Month: October 2012

Notable Brazilian guitarist presented by the embassy and the NZSM

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Aliéskey Vianna (guitar)

Presented by the New Zealand School of Music and the Embassy of Brazil

Massey University Theatrette, Wellington

Thursday 18 October, 6.30pm

The Embassy of Brazil has been hosting regular cultural events for a few years, and these are often of music, featuring Brazilian musicians. We have been aware of them but it has taken us till now to get to attend and to write about them.

The recital by Aliéskey Vianna was particularly drawn to our notice through that excellent daily radio programme, Upbeat, on RNZ Concert at midday. Eva Radich seemed to establish a delightful rapport with him and he proved articulate, indeed remarkably fluent in English, and well-informed and not just about his own instrument, but about music in general – classical, popular, Latin, jazz, anything…

He was born in Brazil’s third largest metropolis, Belo Horizonte, in the state of Minas Gerais, about 400km north of Rio. He graduated from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

The visit was evidently initiated by Dr Jane Curry, head of classical guitar performance at the School of Music, who attended the University of Arizona at Tucson a few years after Vianna had been there and the two had become friends.  The Massey theatrette was almost full when we arrived, of guitar students and members of the Brazilian community and a few other diplomats who, from personal experience, are not in general as interested or as cultivated in the arts as is often imagined. However, some were there, though the majority of the audience judging by the talk during the interval and at the supper later, were from the Brazilian community.

It was a mixture of classical and other music – the ‘other’ being pieces by a couple of famous Brazilian composers.

Inevitably, he began with two pieces by Villa-Lobos – the familiar first Prelude and the less familiar Study No 11.  Suggesting that he was approaching the acoustic diffidently, for a space full of people sounds very different from an empty one during an earlier test-run, his playing in the Prelude was soft, unassuming and discreet, which offered a very attractive view of it; though its middle section took on a more confident character.

I could not discern the particular technical aspects that Estudo 11 might have been been intended to offer work. It began deliberately, soon moving through a series of disparate harmonies, tremolo effects using fast repeated notes, then a theme that seemed derived from chords rather than the other way round: determined by the colour and flavour of the melody.

The next two pieces came from the late and early 18th century: Fernando Sor’s Fantasia Op 18, a prelude and set of variations on a theme by Paisiello. The prelude was a brief affair that seemed to lead without much change of mood into the statement of the theme in question, which was a thoroughly typical, melodious piece from the time of Haydn and Mozart. The composer put it through a conventional routine which offered plenty of opportunity to show the guitar’s lyrical strengths, some of great delicacy, others of fleetness, one using odd muted strings, and one employing only the left hand in both stopping and plucking the strings; it could hardly have been played without a very occasional fluff.

Bach’s Chaconne has, as Vianna remarked, been adapted by a great many musicians for a great many instruments from its original for solo violin. In Vianna’s own arrangement, it seemed particularly well adapted to the guitar, and it emerged from the treatment in an illuminating, tasteful performance.  It was strongly driven by a feeling of forward motion; at the same time the playing conveyed the underlying grief the Bach no doubt felt at the sudden death of his first wife. The last few minutes of the movement in which quite an emotional punch is created, especially in Busoni’s famous piano arrangement, also had a singular impact on the guitar.

The second half began with a couple of improvisations in jazz style, on themes by jazz composer Ralph Towner. Improvisation is a mysterious art, and one hard to judge in the absence of a knowledge of a performer’s entire oeuvre; for there’s always the lurking question, how much is the exercise of a good memory, following sequences that have been thought out in the mind and on your instrument perhaps many times before. The old game of improvising on a theme offered by audience members provides a more transparent test, though even here, well-practised passages, decorative effects, chord sequences that lie readily to the hands of the improviser but are unfamiliar to an audience, make it a problematic process. All one can say is that Vianna displayed most impressive fluency and versatility, commanded easy-sounding harmonic changes, a wonderful range of ornaments and fleet passage-work. And the two pieces, Toledo and The Juggler’s Etude, seemed to evolve in an organic manner, enabling you to gauge where the playing was heading and how far off was its conclusion.

Vanna told us that Anibal Augusto Sardinha, better known as ‘Garôto’ (his nick-name sounds menacing, but means ‘The Boy’) had emerged from the streets of São Paulo where he was born in 1915, playing the banjo, in popular music, especially the samba. After he went to Rio de Janeiro in 1938 he soon met Laurinda Almeida and Carmen Miranda who took him to the United States with her. His music turned towards jazz and Duke Ellington and Art Tatum were among those in his concerts; but the sounds of the bossa nova are not too remote.  He died in 1955.

His Inspiracão seemed like an exercise in slithering chord changes below scraps of charming if slightly sentimental melody; while Lamentos do morro expressed its lament in hard chords and plucking that would approximate staccato playing on other instruments, in very lively, extravert bossa nova rhythm.

Sergio Assad (presumably no relation), born in 1952, is an important Brazilian composer/guitarist, famous in a duo with his brother Odair. You will find a formidable list of his compositions in Wikipedia.

His three movement suite, Aquarelle, opened with Divertimento where a partly obscured theme was underpinned by bossa nova rhythms and a dazzling array of notes that suggested a fastidious musical personality. Valseana was what its name suggested, as disguised and subverted as Ravel’s orchestral essay, was adorned by decorative flourishes and arpeggio flights. The closing Prelúdio é Toccatina somewhat mirrored the Sor Fantasie, with its short Prelude forsaking Brazil for the sobriety of Bach, while the Toccata handled its material as any devoted disciple of Villa-Lobos would have learned to do through the example of the sequence of the Bachianas Brasileiras.

Apart from the exemplary, if not utterly flawless, performances, there were Vianna’s well-chosen and intelligently expressed remarks about the composers and the pieces, touching on the influences that contributed to their style and handling. The rather slight programme notes and spoken remarks that have often accompanied other guitar recitals has been a matter that I have previously had the effrontery to lament. Here was an example of a performer presuming no less musical background that would a pianist talking to an audience that was about to hear Bach or Liszt or a string quartet on Haydn or Beethoven

 

Five violinists and a cellist at student recital at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

String Students of the New Zealand School of Music

Brahms: Sonata no.1 for violin and piano in G major, Op.78
Mozart: Violin Concerto no.5, K.219; 3rd movement
Bach: Sonata no.1 in G minor, BWV 1001: Fuga; Sonata no.2 in A minor, BWV 1003; Andante
Bloch: ‘Prayer’ from Jewish Life,  Suite no.1
Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor, Op.64, 3rd movement

Annabel Drummond, Lydia Harris, Julian Baker, Hester Bell Jordan, Kate Oswin (violins), Alexandra Partridge (cello), Rafaelle Garlick-Grice, Matthew Oswin (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 17 October 2012, 12.15pm

The lunch-time concert was more than usually dramatic, with an earthquake occurring while Julian Baker was playing his Bach, but he carried right on, and showed no sign of discomposure.

First on the programme, though, was Annabel Drummond, a first-year student, playing the Brahms movement.  This is a long movement, marked vivace ma non troppo.  There were a few slight intonation glitches, but the expressive playing and superb tone Annabel gained from her instrument made these of no significance.  The sparkling piano part complemented the mellow, lyrical violin part, and had the limelight itself at times.

