Month: July 2011

NZSM’s Baroque Workshop at St Andrew’s lunchtime concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Music by Monteverdi, Jacob van Eyck, Dario Castello, Georg Böhm, Telemann, Bach

Amelia Ryman (soprano), Brendan O’Donnell (recorder), Oscar Laven (bassoon), Tom Gaynor (harpsichord and organ)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 20 July, 12.15pm

The Baroque Workshop took over, at relatively short notice I imagine, from other advertised performers; they revealed no evidence of being caught with little preparation time.

Baroque here stretched as far back as Monteverdi to as recent as Bach.

The Monteverdi was a quite short song written for one voice with harpsichord accompaniment from a set called Scherzi Musicali, of 1632. Amelia Ryman, with Thomas Gaynor at the harpsichord, tackled it with a pretty extensive array of ornaments which tended to tax her at times, affecting her ability to control dynamics and articulation; and she needs to watch her vibrato. But the general delivery was most attractive.

The concert opened with a solo piece for recorder by Jacob van Eyck who was born in 1590. It was played in a most accomplished way with careful and subtle dynamics and admirable agility by Brendan O’Donnell. It was so attractive that it struck me as a piece that might well be taken up by flute players looking for an alternative solo piece to Syrinx.

The variations from a Chorale Partita by Georg Böhm, an important early influence on Bach, was played on the church’s chamber organ by Gaynor. Though it proved a typically formal set of variations (only some of them), the varied registrations, shifts between common and triple time and enough flexibility of rhythm, lent them considerable interest. The distinct tempi of each variation indeed suggested the dance movements of a suite: hence the title ‘Partita’ seemed justified.

The next piece drew all three instruments together: recorder, bassoon and organ, in a ‘Sonata seconda à sopran solo’ by Dario Castello, born the same year as Van Eyck. The combination of the organ’s lower register and the bassoon created a warm, rich sound, and subtle rubato helped enliven its interesting, occasionally contrapuntal character.

If there were moments in the Castello when Oscar Laven’s bassoon seemed to be struggling, the reality became clearer in the Telemann Sonatina in A minor (two movements); the baroque instrument, with limited recourse to the use of keys, is clearly difficult to play and to produce even and comfortably articulated sounds. Laven did well, but I had to ask myself whether there are some cases where the pleasure of hearing authentic sounds from a very challenging early instrument is really worth the trouble.

The rest of the concert was Bach. Three short items: two arias from cantatas and a Duet from the Third Clavierübung, which contains a large collection of organ pieces. The other three Clavierübungen are for harpsichord (the first for example contains the six Partitas BWV 825-30). The third volume is known sometimes as the German Organ Mass; it opens with the famous ‘Saint Anne’ Prelude and Triple Fugue, BWV 552 and contains many chorale preludes – all those between BWV 669 and 689; and then four duets (two-part inventions), two of which (BWV 802 and 804) Gaynor played here. His performance might not have been immaculate but on this small organ they emerged with admirable clarity, with all their ‘art that conceals art’ as evident as possible (without lapsing into oxymoron). It occurred to me that I don’t hear the chamber organ, purchased through the enterprise of the former minister John Murray and organist Roy Tankersley at least 20 years ago, often enough.

The cantata arias were ‘Höchster, mache deine Güte’ from No 51 and ‘Höchster, was ich habe’, from No 39. Amelia sounded more at ease in these than in Monteverdi; the flowing lines with less call for florid decoration.

Both were quite short, but expressive of a sanguine optimism not always the stuff of Bach’s sacred music, and they balanced the purely instrumental pieces very happily; and the second aria, with its charming recorder obbligato, brought the concert to its end and stimulated a particularly warm audience response.

A popular lunchtime miscellany from three sopranos at Old St Paul’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Janet van Polanen, Hannah Catrin Jones and Lydia McDonnell –
sopranos

Love Songs: traditional and popular, and opera arias

Old St Paul’s, Mulgrave Street

Tuesday 19 July 12.15pm

Three sopranos whose taste and dispositions span the song repertoire from classical through the musical and film hits to old-fashioned ballads and folk songs took their turn at Old St Paul’s regular Tuesday lunchtime concerts.

The early part of the concert included a few opera arias.
None of the three singers would lay claim to polished operatic voices that would meet the expectations of the professional world of opera, though all have studied professionally, but they were nicely placed in a concert of this kind.

Lydia McDonnell sang Cherubino’s aria, ‘Voi che sapete’ from The Marriage of Figaro, charming, though it might not quite have caught the tone of that randy adolescent boy; later she sang most agreeably, Schubert’s Serenade (from his final song cycle, Swan Song).

Hannah Catrin Jones also sang a Mozart aria, Zerlina’s comforting song to Masetto, ‘Vedrai carino’, from Don Giovanni, offering him balm for the injuries the Don has inflicted, with a degree of the coy suggestiveness that the words make plain. Hannah’s second aria was from La Bohème – Musetta’s ‘Waltz Song’ – ‘Quando me’n vo’ which she sang nicely though she took it rather slowly and it was arch rather than simply flighty and self-admiring.

Janet van Polanen’s classical song was the evergreen 18th century aria, ‘Se tu m’ami’ by Alessandro Parisotti (which was one of the many pieces published under the more famous name Giovanni Pergolesi). Though her brief précis of the song was delivered too quietly for most of the audience to hear (the church’s acoustic is not generous for most speaking voices) she caught its sentiment very well.

Janet had opened the recital with a song that was more the predominant style – a charming and still popular song ‘Where do I begin?’, from a classic film of its kind – Love Story – with its soundtrack composed by Francis Lai: it was slightly uneasy, as an opening piece often is, but idiomatic. Later, Janet sang other songs in similar vein: ‘Out of my dreams’ from Oklahoma and Max Steiner’s ‘My own true love’ that became and remains a favourite after appearing in Gone with the Wind.

