Month: April 2014

Impressive performances of Brahms choral works, including the German Requiem from Kapiti Chamber Choir

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Brahms: Nänie, Op.82
Alto Rhapsody, Op 53
A German Requiem, Op 45

Kapiti Chamber Choir and orchestra, conducted by Eric Sidoti, with Ellen Barrett (contralto), Janey MacKenzie (soprano), Roger Wilson (baritone)

St. Paul’s Church, Paraparaumu

Sunday, 6 April 2014, 2.30pm

A full church greeted choir, soloists and orchestra for a very rewarding concert of Brahms’s choral music.  It was a very warm afternoon (Paraparaumu reached 24deg.) which was hard on the performers.  Nevertheless, they responded magnificently.

The first work was new to me, a piece written in memory of a friend of Brahms.  The title means ‘song of mourning’.  It had an appealing orchestral introduction, in which an oboe melody was particularly notable.  The choir sopranos then entered quietly; it seemed to take them a few moments to settle in. A gradual crescendo emphasised the words of the poem by Friedrich Schiller – all of the German pronounced exceedingly well and clearly by the choir.  There were tricky chromatic passages to be negotiated, on the whole successfully.  The men’s tone was smooth, but lacked character much of the time.  However, in the main the attractive work was tastefully and carefully performed.

Having had Schiller, we now turned to the other great German poet, Goethe.  The setting for contralto, male chorus, and orchestra is a moving, even heart-rending piece.  The arresting orchestral opening sends shivers down the spine, while the striking alto solo and the sombre orchestral accompaniment are richly Romantic, in the best sense of the word.

Throughout this and the following work, the flutes and oboe were particularly outstanding, but all the players and singers performed well. Ellen Barrett’s singing was beautifully controlled and impeccably phrased, although she employed a little too much portamento for my taste – but I daresay it was authentic for Brahms’s time.

The entry of the men was very well done; the rich harmonies and mellow yet soft tone were most satisfying.  The gorgeous ending on the words ‘sein Herz’ (his heart) left a feeling of nostalgia, yet completeness.

Ambitious it was for the choir to tackle Brahms’s Requiem, which is one of the major works in the choral repertoire, though not one of the really large ones.

The deliberate opening tempo was appropriate for the theme, and it was immediately apparent that great attention had been given to detail.  Words were excellent, tone mainly fine, and generally, intonation was good, although the occasional top note here and in the earlier works was not quite reached. Dynamics were well observed.

The choir had complicated fugues to sing in at least two of the movements, and in the 6th movement, ‘For here we have no continuing city’, the choir is in eight parts.

The choristers were obviously well-trained and secure; the orchestral horns were not so, but then they had a great deal to do, and I doubt it was easy playing.  All the orchestra worked hard, not least young trumpeter, Sarah Henderson.

The third movement, ‘Lord, make me to know mine end’ comprised  mainly a solo for baritone Roger Wilson.  Roger has sung this work many times; the printed programme reported that he first sang it in the Durham St. Methodist Church in Christchurch, and he dedicated his performance to the memory of the three organ builders who were killed in that building in the February 2011 earthquake.  I found I was sitting on the ‘wrong’ side of the church to hear him to the best effect; the space required for the orchestra meant that the soloists for this work were very much to one side.  However, any deficiency was not due to lack of clarity or tone from the singer.

The fugue for the choir at the end of that movement, ‘But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God’ is a very taxing sing, as I know from experience.  Of the various entries the clearest was from the sopranos – but the acoustic could not really cope with the complexities.

The beautiful chorus usually known in English as ‘How lovely are thy dwellings’ was captivating; the beautiful suspensions in the orchestral part were splendid, the cellos being particularly important. The men’s entry and accompanying part were sung with sensitivity and grace.

‘And ye now therefore have sorrow’ featured Janey MacKenzie singing strongly, and with great clarity of diction. A little more soft singing would have made her performance even more memorable.  The choir’s part in this movement, sung seated, was very grateful on the ear.  The beauty of Brahms’s writing on the words ‘As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you’ I always find very moving.

The sixth movement, ‘For here have we no continuing city’ (Roger, and Christchurch again?) features choir as well as the soloist.
Here, as elsewhere, the pizzicato from the cellos was very telling, having both accuracy and tone.  The choir excelled itself in the varying moods of both text and music.  There was plenty for the young trumpeter to do, and she did it well.  The words ‘O death, where is thy sting, O grave, where is thy victory?’ were sung as detached notes, giving emphasis to the meaning.