The gently melancholy character of the sonata, particularly the funeral march section (which belied the tempo marking) was conveyed beautifully, while the more rapid sections were fine too, despite a very brief lapse into harsh tone from the violin.  A splendid technique contributed to a wonderful performance in which Brahms’s work was played with feeling.

Lydia Harris gave us the third movement of Mozart’s concerto nicknamed ‘Turkish’.  Her violin had a strong sound, and she played with clarity, but not the sweetness of tone of the previous player, some stridency, even abrasiveness at times, on the upper strings, and not enough delicacy.  The intonation was occasionally awry.  There was too much pedal used in the piano part for Mozart.  The whole movement was, to my mind, played a trifle too fast, though it was not without character.

Next up was J.S. Bach, in the capable hands of Julian Baker, who played the unaccompanied fugue from memory.  His spoken introduction was good, and very clear.  The difficult music was executed very competently on the whole, despite a number of lapses in the double-stopping.  For a first-year student, this was very fine Bach playing; he had the audience totally absorbed (well, some of us lost concentration briefly, but not the performer) with idiomatic Bach, and a rich tone.

A cello followed, by way of variety.  Ernest Bloch’s piece was a shorter work than others on the programme, but of considerable interest.  Playing from memory, Alexandra Partridge proved to be a confident cellist, and one able to produce a lovely sonorous tone from her instrument.  There was plenty of subtlety and a range of dynamics in her performance; the excellent empathy between cellist and pianist was noticeable.

Hester Bell Jordan, playing the Bach Andante, seemed rather tentative.  Maybe it was nerves, but her tone was not consistent.  While there was care with the baroque style of phrasing away the second of each pair of notes, the performance came over as rather hesitant, with insufficient flow.  Certainly, the amount of double-stopping made this a difficult piece to bring off.

The last performer was Kate Oswin, whose brother Matthew accompanied her in the piano reduction of the orchestral score of the third movement of Mendelssohn’s violin concerto, probably the most frequently performed of any violin concerto.  It was a challenging role for both players, the violinist playing from memory, not made easier by being played a little faster than the marking might suggest.  The violin part was well under Kate’s fingers.  However, she does not have a big sound, and the piano sometimes had too much volume in comparison.

I felt the performance was a little too glib.  All the notes were there, but there was a lack of expression or dynamic alteration – indeed, the tempo made it more difficult to convey feeling and nuance.  It felt a little like a race of technical brilliance, rather than music.  There is no doubt that this 3rd-year student was more advanced technically than the first year students – but musically?  It needed to be more winsome.

A couple of people remarked to me how lucky we are to have these lunch-hour concerts (free, with opportunity for koha), in which we hear superb music from accomplished musicians.  I strongly echo that.

 

Organ recital at St.Peter’s on Willis – musical and ambient enchantment

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Peter’s Church on Willis, Wellington

Spring Organ Concert Series

Ian Webb (organ)

Music by JS BACH, BUXTEHYDE, SWEELINCK, VIERNE, ALAIN, GIGOUT

Sunday, 14th October, 2012

What an enchanting place in which to listen to music, I thought, while waiting and looking around from my pew-seat in St.Peter’s Church on Willis St. in Wellington. My reactions were undoubtedly fuelled by the afternoon’s sunbeams, whose wan and wintry outside effect somehow took on a transcendental quality, refracted through the west-facing windows of the church, immediately behind the congregation. The light came streaming in, bathing the whole of the space in front of the nave with a kind of refulgent glow, suggesting a kind of illumination from within as much as from without.

This was an effect I well remembered from a radiant performance of the Mozart Requiem given by the Bach Choir in this same church earlier in the year. And although there were fewer performers (one, in fact) this time round, the ambient light was still working its magic on the spaces and atmospheres, warming the hues and tones of the organ pipes and the surrounding structures.

It made for a kind of hushed expectation about the occasion, a performance from British organist Ian Webb, temporarily living and working in New Zealand not primarily as a musician but as a cardiologist at Wellington Hospital. He was, before leaving Britain, Organ Scholar and Director of Music at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.His activities in Britain indicate the extent of his skill as an organist, and what we heard him play this afternoon confirmed that status.

He began his recital with the Fantasia in G Minor BWV 542 by JS Bach, a performance which had plenty of “grunt” at the beginning, and then relaxed, richly and lyrically, throughout the quieter, more meditative sections. The instrument seemed to have plenty of power as required, without overwhelming, the reverberation having a blooming rather than a confused and muddying effect. Even in quicker, complex contrapuntal passages, the clarity of the player’s figurations was astonishing.

After talking a little about the remaining items on his program Ian Webb then gave us Vierne’s  Berceuse, subtitled “Pieces in free style”), his registrations creating a world of feeling away from Bach’s teutonic textures. The sound wasn’t unlike a wheezy harmonium, so very affecting and nostalgic (obviously tapping into my early memories of listening to my mother play our church’s organ). The textures here were beautiful, piquant and flavorsome, spare and sharply-focused, never weighty – for some reason I thought, “so very Catholic”, which may have been an heretical thought to have in an Anglican Church! Vierne’s “lullaby” theme lent itself to considerable evocation, with a withdrawn section towards the end redolent of oncoming sleep.

Johann Sebastian “Mighty Bach” (as Dylan Thomas’s Organ Morgan called him) returned with the well-known chorale Wachet auf, ruf ins die Stimme BWV 645, the familiar tune underscored with a deep-throated pedal accompaniment, the playing refreshingly sprightly rather than lugubrious, with the counter-chorale making its appearance on a divertingly raspy reed – all very physical and agile and serene at one and the same time.

I didn’t know very much about Jehan Alain, whose Litanies Ian Webb next played – the organist emphasized in his introduction Alain’s “Catholicity” and the composer’s attitude to prayer as a “burst of energy”. The forthright opening bore out the idea of a kind of irruption, the ensuing Allegro celebratory and festive, with a ear-catching “echo” effect, seeming at one stage to bounce and then rebound from the church’s walls. More meditative episodes were after a while broken into by enormous unisons, grand statements of the theme and its variants, bearing out Ian Webb’s description of the piece as “obsessional prayer”. Bach came to the rescue of our finer sensibilities with the following piece, An Wasserflussen Babylon BWV 653, a gentle, lyrical, quietly-meditative piece with wondrously sepulchral pedal notes!

Ian Webb then gave us some music by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, a modest piece with the grand title Variations on “Mein junges Leben hat ein End”, a dignified standard Protestant hymn-tune subjected to piquant changes of mode, registration and rhythm, at one point sounding a little like the “Coventry Carol”. The organist then seemed to literally pull out all the stops for the following piece by Bach to give the grandest possible contrast, the A major Prelude and Fugue BWV 536. The brief Prelude with its swirling toccata-like figures was splendidly realized, and the Fugue dignified and gently-moving at the outset, featuring chirruping piccolo-tones at one point, before gathering increasing girth and energy – Webb’s fingers falling over themselves in excitement at one point, but delivering the pay-off impressively.

I did know that Bach made a famous journey of over a hundred miles on foot to hear Dietrich Buxtehyde play, but Ian Webb assured us that Bach’s journey didn’t include paying court to Buxtehyde’s daughter, who was more than usually homely of appearance. That diverting thought was a secondary consideration to the music we next heard, the Chorale Prelude Nun bitten wir den Heiligen Geist, one of two Preludes written by the composer, and instantly proclaiming him as a creative force on a different plane to the more limited Sweelinck, the chorale melody ornamented freely and elegantly.

