Month: April 2013

Michael Houstoun – Beethoven Revisited

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand presents:

Michael Houstoun (piano) – Beethoven ReCycle 2013  (Programme Three)

Sonata No.5 in C Minor Op.10 No.1 / Sonata No.10 Op.14 No.2

Sonata No.22 in F Major Op.54 / Sonata No.106 “Hammerklavier” in B flat Op.106

Ilott Theatre, Town Hall, Wellington

Monday 15th April 2013

One of the highest accolades a musician can receive is to have his or her name indelibly associated in people’s minds with that of a particular composer’s music – and more than any other pianist in this part of the world, Michael Houstoun’s name has become practically synonymous with Beethoven.

It’s not been an association lightly or casually wrought – it’s grown and developed over a span of time and through the pianist’s Herculean efforts involving preparation and performance of all of the composer’s significant keyboard works. Both the passing of time and life-changing events have made their own contribution to the association, so that Houstoun is presently a different musician to what he was twenty years ago, around the time of his first Beethoven voyage through the sonatas. He himself delineates aspects of the change in his musical outlook in the excellent program booklet, an account that makes absorbing reading.

Many concertgoers attending the present series would have been there last time round, and able to remember well the impact of that first cycle, momentous in so many ways. If the present series seems not quite such a “charged” occurrence, it still generates its own storehouse of interest from the point of view of Houstoun’s own growth and development as a major artist, and the broadening and deepening of his views about the music.

I found having to choose one of three recitals from Houstoun’s first “round” of his Beethoven Re-cycle a costly experience, as there was so much to lose as well as to gain – but I finally plumped for the third programme, which had the mighty “Hammerklavier” as a kind of finale to three earlier (and briefer!) works.

Over the years I’ve worked hard at NOT becoming a total “Hammerklavier-junkie”, though it’s sometimes been a near thing – every great performance I hear of the work has the effect of pushing me close to that edge over which the way back to sanity would be a torturous process. This was such a performance, but one with a difference to some of the more “addictive” experiences I’ve gone through – it was more of a “cleansing” experience here, rather than an immersion in or partaking of something rich and strange.

Until relatively recently I’ve found Michael Houstoun’s playing of Beethoven somewhat enigmatic  –  I would sit and listen to live performances and recordings of various things and admire the playing’s obvious mastery, its strength, purpose, clear vision and command of both structure and detail. One of Houstoun’s most pronounced qualities – a kind of “greatness”, I believe – is the ability to convince the listener of the validity of his approach to any piece of music he plays at the time, however much one might find oneself holding different views in retrospect.

Of course, any musician ought to be able to similarly persuade listeners to accept the “truths” of what he or she plays, but in Houstoun’s case the force of his “in-situ” persuasion is quite remarkable. Nevertheless, I remember thinking repeatedly in those days how strange it was that the pianist’s playing, despite its obvious qualities, hadn’t really ever moved or touched me –  it was music-making I admired, but didn’t love.

After Houstoun’s debilitating encounter in the year 2000 with, and eventual recovery (2005) from focal dystonia (a process documented clearly and movingly in an article on the pianist’s web-site, found at www.michaelhoustoun.co.nz), I began to feel a kind of “thawing-out” in his playing – especially memorable for me were recitals featuring Schumann’s Kreisleriana (August 2010) and Schubert’s B-flat Sonata D.960 (July 2011), both works getting magnificent, expressive readings. My reviews, to my surprise, were punctuated with many comments referring to the pianist’s poetic sensibilities and evocation of free and open spaces – “beautifully and sensitively weighted, equivocally poised between worlds of foreboding and resignation” was some of my purpler prose.

Houstoun mentioned in his account of the FD saga his “rediscovery of a happiness in simply playing the piano” as part of his healing process – and for me that rediscovery is manifest in what sounds to me like a greater warmth and freedom in his playing. I noticed, for example, during the recent Beethoven recital how beautifully differentiated the three first-half sonatas were, each offering very different aspects of the composer’s musical personality – the “Hammerklavier” of course, was something else again!

Simply the selection of keys across the three first half works gave the listener interest and pleasure – plunging into a stormy C Minor to begin with, the recital moved to a good-humored G Major for the second work, and a brief though richly-plaintive immersion into F major for the diminutive Op.54 Sonata. At first, from the beginning of Op.10 No.1, with its terse ascending figurations hurling out a challenge to the world, I thought the Ilott Theatre acoustic would prove too dry and dull for the music to properly “speak” – but as the work progressed I realized that the sounds were bringing out both player and instrument beautifully, without need of much help from the hall at all.

Houstoun relished the operatic character of the second movement, energizing the dramatic, baroque-like flourishes that contrasted with the lyrical lines, and bringing out the playful countervoice dancing over the top of things, before the richly beautiful concluding descent. Having sufficiently expressed his ardour, the young virtuoso composer applied his pianistic spurs once again and galloped off and into an incident-packed third movement, rich with variety. The pianist took us adroitly through all of this towards the somewhat Haydnesque harmonic cul-de-sac which brought the journey to a whimsical halt, then laughingly turned us around and pushed us in the right direction to the final cadence.

The opening of Op.14 No.2 had, by contrast, a feline grace, in Houstoun’s hands, with the music’s contours finely sculptured, but with some easing at the phrase-ends, just as a singer would breathe. The middle section clouded over and giddily whirled us through various agitations to a wonderful release-point nicely held by the pianist before returning to the gentle warmth of the opening – I thought Houstoun’s tones positively glowed in places towards the end, with a kind of burnished quality. The andante stepped out with attitude, Houstoun terracing the dynamics finely and without exaggeration – I had never noticed a kind of kinship of utterance between places in this movement and the variation movement of No.30 (Op.109) before hearing this performance.

Regarding the finale, it was “and now for something completely different….” on the composer’s part. Houstoun brought out the music’s skittishness, in places as much lightly brushing-over as playing the notes – as another pianist once said to me, having just played the work, “It’s all slightly mad, isn’t it?” – and splendidly delivered Beethoven’s gorgeous growl of impulsive drollery right at the end. And from this we were taken to a world of grander, more ceremonial and ritualized fun-and-games, the enigmatic two-movement Sonata No.22 (Op.54).

Comparing this performance with Houstoun’s Trust recording of the work, made in 1994, I noted the more open and varied touch throughout the first movement’s exuberant octave hammerings. I also felt a stronger sense of narrative throughout – here, the introductory minuet-like dance was beautifully augmented on each of its appearances with grace-notes and other accoutrements, and thus transformed into a wondrously-adorned processional. The pianist allowed it a moment of glory before gracefully delivering a succession of plaintive, fading chords, and letting it all go.

As for the moto perpetuo-like second movement, Houstoun has always played this music superbly, as here. From the beginning there was a finely-controlled but burgeoning excitement, Houstoun bringing out Kreisleriana-like voices from the occasional held notes, and varying the tones and intensities throughout different episodes. I enjoyed the wonderful “lurches” into different ambiences, before the pianist refocused the music’s bearings, girded its loins for a final reprise, and made an all-out dash for the finish line, to exhilarating effect.

So – we were now “primed” as it were for that Everest of the pianistic literature – the “Hammerklavier”. The music was hurled across the firmament for us at the very start, Houstoun’s hands leaping excitingly through voids of time and space. His fingers didn’t quite encompass every note cleanly in the subsequent figurations, but the hint of strain suggested a no-holds-barred commitment, and the titanic nature of the effort required to bring those sounds into being for us. The energies generated and subsequently released throughout the whole movement in places suggested to me dancing star-clusters, forming and breaking apart, the pianist’s strength and vision of the whole keeping the ebb and flow of things together. The  fugal sequence had both vigour and weight, suggesting a human mind attempting to come to grips with something elemental and for the ages. A tremendous achievement.

