Day: 15 July 2012

New wind ensemble plays for mulled wine at Paekakariki

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Mulled Wine Concerts, Paekakariki

Category Five – wind quintet:
Peter Dykes (oboe), Moira Hurst (clarinet), Simon Brew (alto saxophone), Tui Clark (bass clarinet), Penny Miles (bassoon)

Music by Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Rameau, Bach, Byrd, Debussy

Paekakarikiki Memorial Hall

Sunday 15 July, 2.30pm

The famous Mulled Wine Concerts in the hall on The Parade, Paekakariki, staged the first performance by a new wind ensemble, to honour the stormy seas pounding the beach across the road. No ordinary wind ensemble, that usually includes flute and horn, but one comprising entirely reeds – single and double.

Moira Hurst introduced the players, explaining the name Category 5  as relating to the meteorological classification of wind strength, and noting that though something of a storm was visible outside only 50 metres from the hall, that was perhaps only a category 3½ (what was happening inside was something far more formidable!). (Ignorant of nautical weather scales, I looked it up through Google. The scale presumably referred to is not the Beaufort Wind Scale but the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale which uses the word ‘category’ and goes from 1 to 5. LT).

Each player, as the concert proceeded, added anecdotes to explain the special virtues or playing difficulties of his or her instrument, sometimes drawing unflattering comparisons with players of other instruments.

For example, Simon Brew noted that the demand for music for wind groups, particularly saxophone quartets, was met by arrangements, mainly of music out of copyright; and those arrangements were, accordingly, protected and yielded royalties to the arranger; it had become a lucrative secondary income for poor sax players.

An overture opened the concert: that to Tchaikovsky’s ballet, The Nutcracker (if only orchestral programmers could get over the deathly, over-used, popular suite of Nutcracker dances!) It proved an admirable candidate, in an arrangement that seemed to suit the quintet perfectly, even the saxophone whose sound, unsurprisingly, was here more in sympathy with its colleagues than it might be in a symphony orchestra.

Mozart’s Serenade, K 388, in C minor, is a wind octet – one of the three marvellous wind serenades, with K 361 and K 375, written in the early 1780s. Mozart rescored it for string quintet in 1787 (K 406), and it may have been largely the latter that was used for this latest version for five reed instruments. Again, the fit, and the tonal contrasts displayed in this arrangement were most attractive. Tui Clark’s bass clarinet tends to be confined, like the bassoon’s, to a bass line but here it was free to relish  some individuality.  Simon Brew’s saxophone made a remarkably authentic fit in Mozart’s texture; Peter Dykes’ fine, high oboe line was conspicuous though, by the second movement, it began to sound a bit insistent. They all played with great energy, if perhaps a little fast in the last two movements; and ensemble was excellent throughout.

La Poule is taken from Rameau’s second book of pieces for harpsichord, amusingly suggesting the squawk of a chicken, to which Moira Hurst offered an alarming simulation. The said squawks were passed, democratically, from one instrument to another.

Those who did not know the source of the oddly titled ‘Jesu joy of man’s desiring’ (for the original ‘Jesu bleibet meine Freunde’) by Bach, would again have been enchanted to find it as an aria in his cantata BWV 147, ‘Herz und Mund, Tat und Leben’ – one of the cantatas probably written in the early, Weimar years. Here the oboe took the rippling accompanying motif while the clarinet played the melody, as if Bach had scored it for these instruments.

The Browning was a medieval popular song, used for a set of variations for recorder consort by William Byrd. It may have been a controversial concession for the group to have succumbed to using music composed for scorned, reedless instruments; but they would have justified it by the tonal variety that was available to them and which they made full use of; they might also, perhaps, have introduced some greater dynamic variety in their playing, but their coping with the extremely difficult rhythms in the piece obscured the rather unvarying tempo.

The concert ended with what was perhaps the most challenging adaptation, Debussy’s piano suite, Children’s Corner. It had been so transformed as to be almost unrecognisable, until the most familiar theme of the first section of Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum appeared. Peter Dykes replaced his oboe with a cor anglais (or ‘anglé’, as he explained, noting the still common misapprehension that there is something English about the alto version of the oboe; yet in my Larousse dictionary it is still ‘cor anglais’). The saxophone was prominent here, taking a high line.

In the next piece, Jumbo’s Lullaby, it was the turn of Penny Miles’s bassoon to take the opening solo phrases. In the fourth section, The Snow is Dancing, a slight weakness, often noticeable, was a lack of dynamic subtlety, of attention to the need for really quiet playing, both in response to the character of the particular movement, and merely for variety’s sake. The snow was very heavy.

However, in the final section, Golliwog’s Cake Walk, it was their strengths, the energy and their so conspicuous enjoyment of music making together that spoke most clearly, justifying the creation of a new and rather novel (for Wellington anyway) instrumental ensemble. Their encore, a piece called Hip-hop, by Ellington, was well placed and enhanced the enjoyment of the after-match mulled wine and snacks.

