Month: August 2010

Trio Boyarski (Ben Baker – violin) entertain with food, drink and strings

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Schubert: String Trio in B flat, D 581; Beethoven: String Trio in G major, Op. 9, no. 1; Dohnanyi: Serenade, Op.10; K. Boyarski: Mosaique Musicale

Trio Boyarsky: Ben Baker(violin), Konstantin Byarsky (viola), Amelia Jakobsson-Boyarsky (cello) – Capital Theatre Productions

Old St. Paul’s, Mulgrave Street

Friday, 20 August 2010, 5.30pm

About 90-100 people attended the concert; the rather odd hour prompted the organisers to sell drinks, sandwiches, muffins and chocolate bars before the concert and during the interval – an excellent idea.

While the printed programme gave plenty of information about the young performers (Ben is just 20),the works played were simply listed, with no programme notes, and not even the tempi markings of the movements.  Ben Baker gave spoken introductions to the items – very brief in the case of the Schubert, longer for the Beethoven including historical background.  The Dohnanyi and the work by the violist in the trio both received good introduction.

The concert opened with a truly lovely sound, right from the first chord of the Schubert, partly at least due to the warm wooden acoustic of the building.  There followed beautiful phrasing and shimmering tone throughout the trio.

Boyarsky’s rather small viola did not have the effulgent resonance of the violas in the NZSO, which were so highly praised by conductor Richard Gill in the Town Hall last night, but the playing, as of all three musicians, was of a very high standard indeed. It was a very enjoyable rendition.

The Beethoven began with a little more vibrato than I would have liked, in the dramatic opening chords.  But it grew into a very fine performance; assured, accurate playing. Each player had impressively fluent bowing action.

It was strange that there was little eye contact between the performers, but it didn’t seem to matter: nuances were faithfully observed.  The first two movements are sombre in mood, and if there was not always a depth of feeling apparent, this will come as the players mature.

The melodies the composer assigned to the different instruments were effectively given prominence, especially in the third movement.  In the quick finale there were beautifully graded dynamics, before the spirited ending.

Dohnanyi’s romantic Serenade contrasted with the previous two works, and the style of playing reflected this.  There was lovely tone, and good dynamic contrasts.  As in the other works, these talented young musicians were technically accomplished.

Boyarski’s work, dedicated to his wife, the cellist, made a slow build-up through low notes, followed by repeated, rapid passages leading to a slow melody, then through slow modulations to a violin melody with pizzicato accompaniment.  It traversed many moods.  There was extensive and interesting use of harmonics, and a robust cello solo.  It then livened up and became frenetic and discordant.

I wasn’t sure if ‘Mosaique’ in the title meant ‘to do with Moses’, or Mosaic as in a pattern of coloured tiles or gems – I suspect the latter.

Towards the end, the piece seemed to get bogged down, but it was an interesting and worthwhile work.

Although the addition of continuous seat cushions has made the pews in Old St. Paul’s somewhat more comfortable, the minimal depth of the seats (fine for Anglican services, where standing and kneeling are intrinsic) means they are not ideal for a full-length concert – at least, not for anyone over about five feet tall (or should that be 1.5 metres?)

Another matter to do with the audience rather than the players is the perennial one of coughing.  I would have thought that open-mouthed coughing at concerts would be a ‘no-no’ on health risk grounds as well as those of being disruptive of the music.  Cloth handkerchiefs (better as stifling tools than paper tissues) are not expensive, nor is the crook of one’s elbow.  If I can’t suppress a cough I normally endeavour to cough with a closed mouth.  It can be stressful, but it can be done, with greatly reduced volume the result.

Close Encounter with Dvorak – Richard Gill and the NZSO break it down….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Close Encounters – NZSO breaks it down

Richard Gill (conductor and presenter)

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Wellington Town Hall

Friday, August 20th (Dvorak – Symphony No.9 “From the New World”)

(Review also by Julia Wells)

Australian conductor Richard Gill runs a series of educational-cum-entertainment programmes with the Sydney Symphony, called “Discovery”, making classical music more approachable for people who perhaps haven’t had musical backgrounds or previous exposure to what’s commonly called  “classical” music. He recently brought this idea to Wellington, working with the NZSO over two evenings and concentrating on two of the most popular symphonies in the whole of the classical music repertoire, Bethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony on the first night and Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony the following evening. I attended the second of the two evenings, devoted to the Dvorak Symphony, and enjoyed it immensely on a number of counts, the first being that I was re-acquainted with a work I had previously heard so many times I thought I’d gotten tired of the music, and fell in love with it all over again!

Many people will recall those early television programmes featuring Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic presenting a series called “Young People’s Concerts”. Richard Gill’s brief was different in that his presentation was designed for a much greater age-range of people, perhaps more specifically adult- than child-oriented, though his out-going, easeful manner and the direct, uncomplicated style of his delivery made what he was saying readily accessible to children of about ten years and over. Of course, it’s many years since I saw and heard Bernstein’s television broadcasts, so comparisons are even more irrelevant – but without having quite the charisma of Bernstein, I thought Richard Gill a charming, personable and informative guide, one who took pains to emphasise that we were entitled to think what we liked about the music that we heard, and let our own intelligent imaginations work on the sounds and come up with their own valid impressions. For many people I’m sure this would have been something of a revelation, quite a liberating and empowering attitude with which to approach this “thing” called  “classical music”.

Gill had the inestimable advantage of working with the NZSO, whose playing he praised highly at the conclusion of the evening, calling the band a “national treasure” and imploring his audience to support the orchestra “by buying lots of tickets to its concerts”. Throughout the evening the rapport between conductor and players seemed excellent, judging from the quality of the playing, a couple of ensemble slips apart, which could have been put down to the “stop-go” nature of the demonstration – when it came to the performance of entire movements, the playing was of an excellent standard throughout.  I myself would have thought, however, that the music would have been better served had the orchestra played the entire symphony, for people to get the range and sweep of the whole, and for the players to be able to generate something of what was understandably lacking in the performance – a sense of line which would have resulted in greater rhythmic character in places and even better-defined episodes along the way. Overall, the conductor’s stop-go analysis of the work needed, I think, to coalesce into some kind of fruition by the end, and the concert’s format was in many ways the ideal platform on which to do this. However, opinions concerning the purpose and scope of the presentation will vary; and certainly people will have at least come away from Gill’s presentation with a better understanding of the origin and nature of this, one of the most famous of all symphonies.

The true star of the evening was probably the NZSO’s cor anglais principal, Michael Austin; and it was Richard Gill who facilitated the limelight to which he subjected this normally self-effacing player. The conductor began his analysis of the symphony with the Largo (for so many people, the ‘way into”  this symphony), and asked Michael Austin to come forward and take a concerto soloist’s prominence, so that people could watch as well as hear him play. The player’s tone and his phrasing of the famous tune was exemplary, truly lump-in-the-throat stuff for at least one listener; and the orchestral accompaniment had that hushed, concentrated quality that’s so easily given scant attention, but appreciated all the more when, as was done here, broken into its constituent parts and analysed. As anybody knows who tries to play on a piano or any other instrument transcription of a well-known piece of classical music, the art of composition is often one which conceals art; and Gill was able to alert us as to the extent of Dvorak’s artistic achievement in creating those sounds that over-familiarity often leads us to take for granted.

