter van Drimmelen has been the driver throughout and he has decided that now is the time to withdraw from the project.

Before the final item on the programme, several people spoke: Ian Fraser, a former CEO of the NZSO, Chris Finlayson, Minister for the Arts, who spoke of the importance of the enterprise and its achievements, and finally the Education Office of the NZSO told the audience what it had expected to hear: how the scheme was to carry on.

Deserved praise went to Peter van Drimmelen.

In brief, it is being taken over jointly by the NZSO Foundation and the orchestra itself and it will be expanded to provide comparable activities in other centres.

The Foundation’s remaining funds will be handed to the NZSO Foundation.

Though it would be reckless to claim that standards of performance have improved out of sight, it might not be altogether wrong. I can remember earlier concert in which there were several very impressive performances but one or two that didn’t quite measure up.

This time all eight reached a very high standard, with the last two, cellist Lucy Gysbers and violinist Julian Baker, giving particularly polished performances.

Whether by chance or by a certain amount of tweaking the selection, the concert formed a satisfying programme. The opening piece was a most successful choice – French flutist/composer Benjamin Godard’s Valse, a delightful blend of Straussian Vienna and Offenbachian Paris in a showpiece for the flute in which Jae-Won Um displayed a sure instinct and played attractively.

In the slow movement from Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, and in several subsequent pieces, the roguish acoustic of the cathedral took its toll; though probably not so bad from the front seats, at the rear, bass sounds were unduly exaggerated. Sometimes it created an interesting effect that was not too out of place; at other times, in parts of the Sibelius, the orchestral bass instruments weighed heavily on the violin. With the benefit of a very warm-toned violin Chikako Sasaki got inside it successfully.

Sophie Rose Tarrant-Matthews played the last movement of Beethoven’s third Piano Concerto, again subject to an overbearing acoustic, but strikingly musical; her dynamics and her easy and natural phrasing, avoiding rigid rhythms, were always obvious.

Asaph Verner was even more tested by Ravel’s big orchestra, rich in high woodwinds and percussion, in the first movement of his frightening Concerto in G. Balance between the piano and the orchestra was again hard to achieve, but a fine, brave talent was conspicuous.

The second half was devoted entirely to stringed instruments. Claude Lily Tarrant-Matthews (was this a first, with two siblings among the chosen?), only 11 years old, gave a surprisingly mature performance of the slow movement of Mozart’s third – G major – Violin Concerto. She took it slowly but made full use of that opportunity to explore its lyrical beauties.

Benjamin Pinkney was the only player to tackle a New Zealand piece: Anthony Ritchie’s Viola Concerto, first movement. An interesting work, but it was difficult to assess the performance because of the stridency of high woodwinds and the distraction of too much going on in the orchestra to the detriment of the viola’s role.

The middle movement of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto was played with considerable accomplishment by Lucy Gysbers. Though soloist and orchestra found balance difficult, her playing was confident and very musical.

Finally a little-heard Violin Concerto by Kabalevsky was the choice of Julian Baker. He played its first movement, something of a showpiece, happy and boisterous in fine Soviet style, with good grasp of its style, unostentatiously yet with flair.

There was perceptible relief at the concert’s end from the audience on the announcement about the programme’s continuity. While there are still enormous deficiencies in the teaching of music in schools and simply in exposing children to classical music, this initiative goes some small way to redressing the shortcomings. May it flourish now, and nationwide.

Chorus And Keys – Festival Singers with Organists

Posted on by Peter Mechen

CHORUS AND KEYS – Festival Singers and Wellington Organists

DVORAK – Mass in D Major

Works by PURCELL, SWEELINCK, MATHIAS, MENDELSSOHN and J.C.BACH

Festival Singers

(Rosemary Russell, director)

Soloists: Clarissa Dunn (soprano) / Rosel Labone (m-soprano)

John Beaglehole (tenor) / Kieran Raynor (baritone)

Organists: Paul Rosoman, Jonathan Berkahn, Judy Dumbleton

Church of St.John’s in the City, Willis St., Wellington

Saturday 12th September 2009

This was a concert devised by Wellington organists and the Festival Singers to present music which combined the sounds of voices and organ. Similar concerts with the same forces have been held in the past during the annual “Organ Week” festivals, but 2009 being the 50th Anniversary of the Wellington Organists’ Association, this became a special occasion, celebrated in fine style with performances of a variety of music from different times and places.

