Month: March 2014

Marc Taddei and NZSO with a splendid Sibelius Fifth

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand Festival and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marc Taddei

Sibelius: Karelia Suite, Op.11 and Symphony no.5 in E flat, Op.82

Michael Fowler Centre

Monday 10 March 2014

For those of us who have always been in love with Sibelius’s unique sound, this concert was a lunchtime treat; for those not so afflicted, it should have resulted in recruiting new disciples.  Over the last seven or eight years, the wonderful radio series Letter to Sibelius by Marshall Walker, broadcast twice in its entirety during that time and with individual programmes frequently requested on ‘Your Choice’ on RNZ Concert, has established or enhanced the interest in and appreciation of this composer for many, I am sure. 

Not least has been the effect of Symphony no.5, which was Walker’s father’s favourite.  Its enchanting melodies, innovative orchestration and lively rhythms captivated him – and us.

The concert began with the well-known Karelia Suite.  The thrilling opening to the first piece (Intermezzo) from the horns, at first open then muted, set the scene for this music of dances inspired by the Finnish region of Karelia.  We then took off on a wonderful ride through the forest, with sleigh bells and all.  After a grand climax, the sleigh receded into the distance and the horns ended their calls with a lovely cadence. 

The second movement, Ballade, opened with plaintive woodwind, followed by strings, both in the minor key, which sank to sotto voce before building up to a grand theme on the oboe, played against pizzicato cellos.  After this was played around with, the movement ended. 

The Alla Marcia last movement is probably the best known, with its jovial dance, followed by the stentorian clarion calls from the brass.  These musicians played their prominent part superbly, with plenty of support from their colleagues, notably the percussion department. 

Sibelius’s singular writing for brass was manifest again, in the horn entry, as though from afar, at the beginning of the symphony.  This was followed by woodwind calls played with nuanced gravity.  A gentle string entry was followed by brass, some of whom were not absolutely spot-on during the build-up to the spooky chromatic theme on strings.  This is followed by a glorious three-note rising theme, with brass again taking the lead. 

We need to remember that all of Sibelius’s symphonies were written early in the twentieth century, thus, to my mind, giving the lie to the statement broadcast on radio today, that Shostakovich’s fifth symphony was the greatest symphony of that century.

The slow movement opens with pizzicato cellos presaging the theme that is passed around the orchestra, flutes in particular giving it a beautiful rendering, played in thirds.  The festive nature of the music, first performed at celebrations for the composers 50th birthday, was fully incorporated in the NZSO’s playing at this concert. (However, I constantly heard in my head Marshall Walker singing the words his father had put to the theme: ‘Because I’m fifty, I know I’m fifty’!).  The brass were submissive in the background for once.

From pizzicato and staccato, the music turns to be lush on the strings, briefly, before it is back to pizzicato.  As in the Tchaikovsky symphony last week, the brass are grandly dominant through much of this symphony, and after being submissive here they soon assert themselves again.

With virtually no gap, we proceeded to the third and final movement.  It has been described as ‘some of the most stirring music even Sibelius ever wrote.  It has a monumental energy…’.  The busy strings play a fugue before the wonderful theme of rising fifths, played in thirds, on the brass.  (Did Stephen Schwartz consciously or unconsciously copy this music for his 1971 musical Godspell?).  As it changes key, it grows and swells to become an all-encompassing declaration, both joyful and uplifting.  In each movement there are hints of themes from the other movements, giving the work a unity, despite all its variety and changes. 

A counter-theme brings a more sombre tone, while the brass continues trying to promote the original one.  These two themes develop together in a paean of triumphant exaltation, leading to ecstatic separated final chords. 

The work received magnificent playing from the orchestra, especially in the final movement; the audience responded warmly.

 

Ancient Mariner Rime watered-down, though stunning to look at

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand International Festival of the Arts presents:
RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

The Tiger Lillies
Martyn Jacques: Vocals, accordion, piano, guitar
Adrian Stout: Contra bass, musical saw, theremin, vocals
Mike Pickering: Percussion
Mark Holthusen: Animation and photography

St.James Theatre, Wellington
Saturday 8th/Sunday 9th March 2014

Review by Frances Robinson and Peter Mechen

This was an evening which, on the face of things, promised much, with a presentation that, right from the outset, looked terrific, but then didn’t go on to adequately develop the musical and contextual possibilities afforded by these arresting visual images. I’d not seen but had heard about the group’s previous appearance at the New Zealand Festival in 2000 with the anarchic musical Shockheaded Peter, and so was looking forward to what I hoped would be some comparably stunning realisations of poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s visionary saga of a soul in torment.

Alas, past Mark Holthusen’s brilliant visual realisations, projected onto gauze screens arranged to give maximum spatial perspective, I thought the show was disappointingly bland as regards both music and literary response. Perhaps the advertising blurb unwittingly put its finger on the essence of the presentation, with its emphasis upon Holthusen’s “extraordinary animations” and its cliched description of the show as “the perfect fuel for those late-night club conversations” – I must have missed that part of it, for some reason.

Joking aside, there were sequences indeed well worthy of discussion, and indeed, argument, in the wake of it all – but they were invariably centred on the visual settings and those extraordinary projections of ships, sailors, oceanic swells, exotic places, and, of course, the ever-present albatross, the fulcrum around which the story of Coleridge’s poem revolves, both up to and subsequent to the bird’s untimely end, shot dead by the “Ancient Mariner”. In fact the  show might as well have been a silent-movie realisation of some of the poem’s events, the three-man ensemble’s textual and musical realisations a grossly watered-down version of the poet’s richly-conceived detailings.

So, throughout the evening the narrative action of the Ancient Mariner was broadly depicted by these amazing film projections that unfolded within the stage space. These spanned from the backdrop, right out to the front edge of the stage, with multiple layers often operating simultaneously, hanging in the void like a series of ethereal, translucent curtains. They were never for a moment static, as within them moved the characters of the tale like the Mariner himself, the albatross, the mermaid, the hapless cabin boy (I thought some of the suggested sexual abuse of the boy a bit gratuitous) and the ship’s crew. Across these ethereal vistas moved the jagged icebergs and drifting snowflakes of Antarctica, the listless clouds of the doldrums, the heaving stormy seas of the roaring forties, and the doomed vessel itself. Most dramatic of all were the wondrously fearful sea monsters, spiky, scaly, sinuous of tail, and hideous in tooth and claw.