Hannah Catrin Jones opened her own contributions with Vaughan Williams’s setting of D G Rossetti’s ‘Silent Noon’ from his song cycle The House of Life. She at once displayed an attractive voice, confidently, though the acoustic again made her words a bit indistinct and a mishap with a page of music would have unsettled her.

In a charming, unaffected way Hannah sang At Dawning (‘I love you’), a song by Charles Cadman that became famous in the 1920s; Cadman’s early reputation derived from his interest in and promotion of American Indian music. And later, reflecting her Welsh ancestry, Hannah sang Joseph Parry’s ‘Myfanwy’, with her father Conrad McDonnell accompanying on the guitar: well done. All the other songs were sympathetically accompanied by David Trott at the piano.

After her Mozart and Schubert songs Lydia McDonnell’s later songs included Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Love changes everything’, the best known number from his musical Aspects of Love, a sort of narrative song that she handled rather nicely. And then unaccompanied she sang with touching conviction her last solo – the traditional Irish song ‘My Lagan Love’ dating from the time of harsh English repression.

Together, the three gave the audience an agreeable, rather different experience, with the three voices blending interestingly: ‘Love can build a bridge’, a somewhat sentimental country ballad that had its hour of fame in the early 90s; then ‘Cockles and Mussels’ and finally ‘Pokarekare Ana’, which brought a well-planned and charmingly executed recital to an appropriate end.

Cello and piano at Jewish Community Centre

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Bach: Sonata in G, BWV 1027;
Kodaly: Sonatina for cello and piano;
Bloch: From Jewish Life and Méditation Hébraïque;
Debussy: Sonata for cello and piano;
Martinu: Sonata no.2 for cello and piano;
Piazzolla: Libertango

Paul Mitchell (cello), Richard Mapp (piano)

Myers Hall, Jewish Community Centre, Webb Street

Sunday, 17 July 2011, 3pm

Myers Hall was a new venue to many of us at the concert on Sunday; it proved to be of a good size for a chamber music concert, and with its wooden parquet floor and high ceiling, its acoustics were very satisfactory.

However, if it were to be used more regularly for concerts, a better piano would be required. At times I thought the elderly Marshall and Rose baby grand to be out of tune, but it may just have been its age that made it sound oddly at times, particularly in the Bach. Richard Mapp played with appropriate style and technique for the baroque music (the instrument often almost sounding like a harpsichord), in contrast to his full-bodied playing of the other works, but the former manner of playing seemed to emphasise the piano’s difficulties.

Having just heard a radio talk about recorded Bach works, that made a comparison between performances that were ‘straight’ and those where the performer(s) introduced some individuality to the interpretation, I was delighted to hear the nuances, especially of dynamics, that these musicians brought to their performance of the Bach composition. It was a very satisfying performance; after the third movement’s logical, peaceful nature, the allegro finale was played with great panache. In my head I hear my pianist/organist mother saying (as she does on a private recording I have) ‘The piano does not bring out the notes of the tune as does the organ or the clavichord’. Mapp defied this dictum pretty successfully.

Apart from the Debussy sonata, the remaining works on the programme were not familiar to me. It was a pleasure and interesting to hear so much music that is seldom played, not least the Kodaly sonatina. After a lovely piano introduction, there was much lyrical music, and strong playing from both musicians, providing a complete contrast with the Bach work.

Bloch’s From Jewish Life is in three sections. The first, ‘Prayer’, was very beautiful. The piano starts by just playing chords while the cello plays melody, then a different piano theme that echoes and balances the cello one enters. In the second part, ‘Supplication’, one could almost hear the cello uttering words, since the melody followed very much the inflections and rhythms of language. Finally, ‘Jewish Song’ had a very spare and Middle-Eastern-sounding tonality. There was a plaintive quality to it, and it was very sensitively played. Again, it was a great contrast with the Bach sonata. This was passionate music. The full tone from the cello was very fine.

Paul Mitchell gave spoken introductions some of the items. He said that he thought that the Debussy sonata was more Spanish than French in character. Certainly the first movement has a very rhythmic piano part, which is dominant, then the cello reasserts itself. Then there are passages of great delicacy, played with feeling and finesse.

The second movement (Serenade) features lots of pizzicato on the cello and staccato on piano. It is full of character – and it was given characterful playing. The finale, which follows without a break, had the instruments swapping notes and dynamics with each other, followed by a strong, assertive ending. As the programme notes stated, it was more spirited, and had elements of folk-song. This was a thoroughly convincing performance.

The Méditation Hébraïque of Ernest Bloch starts quietly and lyrically, with a repeated bass note on the piano. The central section, especially passionate on the cello, embroiders a pentatonic theme, and then the music dies away quite dramatically.

The most substantial work on the programme was Martinu’s sonata. A fiery allegro with difficult passage work admirably executed by both performers began this 1941 composition. There was a long section for piano only, as there was in the second movement (largo) also. This movement ended very calmly, with a sad undertone.

The allegro commodo (comfortable) finale was very fast, with repetitive figures on the piano which would have pleased the minimalists. Both cello and piano parts were very energetic and spirited. A cello cadenza was complex and demanding, to end this dynamic and exciting work.

The Piazzolla ‘free tango’ was fast, but good-tempered. There was much upper fingerboard work for the cellist, and off-beat rhythms abounded.

A good-sized audience heard two performers who played with superb technique and musical sensitivity – and Mapp was blessed with a skilful page-turner.

