Month: September 2013

Engaging guitar performances from mainly junior NZSM students

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand School of Music Classical Guitar Concert

Music by Stephen Goss, Fernando Sor, Astor Piazzolla, Sylvius Leopold Weissm Carlo Domeniconi,  Julián Arcas, Jorge Cardoso

Old Saint Paul’s

Tuesday 17 September, 12:15 pm

This concert was one of a series presented in collaboration with the New Zealand School of Music, to give students opportunities to perform before an audience other than fellow students and teachers. All but one of the players were first or second year students. What impressed here was not, perhaps, impeccable playing or mature insight into the music, but an ability to find their way through music that was often complex and sophisticated. The music was introduced by Jane Curry, lecturer and head of classical guitar studies at the school.

The concert opened with a quartet consisting of Jake Church, Cormac Harrington, Emmett Sweet and Cameron Sloan playing three pieces from a five-movement ‘re-working’ of familiar pieces by Erik Satie, from the Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. The latter word may derive from an early Greek religious belief, gnosticism, while it has also been linked with the myth based in the ancient Cretan city of Knossos, of King Minor, the story of the Minotaur involving Ariadne and Theseus. Satie’s intended meaning or connotation remins obscure.

The same applies to ‘Gymnopédies’, which hints at gymnastics, or dance (gymnos means ‘nude’ in Greek, since in Sparta, at least, gymnastics were performed naked; while paedia, or ‘pedia’, means boys). So both words have a classical association with movement or dance, and have in common the rejection of late 19th century salon music; they are, in Wikipedia‘s words, “gentle yet somewhat eccentric pieces which, when composed, defied the classical tradition”.

These arrangements were certainly taxing, not only in the finding and maintaining of good ensemble, but also in expressing a gentle melancholy through enigmatic dissonances and unusual harmony.  In their original versions, or in Debussy’s orchestration of the Gymnopédies, they have become extremely popular.

These re-workings proceed without breaks, offering the kind of contrast that Satie was, clearly, not seeking to make, as both groups of three have a striking unity of tone, harmony, tempo. The stronger tune of the Gymnopédie set betwen the two Gnossiennes changed the character of the pieces.

But the players did not quite achieve the fluidity and the disembodied feeling that is the character of the originals.

Sor’s Sonata, Op 22, a piece that probably owed someting of its shape to Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas, was played by George Wills. I suppose because he only had his own instrument to attend to, he produced a more fluent line, in handling the tricky rhythms, than the quartet had in the Satie pieces; the perfectly understandable slips and a certain hesitancy, however, did not detract from his general grasp of the style.

The first of a couple of South American pieces was Verano Porteno by Piazzolla. First year student Dylan Solomon’s approach to the elusive tango rhythm was cautious, quiet and a bit tentative. Playing from memory as did all the solo players; after a couple of minutes he handled capably, a change of tempo and  mood.  The music returns to its quiet opening phase, brushing strings with the finger tips, slowly gaining momentum towards the end. A charmingly played piece.

Royden Smith, another first year, played a Passacaglia by the famous lutanist, and contemporary of J S Bach, Sylvius Leopold Weiss. He captured the music’s melancholy tone as well as exhibiting considerable feeling for its rhythm and for the baroque style which would have been derived from some understanding (I suppose) of the nature of lute performance.

Carlo Domeniconi is a contemporary Italian composer who has written much for the guitar. Jake Church played his Variations on an Anatolian Folksong. Its opening was a little insecure, for its texture and rhythm were complex, calling for a fluency that might hardly be expected in a second year student. There were five variations in which Church managed to exhibit changes of character, though in truth, they did not quite compensate a certain monotony that the unchanging tonality and dynamics induced. It sounded particularly hard, in the third variation, to bring melody and rhythm into a synthesis. And in the last variation, I had the not uncommon experience of feeling lost for a moment, and then found, in time for a nice ending.

Then came a Fanasy on Themes from La traviata by 19th century Spanish composer Julián Arcas. Cristian Huenuqueo tended to exaggerate he exprssive features to begin with and I did have misgivings about the likely success in adapting vocal  music of this kind for such a very different vehicle. Whether his playing slowly became more persuasive or my sensors were becoming acclimatised, the several tunes took on something of their character in the opera. It seemed a technically demanding piece and, allowing for occasional smudges, this 4th year student negotiated its changes, its lyrical character, verfy effectively.

The last piece was a suite of five pieces by Jorge Cardoso, a contemporary Argentinian guitarist and composer, and played by a trio of Jamie Garrick, Huenuqueo and Wills. They were derived from the folk styles of various South American countries, entitled as follows: Samba d’orou, Camino de chacarera, Polca paraguaya, Zamba de plata and Vals Peruano.

While Samba d’ouro was a gently syncopated piece in which the trio created a rather sweet atmosphere, Camino de chacarera which is a rural counterpart of the cosmopolitan Argentinian imagery of the tango, but was without the brittle sensuality of the tango proper. Ensemble here proved a little elusive.

Polca Paraguaya was a considerable challenge though the ensemble seemed to gather itself up as it progressed, with a treble line carrying well. Zamba de plata alternated between 6/8 and 3/4 rhythm, sounding a little like a waltz, with competing rhythms, that caused momentary slips; but a charming piece.  The audience clapped at this point, thinking, because the way the programme notes were set out, that it was the end.

Vals Peruano had me fooled as it didn’t sound much like a waltz; Jamie Garrick later clarified the order of the pieces for me, pointing out that this last piece ‘uses syncopated, dotted rhythms which really muddy the feel’. The rhythms were curious and ever-changing.

The music was not chosen for its simplicity or audience familiarity, yet the players, most of whom were at the early stages of their studies, coped well enough technically, but more importantly, found the appropriate idiomatic style, from both a period and geographical point of view.

 

New Zealand String Quartet plays Britten along with kindred spirits

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Bravo! Britten

Purcell: Fantasias nos. 8 and 11;
Schubert: Quartettsatz in C minor, D.703
Britten: String Quartet no.3 Op.94
Ravel: String Quartet in F

New Zealand String Quartet (Helene Pohl and Douglas Beilman, violins; Gillian Ansell, viola; Rolf Gjelsten, cello)

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University

Saturday, 14 September 2013, 7pm

In a recent review I commented on the effect of concerts starting at 7pm on those of us who live out of town.  While I can see a justification, if an early start on a weekday persuades patrons to stay in town after work and go to the concert, I can’t see that justification applying to a Saturday.

This concert was the second in a series of two, transferred from St. Mary of the Angels due to earthquake strengthening work going on there.  Certainly the Hunter Council Chamber is both a more comfortable and a more chamber-like venue, but
while well-filled, it was not full.  Was the hour anything to do with this?

While I’m on gripes, I have to comment on the printed programme.  The excellent programme notes by Joy Aberdein were almost impossible to read in the low lighting provided even before the concert and in the interval, let alone the pseudo-candlelight illumination during the playing.  I appreciate the atmosphere the quartet were trying to create; the blame is on the designer of the programme.  There seems to be an idea around that serifs on letters are old-fashioned, unnecessary decorations.  This is not the case.  Tests, and experienced desk-top publishers, have found that the serifs carry the eye forward to read whole words, whereas sans-serif tends to cut the words up into individual letters.  Here was a sans-serif typeface and very pale printing, which could not be read in the lighting provided.  It was interspersed with quotations from the players, in bold, which could be read. Designers need to bear in mind that the majority of the members of the audience for this type of concert are over 55, and simply need more light, and more ink, to read what someone has put time and thought into preparing.  Practicality before design, please!

Gripes done with, I have to say it was delightful to be again at a concert from our own string quartet.  Their intelligent, thoughtful spoken introductions are a fine way to preface each work (especially when you can’t read the programme notes!), and their playing is always sensitive, lively, and passionate as required.

The Purcell Fantasias reflected Britten’s love and admiration for the 17th century composer, and his feeling that the earlier composer was a kindred spirit. The instruments were played without vibrato, in the style of the period.  The music contained scrumptious dissonances and suspensions.

Schubert’s Quartettsatz represented another composer loved by Benjamin Britten.  In her introductory remarks Gillian Ansell pointed to the melancholy that lay behind the Viennese gaiety of this and many of Schubert’s compositions.

