Day: 5 April 2014

Audience gives enthusiastic reception to splendid NZSO concert

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

‘Visions of Happiness’

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Pietari Inkinen, with Mikhail Ovrutsky (violin)

Wagner: Siegfried Idyll, Op. 103
Korngold: Violin Concerto in D, Op.35
Tchaikovsky: Symphony no.4 in F minor, Op.36

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday, 5 April 2014, 7.30pm

What better composer to open the programme than Wagner, with conductor Pietari Inkinen fresh from conducting Wagner in Europe and Australia!  However, this was very different Wagner.  The Idyll was written as a birthday present for his wife, Cosima, in 1870.  (She wrote about it in her dairy, according to the printed programme!)  Not that a full symphony orchestra performed it for her to wake up to on the day; the composer wrote it for a group of 15 musicians, and gave it a full orchestration much later.

The lines were carefully delineated in this performance of the lush, romantic music.  The delicious woodwind writing was particularly notable.  All began in a calm, unhurried manner, horns and bassoons making a marvellous foundation for the strings, as did the pizzicato double basses.

Idyllic, indeed.  The exquisite first climax led to long, quiet passages before the major climax, with its lovely horn and woodwind solo melodies.  After a little more excitement the horns first and then the strings shimmered.  Stillness returned after the opening tune was reprised.   Just before the end, the horn and flute returned; all is then peace and tranquility.

This was a wonderful rendition, even if a little slow for my taste.  All the subtleties of the writing emerged, including the typically Wagnerian chromaticism, and some gorgeous suspensions.

Erich Korngold is a composer probably more associated with film music than with symphonic music, but as well as the latter, he wrote operas.  The orchestra was slightly smaller in the string sections for the concerto, but many more brass players were added, along with percussion.  This work, along with its predecessor and successor in the programme was dedicated to a woman, we were told in the excellent pre-concert talk from Roger Smith, of Radio New Zealand Concert.  The programme notes gave the titles of films in which some of the themes were used, but stated that it is not clear if they were written first for the movies or for the concerto.

The first movement (moderato nobile) began with a romantic melody from the violin, enhanced by the beautiful tone the soloist maintained throughout the concerto.  Despite the movement’s description, I found it more colourful and romantic than noble.  There were certainly times when symptoms of film music were present. An unusual feature of the entire work was the extensive use of the celeste, played by Kirsten Simpson.  I can’t think of another composition that features the little keyboard bells so much.  Famous for its use by Tchaikovsky in his Nutcracker ballet, it makes few other major appearances.

Ovrutsky has a passionate style and great technical prowess on his instrument, but musical integrity always came first.  His mastery was exhibited frequently, especially in the first movement cadenza.

The second movement (romance – andante) gave further opportunities for the celeste, and also for the harp, accompanying another romantic melody from the soloist.  This was played with plenty of nuance, fine phrasing and subtle colouring.  Korngold gave the violinist plenty of scope – rather more than he gave to the orchestra, though the latter nevertheless had many rich colours.

The Finale was marked ‘allegro assai vivace’, and fast it certainly was.  Here was a change of character, demanding furious violin-playing, and an episode where the orchestra strings played with the wood of their bows.  A magnificent theme began with the harp and lower strings only accompanying the soloist, then the violins were added; a most effective device.  Yet more prominent celeste added to what became a cheerful and bouncy movement, with a suitably climactic ending.

What is the response to my colleague’s aphorism – more corn than gold, or more gold than corn?  Equal measures, I’d say.  However, the negative element in the remark is no reflection on the evening’s superb soloist.

As an encore, Ovrutsky played with the orchestra Massenet’s justly popular ‘Méditation’ from his opera Thaïs, most sensitively and with subtle variety.

Tchaikovsky’s splendid Fourth Symphony was indeed substantially a vision of happiness, though some of it did not realise the vision. The supreme orchestrator gave the audience much joy, even if he did not always achieve it himself.  The immense
invention in this symphony is astonishing.

