Baroque guitarist Hopkinson Smith reveals a little known era of Spanish music in exquisite recital

Hopkinson Smith playing a five-course baroque Spanish guitar

Music by Gaspar Sanz, Francisco Guerau, Antonio de Santa Cruz

Wesley Church, Taranaki Street, Wellington

Monday 24 February, 6:30 pm

This was Hopkinson Smith’s second performance in Wellington; the previous day he had played at Pataka, the museum and cultural centre in Porirua. I gather there was a full house, and a highly appreciative one.

His rather memorable name has been around for many decades: I confess to thinking he was English (he was born in New York, was educated at Harvard, and long resident in Switzerland) and so there were several surprises and even more delights to be found at this recital by a refined, quietly witty, unpretentious American who seems to command every kind of plucked string instrument (apart from the harp): his extraordinary discography on the Internet is worth a look.

Though he opened the recital without making any comments  about the music or the instrument he was playing,  he did speak at the end of the first bracket of three pieces by Gaspar Sanz  (1640-1710, from Aragon), thus a contemporary of such composers as Lully, Buxtehude, Stradella, Charpentier and Biber.  In terms of Spanish history, the 17th century had seen the decline of its military and political greatness, having squandered the superficial wealth that gold from the Americas had brought them.  But great empires in decline often continue to produce art of lasting quality.

These ‘Three Spanish themes’ which came from a collection published in Zaragossa in 1674, Instrucción de música sobre la guitarra española, suggested a refinement of taste, somehow in contradiction to the grandeur and pomposity still exhibited by the Spanish court and the nobility. There was little chordal writing or employment of rich harmonies; rather, a hesitant quality in the Pavanas with variations, colouring by lots of runs, subtle decoration and rhythm changes. Folias displayed a sort of flamenco character, with strumming across the finger-board.

Before playing the next group, entitled ‘Europe in Miniature’, Smith spoke about his guitar, a replica of a 17th century Spanish guitar with five courses (that is, pairs of strings tuned to the same pitch or at the octave); he noted that his instrument was tuned according to Sanz’s directions, with the two lowest courses tuned an octave higher so that no bass notes could be produced. The result is ethereal, transparent and, in the artist’s own words, the instrument was ‘liberated from the bass, thus the tonality has a unique poetic aura which in its best moments creates a magic of its own’.

It is perhaps more attuned to a venue rather smaller than the church; the space somewhat reduced the feeling of the refined character of this small instrument as well as making Smith’s words hard to hear. But a smaller venue would have meant turning many away.  While the guitar might have been minimally amplified, his voice was not.

There were six pieces in the bracket ‘Europe in miniature’. The first impression was of a certain lack of variety, particularly of key, though they may have been closely related keys; until the final piece, Tarantela which shifted dramatically with much more vigorous strumming, occasional hitting the body of the guitar, creating a very lively musical fabric. The earlier pieces were drawn from various parts of Spain and Europe in general, though always infused with a character that seemed essentially Spanish; varied in rhythm, duple to triple back and forth, lively dotted rhythms that were sometimes difficult to distinguish from quaver triplets. The delicacy and refined taste of the music steadily made itself familiar to me as the concert proceeded.

The two pieces by Francisco Guerau (1649 – 1717/1722, from Majorca) came from a famous publication of 20 years later (Poema harmonico, 1694). The Passacalles del primer tono, one of some 30 passacalles in the volume, proved a longish work, perhaps the most substantial and characteristic in the programme . There was a subtlety of invention and expression, a variety of rhythms and tempi, of unobtrusive counterpoint where, in its central part, its melodic evolution became increasingly intriguing and difficult to follow and appreciate. Towards the end, a meandering, fluid character emerged, in a more marked triple time, that was neither a minuet, a sarabande nor any kind of German Ländler.  Smith’s own notes described Guerau’s music as ‘some of the most sophisticated  writing for the guitar from the entire baroque era’.  Further exploration will be rewarding.

His Canarios (from the Canary Islands), less elaborate but more sparkling and delightful, involved a lot of strumming  that suggested the flamenco style of Andalusia.
The first half ended with a Jácaras, a lively dance by Antonio de Santa Cruz who seems to be a more obscure figure, comparable with Guerau in style, and dated around 1700.