Its two movements (allegro assai and an incomplete andante) are full of melody, but there are also stormy passages.  This was delicious playing, with fine phrasing.  The music was performed sensitively, and was full of nuances; the lilting loveliness was exploited to the full, as were the ‘Moments of sudden rage, lightning strikes, resignation and bittersweet pathos’, to quote Gillian Ansell’s printed words.

Britten’s third string quartet was his last work in the genre, and he was ill when he wrote it.  He was in Venice when completing it, and had two years previously produced his last opera, based on Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice; the quartet quotes from that work.  His feeling of kinship with Aschenbach, the hero of the novel, makes the work autobiographical.  The preface from Rolf Gjelsten gave us examples of the extraordinary textures the composer employed.

A Shostakovich-like opening of the first movement, Duets: with moderate movement, was melancholy and solemn, with discords, much rhythmic variety, and an inconclusive ending, while the Ostinato: very fast second was driving and angular, and made telling use of pizzicato.  The Solo: very calm – lively third movement incorporated contemplation and questioning, with slow phrases for the lower strings behind a sombre, even desolate high-pitched solo from Helene Pohl.

There were interesting technical effects from the other parts: glissandi, pizzicato, harmonics, playing across the bridge (on the viola) in the rapid, and perhaps ironic,  fourth movement: Burlesque: fast.  These effects were not gratuitous, but fitted
into the aesthetic of the movement perfectly, contrasting with grand chords.  The whole movement was delirious and robust, and included an excited fugue.

The final movement, the longest, was entitled Recitative and passacaglia [La serenissima]: slow.  It began with harmonics on the second violin and tremolo notes, with a melody from the cello.  The dirge-like passacaglia was set against an
feeling of continuing life, yet also of finality; here was sombre profundity.  The low repeated notes apparently represented the bells of Venice.

The whole movement was a slow, serene and at times mournful transformation compared with the movement that preceded it.  A difficult movement, it did expose a few notes out of place.  However, throughout the work there was great clarity of textures.  The work ended on a despondent note.  Britten said “I want the work to end with a question.”

Ravel’s only quartet is quite often played, but it was wonderful to hear it in this relatively intimate space, which provides clear yet rich sound (despite the carpet).  The Quartet committed this work to disk a number of years ago (Atoll ACD 399).  I have the recording and know it quite well, but this performance brought the music alive, literally and figuratively.

Its first movement (allegro moderato – très doux) opens with a beautiful tune, vaguely pastoral in character, the writing beautifully spare The second subject played in unison, octaves apart, gave an other-worldly feel.  The section before the later repeat of the theme during the development features a gorgeous viola passage.

The second movement, assez vif – très rhythmé, brings pizzicato to the fore, and over it, haunting melodies weave in and out. Pizzicato triumphs in the end, with a loud exclamation mark.

The third movement, très lent, has a spooky opening leading to calm, gentle and languid passages.  This movement also features haunting, even doleful phrases, and much of it is played using mutes.  Lyrical, with pastoral themes, it is full of
surprises, including echoes of themes from previous movements. The vif et agité finale is something completely different.  It begins in energetic, even angry mood, but repeats the theme from the opening movement, and plays with it lightly in new ways, until a robust, almost Shostakovian ending.

It was a thoroughly satisfying and accomplished performance, as indeed was the entire concert.

 

NZ Opera’s Dutchman redeemed by love and music

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand Opera presents:
Richard Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman”

Cast: Jason Howard (The Dutchman)
Paul Whelan (Daland, a Sea-Captain)
Orla Boylan (Senta, Daland’s daughter)
Peter Auty (Erik, a hunter)
Shaun Dixon (Steersman)
Wendy Doyle (Mary)

Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus
Chorusmaster: Michael Vinten

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Wyn Davies

Director: Matthew Lutton
Assistant Director: Andrew McKenzie
Designer: Zoë Atkinson
Lighting: Jon Buswell

St.James Theatre, Wellington

Saturday 14th September 2013

Aidan Lang, New Zealand Opera’s General Director, put it well in his welcoming foreword to the programme for this production – it’s been much longer than the mandatory seven years since the Flying Dutchman last “came ashore” here in New Zealand in search of redemption.

In fact, it’s been thrice that number of years since the 1992 Auckland Opera production which featured none other than Sir Donald McIntyre in the title role, and was conducted by a fellow-New Zealander with an international career in opera, John Matheson.

By all accounts that was a creditable production, an artistic, if not a financial success. New Zealand Opera would have been hoping to emulate that occasion’s artistic achievements, while having the advantage of working in partnership with Opera Queensland to assist the present undertaking’s considerable cost outlay.

Photographs of the 1992 production suggest that the conventionalities of the story – the sea, the ships, sailors, coastal townspeople – were pretty well in evidence. However, twenty-one years later, the Dutchman returned to an almost complete contrast of scenario –  and both the elements and the means of traversing them were here abstracted to the point of alienation. On the stage of the St.James Theatre, not a drop of seawater nor flurry of salt spray  actually registered – all of the oceanic turmoil was confined to the the orchestra pit from whence it welled up fiercely and splendidly.

The high-and-dry cell-like enclosure of the Norwegian sailors’ shelter at the very beginning suggested more a state-of-mind-siege than a ship, or even a touch of post-nuclear-strike refuge in appearance and human use. As for the Dutchman’s ghostly vessel, it hove to simply as an oncoming, imposing black wall from which mysteriously emerged the legendary figure, bearing more of a sinister Nosferatu-cum-Twilight-novels aspect than that of a tragic, romantic sea-faring character.

Underlining this was the figure’s use of what appeared to be a form of supernatural power over the sailors, to the point of causing one of them to cough up blood. Earlier, during the Steersman’s homesick love-song, just before the arrival of the Dutchman’s ship, an alluring naked woman eerily materialised among the Norwegian crew, disappearing as mysteriously as she appeared – a rather more “story-wise” event, I thought, than the gratuitously haemorrhaging sailor.

But the production’s application of these detailings throughout had a similar in-and-out-of-focus aspect, some telling touches rubbing shoulders with what seemed a “trying-too-hard” spirit born of wanting to be innovative for its own sake. I did like how the Norwegian sailors  sudden “found” treasures in their own pockets as part of the bounty promised by the Dutchman in return for some hospitality – it was a good way of dealing with what’s always seemed to me a rather gauche, tinsel-like “baubles, bangles and beads” transaction, here given a much more powerful, less pantomime character.

Act Two began with the famous “Spinning Chorus”, here sublimated into a kind of erotic wish-fulfilment ritual on the part of the women who assembled, polished and partly dressed a number of bare male mannekins – maybe psychologically apposite but visually incongruous, and somewhat at odds with the “spinning” music. Interestingly, the picture of the Dutchman was an ample piece of unframed canvas pop-art rather than an image presented to suggest any great antiquity. Although this was something Senta could literally “wrap herself up in” while singing the well-known “Ballad”, the image, in this medium, had an almost clip-art, “throw-away” quality, hardly designed to engender any sense of legend or mythology.

I thought the Ballad itself, by way of compensation, might have been theatrically framed by some kind of ambient intensification, lighting or staging depicting the storms and emotions described by Senta’s narrative. But no – music plus imagination triumphed, as there were no externals bringing about any kind of startling “picture come to life” metamorphosis when the Dutchman in person entered the room.

Blood figured yet again in the exchanges that followed – blood from the inside of the Dutchman’s coat which Senta had dreamily picked up and put on, then relinquished, leaving her bare arms almost sacrificially smeared – a tangible warning, perhaps, of the fate accorded to vow-breakers?

Whatever the case, singers, conductor and orchestra drove the music excitingly towards the Act’s conclusion, and straight on into Act Three without a break in the music, though the curtain allowed plenty of music-only space for a scene-change – here were the Norwegian crew’s homecoming revels, and the imminent marriage of the Steersman presumably to the girl whose charms he conjured up in his Act One night-watch song.

First the sailors and then their womenfolk attempted to rouse the sleeping crew of the Dutchman’s ship – their figures to one side, in full view, sitting asleep with bowed heads, as still as death, splendidly resembling pre-Raphaelite spirit-wraiths. I thought the moment of their awakening a gripping and effective piece of theatre, the figures instantly shedding their somewhat androgynous quality and generating real deadly menace, even if the singling-out of the Steersman for some extra “treatment” became a bit schoolboyish in effect.