Concluding the recital, Ian Webb chose a piece from the French repertoire, Eugène Gigout’s Grand Choeur Dialogue, another grand, festive and wonderful piece which would, I think, have the effect of drawing the casual listener to further exploration of the French repertoire, especially when presented, as here, with such great flair. Gigout obviously knew how to build tensions within a piece in both predictable and unexpected ways. The music featured gradually tightening antiphonal exchanges between voices, but then would break off from such interactions to lead the ear along more contrapuntal pathways mid-exchange, before reverting suddenly to the give-and-take with heightened energies. I loved the conclusion of the piece – great chords, modulating in all directions, but somehow finding a single note to finish the music on – bravo! – as much for the player, Ian Webb, as for the composer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brilliant Bartered Bride redeems shortcomings of its Cold War setting

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Bartered Bride by Smetana (NBR New Zealand Opera)

The Vector Wellington Orchestra and the Opera Chorus; conducted by Oliver von Dohnányi; directed by Daniel Slater; associate director and choreographer: Tim Claydon; associate director: Jacqueline Coats; chorus master: Michael Vinten

Cast: Anna Leese, Peter Wedd, Conal Coad, Andrew Glover, Taryn Fiebig, John Antoniou, Patricia Wright, Richard Green, Helen Medlyn, Jeff Kingsford-Brown

St James Theatre, Wellington

Saturday 13 October, 7.30pm

New Zealand Opera continues to explore every year or so, as much as it safely can, slightly unfamiliar operas. Their record so far has been unfaltering, and this splendid outing of something a bit on the fringe has maintained the high score. An opera has been revealed that many will have heard of but few expected to see here. This production has put it into the mainstream, into the class of comic operas with Rossini and Donizetti, Strauss and Offenbach or G & S. The music has character, wit and energy, and the story is no less probable than the average comic opera – or theatrical comedy for that matter.

The history
But first, the opera’s background in New Zealand. It has not been entirely absent from the New Zealand stage; it was one of the operas produced in the second decade of the legendary New Zealand Opera Company. It was in 1964, and I did not see it as I was overseas, but I recall reading about it in the New Zealand press. That year the company was about at the height of its success: both The Bartered Bride and Rigoletto toured nationally with the then NZBC Symphony Orchestra, and nationally meant to a dozen or more towns; and there were were also a Cosi fan tutte which had been produced in Wellington at the end of 1963 (I saw that) and then travelled to Auckland, Nelson and Blenheim, and La cenerentola (Rossini) was staged in Auckland and Wellington.

And note too that the Dunedin Opera Company, which was established in 1956, a little after the New Zealand Opera Company, and is still at work, staged The Bartered Bride as its first production in 1957, revived in 1962; though that would have been a very pro/am affair.

Certainly, by today’s standards, those productions would appear pretty amateur, but at that time very few people travelled overseas and saw real international opera, and there were very ready audiences for opera all over the country. In reality, through those years, and especially the 1980s and 90s there was a lot more opera to be seen throughout New Zealand than there is now, if not as polished as it usually is today.

This splendid performance
Before I describe my misgivings about the production, I will dwell on the performance itself, much the most important aspect and which was such a delight.  The English translation is by David Pountney and Leonard Hancock, and the dialogue by Daniel Slater, the director; it was idiomatic and sometimes witty, and the surtitles were excellent though often remaining on the screen too briefly for me. I am a firm advocate of opera in the original language, and earlier I had some misgivings about it, but in the theatre I was won over right from the start, for there is not a great gulf between the rhythms of Czech and English.  Most voices projected very clearly but the surtitles were still a help.

The programme booklet was comprehensive, with scholarly articles by Nicholas Tarling and Nicholas Reid: well worth the money.

And there is no doubt about the fully international character of this latest production, hired from Opera North which premiered it in 1998; it was widely praised then, and at revivals.

The opening scene is something of a coup, with the villagers carrying chairs for a choir rehearsal under a stiff conductor who has them singing quite brilliantly to infectious Slav rhythms, in praise (ironically) of the country’s liberation. (The real chorus master was Michael Vinten). And though the chorus doesn’t sing a great deal, its contributions are always high points both through the music and their tight and energetic ensemble, in particular their coming in at the end of the Polka and during the circus scene.

Perhaps the most striking, and astonishing element is the troupe of acrobats who enliven all the dances, especially the Furiant and the circus itself with the Dance of the Comedians, where their spectacular juggling and hair-raising hurling of each other high in the air and trusting their catchers so implicitly adds a very singular element to the performance.

The lighting (Simon Mills) is so subtly executed that you are virtually unaware of it.

Roles are excellently cast, the chorus vivid and well schooled, and the orchestra plays with good ensemble, energy and colour; conductor Oliver von Dohnányi guides things spiritedly.

As usual, the cast is a mixture of New Zealand and overseas singers. The vivid Napier-born soprano Anna Leese fitted the role of Mařenka like a glove, with a strong, beautiful voice portraying intelligence and determination; her costume – an unstylish mix of bluish jerkin over pink skivvy and blue jeans  –  her demeanour, like those of almost all the cast did indeed recreate the look of the 1970s – anywhere – not merely in communist countries. (Anna gave a good interview in The New Zealand Herald: look at http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10834706).

Her boy-friend, Jeník, is English tenor, Peter Wedd, who has sung in Australia in two Janáček roles (and two roles in Kátya Kabanová elsewhere – looks as if he’s a Czech specialist); he wore a leather jacket and brown trousers (the designer of costumes and other aspects of the production was Opera North’s Robert Innes Hopkins). Wedd’s voice and lively performance were as arresting in his role as was Leese’s. The duets of Mařenka and Jeník are important moments of the opera and they carried them off as if they cared.

The arrival of Conal Coad on stage always seems to bring with it the feeling that, here is a truly polished and convincing production. I confess I didn’t become aware that Kecal had been transformed into the village mayor till I read it in the programme; and it didn’t make his bullying more or less acceptable. But he didn’t ham it or try to play for laughs; his performance, with brilliant patter-arias in the last scenes, simply fulfilled the role’s expectations splendidly, even in his devastating humiliation at the end.

The approved bridegroom for Mařenka appears after the second exciting acrobat-led dance – the Furiant – in Act II: the earlier invisible Vašek (New Zealander Andrew Glover) appears and explains himself in a mock stammering manner. But the scene was lustily funny in which Mařenka, pretending to be someone else, paints a terrible picture of her own self for Vašek’s enlightenment, causing him immediately to abjure her.

The interval came after Act II with preparations for the circus, one of the most spectacular scenes, with the Ring-master, played by actor Jeff Kingston-Brown who was given wittily topical (for 1972) lines touching life under communism. It also introduces what is little more than a brilliant cameo role, a circus performer, Esmeralda, sung by sparkling soubrette performer Taryn Fiebig, one of the most catchy and hilarious numbers. Vašek is paired with her and for a moment she serves to confirm Vašek in his determination not to marry Mařenka.