The scherzo was kept “tight”, and the dynamics contained, though circumspection was thrown aside as the madly scampering trio section brilliantly touched off the volcanic climax, the sounds skyrocketting upwards and all over in a brilliant display of surging pianistic exuberance. A few obsessively-repeated chords and a throwaway ending, and we were suddenly in another world of vast spaces and far-flung thoughts, as the slow movement was begun.

When reviewing Houstoun’s recording of this work, I felt that the pianist demonstrated that he was a skilled, committed and thoughtful architect and builder, from the opening notes of this movement shaping the music into a magnificent structure, exquisitely proportioned and finely detailed in all of its parts. His grasp of the different dimensions suggested by the music made for profound contrasts of space, light, meaning and feeling which I felt readily opened themselves to the listener. It was a telling journey through these different vistas, with seemingly endless explorations in and around the music’s structures, upwards and outwards, though I didn’t ever feel I was invited or encouraged by the playing to stop and experience the depths of the stillness at the heart of it all.

Seventeen years on I felt Houstoun’s approach to this music had moved closer to this stillness, though he seemed as disinclined to take that last step into the vortex of allowing the music to direct him, of surrendering to the ineffable and feeling the full depth of the silences between some of those notes. Rather, the music was, I thought, kept on the continuum of a living pulse, with everything admirably weighted and sensitively detailed. Beethoven’s use of a slow waltz-rhythm throughout suggested in its way a kind of life-dance, whose ebb and flow underwent profound transformation, and Houstoun’s invitation to us to share in that dance pared our existence to the music’s essentials for its duration. And though this music was supposed to represent the well of the world’s sorrow, here on the opposite side of its tragic aspect was an antithesis, a kind of cleansing of the spirit and a refreshing of the indomitable will. It was on this plane that I thought the pianist’s achievement in this music was truly memorable.

On a prosaically functional level, a truly transcendental performance of the slow movement can leave one in a kind of emotion-suffused daze, creating the unforgivable solecism of wanting to turn the work into a kind of “Unfinished Sonata” by breaking off one’s listening at that point. Perhaps Beethoven sensed such a possibility, responding with a finale whose opening easeful, recitative-like gestures suddenly plunge the listener into a seething cauldron of fugal interaction, one which largely dominates the movement. Houstoun’s strength and energy really came into its own, here, and his playing vividly delineated the music’s fugal form as a wonderfully jagged cliff-face, whose relief outlines displayed things such as augmentation, retrograde and inversion (as all good fugues ought). With him we climbed that cliff-face, experiencing the stature, grandeur and beauty of the journey, and braving things like suspensions, overhangs and false steps, and pausing for breath at a certain point to take in the full extent of the terrain thus far covered, savour its beauties and terrors, and then plunge upwards and onwards.

Having gone within hailing distance of the goal, the music then intensified the order of its going, requiring the pianist to interweave some of the elements thus far encountered, before finishing with a part-defiant, part-exultant ascent of the B-flat major scale of tenths and trills to the final tonic-dominant cadences of the work’s summit. Resisting the temptation to employ Sir Edmund Hillary’s famously reported description of his and Tensing’s ascent of Everest at this point, I might instead say that Houstoun thus came, saw and on this occasion conquered. His traversal of all four sonatas (but especially the last!) justly drew forth a rapturous response from a near-filled Ilott Theatre, people almost without exception on their feet wholeheartedly acclaiming a stellar achievement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Houstoun’s second triumphant Beethoven sonata recital

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Michael Houstoun – BEETHOVEN reCYCLE 

Piano Sonatas:
G minor, Op 49 No 1;
F major, Op 10 No2;
B flat major,  Op 22;
D minor, Op 31 No 2 (Tempest);
A major, Op 101

Ilott Theatre, Wellington Town Hall

Sunday 14 April, 5pm

Each of the seven concerts in which Michael Houstoun plays all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas is high-lighted by one of the famous ‘name’ sonatas.  It is a device with far more value than mere marketability.

The order of the sonatas
Many in the audience will have wondered whether Houstoun had a theme or some sort of musical pattern in mind in his choice of what to put in each programme: whether these titles found echoes in the other pieces chosen for that particular concert or was there some other common mood or spirit to be heard in each concert, to what extent was there a chronological pattern. 

In his interview with Tim Dodd on RNZ Concert Houstoun said he followed the order he used in the 1993 programmes. The programme booklet reminded us of how they were arrived at. In marginal quotes, Houstoun drew attention to key relationships, some rather recondite, especially when the adjacent pieces were separated by the interval.

Other than that, Houstoun seemed to be guided simply by an instinct about pieces that might fit together or offer suggestive contrasts. Marked contrast seemed to be an important aim; so the three earliest pieces (Op 2) and the last three (Opp 109, 110, 111) are all in the last three recitals in November; while all three of Op 10 and both of the Op 14 sonatas were in the first three programmes. Otherwise, the programmes were nicely varied between early, middle and late works.  

Though I am reviewing only Programme 2, I heard all three in the first weekend and hope to hear all other four recitals. So far a general impression is of somewhat more impassioned performances than those of 20 years ago; tempi often a little faster in quick movements, though similar, perhaps sometimes even slower, in the adagios and andantes.  But more strikingly, an older Houstoun has had the confidence to exploit extremes of dynamics, daringly juxtaposed, to make the most of tempo changes, of playful or portentous passages, prolonged pauses that almost suggesting a mock memory lapse on the part of pianist or a radical change of mind on the part of the composer.

Op 49 No 1, in G minor
The first piece on Sunday evening (Op 49 No 1) hardly lent itself to displays of wit or mockery. Along with its major key companion, this is probably the young pianist’s first taste of Beethoven sonatas, and Houstoun simply played it with elegance and affection, unaffectedly, with rich bass sonorities, discreet rubato and staccato phrases that enlivened the rhythms. 

Op 10 No 2, in F
That atypical piece out of the way, the real young Beethoven arrived with the second sonata of Op 10; written in the mid 1790s when the composer was about 25 and enjoying a spectacular career as a piano virtuoso. This is no work for the Grade 5 piano student; it demands confident rhythmic acrobatics and fast, elaborate ornaments. It also calls for the pianist to find the wit and originality that a young Beethoven was determined to astonish the Viennese public with. There’s really no slow movement as the second, marked Allegretto, is in brisk triple time. The third movement, with its fugal touches, was driven with unremitting, staccato energy, with a conscious wit with a straight face, which had its effect on the audience if not perceptibly on the pianist.

Op 22, in B flat
The next sonata, Op 22 in B flat, as if aware of Houstoun’s interest in related tonalities, created a sense of regression, moving down a fifth (or up a fourth) from the previous sonata in F major. As with all the slightly less familiar pieces, it was strikingly arresting with its Allegro, very con brio, its flying semiquavers whose technical risks Houstoun succeeds in drawing attention to, rather than making them seem easy as do some pianists, not necessarily better ones. But at least, in the second movement, we could be comforted with the calm and beautiful 9/8 Adagio, with a piquant modulation in the middle.  

Beethoven tends to defy facile characterisations. The Minuet has its sweet and untroubled phases, lilting staccato, while at the same time revealing a satanic mask, which is especially explored in the dark Trio section. Houstoun understands and seems to relish these contrasts and states of unease.  A happy tune colours the Finale, a Rondo, which relaxes tensions and might have left the feeling of its being somewhat facile, if this pianist was virtually incapable of playing even the simplest piece without  a certain dignity and profundity.

The Tempest, Op 31 No 2, in D minor
Houstoun played the Tempest Sonata, the second of the three in Op 31, not as the last in the concert, but straight after the interval. It was followed by the one unfamous late sonata, Op 101; some might have felt it as an anti-climax.

However, to plunge straight into The Tempest after the interval was exhilarating; rather more so than the Op 26 which opened the second half before the Waldstein on the Friday evening. The large gestures of this highly dramatic performance that lent credibility to its title ‘Tempest’ (which was not Beethoven’s) alternating between calm and storm.  Beethoven’s early biographer Anton Schindler believed it to be inspired by Shakespeare’s play, while the programme notes offer the now more common idea that it describes Beethoven’s despair at the realisation of his irreversible deafness.

