Month: June 2013

Scholarly and musical – Sergey Malov plays Bach

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Bach on 13 strings

Bach: Chromatic Fantasy for solo viola, BWV 903

Suite no.4 in E flat, BWV 1010

Partita no.1 for solo violin, BWV 1002

Suite no.3 in C for solo cello, BWV 1009

Sergey Malov, viola, violoncello da spalla, violin

Expressions, Upper Hutt

Friday, 7 June 2013, 7.30pm

One might think that a recital composed entirely of unaccompanied Bach would not reveal the versatility of the performer.  In fact, it did.  The other thought is that it would pall for the audience.  Although I heard remarks afterwards from some audience members that they missed piano accompaniment, I don’t think this was a general reaction.

However, I don’t believe I have been to a completely solo violin recital before, nor one devoted entirely to one composer.  However, by using three different instruments, Malov was able to introduce variety to the programme.  (A member of the audience provided accompaniment by tapping his/her foot constantly.)

Sergey Malov, here for the Michael Hill International Violin Competition as the winner of the last competition in 2011, and to tour for Chamber Music New Zealand, is a consummate string player.  He disarmed his audience with a few well-chosen remarks (including about the cool hall, which was certainly noticeable to the audience, and must have been worse for him, given his less-than-full-concert garb and his need to keep his instruments and his fingers warm).

The opening work was a tour de force in itself, its virtuosic writing for viola full of variety and difficulties, appearing not to trouble Malov.  However, he is one of those highly competent and talented individuals who has to take on additional challenges.  Therefore he commissioned a reproduction violoncello da spalla (on the shoulder) to be made for him, the instrument having been revived in recent years in Belgium.

We were introduced to this instrument in the Suite no.4, so I spent much of the time in that item listening to the instrument rather than to the music per se.  I have not been able to discover the tuning that Malov used for the five-stringed instrument (hence Bach on 13 strings) that he employed for the two Bach Suites. An article in Grove indicates that it may have been C-G-D-A-e (i.e. e in the treble clef), which equates to a standard cello tuning plus an additional string tuned to e.  There is strong indication that some, maybe all, of Bach’s Suites for cello were written for the da spalla instrument, which is a much more ancient instrument than the modern cello.  With a strap over one shoulder and round the back of the neck,  and having the instrument’s back against the player’s body, looked slightly ungainly, being played with a baroque bow – as compared with the guitar,, which is held in a similar position, but is plucked.

I found the timbre of the lower strings somewhat odd, and not a particularly musical sound.  The higher strings did not have this peculiar timbre.  The instrument has nothing like the resonance or warmth of the violoncello we are familiar with, and I have to say that I prefer the Suites on the latter instrument – but of course this is what I am accustomed to.

The Suite was exquisitely played with skill and expression, the tempi and rhythm suitable to each dance movement.  It was followed, after the interval, by Partita no.1,  played on the violin.  Similar to a Suite, Partita, being an Italian term, names the movements dance movements by the Italian names.  The subtlety and nuance in the playing were remarkable, but it was vibrant too.  The Corrente particularly was incredibly virtuosic, as indeed was the Tempo di Borea (Bourrée).  It was fascinating to watch Malov’s long, lithe fingers in action.

The final work, Suite no.3, was again played on the violoncello da spalla.  This one is more familiar than the no.4, and was delightful to hear.  Lively melodies take the listener through the six movements.  The Bourrée was so sprightly I rather wished that there were dancers on stage to put the music into movement.  A friend in the audience told me she had once seen such a performance in a house concert.  Malov made the music dance with very rhythmic playing and variations of timbre, with frequent lifts between notes; the music lived and spoke.

To have the performer play three different instruments, and therefore use three different fingerings in one concert was astonishing.  It was certainly not only a technical achievement; this was an evening of great music-making.

 

 

 

Big Sing for a big occasion

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Wellington Regional Big Sing Gala Concert (New Zealand Choral Federation Secondary Schools’ Choir Festivals)

Wellington Town Hall

Thursday, 6 June 2013

More choirs from the region performed in the two gala concerts this year: 42 choirs from 22 schools; last year thirty choirs from nineteen schools performed.  It is marvellous to find so many young people taking part in choirs and obviously enjoying it, and that some have student conductors and accompanists.  The fact that all the choirs learnt all their pieces by heart is staggering to us mere adults who sing in choirs, to whom this is an almost overwhelming difficulty.  An excellent effect of memorisation is that for the most part, words come over clearly – not always the case when singers are constantly glancing down at printed copies.   Every eye here was on the conductors – except for those few choirs who were able to perform without anyone standing in front of them to direct things.