Mařenka’s parents had appeared in Act I in the dealings with Kecal. They are Australian John Antoniou and Patricia Wright, who is still one of the best sopranos in this country. Now, in Act III, Vašek’s parents and, it turns out, Jeník’s too, show up. They are very well delineated by New Zealanders Richard Green and Helen Medlyn and one wished they’d had bigger roles.  One feels a bit sorry for Vašek, as the unlikely match with Esmeralda doesn’t materialise.

It’s a pity that this splendid comic opera has not become a standard repertoire piece outside of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the homeland of conductor Oliver von Dohnányi, who has been its conductor for Opera North as well as many other companies (though I don’t see Bratislava or other Slovak cities among them). He led the singers and orchestra with energy and drew strong rhythms from the orchestra in the dances and the various ensembles and choruses built on Slavonic ideas.

From Austrian bucolic to heroic communist peasant?
Daniel Slater, the director, is quoted saying he thought a shift in era would make the characters more believable, and so he moved it from its original time, mid-19th century, to 1972, a few years after the Prague Spring when under an enlightened leader, Dubček, there seemed momentary hope that the harsh hand of communism might be at least softened, only to be dashed by the arrival of Warsaw Pact troops.

It was produced only eight years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the world was still fascinated by the events of 1989/90, dramatising the stark contrasts between the old evil days and the – well, what? – the bright optimism of the 90s punctuated with the happy scenes in the former Yugoslavia?

This production is already 14 years old.

And the world has moved on, a very long way, since then.

So is it dated already? To me it felt like that. There is a tide in the affairs of men (as Brutus said) – of history and art. What happened to the Soviet empire was momentous and amazing, and to transplant an old opera into that period was adventurous. But is it still, today?

The common justification for theatrical changes of time and place is the fresh perceptions and levels of meaning, insights about the story itself made possible. What did we learn about the nature of the Czech people, of political life, or of the psychology of human beings?

Apart from the very amusing promotional rave from the Ring-master at the start of Act III with his witty allusions to communist leaders and the threatening existence of Big Brother in Moscow, very little.

I approached it with an open mind, but the feeling grew steadily that the presence of a totalitarian regime in the background offered little more than a bit of visual ugliness in the set.

The opening chorus, directed in a somewhat martial manner to be sure, did not offer any special insights into the nature of life under communism.  It’s Liberation Day rather than simply a holiday, but that seems not to change the way the people behave.  There was no modification, nor could there have been, in the story that revolves round the planned marriage as a matter of financial convenience. Micha, a well-to-do merchant, was still able to exploit a poor peasant who seems still to own his own farm (though we know that collectivisation was not nearly as sweeping in the satellite countries as it was in the Soviet Union).

There were still plenty of typical country scenes and pretty villages in Czechoslovakia in 1972 – I spent a few days there in the 60s. I was bemused at Slater’s relating how he had toured the country looking for ‘an authentic Bohemian village, [one not] prettied for tourists’. (He could have done that a lot more cheaply by looking through media photos). To have fastened on this bleak scene seems sadly perverse.

Where do the comrades live, work and shop, and go to school and drink beer? On stage we see a big grey transformer, a couple of red steel drums, beer barrels on a table and four poles that might have been watch towers or carried search-lights. Was it a border post? But the folks gathered in this odd outdoor place to have their choir rehearsal. What an eccentric community!

While these feelings about the point of the change of era remained, my enjoyment of the performance grew. It’s the music, to be sure, but much more than the overture and the three well-known dances. It’s not one of those operas with an embarrassing libretto that survives entirely through the music, for the story is fairly adroit and credible, at least in theatrical terms. The only place that always seems weak is in the last scene where Jeník fails tell Mařenka at once, in simple terms about the stunt he has pulled over the broker which will make their marriage not only secure but financially rewarding. But theatre depends on characters who don’t ask the obvious question or offer the obvious explanation at the right moment.

In conclusion, the shifting of the production to the 1970s did no great harm; it allowed a few moments of amusement but really offered no fresh insights into the opera or into the human condition. All the important elements, of singing and orchestral playing, were of undisputed international quality and another opera has, at least for us, been admitted to the ranks of top 20.

Nicola Benedetti and the NZSO show their class

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents                                                                                               FORBIDDEN LOVE

YOUNG – Dance / BERNSTEIN – Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story”

TCHAIKOVSKY – Violin Concerto / Francesca da Rimini

Nicola Benedetti (violin)

Miguel Harth-Bedoya (conductor)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 13th October 2012

This NZSO concert was a show made up of various classy acts – perhaps the sum of its parts were greater than the whole, but those classy parts alone made it all memorable, if not perfect.

One of these classy acts was violinist Nicola Benedetti’s – she gave a beautifully warm and richly-toned performance of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. Another was conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya’s inspired music-making with the orchestra throughout almost every moment of the evening. The latter were perfect partners for Benedetti in the concerto, and readily captured the warm nostalgia and heady exuberance of Kenneth Young’s Dance at the concert’s beginning. As for Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, the energy and brilliance of the playing was staggering, sounding as if the NZSO had been a pit orchestra for years in one of the Broadway music-theatres.

Only Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini didn’t for me exert its usual grip, though the winds and strings played their hearts out to wondrous effect throughout the work’s lyrical middle section, describing the awakening of attraction and deepening of love between the ill-fated, adulterous couple. I thought that, immediately after the Bernstein work, with its wonderful “instant-wow” quality, its tremendous exuberance, colour and visceral engagement, most nineteenth-century romantic music would sound terribly old-fashioned (as here), rhetorical and bombastic. We were being asked to suddenly take our sensibilities back a century, and to my ears the juxtaposition didn’t work, and especially in the case of poor old Francesca.

Had the order of the pieces been reversed, things would have been quite different – without the very twentieth-century jazzy excitement and cool sophistication of the West Side Story music in our ears, we could have more readily gone back to Tchaikovsky’s (and further back to Dante’s) worlds of sensibility and been more properly and deeply moved by the horror and pity of Francesca’s and her lover’s plight. The darkness of Tchaikovsky’s opening sequence, an evocation in music of the inscription over the Gates of Hell – “Abandon hope all ye who enter here”, and the ceaseless buffeting of the roaring tempests which engulf the damned souls who sinned adulterously, would have had sufficient ambient room for the music to establish itself on its own ground and properly take us there. The work is, I believe, a masterpiece of nineteenth-century romantic tone-painting – but it needed to be played in a more appropriate context than here, where it seemed a bit like a “tack-on”.

I would have had an all-Tchaikovsky first half had I been programming the concert (what better context than that for a composer’s music?), and in the second half would have ended the evening with Ken Young’s beautiful and brilliant work. I did wonder to what extent the orchestra management might have been influenced in their choice of program order by having extra players involved in the Bernstein work (extra percussion and brass players), not wanting them to be sitting around waiting for their turn to play. Interestingly, I thought the brass and percussion players who did remain for Francesca, after playing so brilliantly and with such wonderful energy during the Bernstein, came across as a bit flat and lacklustre in the vigorous parts of the Tchaikovsky – there were a couple of wrong percussion entries in the latter work, which suggested that the musicians had, in fact, given their all during the “West Side Story” Dances.

