Month: June 2010

La Vie…..La Mort – from the Tudor Consort

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Motets of life and death

by Jean Mouton, Nicolas Gombert and Josquin Des Prez

The Tudor Consort

Director: Michael Stewart

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Saturday 12th June 2010

Perhaps it was because I’d arrived with only a few minutes to spare before the concert began; but inside the cathedral was an almost unnervingly ambient worshipful silence – I almost expected to be “shushed!” if I had even dared try to exchange pleasantries with either of my seated neighbours, so I gave myself over instead to contemplation and furtive observation. A large image-screen had been placed just to the right of the performing area, which suggested that there would be “visuals” employed during the concert; and so it proved, with each item having one or two associated images (all very striking) drawn from the art-works of the music’s period, details of which were in the programme alongside notes concerning the item. I hadn’t had enough time to properly “scan” the programme before the concert began, so I was surprised when, after the first motet had been sung, two Consort members stepped forward and began speaking, the first in French and the second translating into English, practically in canon. The poetry, very beautiful-sounding, turned out to be that of Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), whose verses featured several times during the concert, each poem with different speakers and translators, all of whom conveyed both sound and sense of the words most attractively.

The concert’s title testified as to the music’s somewhat elemental subject-matter throughout, finding expression in motets by Jean Mouton (1459-1522) and Nicolas Gombert (1495-1560), with a work by Gombert’s teacher, Josquin des Prez (1450-1521) thrown in for good measure. Opening the programme was a composition by Mouton, O Christe redemptor, a piece he wrote while composer at the Royal Court, judging by its reference to the Queen, Anne of Brittany who was married to no less that two French monarchs. Beginning with the resplendent, beautifully-balanced tones of the full choir, whose focused lines gave the composer’s “smoothly flowing and consonant” style such character, the piece allowed the mens’ voices to shine in places, notably at “Largitor virium”, while giving the women’s voices plenty of melismatic beauties.  The first of Ronsard’s verses was then delivered by two speakers, the intermingling of French and English texts creating a sense of something conveyed through time and reawakened for our pleasure – the poem Je vous envoie spoke of human beauty withering as does that of flowers, with the passing of time.

A Magnificat by Nicolas Gombert followed, one of eight written by the composer while in exile as a galley slave (for what one account calls “acts of gross indecency” – evidently, while working as a composer in the court of Charles V of Spain, he had sexual relations with a choirboy). How the composer managed to write music at all while he served his time on the galleys has not been made clear, while the story that the Holy Roman Emperor commuted Gomberg’s sentence upon hearing these works (which the composer called his “Swan Songs”) is similarly shrouded in conjecture. Whatever his proclivities and resulting indiscretions his work as a composer happily transcended such misdemeanours of the flesh, his mastery of vocal polyphony evident throughout this beautiful work. Especially attractive was Gombert’s use of plainchant to introduce each episode, creating beautifully atmospheric effects of depth and antiphonal contrast. After a less-than certain beginning, the Consort’s tenor voices that began each episode with the plainchant grew in confidence and surety of tone, the contrasting body of varied responses sustaining and building our interest throughout. Less extended, but even more complex was Mouton’s Nesciens Mater, an intensely-worked canonic masterpiece, drawing forth from the Consort great intensity of tone (a shade raw at the high-voiced clustered climax, but all the more involving) set against more celestially-floated textures – an amazingly-sustained outpouring of great beauty. Ronsard’s spoken verses which followed, entitled “Chanson”, were similarly intense, comparing the characteristics of the seasons and the multiplicities of nature with the depths of the poet’s sorrowful feeling for a lost love.

Conjecture has it that Gombert studied with Josquin des Prez, though details of their association are sketchy – nevertheless, the older master exerted considerable influence on the younger composer. The inclusion of Josquin’s motet Inviolata demonstrated the tightly-worked canonic style and direct word-expression for which the composer was renowned, with duetting between different choir-voices, the most extended being that for tenors and basses during the second section at “Nostra ut pura”. Then, the corresponding altos/tenors passages in the first part beautifully brought out the words “O Mater alma”, as did the sopranos/basses combination with their phrasings towards the end, which resulted in pleasingly-contrasted open textures. Ronsard’s poem that followed, Sur la mort du Marie, made a typically sobering effect, the poem a variation on the theme of youthful beauty withering at the hands of fate, again nicely “sounded” between the languages. We were thus prepared for Gombert’s incredibly intense lament for his great predecessor on the occasion of Josquin’s death, the motet Musae Jovis occasioning a marvellous display of controlled outpouring of emotion, the “plangite” given full and sustained expression.