The role of the three piece band was built around the vocals of Martyn Jacques, which sometimes narrated brief portions of the story narrative, sometimes commentary on the events.  They fell into two broad styles – heavy bass gig-style numbers thumped out from front of stage, with Jacques doing accordion and lyrics; or more soulful crooning cabaret-style numbers with Jacques doing piano and lyrics. In only a few instances was the diction clear, and only a few brief snatches of the Rime were clearly enunciated. The Coleridge poem provided no more than the skeletal framework for the vocals, while the sequence of the narrative was played out almost entirely by the projected stage effects.

I found this inbalance rather disappointing. I would have liked to hear much more of the wonderful tale, simply provided by Coleridge’s matchless word painting. Instead there were the booming lyrics from front of stage, with words barely distinguishable, or the keyboard numbers in a classic nightclub croon, complete with mangled American vowels which sat, to my ear, very oddly with the musings of a classic British tar.

In places I was reminded of another production I’d seen recently on DVD, that of Thomas Ades’s opera “The Tempest”, with Shakespeare’s texts disappointingly “flattened out” and the poetry’s extraordinary inbuilt resonances of ambience and rhythm destroyed. Here, the effect of the words was similarly diminished – only the predictable phrases from Coleridge were touched upon, and were rarely developed, apart from, in some instances, being subjected to endless repetition.

This may have been a deliberate intention, used to highlight the endless wanderings of the vessel and the hopelessness of the Mariner, or simply the group’s normal style of gig music. Having said that, some numbers married brilliantly with the visual effects, and particularly the finale. This comprised little more than the repeated phrase “Living Hell” thumped out numerous times, but the stage and band were progressively engulfed by leaping flames from every direction in a spectacular finish to the show. It brought the house down, which suggested that the audience came largely for a hugely entertaining production, which this most certainly was.

It was clearly not a “setting” of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner in the traditional sense, and this was probably never the intention of its creators. Given that, the Tiger Lillies and their inventive visual artist Mark Holthusen produced a highly creative spectacle where the visual effects were undoubtedly the standout feature.

 

Admirable, engaging performance of Noye’s Fludde in the Festival’s periphery

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand Festival and New Zealand Opera

Britten: Noye’s Fludde

Robert Tucker, Joanne Hodgson, Bryan Crump, large cast of children and young people, Wellington Youth Sinfonietta, Arohanui Strings, Hutt Recorder Group, Samuel Marsden School Handbells, all conducted by Michael Vinten and directed by Jacqueline Coats

Te Rauparaha Arena, Porirua

Saturday, 8 March 2014, 5pm

The production of Britten’s community opera, written in 1957, in a large venue with a huge cast of singers and instrumentalists was a major undertaking, and all acquitted themselves well.

Although it appeared that the majority of the audience consisted of parents and grandparents of cast members, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, and the participants had a valuable experience of
taking part in such a show, where everyone must know their part, and co-operate with many others.

This was a performance that improved as it went along; two subsequent performances in a smaller venue in Berhampore next weekend should benefit from this first outing.

Britten based the work on a 15th century mystery play (or was it 16th?  The printed programme gives both but Google sources favour the former date) from Chester. All the action taking place on a central stage with several level echoed the original’s performance on a cart, which could be moved from place to place.

Prior to the performance, the audience was  rehearsed by Michael Vinten for its part: the singing of three hymns at various points in proceedings.  It did this  extremely well, I thought.

The action began with the arrival of Noah  (Robert Tucker) and the voice of God (Bryan Crump) instructing him to build the Ark.  There was some loss of clarity  early on from both characters; all solo voices were amplified, and sometimes this obscured rather than enhancing the voices and especially the words.  Robert Tucker, as a superb and experienced  opera singer, surely did not need amplification, and I fancy he did away with  his face microphone at some point.  His  strong, accurate and characterful baritone voice and his acting were splendid.

Joanne Hodgson, as the doubting wife, acted  her part believably; her gossiping friends’ over-acting was obviously deliberate.  Their affinity with drinking  was manifest in their carrying milkshake containers – apt for a family show.

The parts for the Noah sons and their wives  were played by children, and here the projection of voices was more problematic.  All had face microphones, meaning that the sound came from the directions of the six loudspeakers situated on three sides  of the platform.  This meant loss of identification and direction, and a merged sound, instead of each being an  individual.  Much of the time it was difficult to see which one was singing at any given time, or differentiate the  voices.  They all had attractive voices and knew their parts, though consonants did not come over well.  I have to admit it would have been difficult for such young voices to project sufficiently in such a large space.  Britten wrote the work for performance in a
church or a theatre; smaller places much more resonant for the human voice.  I am sure he never envisaged such a large venue as the Arena.

Perhaps at Berhampore, in a smaller venue, they can dispense with the amplification.
Coincidentally, that very day I had been reading a piece on the subject written by my colleague Lindis Taylor, some years ago.  He pointed out that focus, balance and  quality are muddled and distorted, and can be lost by the amplification of the solo human voice.

The Gossips and the Animals were not amplified, and thus their voices sounded direct, natural, and had individual character, while blending well; of course, they had the volume of numbers on their side.

The words were in the main from the mystery play, but the animals when they first came on sang ‘Kyrie’ (Lord have mercy), and when they went off at the end, they repeated ‘Alleluia’.  The energy and rapid movement of the animals were delightful, as were the depictions of the raven and the dove.  These were danced, with avian props, by Brooke Raitt and Sophie Plimmer.  The rainbow took the form of strings of coloured pennants, which were raised at the end, and attached to the mast of the Ark, after sun, moon and stars had been paraded, and placed around the Ark.