I wondered at the very beginning whether the word “birdsong” ought to have been added to the concert’s title, as the first sounds we heard were those of the kakapo, the haunting and evocative notes allowed to resound in the spaces of St.John’s in the City for some seconds before organist Paul Rosoman began his first item, Jan Sweelinck’s attractively melancholic set of variations on a old German tune Mein junges Leben hat ein End. This manuals-only work imparted a charming, chamber-like feeling, though a brilliant trumpet stop invigorated one of the variations excitingly. Voices provided a contrast with the next item, Purcell’s well-known anthem Rejoice in the Lord Always, featuring soloists Rosel Labone and Kieran Rayner, blending their voices characterfully as they exchanged attractive antiphonal episodes with the chorus. Both soloists and chorus made sonorous and strongly-focused contributions throughout, the former at the reprise of “Rejoice”, while the latter produced a stirring impact at their final massed entry.

If the J.C.Bach “Organ Duet” Sonata showed neither Paul Rosoman nor Judy Dumbleton at their best (perhaps through nerves and/or lack of rehearsal time), each made amends with a solo performance afterwards – first, Paul Rosoman gave a powerful reading of Mendelssohn’s Allegro, Choral and Fugue, the imposing toccata-like opening alternating great rhythmic drive and sinuously-wrought chromatic progressions, before relaxing into a major key in a way entirely characteristic of this composer (it would never have done for “Old Bach”, whose music Mendelssohn revered above all other, but whose musical sinews were obviously made of sterner stuff). The subsequent Chorale and Fugue were strongly characterised, with plenty of tension and sharp focus, before the music was triumphantly brought home in splendid D Major. For her part, Judy Dumbleton gave an exhilarating and open-aired reading of Eugene Gigout’s E Major scherzo, with reedy timbres and hunting-horn echoes to the fore, the playing not note-perfect, but with just the right amount of joie de vivre. The trio section particularly delighted us, the rhythmic phrases skipping along and jumping between registers, and managing to get the last saucy word in after the Scherzo’s brassier timbres had returned.

After the interval came the Dvorak Mass in D Major, a work I’d not previously heard, and an absolute charmer. The music began with a “Kyrie” whose lilting, lullaby-like accents built to more stirring utterances, leading to the “Christe” in which soprano Clarissa Dunn beautifully interwove her lines with that of the choir.

Throughout, the energetic triumph of the “Gloria” was splendidly directed by conductor Rosemary Russell, and featured some nice solo work at “Domine Deus”, with Kieran Rayner particularly sonorous at “Qui tollis peccata mundi”. In the “Credo” I liked the deceptively gentle altos-only beginning, with the whole choir bursting in at “Patrem omnipotentem” to great dramatic effect, as were the exchanges between choir and soloists at “Deum de Deum”. More lovely singing from Kieran Rayner, as well as from alto Rosel Labone, brought true mystery and reverence to “Et incarnatus est”, helped by beautifully reedy organ tones from Jonathan Berkahn’s playing. A harsh, confrontational “Crucifixus” was brought off with great strength of purpose, while tenor John Beaglehole supplied plenty of heroic energy in “Et ascendit in caelum”, the choir a shade shaky with the fugal writing at “Et iterum venturus”, but bringing it together well at “Cujus regni”. More good work from altos at “Credo in unam sanctam” and tenors with their “Confiteor unum baptisma” brought us resoundingly to the repeated and majestically-delivered final cries of “Amen!” at the Credo’s end.

The “Sanctus” which followed featured some lovely work in thirds by the women, their high lines leading surely to the celebratory “Hosannas”, and contrasting nicely with the rapt and reverential tones of the “Benedictus”, the organ again reedy and atmospheric, the choir sustaining the tones well (women a little more securely and surely than the men), and relishing the return of the “Hosannas” with glorious and vigorous outpourings of tone. The “Agnus Dei” gave the soloists further chances to shine, the tenor leading the way with nicely lyrical, suppliant petitionings, echoed by the altos and sopranos from the choir, and joined by soprano Clarissa Dunn with some beautifully-floated high notes. As for the concluding “Dona nobis pacem” it was beautifully managed here, the minor-to-major modulation nicely brought off, and the hushed choral entries giving the work an appropriately valedictory feeling at the close.