More obsequies were observed with Mouton’s tribute to Queen Anne of Brittany, Quis dabit oculis nostris, sung at the various places where her funeral rites were performed. I liked the fine surge of major-key emotion at the composer’s rhetorical declamation “Britannia, quid ploras?”, throwing into stunning relief the hushed repetitions of “defecit Anna”, the energy of life drained, the full-throated song now muted at “Conversus est in luctum chorus noster” (Our song has changed to mourning). But I thought the different invocations to the various groups of people to “weep” not as “pointed” as I expected them to be, rather more dry-eyed in effect than I imagined was possible. Significantly, Michael Stewart also kept the final “Anna, requiescat in pace” in check, eschewing a more obvious outpouring of emotion in favour of a longer-lasting subtlety. After such whole-heartedness, Ronsard’s somewhat droll characterisation of the body’s farewell to its soul (in translation, somewhat reminiscent of Robert Burns’s poems) lightened the mood, even if the delivery of the speakers emphasised the matter-of-factness of utterance more than thehumour.

Concluding the concert was Gombert’s affirming “Tulerunt Dominum”, a setting of the Gospel verses describing Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the angels in Christ’s empty tomb on Easter Sunday morning. Dramatic and emotional, the setting captures the desolation of Mary’s feeling of abandonment at Christ’s disappearance with the words “Tulerunt Dominum meum”, and the reassuring words of the angels in reply, the composer establishing an almost lullabyic aspect in the motion of the lines, the insistent, but beautifully-pulsed voices creating an almost minimalist precursor of style in places. Angelic voices floated the lines with intense purity, while the “Alleluias” grew from out of the performance’s ever-burgeoning emotion to resound like ringing bells, in minor-key mode, but secure, strong and exultant to the end.

A word regarding the projected images of largely renaissance art that accompanied the items – I confess that for the most part I didn’t register them strongly, which isn’t to say that that they shouldn’t have been used. I certainly didn’t find them distracting in any way, though my attention was taken up so overwhelmingly by what I was hearing, I was conscious afterwards of having failed to “connect” the visuals significantly with the music. The idea was employed with such welcome simplicity as to render the images almost as part of the venue’s decorative and functional detail. I’m sure that people attuned to art history and/or better able than myself to synthesize sight and sound would have greatly enjoyed the enrichment of the Consort’s lovely singing with these obviously beautiful and significant works of visual art.

St.Andrew’s concert – Messiaen: Poèmes pour Mi

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Felicity Smith (mezzo-soprano)

Michael Stewart (piano)

Wednesday, 9 June 2010

The performers were brave to tackle a difficult and unusual work such as this cycle of nine songs, and perhaps it was not only the recent bad weather that deterred some from attending the lunch-time concert.

However, it proved to be an interesting and worthwhile recital.

Messiaen’s songs were written in 1936 for his wife, violinist and composer Claire Delbos, whose nickname was Mi.  He wrote the words himself, with Biblical influences, and also those of the surrealist poets.  The songs celebrate the sacrament of marriage, and as in the Bible itself, the service of Holy Communion and the metaphysical poets, use marriage as a symbol of the union between Christ and his church.  They are very varied in style, with the first and last drawing on plainchant, while others use impressionist styles; nevertheless, most of the composer’s music is very much uniquely the composer’s own.

The performers both gave full rein to the intensity and contrasting subtlety in the writing.  The words were absolutely clear, as befits a graduate in French, as Felicity Smith is.

The use of the printed score by the singer was quite understandable, given the complexity and variety in both words and music which would make them difficult to memorise, but it did create a barrier to communication with the audience.

The accompaniments were beautifully played by Michael Stewart; technically difficult, they were full of exquisite impressionistic phrases and images.  He was totally ‘in synch’ with and supportive of the singer.

The titles of the songs convey their content quite well: their translations are Thanksgiving; Landscape; The house; Terror; The bride; Your voice; The two warriors; The necklace (Le Collier!); A prayer granted.  In the fourth song, Terror, the performers certainly conveyed the emotion strongly.

Your voice was a quite lovely song, while The two warriors contained very evocative writing. The necklace featured a sublime ending.

Sometimes in the first half (the first four songs) the singer’s sound was rather breathy, and not only between phrases.  This was less so in the second half.  Her voice has a very pleasing quality, and the right kind of tone for French song.

The performers are both to be congratulated on attempting and bringing off this difficult cycle; it was a most accomplished performance, and illuminating to anyone who, like me, was unfamiliar with the songs.

Warmth amid the cold – Song Recital at Old St.Paul’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Music by A.Scarlatti, Pergolesi, Marcello, Durante, Vaughan Williams, Poulenc and Copland

Janey MacKenzie (soprano)

Robin Jaquiery (piano)

Old St.Paul’s Church, Thorndon

Tuesday 8th June 2010

Despite the rain and cold doing its best to dampen people’s concert-going inclinations, soprano Janey MacKenzie got a heartening and enthusiastic attendance of determined music-lovers at her lunchtime recital with pianist Robyn Jaquiery at Old St.Paul’s Church.