The cardboard animal headgears, and in some cases, representations of birds and other creatures on hand-held poles, were enchanting, though not as elaborate as I have seen previously nor as shown in photographs of a performance supervised in 1958 by the composer.  Also apt and telling were the lengths of appropriately coloured cloth waved beside the ‘Ark’ to represent the rising waters.  Actions of the animals on board likewise represented the movement through water.

The orchestra of children and young people performed the lively score extremely well, especially the percussion, the Samuel Marsden handbells who played at the end, the recorder bird-songs, and the hunting horns located in the upper gallery, away from the audience and other performers.  However, this is not to demean the large force of string players, who carried most of the orchestral work most proficiently.

The performance amply demonstrated Britten’s genius in writing such a diverse work for juvenile forces.  All in all, it was an enjoyable and engaging production, despite some problems, and plaudits are due all round.

There are two further performances in Berhampore next Saturday, 15 March, at 2.30pm and 5pm, in the Wellington Chinese Sport & Cultural Centre, Mt Albert Road, Berhampore.

 

Festival’s return to lunchtime concerts, now with the NZSO and Tchaikovsky, a triumph

Posted on by Frances Robinson

New Zealand Festival 2014: Five by Five: Fifth Symphonies at Lunchtime

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 in E Minor, Opus 64

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Hamish McKeich

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 7 March, 12:30pm

This was one of five lunchtime concerts by the NZSO performing the fifth symphonies of Beethoven, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius and Shostakovich. They were promoted as “famous fifth symphonies that are known for capturing the voice of the composer” and this is certainly the case for the Tchaikovsky. Hamish McKeich guided the orchestra with consummate musicianship through a reading that explored the ultimate heights and depths of the great Russian romantic orchestral tradition, and captured the audience totally.

The work opened with exquisite control and sensitivity, as the clarinets announced the brooding principal motif, then built inexorably to the entry of the brass, unleashed in their full dramatic power. The poetic episodes that alternate with the dramatic tutti sections were beautifully shaped by McKeich, who made full use of rubato, wonderfully contrasted with tightly controlled rhythmic sections. There was an enormous dynamic range between the power of the dramatic tuttis and the delicate relief of the gentle melodic interludes.

The Andante cantabile second movement was lovingly introduced by violas and cellos, leading to the famous horn solo, played with a breath-taking poetry that seemed to speak personally to each listener. The thematic conversations that then develop through the course of the movement display Tchaikovsky’s wonderful orchestration at its best, and the various soloists and sections embraced every opportunity to explore a huge range of moods, from the most ethereal whisper to the full orchestral blast from the hand of Fate.

The third movement Valse was pure delight, its playful melodies passed from one wind soloist to another with obvious relish, superb musicianship and faultless execution. In a lineup of international class, the first bassoon undoubtedly took the prize, and the strings in turn took up the baton with balletic lightness. The fast passagework supporting the main themes was wonderfully clear and crisp, then suddenly the dark cloud of the initial sinister theme passed over, and set the scene for the
ominous Finale.

This principal theme that reappears to open the Andante Maestoso was full of rich new shaping and dynamics, leading into an Allegro Vivo that was attacked with great verve and exceptional rhythmic clarity. The movement builds and builds towards an inexorable finality, and the players’ faces showed they were clearly caught up in the joy and challenge of realising real music, superbly written, never daunted by its huge technical demands. McKeich shaped a movement that explored everything from huge rubati to total rhythmic control, according to his vision. It was a completely convincing vision that swept the audience on to the majesty of the coda and the exultant final chords.

This wrapped up the best performance of this work that I can remember hearing in a very long time. The musical quality and technical command of the NZSO means we can listen right here to a world class ensemble, and the large lunch hour turnout showed that even a bright sunny day could not keep the listeners away. Why are such midday events so rarely offered by the orchestral management, when there is an obvious demand for them? And why is a conductor as patently talented and effective as McKeich so infrequently on the podium? The pleasure written on the face of every departing player and listener said it all. Is anyone in the office listening??

Footnote
This concert was unfortunately subjected to the worst episode of house management I have ever seen at the Michael Fowler Centre. The breath-taking horn melody of the Andante cantabile was hideously marred by the admission of a parent and child who wandered back and forth deciding on where they might sit, all in plain view immediately above the orchestra. As if this distraction were not bad enough, management later decided they should be re-seated and chose, not a space between movements, but another exquisite moment in the music making to muscle in and shift them. I can’t find a black enough pen to mark this incompetence.

 

 

Bach Collegium Japan leaves audience wanting much more after Bach Lutheran masses

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Bach Collegium Japan, soloists from the choir, directed by Masaaki Suzuki

Johann Sebastian Bach:
Sinfonia from Cantata Am abend aber desselbigen Sabbats BWV 42
Lutheran Mass in A, BWV 234
Lutheran Mass in G minor, BWV 235

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday 6 March 2014, 7.30pm

The magical performance by the Bach Collegium Japan under its inspiring Director, Masaaki Suzuki, left one wanting more.  Indeed, the Festival programme led us to believe we would get more, listing the duration as “2hrs 20mins (no interval)” despite an Interval being listed just above that.  However, it was not to be.  The concert lasted one hour and 40 minutes, including an interval.

Compared with the previous evening’s St. John Passion, this was unfamiliar music.  An extraordinary fact about the Lutheran Masses is that most of the music was adapted from the composer’s cantata movements, where the words would have been in German.  To reconstruct them with words with different syllables and emphases must have been quite a task.

Before the choral works, we were treated to the Sinfonia from the Cantata BWV 42.  This was lively, cheerful music, made more so by the sound of the period instruments (and bows) employed: initially, strings and chamber organ, later joined by oboes and a bassoon.  There were no flutes in this piece.  After it, conductor Suzuki invited applause especially for the wonderful woodwind playing.

Suzuki told us in his lunchtime talk on Wednesday that original instruments restrict the player to the appropriate style for the music of their period.  He suggested that the beauty of the movements selected by Bach was probably the reason for their reuse in the Lutheran Masses.