Its key of D minor which had been the vehicle for darkness, grief and satanic characterisation for Mozart (vide Don Giovanni and the Requiem), was bound to call up such emotions in both composer and those of the audience sensitive to tonality.  Mood and tempo changes create a sense of spiritual confusion, and Houstoun’s powerful playing lent weight to such a theory.  

Though the Adagio movement begins without much ado, not many bars pass before darkness descends, a deep thoughtfulness touched with increasing mystery; acceptance of his fate. There’s no Minuet; the last movement is marked innocently, Allegretto, but here is the storm, portrayed with unflagging passion and staccato-driven, motoric rhythms.

Op 101, in A major
I’d expected the follow-on by the Sonata in A of 1816 to offer something of an ambiguous transition, and the beginning was certainly true to its key’s traditional character: light-hearted, untroubled. I always have the feeling, undisguised in Houstoun’s hands, that the first few notes of the opening theme are missing and his playing seemed dramatise the feeling that we had gate-crashed into the middle of something that was a little bit private.  But nothing much does happen in the short first movement except to put us at rest.

The more usual Beethoven emerges in the next movement. The tempo markings are interesting: the first movement is Etwas lebhaft – ‘somewhat fast’, while the second is simply Lebhaft, adding ‘marschmässig’ – march-like; but the difference between them is far more than that, especially in Houstoun’s hands, a springing, frantic, staccato-driven, march.

Another short Adagio (Langsam) precedes the fourth movement (though the way the programme note is set out suggests the two are one movement; and incidentally, what a splendid programme booklet Chamber Music New Zealand has produced, worth every cent!). Houstoun seemed to be feeling his way into this slow and beautiful movement, preparing secretly for the arpeggios that accelerate into the last movement, marked ‘Geschwind’ (‘swift’, a wonderful word that has no comparable feel in English; for me it always calls up the last stanza of Goethe/Schubert’s Erlkönig: “Dem Vater grauset’s, er reitet geschwind”).

In this movement all the pent-up energy, now joyous, come to a climax and is released, though controlled through a certain amount of fugal writing. In spite of its enigmatic earlier aspects, the sonata ends on a note of high excitement, even if there remains a touch of cosmic doubt.

Coda
It proved a wonderful conclusion to a great concert, another exposure to a Beethoven pianist with something more to say than mere technical virtuosity and a high level of sensitive musicality.  Do we understand that we are host to a Beethoven interpreter of international stature, who has made a profound exploration of some of the greatest works of art of all time;  who brings a sense of drama to the music, unafraid to reach to the extremes of expression, at which the composer himself would surely have given a gruff sign of approbation? And a  pianist who has continued to explore and discover, who has determinedly pursued his individual perceptions that brings to every episode, every movement, new awakenings and revelations?

For the second time, the overwhelmed audience came to its feet with long applause.

“Round the Horn” – Wellington Chamber Orchestra and Samuel Jacobs

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Wellington Chamber Orchestra presents:

Beethoven: Fidelio Overture

Richard Strauss: Horn Concerto no.1

Brahms: Symphony no.4 in E minor

Wellington Chamber Orchestra conducted by Rachel Hyde; Samuel Jacobs (horn)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday, 14 April 2013, 2.30pm

It was unfortunate that probably many in the audience beside myself had attended the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s concert in the Michael Fowler Centre the previous night: a close juxtaposition of the playing of a professional orchestra with that of an amateur orchestra is not good for the latter.

Nevertheless, there were high points in this ambitious programme.  It was good to see (and hear) the brass out of the sanctuary this time, so that the instruments could be heard clearly, without undue reverberation.

A splendid opening to Beethoven’s overture was rather soon marred by the horns muffing notes.  There were four horn players, and Beethoven gave them a lot to do, some of which they performed very well – but too often their contribution was less than perfect.  By contrast, the trumpets were excellent – of course, the trumpet is not nearly such a difficult instrument to play.  As a whole, the performance of the overture was a good effort.

It was a sad shock to learn earlier in the week that the English leader of the NZSO horns will be returning to Britain at the end of the year, after less than two years here.  Samuel Jacobs played the Strauss concerto in great style – and some of his professional colleagues were there to hear him play only the second concerto he has performed in this country.

Strauss gave parts to only two horns in the orchestra, so the other horn players could enjoy hearing the solo –  one did it with a smile on his face most of the time.

Jacobs’s playing was true and vital with fine tone and lovely phrasing.  His high notes were refined and controlled.  His playing echoed the programme note description of Strauss’s horn-playing father’s efforts: ‘…almost universally admired in German music circles or his flawless technique and impeccable artistry.’  The solo playing here was always lovely, with a variety of tonal colours.

The first movement of the concerto was extremely lyrical, even Romantic in style.  String intonation wavered at times, but was mainly good.  The orchestra rose to most occasions.  There was a charming episode featuring horn solo with woodwind; the flutes particularly did a great job.

In fact, the whole work, described in the programme note as ‘…a very conservative work… [with] melodic ardour and profligacy’ was superbly played, and was greeted with tumultuous applause such as one doesn’t usually hear at an amateur concert.

The Brahms fourth symphony was a big work to tackle for a chamber orchestra.  While it was given a creditable performance, maybe it was a little beyond these musicians.  As the programme note said, here ‘…Brahms explores a range of emotions as well as sheer orchestral colour beyond anything he had attempted in his earlier symphonies…’ and so the demands on the players were huge.  It is a complex composition – but I do find that towards the end of the finale it becomes somewhat dull and predictable – Brahms was famous for making the most of every scrap of material.

The first movement (allegro non troppo) opens with a slightly sad, lyrical passage – this was played well.  Surging lower strings and strong brass were later features, the thick textures demonstrating the great strength of Brahms’s writing, but also providing difficulties for the orchestra in obtaining clarity.

The andante moderato second movement is characterised by beautiful lyrical phrases and themes, but some of them suffered from a lack of precision in the strings, though the winds continued to be effective.  Richard Strauss apparently told Brahms that the music suggest ‘a funeral procession moving in silence across moonlit heights’; this seemed apt, but the orchestration was quite grand following a most nostalgic section for horn.

The third movement, allegro giocoso, was more jovial, not least for the introduction of the triangle and the piccolo.  Trumpets and horns both played well here.  A long flute solo with two horns intoning repeated notes was very well executed.

In the large-scale finale (allegro energico e passionato) the trombones finally got a chance to play, and they did it with skill and character.  By the end the music, and playing, became a little tedious.  After such a demanding programme I should not be surprised if the players had become tired.

Overall, the orchestra made a good sound, but inevitably in an amateur orchestra there is a range of skills and levels of competency.  The Strauss horn concerto was the outstanding part of the programme, and the excellence of the solo playing made it all the more regrettable that Samuel Jacobs is not staying around.

Rachel Hyde had the flutes stand first after the general applause at the end of the concert, marking their considerable and skilled contribution to the performance.

NZSO’s “Home is where the Heart is….”

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:

ECHOES OF HOME

Larry Pruden: Soliloquy for Strings

Dvořák: Cello Concerto in B minor, Op.104 (allegro; adagio non troppo; allegro moderato

Rachmaninov: Symphonic Dances, Op.45

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Pietari Inkinen, with Daniel Müller-Schott (cello)

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday, 13 April 2013, 7.30pm

The title alludes to the fact that these works were either devised, or revised, when their composers were a long way from home: Pruden in London, Dvořák in the USA and Rachmaninov in the States also.

Larry Pruden’s work for string orchestra was a fine concert opener.  Its dreamy, unison opening for violins only, led us gently into the concert.  Other strings followed, the minor key giving the work a melancholic air, although there was plenty of passion present.  For a while the music wandered around a rather stark landscape, then became tense and astringent, before a calmer mood overcame the tension, and excitement built up.

A solo violin section led to a gradual resolution of the argument; a slightly uneasy peace settled by the end.  Throughout, the strings played with panache and sensitivity, giving a fine reading of the piece.