Schubert from Houstoun at Paekakariki – Matching Poesies

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SCHUBERT – Piano Sonata in G Major D.894 / Piano Sonata in B-flat D.960

Michael Houstoun (piano)

Mulled Wine Concert Series / Memorial Hall, Paekakariki

Sunday, July 17th, 2011

Waiting outside the Memorial Hall in a July afternoon’s wintry sunshine at Paekakariki was for me a kind of poetry in itself, colored partly by the expectation of hearing live performances of two of Schubert’s greatest piano sonatas, but also by the ambience of the open spaces, rugged hills to the east, and the beach and distantly lovely Kapiti Island to the west. I’ll doubtless be accused of “event-dropping” here, but I was reminded by all of this of my visit to the Aldeburgh Festival in Suffolk (too many years previously that I care to number!), where one finds a similar “homely” aspect to many of the concert venues, and the same rural outdoor “far-from-the-big-city” atmosphere that gives to the whole enterprise such distinction.

Inside the hall at Paekakariki, the excitement-buzz was palpable, the sense of an occasion somehow made more manifest by the community-hall nature of the venue – a kind of “music is where you find it” spirit that, as I’ve said, heightens the special nature of the event. I was not aware of Michael Houstoun having any previous significant association with the solo piano music of Schubert, and so this for me seemed to add to the concert’s specialness. Naturally, I knew Houstoun had recently performed with tenor Keith Lewis the great “Winterreise” song-cycle, as well as the “Trout” Quintet as part of Chamber Music New Zealand’s “Schubertiade” – so I found myself keenly anticipating the pianist bringing his own unique qualities as a performer to music I’ve loved for much of my listening life.

First up, and I think rightly so, was the G Major Sonata D.894. Like its recital companion, the B-flat Sonata, it’s a work whose first movement alone, when played with the repeat can dwarf in sheer size and scope the movements which follow, especially in the hands of an interpreter who emphasizes the music’s potential for what Robert Schumann famously called its “heavenly length”. Perhaps taking its cue from Schumann’s observation, there’s a school of interpretation that advocates the most spacious of tempi over certain of Schubert’s movements, more pronounced, I think, than with any other classical composer. But as with all great music, there are diametrically opposed notions regarding how it should be played, ranging from those rooted in abstraction and severity of symphonic form, to ideas which advance the feeling that Schubert’s work should all be thought of as subservient to song, since (following this line of thinking) he was a lyricist, and not symphonic in outlook, and that his structures should be regarded as little more than somewhat naively-extended melodies.

Michael Houstoun’s playing of the sonata’s opening suggested a course that took into account both structural awareness and lyrical impulse on the composer’s part. We heard at the outset phrases given plenty of air and space, richly-toned and with leading lines sung out, along with strong, well-focused chordings and clearly-etched melodic patterns, suggesting that the pianist took the idea of Schubert the long-term symphonic thinker seriously, though without, it must be said, going to the extremes of profundity attempted by the likes of pianist Sviatoslav Richter. Houstoun, to my ears, sought from within the movement a judicious balance between profundity and momentum that found the best of both the intellectual and emotional worlds of the music. Throughout the introductory paragraphs he differentiated the different voices with considerable sensitivity, withdrawing his tone for the minor-key utterance, and warming it with slightly more body for its repetition in the major mode – as well, he beautifully energized the music at the point where it consciously begins to pulsate, the melody subtly detailed (a slight finger-slip in the filigree right-handed runs possibly the result of the phrasing being, I felt, a shade too “stiff”, more an etched pattern than a dance), the rhythm given sufficient girth to remain relatively light upon its feet. I thought Houstoun’s observation of the repeat just that wee bit more exploratory and expansive – if, this time round, the filigree runs in the right hand seemed freer and more dance-like, there was also an added hymn-like quality to some of the more chordal utterances, very much a feeling, one could say, of a “song of the earth”.

The rest of the movement was as fine in Houstoun’s hands, with only a touch of “bluntness” at some of the phrase-ends suggesting that there were still a couple of corners of the work he hadn’t yet negotiated with complete ease. Largely his approach to the darker, stormier development was lean and forward-looking, more agitated than tragic in feeling, building up the chordal sequences impressively, but playing with translucent tones that never threatened to crush the music under its own weight. The lead-back to the opening was nicely “breathed”, as was the coda, the music’s “homecoming” aspect given plenty of songful feeling. The slow movement’s first few phrases energized the stasis of the first movement’s conclusion, almost too much so, I thought at first, thinking that those wonderful phrases weren’t being encouraged to “flower” with sufficient poetry – but as the music progressed, so did I warm more to the playing, thanks to the flexibility and subtlety of the pianist’s rubato. The music’s key-change brought a big-boned contrast, but also some beautifully pliant phrasings in the gentler responses – Houstoun actually surprised me with his readiness to yield in places, getting a lot out of the music with his beautifully nuanced contourings.

I liked the Scherzo’s characterful dancings, the pianist bringing out the music’s lilting qualities and playing the grace-notes that punctuate the line with great “point” and care. He illuminated the melodic line of the Trio with nicely-stressed harmonies and counter-lines, enjoying the music’s contrasts as the scherzo’s chords lurched back into the soundscape. As for the finale, the playing had all the rhythmic buoyancy one could have wished for (was there a touch of hesitancy over the transition into the “running” sequence?), with everything nicely pointed and dovetailed; and then, during the stormier minor-key sequences, plenty of invigorating “schwung” to muscle up the interplay and keep the momentum going right through to the opening’s return. After these exertions, the coda was like balm for the senses, a hugely satisfied exhalation which Schubert (and Houstoun) seemed to invite all of us to join in with. At the end of all of this there was general pleasure in demonstrating our appreciation of the performance, though I have to say that Houstoun’s playing of the sonata divided opinion in my party, a situation which always invigorates discussion and sharpens all kinds of critical evaluations, both in the process and its conclusions. A friend whose opinion I respect thought the playing up to this point “all head and no heart”. But I couldn’t agree, as witness what I’ve written so far; and, for myself, I thought it was a truly praiseworthy performance.