All nineteenth and twentieth century composers were influenced by Bach, he said.  In Suzuki’s eyes, Bach’s compositions were a work of God.  He found Bach his home, whereas conducting Stravinsky and Mahler (as he does) were like going on a picnic.

The choir entered; only 18 singers, comprising four sopranos, two female altos and two counter-tenors, five tenors and five basses.  For the Lutheran Mass BWV 234, there were no oboes, but two transverse wooden flutes, played standing.

With the opening Kyrie, one was immediately struck by the choir’s clarity, attack, and distinct consonants.  The following Gloria was a delightfully bright movement, the tenor solo at ‘Adoramus te, glorificamus te’ featuring a gorgeous tenor solo from Gerd Türk, in which even tone throughout the range was notable.

The four soloists were all non-Japanese: the soprano was Joanne Lunn (English), the counter-tenor, Clint van der Linde (South African), tenor Gerd Türk (German), and bass Peter Koolj, (Dutch).

A bass aria followed: ‘Domine Deus, Rex cœlestis’.  The bass’s voice had great richness, yet everything was enunciated and delivered clearly.  The accompanying violin solo from orchestra leader Ryo Terekado was beautifully phrased, and delivered with warm tone, yet the playing was incisive.

It was next the soprano’s turn, with the two flutes, in ‘Qui tollis peccata mundi’.  Here was more incisive performance, yet Joanne Lunn made the performance dramatic, including not being able to resist some hand gestures.  The singer used little vibrato, but employed ornaments, which reminds me of a lovely story told by Maasaki Suzuki at his lunchtime talk.  He said that when he went to Belgium to study organ, after first learning the instrument in Japan, he began with the famous Ton Koopman.
Koopman encouraged his pupils to create ornaments in profusion, in baroque music.  Following study with him, Suzuki had lessons from another well-known Dutch organist, Piet Kee.  The latter decried all the ornaments, and told Suzuki to get rid of them!

The flutes were quite delicious in the ‘Qui tollis’, and a large section of the orchestration was for them, with violas and second violins.  The effect, and the playing, was of sublime loveliness.

Joyous, reassuring music followed in the counter-tenor’s solo ‘Quoniam tu solus sanctus’.  Graceful long lines and superb quiet singing made this movement perhaps the most beautiful of all.

It was followed by the chorus singing the final movement ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’.  Here, the flutes did not sound out very well in the Michael Fowler Centre acoustic when all the choir and orchestra were holding forth – but when you could hear them, they were exquisite.

We were in for an unprogrammed treat after the Interval: a movement from a Bach cantata (sung in German), for counter-tenor, with two violins, cello, and chamber organ (played by the maestro himself, whereas in the other works it was played by Masato Suzuki – the maestro’s son?).  The spare sound, in contrast to what we had heard before, was delightful – enhanced by the gut strings (though the difference these make is less noticeable from the cellos).

The singer’s expressive voice, varied dynamics, and greater level of communication with the audience than that of some of the other soloists, made for a fine performance, much appreciated by the large (but not full) audience.

The choir and remaining orchestra came on for the Lutheran Mass in G minor. The Lutheran Masses set only the Kyrie and Gloria, not the full Mass, but the sections of the Gloria set differed between the two Masses. The opening Kyrie of this second one featured the oboes again.  Their sound had bite, yet was mellifluous.  The flowing, interweaving lines were wonderful to hear.

The Gloria chorus was marked by quite detached notes, unlike the Gloria in the previous Mass.  Throughout both works, the pronunciation of words by the choir was uniform and precise, with excellent Latin syllables – no ‘tay’ for ‘te’ or ‘dayo’ for ‘Deo’.  The choir delivered a strong tenor line on the words ‘Laudamus te, benedicimus te’.

The bass aria ‘Gratias agimus’ (the latter pronounced with a hard g) accompanied by violins and a continuo consisting of organ, two cellos, bassoon and double bass, was outstanding, and was followed by the counter-tenor singing ‘Domine fili unigenite Jesu Christe’.  This was very florid setting, with wonderful soaring notes, and somewhat pastoral in its effect.

No soprano solo this time; the last solo was from the tenor, whose warm and expressive voice, clear consonants and effective suspensions were accompanied by an incisive solo oboe.

The final chorus, ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’ gave parts of the choir the chance to shine, especially a good bass lead part-way through, followed by strong sopranos.  This was a triumphant sound, with strength from both singers and instrumentalists, especially the cellos and double bass, whose parts echoed the opening of the previous mass.

The soloists’ inconspicuous moving from choir to the front of the platform and back again was a feature that meant little disruption to the music or to the visual presentation.  The choir stood throughout their performances.

The precision, accuracy, balance, tone and musicality of the ensemble made a lasting impression on everyone I spoke to; this was an outstanding contribution to the Arts Festival, and an uplifting experience for all who were present.

 

Bach’s St John Passion from Masaaki Suzuki’s Bach Collegium Japan

Posted on by Frances Robinson

New Zealand Festival 2014

Bach Collegium Japan conducted by  Masaaki Suzuki

J.S.Bach St. John Passion, BWV 245

Michael Fowler Centre

Wednesday 5 March 2014, 8 pm

Formed in 1990 to introduce Japanese audiences to great works from the Baroque period, Bach Collegium Japan has since toured the world and appeared at major festivals including the BBC Proms and Edinburgh Festival. Musical Director Masaaki Suzuki is regarded as an international authority on the work of Bach. The ensemble he chose for this performance comprised some 18 singers and 19 instrumentalists, with vocal soloists being drawn from the choristers.

The St. John Passion has two parts: Part One relates the story of Judas’ betrayal and Jesus’ arrest in the garden, then his examination before the High Priest, where the striking story of Peter’s denial and the cock’s crow is played out. Part Two moves to Jesus’ trial before Pilate, whose initial unwillingness to condemn him is eventually swayed by the clamour of the mob.