Gill made many interesting and entertaining observations during his presentation – some of which had the orchestra players laughing out loud along with his audience – rounding out the nature and context of Dvorak’s most famous Symphony, talking about the composer’s American connections, the influence of Wagner’s music on the symphony and the ultimate faith Dvorak had in the more “classical” examples for composers set by people such as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.  Gill touched briefly on what I thought was a very important point, one that he could have developed and cited elsewhere in the symphony, the use of recurring motifs throughout the work, a practice that, of course scholars and traditionalists of the time frowned on, as it contravened “the classical rules” – we were told that Dvorak was considered as “showing off” in doing this by the music establishment, which was a nice way of putting it. Gill talked a lot about the music’s “Czech” character, intending to put into perspective the ideas that were held for many years held about this symphony, that the tunes were American Negro or Indian melodies which the composer was either quoting or copying. A pity nothing from the work’s Scherzo was played, a brilliant demonstration of both the composer’s use of national Czech dance-forms and his fondness for cross-rhythms.

However much I thought that the overall approach to the work was a little chaotic in terms of its analysis, my own experiences of getting to know new music bore out Richard Gill’s way with his presentation – often there’s a single idea, either melodic or rhythmic, that for some reason impinges in the memory of the listener, resembling a seed around which the rest of the organism gradually takes shape. After all, the purpose of the evening’s presentation was to facilitate this very process, in fact to fulfil the conductor’s own stated dictum that “this music is abstract art – it isn’t ABOUT anything concrete, but depends entirely for its effect on the listener’s very individual reaction to the sounds used by the composer” – or words to that effect. I was sorry that I’d missed the previous evening’s analysis of the Beethoven symphony, and can only congratulate Richard Gill and the members of the NZSO for giving us such a delightful and resonating musical experience.

As if to further ‘validate” the event’s degree of communication between performers and audience, I asked eighteen year-old Julia Wells, a piano student and first-year tertiary student, who also attended the concert, for her impressions; and received the following evaluation of the experience:

“Overall I found the performance very enjoyable. There was a good balance between Richard Gill’s discussion of the music and the actual performance, although at times I felt like hearing slightly more of the actual piece. My favourite part was his demonstration of the layering of sounds in the orchestra. He brought out the difference of sound when the flute combined with the oboe and the effect of them combining with brass instruments. This was shown most clearly in the second movement, which I thought was the strongest part of the presentation. One thing I would have liked more of was contextual information – Gill’s comments on the work’s reception, and also about Wagner’s influence on Dvorak, were interesting; and I would have appreciated more information about other contemporaries and the musical context, and also about the Czech tradition Dvorak was drawing on.”

This was an NZSO Community Programme, “proudly supported” by The Community Trust of Wellington. It’s something that I think the orchestra could look at doing more often – provided the right person was found for the job. Richard Gill obviously had the necessary communicator’s touch, and the musical skills to demonstrate what he was trying to express with the orchestra. All we need, really, is somebody like him, or else an embryonic Leonard Bernstein…….

Die Fledermaus – quintessential operetta

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington G&S Light Opera

DIE FLEDERMAUS  :  JOHANN STRAUSS Jnr.

Operetta in Three Acts

Director: David Skinner

Cast:  Malinda Di Leva (Adele) /  Helen Lear (Rosalinde) / Jonathan Abernethy (Alfredo) / Chris Berentson (Eisenstein) / Kieran Rayner (Dr Falke) / Kevin O’Kane (Dr.Blind) / Derek Miller (Frank) / Megan McCarthy (Ida) / Alison Hodge (Prince Orlofsky) / John Goddard (Frosch)

WGSLO Chorus and Orchestra

Hugh McMillan (conductor)

Wellington Opera House

Thursday 19th August 2010

Mention the word “operetta” to most members of the theatre- and concert-going public, and probably one of two works will most readily come to mind, either Johann Strauss Jnr’s “Die Fledermaus” (The Bat), or Franz Lehar’s “Die Lustige Witwe” (The Merry Widow). None of the Savoy operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan can match their Viennese counterparts for charm, glamour and romance, and of the French equivalents, only Jacques Offenbach’s “Orphée aux enfers” (Orpheus in the Underworld) has made a comparable impact on the English-speaking world. For general all-round appeal, and an attractive musical style which occasionally suggests “grander” opera, the two Viennese classics are certainly hard to beat.

All credit, then, to the Wellington G&S Light Opera for presenting “Die Fledermaus”, the younger Strauss’s light-hearted and affectionate “take” on the finer points and foibles of Viennese society, a production whose musical virtues carried the day, even if some of the acting and stage business was occasionally somewhat pedestrian (Act One suffered the most in this respect, with the characters often slow to take up their cues, or indulging in too much unfocused movement). Best in terms of dramatic impact was the Second Act, the party at Prince Orlofsky’s, where the chorus work diverted our theatrical sensibilities, and the superbly-projected “presence” of the Orlovsky, mezzo-soprano Alison Hodge, commanded the stage with a worldly-wise delivery of her imperiously droll directive “Chacun au son gout!”. Another star turn (non-singing) was the scene-stealing tipsiness of Frosch, the drunken jailer, played by John Goddard, whose monologues at the beginning of Act Three in the town jail were richly fortified with comic timing and an engaging plausibility.

In general, though, it was the singing and orchestral playing which better-defined the ebb and flow of the story and the interaction between the characters – thus the opening scenes between Helen Lear’s Rosalinde, Jonathan Abernathy’s Alfredo and Malinda Di Leva’s Adele truly sparkled when they were singing, each having the ability to use the energised quality of their voices to give force and complusion to the drama. Helen Lear’s Rosalinde was attractive, and alternately vivacious and winsome, while her would-be lover Jonathan Abernathy used what sounded like a lovely lyric tenor voice to mellifluous effect. And Malinda Di Leva’s Adele made an initially lovely vocal impression during that opening scene (a gorgeously-delivered duet between her and Helen Lear), even if, in the Third Act’s “Talent” aria her tone seemed to slightly harden in places, though she was never less than accurate and musical. Both Chris Berentson as Eisenstein and Kieran Rayner as Dr.Falke, though generally seeming less at ease dramatically, were again able to flesh out their characters via their singing (making a creditable job of their “plotting” duet), even if their dialogue and stage movements didn’t have sufficient liquid flow for the comedy of their intrigue to properly ignite.

Of the others, Kevin O’Kane acquitted himself with appropriate bluster and energy as the incompetent lawyer Dr. Blind, while Derek Miller’s jail governor Frank spoke, sang and acted with spirit and character (the energetic “leave-taking” trio was superbly sung by the bogus husband, distracted wife and bemused prison governor!) Again, the stage business, both dramatic and technical, didn’t have the sweep and elan to match the singing – the “farewell kiss” was somewhat inconsequential, and the end-of-act curtain was much too slow in falling! Things improved markedly during Act Two, as the Chorus provided a well-rounded focus with their singing and deportment, and the principals taking part in the opening exchanges gave their characters plenty of energy and projection – great acting from both Malinda Di Leva and Megan McCarthy as none-too-affectionate sisters at a society party, got the Act away to a spirited start, and of course Alison Hodge as Orlovsky was a tower of strength. As well, Adele’s famous “Laughing Song” was delivered by Malinda Di Leva with just the right amount of corresponding control and panache – a nice perfomance.

I did think Helen Lear less characterful as the “Hungarian Countess” both singing and acting-wise, than in the First Act, which surprised me – I thought she might have brought more theatrical sultriness to the deception, instead of the relative inertia which overtook both her and Chris Berentson in the watch-seduction scene, one that needed far more life and sparkle between the characters. Fortunately, there was plenty of spirit in the salute to the efficacies of King Champagne, with both Adele and Eisenstein bringing energy and gaiety to their contributions; while Kieran Rayner’s Falke came into his own with a confident, and tenderly-phrased “Brother dear, and Sister sweet”, the ensemble bringing some lovely nuances and colourings to their delivery of the vocal lines.