The seventh movement, ‘Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord’ had the woodwind giving a thrilling edge to the climaxes.  The soaring, rising melody on the words ‘their works do follow them’ (denn ihre Werke folgen ihnen nach) was supremely beautiful and peaceful, leaving the audience with a blessed experience indeed.

I learned that Helen Griffiths, violist, was responsible for getting together the 22-piece orchestra, as she has on many previous occasions.  The choir must be very grateful for her efforts, contacts and not least her persuasive powers.

The printed programme was well set out, and in case of the Requiem, it was very helpful to have not only have full translations but also the Biblical reference for each passage.  It was a nice touch to use Gothic script for the titles of the movements; the script would have been the norm in Brahms’s day.

I find that in reviewing last November’s concert by the choir I said: ‘It struck me that it was high time a district with the population of the Kapiti Coast had a proper performing venue; many towns and districts of smaller size have such a facility, e.g. Martinborough with its Town Hall.  Here, choral concerts are held in a church with an airfield opposite, while chamber music concerts are in a large hall designed primarily for indoor sports, where the audience have to sit on plastic chairs!’

I would reiterate that even more firmly now; a work of the size and complexity of the Brahms Requiem, incorporating an orchestra, deserves a much larger venue, with more spacious acoustics than St. Paul’s Church can offer.  I was told that this venue may not be available for much longer.  In that case, it emphasises the need for a proper performing venue in the district. Not only Martinborough, but Ngaio and Khandallah have their own Town Halls, the former having been built by Wellington City Council, not by a now-defunct local authority.  Upper Hutt has a splendid performance venue.

College halls are a possibility, but are unlikely to have comfortable chairs comparable to those in the church.  However, they would not be likely to have aeroplane noises or flapping blinds, either.

The abiding thoughts on the concert must not be about these factors, but about such wonderful invention on Brahms’s part, and such variety of composition, realised in an impressive performance from all concerned.

 

Eugene Gienger – Dakota Pianist – more feeling than fireworks…..

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Eugene Gienger – Dakota pianist

Piano recital at St.Andrew’s-on-the-Terrace

BEETHOVEN – 32 Variations in C Minor / SOLER – 3 Sonatas

SCHUBERT – Fantasy in C Major (“Wanderer”)  / William WIELAND (b.1964) – Orpheus and Eurydice

LISZT – Après une lecture du Dante – Fantasia quasi Sonata (from Années de pèlerinage)

SOUSA (arr. Horowitz) – The Stars and Stripes Forever

St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wellington

Sunday, April 6th 2014

Eugene Gienger, an engagingly self-styled “Dakota Pianist” originally hails from Streeter, North Dakota, USA. According to his accompanying publicity he is the only pianist of renown to have emerged from the Dakota region, and can therefore be counted as a kind of “local boy made good”. An international performer, he has given recitals and concerto performances in the United States, Canada, Russia and Australia. He’s currently in New Zealand, running a “piano academy” in Karori, Wellington, for pre-school children, as well as (perhaps on a less formal basis) providing tuition and guidance for older students about to study the instrument at a tertiary level.

His traversal of a number of pieces reckoned to be among the most difficult in the romantic keyboard repertoire certainly gave ample opportunity for listeners at St. Andrew’s Church in Wellington to gauge the extent of his prowess as a pianist. It was, as the saying goes in pianistic circles, a “knuckle-breaker” of a programme, with things such as Schubert’s “Wanderer” Fantasia cheek-by-jowl with Liszt’s “Dante” Sonata and Vladimir Horowitz’s celebrated pianistic “circus-act”, his transcription for keyboard of Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever” March.

As well, not much respite was given by Beethoven’s 32 Variations in C Minor, and a work receiving its New Zealand premiere, Orpheus and Eurydice, written by one William Wieland, a contemporary American composer. Amongst these more strenuous musical realizations, three charming jewel-like sonatas from the pen of Father Antonio Soler (a contemporary of Domenico Scarlatti) provided some decibel and figurative relief, for contrast’s sakes, obviously.