I don’t think any change in order would have impaired the “Forbidden Love” idea of the program’s theme. As to that, such promotions I think tend not to be taken too seriously by people with a real interest in music, and therefore don’t really “impinge” deeply – I do recognize their value in attracting people who might be new to or unfamiliar with classical music and who like the feeling of having some kind of unifying idea to go with a single concert. Having said that, immediately after the concert I bumped into a friend (who would readily align with the “not really familiar with classical music” description) who asked me first up what the event’s title “Forbidden Love” had to do with the music that was played! – “res ipsa loquitur” (the thing speaks for itself), as my Latin teacher used to say.

As I’ve already indicated, apart from the order of saying the music and its performance were pretty wonderful – Ken Young’s Dance began with beautiful wind solos (what a gorgeous tone Michael Austin’s cor anglais has!) and the most luscious of violin solos played by concertmaster Donald Armstrong with just the right strain of nostalgic feeling  flecked here and there with astringent impulses. These awakened the music’s rhythmic undercurrents, which rose up to throw back the floodgates of joyous abandonment, suffusing our sensibilities with crackling energies. I always think of Messiaen in places in this music, and wonder to what extent Young’s own conducting of performances of that composer’s Turangalila Symphony influenced the outcomes of this piece. It’s by no means a carbon copy, but the uninhibited spirit of it all reminds me of both Joie du sang des etoiles and the finale from Messiaen’s wonderfully outlandish work.

Nicola Benedetti came, saw and conquered – from her very first note there was a beautiful and distinctive tone served up for us, rich and supple, and able to be fined down when required and still be heard. She played the work very sweetly and romantically, preferring to keep the line smooth rather than really point the dotted rhythms – her articulation was seamless in places, but always characterful and filled with nuancing, never bland and all-purpose – and she also had this quicksilver ability with the faster music, which really energized those passages that needed a higher voltage. Her performance of the finale wasn’t of the kind which evoked some sort of peasant folk-fiddle with all of the wild abandonment and raw, rough-edged excitement of that kind of playing; but it was exciting in a more aristocratic, finely-honed sort of way. You would be hard put to equate critic Eduard Hanslick’s famous put-down of the music after its Vienna premiere with what we heard Nicola Benedetti do – Hanslick complained that “the violin is not played, it is yanked, torn, beaten black and blue – we see savage, vulgar faces, we hear violent curses, we smell bad brandy – for the first time we are able to image music that stinks to the ear!” I somehow think Hanslick wasn’t terribly sympathetic to Tchaikovsky’s music.

Another thing that Benedetti did was open up the cuts which have plagued this work over the years and especially on record – they’re mostly in the finale, and they’re pretty pointless, a remnant of an age of cavalier treatment of music by violinists who actually thought they were “improving” the composer’s work. All these cuts did was make the music slightly shorter and throw the balance out between the orchestra and soloist during the finale’s opening – I think Tchaikovsky knew what he was doing in the first place (though like many composers, anxious for people to like their work, he possibly agreed to the incisions made by those first performers at the time). Anyway, Benedetti, as do most modern virtuosi (but not all!) restored these several passages of figurations for the soloist, and played them brilliantly.

As for the orchestra under Miguel Harth-Bedoya, the playing was exciting, committed and brilliant, beautifully sounded and nobly proportioned, finding that balance between elegance and excitement that makes the music work. It was no wonder that, at the first movement’s exciting conclusion, the audience simply couldn’t help itself and burst into spontaneous applause, all seeming very natural and emotion-driven, so that no-one could possibly make a fuss of the “Oh, no, you don’t do that sort of thing at a concert!” variety. It would have seemed very unnatural to have sat there and done nothing in response to such fabulous music-making.

So, immediately after the interval we were taken to the world of the Jets and the Sharks and the hopeless love of two people torn apart by racial strife, all realized brilliantly and colourfully in Leonard Bernstein’s music – a set of Symphonic Dances from his 1957 Broadway show West Side Story. Right from the beginning Miguel Harth-Bedoya’s direction of the music had what sounded to my ears like an authentic rhythmic swagger, a mixture of “cool” and intensely physical, which underlined every moment of the score, even the quieter, lyrical moments. The original show has, of course a strong dance-drama aspect anyway, enabling some sequences to be lifted straight from the stage action – though some of the dances were complete “makeovers” by the original orchestrators, Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, of famous tunes like “Somewhere” and “Maria”.

Harth-Bedoya and his players produced veritable oceans of galvanic energy, here, which caught all of us up in its excitement. It demonstrated what musicians such as those in the NZSO could produce when encouraged, or when avenues  slightly outside the paradigm of classical performance were explored, to everybody’s advantage – with, of course, the proviso that one needed to be careful how one arranged programs with entirely different types of music in them. I loved the energy and exuberance the players brought to the Mambo, complete with finger-clicking and shouts of “Mambo” – so exhilarating.

Despite my reservations concerning the concert’s last item, Tchaikovsky’s Francesca, already discussed above, the performance generated enough visceral excitement right at the end to provoke enthusiastic shouts and plenty of applause – incidentally, I’ve always felt a bit ashamed regarding my enjoyment of the all-too-obvious orchestral thrills at the end of this work in the concert-hall, considering the pity and horror of the subject-matter (Dante, in his Divine Comedy writes, at the conclusion of Francesca’s tale of adulterous love, murder and eternal torment, “While the one spirit thus spoke the other’s crying / wailed on me with a sound so lamentable / I swooned for pity like as I were dying / and, as a dead man falling, down I fell.”). Shouldn’t one perhaps feel similarly horror-struck by it all at the end, instead of leaping to one’s feet cheering and applauding virtuoso orchestral playing?  But let’s be reasonable about this – if somebody’s at fault here, it’s probably Tchaikovsky!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Four ensembles help in fund-raising concert for St Andrew’s restoration completion phase

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Haydn: String Quartet in C major, Op.20 no.2 (New Zealand String Quartet);  String Quartet in B flat major, Op.76 no.4 ‘Sunrise’ (Aroha String Quartet)
Dvořàk: Piano Trio no.4 in E minor, Op.90 ‘Dumky’ (Poneke Trio)
Alfred Hill: String Quartet no.11 in D minor (Dominion String Quartet)

New Zealand String Quartet (Helene Phol and Douglas Beilman, violins; Gillian Ansell, viola; Rolf Gjelsten, cello);
Poneke Trio (Anna van der Zee, violin; Paul Mitchell, cello; Richard Mapp, piano);
Aroha String Quartet (Haihong Liu and Blythe Press, violins; Zhongxian Jin, viola; Robert Ibell, cello);
Dominion String Quartet (Yury Gezentsvey and Rosemary Harris, violins; Donald Maurice, viola; David Chickering, cello)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Thursday 11 October 2012, 6.30pm

The concert was arranged to help St. Andrew’s to raise funds for the completion of the church’s restoration project.  As the church is a major venue for chamber music in Wellington, it was appropriate to put on a concert such as this, to which the musicians all donated their services.

Therefore, this is not so much a review as a report.  It was remarkable to have all these musicians in one place at one time!  While the major achievement of the Dominion Quartet as a group has been their project to record all of Alfred Hill’s quartets, the other groups all tour for Chamber Music New Zealand, and the majority of the members of three of the four groups are also members of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

It was highly successful concert.  The fine acoustics and the smaller size of the church, compared to other venues in Wellington, meant for very lively, intimate performances of the chosen works.  The New Zealand String Quartet played the first Haydn quartet with their customary verve, communication and commitment, immersing the audience in its beautiful sound and structure.