Dvořák’s Cello Concerto must be one of the all-time favourite concertos, and it is always gratifying to hear this well-loved work played live in concert – on this occasion by good-looking young German Daniel Müller-Schott.

The minor key opening belies Dvořák’s usual good humour and cheerfulness, with its storm of notes, noble theme and blaring brass.  Dvořák could never keep a good tune down for long, and some significant woodwind passages, and a beautiful melody that emerges on flute, were succeeded by another for the horn, calling across the beloved Bohemian landscape.

Sweeping strings and brass introduce a new subject, leading to the soloist’s incisive entry, taking up the orchestra’s themes.  The following passage-work was indeed demanding of the cellist, but Müller-Schott was its equal, before mellifluously rendering his first major theme.  Lots of orchestral detail emerged, especially from the woodwind and brass sections.  Lovely phrasing graced Müller-Schott’s lyrical playing; bow changes were imperceptible.

The early part of the development did not rise to the level of excitement that I was anticipating.  However, the final pages made up for it, with gorgeous string sound from both orchestra and soloist.

Nevertheless, there were times when I was expecting a fuller and warmer sound from Müller-Schott.  Whether this lack was a function of the Michael Fowler Centre, I couldn’t say.

The delicious opening clarinet of the slow movement followed by the cello soloist’s entry and the orchestral cellos’ pizzicato comprise one of music’s magical moments. The ravishing build-up of passion following this is as dramatic as an aria in opera.  The woodwinds reprise is gentle, only to be shocked by the tutti that follows.  The soloists’ melodies do not quell the ardour, but nevertheless lead the orchestra to calmer waters.

There were moments here when the solo was drowned by the orchestra – surely not the composer’s intention.  The cadenza was enhanced by a flute obbligato from Bridget Douglas.  Some of Dvořák’s most superbly magical writing is here.

Both Tovey and the friend with whom I attended the concert remarked on how the composer seems repeatedly to be bringing the movement to an end, and then carries on.  The positive side of this is that we hear constantly renewed beauty from the music.

The allegro slow movement is an utter contrast. It presents a rollicking band, while the cello solo veritably dances.  The sheer breadth of sound from the entire orchestra was breathtaking.  The cello section of the orchestra had plenty to do.  The ending was superb, thanks to the composer’s lovely writing for winds, while the soloist had much lyrical playing to delight the audience.  His technique is splendid, as was his command of the music, but I had anticipated a bigger, richer sound than we always got.  I am referring to timbre and tone rather than volume.  Nevertheless, this was fine, sensitive playing.

Müller-Schott greeted the continuous enthusiastic applause and cheers by playing an encore: Ravel’s Habanera.  In this I heard the sort of tone I had been seeking in the concerto – without orchestra, it came through strongly and eloquently.

Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances was a work only vaguely familiar to me, but it proved to be full of delights.  The delicate, quirky opening was followed by slow intoning accompanied by woodwind solos, and a discreet piano.  A splendid section for woodwinds followed, including an alto saxophone solo, plus some fine cor anglais playing.  Then grand phrases for strings swept us away.  All very dramatic and very Russian, and punctuated by an insistent three-note figure.  This movement was designated ‘non allegro’ (fast but not too fast?)

A strident brass opening of the second movement (andante con moto – tempos di valse)led to a solo violin passage of eloquent phrases, played by Vesa-Matti Leppänen.  This was followed by solo oboe.  Then we were into the lilting waltz, with its quirky interruptions.  The principal double bass player entered into the waltz, with his swaying instrument, the brass plate behind the tuning pegs reflecting the light as it moved.  The movement was full of good cheer.

The opening of the third movement (lento assai – allegro vivace – lento assai – come prima – allegro vivace) reminded me of Sibelius, but it soon changed to something more insistent.  Splendid percussion was a feature of this movement.  Another Sibelius-like theme emerged on the strings.  Brass flourishes appeared before a return to the slow and sombre temper again, with a lovely cor anglais solo.  The harp was notable.

Tremolando strings along with clarinet created a very spooky atmosphere.  This was such effective writing, full of contrasting dynamics.  Back to waltz rhythm again, and then the music worked up to an allegro, packed with excitement and rollicking brass at full pelt.  Drums and cellos sounded Sibelius-esque again, while off-beat rhythms reminded me of Carl Orff.  A tumultuous ending with gong strokes finished a wonderful and satisfying performance of a work of great variety with marvellous rhythms and luscious orchestration.

The printed programme was graced by Frances Moore’s superb notes, in which unfamiliar material was presented in a refreshing way.

Wellington audiences are having four days of an embarrassment of riches: three Houstoun Beethoven sonata concerts, this NZSO concert, and a Sunday afternoon concert from the Wellington Chamber Orchestra.

Beethoven from Houstoun – recycled with feeling

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Chamber Music New Zealand presents:

Michael Houstoun – Beethoven reCYCLE 2013

Beethoven: Sonata no.7 in D, Op.10 no.3

Sonata no.13 in E flat, Op.27 no.1 (Sonata quasi una Fantasia)

Sonata no.9 in E, Op.14 no.1

Sonata no.12 in A flat, Op.26

Sonata no.21 in C, Op.53 ‘Waldstein’

Michael Houstoun (piano)

Ilott Theatre

Friday 12 April 2013

 

Friday night’s opening concert of  Michael Houstoun’s Beethoven sonatas reCYCLE 2013 in Wellington brought home to me yet again that a live concert is one hundred times better than listening to recordings.

One of the marks of genius in musical composition is that the composers’ works can stand endless recycling; as Michael Houstoun has said, he learns more about Beethoven and more about himself through playing the works again, his first full cycle having been in 1993.

A handsome booklet containing excellent programme notes added to the value of the occasion, it is very useful to have the years of composition of the sonatas printed.  To sit in a pleasant, comfortable auditorium is a bonus.  The selection of the sonatas to be played in each concert, and their order in each programme, is itself a work of art.  Each concert is programmed towards the last sonata to be performed – a major, named work.  As Michael Houstoun said in a recent radio interview, his energy must be retained so that there is sufficient for that dramatic finale.

However, these factors fade into insignificance compared with the utter joy and musical satisfaction of hearing such powerful music performed by a superb pianist.  It is marvellous to us mere mortals how someone can memorise all that music, and be able to transmit his interpretation through his fingers.

The opening sonata, an early one, began with a fast movement played, as throughout, with great facility.  The piece’s classical characteristics were superimposed with Beethoven’s typical contrasting, dramatic dynamics.  The movement’s development was full of fire and sparkle, whereas the second movement (largo e mesto) was very soulful, featuring much rubato, stressing its sombre, even tragic mood.

Despite this being a relatively early work, there was much here that we think of as vintage Beethoven, and typical of his later mastery: tempestuousness, rapid contrasts in mood, quiet passages lovingly fingered.  The third movement minuet returned to a classical idiom; its light and bright trio is almost jolly.  The allegro fourth revealed a luminous and virtuoso mood and technique; an impressive and satisfying work played in an equally impressive and satisfying way.

It was with much delight that I heard the second of the five sonatas on the programme – one I learned many years ago.  Needless to say, I never accomplished the fast tempo in the allegro finale that Houstoun achieved, while what Joy Aberdein, who wrote the programme notes, called the ‘Hey Presto’ at the end, left me completely defeated.  Much shorter than the preceding sonata, its calm, logical opening does nothing to prepare its audience for the outbursts to follow.

It was delightful to hear and watch this sonata being played so well.  The adagio slow movement was indeed ‘con expressione’, full of feeling and philosophy, while the dynamic and dramatic final movement had the odd wrong note or two – who cares?

The less familiar no.9 combined delicacy and strength in its first movement, played very fast by Michael Houstoun, his fluency and facility taking my breath away.  Just occasionally a loud note made an unpleasant reverberation – probably the fault of the acoustic rather than of piano or pianist.  Otherwise, the piano always sounded good; it isn’t the case with all pianists or all pianos.