However, such was the power generated by this scene and its music (off-stage voices sang the Dutch crew’s music while the on-stage wraiths choreographed its demonic character most threateningly), that the sudden unscheduled technical “glitch” which brought about a reassuring announcement of continuance after a down-curtain luftpause actually gave us all a breathing-space with which to prepare for the final scene.

Again it was left to the orchestra to conjure up the oceanic furies as Senta and the Dutchman drove towards their intertwined fates. Senta “summonsed” a chasm in the raked floor with a blow from a chair and ritualistically flung herself into oblivion, followed by the ecstatic Dutchman.  At this point the massive wall representing the ghost-vessel dramatically and spectacularly collapsed towards the audience, making for a wonderfully visceral effect of dissolution.

I’ve begun this review and discussed these points at some length, not because I think production the most important aspect of opera, but because these days a lot of people involved with opera do seem to give it over-riding importance, to the point where putting a new “update” upon any work seems to have become a priority. As comedian Michael Flanders prophetically said regarding a proposed musical setting of the sixteenth century play Ralph Roister Doister, in his and Donald Swann’s comedy revue At the Drop of a Hat all those years ago – “Anything to stop it being done straight!”

I’ve tried to fairly balance what I thought “worked” and what didn’t in this process, though I couldn’t help thinking some violence was done to the opera’s libretto and music by inconsistencies and contradictions between words and music and stage action. For example, removing from right at the beginning any visible trace of the ocean’s presence and direct influence  from the stage, however clever an idea on paper, sapped from the work, I thought, much of its inherent sense of elemental power and human interaction with such forces.

At the beginning of Act Two the chorus of “smart young misses” in the clothing factory called all the shots (and, despite the evocative music, not a spinning-wheel, or even a sewing machine, was within coo-ee!). But then, part-way through Senta’s Ballad a regressive thrall seemed to remarkably grip these bright, worldly-wise young things. I thought their sudden wide-eyed interest in and fascination with the legend at odds with their initial hard-bitten mode and deportment at the outset – perhaps it was more demonic trickery from the Dutchman?

If the stage action and design characteristics had their challenging aspects, far less equivocal was the quality of both individual and group performances. Incongruities of placement and manner apart, the choruses were wholly committed dramatically and superbly full-voiced musically right throughout, reaching a thrilling and incisive level of interaction throughout the opening sequences of Act Three, when the Norwegian sailors and their women attempt to rouse the ghostly, slumbering Dutch crew, to alarming effect.

Though perhaps a tad too youthful of appearance, Paul Whelan sang a rich and satisfying Daland, the Norwegian captain, his manner emphaisising the character’s goodness of heart alongside his eagerness for the chance of wealth in marrying his daughter to the Dutchman. I felt sorry for him having to sing the redundant line, near the beginning, to his Steersman “Am Bord bei euch, wie steht’s?” (How’s everything on board?) – when in this staging he had left his crew for what seemed less than a minute, simply going up a ladder and putting his head out the hatch for a look around!

His Steersman, Tokoroa-born and Auckland-trained Shaun Dixon, made the most of his lovely solo while on watch, his voice strong, focused and romantic,  floating his phrases heroically and mellifluously through the stillness – the singer is this year’s Mina Foley Scholar, and on this showing, a credit to the award. His tones sharply contrasted with those which broke the eerie quiet in the wake of the ghostly ship’s arrival – the tortured, and in places harshly-sounded voice of the Dutchman, Welsh baritone Jason Howard.

This was a Dutchman whose business was tragedy and grim desperation more than romantic heroism. His opening monologue set the tone, his voice accurate and incisive, though in places gravelly and uningratiating. Resembling in appearance more a silent movie villain than a seafaring sea-captain, his brief demonic-like gestures did less for me than his consistently haunted demeanour, and fiercely-focused vocal quality when duetting with Senta – not beautiful sounds but filled with an anguished mix of hope and despair that dramatically carried the day.

His rival for Senta’s love, the poor, infatuated hunter, Erik, was sung by English tenor Peter Auty (remembered for an intensely-portrayed Turridu in NZ Opera’s 2011 Pagliacci), here richly interacting with Senta and  conveying all the frustrated passion of doubt and uncertainty regarding his love for her, singing and acting with great conviction.

The role whose character I thought got little chance to make anything coherent and meaningful from was that of Mary. Normally Senta’s nurse, she was here relegated to the thankless position of superviser of the “smart-set” factory-girls, and whose contribution seemed to centre around an attitude of petulant disapproval of Senta’s obsession with the picture, and not much more. Wendy Doyle did what she could with the character, but she was placed rather too far back onstage for some of her contributions to make their real vocal”point” –  which could account for some of her gesturings towards Senta coming across as a shade over-emphatic.

Which brings me to the heroine, whose voice and demeanour both had a somewhat wild and undisciplined quality, but whose commitment to the role of Senta was never in doubt. Irish soprano Orla Boylan took a no-holds-barred approach, one which I thought gradually came into focus and sharpened as the Ballad ran its course. I thought at the scene’s beginning she was too much the odd-ball, dressed differently to the other women, and distracted in manner and movement to the point of serious disturbance, obviously feeling the oncoming presence of the “pale man” in the picture.

The famous Ballad generated considerable musical excitement, the singer working thrillingly with conductor and orchestra to evoke the Dutchman’s tragic scenario and her own involvement with the legend. The voice wasn’t consistently attractive, spreading when under pressure, but at all times conveying great immediacy and character.  I thought she was a “giver” on stage regarding whomever she interacted with, firstly the anxious and despairing Erik, and then with her ghostly wanderer – in fact her dealings with each would-be “lover” were both whole-heartedly and satisfyingly contrasted, the effect deeply-felt rather than contrived.

Though the impression given by Senta’s plunge into the newly-created abyss  seemed more of an abandonment to the “bowels of the earth” rather than to the depths of the sea, the singer’s unflinching physicality and emotional desperation made the gesture work at the end. Again, it was the orchestra whose efforts under the baton of conductor Wyn Davies created the elemental fury of oceanic context, as they had been doing throughout the evening – if (like Anton Bruckner was supposed to have done on his visit to Bayreuth to hear “Parsifal”) we had shut our eyes throughout the performance, the music alone would have here given us what we needed to become caught up in Wagner’s drama.

Whatever one’s reaction to the provocative stagings and the different, and thought-provoking emphases thus given to the presentation by director Matthew Lutton and designer Zoë Atkinson, one could feel unequivocally that justice was done on this occasion by singers, musicians and conductor to this thrilling work’s inspired composer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gorgeous concert of New Zealand commissions for voice and harp

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Te Koki New Zealand School of Music:
Pluck; a concert of New Zealand music for harp

Works by Anthony Ritchie, Graeme Downes, Pepe Becker, Lyell Cresswell, Gillian Whitehead, Chris Adams, Claire Cowan, Ross Carey and Mark Smythe.

Helen Webby (harp), Pepe Becker (voice)

Adam Concert Room, New Zealand School of Music

Friday, 13 September, 7.30pm

Everyone at ‘Pluck’ would have been delighted by what they heard.
The works were commissioned by an enterprising Helen Webby, with support from Creative New Zealand.  Most of the composers are New Zealand residents, but several are currently based
overseas.  All the works were written for full-size orchestral harp – pedal harp – unless otherwise stated below.

Anthony Ritchie’s Angels Flow was certainly apt to its title: evocative, misty, and at the end, feeling unfinished, as if it wafted off into spiritual worlds.  It was an appropriate piece to commence a recital of harp music, but more excitement was in store for the moderately-sized audience (there was musical competition elsewhere in the university precinct).

Also based at Otago University, Graeme Downes is an expert on Mahler, and on rock music.  I had not heard any of his compositions before, but despite the rather technical programme note, it proved to be an interesting and varied piece: Introduction and Scherzo.  It opened in a minor
mode, then changed quite abruptly.  There were many delicious moments of arpeggios and techniques of playing at varying levels from top to bottom of the strings. The tempi were quite fast, and the music was jazzy in places.  Towards the end, it struck me as pianistic in character.  Overall, it was a very attractive work.