Act Three’s opening was very properly dominated by John Goddard’s comical Frosch, the drunken jailer. Malinda di Leva, despite a touch of stridency here and there, made a fine job of Adele’s “talent” song, and, as the characters arrived in various states of compromise, both Helen Lear’s Rosalinde and Chris Berentson’s Eisenstein moved up dramatic notches from the Second Act in the denouments of each deception which followed. Spirited singing from the company brought the show to a proper whirlwind of a conclusion.

Despite the occasional unevennesses of pace, moments of non-synchronised theatrical interaction, and some lack of polish to detail, there was sufficient impetus generated on stage for the story to hold together, generated largely by singing and orchestral playing that provided a focus and an undertow of movement which helped energise people. Director David Skinner may not have replicated quite the frisson of theatrical delight he witnessed in Vienna in 1970 (a well-told story among the programme notes), but he was able to generate plenty of enthusiasm among his company, which, along with energy and purpose from the orchestral players and conductor Hugh McMillan, was enough for the show to be an evening’s worthwhile entertainment.

Bowing and blowing – Orchestral Concert from NZSM Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NZSM Orchestra Series – Concert Five

Strings, Winds and Brass

MOZART – Divertimento for Strings in D Major / JS BACH (arr. REED) – My Heart is Filled with Longing / REED – First Suite for Wind Band

ROSSINI (arr.BRITTEN) – Soirées Musicales / TCHAIKOVSKY – Serenade for Strings in C Major

New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

Conductors: Martin Riseley (Mozart, Tchaikovsky)

Kenneth Young (JS Bach, Reed, Rossini arr.Britten)

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

Tuesday 17th August 2010

A lovely concert – framed by two adorable works for string orchestra, with centres spliced by plenty of tangy wind-band textures. One of those tangy centres was a work I had not heard for some years, Britten’s Soirées Musicales (orchestrations of Rossini’s music), and never as a work for winds only, as here (the arrangement made by the composer). Another work, the Tchaikovsky Serenade, I had never actually heard live in concert (hard to believe, really, especially considering how well I know it!). So, there was plenty of interest there for me, and, I would have thought, for others, though, alas, not so!  It’s true that Tuesday evening tends not to be a popular concert-going night; but Wellingtonians were more-than-usually conspicuous by their absence from St.Andrew’s Church, which would have been disappointing for the concert’s organisers. I can only repeat Henry V’s words from Shakespeare, by way of admonishing people for their non-attendance at such an attractive-sounding and enjoyably musical affair – “And gentlemen of England now a-bed shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here” (pace Shakespeare, I would amend the admonition to include BOTH sexes, together or separately!).

Martin Riseley, in the relatively unfamiliar role of conductor (at any rate for Wellington audiences), directed the School of Music’s strings in a performance of one of Mozart’s utterly delightful Divertimenti of 1772. written during the composer’s Salzburg years. One would never know from the music that the composer was under the baleful jurisdiction of the autocratic Archbishop Colloredo, who had very little regard for musicians and their works. This particular work, in the sunny key of D major, simply bubbles with infectious energy and gaiety in its outer movements, framing an Italienate operatic-like slow movement featuring one of the composer’s loveliest tunes. Altogether it’s an attractive, if deceptively fluent-sounding work, the opening of which the NZSM string students addressed with bright, rich tones and fluent dynamic shadings. Some of the quicker articulations were a bit blurred, though the music’s inner voicings remained nicely discernable, even if the occasional worried looks on some of the players’ faces while addressing Mozart’s running figurations betrayed the ensemble’s intermittent unease. Generally, the Andante’s slower music brought forth a more sonorous, true-toned response, a lovely violin ascent in thirds characterising the generally sensitive playing throughout. The feathery touch at the beginning of the finale was also beautifully brushed in, and the more brilliant running passages that followed were splendid. The first-time-round six-note ascents in thirds were a shade untidy, the ensemble making a much neater job of the same passage later in the movement, and rounding the exhilarations of the music off with some sharp chording at the end.

Strings made way for winds, including brass and percussion, for the next bracket of items, along with a change of conductor, Kenneth Young for Martin Riseley. Two of the pieces were arranged or written by Alfred Reed, a name new to me, but well-known in the United States for his composing activities, primarily for wind ensembles. Reed’s arrangement of JS Bach’s Organ Prelude BWV 727 “Herzlich tut mich Verlangen” (My Heart is filled with Longing) for wind band brought out a beautiful liquid-toned sound, with enough of a plaintive edge to the tone to give it a most attractive plangency, a very clarinet/saxophone-coloured sound throughout the first refrain. An added array of flutes gave the tune a light, frothy descant the second time through, one or two stumbles of little matter; while the timpani and brass which subsequently joined in sounded amazing! – almost too much so, in those confined St.Andrew’s spaces, which, however, after the deluge of sounds had quietened, imparted a glowing ambience to the hushed postlude.  Reed’s First Suite for Wind Band followed, the four movements vividly played and characterised by the ensemble – the opening march had real bite, everything skirling and stirring, with saxophones adding jazzy impulses, while by contrast the following Melody movement relied on colour and atmosphere to set off the various lyrical solo instrumental lines, with beautiful contributions from horn, oboe and euphonium. Both the Rag and the Gallop were tremendous fun, with some droll percussion touches in the former’s trio section, and Young encouraging his players to abandon caution and go for it in the crackling finale, the building’s spaces rattling and resonating with the riotous sounds.

But for me the real delight from the wind band’s contribution to the concert was Britten’s Soirées Musicales, Kenneth Young communicating to and bringing out a real sense of enjoyment of the music from his players – to begin with, a snappy, cheeky March, with nicely articulated solos, spiced by delightful contributions from piccolo and xylophone, among others. Then came a sweetly-sung Canzonetta, a pastorale with a “yodelling” figure reminiscent of Walton’s”Facade”, with the trumpet adding to the gorgeously sentimental flavour, one which the subsequent “Tirolese” number sought to cheer up with hearty beer-hall oom-pahs, gurgling chuckles and irruptions of semi-intoxicated “frohlichkeit”, impulses that one expects would come naturally to most music students worth their salt. The half-ghostly Bolero, with its opening Schumannesque figures wove a sultry spell, its sinuous exotic strains beautifully ritualised by deftly-applied touches from the percussion; while the concluding Tarantella whirled vertiginously and deliriously – perhaps a trifle too fast for the dance-triplets to properly “tell”? But overall, there were transports of delight for this listener, and reactions along those lines at the piece’s end from others present as well.

Finally, strings again for the Tchaikovsky Serenade; which began with a lovely, rich and full-blooded opening chord from the players, conductor Martin Riseley encouraging a string sound with plenty of body, which eminently suited the work. The allegro wasn’t pushed, giving the music plenty of room to point and phrase, the ‘cello’s articulations particularly eloquent. I thought the playing had an attractive out-of-doors feel to it, the players  “tightening up”, and losing their tone and ensemble only when a degree of anxiety pushed the tempo along a bit too much. The second-movement Waltz sounded gorgeous at the beginning, the music nicely maintaining its poise until those repeated Italienate ascents in thirds were reached, when the ensemble became unstuck – however, the ‘cellos and violas sounded rich and full in their repeat of the big tune shortly afterwards. The beautiful Elegy featured songful violin lines over pizzicati accompaniment, a touch of strain from all departments during the violin’s descant over the lower strings, but a sonorous coming-together for the big tune afterwards, the pleasure disturbed only by a slight scrappiness at the tops of phrases in the movement’s coda. That out-of-doors ambience returned for the finale’s introduction, even if the atmosphere of expectation was slightly sabotaged by players and conductor having to turn over a page of score just before the beginning of the allegro (grins all round from both musicians and listeners). The players generated plenty of energy, their finish a bit raw in places, but perhaps appropriately “pesante” – again, the lower strings shone with the beautiful second subject, encouraging matching fervent tones from the violins. The coda caught the sense of festive closure exactly – Martin Riseley would surely have been pleased with his players’ warmth and energy in realising such an enjoyable performance of the work.