Another factor in the success of the evening (the second of two gala concerts) was the excitement in the hall and the large, enthusiastic audience.

Unlike the protocol for the National Finale (to be held in a couple of months’ time), the judges do not choose the item to be sung by each choir at the regional finale, from the three items presented in the daytime sessions.  The result for the regional finale is that the majority of the choirs choose modern popular items, rather than those that might be classified by the rather unsatisfactory title of ‘classical’ or ‘serious’ music.

Neither of these terms should be taken to be totally descriptive; there is much good choral music being composed right now, and over the past 40 years, including by Bob Chilcott, John Rutter, and New Zealanders David Hamilton, Anthony Ritchie, Gareth Farr and others – and some of this was represented in the choices made.  So much of this is neither classical nor serious, but it is broadly in the Western music tradition, and not part of the popular repertoire.

I do not feel equipped with the experience to judge the relative merits of the pieces of popular repertoire chosen by the choirs.  I do know that I found the best choral singing to be mainly in those few pieces of ‘classical’ repertoire that were performed.  One problem with quite a number of the popular pieces was that they sat low in the voices.  It is not easy for young singers to project notes at the bottom of their registers, nor does it make great listening, because the tone is not as pleasing as it would be in music set higher.  Suitability of the music for the range of the performers’ voices would surely be one of the criteria considered by adjudicators.  This is not to say that the voices were not well-trained; for the most part they were.

Tawa College’s Dawn Chorus, a very large choir, opened the programme.  The criticism about the pitch level of the piece chosen certainly applied in this case.  The song ‘Fix You’ was accompanied by electric guitar, which couldn’t be heard by the upstairs audience, and electronic keyboard, which came over as a buzzing noise.

The next Tawa College choir, Harmony with Spirit (girls only) chose a piece that was also too low (‘Jesus, what a beautiful name’).  The style of the song, and of the solo, I found unappealing.  The other choir from Tawa College, Blue Notes, was very skilled.  ‘Hide and Seek’ by Imogen Heap was quite an intricate piece, and was sung with great control and excellent effect – though it, too, started very low in the voices.

Heretaunga College’s choir knew the words of ‘Sellotape’ and sang pretty well, but they did not project the story of the song to the audience – it was all a bit reticent.

Beethoven would have had a shock at the pop version of ‘Joyful, joyful’ based on the final movement of his ninth symphony, sung by Wellington East Girls’ College Multi Choir.  Conducted and accompanied by students, it began as a rather slow rendition of the choral part of that work, but it became a rap and pop version, with a Pasifika slant.

The Senior Choir from the same school produced another low-voice number: ‘Forget You’ by Bruno Mars.  A student conductor led the choir, and teacher (Brent Stewart) and students provided a three-piece instrumental backing.

Palmerston North Boys’ High School’s OK Chorale has always done well at The Big Sing.  The 16 voices produced accompanying noises as well as singing, in ‘You Oughta be in Love’ by Dave Dobbyn, in a special arrangement.  The solo was a little disappointing, but rhythm and expression were strong.

Samuel Marsden Collegiate’s Senior Chamber Choir sang a piece by New Zealander Craig Utting: ‘Monument’, from a set of songs, the words by Alistair Campbell.  This was partly accompanied, partly unaccompanied.  Good tone in this very effective setting was a little spoiled by wobbly intonation in places.  The piece certainly deserves being taken up widely; being for treble voices only, there should be plenty of opportunity for this.

The same school’s Ad Summa Chorale, a student-led choir, performed Adiemus by Karl Jenkins.  I have to confess I usually find this composer’s music somewhat trite, and so it was on this occasion.  The singing was perfectly adequate

Next came one of the evening’s high points: Wellington College and Wellington Girls’ College Combined Choir sang Fauré’s beautiful Cantique de Jean Racine, with organ.  This was a good effort.  The singing had clarity and was expressive, the voices at the top being particularly fine.

