Month: April 2015

Douglas Mews makes most of St Andrew’s chamber organ’s limitations in fine Bach performances

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Clavier works by J. S. Bach

Douglas Mews (chamber organ)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 12 April 2015, 12.15pm

As Douglas Mews explained to the audience, Bach wrote many pieces for keyboard that could be played in the domestic setting.  This meant they were probably most often heard in his day and after on the harpsichord, but the clavichord, chamber organ and piano would all have been used.  These works do not come under the umbrella of the 330th birthday celebration at Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul, where on Friday lunchtimes all Bach’s organ works are being performed by Michael Stewart and Richard Apperley.

The programme comprised four of the 15 Sinfonias (BWV 794-797), and four Preludes and Fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book One.  These were written 1722-23 when Bach was in Cöthen.  The final work, the Concerto in D minor based on an oboe concerto was written much earlier, when Bach was living and working in Weimar.

Unfortunately, other responsibilities mean I was late for the concert, and since the Sinfonias were played continuously and are quite short, I only heard the last of them.  However, I was immediately struck by the lovely ‘chuffy’ sound of the chamber organ playing these works.  This was the one in G minor, the others played were in F major, F minor, and G major.

The Preludes and Fugues were those in F# major, F# minor, G major and G minor, BWV 858-861.  The first key contain 6 sharps!!  Playing these takes a lot of mental and digital concentration.  The first, particularly, was played delicately and lovingly; Mews said that this key produced a serene sound, and so it proved, despite the fine bouncy rhythms.  This first Prelude was played on flutes, including the 15th (2-foot) stop.  All were played sequentially, giving extra point to the gorgeous changes of registration.

None of the works used pedals, since most of the instruments most likely to have played them would not have them, though the chamber organ at St. Andrew’s does.  Nevertheless, Mews amply demonstrated what this organ can do.

The stunning counterpoint of these pieces is full of interest, and the same applies to Bach’s concerto in D minor (BWV 974) based on Alessandro Marcello’s oboe concerto.  The Italian composer was a contemporary of Bach’s – 1673-1747.  The concerto is familiar; as Mews said, Marcello’s original is played on the radio from time to time, and despite the desire of baroque composers, by and large, to have the performers create ornamentations more-or-less spontaneously, usually oboists performing the Marcello use Bach’s suggested ornamentations for the single manual organ!

The registration employed in the concerto had less ‘chuff’ than that in the earlier Bach pieces, and thus sounded appropriately more orchestral.  The first movement was marked andante e spiccato, and spiccato it certainly was, followed by an adagio, then finally a very finger-fast presto movement.

This organ has very few stops, yet Douglas Mews managed to mix and match what was there to make effective differences between the various Preludes and Fugues, and between the movements of the concerto.

Brilliant guitar recital from Owen Moriarty at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Owen Moriarty – guitar

Music by Marek Pasieczny Joaquin Rodrigo, Manuel Ponce, Mauro Giuliani

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 8 April, 12:15 pm

At some stage at most guitar recitals, the famous words of Chopin come to mind. “Nothing is more beautiful than a guitar, except, possibly, two.” We had only one, though Jane Curry, head of guitar at the university School of Music, was there too, evidently without her guitar.

Owen Moriarty began with the youngest piece, a Little Sonata by Polish-born Marek Pasieczny (it was wrongly spelled in the programme). It was in four movements, inspired by Schubert’s set of four piano pieces, the Impromptus, Op. 90; and the title was suggested by Hindemith’s ‘Kleine Sonate’.  In truth, it was quite some distance from Schubert, but I knew what he meant: each movement was in a spirit that, give or take a couple of centuries, owed something to the outward shape or spirit of Schubert’s. Schubert’s first piece is marked Allegro molto moderato; Pasieczny’s is Moderato galante; the second, the favourite Schubert Impromptu, in quaver triplets in E flat, is simply Allegro while Pasieczny’s is marked Lento religioso, rather different.

Never mind. The first was ‘galant’ – mid 18th century – sure enough, in character, though somewhat advanced in melodic shape and harmony. Like most of the programme, it afforded Moriarty excellent scope for his superb dynamic subtleties; and the gentle second piece was an even better example of the way the player shifted the sound not merely through the vigour of the plucking but by the position of his right hand working the strings. The third piece, Arpeggiato largamente opened with spacious broken chords that led to charmingly worked out themes; while the fourth, the equivalent of Schubert’s fast A flat Impromptu, exploited the guitar’s essential strumming technique, vigorous and somewhat grand as it reached the end.