We are certainly familiar with Pepe Becker as a singer; although I knew she composed also, I had not heard anything of hers for a long time. Her piece was titled  Capricorn I: Pluto in terra.  Knowing little of astrology, much of the programme note was over my head.

The work opened with the strings stopped by a piece of paper between them, giving a tonal quality
rather like pizzicato on a violin.  Then there were low wordless vocal tones from the harpist, and a melody for the left hand, while the pizzicato continued from the right hand.  The paper was removed (in an act of sleight of hand), but the same fast rhythms continued, as did the vocal tones, plus knocking on the soundboard.  All of this made for a dramatic and interesting piece – and difficulty for the performer, but nevertheless she succeeded without problems, it seemed.

Lyell Cresswell, who has lived in Edinburgh for many years, maintains his links with New Zealand.  He wrote his piece based on words by the poet Fiona Farrell, which were written after the February 2011 earthquake.  They had particular relevance, since the poet had been playing “with a harp ensemble under Helen’s tutelage”.  The words related the reaction of the harp and of the cups and plates when the earthquake happened.  Telling, and amusing were the lines about
harps making fine companions in disaster. “You can float on a harp as the ship goes down” and “You can hold onto a single string/ Find your way through a broken city.”

Pepe Becker’s singing was incisive yet smooth in this dramatic piece, which was played with great
panache and a range of fortes and pianos. The disaster was splendidly depicted.

Last in the first half of the concert was Gillian Whitehead’s Cicadas, the vocal part setting a text by Rachel Bush.  Naturally, the insects were depicted in the music, as Whitehead “focuses on the life cycle of the cicada and its mesmeric song.” Whitehead proved yet again to be superb at setting words to music, and also at bringing out the theme through the music.  We heard the cicadas emerging from the ground, and their rhythmic vibrations accompanied the words, epitomising the part that said “…say to themselves over and over.”  At one point Helen Webby used a kind of vibrato on the high notes, employing both hands to achieve this, then smoothed over the strings with both hands, giving an eerie effect.  Such ‘twentieth century harp techniques’ were credited in the programme note to great French-American harpist Carlo Salzedo, who died in 1961 at the age of 76.

I found the singing of the words rather shrill in the bright acoustic of the Adam Concert Room.  However, this was a very skilled composition, and performance.

Following the interval we heard Strata by Chris Adams (another composer with strong Otago University connections).  It employed, in addition to the harp, a ‘loop pedal’.  This is an electronic device, operated by the harpist using a pedal, which can play a loop of the music (the loop could be earlier recorded, or recorded during the performance, I learned later, and is much used by pop musicians). The performer could play with the loop as accompaniment, or without it, or activate the loop on its own, playing its part over and over, with no ‘live’ intervention.

The piece began with what sounded like a medieval melody, modal in nature.  The charming melody was played over a repetitive bass accompaniment.  The disadvantage of using the loop was the clicking noise as the pedal was depressed and the electronics started and stopped.

Claire Cowan’s piece was The Sleeping Keeper, for lap harp and pedal harp.  However, since Helen
Webby couldn’t play two harps at the same time, the loop pedal was employed again to activate the electronic version of the lap harp’s part.  At one point, she used the metal tuning key on the strings to produce a sustained metallic sound from them.  As the programme note said “the piece conjures up… the constant movement of water…”; the resonant sound in ACR was right for this evocative piece, full of the atmosphere of dreams.  However, I believe there was amplification in those piece employing the loop pedal.

The repetitive bass was most effective; the use of the loop pedal made for more complex, and louder, textures than the harp could conjure up on its own.

Ross Carey’s … valse oubliée… was for a wire-strung harp of 22 strings.  This small harp 22 metal strings was placed on a high padded stool and Helen Webby played it standing. What an incisive sound this harp has compared with the pedal harp!  Carey was the only composer to use this smaller instrument.  His piece was in an improvisatory style, with pleasing turns of phrase.

Finally, we heard Moto Mojo from Mark Smythe (Pepe Becker’s brother).  In tonality and rhythmically the piece was similar to Pepe’s composition.  It was true to the title, and to the note “to make the listener feel a sense of momentum” but it was certainly not without melody and charm.  I can believe in amplification used like this – it truly enhanced what can be a very quiet instrument.  The piece made a beautiful ending to a gorgeous concert.  It’s not always that you
can say that about a programme of totally new music.

 

NZ String Quartet – Britten alongside his heroes

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand String Quartet presents:
BRAVO! BRITTEN (Programme One)

STRAVINSKY – Concertino for String Quartet (1920)
BRITTEN – String Quartet No.1 in D Op.25
BRIDGE – Idyll No.1 / Pieces Nos 2 and 3
MOZART – String Quartet in B-flat K.589 “Prussian No.2”

The New Zealand String Quartet:
Helene Pohl and Douglas Beilman (violins)
Gillian Ansell (viola) / Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University of Wellington

Friday 13th September 2013

The New Zealand String Quartet concluded their epic New Zealand Bravo! Britten tour with two Wellington concerts on the weekend, featuring separate programs, of which I was privileged to hear the first one on Friday evening. I feel almost abashed to admit that I would have gone to both concerts had I not been scheduled to attend the opening of Wagner’s “Flying Dutchman’ the following evening!

Of course both Britten and Wagner are linked by birth centenaries this present year, give or take a hundred years’ difference. Britten was naturally aware of Wagner as a composer, but drew little from the latter’s work in his own music. Far more influential upon Britten and his creativity were the composers whose music the NZSQ chose to represent in each of their Bravo! Britten concerts this year.

In the first concert, which I heard, the quartet featured music by Stravinsky, Frank Bridge and Mozart, to partner Britten’s First String Quartet. The choices were largely predictable for anybody with an interest in Britten’s music – for example, the accompanying composers for Concert No.2 featured Purcell, Schubert and Ravel. I would have thought either or both Mahler and Shostakovich might have gotten a look in as well, and certainly had there been a third program.

The effect of juxtaposing these influences, at any rate during the first concert, was quite extraordinary – the other composers’ music suggested worlds that were both separate from and linked to Britten’s, and had a cumulative effect on what we heard of his own music. It was a kind of “Show me a person’s world and I will show you that person” kind of phenomenon – and as can happen in real life, some of the similarities were quite uncanny when things were brought together.

The concert began with Stravinsky’s shortish but characterful Concertino for String Quartet. Leader Helene Pohl introduced the work and talked about Britten’s youthful fascination with Stravinsky’s music, quoting the instance when the young Britten arrived on his first day at school to be greeted by the music master with the words, “Ah, this is the boy who likes Stravinsky!” More telling was the playing by the group of two musical exerpts, one from the Stravinsky and the other from the Britten Quartet, demonstrating the uncanny rhythmic similarities of the two fragments.

The Stravinsky piece itself was one of the composer’s relatively spare, neoclassical works, written in 1920 for the Flonzaley Quartet, who wanted to add a piece of contemporary music to their repertoire. The music is, by turns, terse, angular and tightly worked, then whimsical and lyrical – the quartet chose a phrase or two from the driving rhythmic sections that frame the music’s brief lyrical interlude for their composer-comparison. The title Concertino comes from the use of the first violin as a “solo” instrument throughout this lyrical sequence. There’s a brief Andante coda, which the composer directs the performers to play “like a sigh”.

After this came Britten’s First String Quartet, introduced by Douglas Beilman.  This work was written in 1941 in the United States, at the request of a prominent patroness of the arts, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, and first performed there by the Coolidge Quartet. The quartet actually won Britten an award at that time, a Library of Congress Medal for services to Chamber Music.

Having gotten to know this work only from recordings I was anxious to hear what it sounded like “live”, and I was astonished at how much more varied and detailed the NZSQ’s playing was, compared to the rather more austere performance on record that I had gotten used to.

The opening consisted of lovely, haunting, ethereal lines played Andante sostenuto by the two violins and viola, a theme punctuated by recitative-like arpeggiated pizzicati notes from the ‘cello, and strongly contrasted with an explosive driving allegro vivo sequence, before the ethereal ambiences of the opening return, again with the violins and viola underpinned by ‘cello pizzicati.

A more subdued version of the allegro vivo included some attractive “folkish” figurations rising and falling, before the ethereal mood settles once again on the music, the instruments amazingly playing a couple of phrases an octave higher, heightening the other-worldliness of it all. There’s a brief flurry of the allegro and then a few spectral gestures of closure before the sounds disappear.