Two choirs join to expose Salieri the choral composer

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Mass in D (Hofkapellmeister Messe) and Te Deum for the Coronation of Emperor Leopold II; La tempesta di mare and Overture: Armida

The Festival Singers and the Wainuiomata Choir, and orchestra, conducted by David Beattie

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart

Sunday 15 August at 2.30pm

My colleague Rosemary Collier allowed herself to lament that so many choirs had scheduled their concerts in such a short span this month; and the overload continues. On Wednesday 11th there was a concert by the choir of Sacred Heart Cathedral, augmented by singers from Christine Argyle’s Nota Bene, who had joined forces with the Choir of Christchurch Boys’ High School, conducted by Don Whelan. They sang Widor’s Mass for Two Choirs and Two Organs; I heard about it too late and was very disappointed to have missed it.

This past weekend, there have been two performances of Monteverdi‘s monumental Vespers of 1610 by Musica Sacra at St Mary of the Angels, and this concert under review of choral and orchestral music by Salieri.  Next weekend comes Bach’s B Minor Mass from the Orpheus Choir (Sunday 22 August); the following Sunday, the 29th, the Bach Choir tackles two great liturgical works: Cherubini’s first Requiem (C minor) of 1816 and Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir; and on Saturday 4 September the Tudor Consort sings major works by Schütz and Domenico Scarlatti.

The Salieri concert involved two choirs; choirs that, like so many others, struggle to attract male voices, and they made an excellent decision to combine for a particularly interesting concert. It was given entirely to the compositions of one of those well-known but little heard composers that populate the pages of music history.

Thanks to that popular but disgraceful film Amadeus, the 19th century myth about Salieri’s role in Mozart’s death, together with an almost entirely false representation of Mozart himself, did serious damage to music history and to the reputations of two composers. They left the impression that Salieri might indeed have been a murderer.

But it has also stimulated curiosity about Salieri and has led to the exploration of his music by orchestras, choirs and opera houses around the world. Opera Otago produced his Falstaff in 2006.

In fact, the two composers were quite close, and though Mozart was disappointed not to get the position of Hofkapellmeister to the court of Joseph II, which was given to Salieri and for whose coronation he wrote this Mass in D, there is plenty of evidence of a normal friendly relationship.

In his last surviving letter from 14 October 1791, Mozart tells his wife that he collected Salieri in his carriage and drove him to the opera, to see The Magic Flute, and he writes that Salieri was enthusiastic: “He heard and saw with all his attention, and from the overture to the last choir there was not piece that didn’t elicit a ‘Bravo!’ or ‘Bello!’ out of him”.

If there had been jealousy on either side, it was much more likely to have been on Mozart’s, for Salieri was by far the more successful composer in Vienna for most of the 1780s.

For example, when Salieri was appointed Kapellmeister in 1788 he revived Figaro instead of bringing out a new opera of his own; and when he went to the 1790 coronation festivities in Frankfurt for Leopold II as Holy Roman Emperor he had three Mozart masses in his luggage. Mozart was passed over for any official role at the coronation, but he went at his own risk and expense, played his piano concerto in D, K 537 but failed to make much impact.

The Te Deum performed in the second half of this concert was Salieri’s offering for Leopold’s coronation in Frankfurt.

Though the orchestra, drawn mainly from players in the Wellington Chamber Orchestra, announced itself with a degree of uncertainty in the first bars, the entry of the full choir in the Kyrie of the Mass in D reassured me that I was in for an interesting time. The tone was serious without pomposity, revealing a work furnished with attractive and original melody, and put together with taste and polish. It was imposing, and could easily have been mistaken for a liturgical work of Mozart or Haydn. But the musical quality was not uniformly maintained, for example in the rather more routine Credo, though its ‘Et Resurrexit’ was jolly enough. Its virtues lay in its sheer compositional skill and variety, and Salieri’s flair for dramatic colouring.

That the music’s strengths were so clear was due in some part to the performance. Though the orchestra had its weaknesses, a concertato string group in single parts contributed happily; a cello solo in the Gloria, and violin and cello in the Benedictus, acquitted themselves capably in charming episodes. On the whole the festive orchestration, with prominent trumpets and timpani, created the sort of ceremonial effect, including a quotation from the Austrian National Anthem in the Agnus Dei, not far short of comparable works by Mozart.

On the other hand, the decision to draw solo voices from the choir itself was generally less successful: better trained voices were needed, or these episodes should have been left instead to small ensembles. However, the full choir, even on occasion, a cappella, excelled themselves and the effects were often exciting. The Agnus Dei with its arresting pauses, the dramatic impact of ‘Dona nobis pacem’ spoke of a composer of great skill and considerable gifts.

The second half was taken largely by the Coronation Te Deum. The church’s organ (Jonathan Berkahn), together with the orchestra, provided the accompaniment for the full choir, with conspicuous attention to balance and phrasing by David Beattie (conductor of the Wainuiomata Choir); the result was an opening of considerable grandeur. If not impeccable, the orchestra again gave the performance all the colour and rhythmic élan needed; distinguished by a high trumpet at the words ‘Dignare, Domine’. Although Salieri demonstrated his confidence by employing nothing but a plain major triad as pivot for the final section, ‘In te Domine’, a composer of greater genius was needed to carry off such a self-imposed challenge.

The second half had begun with two opera overtures: Armida and La tempesta di mare. I can find no corroboration of the programme notes’ statement that it was the overture to the opera Europa riconosciutta (though that opera opens with a storm) which Salieri wrote for the opening of the La Scala theatre in Milan in 1778; it was also used to re-open La Scala in 2004 after major restoration.

Both overtures were products of the Sturm und Drang era – a reaction against the Enlightenment, Classicism and the rationalism of the earlier 18th century, a precursor of Romanticism – that produced Haydn’s symphonies of the early 1770s, like Il Distratto, and Schiller’s play Die Räuber which Verdi turned into I Masnadieri:.rhetorical, expressing extreme emotion, imitating noises of nature, rising and falling scales and arpeggios, ostinati, drones, dramatic percussion, and… some iffy wind intonation.

Armida was one of Salieri’s most important Italian operas, dated 1774, as a protégé of Gluck whose influential Iphigénie en Aulide appeared in that same year. The story, taken from that fertile Renaissance source of theatre stories for the next three centuries, Tasso’s La Gerusalemme liberata, was also set by composers from Lully and Vivaldi, Handel, Gluck, Jommelli, Mysliveček, Sacchini, Haydn, Rossini (his gained attention through a spectacular production this year by the Metropolitan Opera, New York), and, most surprisingly, Dvořák. The overture was a little more substantial than La tempesta di mare, with again, clear signs of Gluck’s influence. The depiction of the magic in the story took a form that suggested to me pantomime rather than anything more supernatural.

These pieces did less to enhance Salieri’s musical reputation than the two choral works, but were nevertheless interesting in fleshing out one’s view of opera in the 1770s.

The concert was a welcome adventure, carried off with sensibility and musical diligence.