I came away from the recital appreciative of Mr.Gienger’s keyboard facility, but ultimately wishing he had chosen a larger proportion of repertoire for the concert which relied rather less insistently on sheer prestidigitation and more on philosophical content. There was no doubting that the pianist could actually “play” the notes throughout, though parts of both the Schubert, the Liszt, and the Horowitz Sousa arrangement needed to my ears a more transcendentally-driven approach for the music to really ignite around its edges and properly conflagrate. I’ve previously heard both the Liszt Dante Sonata and the Schubert Fantasia (also during the same recital), as well as, on a different occasion, the Sousa-Horowitz “live” in Wellington from pianists who could REALLY stoke the virtuoso fires – and as with the Schubert Fantasia, that kind of technical response is needed to unlock certain integral essences in this super-charged music.

Make no mistake,  I enjoyed Mr. Gienger’s playing immensely, but thought that some of the claims for his playing published in material available at the concert had a rather less exalted basis on this recital’s showing – for example, to quote a review saying of his Liszt-playing in another recital that “these interpretations stand side-by-side with the most acclaimed versions of the greatest pianists” didn’t for me accord with the performance of the “Dante” Sonata that we heard. Yes, the notes were there, and the more reflective moments of the work I thought had real poetry and seemed to convey a true sense of the ethos of renaissance conceptions concerning the afterlife – but the “hollow ring” of those tritones and dissonant harmonies throughout the introduction, the implied terror and despair at the thought of eternal damnation, was under-characterised, as was the frenetic nature of the chromatic theme representing the souls in hell.

In fact Gienger’s conception of the music seemed more wrought from immutable marble and stone than from fire and brimstone and volatile feelings – in its way a valid representation, a kind of abstraction (as is every realization of a score, of course) which in this case stood slightly apart from the in-one’s face coruscations associated with the piece. I still think a certain amount of “visceral devilment” needs to emanate from the music’s figurations and textures, some Lisztian bravura of the kind that Jian Liu’s playing of the work in a 2012 recital at the Ilott Theatre presented in abundance. In that performance, pianist, instrument and music seemed all to be “possessed”, whereas here, Gienger remained our “guide”, his playing seeming to me recounting (albeit with plenty of energy and commitment) rather than actually reliving Liszt’s remarkable Dante-esque visions.

I thought the pianist more successfully carried and maintained the virtuoso physicalities of Schubert’s “Wanderer” Fantasia – again, it wasn’t a barnstorming, sulphurously-lit performance (the composer famously and despairingly invoking the devil’s own assistance at a public performance of the work, which, alas, wasn’t forthcoming at the time!), but at least one of music certainly requiring a certain trajectory of energy in places. This force and girth Gienger was able to supply, even if he seemed to me to be taxed to his technical limits in places during the fugal finale – which circumstance in itself certainly seemed to give a kind of tension, a performing edge to the listening experience.

Earlier he’d nicely delineated the first movement’s terraced dynamics, giving the famous opening rhythmic figurations plenty of variety of voice, and summoning up a cumulative drive in places which had plenty of feeling of engagement with the music. He managed the magical transition to the “Der Wanderer” quotation with rapt wonderment, ushering in all of the writing’s entrancement and rapt, almost religious feeling. When the music’s texture fragmented in to what seemed like many voices, the pianist gave us lovely filigree work, realizing the toccata-like sequences and the reprise of the melody over a tremolando bass with equal aplomb.

With the scherzo that followed Gienger emphasized its somewhat angular charm, gradually working up a sufficient head of steam with which to launch those first portentous fugal statements that came to dominate the final section. Again, though I felt the playing throughout didn’t have the gleam and glint of truly infernal devilry, it generated its own trajectories and momentums towards a rousing finish. Earlier in the half we’d “warmed up” with Beethoven’s fascinating set of Variations in C Minor, which the pianist described as a set of etudes – an interesting way of regarding the music – and, after that, three enchanting sonatas by Father Antonio Soler, most winningly realized as examples of possibly very early music for the then-new forte-piano.

A kind of companion-piece to the Frank Stemper Sonata, which was played the previous week by Korean pianist Junghwa Lee, was another New Zealand premiere of a contemporary American work for piano – William Wieland’s six-part meditation upon the ancient myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The work seemed to divide opinion among the audience members I spoke with afterwards, but I thought the whole piece most interesting in conception and delivery – six vignette-like scenes which represented each part of the story. Mr Gienger was a most persuasive advocate of the music both as a speaker and as a player (the latter role befitting the dedicatee, of course!) and it wasn’t any fault of his that in a couple of places I found the story-sequences rather too abstracted, as opposed to other moments which were very obviously representational in intent. I wanted some of the events to receive more of their due from the music at certain points, rather as individual arias in opera suspend the action in order to enrich moments of high emotion or more vividly describe a scenario.