Having said this, I had to admit, at the conclusion of the concert’s second half, that the B-flat Sonata demonstrated Houstoun’s interpretative depth and identification with the music to an extent that the G Major’s performance, good though it was, didn’t quite achieve. From first note to last, Schubert’s final and greatest piano sonata brought out what I felt was a powerful and comprehensive understanding on the pianist’s part. Even when I wanted parts of the music played a slightly different way (softer, more yielding paragraphs in one or two places), Houstoun’s conviction regarding what he was doing was such at the time that his interpretation carried all before it, the result being an entirely convincing and marvellously played performance.

Right from the beginning, the music seemed to carry whole worlds of inward feeling, Houstoun’s treatment of the chordal melody sounding and feeling almost Brucknerian in its weighty expansiveness, the vistas opening up to accommodate the tones generated by those big repeated chords which grow beneath the melody’s repetition. Not as nuanced as, and much more insistent than the music for the G major Sonata, these were more direct and forthright sounds, dealing, as Houstoun himself would probably say, in fundamental material – and no more so than at the repeat, where it might seem to the uninitiated listener as though the basic fabric of the music is being threatened by some kind of “horror from the deep” – a critical episode in the work’s discourse, here brought off by the pianist with suitably awe-inspiring power and concentration. The development brought layer upon layer of intensification, leading to what I’ve always regarded as the “stricken” passage, repeated chords sounded underneath a minor-key melody, before the opening theme returns, stalked by its trill ominously rumbling away in the bass. By the time the opening was properly reconstituted, the work had truly become “road music”, the vistas opened right out in Houstoun’s hands, the momentum kept up, the soul inexorably continuing upon its journey, bequeathing us those richly voiced chords at the movement’s end.

What a lovely colour Houstoun gave the opening of the slow movement! – its tolling bell aspect was beautifully and sensitively weighted, equivocally poised between worlds of foreboding and resignation. The music carried easefully into the major-key episode, the pianist’s rhythmic trajectories both focused and flexible throughout. Contrasting with this was the scherzo’s lightness of touch, set around and about an angular trio with Houstoun bringing out some startlingly effective bass-line accents. The playful and propulsive finale also harboured contrasting energies, the explosive mid-stream outbursts very much in keeping with the movement’s volatile character, as were the angular polyphonics leading up to the final energy-gathering pauses, and the torrents of abandonment which concluded the work. And my friend’s reaction to Houstoun’s playing of the B-flat Sonata? – words to the effect of “Well, he really nailed that one!”…..and when all’s said and done, I can’t really sum it up better than that!

Rewarding recital of 20th century British organ music Friday at St Paul’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Great Music 2011:  Music by William Mathias, Britten, MacMillan, Lennox
Berkeley, Kenneth Leighton and Howells

Richard Apperley (organ)

Cathedral of St Paul

Friday 15 July, 12.45pm

A programme of entirely British organ music comes as a bit of a surprise for it is normal to think of the repertoire as dominated by Germany and France.

The second surprise was how attractive and interesting the recital was, especially as it was entirely from the 20th century (though coming from one with no special familiarity with a great deal of British organ music of earlier periods, I suppose that might be a provocative remark).

That was due as much to the organist Richard Apperley who is assistant organist at the cathedral and whose familiarity with and command of this organ must be near unparalleled.

William Mathias’s Processional had already begun when I arrived and I was sorry not to hear it all; it was enlivened by the use of bright, sparkling stops, some with a tight reed quality; the impact was fresh, inoffensively diatonic, non-portentous, welcoming, speaking of a lively musical mind that was concerned to arrest and entertain the listener, and the last few bars did that with its surprising shift of tone. The skill and buoyancy of Apperley’s playing persuaded my organ-diffident companion that he should stay the course.

I’m not familiar with Britten’s organ music at all; yet, as with almost everything that composer wrote, this impressed. However, my unfamiliarity felt forgiven after I’d searched in the usual places to find out about this piece. An article in the Musical Times in 2004 remarks that Britten’s only organ piece known till recently was the Prelude and Fugue on a Theme of Vittoria, which Apperley played later. But then in 2003 three pieces were discovered, two of them incidental music for a 1938 play by Max Catto called They Walk Alone which ran for six months in the West End and later on Broadway. Britten had taken the score with him to New York in 1939 and left it there when he and Pears returned to Britain in 1942. It and other organ pieces were presumably left in the hands of Elizabeth Mayer, the German émigré in New York who maintained an artistic salon for émigré writers and with whom Britten and Pears stayed. Her collection was given after the war to the Britten-Pears Library at Aldeburgh, and evidently not thoroughly examined. The author of the Musical Times article, Timothy Bond, prompted the search for it and helped get the pieces published.

The Prelude to They walk alone had a sombre character, meditative and somehow comforting though without the slightest hint of self-reflection. The opening and closing of the swell box seemed to lend it a feeling of humanity, of breathing, or of rising and falling level of attention. The organist managed to suggest that he was playing a piece written by a real organist who knew how to draw idiomatic and intriguing sounds from the instrument; just as Apperley did.

The second piece by Britten, Prelude and Fugue on theme of Vittoria (Victoria in English, the theme from the motet Ecce Sacerdos Magnus) was rather more robust, at least in the Prelude which was a vigorous call to attention after which the fugue began quietly and became, not only more and more complex, as fugues do, but more and more extrovert and arresting, and complex. I have to confess to an obscure feeling of dislike for Britten in an abstract sense, on account of the person perhaps, but invariably, once the music starts, I am fascinated, drawn in, and it was the case here.

I’m not aware that Britten was anything of an organist, though a brilliant pianist, but this piece suggested an ear keenly attuned to the organ’s capacities, sensitively exploited by the player here.