This sonata is lighter in character than the previous two, but was as much appreciated by the attentive audience that packed the Ilott.

After the interval, the twelfth sonata’s slow start led into a set of variations which not only demonstrated the wonderful interplay of voices that Beethoven created, but also the great attention to detail that typifies Houstoun’s mature playing – no note is wasted.  Each one speaks its part with clarity.  Revealed too, was the lovely variety of touch, dynamics and tempi that this pianist brings to bear.

I was almost never aware of the sustaining pedal; this is the way it should be.  The playing is crisp with never a hint of sloppiness.

The scherzo second movement was sparkling, almost like a folk dance.  What a contrast, then, to the funeral march third movement!  Its sombre, mournful mood is like that of one of Schubert’s darker, more solemn lieder.

There were cascades of ecstasy in the allegro finale.  It was almost jolly by comparison with the previous movement – somewhat like a Haydn allegro in feeling, with a quiet, rather abrupt ending.

The pièce de resistance of the recital was the well-known ‘Waldstein’ sonata, named for its dedicatee, Count Ferdinand von Waldstein, one of Beethoven’s many aristocratic friends and patrons.

The allegro con brio first movement was certainly that, with high-speed flourishes, especially at the end.  The playing was full of subtlety and variety.  Even though it now sounds like an old friend, how exciting it must have sounded to its first hearers!  Not that there was anything stale about this performance – far from it.

The short slow movement came as such a contrast to what we had just heard.  Like so much else of Beethoven’s music, it explores entirely new territory, in an entirely new way.  Its way of anticipating the rondo is spine-tingling.  The allegretto rondo follows on directly, with its energetic interplay, and then the prestissimo.  What a pace!  There was interesting use of the pedal in the quiet, contemplative passages with their arpeggio-like patterns in all manner of keys – this technique was in accodance with Beethoven’s instructions.

As for Michael Houstoun – what technique!  What musicality!  What a treat!  Yet it is but part one of a seven-part treat.  It was an astonishing start, with five sonatas in one concert – two hours of piano playing, and the very demanding long last movement of the Waldstein to finish with.

So much variety!   The concert demonstrated the brilliance of Beethoven and the brilliance of Houstoun.  At the end, the audience, perhaps the quietest and most attentive I have ever experienced, rose to its feet in appreciation of both.

Youthful voices savoured – NZSM Voice Students

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

NZSM presents: Arias and lieder

New Zealand School of Music: vocal students of Richard Greager, Jenny Wollerman and Margaret Medlyn, with Mark Dorell, piano

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 10 April 2013, 12.15pm

I heard four of these same singers perform last October, in Upper Hutt (9 October 2012), and my remarks then in some cases still apply; in others, the singers have noticeably improved their skills and performances.  Elisabeth Harris I heard in the master-class run by Denis O’Neill after the Lexus Song Quest last year.  Her singing has certainly moved onwards and upwards since then.

First, though, we heard from Oliver Sewell (tenor) who sang  the recitative “Comfort ye” and the following aria “Every Valley” from The Messiah by Handel.  Following the short overture, these open the great work, so must be arresting and interesting.   Sewell made them both of these things.  Although he was the only performer to use a music score, this is, after all, the norm in oratorio.

Sewell proved to have easy voice production, a good control of dynamics, a strong tenor voice, and appeared very confident.  His was as fine a performance technically, as I have heard in the many performances of The Messiah for which I have been a choir member.  Just a little more subtlety in interpreting the words and meaning are required.

James Henare has a very fine bass-baritone voice, with which he sang one of my favourite Schubert songs, “Du bist die Ruhe”.   The words were beautifully rendered, as was the phrasing.  Perhaps the loud section was a little too loud for this song.

Elisabeth Harris (mezzo-soprano) sang “Se Romeo t’uccise un figlio” from Bellini’s opera I Capuleti e I Montecchi in a fine, strong, dramatic rendition, using her voice to good effect, although there was a slightly breathy quality at times, and the intonation was a bit variable in places early on.

From Bizet’s Carmen Christina Orgias (soprano) gave us Micaela’s aria, in a most convincing performance.  Her splendid voice and her confidence carried her through a long and difficult aria, with the feeling of pathos conveyed well.

Henare sang again, a stirring “Il lacerato spirito” from Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra.  This was sung in a splendid Verdian voice; the low notes were simply fabulous, and the entire characterisation splendid.  His variation of timbre was impressive; this was indeed very fine Verdi.

Isabella Moore has earned plaudits for her fine soprano singing.  As well as knowing how to use her big voice, she knows how to look dramatic – appropriate for the character of Salome in Massenet’s Herodiade.  Her warm tone and clear words gave excellent expression to this lesser-known aria.

Christian Thurston is a baritone, and also possesses a fine voice.  His aria from Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet, “O vin, dissipe la tristesse” was difficult, but he portrayed the hero convincingly, thanks to good breath control, and excellent French.  Indeed, all the singers pronounced and enunciated their words well.

Baritone Fredi Jones has spent time as a tenor, and this showed in that the bottom of his baritone voice lost tone, while the resonance and tone of the top was very fine.  His singing of Yetletsky’s aria from The Queen of Spades by Tchaikovsky was accomplished, and his Russian was good (as far as I could tell).

Isabella Moore returned to sing Heimliche Aufforderung, one of Richard Strauss’s many beautiful songs for soprano voice – specifically, for his wife-to-be at the time he wrote it in 1894.  It is a song of bright character, with his typical superb rising cadences.  A gratifying song, magnificently sung.

The next offering from Fredi Jones, the lovely “Sure on this Shining Night” by Barber, was sung perhaps a little too dramatically for this contemplative song.  It was a very pleasing performance, nevertheless.

Contemporary American composer Ben Moore’s Sexy Lady proved to be an excellent vehicle for Elisabeth Harris.  Another trouser role (well, partly!), it was the only item in the programme sung in English, conveyed very clearly.  It suited Harris better than did her first offering; her dramatic abilities, including facial expression, had full play, and her voice sounded better.  Parodies of many classical arias were incorporated in humorous fashion, and Harris’s enjoyment of the piece was obvious, and added to that of the audience.

Mark Dorell, as always, was a splendid accompanist, playing many a complex accompaniment in a cool church.

Programme notes were good, although the English was a little strange in a couple of them.  It was great to have the dates of the composers and the names of poets and librettists.  However, it was a pity that Richard Strauss was deprived of 16 years of life – no Four Last Songs, but no enduring World War II either, if he had in fact died in 1933, rather than the actual date of 1949.

The New Zealand School of Music is training some fine singers, and teaching a range of repertoire and also excellent language skills.  Some of these people should make fine careers in opera – starting out with the School’s production of Verdi’s Il Corsaro in July this year.

Britten, Milhaud and Tchaikovsky from the NZSM Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music presents:

NZSM Orchestra – “Pathetique”

BRITTEN – Suite on English Folksongs

MILHAUD – Viola Concerto No.2 Op.340

TCHAIKOVSKY – Symphony No.6 “Pathetique”

Irina Andreeva (viola)

Kenneth Young (conductor)

New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Tuesday 9th April, 2013

This was a whale of a concert from the NZSM Orchestra and conductor Kenneth Young, performing with Auckland-based viola soloist Irina Andreeva. Much of the enjoyment was in our anticipation of the programme, which featured a not too-well-known Folksong Suite by Benjamin Britten, and an even more rarely performed concerto for viola by Darius Milhaud, coupled with one of the best-loved of the Tchaikovsky Symphonies, the “Pathetique”. If not quite “something for everybody” the concert certainly ranged over an impressive and satisfying stretch of stylistic and emotional terrain.

The concert’s centerpiece was the Milhaud Viola Concerto, the composer’s second for the instrument and reputedly one of the most difficult works for viola in the repertoire. Milhaud wrote it during 1954 and 1955 as a dedication to the eminent virtuoso William Primrose, who apparently found it difficult and ungrateful to perform. Upon complaining to the composer, Primrose recalled that Milhaud replied, disarmingly, “Mon Cher, all concertos should be difficult”.