The opening chorus was delivered with great verve and power but the approach in Part One thereafter struck me as being a largely straightforward narration of events: the Evangelist’s recital of the story was by Gerd Turk who adopted a clear speech idiom in his delivery, faultlessly navigating his way round Bach’s fluctuating tonalities. The choruses and chorales observed almost jaunty tempi, and did not linger in contemplative vein, simply filling the role of observer and commentator. All were impeccably presented but left me feeling somewhat disconcerted by the dispassionate style of delivery that had been chosen. Was this the prototypical Oriental reserve?

Was it the ‘flat’ vocal acoustic that has so often beset the Fowler Centre? Or an unfavourable location for our seats (centre front stalls, about a dozen rows back)? The exceptions were the wonderfully heartfelt arias sung by alto Clint van der Linde and soprano Joanne Lunn.

From the start of Part Two, however, the accelerating sense of drama was almost palpable. The excellent soloists were critical to this, but it most obviously lay with the chorus, whose mood rapidly moved from crowd to mob. Their angry self-justification for the charges hurled at Jesus built inexorably to their baying wildly for his blood, clearly determined not to be done out of the bloodthirsty spectacle of crucifixion by any legal niceties Pilate might entertain. Now every note and phrase built the riveting drama of Western history’s most famous trial and death sentence. By contrast, when all was done, the chorales and solos became intensely reverent and contemplative, with every musician projecting a mood of deep reflection on Jesus’ sacrifice and inspiration to his followers.

There was, however, one aspect of this performance which I found very disappointing. In those arias which have instrumental obbligati, Bach has shown us a consummate marriage of his powers as both vocal and instrumental writer. The genius of, say, the double violin concerto meets the magic of the choral repertoire’s consummate composer in a way that no other has ever got within cooee of. Yet in every obbligato number last evening, the instrumental parts were emasculated almost out of recognition, sometimes being actually inaudible even in the front stalls. The pitifully apologetic viol in “It is accomplished!” had me almost weeping at the lost opportunity. These numbers are, in my view, the richest, most intricate, and intimate, conversations in the vocal repertoire, but they were sorely let down here.

Nevertheless, the consummate technical powers of the Collegium and the direction of Masaaki Suzuki ensured that this was a performance which thrilled the audience, many of whom rose to their feet at the finish. The huge turnout, for what some might label a rather cerebral event, was clear testament to the fact that listeners are thirsty for more high-quality classical music, whose presence in Festival programming has been sadly diminished in recent times.

 

Gunter Herbig and his Brazilian-German guitar at St Andrew’s lunchtime recital

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts

Gunter Herbig – guitar

Music by Dilermando Reis, J S Bach and Villa-Lobos

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 5 March, 12:15 pm

Gunther Herbig has been a distinguished figure in Wellington music for some years and was for a time head of classical guitar at the New Zealand School of Music; he remains in Wellington though now teaching at Auckland University. His background – born in Brazil and growing up in Portugal and Germany – gives him a unique background as a musician and guitarist, obviously in both linguistic and musical terms.

His first two pieces were by Brazilian composer, Dilermando Reis (1916-1977), whose music was unashamedly sentimental and romantic. It was clear from the start that Herbig felt a strong affinity with him, as he created the feeling that he was playing spontaneously, embraced by the unaffected character of the music. Perhaps not strong in a memorable sense, Ternura and Se ela perguntar suggested to me the retiring sadness of the Portuguese popular fado song tradition, which I happen to be addicted to. One of the characteristics was a beguiling tendency to pause, to hesitate in mid-phrase, in the fashion of 19th century salon music that filled the piano albums found in our grand-parents’ piano stools.

And he finished the recital with the more famous Brazilian, Villa-Lobos: three pieces called ‘chôro’ (I noted his pronunciation: ‘sho’ru’) which, he explained, were not really in that genre. These were pieces from his Suíte popular brasileira written in 1928, based, as their names indicated, on European dances: Mazurka chôro, Schottish chôro and Valsa chôro. The ‘real’ chôros were about 15 in number, written through the 1920s for orchestra or a great variety of instruments.

The mazurka and the waltz bore some signs of their rhythmic inspiration, though I wondered where the composer had picked up his impressions of the schottish. They all offered Herbig the chance to reveal the range of subtle articulation available on the guitar, through plucking with the finger nails or the finger-tips, plucking close to the bridge or over the finger-board, forming the same notes with the left hand high on the fingerboard or near the nut. They were most charming if light-weight pieces by this prolific composer.

(It’s always interesting to be side-tracked when exploring Internet resources. I had not been aware that Villa-Lobos had damaged his reputation in the late 30s by becoming an acolyte of President Getulio Vargas in his third, dictatorial period from 1937 to 1945, writing ‘patriotic’ music after the pattern of other dictators of that time).

The serious, classical piece in the programme was Bach’s first Lute Suite, BWV 996. As with the previous pieces, Herbig spoke about its provenance, though without using the microphone and he was hard to hear, even eight or so rows back. Bach was apparently inspired to write these, though not a lutenist himself, by the great lute composer and player Sylvius Leopold Weiss, who was almost exactly Bach’s contemporary. It sounded fine on the guitar for Herbig had the taste and skill to adorn the music with enlivening variety, in dynamics and rubato, in articulation and pacing, capturing the charming meandering character of the Präludium, lending interest to the Allemande by seeming to disguise its rhythm and giving the Courante a very deliberate pace so that it seemed to be jogging rather than running; it allowed the sophisticated melodic line to be properly enjoyed. Herbig’s skill in employing all the refined techniques at his command, as well as all sorts of appropriate ornaments, was best displayed in leisurely paced Sarabande; the two last movements, Bourrée and Gigue, captured a lively spirit in dancing rhythms. Was Bach (or Herbig) teasing us by bringing his gigue to what seemed a somewhat unannounced end?

In all, music that was very skilled, balanced and highly suitable for the digestion of empadas or bratwurst.