The performers very quickly made up for the inclement weather through their communicative warmth and whole-hearted enjoyment of what they were presenting for their audience’s grateful pleasure, an interchange evident from the response to the very first item, one of four early Italian songs by various composers. Janey MacKenzie had instantly disarmed our reserve at the beginning by brandishing what she called “the dreaded book” of Italian art-songs, a volume which she contended every vocal coach had worked their students mercilessly through for good or for ill. Whatever associated traumas were suggested by her reference to the tome were nicely dispelled by her performances of the songs, all sung in attractively-nuanced Italian. To begin with, we were given an evocation of an exotic land by Alessandro Scarlatti, “Già il sole dal Gange” (The sun above the Ganges), filled with delight and wonderment of the scene’s romance and colour, followed by a love-song “Se tu m’ami, se sospiri” (If you love me, if you sigh) by Pergolesi, one in which the singer used the occasionally florid passagework to great expressive effect, elsewhere catching the song’s melancholy.  Doubt exists regarding whether Benedetto Marcello actually wrote “Il mio bel foco” (My joyful ardour), but the song is a great one, tricky to negotiate, with plenty of judicious breath-control needed. Both singer and pianist realised the work’s “minor-key” feeling with impressive poise, and gave us finely-controlled upward surges of feeling at the song’s climactic points. Durante’s “Danza, danza, fanciulla gentile” (Dance gentle girl) scampered this way and that in an attractively elfin manner, the musicians working hard to compensate for the church’s rather unresonant acoustic, a true, but dry-ish sound.

The three Vaughan Williams songs which followed included “Linden Lea”, whose melody, although the composer’s own, is probably his most well-known tribute to English folk-song after his orchestral setting of “Greensleeves”. Described as a “Dorset song” by the composer, the setting is of verses by William Barnes, from a collection “Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset dialect”. Janey MacKenzie’s singing gave a “fresh-as-paint” feeling to the work from the outset, though I felt the words of the second verse needed a touch more “point”. The singer’s focus was resharpened with the third verse’s declamatory, almost operatic utterances, melting touchingly into a final remembrance of the low-leaning apple tree at the end – a nice performance. The second song “Silent Noon” brought out long, strong lines, singer and pianist filling out their tones nicely, and the ensuing flowing movement transporting us briefly to realms of rapt enchantment, before pitilessly moving things on once again. And I thought the beautiful backward-looking high note from the singer near the end at the word “song” very affecting. Gorgeously gurgly piano-playing from Robyn Jaquiery set “The Water Mill” on its way, the singer having to negotiate some treacherous rhythmic eddyings and sudden becalmings in the vocal line throughout, perhaps needing, I thought, to give a little bit more juice to the lyrical episodes in places for more of a”storytelling” effect. Otherwise singer and pianist deftly captured much of the subservience of the lives of the miller and his family to the “time-turning” motions of the water-mill, the song’s chief protagonist.

As a prelude to the Poulenc song-cycle “La courte paille” (The short straw), Janey MacKenzie entertained us briefly with an account of the student experiences in Paris of her sometimes vocal-coach Donald Munro, who would turn pages for the composer Francis Poulenc at the piano accompanying Munro’s teacher, baritone Pierre Bernac. The Poulenc cycle is a setting of children’s nonsense poems by Maurice Carême, the music entirely characteristic of this belovedly characterful composer, and vividly brought to life by both musicians. From the opening “Le sommeil” (The Sleep), with its languid sweetness, through the mischievous “Quelle aventure!” (What an adventure!), whose antics brought laughter to our lips, the salon-like “La reine de coeur” (The Queen of Hearts), and the nervy energies of “Ba, Be, Bi, Bo, Bu”, both singer and pianist brought a wealth of characterisations to life, leading our pleasurable expectations ever onward to the next vignette. The musical distillations of the angel musicians seemed straightforward compared to the occasional chromatic venturings of both “Le cafaron” (The baby carafe), and “Lune d’Avril” (April Moon), the latter’s declamatory homage to the moon fearlessly brought off by the singer, and nicely rounded by a beautiful piano postlude.

For a lunchtime concert, the fare was richly satisfying, concluding with some of Aaron Copland’s “Old American Songs”. Beginning with the Shaker song “Simple Gifts”,  Janey MacKenzie nicely differentiated between the slightly held-back first stanza, and the richly-wrought progression towards the certainty of attaining “true simplicity”. After a less-than-certain start, “The Little Horses” got into its stride, both musicians enjoying the “riding into the dark” episodes, and back to the reprise of the lullaby with nary a further mishap. The good humour of “Ching-a-ring Chaw” and the hymn-like American dream-time “At the River” made a good contrast, the restraint of the latter a perfect foil for the final item, a children’s nonsense song “I Bought Me a Cat”, the singer’s deliciously-characterised animal voices capped off by her newly-purchased man’s honeyed tones at the beginning of the final verse – though, of course, the cat still gets the last word!