Nevertheless, there were marvellous evocations to enjoy, even if some of them passed all too quickly – I particularly liked the opening celebratory music depicting the wedding of Orpheus and Eurydice (entitled “Bliss”), with its festive figurations and rustic dance impulses, and thought the sudden shift into a state of shock, horror and loss when Eurydice suddenly dies of a snake-bite extremely effective. The pianist’s fingers had to conjure up three different strands of feeling – a right-hand lament, a left-hand whose deep tones suggested the Underworld, and the toll of a bell in the middle of the keyboard suggesting the inevitability of fate.

A similar kind of transition occurred after Orpheus had played his lyre to win back Eurydice from Death’s clutches, but then lost her irrevocably during the ascent by turning and looking back at her. At that point the music suddenly shed its Lisztian radiance and snatches of renewed bliss, and plunged the soundscape into darkness with harsh, bitter tones, resolving at the end with the return of fate’s tolling bell. So, a vivid and characterful retelling of the ancient story, then, even if I did want certain sections to linger more and allow more expansiveness of response and feeling.

I do hope Mr Gienger will give us another recital some time, and that he concerns himself more with music of greater poetic and philosophic substance and manner – every piano-fancier will have her/his little list of “favourite things”, including, probably, Mr Gienger.  It will be interesting to see what he inclines towards after this……conjuring a name and an associated body of work from the air, I would suggest, say, Schumann?

Festival Singers under Berkahn explore baroque byways, a romantic Stabat Mater and a modern, jazz cantata

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Festival Singers conducted by Jonathan Berkahn

A Rising Tide – Easter Music, by Buxtehude, Bach, Lachner, Rheinberger, Ireland and Jonathan Berkahn

St Peter’s Church, Willis Street

Sunday 6 April, 2:30 pm

The concert was advertised as performing two works: a Stabat Mater by minor German composer, Josef Rheinberger, contemporary of Brahms and Bruch, and The Third Day by the conductor.

The works that accompanied the Stabat Mater in the first half were of a similar kind: organ and vocal pieces by Buxtehude, Bach, Lachner, and religious songs by John Ireland and Berkahn.

Lachner’s name probably rings faint bells as Franz was one of a Bavarian musical family, contemporary with Schubert and Schumann. This Introduction and Fugue for organ sounded as if he was a pupil of J S Bach, rather than a composer 30 years Beethoven’s junior.  Its virtue was a bold and plain opening, using the 16 foot stops, that switched abruptly to light flutes on the choir manual. The fugue subject was of the most elementary character which might well have served as an exercise for a beginning composition student to explore the mysteries of fugue, but it was followed by a more imposing sequence of cadences that announced its conclusion.

A setting by Berkahn of a religious poem by Wordsworth contemporary James Montgomery followed; in an attractive bass voice, Jamie Henare handled the hymnal melody graciously; though the accompaniment (by the composer) was at a somewhat primitive sounding electronic keyboard.

I’m familiar with some of Rheinberger’s organ music and a few choral pieces but was unaware of a Stabat Mater. I’m afraid this exposure seemed to reaffirm the judgment of history; it recalled nothing of Alessandro Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Pergolesi or Haydn, and certainly nothing of his 19th century colleagues like Rossini, Dvořák or Verdi (it is one of his Four Sacred Pieces). (I recall this choir singing Rossini’s version in 2009; in my review then, I thought the choir displayed a closer sympathy with the Catholic than the Protestant style of religious music).

This was sung in English, to a translation different from that in our programme leaflets. The translation did serve to remind the audience of the Church’s strange obsession with the most ghoulish details of the Christ story; though it was never formally a part of the Catholic liturgy, the Stabat Mater maintained its prominent place in the pattern of worship from the time of the poem’s composition in the 13th century, through its numerous musical settings down the ages.

So if verbal clarity might not have been a major concern in the choir’s rehearsal, other matters had careful attention: ensemble, intonation and style. Here, more than elsewhere, the small numbers of male singers was rather conspicuous in some lack of confidence. Nevertheless, there were several interesting features that the choir navigated well; one was a fugal section which lent the work greater variety and a certain dramatic impact.