There were also two pieces from Scottish composer James MacMillan: again, I had not encountered him as an organ composer. The first piece was entitled White Note Paraphrase. My ears did not allow me to believe that the piece was confined to playing the white notes. A remotely suggested, uneasy Scottish motif existed in an entirely different sphere from the accompanying series of single notes from an attenuated stop. As with all MacMillan’s music, there was a strong feeling of individuality and musical sense-of-purpose MacMillan’s second piece was Gaudeamus in loci pace, which again made use of two very distinct lines of thought and sound; a murmuring bass line below a sequence of rising silvery notes which at the end simply descended into silence. Both pieces prompted me to explore this area of a composer whose political attitudes I am responsive to.

Hyperion’s website tells me that Gaudeamus was written in 1998 to celebrate the golden jubilee of the re-foundation of a Benedictine Abbey in the diocese of Aberdeen; that it’s based on a plainchant melody sung as the introit on the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Lennox Berkeley was ten years older than Britten (incidentally, he was William Mathias’s teacher at the Royal Academy of Music). His Aria is one of three pieces for organ of 1966-68, entirely approachable, quietly lyrical, with what’s been described as a ‘bitter-sweet tunefulness’.

The least familiar name to me was Kenneth Leighton’s; raised in Yorkshire, he spent most of his life teaching in Edinburgh. His Paean was not of a particularly strident or clamorous kind, opening with bright tone clusters (in an attractive vein) it seemed to be designed in some complexity, for a great cathedral lit with gorgeous, kaleidoscopic stained glass. It struck me as a particularly interesting piece, individual in character and of genuine musical inspiration that this performance did full justice to.

The recital ended with the oldest music, the First Rhapsody by Herbert Howells in 1915, opening with a chorale-like theme in a slow crescendo, hinting at the presence of a grand melody which failed to materialise, eventually being somewhat smothered in dense harmonies, perhaps suggesting the impact of the First World War on the composer . But things clarify and lighten and the work ends in a calm, meditative mood, rather beautifully, and an awareness of the circumstances of its composition seemed, in hindsight, to give it more meaning.

So this was a recital that introduced me to an area of music with which I was largely unfamiliar but which held my attention and at many stages delighted me; I’m sure that a great deal of that impact was on account of the skill and musical taste of Richard Apperley.

Nikau Trio: flute, oboe and cello, at Old St Paul’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Boismortier, Joseph Bodin de (1689-1755): Trio in A minor (allegro, adagio, allegro)
Schubert: Adagio from Octet in F major, Op. 166
Beethoven: Duo no. 2 in F major (allegro, larghetto, allegro moderato)
Bach: Trio sonata in G major (adagio, allegro ma non presto, adagio e piano, presto)
Haydn: Trio no.3 in G major (spiritoso, andante, allegro)

Nikau Trio: Karen Batten (flute), Madeline Sakofsky (oboe), Margaret Guldborg (cello)

Old St. Paul’s,Mulgrave Stree

Tuesday, 12 July, 12.15 pm

A well-attended lunchtime concert on Tuesday heard a surprisingly comprehensive programme for an unusual combination of instruments. It began with a composer I had never heard of, who, according to the programme note, ‘wrote mainly instrumental and vocal music deliberately in a style that would please the listener and ensure his own wealth and success.’

Certainly it was attractive music. The first movement commenced with the flute and oboe doubling parts. This led to a lively and tuneful allegro. The adagio was perhaps a typical baroque slow movement, featuring delicious chords and suspensions. The final movement was fast and quite demanding, especially on the flutist. This work proved the Nikau Trio to be a very pleasing combination, each player having beautiful tone.

Next came one of Schubert’s gorgeous slow movements. At first, it featured oboe, with the others playing sotto voce. But as it progressed, there was not a lot of dynamic variation. As in some of Schubert’s orchestral works, there were rather too many repeats, and the movement outstays its welcome. However, there was a lovely flute and oboe passage, the cello entering at the end, as a kind of fulfilment of promise.

What followed was a duo for oboe and cello ostensibly, yet doubtfully, by Beethoven. (No such duos appear in the list of works by Beethoven in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.) Nevertheless, it was a thoroughly delightful piece. There was more variation of dynamics and expression in this work. The larghetto, entitled Aria, was in a minor key, while the allegro moderato final movement, Rondo, contained a lovely rubato with all the players absolutely together; as elsewhere, ensemble was immaculate.

The trio sonata was Bach at his contrapuntal best, weaving the parts into and through each other. The solo oboe passages, with the other players accompanying, were particularly fine. The final presto movement was pretty exacting, such was its speed.

The final work by good ol’ cheerful Papa Haydn was a splendid way to end the concert, with a final allegro that demonstrated his humour and sense of fun. The master used the instruments imaginatively, producing a jolly result. I couldn’t help thinking, though, that the more mellow sound of the wooden flute would blend better with the other two instruments and with the admirable acoustic of the wooden church interior.

The fluidity of the flute, the piquancy of the oboe and the majestic smoothness of the cello made for great enjoyment of this rare admixture.

A programme of two baroque works, two classical and one early Romantic work was quite an achievement, but perhaps the introduction of one modern piece might have been good, as a contrast. The printed programme notes were brief but informative; it is a pity that those for both Beethoven and Bach were marred by misrelated clauses.

Presumably the building work going on in the grounds of Old St. Paul’s was being done for the historic church, so surely the intermittent hammering could have been stopped the for the duration of the concert?

Bow at St.Andrews – tightening the strings….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Bow String Ensemble

Musical Director – Rachel Hyde

Concertmaster – Kathryn Maloney

GRIEG – Two Elegiac Melodies Op.34  / GORECKI – Three Pieces in the Old Style

TCHAIKOVSKY – Serenade in C Major for Strings Op.48

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

Sunday, 10th July, 2011

This concert was the Bow String Ensemble’s second outing, following its inaugural concert last October, also at St.Andrew’s. On that occasion the new ensemble made an admirable job of the concert’s first half, but, given the rehearsal time available to amateur players, simply couldn’t do justice to what was practically a full-length program. The result resembled what I thought was very much a concert of two halves, disconcertingly so when setting one against the other. Happily, this time round, a less ambitious, though still demanding program produced a far more consistent and satisfying overall result for all concerned.