Another work with organ, played by Michael Fletcher, followed after the interval, from the same school’s huge Teal choir.  The Kyrie from Missa St. Aloysii by Michael Haydn would not have been easy to memorise.  Pitch was not always spot on, but overall, the choir did well.

Nicola Sutherland had a busy time directing four choirs all together this time from the piano.  The Year 9 Choir from the same school sang ‘If I only had a Brain’, which included a lot of actions (as indeed did a number of other items in the programme).  There was not the same level of projection from this choir.  The last choir from Wellington Girls’ College, Teal Voices, sang Vivaldi’s ‘Domine Fili Unigenite’, from his Gloria.  It was performed with organ and cellist Paul Mitchell.  The pronunciation of the Latin words was better than that to be heard from many adult choirs, and the cohesion of the choir created a very pleasing performance.

Kapiti College’s choir sang a Cole Porter number, ‘Every Time we say Goodbye’; quite a difficult piece, but done well, with attractive sound and excellent intonation.

Marsden Collegiate, Whitby, was not really up to the standard of most of the other choirs.  Their ‘Arithmetic’ by Brooke Fraser had not only a student accompanist but also a student violinist.

Bernard’s Men from St. Bernard’s College produced a good body of sound, including a solo, in Ruru Karaitiana’s well-known ‘Blue Smoke’.  There were some small boys in the choir as well as tall seniors.  I couldn’t hear any soprano sounds, though the young boys were certainly opening and closing their mouths.  The whole was well-presented, though perhaps a little uncommitted.

An excellent choice for a junior choir was Sacred Heart’s ‘The African Medley’ arranged by Julian Raphael.  The student conductor (and another student on drums) gained exemplary projection from the choir.  The same school’s Senior Choir sang Gareth Farr’s ‘Tangi te kawekawea’.  The choir did not sound very secure – perhaps the work was too difficult for them.  Nor was the blend as good as most of the choirs demonstrated.

Two Wairarapa choirs combined as Viva Camerata: Rathkeale and St. Matthew’s Senior College.  They sang Steven Rapana’s arrangement of ‘Le Masina E’, a Polynesian piece, accompanied by a wooden drum and another percussion instrument made of a rolled up Island mat.  The choir began strongly after a solo invocation.  There was no conductor, yet the timing was excellent, as was the choral tone.  Along with actions, the singers had projection plus!

The final item was from St. Patrick’s College (town) and Chilton St. James combined choir, PatChWork.  This was a case of keeping the best till last.  New Zealander Chris Artley has composed a number of choral pieces, and ‘I will lift up mine eyes’ was an outstanding one, set for choir, organ (played by Janet Gibbs) and trumpet.  Again parts of the piece were a little low for young voices, but the whole performance was projected well, and performed with unity and precision of words.  For me, it was the highlight of the evening, not least for the wonderful trumpet playing of a student from Chilton St. James.

Preceding the award of certificates to every  participating choir, the adjucator, Nick Richardson from Auckland spoke briefly, urging the participants to carry on singing when they leave school.  Yet the style of much of the music performed would not necessarily lead to this.  Some might form pop or rock groups perhaps.  Then there are Barbershop and Sweet Adeline groups.  Most youth and adult choirs do not sing the repertoire we heard; most of them perform what could loosely be called ‘classical’ repertoire, though they may include lighter items.

Various cups and awards were presented – too many to enumerate here.  They will doubtless be listed on The Big Sing’s website.  Suffice to say that PatChWork won the award for best performance of a New Zealand composition.

 

Their own sounds: Viola students from the NZSM

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Viola Students of the New Zealand School of Music

Music by Bloch, Hindemith, Flackton, Brahms, Stamitz, and Walton

Vincent Hardaker, Megan Ward, Felicity Baker (cello), Alexa Thomson, Alice McIvor with Stephen Clothier, Rafaella Garlick-Grice (pianists)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 5 June 2013

The presence of Gillian Ansell, violist in the New Zealand String Quartet, as a teacher of viola at the School of Music appears to be producing excellent results, in the numbers of skilled violists who are her students, emerging there.