The Dvořàk Trio has been heard quite a lot lately (including from this group) – were we all Dumky’d (or Dumkied?) out?  I think not, hearing this very spirited performance.  I found the sound when the strings were muted particularly intriguing in this acoustic.  At times, the tone was almost that of a woodwind instrument.  The great variety of Dvořàk’s writing had real impact, and the performers’ rapport was very apparent.

The much later Haydn quartet chosen by the Aroha Quartet compared with that played by the New Zealand String Quartet was full of delights.  Only the finale went a little awry, due probably to its rather over-fast tempo (it is annotated allegro ma non troppo).  It became rather troppo, and lost some of its cohesion and melody lines in the process, making it sound less distinguished than it should have.

The Dominion Quartet played one of Hill’s shorter quartets, revealing its beauties amply.

Spoken introductions to a couple of the works, and several short speeches, including one from the minister, Rev. Dr. Margaret Mayman and one from Kerry Prendergast, chair of the International Arts Festival Board, made up the rest of the evening.  Ms Prendergast’s remarks were of particular interest to avid concert-goers, as she suggested that with the improvements already made and about to be made to the buildings at St. Andrew’s, the Festival might reinstate holding concerts in this venue, which were very successful (as lunch-time concerts) in the early International Festivals, and which have been continued since by two different groups of music enthusiasts.

This was a superb evening of music, the variety of performers adding greatly to the enjoyment.  We can only hope that St. Andrew’s is successful in its final building project, and that the renewed venue will encourage many to use the facilities, not least the International Arts Festival.  Its fine acoustics and excellent piano deserve even greater use for fine music performances than it already receives.

 

Stroma’s beautifully “luminous horizons” at Ilott

Posted on by Peter Mechen

STROMA – LUMINOUS HORIZONS

Music by SCIARRINO, PESSON, CLEMENTI, TAÏRA, SAARIAHO, CAVALLONE

Roberto Fabbriciani (flute)

Hamish McKeich (conductor)

Stroma

Ilott Theatre, Town Hall, Wellington

Thursday, 11th October 2012

Five of the six works in this Stroma concert were New Zealand premieres, and one of these was a world premiere (Paolo Cavallone – Hóros). The odd one out was Yoshihisa Taïra’s highly theatrical and dramatic Synchronie, a kind of “Duelling banjos” for two flutes, which one imagines being readily enjoyed by all but the most conservative listeners. For that reason, I wasn’t surprised to find that it’s already been heard here.

Such a high proportion of unfamiliar music in a concert might be an an enticing prospect for some listeners, and a somewhat daunting outlook for others. Still, it would be fair to say that audiences who attend contemporary classical music concerts are generally pretty dauntless, being well used to having their ears pinned back by the originality of the sounds.

This concert would have thrilled the regularly adventurous ones, but on a number of counts had qualities which would have readily furthered the cause of contemporary music for people who might not have been “regulars” but in this case were attracted to its novelties. While one could have questioned the absence of a New Zealand work, the presentation’s title “Luminous Horizons” suggested an attractively exotic, far-from-here quality about the content which worked throughout superbly well.

A drawcard for aficionados was the presence of legendary flute-player Roberto Fabbriciani, whose virtuoso playing and interest in “new” sounds inspired various European composers from the 1970s onwards to explore what was initially a radical world of microscopic sonorities and nuances in music – what Stroma director Michael Norris called in his illuminating program note “this fragile, transient world”.  At least two of the evening’s works had direct connections to Fabbriciani, with the most recent, Paolo Cavallone’s  Hóros, including in its reference of dedication the Stroma players and artistic directors.

Straightaway Roberti Fabbriciani showed his credentials by opening the concert with a performance for solo flute of Salvatore Sciarrino’s eponymously titled L’orizzonte luminoso di Aton. Aton (sometimes spelt “Aten”) is a manifestation of the sun in Egyptian mythology. This was music born “on the breath” as it were, the sounds eschewing normal tones and pitch and concentrating instead on their edges and undersides, their parameters and foundations. The program note drew a parallel between sound and light in the respect that the latter suggests, defines and obscures its own shadow, the two states indivisible.

Sciarrino’s work created a world of suggested light, activating our imaginations with those aforementioned parameters, and setting in motion what Tennyson described in a different context in his poetry: – “our echoes roll from soul to soul / and grow forever and forever….” Fabbriciani’s evocation of Sciarrino’s world was, for this listener, spellbinding, with player and instrument seeming firstly to fuse before our very eyes and ears, breathing as one. But then sprang up what seemed like in places a fiercely intense dynamic between musician, flute, music and listener, with sounds and gestures constantly varying the focus of attention.

Gerard Pesson’s Nebenstücke was a kind of rumination by the composer on musical memory, focusing in particular on Brahms’ B Minor Ballade Op.10. I liked the composer’s description (reproduced in the programme) of his memory of the piece having “gradually corroded like an object that had fallen into the sea”, but augmented by the same process as well, “encrusted with elements that my own musical works had added to it”. Pesson’s work established a skeletal rhythm at the start, with muffled timbres sounding either waterlogged, or decrepit with age, the piece’s movement causing bits here and there to fall off. Perhaps I was influenced by the composer’s programme-notes, but I did tune into what sounded throughout this opening section like the shades of a ghostly Viennese waltz.

A trio-like sequence desynchronized the music for a bit, a warm string chord coming to the rescue and inspiring the clarinet to breathe some life-blood into the proceedings, the violin accompanying and the ‘cello counterpointing. Ghostly memories paraded before our ears, strings swelling and receding, playing a combination of arco and pizzicato – while the strings consorted thus with the clarinet, the viola explored the stratospheres, until the concluding impulses left us with something of a shadow-world, toneless clarinet-breath and soundless string-bowings putting the dream to rest.

There was more than a whiff of theatricality about Aldo Clementi’s 1983 Duetto, featuring partnerships within partnerships – two clarinets and two flutes, everybody taking up antiphonal positions. Clementi’s “variation on a theme” scenario was begun by Bridget Douglas’s flute, with the others following canonically, but each sounding as if pursuing a kind of improvisatory course, a slightly “curdled hall-of-mirrors” prescription. I found the textures and juxtapositionings wonderfully claustrophobic in places, especially when the clarinets were closely intertwined – at one point they were playing in seconds, and their timbres seemed to completely crowd out the ambiences – by comparison the flute intertwinings had the opposite effect, opening the sound-vistas up and suggesting far-flung spaces.

Roberto Fabbriciani amusingly drew our attention to a squeaky floorboard on which he had to stand while playing Yoshihisa Taïra’s Symchronie opposite Bridget Douglas, armed with her own instrument – this highly combatative piece arose from its composer’s imaginings of Japanese warriors in battle, leaping across clouds in the sky (a scenario somewhat reminiscent of a particular Japanese computer-game my teenaged son went through a recent phase of playing, and which the music also reminded me of), and manifested itself here as a kind of confrontational show-down between two players and their instruments.

Throughout this extremely theatrical and volatile piece I was amazed as to how aggressively-toned the sounds made by a flute could be. Every sound it seemed possible to make on the instruments, and then more besides, seemed to be fetched up by these players, along with occasional normally-vocalised shouts and yelps. But the over-riding feeling at the end was that of some kind of ritualized conflict, with certain protocols observed, despite the unbridled nature of some of the utterances from both instruments.