To date there has been no commercial recording made of the concerto, though there are rumours that a tape of Primrose playing the work does exist. The violist was quoted as saying it (the concerto) was “the most outrageously difficult work I ever tackled, and for all the immense labour I devoted to it never appealed to the public”.

For myself, on a first hearing, I thought it lacked the charm and variety and energy of Walton’s only concerto for viola, the first rival twentieth-century work which comes to mind. Though they’re not exactly thick on the ground, other concerti for the instrument by Bartok, Hindemith, Schnittke, Penderecki and Piston do turn up in adventurous orchestral programmes – and one mustn’t forget things like Anthony Ritchie’s 1994 concerto, of which there’s an Atoll recording featuring violist Timothy Deighton. (There are also viola concerti by Alfred Hill and Nigel Keay, further off the beaten home-grown track…..).

But Milhaud it was on this occasion, and the soloist Irina Andreeva bent her back to the task with a will, meeting head-on William Primrose’s assertion regarding the music’s difficulty, and emerging triumphant at the end, though not without playing her way through some nail-biting moments. The first movement is marked “Avec Entrain” which my on-line translator rendered as “with spirit” – and as the solo instrument virtually never stopped playing throughout, spirit was certainly required on the part of the soloist!  The music consisted of a running figure for the viola which sometimes relaxed into a more lyrical mode, accompanied in a disconcertingly pointillistic way by the orchestra, with abrupt squawks in places and lovely squealings in others. And I did enjoy the frequent insouciance of the wind-playing, in marked contrast to the nervous and keeping-on intensities of the violist’s undulating figurations.

Movement 2 was “Avec Charm” which I guess didn’t need translation, though the music’s ambience was, I thought, “small-hours dance-floor” with only a few couples left. The soloist’s lovely tone amply filled out the lyrical figurations, one or two intonation sags aside, especially when under pressure from what seemed like awkward stretches – the “difficult and ungrateful to perform” ghost here hovering about the music. But there were some gorgeous low-lying passages which brought forth plenty of juice from Andreeva’s instrument, accompanied by nostalgic winds and some “last dance” harp phrases, leading up to the crack-of-doom gong-stroke which then sent the phantoms of the small-hours packing into the gloom.

My schoolboy French wasn’t up to “Avec esprit”, and I was put right in conversation afterwards by a friend who explained it was literally “with mind” [it also means ‘wit’: L.T.] – which made more sense of music that seemed extremely controlled in its expression, a tight rhythmic regime which came across like a waltz in a straitjacket – the soloist’s recurring “theme” alternated with orchestra comment whose textures supported the argument with occasional punctuations and deft cross-rhythms. And there was no let-up for anybody in the concluding “Avec gaîtè”, a slowly-lolloping jig, whose stride gathered up the soloist’s strenuous double-stopping and the marvellously detailed orchestra textures, and proceeded to generate a well-nigh unstoppable momentum towards a “fin triomphant”! Accolades all round was the richly-deserved response to a fine performance.

To begin the concert, we had another work rarely encountered in the concert-hall, Benjamin Britten’s Suite on English Folksongs, music which took a somewhat different approach to that accorded traditional airs by composers such as Holst and Vaughan Williams. Britten had written a work for inclusion in the celebrations surrounding the opening of the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1966, an arrangement for winds of the folk song Hankin Booby, and so, eight years later, included the work in his new suite. The whole work was given the subtitle “A time there was…..”, which was a quotation from a poem by Thomas Hardy, reflecting upon an age of innocence, and its subsequent corruption, something of a recurring theme in Britten’s own work.

Unlike other folksong treatments, Britten took the traditional folk-themes and developed them in pairs, subjecting the combinations to concise, but nevertheless intense explorations, finding worlds within worlds from these melodies. I noted in the very first one, Cakes and Ale, the rhythmic thrust of the writing from the very first chord – superbly delivered, here! – and the great work by the brass in carrying this forward. Interwoven with the themes were tortured, obsessive figurations, heightening tensions between both tunes and underlying accompaniments.

The second piece, The Bitter Withy, inspired beautiful string playing and support from the harp, the instrumental tones nicely gradated and the intensities well terraced, bringing sharply into relief the rustic angularities of the following Hankin Booby, the work’s “godfather” piece. What wonderful sonorities, and how pungently and wholeheartedly the orchestral winds put across their characteristic tinbres – riveting!

Hunt the Squirrel suggests as a title a quintessential English activity set to music, and the open-sounding strings brought out the essential earthiness of the fun, with some great playing from the orchestral leader, Salina Fisher. The ensemble wasn’t absolutely note-perfect, but put across a corporate verve and energy which underpinned the music’s excitement.

Again, Britten set one piece’s mood against its previous opposite, with the suite’s finale, Lord Melbourne. A tragic note hung around the music’s beginning, with its deep-throated percussion and “wandering” string and wind lines – this continued until the cor anglais solo, when conductor Ken Young suddenly stopped the orchestra and indicated to the players to start again – it had transpired (I was afterwards told) that one of the wind soloists had been ill before the concert, and had at that point gotten somewhat out of time and wasn’t “knitting” with the rest of the ensemble.

The repeat that followed seemed to present a tauter aspect to the music, if less spontaneous-sounding and “dangerous”. The piece built to a climax with the help of some intensely-focused string entries, then ebbed the tension away with birdsong-like winds and all-pervading feelings of nostalgic longing, the music expressing a touching loss and sorrow at the end. Altogether, the music was a discovery for me, and the performance presented it memorably, in an entirely sympathetic light.

I haven’t left much time or space to talk about the performance of the “Pathetique” which took up the second half of the concert, mainly because I thought the orchestra had presented the concert’s first-half items with such distinction, along with the soloist in the Milhaud Concerto. But the Tchaikovsky Symphony was also played magnificently, with a palpable sense of commitment and concentration from the very first gloom-laden notes, the bassoon and violas empowering the basses to “focus” their initial phrases a bit more securely the second time round after what I thought were a somewhat nervous first couple of notes.

Tchaikovsky’s adoration of Mozart was apparent with the violins’ opening phrases, here, the poise and clarity of the playing growing in intensity towards the brass fanfares, then erupting in agitation but called back to a state of relative calm by the lower strings – and how beautifully the violins stole in with the “big tune”, the playing expressive and plaintive-toned, with proper heart-on-sleeve emotion here, from winds as well as strings.

Conductor Young didn’t spare the players with the sudden onset of the allegro, and encouraged a terrific noise at the heart of the conflicting hubbub, timpani especially “charged” and well-focused throughout. With the big tune’s reprise at the end of the tumult, the sound wasn’t especially pure from the violins, but had great character, which I much preferred to a kind of bland homogeneity, the emotion expressed in great waves. Lovely winds and noble brass at the end, with every pizzicato note sounding as though it really meant something.

If I describe the remainder of the symphony’s performance like this I shall be here all night – so suffice to say that the 5/4 Second Movement was expressed by Young and his players with great urgency, or “a fair old lick” as they say in the classics, with the pizzicato passages a forest of plucking noises at that speed! No respite from the Trio, either, the music’s anxiety level kept near the red throughout, and the playing matching the music’s mood in point and focus. Then, the third-movement March was all urgency and angst – music of flight as much as nervous energy – with the antiphonal exchanges between the instruments thrilling. Every now and then an instrumental detail would arrest one’s sensibilities, such as a piccolo-led wind flourish, and a keenly-focused timpani crescendo.

Young gave his strings enough room to really “point” the main theme, and also deal with the syncopated exchanges between instrumental groups. The build-up to the first percussion onslaught was fabulous, even if the bass drum slightly anticipated one of its entries. And the coda was all the more effective through being kept rock-steady, allowing the winds a terrific texture-piercing flourish before the final crunching chords. How the audience restrained itself from breaking into spontaneous applause (a common occurrence with this work in concert) I’ll never know!