Not programmed on paper, but included as an item in the concert as a (somewhat specious) “filler” between the 19th and 20th centuries was Britten’s organ piece “Prelude and Fugue on a theme of Vittoria”, introduced and played by Jonathan Berkahn. Despite its brevity, the music made a big and imposing overall impression in Jonathan Berkahn’s hands, with majestic tones at the start, spiced by some glorious dissonances, and followed by a nicely processional fugue which explored contrasting bell-like sonorities and different rhythmic patternings through to a gradually receding conclusion. After this, the festive irruptions of joyful sounds occasioned by William Matthais’s setting of Psalm 67 “Let the People Praise Thee, O God” brought the concert to an exuberant conclusion, the Singers enjoying the Walton-like rhythmic syncopations of the writing as much as the celestially floated unisons of the music’s more luminous episodes. A great and celebratory way to end a concert.

Wellington Orchestra and Houstoun in Beethoven 4

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Tangazo (Piazzolla); Piano Concerto No 4 in G (Beethoven); Symphony No 104 in D ‘London’ (Haydn)

Vector Wellington Orchestra conducted by Marc Taddei with Michael Houstoun (piano); dancers from Footnote Dance

Wellington Town Hall, Saturday 12 September 2009

The fourth in the Wellington Orchestra’s subscription series continued the orchestra’s theme of combining the symphony with dance and movement. An imaginative enterprise but it presents quite surprising aesthetic problems.

The concert opened with an interesting dance piece by Astor Piazzolla, perhaps the only Argentine composer many classical music followers have heard of. His fame rests on taking tango music into the concert hall, taking its essence and subjecting tango rhythms and melodic motifs to classical techniques.

The piece began with basses and cellos playing slow, sonorous, elegiac ideas, soon picked up by violas and violins in quasi-fugal fashion: it might have been Tchaikovsky or Mahler. As it proceeded dancers came up the aisles and sat on chairs on stage.

When tango music emerged, one of the dancers rose, the female in scarlet, making arching, long-legged, tango-style gestures as she stalked across the stage. Unfortunately, neither the male nor the other female quite matched her command of the idiom; and one kept hoping that some arresting, authentic tango would develop; it didn’t quite happen.

I did not envy the dancers, called on to perform on a bare stage, without scenery or props, dancing to music that had really been gentrified, turned into polite concert music, stripped of most of its essential sensuality. Theatricality was missing.

What followed was an entirely different matter.

Michael Houstoun’s presence throughout this series of Beethoven piano concertos has certainly been the key to their success. His playing, again, was immaculate, finely shaped and with discreet dynamics and rhythmic flexibility. It was perhaps too discreet for the orchestra to pick up for after the piano’s famous opening, the orchestra didn’t quite prolong and develop the musical features that were implicit in those phrases, but when the piano re-entered the temperature rose subtly. The first movement cadenza thus proved a particularly engrossing phase.

The slow movement could well be called merely an Intermezzo, but it is of singular beauty and the orchestra judged its character and scale with great sensitivity. This was an excellent collaboration between piano and orchestra, creating a wonderful stillness, a stylish sense of occasion.

The size of the orchestra will be defended on ‘classical’ grounds; this is so, but the smaller the band, the more testing are matters of balance, absolute unanimity in the string playing and in blending of winds and strings. While it may have been better to defy ‘classical’ strictures a little and risk a few more strings, the whole performance, embroidered by very fine wind playing, again reinforced how important it is that this orchestra be maintained at good strength and in good morale. .

Usually the London Symphony seems one of the weightiest of the 12 that Haydn wrote for his two London visits. If this performance didn’t present it as of quite the grandeur of Mozart’s last three, for example, that too may have been a question of orchestral size.

Conductor Taddei changed the orchestra’s string seating for the symphony: from the left, first violins, violas, cellos, second violins, and it offered a subtly better sound picture.

After the somewhat less than monumental Adagio introduction, the Allegro itself gained stature as it got into its stride; there was energy and vivacity. The Surprise-Symphony-like fortissimi in the varied Andante were effective, as was the woodwind quartet that adorns it and Taddei knew how to dramatise the quirkiness of this typically off-beat Minuet and Trio and to keep interest alive throughout the novelties of the last movement.

There was a pretty full house, if one ignored the scattering of empty seats in the stalls. It’s a pity that the quality of the seats in the stalls – too close together – encourages the audience to sit in remote parts of the gallery.