 

 

 

Schubert with the NZSO – head held high in symphonic company

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NZSO – “Five-by-Five” Lunchtime Concert Series

New Zealand International Festival of the Arts

SCHUBERT – Symphony No.5 / Rosamunde Overture D.664

Marc Taddei (conductor) / New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Monday 3rd March

Had Marc Taddei and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra given us only the symphony in this, the second of the orchestra’s innovative “Five-by-Five” lunchtime concerts, it would have been a brief, if still delightful affair – but help was forthcoming, courtesy of the same composer’s equally winning Overture to “Rosamunde”, music whose stern, dramatic opening served to quickly focus our thoughts on the musical matters in hand. It all suited the occasion to perfection, as, once the dark, arresting introduction had unequivocally captured our attention, the grace, charm and high-spirits of the following allegro vivace put us all in the best of possible moods for the symphony to follow.

Marc Taddei had briefly talked on the radio a few days previously about Schubert, mentioning his kinship with Mozart as regards the symphony’s construction, but emphasizing the later composer’s proximity to the dawn of romanticism in the arts. For this reason he indicated that “a more relaxed approach” to the score would be his ideal in realizing the music with his players. We were able to register this in the overture – after the black-browed and dramatic introduction had spent its force, the music’s essential lyricism, geniality and good humour readily came to the fore under Taddei’s direction. I thought the wind-playing was particularly fine, the sounds both characterfully pointed and phrased with plenty of winning grace.

So, we were well-primed for the symphony, a work which I hadn’t heard in concert for some years – in fact, so chequered has been my concert-going habit over the duration, my last actual memory of hearing the piece live was in the 1970s in Palmerston North, at a concert given by the Alex Lindsay Orchestra with conductor John Hopkins. Though I have very little recall of the sounds from that occasion I would imagine they would have been quite different in character to what we heard in the Michael Fowler Centre. Of course, much of the difference would stem from my recollection of the Lindsay Orchestra having a somewhat smaller number of players than did the NZSO.

Not that Marc Taddei went for a consistently full-throated approach to the music – in fact I was impressed by his readiness to “yield” to the work’s more poetic and lyrical aspects, and his disinclination to “drive home” the more fully-orchestrated sequences to maximum possible effect. Because, compared with those forces I saw play the work many years ago in Palmerston North this was certainly a sizable orchestra – “A little TOO big,” observed a friend (whose judgement I respect) afterwards. “Yes”, I countered, relishing discussions such as these, “but surely that’s less important than having the players, no matter how many there are, focus and fine down their tones and get the music’s actual “voice” across?”.

That’s what I felt was happening, throughout the first movement – an approach to the playing, via the players’ attack and their phrasing, that knew what it was about, that concentrated upon singing lines and detailed phrasing more than generalized force and mechanical passagework. With each player focused on those priorities it didn’t really matter as to the numbers – the focus and concentration was all. I did like hearing the exposition repeat;  and only with the recapitulation did I feel the need for a bit more affectionate caressing of the lines, a kind of bringing of past experience to bear on the notes and phrases. But I was still impressed by Taddei’s way with the music, getting the musicians to sing their tones naturally, and without forcing or beefing-up of emphasis at the paragraph-ends.

The slow movement was also very fine, enlivened by a slightly quicker, more urgent and “troubled” manner in the minor-key sections – it gave the whole a kind of shape, a real and telling contrast of character, an approach which also worked well with the heartfelt, sighing coda. Of course, the reverse was the case with the scherzo – at the outset it was all muscle and bucolic energy, even if the unison opening wasn’t quite together first time up.  Then, with the trio, the whole mood changed, strings aglow, winds with smiles on their faces, and the horns gloriously mellow.

A further contrast came with the finale’s opening, nimble and urgent, with deft interchanges between strings and winds – and what a contrast with the plunge into the minor-key mode! – real “sturm-und-drang” stuff! The repeat gave us the chance to hear it all again, including the beautifully-held moment of breathless silence before the second subject entered, with its Mozartean grace and sense of well-being. With splendid attack and poise, the triplet rhythms danced the music to a joyous conclusion, one greeted with plenty of enthusiastic applause from a well-satisfied audience.

 

Festival opera Ainadamar semi-staged but powerful, strongly cast and magnificently performed

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Ainadamar, opera by Osvaldo Golijov

Production, semi-staged, by the New Zealand Festival with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya, and directed by Sara Brodie

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Publication here of this review of the performance on 2 March was delayed till 18 March because it is in some part based on my review in the New Zealand Listener; it is unethical to publish elsewhere until the issue of the Listener has gone ‘off sale’, at the end of last weekend.

I made use of the delay to add some material from reviews of earlier productions of Ainadamar. In the light of conflicting attitudes towards the work, I find it illuminating to read a range of opinions from other parts of the world.

Sunday 2 March 2014

In spite of the many attempts by composers of the present day to use contemporary issues and events as subjects for opera, few have survived more than an opening season of performances.  For by determining to display a command of the concepts and fashions that musical academia has developed and made de rigueur for a composer who wants to be taken seriously by his peers,  most have failed to engage more than small dutiful audiences dedicated to serious academic music.

Ainadamar, however, premiered in 2003 at the Tanglewood Festival in Massachusetts (where it won “a shouting, stomping ovation”), and has been rapturously received, at least by audiences, in a dozen places. Certain critics have been less open-hearted.

The work deals with poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca’s assassination by fascists in 1936, though much of the narrative is through a powerful portrayal by actress Margarita Xirgu, who was devoted to Lorca and was the famous creator of the role of Mariana Pineda in Lorca’s play of the same name.  Pineda was an early 19th century liberal who was garrotted by the monarchy (a particularly kindly execution technique practised by the Spanish); she is presented as presaging Lorca’s own fate.

The text is by David Henry Hwang, translated into Spanish by the composer (with good English surtitles).  Using some projected images from overseas productions, this most successful semi-production is a great credit to Sara Brodie; there were several experienced international singers and we were lucky to have Ainadamar veteran Miguel Harth-Bedoya conducting. The former musical director of the Auckland Philharmonia has conducted several incarnations of the work in North America (including the debut of the opera’s revised form in Santa Fe in 2005), produced an authentic, sometimes hair-raising performance. Percussion and guitars made prominent and splendidly vivid contributions.