A piece by Kaija Saariaho followed, Cloud Trio, a work for strings alone, played here by violinist Rebecca Struthers, Andrew Thomson (viola) and Rowan Prior (‘cello). The composer’s own note about the music evocatively described the different instruments’ pictorial and structural functions in the piece – the upper (violin) and lower (‘cello) instruments evoking reverberation and shadow respectively, in between which the viola created the substance related to these effects. Saariaho indicated she was inspired by cloud formations over the French Alps, and her writing during the opening section of the work had what seemed like an intensely “analogue” character, lines filled with curves, bends, stretches and dissolutions, which suggested constant, gradual evolution.

The players beautifully caught both the energies of the second part, with the process of formation and dissolution sped up to a frenetic pace, and the toccata-like asymmetric patternings of the brief third movement with its follkish-dance suggestions. And the instruments beautifully coalesced throughout the lazily unfolding final movement, its melodies and figurations beautifully dovetailed by the composer, everything drifting in a similar direction overall while maintaining a kind of impulsive independence.

Roberto Fabbriciani returned with the ensemble to finish the concert with Paolo Cavallone’s Hóros, written this year for Fabbriciani and the Stroma ensemble, and here given its world premiere. This work was practically a flute concerto, and, like Aldo Clementi’s work earlier in the evening, took an existing piece of music as its starting-point, in this case, Chopin’s E Minor Prelude. This time, though, we actually heard a recording of the Chopin, played in the darkness immediately after the reading of a poem by Cavallone, the text of which was printed in the program – a meditation concerning spaces, distances, and boundaries.

From the darkness of this extremely theatrical opening came light and the sounds of instruments being activated by breath and bow, and developing a rich spectrum of colour and texture. Confrontations and re-inventings followed, the solo flute playing Mercutio to the ensemble’s Romeo, leading and teasing, light-fingeredly suggestive and gently mocking, the music opening and narrowing spaces between lines and timbres as did the Chopin Prelude. Over the last few pages the composer took us to different realms, the ensemble “reinventing” the ambient space of the opening, and making peace with the soloist.

So many notes, all of them unfamiliar ones! – but thanks to some judicious programming and excellent playing, and bags of individual and ensemble personality from flutist Roberto Fabbriciani and the Stroma players, I found this concert a stimulating and warmly intense listening experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Students explore viola repertoire at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Viola Students of the NZSM

Hindemith: Sonata for viola and piano in F major, Op.11 no.4, movements 1 & 2
Schumann: Märchenbilder (Fairytale Pictures) for viola and piano, Op.113, movements 3 & 4
Bloch: Suite for viola and piano, movements 2 & 3
Walton: Viola Concerto in A minor, movement 1

Vincent Hardaker, Alice McIvor, Megan Ward (violas), Rafaelle Garlick-Grice (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 10 October 2012, 12.15pm

These major twentieth-century viola works (excluding the Schumann) made an impressive muster.  The latest composition was Bloch’s, dating from 1958 (and the most modern-sounding it was); 1928-29 was the period of Walton’s concerto, though it was revised in 1961, and Hindemith’s was the earliest, composed in 1919.

The Hindemith was the first work played, by Vincent Hardaker.  The composer was himself a violist.   The work opened with low-pitched notes for the viola; this was a gorgeous sound, but there were a few hiccups soon after, and some coarse tone, particularly in the middle register.  A challenging and interesting piano part was very able played.  Excellent programme notes assisted the audience’s appreciation of the music, particularly the second movement, with its theme and variations.

Schumann wrote a considerable amount of programme music, that is, music telling a story or illustrating an extra-musical theme.  The third and fourth movements of the Märchenbilder were played by Alice McIvor.  ‘Rasch’, the third movement, depicted Rumpelstiltskin; like the character, it was tricky music!  The ‘Langsam’ final movement was in complete contrast.  It brought out all the richness of the instrument; serene and nostalgic, it was a true Romantic piece.

The pianist handled her material in a most sensitive fashion, her gentle rubati emphasising subtly the romantic nature of the music.  Alice McIvor proved to be a very competent performer, and together with Rafaelle Garlick-Grice, provided a consummate, very accomplished performance of both movements.

Megan Ward impressed by playing the second and fourth movements of the difficult Bloch Suite from memory – the only one of the performers to abandon use of the score.  How different this music was idiomatically from the previous item!  Megan Ward proved to be a very proficient player.  She and the pianist both handled a considerable amount of rapid gymnastics with aplomb, although the sound from the viola was rather more abrasive than that of the preceding violist – but that probably suited this music quite well.

The music had considerable interest, because Bloch sub-titled the movements: the second, “Grotesques: Simian Stage”, making it, as the programme note said, “one of extremely few pieces of classical music to be indisputably about monkeys”; the fourth movement, “Land of the Sun”, depicting, according to the programme note, “early society in China… described by the composer as ‘probably the most cheerful thing I ever wrote’”.

One could almost see the monkeys leaping around – probably those I saw on TV the previous night, in David Attenborough’s programme made in India.  The latter movement was bright, but rather more conventional.  Again, there was much complexity in the piano part, which was brilliantly played.

William Walton was a viola player, like Hindemith.  Alice McIvor returned to play the first movement of his Viola Concerto.  Of the three viola performers she had the most consistently good tone throughout the range.  She made a very fine performance of the movement, double-stopped melodies and all.  It was unified playing that interpreted the music coherently and gave the audience the good grasp of it that Alice obviously had.  Rafaelle produced beautiful tones from the piano.  It was a pity that the printed programme contained no biographical notes for her.

Perhaps a smile or two from the players at the end of the concert would have conveyed a feeling of pleasure in performing, and also would have recognised the audience’s applause.

 

School of Music guitar students delight Lower Hutt lunchtime audience

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand School of Music Guitar Ensemble, conducted by Jane Curry

Music by Gibbons, Dowland, Bach, Andrew York, Piazzolla, Brouwer, Carulli

Church of St Mark, Woburn Road, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 10 October, 12.15pm

Two distinct ensembles took part in this delightful recital, some of which was to contribute to the final semester assessments of senior students. Eight players formed the ‘ensemble’ while four of them – the more senior students – formed the quartet. The Ensemble started and finished the programme.

Two pieces by Elizabethan/Jacobean composers opened it. Orlando Gibbons Fantasie for keyboard was very short but demonstrated, in this most accomplished arrangement by one of the guitarists, how effective it could be made to sound in another medium that involved the creation of far more notes.

John Dowland’s The Frog Galliard was written for the lute and arranged for an ensemble by his contemporary Thomas Morley; a more elaborate, courtly affair, in slow ¾ rhythm, it was played fluently with only a few missed notes, leaving an excellent impression of the musical talent within the ensemble.

The fourth of the Preludes and Fugues (in F major) from Bach’s Eight Preludes and Fugues, BWV 553-560, followed (it is now believed they were written for pedal clavichord, not organ); I don’t think that, knowing of the earlier doubts about its being by Bach, affected my impression that it did not display a very typically Bachian character. The Prelude moved along fluently and interestingly with its nods at different keys while the Fugue made use of rocking series of thirds that did rather call for a bit more elaboration.