The NZSQ’s playing of the following con slancio movement again seemed much less “beefy” than what I’d gotten used to on record – with much more light and shade and variation of colour and texture, though still with plenty of “attitude” in the strutting rhythms, cheeky triplet sequences and running figures. The players relished the Peter Grimes-like “Moonlight” atmosphere which grew the third movement magically from out of the silences, the solo violin taking up the line from the opening ensemble, and joining with the second violin. I loved the fanfare figures begun by the ‘cello and then brought forth from each solo instrument, with the ambient echoes of these resonating beautifully. More hymn-like solo lines and more fanfare-like passages took the music to gentler, more ruminative realms and nicely-built cadence-points – from which the music sank to a crepuscular conclusion.

After this, what fun the finale was in these players’ hands! The cheeky opening figure was tossed around the group with a will, a two note motif played ducks and drakes with a repetitive rhythmic motif, and the music raced through the various twists and turns to its invention-strewn conclusion. For me this was again a performance of great enhancement of my perception of the music, one that demonstrated its enormous capacity for surprise, delight and fresh appraisal.

Gillian Ansell then told us a little about English conductor, chamber musician and  composer  Frank Bridge’s tutelage of the young Britten, repeating the story concerning Bridge’s encouraging of his pupil to “make every note count” in his composing. Britten certainly took Bridge’s advice to heart, judging by the fastidious “weighting” of his harmonic and colouristic textures at all times.

We then had an opportunity to hear some of Bridge’s own, seldom-played music, in a bracket of three items called “Idylls and Pieces”. The first, an Idyll by both name and by nature, oozed dark melancholy, but offered a consoling viola tune at the end. The second piece, a waltz with a lovely sighing melody, and the third, a brisk-rhythmed marching song with a beautifully sentimental trio section restored our equanimities. Throughout, Bridge’s music certainly seemed to know exactly what it was doing, and presented itself to us simply and concisely.

It fell finally to the Quartet’s playing of the music of Mozart to appropriately complete the evening’s commemorative picture of our composer. This was one of the three great “Prussian” Quartets, the second in B flat Major K.589. The Quartet’s ‘cellist, Rolf Gjelstan, enjoyed informing us that the King of Prussia, for whom Mozart wrote these works, was himself a ‘cellist, hence the profligacy of wonderful solo lines for the instrument.

By popular legend, Mozart was also a composer for whom not a note was wasted, though we have a more reliably-documented quote from this amazing genius regarding performance-style – namely, the words “It should flow like oil”. That’s what it did here, the players responding to the music’s uncanny quality of satisfying at many different levels of appreciation. Mozart himself was aware of this, writing to his father regarding a newly-composed set of piano concerti that “there are passages that will give pleasure to all, but only the connoisseurs will understand why”.

Though somewhat more gently and circumspectly configured as works of art than Beethoven’s comparable quartets, Mozart’s are as richly- and characterfully-wrought in their own way. These players had the knack of engaging and satisfying the gamut of our emotional responses to the music, coursing over a vast range of aesthetic impulses and spiritual responses. As with the Britten work earlier in the programme, I had never heard the music of this quartet projected in quite so detailed a way as with the NZSQ, and was grateful for such “enlargement” of a work’s range and scope through such an insightful performance.

If pressed to name a playing highlight from the latter work, I would here choose the Minuet and Trio movement, music filled with challenging incident for performers to surmount and listeners to take in. Not the least of this is a “Trio within a trio” kind of structure, complete with a few bars that actually reminded me of the music for that long-defunct television series “Doctor Finlay’s Casebook”!

Less self-indulgent and more pertinent an observation is that the composer’s mastery ensured that every detail which contributes to the complexities of the music literally “flowed like oil”, and that the NZSQ met the composer on common ground here and throughout the rest of the work, to give us a richly-wrought experience – one that enhanced my own appreciation of both Mozart and his devoted Benjamin Britten.

 

Sunny moods and bitter grief at lunchtime at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Koru Trio (Rachel Thomson – piano, Anne Loeser – violin, Sally Isaac – cello)

Schumann: Adagio and Allegro for cello and piano, Op 70
Shostakovich: Piano Trio No 2 in E minor, Op 67

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 11 September, 12:15 pm

When I reviewed the Koru Trio’s performance of Schubert’s B Flat piano trio last October, I exclaimed at the blessings that were available to the legions of public servants in the vicinity of St Andrew’s who could recover their sanity and humanity (words to that effect) in their lunch breaks at these wonderful lunchtime concerts. I was one of them till the late 1980s, but I see very few of my latter-day colleagues at the concerts now, even on days when an indoor sanctuary is necessary; it was a foul day outside. I suspect spiritual redemption would be ever-more essential in today’s political climate.

Schumann’s later compositions are commonly regarded as inferior to the wondrous inspirations for the piano and the Lieder that he produced up till 1840. This short piece, Adagio and Allegro, dated 1849, was originally scored for piano and horn, though the composer directed that it could also be played on violin or cello. Thank goodness! For the cello, certainly that played by Sally Isaac, was beautifully matched with the softly lyrical character of the music.  I don’t know how much these players work together, but the ensemble, the perfect unity of tone and expression between cello and piano seemed to speak of close affinity in their musical temperament. The one instrument was never obscured by the other, apart from the momentary sharpish attack from the piano at the start of the Allegro.

This was such a gorgeous performance of a little-known piece that I have to refrain from saying that it was the Shostakovich that was the real reason for being here. Both were simply wonderfully understood and eloquently expressed performances.

The opening of Shostakovich’s second piano trio is famously unique, and arresting; cello, violin and piano signaled, in succession, through those other-worldly harmonics, a deep understanding of this remarkable music and the capacity for its expression. Much as one was entranced by the technical mastery and scrupulous articulation, its real impact lay in the profound emotion that surfaced.

It would be easy for the more energetic second movement to deliver a very different mood, but it appeared simply as another facet of the sense of loss and pain that the composer felt both for the death of his friend Sollertinsky and for wartime suffering in general.

The Largo, starting with insistent piano chords, moves promptly to more extended, contrapuntal passages that lie at the funereal heart of the piece. Then, in the final movement, the players imposed a heavy rhythm, suggesting a dark, peasantish dance of death, as if stamping on the ground, venting anger at the blind cruelty of fate, or the State. The violin tone became brighter, even elegant, though it also served to raise the level of emotion which increased further with hard piano chords and insistent down-bow strokes on the violin and cello.

The way in which the trio comes to its end, in a mood of increasing quiet and calm actually speaks of the composer’s sense of despair, a conviction that nothing will change, and the way the players allowed the textures to thin out, diminuendo, to slow down without any actual rallentando was a memorable feat.

It’s not every lunchtime that one can be brought face-to-face with such musicianship and an utterance of such powerful politico-emotional despair.

 

 

Fancies and realities from Orchestra Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents
LA DONNA IDEALE

BEETHOVEN – Leonore Overture No.1 Op.138
Symphony No.8 in F Major Op.93
LUCIANO BERIO – Folk Songs
JULIET PALMER – Three Pop Songs “Solid Gold”

Madeleine Pierard (soprano)
Marc Taddei (conductor)
Orchestra Wellington

The Opera House, Wellington,

Sunday, 8th September, 2013

Restricted as to performing venues on account of the capital’s various earthquake-generated strengthening projects, Orchestra Wellington triumphantly made good in the Opera House on Sunday afternoon with its most recent concert, La Donna Ideale, whatever difficulties might have arisen from having to make music in relatively unfamiliar spaces.

By covering the pit and extending the floor area of the stage to well out in front of the proscenium arch the organisers had given the musicians a surprisingly immediate acoustic for its audience to enjoy. Though a smallish orchestra, the sounds in the purely orchestral items packed plenty of punch, with clear (almost too clear) detailing – the string passages which began the Leonore Overture No.1 had great intensity, but moments of less-than-uniform intonation, a glitch which receded as the players “found” one another.