Being an ex-percussionist rather than a string player myself, I find a certain fascination, even mystique about string playing, all to do with the sound produced by ensembles. Some of the notes and phrases produced by this group in places during the course of the concert were of “sit-up-and-take-notice” quality – and not always in passages where one would expect a mellifluous sound as a certainty. All the “sections” of the ensemble had wonderful moments, places where the tones had unanimity of focus and the phrases either “flowed like oil” or tugged at the heartstrings.

That there was also, especially in the larger work of the concert, the Tchaikovsky Serenade, a rawness of intonation and a few out-of-sync passages could be easily put down to lack of rehearsal time. But, unlike the struggle experienced by the ensemble last year to make the Dvorak Serenade properly “speak”, I felt that, for all the occasional roughnesses we were given a performance of the Tchaikovsky that truly captured the music’s heart. It was more than getting the notes right – I thought the players’ tones conveyed the character of parts of the score so well and whole-heartedly in places, as to suggest that, with more rehearsal time, the group’s potential to realize performances of comparable through-quality would result, to everybody’s enhanced satisfaction.

As with last year’s performance of the “Holberg” Suite, Grieg’s music proved an excellent concert-opener, on this occasion with the Two Elegiac Melodies Op.34. Easily dismissed as “lighter” fare, they’re actually as characteristically heartfelt and richly-layered as any music by the composer, and reward the detailed, sensitively-nuanced playing encouraged by Rachel Hyde with a most attractive and readily-grasped lyricism – they are, of course, transcriptions for strings of two songs by the composer, “Spring” and “Heart Wounds”.

I thought the ensemble’s tones at the outset had a grainy, nostalgic quality, tightly held, with dynamics controlled beautifully throughout, giving the feeling of every note having been “considered”, so that the accompaniments “told” as appropriately as did the leading lines – I also liked the unmoulded sounds made by some of the notes when “leaned into” – they had a marked visceral impact which contrasted well with the “other-worldliness” of some of the more hushed passages. “Heart Wounds” seemed more inward a piece than “Spring”, one that I suspect is more difficult to “sing” because of its chromatically-inflected melody line. This is music which sounds appropriately “cold”, with flecks of sunlight in places like the tiny ‘cello counterpoint, accompanying the melody’s turning to the major key, and clouding over again when the violas introduce the tune’s second-time though. Focusing upon these nicely-realised detailings may seem as if this review might be losing sight of the forest for the trees – but they’re part of what made the performances of this music by the ensemble resonate in the memory long after the last sounds had died away.

In her spoken introduction to the concert conductor Rachel Hyde had described the three Gorecki pieces as being “lovely, but with some really scrunchy sounds in places” – and so it proved, with the last of the trio of pieces transforming an elegiac beginning into a bell-like threnody, some claustrophobic harmonies providing the crunchy bits as promised, relished by musicians and audience alike, as the sounds alternated between outward brazenness and inwardly-sounded echoes. The first two pieces were nicely differentiated, firstly an oscillating, ritual-like processional not unlike parts of the famous Symphony No.3 (“Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”); and then a cheerful folk-dance, very out-of-doors in feeling, richly textured with dynamics that dipped, swooped and soared – the ensemble seemed to take to the different moods of the music like a duck to water.

So the Tchaikovsky Serenade was splendidly prepared for by these goings-on, and the grand, dignified opening – so ceremonial and heart-on-sleeve at one and the same time – didn’t disappoint. The tones may have been close to raw in places as the players again “leaned into” their bowings, but the result was appropriately heartfelt, especially throughout the questioning repetitions leading up to the allegro. The playing brought out the music’s Italianate quality, Rachel Hyde’s tempi and general control perfectly gauged to allow the ‘cellos time to make something of their counterpoints, and the violins and violas elbow-room for their chromatic back-and-forth figurations. The Mozartean exchanges kept their rhythmic poise,though intonation suffered in the exposed dovetailing as the music turned for home just after the pizzicati colorings – the players were much happier with all this the second time round in a lower key (C as opposed to G), a sense of real enjoyment coming though, reflected in the “juiciness” of the playing of the opening’s reprise at the end.

The Waltz, one of Tchaikovsky’s most well-known, was by turns forthright and yielding, again with that attractive “Italianate” quality so well caught by the violins in thirds, though the minor-key episode that followed sounded relatively scrappy – fortunately, amends were made by the warmth of  the major-key recap., the violas having a fine time with their counterpoint (it must be such a joy to play this work!), and the coda brought off most enchantingly by all – the pizzicati ending got a special burst of delighted applause!

I loved the Elegie all over again in this performance – a beautifully “caught” opening, the tones coloured and weighted to perfection, and the last phrase “dug into” most satisfyingly – the following pizzicato sounded a bit “muddy” at first, then cleared, and the violins started the melody confidently, seemed to “lose their nerve” momentarily at the first rallentando, but then pick up again in support of the ‘cellos. Throughout I thought the performance poised, open and nicely charged with feeling – Tchaikovsky’s candidly-open “weeping” towards the end brought out some less-than-ingratiating tones, though the players recovered for the coda, giving us a most atmospheric, “Russian-sounding” final chord.

Straight into the finale, then, songful at the beginning, and with energy and bite to the dance at the allegro (the second violins couldn’t match the confidence of the firsts in the opening exchanges, but the pizzicati leading to the second subject were full of life and bounce!). Though the ‘cellos sounded a little unhappy with their theme, they then dug into the development with gusto, Hyde and the players keeping the momentum going splendidly, the up-and-down scales rocketing with energy just before the grand return to the work’s opening. Most deservedly, conductor and orchestra got a great ovation from the “in-the-round” audience, Hyde inviting comments at the end and getting one or two bravely-delivered contributions!