The second half was devoted to five pieces by Sanz: a flowing Preludio based around scales and arpeggios. Then a Marizápalos which emerged as the source of the slow movement from Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, a lovely set of variations.  A jig followed, and then another Passacalles, this time ‘del segundo tono’: bold strumming  and more dense clusters of chords, creating a more ‘modern’ impression than many of the other pieces.

Finally Sanz’s Canarios which proved to be the source of the last movement of Rodrigo’s Fantasia para un gentilhombre; as expected, it was delightfully lively and attractive.

The entire recital, exquisitely and brilliantly executed by Hopkinson Smith,  opened a window for me to a period of music that I was fairly unfamilar with. From a period that is contemporary with the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution in England, of Purcell and Blow, Jeremiah Clarke and Eccles; or Louis XIV’s France of Lully, Charpentier, Campra and Couperin, it evokes a society of perhaps greater refinement and sophistication, though it is pertinent to recall that this was also the era in Spain of the emergence of the baroque Zarzuela, the early form of comic opera that re-emerged strongly in the 19th century.

 

Beethoven blazes to the front of the NZSO’s ‘Five by Five’ symphony series

New Zealand International Festival

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hamish McKeich

Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture and Symphony No 5 in C minor, Op 67

Michael Fowler Centre

Monday 24 February, 12:30 pm

Day One of the five concerts devoted to the great fifth symphonies by five great composers opened with a performance that promised a splendidly successful enterprise across the span of the Festival.

It was hard to guess the kind of audience that might buy tickets for a concert at a different time and in a different format from usual. However, the auditorium was reasonably well filled with an audience that seemed younger and more varied than those at the normal subscription concerts.

I had rather expected, at a concert that no doubt anticipated a lot of listeners who were giving classical music a try, some introductory comments from conductor Hamish McKeich. It was probably good simply to let this mighty music speak for itself: even though there was no printed programme or even a list of songs, they launched straight into Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture. The overture was for a play written by a young contemporary of Goethe and Schiller: Heinrich Joseph von Collin. The subject is the same as Shakespeare’s – about a misguided, 5th century BCE Roman general ‘who lets pride and a perverted sense of honour destroy him’ (Folger Library Shakespeare series). Collin is unlikely to have known the Shakespeare play (which has never been particularly popular on the English language stage) for very few of the famous Shakespeare translations by A W Schlegel had appeared by 1804 when Collin’s play was written. I can find no evidence that Schlegel or his successors translated Coriolanus.

The opening chords are dark and compelling, suggesting Coriolanus’s power and blind determination, followed by a gentler lyrical phase that is thought to reflect his mother’s attempt to calm his bellicosity. The impact by the orchestra was of stunning force, all sections magnificently integrated in the expression of purpose, in the resonant and lively acoustic (depending where you sit – I was centre stalls about row S, this place is no less responsive than the Town Hall).

The symphony was no less majestic and powerful; right from that famous call to attention, so much detail and refinement of expression entered into the biting pulses of the first movement as well as a relentless pursuit of a challenging journey the goal of which was always clearly in view. There was space, scrupulous care with note values, suspenseful dynamics and subtle tempo changes that expressed the blazing determination that propels the music.

The orchestra handled the beautiful second movement with a sort of restrained force and no less passion, again making the perfectly familiar music sound freshly enchanting and surprising. Here it was possible to relish individual playing, always by the cellos, and strings as a whole, several times from the bassoon, while meltingly beautiful colours were spread by the horns.

The magical, secretive transition to the Scherzo always takes me by surprise and this time, as in the thrilling tempo changes through the Finale, the hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck experience was real.

We are so flooded by music of all kinds today that it is forgivable to wonder whether another hearing of a great but well-known work will yet again have the same impact as it did, first heard many decades ago.  In this case, from the first moment, under the spell of conductor McKeich, I felt that I was present at a very great performance indeed; I have rarely felt such a sense of euphoria throughout the performance and emphatically, when the last insistent chords died away. Far more than ritual applause broke out at the end.