Rodrigo’s Bajando de la Meseta is one of five pieces in a suite characterising regions of Spain, this one literally, ‘Lowering the plateau’; Meseta refers here, specifically to the plateau of New Castile (Castilla Nueva), the most central region of Spain in which Madrid is situated. It opened in a deliberate manner, lento strumming, in fast common time, which shifted to triplets, increasingly virtuosic with fast scales and fancy decorative passages.

Ponce’s Balletto and Preludio comes from a generation before Rodrigo. He had an association with Andres Segovia and the two were complicit in publishing this pair of pieces as a newly discovered work of the great lutenist Silvius Leopold Weiss, a contemporary of J S Bach; this was the era when Kreisler was turning out pieces that he attributed to various baroque composers.

It certainly worked as a piece of that age, the Balletto, charming, slow and danceable; while the Preludio was subject to several rhythm changes with motifs weaving through various lines adroitly delineated by the player.

The real spectacle came with Rossiniana No 1 (of six) by the Italian guitarist Giuliani whose guitar concertos (more than one I think) were familiar a few years ago, but not heard (by me) recently. This was one of six pot-pourris on tunes from Rossini’s operas arranged freely and with huge flair and an eye to impressive virtuosity. The tunes were somewhat familiar, at least one from L’italiana in Algeri?, with the last leading to the typical Rossini crescendo of increasing excitement and spectacular agility by both the guitarist’s hands

Another piece by Rodrigo was the last item in the programme: Pequena Sevilliana – The Girl from Seville. Coming from Andalusia, flamenco music was to be expected, but quirky, with little twists that involved the fingers darting all over the finger-board. It was a delightful finish to a highly entertaining and revelatory recital of, quite simply, international calibre guitar playing.

 

Memorable and illuminating exploration of the Miserere, its rivals earlier and later, by The Tudor Consort and Michael Stewart

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Tudor Consort conducted by Michael Stewart

Miserere:  Music for Holy Week

Cathedral of Saint Paul, Wellington

Friday 3 April, 7:30 pm

I have been rather neglectful in recent years of pre-concert talks. This time, even in the disagreeable face of train replacement by buses and possible crowds heading for the Stadium, I decided to expose myself to the possibility that I might learn something by listening to Michael Stewart. I had already heard him talking with Eva Radich on Upbeat and wanted to get a bit more clarity on the subject of the vicissitudes of Allegri’s Miserere. A very good crowd had also come early to hear the talk, which Michael illustrated with projections of various parts of various versions of the work, as well as by singing key phrases with such acute brilliance.

The Miserere is the first word of Psalm 51 (50 in the Latin, Vulgate Bible) and has long been a part of the Catholic liturgy for Holy Week, sung at the end of the Tenebrae office, ritually sung in increasing darkness as 15 candles are extinguished in the course of the singing. At its end there follows the Strepitus, or loud noise that represents the earthquake believed to have followed Christ’s death, done by ‘slamming a book shut, banging a Hymnal or Breviary against the pew, or stomping on the floor’ (Wikipedia).

Michael Stewart’s commentary
Stewart spoke of the various versions of the Miserere, both before and after Allegri’s; the secrecy imposed on the Allegri setting by the Vatican, its notation by the 14-year-old Mozart (thus in 1770), and the Papal response later, as Clement XIV praised Mozart personally for the genius of his accuracy in transcription. In the meantime Mozart had given English music historian Charles Burney a copy and it was published in 1771 (so soon?).  Later aural recordings were made by Mendelssohn and Liszt.

The young Mozart’s action was recorded in a letter home from Wolfgang’s father immediately after.

It was also recorded in 1792, the year after Mozart’s death, by his sister: “…they travelled on the 15th March 1770 to Parma, Bologna, Florence, [on] to Rome, here they arrived during Holy Week. On Wednesday afternoon they accordingly went at once to the Sistine Chapel, to hear the famous Miserere. And as according to tradition it was forbidden under ban of excommunication to make a copy of it from the papal music, the son undertook to hear it and then copy it out. And so it came about that when he came home, he wrote it out, the next day he went back again, holding his copy in his hat, to see whether he had got it right or not. But a different Miserere was sung. However, on Good Friday the first was repeated again. After he had returned home he made a correction here and there, then it was ready. It soon became known in Rome, [and] he had to sing it at the clavier at a concert.”

But one has to note that the co-author of the version performed by The Sixteen under Harry Christophers, Ben Byram-Wigfield, writes: “And several myths have grown up around the piece, such as the idea that the Pope forbade copying of the work, punishable by excommunication; and the young Mozart supposedly copying the work after hearing it performed. Neither is true.”  (http://ancientgroove.co.uk/essays/allegri.html)

The question of embellishment was also interesting. It is said that the actual ornaments used in the Sistine Chapel were, as much as anything, the most closely guarded, and the version that Burney published did not include them. They were not in the public domain until Roman priest Pietro Alfieri published an edition in 1840, which preserved the performance practice, including ornamentation, of the Sistine choir.