The Tudor Consort – an afternoon of choral filigree

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J.S.BACH – The Six Motets BWV 225-230

Tudor Consort, directed by Michael Stewart

St Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wellington

Saturday September 12 2009

Review by Anna McGregor

Seats were scarce at St Andrews on the Terrace on Saturday afternoon as the Tudor Consort presented their programme of six motets attributed to J.S. Bach. Admired by generations of musicians, these works have been described as ‘a pinnacle of absolute vocal music’, and greatly influenced the choral music of Mozart, Mendelssohn and Brahms. This was a rare opportunity to experience all six works in succession and provided the listener with a unique platform to compare the facets of each.

Under the direction of Michael Stewart, the Tudor Consort produced a well-blended and clean sound, successfully negotiating highly demanding vocal lines with stamina. The 21-strong ensemble split into two antiphonal choirs for the first half of the programme, opening with Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied (BWV 225), accompanied by Douglas Mews on chamber organ and Emma Goodbeheere on baroque cello. The balance and colour between the choirs was well matched, enabling the ensemble to smoothly interplay during alternating passages. Unfortunately the continuo was often overwhelmed – subtleties of articulation and timbre may have become more apparent with the addition of a small string section.

The group re-united in the second half for the centrepiece of the programme, Jesu, meine Freude (BWV 227) with soloists Anna Sedcoe, Erin King, Andrea Cochrane, Richard Taylor and Richard Walley emerging from within the ensemble. Almost in defiance of its conception as a funeral motet, this is a colourful and highly emotive masterpiece as well as a gauntlet of textural demands for any ensemble. The Tudor Consort shifted with ease and breadth of expression between highly contrapuntal fugues to reduced chamber sections to strident but lyrical chorales.

What better way to spend an afternoon than fully immersed in Bach – credit to the Tudor Consort for fantastic programming and a very fine performance.

Guitars at Old St Paul’s Lunchtime concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Guitar music by Andrew York, Radames Gnatali, Brahms, Piazzolla, Paulo Bellinati

Wellington Guitar Duo (Christopher Hill and Owen Moriarty)

Old St Paul’s, Tuesday 8 September 2009

The guitar is not, perhaps, an instrument that you think of as devotional, adapted to what you do in a church. In fact, however, the delicacy and subtlety of this string instrument sits very comfortably in a fairly small church, especially one with such architectural and historic beauty as Old St Paul’s. The guitar, after all is a close relative of the lute and its keyed descendants such as the clavichord, harpsichord or spinet.

To its disadvantage is the relatively small repertoire of music of more than a century old, and the dominance of much of its recent repertoire by Hispanic dance music, not to mention the universe of popular music. We are not used to thinking about guitar music as being as important or as valuable as that of instruments more central to western European music tradition.

So it is common to fortify programmes with arrangements of acknowledged classical pieces: on this occasion the candidate was the Andante, Theme and Variations movement from Brahms’s String Sextet, Op 18, one of his best loved works, and music that, through John Williams’s arrangement, sounded extremely well on two guitars, overlooking those parts in which your mind’s ear longs for the low sonorities of a viola and cello. Its gently shifting harmonies seemed to be just what a sensitive guitarist would choose, though a repeated accompanying figure became monotonous in the fourth variation.

The programme of Christopher Hill and Owen Moriarty began with a piece by United States composer and guitarist Andrew York. His Sanzen-in was inspired by the ancient temple and garden in Kyoto which, with gently syncopated rhythms in common time, evoked a past but not perhaps a Japanese past; the flavour was generalized Latin rather than Asian.

The rest of the programme was of South American music: by two Brazilian composers, Radames Gnatali (two pieces from his Suite Retratos) and Paulo Bellinati. Gnatali was born in 1906 in Porto Alegre (get out your atlas) and his four movement Retratos was composed in 1956 and arranged by the composer for many different solo instruments and ensmbles . The beguiling waltz, Ernesto Nazareth, recalled music like Granados’s Valses poeticos, with its attractive rubato and dreamy character; the second, Chiquinha Gonzaga, presumably named for a musician friend, exercised the two players’ rhythmic dexterity.

Bellinati’s Jongo ended the recital. Written in 1978, using one of the many Brazilian dance rhythms, it has become a standard in the guitar repertoire, and the duo’s performance was highly accomplished.

There were two very contrasted pieces by the famous Argentinian, Astor Piazzolla (which Christopher Hill explained he had transcribed from a recording because of difficulty in obtaining scores – one hopes, not just to avoid paying royalties). One, Zita, was one of his characteristically elaborate and complex tangos where one admired the players’ ensemble through the spiky, unpredictable rhythms; the second was Whisky, and indeed created a feeling of happy disorientation.