A quick word regarding Rachel Hyde’s invitation to children present to move around during the performance of the music – while laudable in theory I did find the audience movement distracting during the playing, and wondered whether other people also found that it actually “took” from the concert’s musical ambience – one can be warmly welcoming of children at concerts by way of dispelling a lot of the usual “stuffiness” that people associate with classical music performance, but as this wasn’t anywhere presented as a “young audience” event, I didn’t think that offering people carte blanche of movement was entirely appropriate. Perhaps I’m the one being overly stuffy, now, but I still feel that somewhere there’s middle ground with all of this that can strike a balance at concerts between enjoyment and respect, constraint and comfort – and not just for youthful concertgoers!

Splendid Russian concert from Pinchas Steinberg conducting NZSO with Simon Trpčeski

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pinchas Steinberg and Simon Trpčeski (piano)

Night on Bald Mountain (Mussorgsky); Piano Concerto No 3 in C minor, Op 26 (Prokofiev); Symphony No 4 in F minor, Op 36 (Tchaikovsky)

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 8 July, 6.30pm

I sat one seat away from a couple who, at the end of the symphony, sat stony-faced, and I mean with countenances sculpted from the finest granite: arms folded, so that any suggestion of an agreeable emotion, in sympathy with the storm of applause, and even a few shouts, was out of the question.

I suppose there are still a few people who came across some of the writers of the puritan school of severity and joylessness, and have themselves never listened with normal ears; people who dismissed Tchaikovsky as contemptible for having written music that is widely loved: the church of “if it’s popular, it can’t be good”.

If you detect a note of irritation in my reaction, you’d be right. For I happen to be one who thinks the two finest symphonists of the 19th century, after Beethoven, are Brahms and Tchaikovsky, closely followed by Schubert, Bruckner and Dvořák, and then Schumann, and you-add-the-rest. Anyway, this was a simply stunning performance.

Steinberg may not be a household name like Abbado or Barenboim, Gergiev, Rattle or Haitink, but he’s got a pretty respectable pedigree in opera and orchestral music with major orchestras and opera companies.

He conducted Tchaikovsky’s F minor symphony, without the score, with a searing conviction, whether through the most breathless pianissimo or the most ferocious and tempestuous climaxes. A powerful opening gambit was to be expected in the first movement, but it was followed by a thrillingly slowly paced waltz episode, where the orchestra was guided in serenely lyrical music that might have been misplaced from any other composer’s slow movement. Then it was the control of slow crescendos and slow accelerations (and their reverse) that contributed to the tension and the brilliance of the landscapes revealed from the mountain-tops.

If there were moments when I was slightly worried by the hush or the stillness of some passages, their importance was soon revealed through their contrast with the storming victories that followed. Steinberg’s secret was to invest familiar music with a revelatory freshness.

No conductor is needed to produce the many rapturous individual solo performances by oboe or clarinet, flute, horns or bassoons, or even perhaps by the beautiful playing of cellos at the beginning of the Andantino, but a Steinberg was definitely required to bring about the transitions and the evolutionary passages, and the whole structural grandeur and excitement that held the audience transfixed throughout (perhaps that was my neighbours’ problem).

Then there was that remarkable Scherzo: pizzicato strings, whose dynamics undulated voluptuously, and as phrases passed two or three notes at a time through all the five strings sections. The pizzicato parts were separated by a Trio of the most exquisitely refined woodwind and brass playing, finding colours and subtleties that were fascinating, hardly imagined.

It was the last movement where all Steinberg’s genius was consummated; the rhetorical eruptions, driven by the sweeping left arm, built through the energy that he inspired in the players to a coda of ferocious pace and white-hot emotion.

Mussorgsky

The concert had got off to a splendid start with a devilishly thrilling account of Rimsky-Korsakov’s version of Mussorgsky’s witches’ Sabbath. It was polished, biting and for those predisposed towards the supernatural, exciting or terrifying. The sudden shifts, in the opening fanfares, from one orchestral chorus to another were at once vividly contrasted and seamlessly joined. The strings glowed with a dark velvet refulgence.

Nothing was as rapturous as the way the orchestra dimmed and quietly left the mountaintops at the end.

Macedonian pianist

Then the concerto, with Macedonian pianist Simon Trpčeski.

A local weekly described his country as being only 20 years old.

In case that evokes the image of a land rising from the ocean back in 1991, a word of encouragement: this was the Greek kingdom over which Alexander the Great ruled in the 4th century BC, when his conquests spread Greek influence as far east as India. Slavs settled in its northern region from about the 7th century and it was an independent Slav kingdom in the late 10th century AD. It was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1355, and when they were finally driven out in 1913 it was divided between Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece. The Slav northern part became part of Yugoslavia from 1918 and it was a republic of the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia after the Second World War.

It gained complete independence in 1991. There is inexplicable tension with Greece over the name since it is also the name of the Greek province immediately to the south with its capital Salonica.

Prokofiev’s Concerto No 3

The music. I was a bit disappointed that the most familiar of Prokofiev’s piano concertos was chosen for Trpčeski’s one concert (to be repeated in Napier, Hamilton and Auckland). He did write five of them, all worth hearing; what about a less-known Rachmaninov (1st or 4th), or the intriguing Scriabin concerto, and much other Russian piano music?

That said, the 3rd is highly entertaining: the first movement opens encouragingly, the orchestra playing a droll waiting game, for the piano’s entry which is without fuss, acting the part of an instrument of the orchestra rather than the flashy hero who holds himself apart. The remarkable thing was that, through Trpčeski’s modesty and refinement, the piano’s presence had a much greater impact, and actually charmed us through the constant varying weight of contrasting phrases; it all enraptured the audience from the start.