For me the concert’s venue recalled my first-ever orchestral encounter in a similar kind of space – the Palmerston North Opera House in 1969.  Maestro Piero Gamba conducted the then NZBC Symphony Orchestra in an evening of music-making that rocked my socks off, especially with Ravel’s La Valse as a rousing finale. Here, the fireworks at the concert’s end were Beethoven’s, Marc Taddei leading a performance of the composer’s Eighth Symphony that emphasised the music’s dash, drive and excitement, though somewhat at the expense of wit, charm and good humour.

It was Beethoven’s music also which led this latest concert off. Here was a further instalment in a survey by the orchestra of the various Leonora Overtures written by the composer for his opera “Fidelio” – the composer wanted “Leonora” as his opera’s title, but Beethoven was persuaded eventually to make the change, as at least three other composers had previously used that name for their operatic settings of the story.

Leonore No.1 was thought for many years to be the original version of the overture  – but recent research has established it was written after the other versions, specifically for a Prague production of the opera in 1808 which apparently never actually took place (hence the Overture’s somewhat “academic” high opus numbering). Though not as overtly theatrical in its layout as the other “Leonora” overtures, the music still has a pleasing and satisfying overall shape – a sombre introduction, giving way to determined energies followed by lyrical yearnings, the whole completed by a surging, all-conquering conclusion.

Having the players, specifically the strings, brought foward of the proscenium arch made for a more-than-usually analytical sound-picture, sharply-focused, but lacking the bloom of the Town Hall’s ampler ambience. However, the smallish number of strings survived the sound-spotlight with considerable credit, a couple of previously-mentioned ensemble and intonation inconsistencies aside, during the slow, recitative-like opening passages.

Once the allegro got under way the full orchestra’s extra weight and immediacy of sound was thrilling to experience, the music’s syncopations and energies here, and at the conclusion of the work, done with verve and dash. Conductor Marc Taddei managed the music’s contrasts beautifully, the horns and other winds giving great pleasure with their handling of the famous yearning theme sung in the opera by the imprisoned Florestan.

The following work on the programme indirectly gave the concert its overall title, “La  Donna Ideale”, which was the title of the sixth of a collection of eleven Folk-Songs composed and/or transcribed from other sources by avant-garde Italian composer Luciano Berio. Of course, Beethoven’s eponymous heroine celebrated in the concert’s opening music had already ticked the requisite boxes suggested by the title!

Berio wrote these songs for the celebrated singer Cathy Berberian, whom he was married to for a number of years. Today’s singer was our own Madeleine Pierard, resplendently pregnant, and as engaging in voice and platform manner as ever. I could imagine Berberian’s voice having a bit more “edge” and feistiness in places compared with what we heard, but not any more charm, wit and heartfelt directness which Madeleine Pierard gave to us so generously.

The singer’s focused diction enabled us to hear every word of the two American songs which opened the set, and her fully-vocalised engagement with the changing moods of the others brought each one to life. From song to song one marvelled at the differences
of ambience and energy and the range of emotion.

Particularly telling were the contrasts across the final sequence of four songs, the eerie, almost spectral quality of the singer’s “bleached” tones in Motetu de tristura, the out-of-doors chirpiness of Malurous qu’o unno fenno, the folksy, tongue-in-cheek exchanges between singer and solo ‘cello in Lo fiolaire, and the verve and energy of the concluding Azerbaijan Love Song – it sound as though those people in the final song were playing for keeps!

Supporting and matching Pierard’s artistry was the quality of the orchestral playing throughout, both in ensemble and across the many solo lines, making the whole a heart-warming experience.

What a contrast with the world evoked by ex-pat Toronto-based Kiwi composer Juliet Palmer – unlike the often more rarified, prescribed work of many of her contemporaries, her Solid Gold presentation drew directly from mainstream culture, namely, those of pop lyrics associated with music.

Juliet Palmer used only the texts of various pop songs to gather the shards of material she needed to make into a kind of distillation of impulses concerning  love – the composer declared her aim to “unearth the heart of the love song”.  A lot of the time the singer was using the word I – beginning with “I am, I said” which was about the closest to a direct quote from an actual song – but elsewhere it sounded as though Palmer was actually reassembling  the sounds of the words. Other reconstructions brought forth phrases beginning with such words  as “I wanna be” –  according to the composer, echoing a 1984 hit song “I wanna know what love is”.

As she was inspired by pop music’s “distinct sound world” her own music here mostly courted pastiche, (I scribbled the phrase “Disney-like accompaniment” at one point) primarily a kind of springboard for those deconstructed/reconstructed lyrics to bounce along before taking and relishing their brief individual moments of glory. But there were also abnormalities and angularities in places, diverting horn glissandi notes during the work’s introduction and a clustered, Ligeti-like accompaniment to the words “I am” and their subsequent development, sharp Stravinsky-like chords  contributing to the faint underbelly of edginess in certain places in the work.

Enjoyable, but intriguing – and sung by Madeleine Pierard with a richly-wrought relish that brought to mind Noel Coward’s comment  regarding “the potency of cheap music”.

After this we pleasurably anticipated a different kind of delight – the rich, robust humour of Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony. It’s always seemed to me a work of enormous verve and assurance, one which appears to confidently sum up a whole cosmos of symphonic achievement on the part of its composer. Though outwardly it appears something of a classical “throwback”, the music constantly confounds expectation and is filled with dramatic surprises and rhythmic angularities.

Alas, in this performance, the “rich, robust humour” was a sometimes thing. Brilliantly though the orchestra played the work, I thought Marc Taddei’s frantic pacing of the music took away some of the work’s capacity to delight and confound as Beethoven probably intended. For every sequence that impressed with its near-breathless brilliance, there were two which caused me to lament the over-riding impression of excessive haste  – with such deliciously-contrived humour and droll charm to be savoured, I’m at a loss to understand why these things seemed to be put to the metronomic sword.

To be entirely fair, the parts of the work which I thought did come off well were certainly exciting to listen to – the first movement development evoked a kind of tense game of chase between groups of instruments, the horns in particular bringing out their accents tellingly at one point, though the crescendo leading to the reprise had little chance to register at such a pace. And the finale, too, had its best moments mid-movement, the music’s driving force giving an extra vertiginous quality to the “giant’s footfalls” and their hair-raising harmonic lurches.

The middle movements seemed to me far less happy with so much detailing being made to rush by at speed – the Allegretto scherzando movement lost some of its droll contrasts between delicacy and girth, while the canonic passages between winds and strings had little chance to properly register at such a tempo. Similarly, the Tempo di Menuetto sounded too businesslike and regimented here, as if all the dancers had personal trainers as their partners, keeping things up to speed. And the delicious triplet accompaniments for the horns and winds in the Trio went almost for nothing for me, despite the wonderfully alert playing.

One person’s meat, they say – but even so, a thing of beauty is surely to be savoured and not merely efficiently despatched. There were enough good things about the symphony’s performance here to divert the harshest critic, if only momentarily – but I felt that, if more time had been given for notes, phrases and paragraphs to properly “own” and relish their allotted spaces, a good performance of the work would have become a great one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Il Corsaro – a New Zealand premiere, but not the Australasian one

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

A post-script to the New Zealand School of Music’s production of Verdi’s Il Corsaro
In reference to the reviews published in this website on 26 July.

In the review I sent to Opera magazine (London) of the New Zealand School of Music’s production of Il Corsaro in July, I wrote not only that was it the New Zealand premiere but surmised that it was probably the Australian premiere too.

Browsing for something else I have come across a listing of earlier performances of Il Corsaro in Australia, by the small Melbourne City Opera – in November 2006. It took place in the Melba Hall of Melbourne University. The conductor was Erich Fackert; Joseph Talia was named director, though that did not mean ‘stage director’, as a review called it a concert performance. Talia is the general manager and artistic director of the company.

Wellington may well feel aggrieved at the way the so-called merger between its opera company, Wellington City Opera and the company that had been called Auckland Opera has turned out. Melbourne has long felt the same about the shared access it has to the Sydney-based Opera Australia. Melbourne sees only about half the number of performances that are presented in Sydney.

Things were different up to 1996 which was the year the professional, enterprising Victoria State Opera was driven to an accommodation with Opera Australia, the result, it has to be admitted, of extravagance and mismanagement on the part of the Melbourne company. The merger was supposed to entail some improvement in the attention paid to Melbourne by Opera Australia, but things have not really worked out like that.