A programme of this kind made me aware both of the riches that the past half century have brought to the guitar repertoire and the depths of (at least my) ignorance of the world of Latin American music, apart from the few obvious names. Would it have been a good idea to have used a recital like this to elevate this music, by its presentation, to the status of a comparable recital of European classical music, with documentation in the shape of informative programme notes about the composers and the music?

It seems a shame to perpetuate the impression of guitar music, and Latin American music generally, as light-weight and not worthy of musicological attention, by not offering background material of interest to a (let us assume) musically cultivated audience such as comes to these concerts.

　

Keeping the piano recital alive – Stephen De Pledge

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Stephen de Pledge – Piano Recital at the Town Hall

Music by Beethoven, Debussy, Mayerl, Brahms,
Psathas, McLeod, Harris, Prokofiev

Wellington Town Hall, 8th September 2009

It had to happen, sooner or later – a piano recital at a major Wellington venue, the Town Hall, no less (the event graduating from the Ilott Theatre presumably by dint of weight of public interest, even though the Town Hall galleries were closed to the public). The artist was Stephen De Pledge, one of New Zealand’s finest pianists, presently on a nation-wide Chamber Music New Zealand tour. There’s an opinion afoot that piano recitals don’t attract as much public interest as do other musical events, a disturbingly blinkered sentiment which, if given enough currency, could do a lot of harm in the wrong quarters. Imagine a situation where concertgoers were thus deprived of regular opportunities to hear “live” a sizeable body of the Western world’s greatest and most significant music!

Some of this music was presented with admirable aplomb and considerable sensitivity at Stephen De Pledge’s Town Hall recital on Tuesday evening. The very cosmopolitan programme spanned a number of centuries and covered a variety of styles, attitudes and emotions – if Stephen De Pledge seemed more at home with some of the pieces than with others, his presentations were always expertly crafted and constantly thought-provoking.

I thought his Beethoven classically restrained and elegantly gradated, perhaps a bit too mellifluously delivered to convey the “Pathetique” Sonata’s full revolutionary force – his sinuous keyboard sheen gave the fiery allegros in the outer movements more of a Mendelssohnian feel, though in the first movement he scored points with his “back to the very beginning” repeat (which I had never heard done before), and the charged quality with which he invested the dramatic pauses and silences that abound in the music. His sensitivity brought an almost coy reticence to the slow movement’s great theme, less a case of “strong men wiping away silent tears” than an inwardly-expressed delight. The minor-key middle section was lightly etched, again sensitive and intimate almost to a fault, never singing full-throatedly, but content to delineate the delights of order and serenity. Again, the finale, though it had moments of almost Lisztian brilliance such as just before the main theme’s recapitulation, was notable here for its order and restraint, reminding us that the composer, for all his revolutionary impulses, still lived in an aristocratic age.

Before continuing with the Debussy Stephen De Pledge spoke to the audience, as he continued to do throughout the recital, in this case offering some thoughts regarding the contrasts between Beethoven and the music he was about to play.  He had only to touch the first few notes of Reflects dans l’eau from Debussy’s Book One of Images to convey to us his absolute identification with the composer’s sound-world – all the limpid textures and colours of the music were captured in an enchanting sound-web of suggestion. The Hommage à Rameau which followed was a beautifully wrought fusion of antiquity and timelessness, while the final Mouvement tripped the light fantastic with bell-like cascades of light at once singing and shimmering, the music’s extraordinary “layered “quality realised to the full for our delight. The two Billy Mayerl pieces which followed brought to our attention the work of a classically-trained composer and performer who sought fame playing the popular “syncopated” music of the age, but whose music is informed with all kinds of “serious” influences. Stephen De Pledge charmed and lulled us with the graceful melodic elasticity of Shallow Waters, before whirling us along a madcap Railroad Rhythm faster than any British Rail passenger would have expected to go, complete with raucous whistles and clattering point-changes, the disappearing juggernaut saluting the exhilarated traveller with a farewell whistle at the end.