Resplendent Monteverdi at St Mary of the Angels

Posted on by Peter Mechen

MONTEVERDI  – Vespers 1610

Baroque Voices / St.Mary of the Angels Choir /  Academia Sancta Mariae Ensemble

Robert Oliver (director)

St. Mary of the Angels Church

Boulcott St., Wellington

Saturday August 14th 2010

No work has inspired more disagreements among both scholars and musicians regarding both its history and performance practice than Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610. The British musicologist Denis Arnold once wrote about the work, “To perform it is to court disaster. To write about it is to alienate some of one’s best friends”. Happily for Wellington audiences, no such strictures seemed to hang over the head of Musica Sacra concert series director Robert Oliver, who organised and directed two performances of the work in the splendidly atmospheric precincts of St Mary of the Angels Church, marking the 400th anniversary of the music’s publication in Venice. Oliver took what some people still considered to be a courageous step by performing the work with ten solo singers, one to a part, drawn from Pepe Becker’s Baroque Voices group, and accompanied by an ensemble of baroque strings, cornets and sackbuts, two organs and two theorbos. I was told by one of the singers that a friend’s reaction to the “one-singer-to-a-part” idea was expressed in tones of sympathetic disbelief. However Oliver’s faith in his “virtuoso singers and players with a brilliant command of all the instruments and techniques” (a quote from the programme notes) was richly vindicated by the splendours of the ensuing performance.

Oliver had directed a version of the work previously in Wellington a number of years ago with a choir of nearly thirty singers and a mixture of baroque and modern instruments, but felt that, with the advantages of more recent research into Monteverdi’s original intentions, plus the increased skills of early instrument players, the time was nigh to tackle the work afresh with up-to-date knowledge and performance practices. The aim was to reproduce more closely the sound that Monteverdi was believed to have had in mind for the work. The result was, in a word, stunning – singers and instrumentalists surpassed themselves in evoking a sound-world that seemed at one and the same time of the period and timeless, casting a potent spell over the  imaginations and sensibilities of the audience members throughout the evening. Such occasional roughnesses as there were seemed so infrequent as to be of little consequence when set against the sweep and power of the whole, qualities which continually transcended the earthly and invoked the divine.

The church’s antiphonal potentialities were nicely realised right from the beginning, the St Mary of the Angels’ tenor choir voices intoning the opening “Deus in adiutorium” from the choir-loft at the rear of the church, to which the full ensemble of singers and instrumentalists replied from the front across the spaces, investing the words “Domine ad adiuvandum me festina” (Lord, make haste to help me) with truly age-old fervour and exotic colour. From this moment on the performance never flagged, the solo singers confident and nearly always accurate and secure with both their soaring lines and their often treacherously decorative impulses of melismatic energy, and the instrumental playing lustrously-toned and scalp-tinglingly characterful. Having solo voices gave the vocal lines such creative character, in the slower polyphonies the strands both blending and activating each other’s timbral differences, while in the quicker music the flavours and colours of the combinations produced occasionally an almost kaleidoscopic effect.

Sopranos Pepe Becker and Jayne Tankersley relished both their duet-style combinations and the more antiphonally-placed exchanges, their very different voices producing a real frisson of interaction, very marked, naturally enough, in their big duet Pulchra es, whose music I thought had a wonderfully charged eroticism. Pepe Becker floated her voice gloriously at “Averte oculos”, and Jayne Tankersley, so physically expressive by way of response, brought a sense of urgency to “Me avolare fecerunt”, her body appearing to physically choreograph the intensities of what her voice was doing in an extremely involving way. In other places, such as during Psalm 112’s Laudate Pueri Dominum (beautifully-sustained tones from both singers at “Ut collocet eum cum principibus”) and also throughout Lauda Jerusalem (Psalm 147), the antiphonal interactions and dovetailings of the sopranos made for a wholly sensual sound-effect, in fact highlighting what the rest of the ensemble was also doing so delightfully. Altos Andrea Cochrane and Christopher Warwick had fewer exposed lines, but made the most of their opportunities, most notably in the Hymn Ave Maris Stella, where each sang a verse most mellifluously, and also within the concluding Magnificat, where their steady, sustained tones provided a perfect foil for the more energetic and decorative lines of the tenors and basses.

The last-mentioned played their part as well, with the tenor parts particularly prominent. Both John Beaglehole and John Fraser contributed strong, sonorous tones to the many ensembles, and fearlessly tackled their various solos, most of which were resplendent with decorative detail. John Beaglehole made a strong beginning to the motet Nigra Sum, his voice confidently projected and nicely focused, surviving an uncomfortable patch of intonation at “Flores apparuerunt” to recover his poise somewhat for “Tempus putationis advenit”. Beaglehole and Fraser brought the two questioning Seraphims beautifully to life at ‘Duo Seraphim” before being joined by a third tenor, Philip Roderick, for the affirmation of the Blessed Trinity in heaven. And in the Motet Audi Coelum Beaglehole’s ecstatic phrases praising Mary, Mother of God, were echoed by Fraser off-stage to evocative effect amid tumultuous interjections by half-a-dozen of the soloists with continuo (it sounded as though there were more), beginning at the word “Omnes”, and continuing to the end, including the gentler “Benedicta es”, sung here with richly-focused tones and finely-honed ensemble. If basses David Morriss and Chris Burcin, along with baritone Dimitrios Theodoridis, had less spectacularly exposed material to sing, they still registered a powerful presence, blending beautifully in Dixit Dominus (Psalm 109) at “Judicabit in nationibus”, and contributing strongly-etched lines to Laudate Pueri Dominum (Psalm 112) as well as displaying some thrilling muscularity at “Quia fecit” in the concluding Magnificat.

With true-toned contributions during the Antiphons from the St.Mary of the Angels Choir, directed by Stephen Rowley, a feast of resplendent singing was dished up for our delight throughout, happily matched by the burnished splendour of the instrumental playing from the Academia Sanctae Mariae ensemble, and associated players. Earlier in the year at a Te Papa concert which featured Renaissance madrigals we’d had a taste of Peter Reid’s evocative cornetto playing – but here, with two other cornetto players, as well as sackbuts, recorders and theorbos (enormous lute-like fretted instruments), along with strings and two organs, the potential for instrumental colour and visceral excitement seemed almost too good to be true. The standing ovation which greeted the performers at the end of Saturday evening’s performance well-represented the audience’s astonishment and delight and deep enjoyment at the stellar efforts of singers and players alike. Musica Sacra concert series director Robert Oliver brought to bear his enormous skill and experience in this repertoire with vision and intensity, and in doing so inspired a performance of this legendary work which will surely be talked about in Wellington for years to come.

Birthday presents from Stroma in Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Stroma – Living Toys  (10th Anniversary Concert 2010)

Thomas Adės – Living Toys (1994) / Peter Scholes – Relic (2010) / Alexandra Hay – An Island Doesn’t Either (2010) / Jeroen Speak – Silk Dialogue (VI) (2009) / Iannis Xenakis – Thalleïn (1984)

Stroma: Paula Rae (fl/pc), Peter Dykes (ob/ca), Richard Haynes (cl/bcl), Phil Green (cl), Ben Hoadley (bsn/cbsn), Ed Allen (hn), Mark Carter (tpt), Dave Bremner (tbn), Claire Harris (pf), Thomas Guldborg, Jeremy Fitzsimons (perc), Vesa-Matti Leppanen, Rebecca Struthers, Emma Barron, Kristina Zelinska (vlns), Andrew Thomas (vla), Rowan Prior (vc), Victoria Jones, Matt Cave (db), Su Yi (hps)

Hamish McKeich (conductor)

Ilott Theatre, Wellington

Thursday 12th August 2010

Wellington-based contemporary music group Stroma couldn’t have chosen a more engaging and demonstrably virtuosic ensemble piece than British composer Thomas Adės’ work Living Toys, with which to commence the celebrations marking their tenth anniversary as a performing ensemble. As well as beginning the concert, the piece also gave the evening its truly apposite title, one which seemed to express something of the character of each of the works chosen by the group, an alchemic sense of something having been created in each case which then evolved a life of its own – a metaphor, of course for all artistic creation, but particularly suited to the abstract medium of music. In other ways the sense of occasion regarding the anniversary wasn’t exactly writ-large or over-inflated by the group – the printed programme sweetly featured a modest image of a single burning birthday candle, accompanied by a “thank you” note to the group’s supporters for their encouragement and attendance at concerts over the years. It was the music that did the talking and the ensemble that brought it all to life – an anniversary celebration that proclaimed that Stroma meant to go on as it had begun, the implication being an intention to deliver at least ten more years of exhilarating chamber music.