 

 

 

 

Consorting with harpsichords – Erin Helyard and Douglas Mews

Posted on by Peter Mechen

FOUR HANDS – TWO HARPSICHORDS

Erin Helyard and Douglas Mews (harpsichords)

Adam Concert Room

New Zealand School of Music

Victoria University of Wellington

Sunday, 15th July 2012

One of a series of concerts entitled “Musicke for Severall Friends”, this one featured a close-knit partnership of two harpsichordists, playing both together and singly for the delight of a small-ish but dedicated Adam Concert Room audience. The “two-for-the-price-of-one” package featured two tutor-performers from the New Zealand School of Music, plus two instruments from the NZSM collection of keyboard instruments, copies of French (1769) and German (1728) harpsichords respectively. Both were two-manual instruments, the former made in the UK, and the latter built by Aucklander Paul Downie.

I’ve heard Douglas Mews perform many times on various keyboard instruments in an enormous range of repertoire; but I had never heard Erin Helyard play before. He’s currently period performance tutor at the NZSM and brings a wealth of experience as a performer and scholar to that position – however, what I found enchanting was the energy and vigour that he radiated while at the keyboard, both in partnership with his colleague, and as a solo performer. The pair worked well together, obviously sharing considerable musicianship within contrasting playing styles.

Erin Helyard visibly interacted with both his instrument and with the music as he played, bringing an element of physical choreography to the performance. Rather than finding this distracting, I considered such apparent contouring and visual delineation an added dimension to the music, an integral part of the ritual of a specific performance. That this was very much an individual rather than a standardised baroque musical process could be seen from Douglas Mews’ far less demonstrative manner at the keyboard – here one listened to the sounds and allowed one’s imagination to put flesh on the bones of the music in abstract. Not that Mews’ playing was unemotional or lacking in warmth – but the qualities of the music were expressed far more aurally than visually.

“Vive la difference”, as certain Continentals say; and Mews and Helyard brought their individualized responses to a wonderful synthesis with the Sonata in F by Wilhelm Friedmann Bach, which began the program in a most resplendent way.  I’d always considered Carl Phillipp Emanuel Bach the “stormy petrel” among the great Johann Sebastian’s composer-children, but Wilhelm Friedmann certainly demonstrated in this sonata a similar penchant for contrast, cheekiness and drama. In fact I thought at the finale’s beginning the players were using a kind of “janissary stop”, such was the irruption of percussive-sounding tones generated by the opening figurations’ rapid upward rolls. Elsewhere, the unexpected became the norm in places, the composer delighting in keeping his listeners guessing as to the various possible trajectories of the music.

After this the aforementioned CPE Bach was brought into the action on a single harpsichord, played by Erin Helyard.  via his 12 Variations on the Spanish Follia, the famous tune which has inspired well over a hundred composers to use it in their works (its origin has, in fact been ascertained as Portugese). True to reputation, Phillipp Emanuel’s florid, widely-ranging variations whirled us through incident and contrast aplenty, the composer’s use of the extremities of the keyboard anticipating Beethoven, and calling upon great reserves of virtuosity from the player, who was,in this case, equal to the task. In places the “Follia” theme was completely obliterated (at such points someone like comedienne Anna Russell would have said, “You’re making this up, aren’t you?”), though Phillipp Emanuel would adroitly return to something more recognizably connected to the original dance-tune. A dignified processional was followed by a whirlwind finale, at the abrupt conclusion of which the player straightaway got to his feet, with what felt like a spontaneous impulse of showmanship, very much in accordance with the music.

Relative sobriety settled over the ensuing performance of JS Bach’s French Suite, given by Douglas Mews. The Allemande was gracefulness itself under his fingers, the rhythms extremely pliable. The lively Cpourante was followed by another grave dance, the Sarabande, the performance here emphasizing a certain timelessness, a world within the sound-equivalent of a grain of sand, or eternity within a flower. Ample contrast came from the Gavotte and the following Bouree, energetic and engaging dances, which again threw the next movement, a Loure, into bold relief – this was a slow, waltz-like piece, offering ample space for elaboration, but with a certain piquancy of mood, perhaps emphasized by the constant dotted rhythm. I thought the player’s delivery of the final Gigue was masterly, a confident, even racy performance!

The programme’s final item was the Concerto in C for two harpsichords BWV 1061, the players swapping instruments for this piece. By now the performance profiles of each instrumentalist were sharply-defined in our minds, enabling us to relish both similarities and differences of phrasing, emphasis and gestural incident which the music of Bach occasioned. Antiphonal episodes gave each player solo-turns, though there were concerted passages as well where the rapport between the parts was beautifully, and teasingly suggested.A deeply-felt Adagio ovvero Largo (“ovvero” means “or rather” – couldn’t Bach make up his mind, here? – or was he thinking of what performers might do and was cutting them off at the pass, so to speak?) was followed by a sparking, festive-like fugue that reaffirmed the great man’s incredibly “hot-wired” musical mind for all of us lesser mortals, and done full justice by Douglas Mews and Erin Helyard.

We got part of a Vivaldi Oboe Concerto transcription as an encore and a palate-cleanser, and then (perfectly possible in a venue such as the Adam Concert Room) a closer look at those two exquisitely-beautiful instruments before they were carefully put away – a perfect conclusion to our little baroque feast!