Even so, there is definitely a difference between the performers and in the sounds they make; no carbon copies here.  The variety thus produced provided some of the interest in this lunchtime concert.

Ernest Bloch’s ‘Rhapsodie’ from his Suite Hébraïque commences with a Jewish pentatonic march-like melody, and continues in similar vein.  A beautiful and interesting work, it needed to be more mellow than this player made it.  The tone was sometimes harsh, and the piano part rather over-pedalled at times.  However, there was great attention to the dynamics on the part of both performers.

Hardaker followed in an unaccompanied work by another viola player: the first two movements from Viola Sonata, Op.25 no.1 by Paul Hindemith.  The programme note seemed to have been dashed off in haste; the remark ‘The first two movements of this sonata run together’ intrigued me, but in fact they were played one after the other, without a pause.

Megan Ward played something entirely unusual and charming: William Flackton’s Sonata VI for viola and bass, with Felicity Baker, cello.  I had never heard of the composer, but it seems he flourished in the mid- to late-eighteenth century.  The ‘galant’ style of the period was one of ‘simplicity, homophony and immediacy of appeal’ according to the programme notes.  The three short movements gave us playing that was rhythmically strong, a consistently pleasant, rather gentle tone, and ornamentation that was beautifully managed.  The cello part was subtle and very musical in effect.  The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians article on Flackton, by well-known music editor Watkins Shaw, speaks of his ‘considerable individuality and expressive power’; and ‘his refined and elegant taste’.

Brahms’s Viola Sonata in F minor (Op.120 no.1, from 1894) was perhaps the best-known work on the programme.  Alice McIvor’s sound is rich and mellow, with plenty of volume when required.  Some slight intonation inaccuracies in the first movement could not spoil a fine performance.  Stephen Clothier, a composition student, was a splendid partner at the piano.  His playing was expressive, and he gave the piano part its full value.  There was just a shade of over-pedalling at some points, but the performers did very well.

The second of the two movements played, andante un poco adagio, was very attractively performed, with many nuances, the phrasing bringing out the lyricism and a certain nostalgic, even wistful character to the music.

With Carl Stamitz’s Viola Concerto no.1 in D, Op.1, we moved to a solo work in which the pianist had the unenviable task of trying to be an orchestra.  The first movement was played, without cadenza, but had Alexa Thomson extended nevertheless.  Violas vary in size, and it appeared to me that hers was smaller than those we had seen already.  However, she made a big sound on it.  There was plenty of work for her to do – the movement was taken at considerable speed, and as well, there were double-stopping, octaves, string crossings (playing across several strings in rapid succession in one phrase or figure) to contend with.  These were all accomplished with skill and precision.  The orchestral part had not a lot to do; it was really just supporting the violist’s part harmonically.

Alexa Thomson also played the last work on the programme: the first movement (andante) from William Walton’s Viola Concerto.  Again, there was much double-stopping.  Slight intonation lapses in this and the previous work were not significant in light of the accomplishment of most of the playing.  This was a lively, invigorating and highly competent performance of a difficult work, and as the programme note said ‘showcasing the viola’s warm, rich tone’.

As a whole, the concert exhibited the skills of the viola students, as well as introducing a marvellous range of important works written for the instrument.

I was pleased to see that not all the students wore black clothes for performing.  I can see no need for students, who are not professional musicians, to attire themselves entirely in black, as they often do, especially not for daytime performances.  Let’s have some visual, as well as aural, colour.


Mozart ‘s take on Handel – warmth more than refiner’s fire

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Choirs Aotearoa New Zealand Trust presents:

HANDEL’S MESSIAH as arranged by MOZART

Morag Atchison (soprano) / Bianca Andrew (mezzo-soprano)

Henry Choo (tenor) / James Clayton (bass)

Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir

Orchestra Wellington

Tecwyn Evans (conductor)

Town Hall, Wellington

Sunday 2nd June 2013

Being a bit of a “Messiah-buff” I was, I must admit, excited at the prospect of attending this concert, as I had never heard the famed Mozart “arrangement” of the music. I was naturally intrigued as to how it all would sound, and if and to what extent Mozart might have done the equivalent for his time of what Hamilton Harty in the 1920s and Eugene Goosens in the 1950s did with their arrangements of some of Handel’s music.