Sweet, regretful strings there were at the finale’s beginning, the emotion dignified at this initial stage, the phrasings given plenty of breath, wind and brass steady, apart from the occasional tiny horn burble. As the music slipped into the major, the mood took on a more hopeful aspect, the plea becoming increasingly eloquent – only to flounder against a brass rebuttal and crash to a halt in disarray. I enjoyed the subsequent ghoulish brass raspings and Wagnerian string intensities “sung out” by the players just before the second and final irruption, giving the moment of death-convulsion a truly fatalistic feeling and colour. The trombones intoned their lament superbly, as did the strings, with great, weeping swells of emotion, leading to dark, drained silences at the end.

I confess to being spellbound, throughout, by the playing’s energy and commitment – in short, I thoroughly enjoyed the concert’s two earlier (and less familiar) items, but thought the whole of the symphony was well-and-truly “nailed” by these youngsters and their inspirational conductor. Bravo!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oleg Marshev with lovely programme on Waikanae’s Fazioli piano

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Preludes Book 2 (Debussy)
Pictures at an Exhibition (Mussorgsky)

Waikanae Music Society subscription recital

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 7 April, 2.30pm

The third in the Waikanae Music Society’s 2013 series of nine concerts presented an international pianist in one of what was apparently very few New Zealand recitals.

The audience was of around average size for Waikanae, perhaps 350.

Book 2 of Debussy’s preludes contains music that is less familiar than Book I. The reasons are plain enough: fewer pieces of distinctive character, more ‘impressionist’ or scene-painting pieces whose strengths emerge, for all but those with a psychological affinity with the composer, only after several hearings, or by studying them at the keyboard (not an approach available to those with less than Grade 8 skills at the very least). And then, their magic is likely to take root, seriously; and a performance like this is the kind that could accelerate the process of enchantment.

The pieces call for extraordinary refinement and subtlety, qualities that Marshev is greatly endowed with. In the first piece, Brouillards, a wash of arpeggios ending with a sequence of widely spaced octaves, dynamic effects seems to emerge from the far left of pianissimo. Dead Leaves are captured at considerable length in dense chords, coloured blues-like with 6ths, while a habanera rhythm sustains the Spanish/Moorish quality of the third piece – a sensitive portrayal of the sounds of a country Debussy never really visited.

One finds oneself smiling indulgently at some of the fanciful titles and the music they are put with. Les fées sont d’esquises danseurs is a case where the title rather outstrips the piano’s capacities to suggest the indefinable and unsubstantial, no matter how delicate and exquisite the touch at the keyboard; and a more perfect rendering than this could hardly be imagined.

One of the few comic touches was Général Lavine which stands out more for its eccentricity and unexpected effects than much lasting musical interest – for me at least. The same goes for Hommage à S. Pickwick Esq. of which I can actually recall more outlandish and grotesque performances. A comparable exercise at satire is La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune, but slightly removed from comprehension through its need for the event that inspired it to be explained; for all that, it remains one of the more colourful and entertaining of these preludes. It ranks in character with the last prelude, Feux d’artifices (fireworks) that in many ways provides a cyclopedia of the varied technical and colourful devices that enrich the whole collection.

An external diversion was not well timed to accompany Canope, a portrait of an Egyptian burial urn, an image that overlapped awkwardly with the skittering of seagulls on the roof of the hall.

The gulls departed soon enough, though they might have usefully provided complementary effects for episodes of Pictures at an Exhibition – The Ballet of the Unborn Chicks or The Little Hut on Chicken Legs.

The work as a whole is an interesting reminder of the richness and extent of western European music, and culture in general, that took root in Russia through the 19th century, evidence that more recent regimes seems to be determined to depreciate. Though familiar piano music of the 19th century is limited to Tchaikovsky, there were others, like Balakirev (Islamey for example), Liapunov, Arensky, Tcherepnin, as well as Mussorgsky, before the obvious later figures like Rachmaninov, Medtner, Scriabin and Prokofiev.

Nevertheless, Pictures at an Exhibition does rather emerge from nowhere, in Russian terms, and its genius is attested to by the several successful orchestrations by later composers, though it’s the original piano version that excites me most.

The combination of a pianist with such refinement of touch, command of dynamic subtleties, with the Fazioli piano made this a performance to remember. The Promenade began promisingly, commanding attention without punishing the piano, it led to a virtuosic picture of weird creatures, Gnomes, with erratic rhythms, crabbed motifs, irregular patterns, contrasting with the gentle, mournful depiction of a troubador’s song at an Old Castle.

The astonishing variety of images that Mussorgsky creates, some frenzied and unsettling, some slow and steady like Bydlo or the Catacombs, others painting colourful people like children playing in the Tuilerie gardens or the two Jews; all called for virtuosity and precise articulation; nothing was tasteless or excessive.

The Finale really comprises The Little Hut on Chicken Legs which merges into the Great Gate at Kiev, rehearsing aspects of what went before and building to a climax in which nothing could be seen as conventional peroration or a ritual ending.

Here are there, minor slips happened, and one was near the end, but the challenges of this unusual piece with its grand chordal acceleration to the end, have tripped up others.

There was one encore: Alexandr Siloti ‘s transcription, in B minor, of Bach’s Prelude in E minor from Book II of the 48 Preludes and Fugues.
It was a privilege to hear this exquisite yet highly colourful and dramatic performance.

 

Martin Riseley (violin) and Jian Liu (piano) – elegance plus outrageous virtuosity

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music presents:

Martin Riseley (violin) and Jian Liu (piano)

FRANCK – Violin Sonata in A Major / DEBUSSY – The Girl with the Flaxen Hair

SARASATE – Introduction and Tarantella Op.43 / PAGANINI – Moto Perpetuo

WIENIAWSKI – Scherzo-Tarantelle Op.16

Adam Concert Room, NZSM Kelburn Campus

Victoria University

Friday 5th April

The present recital, featuring violinist Martin Riseley and pianist Jian Liu, was one of a series of concerts organized this year by the New Zealand School of Music.

Martin Riseley has on at least one previous occasion given me short-term lockjaw in the open position, when he played the 24 Caprices of Niccolo Paganini at a concert I attended in Wellington a little over three years ago. Playing those works in a single performance span and making a success of the undertaking demonstrated at the time that the violinist was a virtuoso-musician of considerable stature.

This time round, Riseley again wowed us with his brilliance and quicksilver reflexes, though the “relentless virtuosity” of Paganini and a later generation of virtuoso performer-composers represented by Sarasate and Wieniawski was confined to the recital’s second half. Not that the opening part of the concert gave the musicians any great relaxation, though the demands were of a slightly “removed” order of musicianship – this was the well-known Sonata in A major by Cesar Franck, inhabiting what Robert Schumann might have called “different realms” of expression.

I found Martin Riseley’s programme notes fascinating, as much for conveying his attitudes towards and history of playing the Franck work, as for giving me certain insights into some of the different technical aspects of playing both sections of the recital. I was interested that he mentioned as his “ideal” the recording of the Franck Sonata made by the Russian pair David Oistrakh and Sviatoslav Richter, as that performance has always been a great favorite of mine as well.

So it was with much anticipation that I settled down to await the beginning of the Franck, aware as I was of the playing and interpretative skills of not only Riseley, but pianist Jian Liu, whom I had heard and enjoyed a number of times in recital.

I thought the work’s opening beautifully voiced, having a growing focus from the first notes which flowered nicely at the first real climax. The passagework of both musicians had a lovely velvet touch in places, but had sinew and muscle in others when strength was required – the players’ detailing suggested depths as well as half-lights. Each musician nicely “wreathed” the other’s playing – still, I felt the music and its intensities slightly held back throughout, each player doubtless aware of the terrain still to be traversed.