One of a number of things that was pleasing about the concert was the programming of both New Zealand and overseas works – of course the “double whammy” of such an arrangement was the tacit proclamation that (a) home-grown works could stand alongside pieces by iconic composers such as Thomas Adės and Iannis Xenakis, and (b) local musicians had the skills and interpretative capacities to tackle the best of the contemporary crop, both from home and off-shore. The New Zealand works were freshly-minted, two of them world premieres ( Peter Scholes’ Relic and Alexandra Hay’s An Island Doesn’t Either), and a third, Jeroen Speak’s Silk Dialogue VI, receiving its New Zealand premiere at this concert. Incidentally, two of the musicians in the ensemble played in the world premiere of this work in Australia last year, clarinettist Richard Haynes (for whom the work was written), and flutist Paula Rae, from Melbourne. Rae had to be flown in from Australia on the day before the concert to deputise for Bridget Douglas, Stroma’s regular flute-player, but alas, flu-ridden and temporarily out of action.

Thomas Adės’ 1993 work Living Toys is a kind of chamber symphony in a single movement, but with clearly-defined, often insinuating narrative episodes (a detailed note by the composer was reproduced in the programme). The piece seemed to resemble a continuous interaction of confrontation and persuasion, the sounds alternating rapidly between the two states, with the sharp bite of some of the writing a perfect foil for the lullabyic character of the contrasting episodes, befitting the work’s prefaced programme – a somewhat elliptical account of a child’s dream-fantasies that blurs the divide between sleeping and waking. The raucous squeals of delight right at the work’s beginning quickly moved into narrative mode, with arabesques rolling around a bardic horn solo, the music going on to depict a kind of subconscious Jungian unfolding of imagery involving angels, extinct bison and space-age computers (the iconic H.A.L. from the film 2001 A Space Odyssey even makes an appearance!). Then there were connecting sequences whose anagram-style titles both helped to connect and further complicated the scenario. While it might seem invidious to single out single players in a performance of such a complex ensemble work, one must particularly mention Mark Carter’s brilliant trumpet-playing during the “militia men” sequence of the piece. Conductor Hamish McKeich directed with both energy and patience, steering the players through both concerted and fractured frenzies, and the equally compelling ghostings of timbre and colour that propelled and intensified the work’s course.

On the face of things, any music following Adės’ cornucopian inventiveness might seem to have a hard time making any kind of impression; but both Peter Scholes’ Relic and Alexandra Hay’s An Island Doesn’t Either provided soundscapes of such a different and distinctive order that one’s ear was straightaway led to contemporary equivalents of Schumann’s “different realms” of expression. Scholes’ relatively tonal style evoked a certain exotic element in his work’s colourings and an underlying suggestion of ancient ritual in its rhythmic character. The composer indicated in a programme note a certain fascination with Middle Eastern antiquity and its manifestations, stimulated by a visit to Egypt and the prospect of working with Arabic musicians, the harp-and-drum combination that opened the piece presiding over age-old processionals, then goading the ensemble into a lively primitive-sounding dance. Interestingly, Scholes cites the Locrian mode as the dance’s melodic “key”, emulating twentieth-century composers as diverse as Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Sibelius and Britten in his use of this exotic-sounding sequence (a minor scale with the second and fifth notes lowered a semitone). I enjoyed the music’s concurrent states of mystery and clarity, judiciously worked by the composer.

Alexandra Hay’s An Island Doesn’t Either was a piece whose sounds were more hinted and suggested in effect than articulated, but as one moved into her aural world the many subtleties of timbre and colour brought innumerable impulses of delight to the careful listener. Verses written by the composer gave clues here and there as to the music’s direction, with phrases such as “chance unions are framed in watery free fall” hinting as much, one suspects, at the piece’s creative philosophical impulse as suggesting a poetic description. That tone and pitch were pared away almost to nothing created worlds of burgeoning potential involving gestures and timbres which were as likely to dissolve as coalesce, those “chance unions” given their freedom and charged with expectation at one and the same time. I enjoyed the feel of the underlying tensions which to my delight occasionally irrupted as scintillations, whose “ripples-on-a-pond” effect create resonances very much at the mercy of the same random impulses that influence our lives, whose grip upon existence on “the warm surface on this limb of archipelago” is of course as evanescent as each breath exhaled by the music that we heard. A bold and compelling work, realised by the ensemble with considerable sensitivity.

Jeroen Speak’s Silk Dialogue VI, composed in 2009, was written for and dedicated to the Australian clarinettist Richard Haynes, whom I had heard play with Stroma previously to stunning effect. This performance, more concertante- than concerto-like in effect was nevertheless astonishing in its virtuosity and sensitivity. The music reflected Speak’s current activity in both China and Taiwan, where he has worked since 2004, among other activities studying ancient Chinese music notation systems with a view to reviving some of the traditions in “new approaches to contemporary notation, instrumentation and tonality”. A feature of the new work was the use of snare drums by each player in addition to his or her own instrument, the resulting activation of percussion adding a theatrical element linked by the composer to traditional Chinese opera, as well as delineating the flow of time throughout the work. From the beginning, the music pulsed outwards and upwards, each individual burst of energy an almost systolic-like impulse countered by a gentler exhalation. These alternations gave rise to the idea of the sounds seeking light and space, inclined as they were towards buoyancy rather than weight, and accompanied by a gradual emptying-out of tonal and colouristic elements in the music. Speak’s researches into a particular aspect of Chinese notation involving a traditional instrument called the guqin (a kind of zither) emphasised his interest in the gestural aspects of the music-making, and suggested a certain kinship across centuries with independently-conceived soundscapes like those of Alexander Hay in the previous work. But the added theatricality of Speak’s music made a powerful individual impression, especially the clarinet’s increasingly desperate attempts to give voice to the growing abstractions, before resigning itself to seeming incoherencies, its gestures at the work’s end indicating a hard-wrought transition towards an even subtler language.

In attempting to sum up ten years’ worth of contemporary music performance Stroma very appropriately turned to the work of an iconic figure, Iannis Xenakis, often described as a true renaissance man because of the range and scope of his interests and activities both in music and other associated areas. His works touched every media, from acoustic, through electro-acoustic to multi-media; and his interests took in mathematics, experimental engineering, architecture and education. His work Thalleḯn for fourteen instrumentalists dates from 1984, one whose Greek title suggests growth or germination leading to organic evolution, except that the composer stipulated the exclusion of all human gesture and expression in performance, thus denying conventional musical rhetoric and emphasising “a more impersonal sound-utterance” (for instance, Xenakis wrote on the front page of the score “vibrato is not permitted”). Theoretically, the plan sounds impervious, except for its realization via the same human element in performance, which sets up all kinds of creative tensions as different attitudes on the part of both musicians and audiences kick in. Be the approach one of acceptance or denial of the composer’s visionary directives, confrontations were bound to occur between participants in the exercise – not everybody would, I expect, want to buy into the composer’s “purification of the spirit” idea as a pre-requisite to understanding or enjoying the music. There was no question as to the music’s raw power, or its ability to engage with its listeners, as the opening “no holds barred” paragraphs demonstrated. Perhaps the composer might have found Stroma’s full-blooded performance manner too engaging, too expressive, as the players certainly seemed to put their energies on the line within the instrumental “blocks” and confront one another without reserve. As with the Adės work, the soundscape was occasionally saturated, the music’s intensely physical aspect at those times both imbued with and going beyond what the programme note (Xenakis’s own?) called “the heat of the human world”. My own reaction to the music was ambivalent – such unidentifiable realms as the composer’s sounds hinted at I felt both drawn towards and repelled by almost by turns, possibly reacting to the inevitable process of recognising such gestures as the players were visibly making, and then struggling to equate my expectations with what I heard, and drawing back in search of more solid ground on which to put my feet. My enduring memory of the work is a sense of a mid-life melt-down crisis (contrasting markedly with the feeling of things thrusting upward suggested by Jeroen Speak’s work), followed by energised reawakenings of those same instrumental blocks registered earlier and their incorporation into a march-like processional, whose short-lived but unashamed theatricality occasioned brassy shouts, percussive roarings, shimmering strings and trilling winds. What was Xenakis thinking of? Drama and interaction such as this surely tends to stimulate, not eliminate, “human” gesture.