I prepared myself for all possibilities, anything ranging from either a full-blown makeover, bewildering in its complexity, to a far more subtle, “spot-the-difference” scenario. I deliberately held back from reading-up beforehand on what Mozart had or hadn’t done, thinking the impact of it all would be all the greater for me through having an element of surprise.

Hearing it all for the first time left me with a curious mixture of feelings. The experience actually brought to mind my first-ever encounter with Ravel’s orchestration of Musorgsky’s “Pictures from an exhibition”, particularly as I had by sheer chance become familiar with Musorgsky’s piano solo original long before I heard Ravel’s revamp for full orchestra. As then, I found myself torn anew between admiration, enjoyment, surprise and dismay at what had been done. Here, I certainly admired and enjoyed many a felicitous Mozartean detail, but was equally taken aback at a number of changes I thought quite wrong-headed. Why, I thought, would a composer change something in another composer’s music that worked so well just as it was?

So, I decided to read about the background to what Mozart had done, and it all began to make sense – as well as, incidentally, having a number of parallels with what Ravel did regarding Musorgsky’s work, and why. Both operations had been planned as “rescue jobs”, and each was the brainchild of a third person. In Musorgsky’s and Ravel’s case, the instigator was the conductor Serge Koussevitsky, while Mozart’s arrangement of Handel’s work was commissioned by one Gottfried van Swieten, a diplomat, patron of the arts, and at the time the Imperial Librarian and a Minister in the Emperor Joseph II’s government.

Van Swieten, though an enthusiast for Baroque music, thought that Handel’s work needed bringing”up-to-date” for contemporary tastes. Although a mere 48 years separated the premiere of Messiah and Mozart’s arrangement of the work, the musical world had changed almost beyond recognition during that time. The baroque style had gone, and people were thoroughly accustomed to the more textured and varied tonal colours of the classical orchestras. Messiah was actually the second of four commissions Mozart received from Van Swieten relating to Handel’s music, the others being the masque Acis and Galatea, and the cantatas Ode for St.Cecilia’s Day and Alexander’s Feast. Mozart’s brief was to “modernize” the music, which idea makes an interesting variant upon present-day thinking regarding authentic performance practice.

That Mozart’s work was regarded as successful can be gauged by contemporary reports of the premiere of what was known as Der Messias staged by van Swieten in Vienna in March 1789, with Mozart himself conducting the performance. One review stated that Mozart had “exercised the greatest delicacy by touching nothing that transcends the style of his time….the choral sections are left as Handel wrote them and are only amplified cautiously now and again by wind instruments”. Which wasn’t strictly true, as Mozart recast the openings of several of the Part One choruses for the soloists’ voices – and the “cautiously” comment regarding the wind instruments was something of an understatement. There’s a significant amount of wind writing added to the score – clarinets, flutes, and horns, with extra writing for oboes and bassoons, away from simple accompaniment.

The writing for brass was also augmented, with the high trumpet parts shared (more “taken over!”, really) by the french horn, particularly noticeable during the bass aria “The trumpet shall sound”. Trombones (a wonderful sound!) were also very much in evidence, supporting and enriching (often darkening) the lower lines. In all, the effect for me was a Mozartean “fleshing-out” of Handelian muscle and bones, the wind parts through the instruments’ textures and timbres bringing colour and warmth to much of the music. At first these things seemed alien to the relative austerity I was accustomed to hearing, with the effect somewhat fussy – but after a while my ear began to expect a “warming-up” of those textures, and a more varied colour-spectrum along many of the lines. In this way, Mozart was able to shed new and varied light on the old most successfully.

I was far less convinced by the recasting of the chorus openings for solo voices – mercifully, throughout Parts Two and Three, Mozart himself seemed less inclined to press the idea, and left most of the remaining choruses intact, though allowing the soloists to join in. But the magic frisson of some of those quieter original choral beginnings, such as “And he shall purify” and “For unto us” were lost here, and the effect to my ears coarsened by crude interchanges between the soloists and the choir. Unlike with the wind and brass additions, nowhere did I think Mozart improved on Handel’s treatment of his voices, either solo or choral. Incidentally, Mozart used a German translation of the words – but here, we had the original English (odd to think of the work being sung in any other language – maybe that sentiment’s a tad ethnocentric….).