Stewart also dealt with the modifications to the scoring accounting for the non-authentic ‘high Cs’ in the version we know, thought to be the result of transposition. Again, Ben Byram-Wigfield notes: “the ‘Top C’ version, which was never performed in Rome, … merely a serendipitous scribal error”.

Thus, what a great idea to perform both the original version and that current today!

Two Allegri versions
The conventional version with the High Cs was sung in the first half. To enhance the impact of the high female voices, all singers of the quartet (sopranos Pepe Backer, Melanie Newfield, alto Andrea Cochrane and bass David Houston) went to the gallery above the south (Molesworth Street) door and their voices created the most thrilling effect at each return to inauthentic (if you must) bursts of spiritually ecstatic exclamation. The contrast with the other fourteen singers was marked, their voices more suffused in the huge main space of the cathedral. There was a breathless conviction about the whole performance.

Alfieri’s account of the original, with the best realisations we will ever have of the original embellishments, was sung after the interval. Here, all the singers except Paul Stapley who sang the plainsong part from the pulpit, remained at the front of the Choir. While the female voices had similar effects to handle, it was naturally less thrilling that with voices emanating from high above the nave, though awareness of the modern version teased us with an expectation that treble phrases would rise higher. Stapley’s contributions were very fine, projected with ease, even delivery allowing discreet dynamic changes, but with arresting pauses in the middle of his stanzas.

The other Miserere settings
But there was much more of great interest in this concert whose intention was to let us hear other treatments of the Miserere. First was a short setting by William Byrd, the performance of which revealed the composer’s ability to convey the feelings of lamentation and self-flagellation so beloved of religion.

And the even earlier setting (around 1503) by Josquin des Prez, evidently the best known setting before Allegri. It was thought to have been inspired as a testament to Savonarola who called for ‘Christian renewal’ and the church’s reform. He denounced clerical corruption, despotic rule and the exploitation of the poor, and was a painful thorn in the Papacy’s side. He was tortured and executed by Pope Alexander VI in 1498. Josquin’s composition is not given to expressing much sense of exultation, and expression of praise of the Almighty, which is a significant purpose of the Psalm, but emphasised our sins and the need to be purged and cleansed. Among otherwise pretty flawless singing of the other works in the programme I felt there was a touch of insecurity in ensemble and balance here.

Giovanni Croce’s Miserere of 1599, 40 years before Allegri, came from Venice (Josquin’s was from Ferrara, not far away), with the sounds of the Gabrielis in the background, and here was the precursor of the sort of high soprano ecstasy, with richer harmonies cultivated by Allegri. It was also curious, not that it seemed to affect the mood or richness of the musical setting, that the Psalm text was paraphrased as a sonnet by Francesco Bembo, whose name only calls up painters.

The Gesualdo setting
Then came what for me was the third most interesting piece on the programme (after the Allegri and the James MacMillan), the imaginative and original setting by Carlo Gesualdo, more famous for a certain violent episode in his life. There’s no better account than by music critic Alex Ross (have you read his The Rest in Noise?) in The New Yorker – (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/12/19/prince-of-darkness).

His music is generally said to be ‘ahead of its time’ by anything up to three or four centuries (and four would bring it up to the present decade). The words employed as evidence are ‘chromaticism’ and ‘dissonance’; neither is to be remarked upon today; the dissonance amounts to momentary departures from an expected harmonic cadence which are rather delicious. It was splendidly sung, all these little touches exposed with clarity and wit; with the excellent Paul Stapley, as in the Allegri, singing the plainsong verses, falsobordone (French: fauxbourdon) = false bass, I believe they are called. Nevertheless, the music follows a repeated pattern which allows the senses to relax each time the surprise comes round in the shape of a sort of rise in the tonality of the treble voices.

MacMillan – the today setting
Finally, the strong and arresting Miserere of James MacMillan who, I suppose, has a special authority today, as a confirmed Catholic. Men and women take the lines of the Psalm in turn, with women seeming to have more of the running, though the men are given an emphatic “Ecce…” – behold, in line 5. The energetic rhythm seems to flow naturally from the intrinsic rhythm of the Latin, a language which, spoken with resonance and fluency, has that unparalleled power, supported by a wonderful literature, that made the language survive remarkably, till my generation – the last, I fear, to have been in a state secondary school where perhaps a third of the boys in the third, fourth and fifth forms learned Latin.

Again at the ‘Libera me de sanguinibus…’, the great shout of anguish had dramatic power, that was quickly softened by the overlapping of men’s and women’s parts; as the end approached  the dynamics rose and fell with moments of ecstasy and spiritual entreaty.

