Fun, virtuosity and the hugely popular Vivaldi at Nelson

Adam Chamber Music festival. Four Seasons

Boccherini: String Quintet in C; Rossini: Duo for cello and bass; Paganini: Introduction and Variations on ‘Nel cor piu non mi sento’ from La Molinara by Paisiello; Motoharu Kawashima: Paganigani (1999); Vivaldi: The Four Seasons (Le quattro stagione), Op 8, Nos 1-4

Nelson Cathedral, Friday 11 February, 7.30pm

The penultimate evening concert from this splendid festival moved into the large territory of very popular, and very funny, and very extraordinary music. It was a brilliant success.

There was a surprise at the beginning. The artistic directors had realised that the Boccherini quintet that was played at the opening gala dinner and concert should be heard by more than those who were there (I was one of those not there), and perhaps heard again by the latter.

Boccherini is a composer whose music depends somewhat on the spirit and skill of the performers to reveal its real worth. There is huge scope for musicians of that calibre and who care to explore, for the Yves Gérard catalogue of Boccherini’s music lists some 140 string quintets and almost 100 string quartets, masses of other chamber music, some 10 cello concertos and 30 symphonies and so on to over 600 works. There are probably a couple of dozen quintets in C major.

Though I haven’t been able to identify it in the catalogue, the one they played is distinctive because its last movement was used by Jean Françaix in his ballet based on Boccherini’s music, Scuola di ballo of 1933; its Allegro con moto is indeed a rhythmically striking piece. The ballet suite used to frequent the Dinner Music programme on 2YC, the predecessor of Radio New Zealand Concert and I was happy to discover there was more to Boccherini than the Minuet.

The quintet was played by the musicians of the Hermitage String Trio plus Helene Pohl and Rolf Gjelsten, in the additional violin and cello parts, and the opulent tone they all produced and the careful handling of its subdued and charming accents awakened the audience to this composer’s importance.

Rossini’s Duo for cello and bass was introduced by Hiroshi Ikematsu, principal bass player of the NZSO, in a mixture of fact and facetiousness. The latter was the right manner for it proved one of Rossini’s incomparable masterpieces in the field of almost impossibly difficult as well as comic creations. Ikematsu ended by adding that it was worth noting that it was written for an amateur cellist but a professional bass player, grinning superciliously at Rolf Gjelsten. Along with the music itself, there was a stand-up comic routine comprising alarming difficulties, riotous musical juxtapositions and absurd virtuosity. I doubt that the piece has ever had such an exponent as this; and Gjelsten wasn’t too bad either..

Ikematsu was back on his own later with a piece by a Japanese colleague (Motoharu Kawashima), bearing the name Paganigani, which when translated phonically into Japanese ideographs contains the word ‘crab’. It combined a great deal of game playing with a gloved hand that I eventually understood to be the crab, that caused him a good deal of trouble, interfering with his attempts to play what he confessed was impossibly difficult music. He said he’d spent hundreds of hours on it, but it had all been a waste of time.

In somewhat the same class was an almost as extraordinary piece by the real Paganini, based on an aria from an opera of Paisiello, played by Martin Riseley. It contained every trick the book, at least up to his time, and the performance was highly accomplished, delivered with apparent ease, though the price one pays for such speed and dexterty is often some loss of tonal richness.

The crowd was there for The Four Seasons however, and I saw no glum faces at the end. It was a nice idea to have Danny Mulheron’s recorded voice reading the little poems with which Vivaldi had prefaced each concerto. Most of the players from the two string ensembles formed the ripieno group, one to a part, and the soloists formed part of it when they were not playing the solo.

Helene Pohl played Spring with shining tone, great brilliance, and the entire sound was so fine that one was delighted that Radio New Zealand Concert had managed to find funds from their ever-tightening budget to record this and the most important concerts in the festival. After the boisterous applause, she smiled as broadly as any in the audience. Douglas Beilman took the next concerto, Summer, which features the famous summer storm. He produces a much more velvety tone from his vintage violin and it generated a splendid dark colour for the hail and destruction of the crops.

From the Autumn concerto Rolf Gjelsten took over the cello part from Leonid Gorokhov while the soloist here was Martin Riseley, delivering the peasant style harvest jollity with tugging down-bows and strong rhythms. Finally, Hermitage Trio violinist Denis Goldfeld was the soloist in Winter, which gave him the privilege of playing the beautiful second movement. He used short chilling strokes with shivering irregular rhythms, enhanced by playing sul ponticello – close to the bridge – at one point.

There was a great outburst of applause at the end with many on their feet.

Rare and beautiful trio explores its repertoire for Nelson’s festival

 

Adam Chamber Music Festival. Fairytales: Schumann: Märchenerzählungen, Op 132; Brahms: Intermezzi, Op 117; Bruch: Eight Pieces, Op 83, Nos 5, 2, 6, 7.

 

James Campbell (clarinet), Gillian Ansell (viola), Martin Roscoe (piano)

 

Nelson School of Music, Friday 11 February 1pm

 

The festival’s artistic directors, no doubt always in close rapport with the artists concerned, have had an unerring ability to fit the music together in contexts that were coherent but also fitted the time of day and the venue.

 

That has been so true of the midday concerts in the charming church of St John.

 

Schumann’s Fairy Tales were among the last pieces he wrote before his mind collapsed, and it is possible to suggest that the quality of melodic inspiration has declined. But the spirit of whimsy and playfulness remained, clearly enough here. Nevertheless it is true that the weaker the music, the more dependent it is on loving and inspiring performance. The four pieces here, melodically not very memorable, came to life with these players who could invest them with such affecting charm and colour.

 

Though nothing much came to mind when I tried to conjure up images or fairy tales to accompany the pieces, no visual support was really needed to accompany this delicate music.

 

Martin Roscoe then played comparable, though one must admit, much more inspired and imaginative music – Brahms’s Three Intermezzi of Op 117. They were the kind of performance that one imagines might reside in a Platonic heaven of Ideals: absolutely immaculate, richly expressive in their nostalgia or gaiety, full of life, so natural and simply beautiful in pace, articulation and dynamics.

 

Then there were four of Max Bruch’s Eight Pieces for this trio of instruments, his Op 83 – the combination that exists because Mozart wrote the only truly great music for it in the Kegelstatt Trio, K 498. One or two groups have lighted upon these Bruch pieces recently, but none had convinced me of their charm and sheer musical worth as much as this performance has. The tunes were clear and memorable and the balance and ensemble of the trio brought them to life in the most beguiling way, with some quite beautiful clarinet playing. Hearing such attractive pieces always induces me to explore more of the neglected Bruch, but one is usually a little bit disappointed; I shall keep exploring.  

 

This was the last performance by Martin Roscoe in the Festival; other concert promoters could do worse than invite him back soon.