What surprised me however, half way through the opening Allegro, was a feeling of uninvolvement, that the tension, the temperature, had dropped below the level of full commitment. Yet Steinberg was undoubtedly creating a colourful canvas with finely wrought dynamics and rubato, even though some of it seemed to lie at the surface of musical experience.

The second movement kept me involved more steadily, with a piano part that took on more a life of its own; the sudden outbursts at speed, the hugely vigorous episode in triple time that just as suddenly subsides, with its several retreats to quiet lyrical passages. All the quirkiness of Prokofiev’s score, with shimmering lights, ever-changing rhythms, some motoric, some lyrical, were exposed. In the last climactic build-up there was a fleeting impression of faltering synchronism, but Beecham’s injunction was followed: all finished together.

Prokofiev seems to delight in throwing off balance an audience’s preconceptions of the character of the three movements of a concerto. The simplistic fast – slow – fast pattern has been long banished and myriad contrasts are found within each movement, by much more obtuse, unorthodox means. Nevertheless, pianist and conductor brought about a level of delight and musical fascination that was rare, again with its treading water episodes allowing time to reflect.

After his third return to the platform following great applause, the pianist took a page from a music stand near him and concert master Vesa-Matti Leppänen and principal cello Andrew Joyce brought their seats forward to surround the pianist who then told us that they were to play a trio arrangement of a Macedonian folk dance. They carried it off brilliantly, digging into the characteristic rhythms that one encounters in all the southern Slav countries. The audience was even more vociferous.

Remarkable lunchtime recital by young pianist

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Hannah-Elizabeth Teoh – piano

Bach: Partita No 6 in E minor; Beethoven: Sonata in E, Op 109; Fauré: Theme and Variations in C sharp minor, Op 73

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 6 July 12.15pm

The young pianist Hannah-Elizabeth Teoh comes from Wanganui and has been a student of Judith Clark in Wellington for five years. I had not heard her play before: her performances were insightful and remarkable.

She gave the sort of performance of Bach that utterly vindicates the playing of Bach on the piano, for every movement had a character and a spirituality that she had the sensibility to enrich by her command of dynamics and timbre, through an ability to sustain or cut short each note that the harpsichord cannot achieve.

The sixth partita is the longest of them and perhaps the most serious and inward. The opening Toccata is the longest of the movements, and it was here, at once, that her mature view of the music became clear: its series of broken chords that called the listener to attention, the steady, deliberate pace, and the surprise presented by the arrival of a fugue after a couple of minutes, which she played with a certain magisterial ceremony. There was nice weight in her left hand that gave the fugue clarity as the theme moved into the bass, and touches of rhetoric towards its end were spacious and beguilingly decorated.

The Allemande had an easy fluidity and the Corrente offered evidence of thorough assimilation, with delicious touches of light staccato with fluent scales and ornaments, each phase ending on the major triad. It runs into the Air, no simple, pensive melody but seemingly a series of hesitant questions that are not answered.

Then there was the elaborate, discursive Sarabande, which can challenge a young player whose worldly experience is limited. Here, it was her address at the piano that caught my attention, something in her posture that spoke of a real inwardness in which all sense of a disciplined tempo or rhythm became irrelevant in a large-scale fantasia-like movement. The following Gavotte was a total contrast, where its spirited rhythm was the immediate heart of the music.

It was the Gigue that struck me as unusual, so strong was the pulse of the double-dotted rhythm, perhaps a shade too slow, that it scarcely maintained the feel of the dance. Elegant, lively musical intelligence replaced jollity, and her reading was perfectly persuasive.

To be presented next with Beethoven’s Op 109 in a mere lunchtime concert might have seemed an excess of riches. But it’s a nice contrast, in a sanguine, major key that seems to portray in the first two movements at least, a restlessness that prevents any idea from holding the stage more than a few moments. An optimism seems constantly striving to emerge, though remarkably at odds with the deafness, financial, medical and other problems that afflicted Beethoven in his last years.

Teoh’s playing, always insightful, did not allow the sudden changes of mood, from the Vivace to the Adagio, to weigh too heavily. The airy flourishes in the first movement sounded as if the hammers scarcely touched the strings; and the way she varied the weight of notes in each new and modified version of the tunes was hardly the playing of a student. There were feathery, fairy-like phrases that rose and fell, then sensitively varied weight on particular notes and phrases, all reflecting a combination of careful study, technical fluency and simple intuition about the emotional and spiritual sense of the piece.

The second movement, Prestissimo, is very fast, volatile, echoing much of the disrupted spirit of the first, though it too avoided suggesting the sort of disorder that some performances seem to produce. Her dynamics again often depended on judicious emphases on bass notes and phrases. If there were slips my ears neglected them.

The Theme and variations of the peaceful Andante demonstrated Teoh’s precise sense of the right pace, a buoyant walking pace, and the right degree of change from one variation to another. She achieved a spirituality that never approached sentimentality or melancholy. The whole was somewhat astonishing in a student of her experience.

The third piece in the admirable programme was an impressive Theme and Variations by Fauré, unknown to me, written in 1895 (he was 50) as a Conservatoire examination piece. Schumann seemed the closest in style and spirit, but I suspect I may not have done well in a blind test to identify the composer. There are eleven variations in all, grouped so as to create something in the nature of a three or four movement suite or sonata. Such a plan ensured that the work had a shape that listeners could fasten on to, and the rest was the job of the pianist who dramatized the moods, the light and shade, holding the attention, thus ensuring that many would be inspired to drop into Parsons before going back to work, to explore more of the Fauré that might be unfamiliar.

She waited a long time for applause to subside and then said she’d play three short pieces by Scriabin. Here was yet another field in which she seems to be instinctively at home, with a composer who doesn’t get the attention he deserves.

She played the Mazurka Op 3 No 6 and two preludes, Op 22 No 2 and Op 11 No 23.