The second half was launched with Brahms’ two Op.79 Rhapsodies, played at times with almost elfin textures, more sinuous and lean than is often the case with performances of this composer’s music. If I occasionally wanted more girth and melodic glint in the big moments, I appreciated the playing’s remarkable poise and control, with many new things brought out in the accompanying figurations. The pianist then “placed” the three Landscape Preludes (taken from a set commissioned by De Pledge from a number of New Zealand composers) as a central oasis of calm between the storms and stresses of the Brahms and Prokofiev items. I loved John Psathas’ Lisztian explorations of harmony and texture in the first Prelude “Sleeper”, and felt that De Pledge similarly brought out both the detail and drama of Jenny McLeod’s West Coast evocation, and the essential solitariness of Ross Harris’s A landscape with too few lovers, a meditation on worlds which have only remembrances.

Concluding the recital as scheduled was Prokofiev’s Seventh Sonata, one of the “War Trilogy” works, and sounding suitably confrontational in Stephen De Pledge’s hands. His treatment of the first movement I thought more anxiety-ridden than savage, bringing out the music’s intermittent dark lyricism in between the fiercer episodes, and articulating the contrasts with great command of detail. The slow movement’s sombre beauty nicely flowered, the pianist bringing out the orchestral quality of the writing in the impassioned middle section, before drawing the remains together for reassuring words of comfort at the conclusion. The finale took no prisoners, its three-note motto hammering the toccata-like argument home, De Pledge moving from elfin lightness through sinuous strength and steely brutality towards a breathlessly cataclysmic climax. Despite his exertions the pianist then gave us a palate-cleansing encore, appropriately another piece of Debussy, The Little Shepherd from Children’s Corner, by turns animated and wistful, and as with the Book One Images, magically recreated.

The Aroha Quartet at an evening at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Haydn: String Quartet in G, Op 54 No 1; Szymanowski: String Quartet No 2, Op 56; Beethoven: String Quartet in E flat, Op 74 (Harp)

The Aroha Quartet: Haihong Liu and Beiyi Xue – violins, Zhongxian Jin – viola, Robert Ibell – cello

St Andrew’s on The Terrace, Saturday 5 September 2009

The Aroha Quartet, comprising four Chinese players, three of them in the NZSO, has been around since 2004. I heard what I think was their first public performance, at Old St Paul’s in Wellington, and was very impressed; I have heard them since then and have enjoyed their programmes and their performances. But the group has not really achieved what it might have if the players had been able to devote more time to playing together. They have now suffered a slight set-back with the loss of their cellist Jiaxin Cheng, after she married Julian Lloyd Webber; she has been replaced by NZSO cellist Robert Ibell, an experienced chamber musician, formerly cellist in the Nevine Quartet which has disbanded.

Once again, the quartet put together an excellent programme, of one of Haydn’s less often heard quartets, Beethoven’s splendid Harp Quartet (not for the harp), and Szymanowski’s second; that was the best thing in the concert.

The programme notes comment that Haydn’s Op 54 quartets are ground-breaking and that No 1 is among his most popular. If that is so, I have been neglectful, not having heard it played live before. But it is indeed an adventurous piece: lively, witty, varied, entertaining. I had mistaken the start time – 7pm – and missed the first and some of the second movement; the minuet was highly diverting, never mind an occasional slip, and the players made the finale a thing of teasing boisterousness.

The best known work was Beethoven’s Op 74. Here it was possible, in spite of the absence of the kind of polished ensemble and virtuosity that we are used to hearing on recordings by great quartets, simply to enjoy the frank and disarming enthusiasm that’s so infectious in players like these. If the somewhat startling dynamic outbursts in the open phase of the first movement sounded a bit unconvincing and there was some smudgy ensemble in the Scherzo, all it did was do highlight a musicianship and technical skill that was generally irreproachable; their grasp of the style and intellectual character of the music was of a high order.

It was in the Szymanowski quartet that these talents could best be enjoyed; most of us did not have the sounds of some famous recording in our ears and were therefore more ready to hear what the Aroha Quartet did as definitive. Its shape is unusual, the first and last movements, using folk-like tunes, quieter and more lyrical than the second movement which is marked Vivace, scherzando. The haunting effect of the opening passage, with its muted strings played at the octave, and tremolando violin and viola, caught the mysticism that had entered the composer’s imagination through his involvement with eastern philosophy. All changed in the second movement with a big extrovert melody that suddenly turns assertive, even violent.

Though the repertoire of the string quartet is probably even larger than that of the symphony, so there is no urgency for new works, the Aroha Quartet made a good case for the more frequent dusting off of Szymanowski’s two quartets.