When Simon Ravens founded The Tudor Consort back in 1986, the choir attracted overflowing, rock-concert style houses, such was the impact of his engrossing pre-concert talks with imaginative programming, often through liturgical reconstructions in a dramatically striking manner. No subsequent director has quite matched Ravens’ flair and charisma, but Michael Stewart, in his own way, is recapturing something of the excitement of that time which had the effect of raising audience numbers for most choirs, and inspiring the formation of new ones. This splendid concert and the size of the audience perhaps presages a real choral renaissance and more adventures to come.

 

Flutist makes sparkling Wellington premiere at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Gabriella Kopias (flute) and Richard Mapp (piano)

Music by Doppler, Debussy, Takemitsu, Fauré, Rachmaninov; Chaminade, Piaf and Ravel

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 1 April, 12:15 pm

It’s not clear what has brought Gabriella Kopias to Wellington, but it was whispered to me that she would rather like to stay here. That would be lovely, not because there is any lack of excellent flutists in town, but another of the quality of Kopias (pronounced Kópyas, I expect) could hardly be any sort of embarras de richesses.

She was born in Szeged in Hungary in 1975, graduated with distinction from both the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest and the Arts University in Graz, Austria and now makes her home in Vienna. While she has had some orchestral experience, including with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, she seems to have made a career as a flute soloist; and also as a cantatrice: she ended her recital, leaving her flute aside and singing Piaf’s La vie en rose, with a very creditable Piaffian timbre and style. She also exhibits as a painter.

Gabriella chose a diverting and varied programme, starting with the Fantaisie pastorale hongroise by Polish/Hungarian, flutist-composer Albert Franz Doppler, who was born in Lemberg (when part of Austria in the 18th century), Lwow when in Poland after WWI (though the population from the 16th century was predominantly Polish and Jewish), and now Lviv, after the total expulsion of the Polish population (‘ethnic cleansing’) after 1945, when it was taken by the USSR to be part of Ukraine. Doppler was a close contemporary of Franck, Lalo, Johann Strauss II, Bruckner).

He wrote successful operas and instrumental pieces, the most famous of which is this Fantaisie. She played this delightful war-horse from memory, accompanied with verve and discretion by Richard Mapp; in three distinct parts, each illustrating a different aspect of Hungary’s musical character, finally a csardas, all full of lively melody and rhythm.

Debussy’s Syrinx seems to be most commonly played solo flute piece, so its place was to be expected, and most welcome.

Toru Takemitsu may still be the best known Japanese classical composer, it was the chance for Richard Mapp to be heard alone; Rain Tree reveals itself in a magical palette that derives from Debussy impressionism and the mysticism of the Buddhist or Shinto world. It seems to evolve but there is also the strong sense of remaining still.

Fauré’s Fantaisie (Andantino and Allegro) is one of those pieces, the Allegro at least, that’s familiar, attractive, but whose composer I hadn’t logged in the memory; one of the many pieces inspired by the great French flute player and protagonist, Paul Taffanel. The piano’s contribution was a very significant element in the performance, lending the first section, Andantino, more interest than it gets sometimes;
and the flute’s contribution was beguiling, fast and brilliant. The two were, as everywhere in the recital, in delightful balance, in support of each other but never invading the other’s space. (I missed the point of Gabriella’s comment, introducing the piece, about Cinderella, and quoting the words put in her mouth in the current Walt Disney film, ‘Have courage and be kind’).

I wondered whether in her next piece she would return to the platform without her flute, to sing Rachmaninov’s Vocalise, which is its original idea of course. But she played the flute, showing how adaptable this evergreen gem is.

Cécile Chaminade, in her long life (born before Puccini and died during the second World War), acquired a sort of palm court reputation in her lifetime and later, but she’s much more than that: her genius was for geniality, charm, sticking to melody and tonality through the turbulence of atonality and avant-gardism. In any case this Concertino, originally for flute and orchestra, Op 107, which was also dedicated to Paul Taffanel, gave clear indications of a capacity for those gifts to find expression in an extended piece that was carefully balanced, ending with an accelerating flourish. Again this well-matched duo proved splendid advocates for unpretentious music that is clearly surviving the years.

Then Gabriella really did leave her flute behind and picked up the microphone to sing Piaf, as I noted above. How many would accept that the definition of ‘classical’ extends far beyond the ranks of those composers whose names are followed by brackets showing dates of birth and death?

Finally, an encore listed in the programme: Ravel’s Habanera, or rather, the Vocalise-étude en forme de habanera, is a song for deep voice and piano. In arrangements for a great variety of instruments it’s been called Pièce en forme de habanera. As does Rachmaninov’s Vocalise, it sits happily for almost any instruments, and this was a most attractive way to end this introduction to a musician whom I hope we will hear again.