A reduced NZSO was on stage, and the singers, including a strong, authentically Spanish-sounding chorus (director, Michael Vinten) occupied the space in front of the orchestra and an elevated platform behind it.

Ainadamar might be one of a rare number of contemporary operas to have touched a wider public. However, several critics have attacked it for an alleged lack of coherent story and a literary context for García Lorca, that it’s ‘not really an opera’. And some reviews have been pleased to refer to such phenomena as ‘multi-ethnic hodgepodges’, ‘Arabic music’, ‘Ladino (Sephardic-Jewish)’, ‘flamenco’, ‘indigenous folk’, with a ‘trivial’ libretto, all to suggest an incoherent, tasteless mess.

Most such views seem driven by pre-conceived, negative attitudes, unschooled aesthetic sensibilities, and artistic and intellectual pretension.

One must look at what the creators made, not what critics might fancy.
A sane review of the 2012 Long Beach production in the United States magazine Opera News acknowledges the almost universal praise from most critics, and certainly audiences: “The bestselling, Grammy-winning 2006 recording (DG) with Dawn Upshaw helped spread the reputation of the opera considerably; today Golijov’s taut, lush work is widely viewed as one of his bellwether achievements and one of this generation’s more significant contributions to the art form.”

I go with that.

The four main roles were taken by singers acclaimed in overseas productions.  The most impressive performances were by Kelley O’Connor as Lorca and Jessica Rivera as Margarita; Leanne Kenneally looked a little misplaced as Margarita’s student Nuria though her voice totally redeemed her. The Falangist thug, Ruís Alonso, was excellently sung by Jesus Montoya.  A minor negative in the entire context was the amplified voices, sometimes disconcertingly: with amplification, one loses a sense of the source of the sound, of who is actually singing. These were well experienced opera singers who appeared to have voices that would have projected well.

The story (yes there is one) emerges in three dreamlike ‘imagen’, or tableaux, the first and last in 1969 in Montevideo where Margarita is dying; the second Imagen is Lorca’s murder in Granada in 1936, graphic but not actually seen.

Its power lies in the vividly portrayed emotion arising from a major 20th century conflict between brutal autocracy and liberal democracy, and genuine grief for Lorca’s barbarous death.

No opera can give all the facts in a historically-based drama; we do not need them, and the engaged and curious will go and find them.

But it seemed a shame to have mounted such a fine production for just one performance, given the huge enthusiasm from the full house.

 

Other views of Ainadamar

The first production was at the Tanglewood Festival, Massachusetts, in 2003.

There were reviews of that production in Opera (London) and the New York Opera News.

George Loomis in Opera began by noting Golijov’s rocketing to fame with a St Mark Passion marking the 300th anniversary of Bach’s death, for Stuttgart.  But he judged that there was disappointment with Ainadamar.

He referred to eclecticism, to the dominating flamenco rhythms, incessant repetition of vocal lines that “retraced the same  stepwise successions of intervals”.  He claimed that it “tested the audience’s knowledge of Lorca with cumbersome parallels between his life and the heroine of his play Mariana Pineda (also a revolutionary martyr), while the playwright himself was barely fleshed out as a character”. He thought Lorca himself was “oddly cast as a mezzo-soprano, Kelley O’Connor [whom we also saw in Wellington]”.

However, the critic for Opera News (Willard Spiegelman) seemed to be reporting on a different performance.

He heard the audience exploding after “Golijov’s more [than for the first work in the evening’s double bill] accessible, tuneful, lush and dramatically nuanced Ainadamar”.

He wrote that it possessed “both symmetry and depth”; and he sees Margarita Xirgu as the key figure, saying that “she has triumphantly given voice to both Lorca and Mariana Pineda. In a secular rather than a religious way, Ainadamar traces a path to transcendence.”

After describing the instrumentation, Spiegelman  concludes: “Golijov’s expressive score was, throughout, rich and expansive, but perhaps too often predictably beautiful”. Furthermore, he admired the work of conductor Robert Spano, who brought out “its flamenco and folk tonalities and coaxed his superb, youthful musicians into building the music to heights and depths of romantic passion.”

Dawn Upshaw sang the older Margarita at Tanglewood, as she did for the revised version premiered at Santa Fe and in the 2006 DG recording. “She made her character reflective and passionate, wistful, uncertain and then  confident, by turns.”  He found Kelley O’Connor wonderful as Lorca.

Santa Fe: the Peter Sellars revision

It was also Loomis who reviewed the revised version at Santa Fe in 2005 for Opera. His severity had somewhat abated.  The opera had been worked over by Golijov and director Peter Sellars and one clear improvement was to have Margarita, who, in 2003, had been shared between Amanda Forsythe and Dawn Upshaw, now sung entirely by Upshaw, while some of the role of the young Margarita was assumed by her student, Nuria [sung by Jessica Rivera who, in Wellington, truly moved from being Margarita’s student to being the mentor herself].

Loomis still implies disapproval of the pervading flamenco idiom, but he liked the trouser role given to Lorca, “which allows for mellifluous trios in the tradition of Der Rosenkavalier”.

And he admired the women’s chorus as well as the conducting of Miguel Harth-Bedoya (the conductor in Wellington as well as for several other productions).

But Simon Williams was distinctly more generous in his Opera News review.

“The highlight of the festival was the revised version of Ainadamar…”, he wrote, saying that Peter Sellars’ production did more than merely to recall Margarita’s “profound artistic affinity with the Spanish poet…”; “…it became a ritual that mourned not the death of an individual man but the appalling waste of youth, beauty and life that blighted the last century and now threatens our own.”

I think parts of the review are worth repeating in full.