Two organ pieces followed. Rafaella Garlick-Grice played Buxtehude’s ‘Ach Gott und Herr’ using stops with discretion, though I wondered whether her tremolo passages were appropriate. Then Berkahn played Bach’s ‘Christ lag in Todesbanden’, here making good use of the organ’s range, its striking contrasts between the Great and Choir manuals, the music, probably dating from Bach’s early years at Arnstadt, rather showing up, in contrast, the relatively limited inventiveness of Lachner and even of Buxtehude.

With Rafaella again at the organ the choir sang a setting by Ireland of ‘Greater love hath no man’, using solo voices from the choir, charming if a bit taxing in the higher register.

There was a ten minute pause as amplification equipment was set up for the accompaniment to The Third Day, which was introduced with an engaging Irish interlude led by flutist/guitarist Bernard Wells.

The Third Day, the text presumably compiled by the composer, deals with happenings before and on Easter Sunday, including Christ’s descent from the Cross and the reflections by Judas and Thomas on the implications of their actions.

Berkahn conducted from the keyboard, in this instance the keyboard of the accordion suspended from his shoulders (he pointed out that before the rise of the dubious profession of the full-time celebrity maestro, music was directed from the keyboard; sometimes it was by the principal violinist or concert master).

The other members of the jazz ensemble were guitarist Andrew James, bass guitarist Adam Meers and pianist Ruth James.

The music is in a delightful post-religious-rock-opera style, that no longer (I imagine) sounds blasphemous in the ears of believers; it uses the choir, soloists and the band in an easy, varied manner, and at a couple of points bass Jamie Henare made the most engaging entries. In the final exultatory section, in triple time, the world was put to rights with the cry ‘Christ is risen, he is risen indeed!’

The concert might have seemed very disparate in style and musical character, but the effect of this very contemporary, and singularly attractive cantata was to lighten the spirits of the audience, and to give perspective to the more sombre music of the first half, perhaps to enhance it in the memory.

 

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.

Sparkling playing of Bach for flute and organ at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

‘Bach for Lunch’

Prelude and Fugue in C, BWV 846 (Book One)
Sonata E, BWV 1035 for flute and basso continuo
Prelude and Fugue in F minor BWV 881 (Book Two)
From Suite in B minor BWV 1067 for flute and strings
Douglas Mews (organ), Penelope Evison (baroque flute)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 2 April 2014, 12.15pm

A third player in the recital was the fine acoustic of St. Andrew’s Church, allowing all the nuances of sound from the instruments to be clearly heard, even the quietest ones.

The programme opened with organ only, playing perhaps the most familiar of Bach’s Preludes from The Well-Tempered Clavier (or Keyboard, in this translation), which unfortunately I missed, due to parking problems. However, I heard the fugue, delightfully played on a lovely high flute registration.  This being baroque music, the small baroque organ was used, pulled forward and towards the centre of the platform – it was good to see it being played.

Douglas Mews introduced the next item by saying that the pitch of the time of the sonata’s composition was fully a tone lower than that used today, and this was the pitch of Penelope Evison’s instrument.  Fortunately for him, the music copy he was using was printed in that pitch, i.e. D major, and not in the modern E major.

He used a registration that contrasted sufficiently with the tone of the baroque flute, without overpowering it.  Very much a continuo part, it provided few flights of fancy for the organ.  In the second movement, allegro, Mews employed plenty of lift in his part, making for a charming and lively performance from both players.  The third movement was a sleepy siciliano; the final one, allegro assai, featured tricky rhythms – the players were not always totally together.

The next Prelude and Fugue from the organ I am particularly fond of, and I enjoyed hearing them on the organ.  There was good contrast between the legato passages and those with more lift.  A brighter registration was used for the fugue.

The Suite was entire, apart from the opening Ouverture, which was absent.  Like all the Suites, this is a lovely work.  Its opening Rondeau was crisp and lively; the second dance (Sarabande) contrasts well, being slow.  The two Bourrées are quick and sparkling, though as played here, they were perhaps a little too fast to dance.  Contrast came again, with the stately Polonaise.  The Menuet is also slow, but features beautiful melodies, while the final Badinerie is utterly delightful.

Despite only two instruments being used, sometimes only one, the concert revealed something of Bach’s great variety, and certainly much of the vast experience and expertise of these two musicians.