So, there we all were, on the first winter Sunday of the year, gathered in the Town Hall in Wellington (soon to be closed for earthquake-protection strengthening). Though the weather obligingly underlined the change of season, many hardy souls braved wind and rain to make up a creditable attendance. On hand to reward such resolve was the Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir, attended by members of Orchestra Wellington and four solo singers, the ensemble directed by Tecwyn Evans.

Listening to and thinking about the work and its performance on this occasion was an interesting experience in itself, as I would find myself switching modes, first analyst and then critic, registering by turns what was happening and how it was being performed. Straight away, one registered the grander, darker sound of trombones in the Overture, and the warmer colourings of the winds in various other places. A mixed blessing, as I’ve said – I thought Mozart unduly reduced the stark impact of the aria “He was despised” by adding winds, but his writing of creepily chromatic descents for the instruments in “The people who walked” gave the darkness an almost infernal, Don Giovanni-like aspect. Conversely, the wind parts during the “Pastoral Symphony”, augmented by spit-spot choral singing, caused the music to positively scintillate in places, entirely appropriately.

Though their impact upon the performance was reduced throughout Part One by Mozart’s changes, the Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir sang superbly, throughout, coping well with some of the idiosyncrasies of the arrangement (odd accented phrasings in “All we like sheep” at the words “..have-GONE-a-STRAA-aa-AA-aa-AA…” – like someone trying to sing while being vigorously shaken!), but elsewhere displaying agility, strength, ease and wonderful variation of tone. For example, in “Surely He hath borne our griefs” I could feel the physical impact of the men’s singing of the words “bruised for our iniquities” , while a glorious outpouring of tones from the women’s voices at one point during the “Amen” chorus actually gave me goosebumps! I would have liked to have heard those same voices singing the openings of the choruses that Mozart gave to the soloists as well; but there was more than enough left for them to make a rich and indelible mark upon the proceedings.

I thought the soloists were for the most part splendid, each presenting their lines with energy and fullness of tone, and bringing to their utterances a distinctive and readily-communicating character. Though a shade tremulous at the top, soprano Morag Atchison’s voice otherwise enchanted, giving a lovely, committed performance with an engaging sense of great feeling, in the first Part capturing the excitement of the heavenly host’s appearance at “And suddenly…”. Also, she didn’t sentimentalize “I know that my Redeemer liveth”, but gave strength and emphasis to the words and put across the figurations with flair and energy.

Truest-toned of the quartet was mezzo Bianca Andrew, singing as always with the greatest of elegance, even when finding (as mezzos do) the tessitura of both “O Thou that tellest” and “He was despised” simply too low in places for comfort of projection. I’ve mentioned that Mozart’s wind additions seemed to me to blunt the latter aria’s tragic impact somewhat, and, in fact, give the music a human warmth that aligns it more with the world of the Countess from “Figaro”.

I liked tenor Henry Choo’s whole-hearted “Comfort Ye”, his voice also tremulous under pressure on top, but still heroic and bright. He thoroughly enjoyed his “bonus” aria “Rejoice greatly”, and made as good a fist as most singers I’ve heard of the so-o-o awkward “Thou shalt break them”, with its terrifyingly exposed leaps. Alongside him on the platform, fellow-Australian James Clayton put across an arresting, old-style prophet-like  “Thus saith the Lord”, though I found his softer singing seemed to lose some of the voice’s presence, resembling in places a rather-too-disembodied effect.  He brought plenty of energy and bluster to “Why do the nations”, though one of his grandest numbers, “The trumpet shall sound”, was here well-and-truly scuppered by Mozart, who reduced the aria to its opening, removing both the middle section and its da capo repeat.

Very great credit is due to conductor Tecwyn Evans, who entered into and realized the spirit of Mozart’s “rejuvenation” with some insightful and in places exciting direction, getting a committed response from choir and orchestra alike. On a couple of occasions I thought his tempi too quick for words and music to properly cohere (both “O Thou that tellest”, and the soloists-led “His yoke is easy” had what felt for me like a kind of driven, “take no prisoners” aspect). But in general his direction brought out both the older composer’s music-for-the-ages essence and the younger one’s delighted creative response to that same greatness.