These three pieces and the later ones played by the Ensemble were conducted by Jane Curry.

The next two pieces were played by the Quartet (Nick Price, Jamie Garrick and Cameron Sloan and Mike Stoop). Andrew York is a prominent American composer for guitar, and his Quiccam sounded a very formidable challenge for the players, required to produce a considerable variety of awkward effects that were rather better than mere devices for idle bravura display, and they handled its complex, varied parts with skill and a good sense of where the music was going.

A rather gruesome piece by Argentinian tango exponent Piazzolla was La muerte del Angel, about the death of an angel in a typical Buenos Aires knife fight. The slashing of the knives was audible as were various unusual effects and articulations. Again, this was a credit to the accomplishment of the students and the adventurous guidance by their teachers.

In Cuban Landscape with Rain the full ensemble took over again. By Cuban composer Leo Brouwer, it was accompanied by a sudden rain squall that descended on the church, to general wonderment. The piece featured impressionistic effects such as very fast repeated notes simulating tremolo, and chaotic, percussive effects that rattled like the rain.

There were two famous guitarists at the turn of the 19th century: Ferdinando Carulli and Mauro Giuliani. Carulli was born in the same year as Beethoven (and Wordsworth); he settled in Paris and it may well have been his playing that prompted Chopin, who was also in Paris during the last decade of Carulli’s life there, to remark that there was no more beautiful instrument in the world than the guitar, save perhaps two guitars.

This Quartett, Op 22, would readily support that opinion, with its formal opening, as if for a concerto, and its tuneful, operatic style that sounded very much of its time, the opéras-comiques of Grétry or Boïeldieu. So ended a concert before a moderate sized audience who would have been unlikely to have been very familiar either with the classical guitar or with its repertoire. The School of Music is doing an admirable job with its sustained policy of getting talented students out into the community, with great mutual benefits.

 

‘Close encounters’: NZSO’s admirable enterprise to get good music on to the street

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Peter Walls

A free lunchtime concert

The Waltz from Farquhar’s Ring Round the Moon; Overture to Il Seraglio (Die Entfürhrung aus dem Serail) by Mozart; ‘Le bal’ from the Symphonie fantastique (Berlioz); Liebestod (orchestra alone) from Tristan und Isolde (Wagner); Enigma Variations (Elgar) – Theme (the  opening Andante), and Variation No XIII (***); Ravel’s Bolero – conclusion.

Michael Fowler Centre

Tuesday 9 October at 12.30pm (repeated at 6.30pm)

The aim of a concert of this sort is not to prove to a highly discriminating audience that it is in the presence of one of the world’s finest orchestras (though, of course it is), but to seduce both that class of listener and any others who have strayed in, because there was nothing better to do this particular Tuesday midday, with some highly entertaining, non-challenging music.

A fine orchestra like this plays itself, but an expressive conductor’s arms and hands and body can vividly illuminate the music for the audience, in the same way that choreography does with ballet music.

It used to be common for critics to remark on the physical style of a conductor, the nature of his gestures, the expressiveness of hands or of the entire body; there’s almost an unwritten convention now about what a critic should comment on and what is hors de combat; most of that is pretentious and silly.  I found Peter Walls’s movements most engaging, suggestive of emotions and the spirit of the music, varied in character, never falling into the sort of repetitive movements that can became tedious, or employing both hands in the same circular manner: he uses each arm to delineate distinct aspects of the music.

The programme at this concert was well-chosen, reflecting much of the music I am personally most deeply attached to – Mozart, Berlioz, Wagner and French music in general.

And it began with one of the few pieces of New Zealand music that has made it into the international repertoire – David Farquhar’s incidental music to Christopher Fry’s play, Ring Round the Moon (adaptation of Jean Anouilh’s L’invitation au château). The lilting strains of the Waltz created the most beguiling atmosphere, and I’d have loved the rest of the suite to have followed.

Peter Walls then spoke, a little about that music, more about Mozart and the opera and his first years in Vienna, and the Turks and Viennese fascination with that cruel, romantic people who had nearly captured Vienna less than a century before… Whether others are as ready as I am to listen to interesting, well-informed people speaking from the stage, I don’t know, but I suspect the sterility of what now passes for education, in history, literature, languages and the arts leaves too many baffled and bored as soon as such things are spoken of.  The performance gave striking prominence to cymbals and drums to support Walls’s remarks.

Then came the second movement from Berlioz’s Fantastic Symphony – The Ball, which Walls noted was linked to the Romeo and Juliet story which the composer had already discovered through the famous visit of an English theatre group, and which he later turned into his sprawling Romeo and Juliet dramatic symphony.  The orchestra played it with perhaps too much ease where greater tension might have etched the phantasm of the Harriet Smithson theme, the Idée fixe, more eerily, but its spectral quality was not lost, beautifully played by clarinettist Patrick Barry.

Walls developed the relationship between Berlioz and Wagner interestingly, with little-known anecdotes, striving in few words to bring to life the Tristan story.

In passing he said that the concert doubled as a taster for the 2013 season which will shortly be announced, and the thought that we could get a concert performance of Tristan made me so excited that I scarcely took in anything else.

But this orchestral version, without the soprano, recalled my first hearing of the Liebestod, as a young teenager who listened avidly to ‘Early Evening Concert’ which opened 2YC’s daily transmission at 5pm every day (in the early 1950s).

The exquisite opening, again on clarinet, was followed by a lovely performance.

Walls then talked interestingly about the New Zealand connection of Elgar’s Enigma Variations. He didn’t say whether he subscribed to Professor Heath Lees’s theory about the underlying theme that the whole work is enigmatically based on (you will find the problem well summarised in Wikipedia); the opening Andante was played and the audience invited to submit ideas about the basic theme (prize: phial of Tristan’s love potion). But he did deal with the arguable matter of the *** at the head of Variation XIII, evoking his early love, Helen Weaver, who broke off the relationship and went to New Zealand for her health. The rattling low C on timpani, played with side drum sticks, perhaps evoke the sound of the engines of a 1900-era steamship crossing the Atlantic.

But this variation has more commonly been connected with a friend of Elgar’s, Lady Mary Lygon, who had just departed with her husband who had been appointed Governor of New South Wales, with a reference to Mendelssohn’s Overture: Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, played on the clarinet. The latter seems to be the more persuasive story, but the New Zealand connection has its appeal.

The last few minutes of Ravel’s Bolero ended the concert, starting from the point where strings pick up the mesmerising, ostinato theme, raising the temperature several degrees. Fittingly for a concert like this, all its colour and underlying rhythms and exoticisms were played for all they were worth.

Admittedly, most of these pieces are to be expected in the programming of any symphony orchestra: it’s the Tristan that has the blood racing. Nevertheless, the concert was an excellent experiment which deserves to be tried in other centres, perhaps with slightly less erudition and more drollerie.

A generation or so ago I suspect a concert like this would have filled the hall. The reason for the empty seats had nothing to do with the reputation of the orchestra, the quality of the music or its performance; but everything to with the decay of education in the arts and the widespread resulting idea that most pop and rock music is as valid and as good as anything in the ‘elitist’ classical repertoire. One can expect that opinion from the youth, but when it is shared by ‘educated’ adults, it’s a worry.