The absent string players were back, and the grand opening fanfare (the fate motif) sounded out.  Unfortunately the were a few false notes from the five horns (as there had been in previous items) this first time, so that it lost some of its impact. Following the fanfare (andante sostenuto) the moderato con anima was indeed just that – very energetic. Wonderful woodwind solos, especially from the clarinet, were a major feature.  You could dance a ballet to this movement.  There is no doubt that this is the composer of Swan Lake.  Conjecture: somewhere in the Russian woods, there emerge sprites looking for some fun. But they are met by witches, who chase them away, and call up thunder and lightning to scare the little ones… Fate issues its warning again, but soon everything is peaceful, because everyone has left the scene.

It was magical to hear the woodwind interjections from different sides of the platform.  It emphasised how much better it is to hear a live performance than a recording, even given the best of Dolby stereo.  The movement’s ending was thrilling and dramatic.

The andantino second movement opens with a beautiful folk melody played on the oboe, repeated by the cellos.  It is followed by a benign and soulful string melody, that nevertheless has lighter touches.  The orchestration is full of colour, not least from the bassoon, here.

The scherzo begins entirely with pizzicato, giving a thoroughly playful mood to the music. Tchaikovsky described the movement as having the effect ‘…when one has had a little wine and feels the first glow of intoxication’.  Oboes, then flutes and piccolo end the flight of fancy with one of their own.  Horns and clarinets contribute – those sprites from the first movement must be
back.  Pizzicato returns, and all works up to a jolly ending, then bang!

Straight into the allegro con fuoco Finale, that also has a Russian folk song as a main theme.  Brass and percussion have a field day, and multiple conversations run alongside the grand theme.  There is a huge build-up of excitement – then the fate theme emerges again.

Pietari Inkinen had everything (well, almost everything!) under control.  He used no huge gestures; just a slight nod to bring in each section for its entry. This was powerful music splendidly played.  There was an ecstatic response from the usually phlegmatic Wellington audience; the conductor called on individual woodwind players to stand and acknowledge the applause.

There were numbers of guest players, including Moky Gibson-Lane, here from overseas, playing sub-principal cello.  However, there were far too many empty seats for a concert of spirited, well-played music by mighty composers.

 

Bach Choir of Wellington – Faure and other delights

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Bach Choir of Wellington presents:
Music for Easter

The Bach Choir of Wellington
Douglas Mews (organ)
Stephen Rowley (conductor)

St.Peter’s on Willis, Wellington

Saturday, 5th April 2014

Despite the “music for Easter” title of the Bach Choir’s recent programme, I would imagine that most people would have been drawn to the concert by the prospect of hearing a performance in a proper church setting of Faure’s supremely beautiful and perennially fresh (as it proved here) Requiem.

Quelling an element of impatience lurking within the recesses of my being at having a “first half” to get through before the “real” business of the late afternoon, I found a pew within a reasonable proximity, and awaited the appearance of the choir, organist Douglas Mews and conductor Stephen Rowley.

By the time the concert began, St Peter’s-on-Willis had worked its usual pre-crepuscular spell on the church’s performing-space, with sunlight streaming through the large window at the back of the choir loft, to suitably beatific effect – well, anyway for we in the audience, but probably not for the choir, having to “front up” to the full-on radiance without the benefit of sunglasses!  The thought did occur to me that had the concert’s main item been Italian instead of French, the latter course could have been adopted by the singers – possibly, to somewhat startling, Mafia-like effect!

All such fancies aside, much of the ambient glow had dissipated by the time the concert’s second half had begun, though that initial impression of “Heavenly radiance” remained throughout.  Appropriately, too, because the choir’s performances of most of the items, including the Requiem, had a similar lucid and beatific quality, making for an enjoyable listening experience.

It’s a common phenomenon for performers to “settle in” to the business of establishing a relationship with both the performing space and the audience via the opening item on a program – what Michael Flanders, of “At the Drop of a Hat” fame used to call “getting the pitch of the hall” – and so it proved here, with a cautiously worthy opening performance of Orlando Gibbons’ Hosanna to the Son of David. Once the choir had negotiated that hurdle, and Stephen Rowley had welcomed us to the concert, everything, including audience responses, seemed to focus upon things more comfortably and surely.