Presumably, reactions such as the above keeps the skin of music porous and moist and stimulates the heart still beating within (more human imagery? – what is this reviewer thinking of?). At the concert’s end the enthusiasm of the audience for the performances, the programming and the occasion must have gladdened the sensibilities of Stroma’s players and administrators. It struck me that people at the concert who regularly go to hear the NZSO wouldn’t have failed to register familiar faces from orchestral ranks among the ensemble’s personnel, suggesting lines of connection between what’s considered “establishment” and the newest music, and helping to break down the “that” and “this” divide which puts art in pigeonholes, to everybody’s long-term disadvantage. On that count, Stroma represents a powerful force for new music across a wider spectrum than its own performance schedules. But considering simply the ensemble itself, one looks expectantly towards the next ten years and wishes the group a similarly fruitful and richly constituted twentieth anniversary celebration.

NZSM student woodwinds at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Woodwind Soloists from the New Zealand School of Music

 

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

 

Wednesday, 11 August 2010, 12.15pm

 

Woodwind in name only; there was no wood in evidence – there were silver flutes and brass saxophones. 

Naturally, there were varying levels of achievement amongst the students featured, but they all gave a good account of themselves.  Throughout the concert (there was only one unaccompanied item), piano accompaniments were sensitively and musically provided by Emma Sayers, in a wide variety of pieces.

The students apparently were required to give a spoken introduction to their pieces.  It is a pity that they (and their tutors!) are not given more help with doing this.  They need to be encouraged to project their voices.  St Andrew’s is a large, resonant space, so anyone speaking without amplification must talk more loudly and slowly than some did at this concert, otherwise there is no point at all in speaking.

 

Quite a proportion of the people who attend the lunch-hour concerts are elderly and have less hearing than the young do.  It is very frustrating for them if they cannot hear what is said.  Some performers treated the spoken introduction as something to be got over quickly, while a few, notably Julia Deverall, provided plenty of background in her remarks, and spoke clearly and not too quickly.

 

A lack in the programme was that no dates were given for the composers, and although some of the players gave dates for the compositions they performed, for others, we were left in the dark as to when the composers flourished.

 

The first performer, Chloe Schnell on the flute, spoke clearly but a little too quietly.  Her piece, Black Anemones by Joseph Schwanter was very impressionistic and featured a lovely piano accompaniment.  It was played well with excellent tone, although the breathing was a little noisy.

 

Dubois (1930-1995) was the next composer, of A l’Espagnole for alto saxophone, played by Katherine Maciaszek, who announced her piece with much better projection.  The music was bright, jazzy, fast, and off-beat, and the performance thoroughly convincing.

 

Sehr Langsam from sonata for flute and piano by Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) was performed by Monique Vossen.  We heard her introduction well; the piece turned out to be reflective and gloomy (rather than the predicted ‘doomy’), but enjoyable, and well communicated.

 

Back to alto saxophone for ‘Vif’ from Scaramouche by Darius Milhaud (1892-1974); a typically lively piece of the composer’s works for winds.  It was played very well, with plenty of light and shade.  The spoken introduction started clearly, but unfortunately Emma Hayes-Smith then lowered her voice and sped up so as to become unintelligible.

 

Adagio from Concerto for flute and orchestra by Carl Reinecke (1824-1910) was the choice of Anna Newth.  This was a very romantic piece, beautifully played.  Her introduction was a little soft, but intelligible from my seat, about five rows from the front.

 

Flamenco Jazz for solo baritone saxophone was the work played by Geraint Scott.  It was composed by Englishman Paul Harvey, who, we were told in the rather rapid introduction, lived in Spain for a considerable time.  The fusion between flamenco and jazz was interesting, but there was little dynamic variation in the performance.

 

John Ritchie (b.1921) wrote The Snow Goose in 1982, based on the famous Paul Gallico story from World War II, we were told in Julia Deverall’s exemplary introduction.  This gorgeous piece for flute and piano was extremely well played with good attention to dynamics, though occasionally noisy breathing.

 

American Paul Creston (1906-1985) wrote a sonata for alto saxophone and piano, the ‘With Vigour’ movement from which was chosen by Reuben Chin.  It was written in 1939, the performer’s rather too quiet introduction informed us.  It was tastefully played with plenty of subtlety, and light and shade.

 

Despite my criticisms of the way in which items were introduced, this was an interesting and pleasing presentation of work from the wind students, who have reached a considerable level of accomplishment. 

 

 

 

Violin Sonata spectacular at Lower Hutt: Hall and Muir

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Chamber Music Hutt Valley; Amalia Hall (violin) and John-Paul Muir (piano) 

 

Sonata for violin and piano: Mozart’s in E minor, K 304; Fauré’s No 1 in A, Op 13; Brahms’s No 1 in G minor, Op 78; Debussy’s in G minor, Lesure 140

 

Lower Hutt Little Theatre

 

Tuesday 10 August at 8pm

 

The second to last in the concert series of Lower Hutt’s chamber music organization featured two young musicians, still in the midst of studies, now overseas. Yet their programme made no concessions to youth and imagined inexperience for both players have played together, sporadically, for at least three years and are much at ease on the recital platform.

 

Before I proceed however, it is worth noting the amount of music, particularly chamber music, that happens outside of Wellington city itself. All of it deserves the attention of those who live in other parts of the metropolitan area; one of the reasons for my quitting reviewing for the Dominion Post was its ban on the coverage of performances outside the city, along with other frustrations.

 

There is the particularly successful, and often adventurous series at Waikanae, a smaller but excellent series at Upper Hutt and the quirky Mulled Wine concerts at Paekakariki which sometimes extends beyond the strictly ‘classical’ field. With train services reasonably convenient for Upper Hutt and Paekakariki, and soon for Waikanae (but sadly not for Lower Hutt), there need be no fear of traffic or parking problems.

 

The Lower Hutt Little Theatre is a more attractive venue than it was; the piano does have certain shortcomings but the acoustic should not be subjected to the sort of comment that I sometimes hear. It is clear and lively.

 

We heard four sonatas, all central to the repertoire. The Mozart is one of a Paris-published set that follows a two-movement pattern, copying the form from composer Joseph Schuster. For the 22-year-old, it shows amazing confidence and maturity: minor key, more than usual prominence to the violin, with invention and treatment of melodic ideas with strength and individuality.

 

Nevertheless, Amalia Hall played her opening phrases with studied diffidence and hesitancy alongside the bold and confident piano of her partner. Yet as they played together he modified his dynamics to match hers. It’s not to say her playing is routinely self-effacing, for it was often full-bodied and generous, and always alert to the needs of every phrase, with scrupulous use of vibrato. In fact her vibrato showed her attention to the emotion and meaning of every phrase; it was not simply a routine shake.