A year later, 1997, Melbourne City Opera was founded, successor to the semi-professional Globe Opera which had been a highly successful company since 1978. The intention was to supplement what the Sydney-based company would deliver in Melbourne, and the company has staged two or three operas a year since then, including the occasional rarity like Verdi’s Ernani and Il Corsaro.

Then in 2003, a break-away company was formed, the result, evidently, of some kind of dispute. The name alone, Melbourne Opera, was an irritant to the older company.

However, both companies have successfully tilled their own fields and their activities can be seen through the Internet.

Other opera companies have sprung up too: Lyric Opera of Melbourne which has mounted lighter opera of an enterprising kind: Spanish zarzuela, Offenbach’s La belle Hélène, Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti.
Scheduled in September is Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride.

In the meantime, another Melbourne opera company with more serious intent was set up, in 2007: Victorian Opera which gets State government support; its artistic director is Richard Mills who recently made a rather spectacular exit from the musical direction of the Melbourne Ring cycle.

The company avoids the familiar, popular repertoire but aims to attract new audiences with pieces
such as Nixon in China, Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, Piazzolla’s Maria de Buenos Aires, a tango opera. In an attempt to engage young audiences there’s Norman Lindsay’s tale The Magic Pudding – the opera written and composed by Calvin Bowman and Anna Goldsworthy, and Xavier
Montsalvatge’s Puss in Boots.

Melbourne is also home to Chamber Made Opera now in its 25th year. It’s run by Artistic Director David Young, about to step aside for Tim Stitz, It claims to be Australia’s most radical and experimental opera company. A look at its repertoire vividly supports that. Many new Australian operas plus significant contemporary works from abroad, such as Turnage’s Greek, Teorema by Battistelli, Philip Glass’s The Fall of the House of Usher.

In 2003 I had visited Melbourne and caught performances by both Melbourne City Opera (Il tabarro and Pagliacci)  and Melbourne Opera (The Magic Flute). I remember talking to both Talia (of the former) and whoever was the manager of Melbourne Opera and was surprised to find the level of animosity between the two, who had earlier worked together in one company.

The company website had a short review of its performance of Il Corsaro by a regular Melbourne critic, Clive O’Connell, which referred to it as a concert performance:

“From all accounts the recently quiescent Melbourne City Opera administration has finally decided to leave the usual fields that it tills of well-known if not mainstream opera.

“This concert performance of a rarely heard Verdi work served the excellent purpose of filling out part of those large gaps in one’s live performance experiences and also helped to lay to rest certain legends about Il Corsaro that have acquired the status of received truth simply because any opposing arguments could not be voiced with assurance.

“Not surprisingly, these three performances from MCO were the Australian premieres.

“Having little to do but stand and sing their contributions from behind the orchestra, the MCO chorus made a sterling impact; both the pirate men and the odalisques…

“Similarly Erich Fackert’s orchestra gave a brisk reading of the score, staying on the ball. The concentrated body of violins worked with a will in the opera’s demandingly active pages, particularly the storm music that accompanies Gulnara’s murder of the Pasha which was performed with Rossinian brio.”

— CLIVE O’CONNELL

(it appeared in the now defunct Opera-Opera monthly (previously called Opera Australia till the company changed its name to that, putting the magazine’s nose seriously out of joint); it had, till about 2007, covered the Australian opera field admirably, and even took some reviews from me in its later years).

 

Diverting variety in sparkling arrangements for reed quintet, Category Five

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Category Five – Chamber Music Hutt Valley

Wind ensemble: (Peter Dykes – oboe and cor anglais, Moira Hurst – clarinet, Mark Cookson – clarinet and bass clarinet, Oscar Lavën – bassoon, Simon Brew – alto and soprano saxophone)

Tchaikovsky: Overture to The Nutcracker; Mozart: Quintet in C minor, K 406 (adaptation of the adaptation of the Serenade, K 388); Ruud Roelofsen: Tides – a postcard from Zeeland; Rameau: La poule; Bach: ‘Jesu joy of man’s desiring’ (arr. Bryan Crump), from Cantata, BWV 147; Gershwin: Three Preludes; Byrd: Fantasia à 5 – The leaves bee greene; Debussy (Children’s Corner Suite)

The Little Theatre, Lower Hutt

Sunday 1 September, 3:30 pm

The first thing that struck me as I sat down at this concert was the good sized audience: more, I think, than most of the evening concerts that I’ve attended in Lower Hutt recently. I guess the committee will be wondering about the wisdom of shifting their concert times, though that could lead to the risk of clashes with the increasing number of other concerts that are attaching themselves to Sunday afternoons. On this particular Sunday there were at least three concerts of classical music.

We heard this excellent ensemble after a couple of their concerts for Chamber Music New Zealand: so far, Te Awamutu and Whanganui with seven more stops around the North Island, and Blenheim and Motueka.

Eight distinct items are a lot; so many shortish pieces might have risked an impression of scrappiness but that was not at all the case for there was a substantial piece in each half, around which the smaller items offered interesting variety.

What is often called the miniature overture to Tchaikovsky’s ballet, The Nutcracker, is no more slight than many an opera or ballet prelude and the important wind parts in the original meant that there seemed little change to the sound, even given the presence of the more foreign alto saxophone in the mix. What the arrangement did for me was draw attention to the inner parts of the score which I had not been particularly aware of before, and the whole made a delightful start to the concert.

The major work in the programme was the piece that Mozart first wrote as a Serenade for wind octet,
carrying the Köchel number 388. It’s one of Mozart’s three serenades that comprise the greatest and most beautiful works in the entire repertoire for extended wind ensemble. When in 1788 Mozart needed a string quintet he arranged the piece which was, conveniently, in four movements, to fill that role, now given the catalogue number 406. This combination, particularly the strange timbre of Oscar Lavën’s bassoon and Simon Brew’s saxophone, gave rise to an odd husky throatiness in the opening phrases; though my ears soon became acclimatised.  Though it could be argued that the original scoring for eight wind instruments, pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons and horns, produces a sound that Mozart has made his own and therefore carries an authentic feeling of inevitability, that was slightly missing from this reduction, and the presence of the saxophone, the sophisticated shape of this piece and its rich invention overcame any pedantic attitudes that might fleetingly have arisen.

A relationship with a young Dutch composer, Ruud Roelofsen, produced a piece, Tides, written for this group, linking the province of Zeeland with this country. There were maritime hints: the sounds bassoon and bass clarinet, from Mark Cookson, used atmospherically to suggest water undulating around wharf piles and lapping the hulls of ships; of ships’ horns; slithering effects, with microtones on the saxophone. An attractive, evocative piece well suited to a wintery harbour seascape.

The familiar La Poule is found in Rameau’s Suite in G minor, one of the two suites comprising the Nouvelles suites de pièces de clavecin published in 1728.  Given that a group of wind instruments can never replicate the staccato brilliance of a piano, let alone the pecking sound that the harpsichord could imitate even better, the oboe-led performance created an effect that was bright and comical.

The second half began with an arrangement by one Bryan Crump of the chorale known in English as ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’ (Jesus bleibet meine Freude), from the Cantata ‘Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben’, BWV 147. It’s one of those pieces that survive almost any transcription; Peter Dykes’s oboe again led the way with a rapid accompanying motif, and although he remarked that the clarinet would be playing the part of the singers, it was his oboe that rather dominated the performance which was, nevertheless, most affecting.

Gershwin’s Three Preludes were written for the piano but his jazz-steeped spirit proved a real gift for Simon Brew’s alto saxophone, though the pieces lay no less well with the oboe, the bass clarinet or the bassoon, which provided quirky underpinning in the third Prelude.

William Byrd’s Fantasia, ‘The Leaves bee Greene’ was the reason for the presence by Brew’s chair
of the soprano saxophone, and for the cor anglais that Dykes had been nursing. They contrived to bring a thoroughly anchronistic yet delightful quality to the performance.

It proved an unlikely though musically apt prelude to Debussy’s Children’s Corner. This was the counterbalancing major work, against the Mozart in the first half, and its piquant, witty, charming variety was splendidly captured in this very effective arrangement of the piano original. There were aural surprises at every turn, and the turns in the course of the six movements were many. In the sly allusion to Clementi’s studies, the bane of every young pianist’s life, the liquid notes of Moira Hurst’s clarinet climbed from the depths to take on the treble lines of the alto sax and oboe. The Doll’s Serenade was lit by bell-like tones from sax, bassoon and bass clarinet. And this colourful ensemble treated the ever-popular Golliwog’s Cake Walk with great success in the very different sound world of reed instruments and, particularly, the saxophone.