Purcell’s Hear My Prayer, O Lord, a setting of just two lines of Psalm 102, caught in its opening tones a lovely solemn atmosphere, the choir holding its lines at a challengingly slow tempo and making a good job of things – a short, but intensely-focused experience of sound and feeling.  Darker in tone and somewhat more complex in its unfolding was Venetian-born Antonio Lott’s Crucifixus, the opening measures rising from the darkness to a starkly-lit cadence. The voices nicely conveyed surges of urgency and anguish with “‘passus” (suffered), and then tapered into long, beautifully-held lines for “et sepultus est” (and was buried).

However, the revelation (so to speak) of the first half for me was encountering the twentieth-century English composer John Sanders’ Reproaches, a work which eschewed avant-garde harmonies and drew instead on traditional modes of antiphonal settings for these texts, mixing plainsong with harmonized sequences. We heard haunting, long-breathed lines of “reproachful” utterances, varied in character and spontaneous in effect, interspersed with more assertive men-only recitatives – a marvellously theatrical, but at the same time, sublimely “spiritual” result. The final exchange was marked, at the end, by eerie modulations and a far-flung, almost cosmic effect of words sounded over endless spaces of time and distance.

It may be heretical of me to say so, but after this John Cameron’s setting of Elgar’s “Nimrod” from the latter’s orchestral Enigma Variations seemed to my ears rather cosy and sentimental – and though the choir’s sopranos made brave efforts to reach their cruelly stratospheric highest notes, the outcome in places was more uncomfortable than uplifting. Of course one perhaps ought to try these things, but I would rather have gone into the interval with the sounds of any one of the other performances of the first half in my ears. However, ’twas but a minor blip on what was a generally mellifluous soundscape.

As for the Faure Requiem, despite the performance being a “streamlined” one (no soprano or baritone, and no orchestra – which meant, alas, no horns!) the results were well-nigh enchanting throughout. Apart from having what seemed a reluctance to let his instrument resplendently roar out that wonderful horn-call in the “Sanctus”, organist Douglas Mews did the instrumental music proud, beguilingly keeping those plangent “French” textures to the fore and thrilling us in certain places with some awe-inspiring seismic pedal-points.  One soon adapted to the organ’s refracted orchestral tones, and enjoyed without reservations what the voices were doing.

Stephen Rowley’s conducting enabled the work to unfold with a kind of natural outpouring of expression, as almost nothing seemed forced or too sharply-etched – only an unexpected intensification of tempo and tension at the words “Lux aeterna luceat eis” which came to a dramatic head at “quia pius est” gave me a start for a few seconds, until I realized that what he was doing at that point was actually working. In place of each of the baritone solos, the men’s voices in the choir provided well-focused tones which kept the line steady and true; and similarly in the “Pie Jesu” the sopranos sang beautifully, in lieu of a soloist, managing the awkward moment of the melody’s reprise with ease, and allowing the final “sempiternam requiem” ample space and rapt concentration.

A mere couple of details wanted slightly firmer treatment – a slightly ahead-of-the-beat “Exaudi” in the first part, a hesitant beginning to the “Sanctus” over the tricky, syncopated accompanying figures, and a too-eager reprise of the “Agnus Dei” by the men – but these were moments of natural attrition, in their way part and parcel of the perils of live performance, and as treasurable for their purposeful intent as were other moments for their accuracy and expressive power.

Perhaps the performance highlight in the Requiem was, for me, the “Libera Me”, begun by the men’s voices, with nice shaping from the conductor, and taken further by the women, sweet-toned at “Tremens factus sum ergo” and building towards a full-throated “Dies Illa, dies ire”, startling in its impact. A thudding organ accompaniment brought back a fearful “Libera Me” reprise from the full choir, after which the piece concluded with a slightly more hopeful rounding-off from the men. Everything was kept in proportion, and the sequences vividly characterized – its spirit represented well the performance as a whole, one which the Bach Choir and Stephen Rowley ought to be proud of.