 

John Paul Muir performed some kind of unusual rhythmic turn in the very first bars of Fauré’s sonata that hinted at a slip, but I remained uncertain of what I heard. There was no doubt about is feeling for this music however, in which he again applying clearly contrasting dynamics to his role in response to the violin’s needs. The piece is filled with the seductive melody that Fauré lavished on his early works, and the pair played rhapsodically, taking every chance to discover fresh nuances; and especially in the slow movement Muir evinced an endless curiosity, constantly seeking to find what might be behind the plain notes on the page. Dynamic delicacy led him to give occasional emphasis to certain notes, making the accompaning violin part even more interesting and charming. I felt there was more exploratory curiosity than plain ‘vivo’ in the scherzo movement. Here I wondered at the odd blurred note from the piano, whether its action is a bit heavy to respond reliably to soft, fast repeated notes; and there were a few blemishes in the last movement from the piano.

 

The order in the printed programme of the sonatas in the second half was reversed. They played first the Brahms, then Debussy.

 

If Fauré was the French Brahms (as has been remarked, with that disagreeable hint of German condescension), then let me call Brahms’s first violin sonata, with its rhapsodic charm, a work of the German Fauré.  Much as Muir’s playing was imaginative and filled with an exploratory sense, there were times when his penchant for emphasis of particular notes and phrases was misplaced, and I felt that here a difference of maturity was evident; the shy, quieter passages were not what they might have been.

 

In the second movement Hall captured its profound meditative beauty, and the last movement which is no bold heroic finale, was again the opportunity to be touched by her ability to sustain long melodic lines filled with genuine emotion.

 

I found myself, first, simply filled with wonder at the remarkable assurance and level of melodic and rhythmic originality in Debussy’s sonata, hardly paying attention to the playing itself. Happily, it dawned on me that my wonder at Debussy was the fruit of the performance itself. It (the composition) was assured and confident because, even in pain, Debussy’s genius did not desert him and his sure feeling for shapes and harmonies created something that sounds perfectly inevitable and natural even though it had moved so far from the sounds of most of his contemporaries: even in the terrible war years that distressed Debussy so profoundly.

 

Though the piano was still inclined to overemphasis, it became clear why they had decided to end with Debussy. For the playing by both artists captured the playfulness of the Intermède, and the restrained animation., the scintillating finale, was an uplifting experience, filled with gaiety, flippancy, wonder and breathlessness (to borrow from the programme notes).

 

Just in case the audience were in any doubt about sheer virtuosity, they encored with Sarasate’s Gypsy Dances, which was overwhelming, evidence of the violinist’s skill as well as her sheer musicianship.

 

 

Houstoun honours Chopin and Schumann magnificently at Paekakariki

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Mulled Wine Concert: Michael Houstoun (piano) in Schumann and Chopin

Schumann: Arabesque Op 18, Kreisleriana, Op 16; Chopin: Sonata in B flat minor, Op 35; Nocturnes Op 37, Nos 1 and 2; Etudes Op 25 Nos 1, 7, 5, 12

Memorial Hall, Paekakariki

Sunday 8 August 2.30pm

This is exactly the kind of concert I expect to mark important anniversaries of two of the world’s great composers: an intelligent selection of some of the two composers’ most representative and enjoyable music. Naturally, a poll of the audience would throw up many other works that ‘should’ have been included.

That would yield a programme lasting several days.

Schumann’s Arabesque is popular and pretty well-known, but Kreisleriana is less so and that perhaps, I remark cynically, is why it is often rated among his finest piano works; it is certainly one of the most difficult to bring off.

Houstoun’s own note about it advises the audience not to trouble with the literary reference of the title – a novel and other stories by E T A Hoffmann; the subject, an eccentric, passionate musician. If you’re there just for the music: correct. But for many of us, all the connections, literary, artistic, religious, sociological and so on, lead towards interesting insights and help furnish the mind.

The Chopin in the second half may have been the more familiar and delightful to the audience, but personally, Schumann often does just a little more for me. Kreisleriana was the last of his major piano works that I came to know, and live performances have been rare. One first falls for Carnaval and the Fantasia, Papillons and the Symphonic Studies, then the Kinderszenen, and much later, Davidsbündlertänze and Faschingsschwank aus Wien, before the less overt attractions of Kreiselriana start to absorb you.

This was no ordinary performance. Houstoun has clearly lived with it, thought about its manifold moods and worked on its technical problems for a long time, so that it emerged utterly engrossing, emotionally quixotic, kaleidoscopic, unorthodox and often plain beautiful.

The transitions between the vividly contrasted Eusebius and Florestan sections, were so clear, as the journey passed through all the eight pieces from the opening, marked Ausserst bewegt – extremely excitable, or molto agitato – to a slightly more gentle lyrical central section, dreamy, employing themes that speak in the private language of his Schumann’s  two personas as well as of his love, Clara.

The challenge for the pianist is to find a sense of continuity and a connected narrative within each movement, as the tempo, the mood, the tonality, the rhythms constantly change and surprise you. Quite soon I found myself with the words ‘commanding’, ‘authoritative’, ‘multitudinous’ in my head.

So the strength of this performance lay in the pianist’s success in creating and maintaining a feeling of integrity, utter absorption though the half-hour long piece.

The second section, Sehr innig und night zu rasch – very reflective and not too fast – opening with short-lived meditative, rising and falling phrases, followed by a wild Intermezzo in which the left hand is all over the keyboard; then a spacious statement of the main tune, another more rhythmic Intermezzo before returning to the initial material. It is such an extended, fully-formed movement, in several sections, that it’s surprising that it hasn’t been taken out as a separate concert piece.

The fourth movement is marked very slow, its character is rambling and expansive and the slow-paced melody performance was beautifully played.  And finally, it might have come as surprise that a pianist with such a command of the more profound things, could find such gaiety and playfulness in the dotted rhythms of the last movement – Schnell und Spielend – and nothing is more surprising than its simple, vanishing ending.

Though the delicacy and delight of his Arabesque should have prepared us for all of that.

The programme notes, by Michael Houstoun, were illuminating; artists ought to be encouraged to write their own programme notes for there are often matters that they could bring interesting to listeners’ notice. Here, it would have been useful if the details of the movements of Kreisleriana had been listed, with their timings, as breaks between movements and between the sections of each are not always self-evident.

The second half was all Chopin, and details of the Sonata’s movements, and of each Prelude and Etude were given. The second Piano Sonata seems to some commentators like four distinct pieces and I think that is a valid proposition; as little seems to connect them as might connect the four Ballades or Schubert’s two sets of Impromptus.

There was no mistaking the openness and full-bloodedness of the performance as a whole. In the first movement Houstoun’s playing gave full expession to the ebullience beneath its heroic and sometimes lyrical exterior; and it became open and urgent in the Scherzo. The third movement only becomes funereal in its latter stages; earlier, there was grandeur and in the central section a sanguine singing character. In this sonata however, I was left with the feelings both of its disparateness and its being still ‘work-in-progress’ in Houstoun’s hands.

The two Nocturnes of Op 37 make an attractive pair, the first steady, sober, pensive, the second more rapturous and rhythmic.

And four Etudes from the second set – Op 25, linked according to the pianist’s own feeling about their contrasting characters rather than the keys (not that Chopin grouped them by key sequence). The keys were not listed; in the order played: A flat, C sharp minor, E minor and No 12 in C minor. No 7 in C sharp minor is the longest of the group and Houstoun created a seemingly large-scale dramatic scena of it with a fortissimo climax in the middle. Of course, the last Etude, for a reason that rather escapes me, called ‘Ocean’, a flawless, virtuosic tour de force, raised the roof and brought long applause for this thrilling ending to a very satisfying and entertaining recital.