Jian Liu’s clarity of fingerwork at the scherzo’s beginning actually reminded me more of Saint-Saens than Franck – he brought out the music’s athleticism, rather than what I think of as its erotically suggestive Wagnerian undercurrents. But both pianist and violinist beautifully integrated the “quiet centre” of the piece into the music’s pulsing, maintaining a “charged” quality throughout, and giving the growing dramatic rhetoric of the recitatives full force. The violinist splendidly brought out the soaring theme at the height of the agitations, contrasting it beautifully with its more reflective self in the quieter moments. The coda was properly hushed and expectant at the start, gathering energy and thrust and featuring the instruments really “digging into” the music, though again, the articulation was so very precise, the feeling was for me more abstracted than truly suggestive and passionate.

At the slow movement’s beginning the gestures had a truly Shakespearean eloquence, grand and declamatory, but with real “quality” in the silences. Both musicians were able to fine down their tones from those very public utterances to more private musings. Franck introduces his themes so touchingly in this movement, and Liu’s liquid keyboard tones and Riseley’s beautifully-floated lines meant that the first “suggestive” theme and later the more declamatory “unveiling” theme both had a kind of “borne along” quality, very intense, but beautifully integrated into the flow.

After this I was a little disconcerted by the finale as played here, the instruments (especially the piano), bent upon contrast instead of pursuing a continuance of “coming-out” from the previous movement’s thrall – in fact the first paragraph was simply too brightly and bouncily played for me after what had gone before. However, the contrasting episodes were voiced beautifully and sensitively by both musicians, even if I wanted the piano tones to have more “tumbling body-warmth” in places. When the slow movement’s theme was reintroduced, I thought the piano figurations which built up towards the violin’s impassioned entries too skitterish, and needing more weight of tone to match those incredible “drenched” violin tones.

Still, a committed performance can win over the most curmudgeonly listener, and thus it proved here – I found myself applauding as wholeheartedly as anybody in the Adam Concert Room when the music was all over. Perhaps in response to our enthusiastic reception the players decided to spontaneously add another item to the program, that of an arrangement for violin and piano of Debussy’s Prelude for solo piano, La fille aux cheveux de lin. This was simply gorgeous, the musicians giving the music absolute security of intonation throughout, and allowing the notes themselves to express their “quality” within the overall shape of things – the piece’s interpretation thus came from the actual “sounds” of the notes, added to which were episodes of haunting harmonics in the middle section, and dead-in-tune double-stopping towards the end.

From here on in the program there were fireworks aplenty, with the very occasional moment of repose or circumspection grudgingly allowed the musicians (well, the violinist, really!), such as the very opening to Pablo de Sarasate’s Introduction and Tarantella. Even so, there were difficulties aplenty here, such as frequent high-wire harmonics capping a whole series of finely-wrought archways of melody. But the Tarantella, when it began, astonished us all, bristling with virtuoso displays, the wonderful alternating (and then together!) left-hand/right-hand pizzicati a visual as well as an aural delight, as were the three-octave leaps along the instrument’s top string. The dance’s reprise was a breathtaking gallop, notes flying in all directions as would pebbles scatter from beneath a horse’s hooves.

More wizardry came with the Paganini Moto Perpetuo. The music resembled a rushing fusillade of notes in places, though Riseley’s playing retained sufficient poise to be able to bring out the music’s dynamic variation, and get an attractive “ebb and flow” aspect. Less gratefully written was the work by Henryk Wieniawski, in which the violinist has to constantly “reach” for the top note in the melodic line, making for more effortful results than in the other two virtuoso pieces. Yet the violinist was still able to bring out the gorgeousness of the writing with the main tune’s reprise. Throughout these pieces Jian Liu was a reliable and rock-steady support-partner, his presence the launching-pad from which Martin Riseley’s violin was able to sing, soar and scintillate to great and thrilling effect throughout the concert.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First of six Bach recitals for organ and cello (and flute) at St Mary of the Angels

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Bach on Thursdays

Douglas Mews – organ, and Andrew Joyce – cello

Bach: ‘Christ lag in Todesbanden’ – three settings of the Easter hymn:
From The Little Organ Book, BWV 625; Fantasia, BWV 695; Chorale harmonisation, BWV 277
Fugue in G minor, BWV 578
Prelude and Fugue in G, BWV 541
Suite for solo cello No 1 in G, BWV 1007

Church of St Mary of the Angels

Thursday 4 April, 12.45pm

This was the first of a new series of six concerts at lunchtime Thursdays devoted to Bach. Unusually, the series puts together a number of organ works, not all very well known, alongside all six of Bach’s cello suites.

It looks like a joint initiative of the church’s musical director, Robert Oliver and Douglas Mews; at this first concert the audience was big enough to reassure the church that it is valued and I hope further such series can be organised in future.

Though there are regular opportunities to hear the church’s fine organ at Sunday services, it is important as well for such an instrument to be heard in a non-religious setting, in music that is not likely to be played on Sundays.

Mews had chosen three of Bach’s arrangements of the Lutheran chorale, ‘Christ lag in Todesbanden’, all composed in the years before 1708, that is, at either Arnstadt or Mühlhausen, The three together seemed to make a satisfactory unity. The text itself was set as a cantata for Easter Sunday (BWV 4), among the earliest surviving cantatas; the choice of this text was thus appropriate to the date.

The first, an organ chorale, or chorale prelude, in D minor, is from The Little Organ Book, and it presented the melody in its authentic 16th century guise: sombre, fitting the words that describe the dying Christ. The second, a Fantasia, BWV 695, is also in D minor. The term ‘fantasia’ relates to a freer character that derived from an earlier period, and it exhibited a quite different spirit: bright, lively quavers in the treble over crotchets in the base line. The third piece, in A minor (BWV 277), was one of four based on the same Lutheran chorale, this time, taken from a four-part choral piece that falls in the category of ‘harmonised chorales’ in the Bach-werke-verzeichnis (numbers BWV 253 – 438). It was played at the same tempo as the preceding piece, but heavier diapason stops gave it a certain funereal grandeur.

The three compositions had clear kinship as well as stylistic similarities, but all sounded splendid in the church’s acoustic at the hands of this highly gifted player.

The other two organ pieces were non-chorale-related; the Fugue in G minor (BWV 578) was a further composition from the pre-Weimar years (1708-23, when most of the organ preludes and fugues, and the like, were written). Fast, fluid writing for flute stops was supported by flowing entries on the pedals. Its fugal character was not its most marked feature, suggesting more similarity to the three chorale preludes played earlier. Again, Mews’s performance displayed the richness and variety of the organ’s resources as well as his intimate familiarity with Bach’s idiom and technical demands which are great even in these early works.

Before the last organ piece (all from the organ gallery over the west door behind us) Andrew Joyce appeared at the front of the chancel to play Bach’s first cello suite. He spoke briefly about the work but, without a microphone, his voice did not carry very far into the church.

Nor was the cello heard to its best advantage for an audience that was scattered throughout the church. From experience, one needs to be in the front half dozen rows in big churches to hear chamber music and solo voices clearly.

The performance itself was rapturous however. My last hearing of Bach’s suites was from Colin Carr at the Nelson Chamber Music Festival, and this performance was in the same class, revealing not only the remarkable formal musical conception that characterises the suites but their emotional and expressive qualities as well. Joyce applied his own instincts and his thorough understanding of what lies inside the music, to stretch notes, make pauses, allow tempi to fluctuate, and the ends of phrases to fade. In less mature hands such treatment can sound affected and self-indulgent, but the playing simply told the audience that the cellist had lived with the music for many years and had the confidence of familiarity and deep musicality to hold us enraptured.

Mews then resumed his seat at the organ to play the Prelude and Fugue in G major, BWV 541, composed at Weimar. The Prelude was designed to arrest attention, beginning with its bold attack and staccato accompaniment, all brilliantly coloured by stops that expressed some kind of triumph.  The fugue followed in the same mood of sanguinity and optimism, using a theme beginning with five repeated notes in an energetic rhythm. Its polish and exuberance left the audience with every encouragement to come back next week.