“Golijov’s mesmerising score articulates the destruction of spontaneity and beauty with disquieting accuracy. The vital rhythms of flamenco are dismembered by the sounds of war – mean fanfares on brass, the oppressive rhythms of the march, the dismal breakdown of tonal beauty, and the incursion of spoken voices, commanding, screaming babbling in fear – which are replaced, in turn, by the piercing, elegant music of lamentation. It is music whose idiom is instantly accessible, arising from the sounds of life, centred constantly on the misery we visit on ourselves through an ineradicable urge towards violence.”

“Dawn Upshaw brought a concentrated inwardness to Margarita Xirgu, her unwaveringly clear, pure vocal line blending effortlessly with the chorus, allowing her to develop the character into a figure of heroic suffering. Golijov sees violence as inherently masculine, suffering and sympathy as feminine; hence the poet Lorca was sung by a woman, Kelley O’Connor , who aptly invested the gentle figure of the poet with a bewitching androgyny.”

Other elements:
“Jessica Rivera embodied horror at the past and a faint touch of hope for the future … the shooting of Lorca – along with a schoolteacher and a movingly inarticulate bull-fighter – by a hysterical soldier … a treacherously pious guard … terrible deeds to which our prejudices and mindless obeisance to authority can drive us.”

Productions since Santa Fe

There have been productions at the Ravinia Festival near Chicago in 2006; by Opera Boston and by Indiana University in 2007; by the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia in 2008; and Cincinnati Opera in 2009.

A CD recording that won a Grammy award was made by DG with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 2006: it featured Dawn Upshaw, Kelley O’Connor, Jessica Rivera and Jesus Montoya (Falangist officer).

Later productions have been at the Granada Festival in 2011 and that production went on to Santander and Oviedo.

Long Beach Opera, Los Angeles staged it in May 2012.

In 2012 Peter Sellars directed a production for the Teatro Real in Madrid. And in October the same year there was a production at Pittsburgh.

The Yerba Buena Centre in San Francisco staged it in February 2013

And Opera Philadelphia produced it in February 2014.

Long Beach

A review of the production by Long Beach Opera, Los Angeles, gave a very just view:

“… today Golijov’s taut, lush work is widely viewed as one of his bellwether achievements and one of this generation’s more significant contributions to the art form.

“The Long Beach Opera production … was an aesthetic and musical success, offering a strong artistic vision and sound execution throughout.  …

“David Henry Hwang’s libretto for Ainadamar is a nightmarish meditation on the death of Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca at the hands of Fascists during the Spanish Civil War, as seen through the eyes of his frequent artistic collaborator, Margarita Xirgu.

“The work’s uncanny rhythmic vitality and melodic elegance put Golijov’s strengths on full display. Drawing from Latin, Arab, Jewish and European influences, the score blends traditional structural elements with contemporary invention. The comforting familiarity of arias–chorus–dance episode is counteracted by, say, prerecorded gunshots that take the role of percussion instruments. Graceful vocal lines and brutal percussive chaos — it works.”

Philadelphia

But even as late in the day as February 2014, when Opera Philadelphia staged Aindamar, a so-called critic could write a piece that displays perversity, ill-will and an extraordinary lack of perception.

Here is the way it starts:
“Five actors shoot three characters at point-blank range on a stage. Then the executioners break into a choreographed flamenco number immediately after, firing their guns to the beat of the music.

“You might think I’m describing some sort of variation on the ‘Springtime for Hitler’ sequence in Mel Brook’s The Producers, where we are supposed to laugh at the absurdly developed (on purpose, mind you) theatrical production about the Nazi regime.

“But you’d be wrong.

“Instead, the above execution scene is from Opera Philadelphia’s staging of Golijov’s Ainadamar: Fountain of Tears, which is, unfortunately, supposed to be taken seriously.
The opera, which runs a brief 80 minutes, is underwhelming at best, and downright incoherent and disconnected at worst.

“Of particular note is the fact that the main character in the opera, famed playwright and poet Federico García Lorca, is essentially lacking context, development, and ethos. Lorca, who was a gay man, is strangely hetero-sexualized in the production, infatuated with two women (minus one reference to him being a “faggot”); very little historical framework is provided in regards to Lorca as a great literary mind. Instead, we are rushed through a series of redundant, often cryptic scenes where director Luis de Tavira’s extremely stylized hand feels forced instead of organic. Unless you come to the opera with an extremely well-read background on Lorca, his work, and the context surrounding his death, the opera makes too many leaps without what every good undergraduate learns in fiction writing 101: You sort of need a plot.”

But then a proper critic, David Patrick Stearns, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, offered a lucid and understanding review.

“Ainadamar isn’t really an opera but a whirlwind – intoxicating, exciting, and ultimately troubling – whose 90 intermissionless minutes leaves viewers wondering what hit them.

“Osvaldo Golijov’s opera was imposing enough in a Curtis production in the Kimmel Center’s smallish-scale Perelman Theater in 2008. Now it has been brought back by Opera Philadelphia in a larger, imported-from-Spain co-production that has no trouble enveloping the Academy of Music, and is easily among the most stimulating theatrical events, operatic or not, so far this season.

“This meditation on the 1936 assassination of poet/playwright Federico Garcia Lorca is recounted in flashbacks by the actress Margarita Xirgu, Lorca’s soulmate, which means Ainadamar lacks a linear plot. The absence of chronological regimentation supports the production’s multi-layered theatricality, from modern computer animation to archival film footage of 1930s Spain to choreography devised by Stella Arauzo for the revered Compania Antonio Gades dancers that goes well beyond flamenco.

“Golijov’s effortlessly ethnic score, which initially feels like a warm bath, is actually a canny piece of operatic theater with well-calculated peaks and valleys and increasingly stark contrasts: When it hits a particularly congenial moment – Margarita persuading Lorca to come on tour with her to Cuba – it won’t be long before flamenco footfalls have a duet with the gunshots that kill him.

“So effectively does the music penetrate one’s consciousness that there’s little risk of visual distraction: The music seems to colour everything around it, intensifying the whole. One could argue that Ainadamar, and this production in particular, achieves Wagner’s theory of Gesamtkunstwerk (total art) more fluidly than Wagner.”