In response to the audience’s delighted applause, they played a very unfamiliar piece by Duke Ellington, after some short remarks from Moira Hurst acknowledging the critical role of Chamber Music New Zealand in organising and supporting their tour, and supporting so much musical performance generally, throughout New Zealand.

 

Stroma – the Elemental and the Fabulous

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Stroma New Music Ensemble presents:
GODDESS AND STORYTELLER

Music by IANNIS XENAKIS, GAO PING, and DOROTHY KER

Nicholas Isherwood (bass baritone)
Thomas Guldborg (percussion)
Hamish McKeich (conductor)
Stroma New Music Ensemble

Hunter Council Chamber,
Victoria University of Wellington

Sunday 1st September 2013

Well, we can’t say we weren’t warned (those of us who read the program note before the concert, that is….)….short of resorting to an official rubber-stamped, or publicly-broadcast Government Health Warning, the accompanying note did made it quite clear regarding the salient characteristics of the two items written by Greek-born, French-naturalised composer Iannis Xenakis which framed this extraordinary Stroma concert: “….these works are unprecedented in their raw power and violence”.

Both pieces were late additions by the composer to an opera inspired by the classical Greek story known as The Oresteia (a work by Aeschylus, about Orestes, the son of Clytemnestera and Agamemnon, and the series of tragic events involving these characters). The first of these additional pieces was called Kassandra, and featured a series of dialogues between the Prophetess of the same name who had forseen these tragedies, and a chorus. The second, titled La Déesse Athena (The Goddess Athena) took the form of an accompanied monologue of declamation, the text a series of directives by the Goddess to the people of Athens to establish courts of law.

Despite each piece having a “stand-and-deliver” appearance on the part of the musicians that one might associate more with the concert platform than the stage, both made the kind of visceral impact one would expect from raw, graphic theatrical depictions of brutal violence and conflict. The theatricality of each piece was underscored by the remarkable vocal virtuosity of American bass-baritone Nicholas Isherwood, required to sing throughout both works alternating (sometimes rapidly) between baritonal and falsetto pitches. It was, one might say, a vocal tour de force.

In the first piece, the two differently-pitched voices represented both Kassandra, the Prophetess, and her exchanges with the chorus of elders. The singer’s voice was amplified (in both pieces), which for me contributed to the immediate “all-pervasiveness” of the sounds –  in Kassandra,  biting, dramatic exchanges between the prophetess and the chorus. Solo percussionist (Thomas Guldborg) activated both drums and wood-blocks, advancing both the declamatory style of the exchanges and remorselessly driving the trajectories of the narrative forward as the prophetess graphically described how Agamemnon would be murdered by his wife and her lover. As well, the singer occasionally activated a kind of psaltery, the sounds imitating an ancient Greek lyre (actually, the instrument was described as an Indian siter).

Just as engaging/harrowing was the second of Xenaxis’s pieces, La Déesse Athena, which concluded the concert – if anything, it was even more blistering an experience than was Kassandra, with the resources of a chamber ensemble put to immediate and confrontational effect. Everything was shrill and hard-edged, with the singer frequently changing from falsetto to baritonal pitch and back again, underlining Athena’s dualistic, male/female nature, and emphasising the implacable, all-encompassing nature of the directives.

From the stark, harrowing pterodactyl-imagined cries of the opening winds, through to the piece’s end, the intensities never really let up, the exchanges between the singer’s dual-voiced utterances and the raw insistence of the ensemble groups expressing sounds of the most elemental and uncompromising kind. Not for nothing was Xenakis quoted by the programme notes as saying that he felt he was born too late, and had nothing to do in the twentieth century – these sounds seemed at once ancient and anarchic, a kind of screaming and moaning from the underbelly of human existence. The archaic Greek texts of both pieces “placed” to an extent the composer’s creative focus, but the classical or pre-classical “statues” referred to in the excellent notes, and here given voice seemed to me, to “speak, sing and scream” to all ages.

The only thing that perhaps could have further advanced these sensational, no-holds-barred performances was to have performed them in a properly theatrical setting. As it was, the presentations were as confrontational and uncompromising as I think they could have been in normal concert surroundings – and, in a sense, the “neutrality” of the concert situation enabled we listeners to focus purely and directly upon the music, to memorable effect.

Thankfully, both Gao Ping’s and Dorothy Ker’s pieces inhabited somewhat different, less harrowing realms, although each had its own distinctive way with sonority and with its organisation of material. I thought Gao Ping’s work was the more overtly discursive and exploratory, as befitted the composer’s title for the piece – Shuo Shu Ren – The Storyteller. Naturally enough, as well as the stories themselves, the storyteller’s own personality and distinctive way of putting across his material were here presented, for our great delight.

One could extrapolate the scenario’s different elements from the sounds – the first section of the music strongly redolent of a “Once upon a time….”, with jaunty, angular winds setting the trajectories at the beginning, but giving way to a whole inventory of textural and rhythmic variations, the lines and timbres engaging us with the idea of a kind of “exposition” of characters, situations and contexts at the conclusion of the work’s first section.

Something of the composer’s idea of myth blending with reality seemed to haunt the wistful, remote opening of the second section, like impulses of a cold memory being stroked and brought back to a state of warmth. Lovely cello-playing by Rowan Prior helped give the sequence a Holst-like austerity, augmented in places with oriental-flavoured intervals and harmonies. The music then re-established its narrative flow, with many imaginative and interactive touches, incorporating both the storyteller’s entrancement and the listener’s rapture.  These interactions brought about a two-note figure of resolution, almost a shout of triumph and fulfilment, brought back by the solo ‘cello to the meditative realms .

A third section gave the wind players plenty of scope to galvanise the narrative and “flesh out” the protagonists – from birdsong beginnings, the figurations grew in animation and girth, underpinned by strings and harp.The kaleidoscopic texture-changes kept the pace keen and listener-sensibilities guessing, culminating in alarm-sounding squeals(winds), acamperings (strings) and flourishes (harp) – very exciting!

The epilogue began with dreamy responses to a perky oboe, strings and winds drifting their lines into harmonies which dovetailed into a cadential trill, then delicately sounded again, to gorgeous, somewhat disembodied effect, with notes sounding across silences and dissolving into them. We readily experienced the composer’s idea of the storyteller dispersing fragments “ephemeral as light”.

An even more interesting-looking assemblage of players trooped out for Dorothy Ker’s work (…and…11), continuing a kind of mushrooming of numbers effect with each succeeding item. Where Gao Ping’s descriptions of his music drew largely upon his childhood memories, Ker’s less overtly personalised language in her programme-note focused intently upon metaphor and imagery describing what she called in her music a “wave-like morphology”, and the resulting “cycles of accumulation and decay” stemming from her use of the word “and” in the piece’s title.

More concentrated, terser and in a sense “tougher” a work than Gao Ping’s, (…and…11)  held our interest in a more immediate, less hypnotic sense, rather as I remembered old radio serials of decective stories used to do, with music soundtracks generating as much imagined expectation and incident as did the voices. I liked Dorothy Ker’s use of a repeated kind of what I immediately thought of as a “radio chord” whose focal-points repeatedly interacted with instrumental incident – percussion rumbles, scintillations, breath-sounds and mutterings, rock-bottom brass sonorities – sequences to create, in the composer’s words, “anticipation, followed by a release energy”.

As with Gao Ping’s work, the sonorities led the ear ever onwards through these sequences – disparate sounds included slashing pizzicati, with strings stinging the fingerboards, chords eerily made by breath-sounds in tandem with deep brass,and recitative-like solos from flute, clarinet and trombone. And the concluding episode was entrancingly done, the dance all-too-briefly suggested before leaving the outcomes to the realms of our imagination.

One was left, at the concert’s end, marvelling at the range and scope of the Stroma musicians’ skills under Hamish McKeich’s clear-sighted direction, bringing into being such a far-flung range of musical realisations with terrific aplomb and conviction.