Day: 17 June 2016

Popular Russian orchestral show-piece, unfamiliar cello concerto and colourful, Hungarian, folk-based music

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Scheherazade

Kodály: Dances of Galánta
Lalo: Cello Concerto in D minor
Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya, with Johannes Moser (cello)

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday, 17 June 2016, 6.30pm

The programme attracted a nearly full Michael Fowler Centre on Friday.  I had the previous day heard Eva Radich interview Johannes Moser on the Upbeat programme, on RNZ Concert.  What a lovely man he sounded!  His cello sounded lovely too, as we discovered in Friday’s concert.  How good it was that he played a different concerto!  While always loving to hear the Dvořák concerto, it was a great pleasure to hear something different – in fact, so different, and as interesting in the case of the Lalo concerto.

Galánta
The first work on the programme had a striking opening. The different modalities of Hungarian music were almost immediately apparent.  The composer’s collection of Hungarian folk-songs and dances are the basis of most of his music.  This work was composed in 1933.  We heard wonderful subtleties on the clarinet in a slow dance.  The large assembly of strings sounded particularly sonorous here, and when playing pizzicato while flute and piccolo produced soaring melodies.  The French horns had their turn at leading things – all five of them.  Percussion players had many delicate – and some not so delicate – interventions.

The work was a delight of colour, rhythm and finesse, contrasted with exuberance.  It was a feast of fine orchestration, and provided a jovial boost to any Friday weariness.  A furious rush of music towards the end was followed by a sublime clarinet solo, and a final burst of jollity.

Lalo’s cello concerto
The tall, youthful cellist came on; like the conductor, he was not wearing formal evening dress.  He played the concerto without a score.  Harth-Bedoya used the score only for this work (a necessary precaution in a concerto).  Moser’s cello produced a superbly warm, rich tone in his hands.  To have had two cellists of such calibre as Moser and Rustem Khamedullin in the space of a week has been a luxury.

Written by the French-born, Spanish-influenced Lalo in 1876-77, the concerto seemed to have hints of Brahms and Schumann – the latter’s concerto was written over 25 years earlier – and even of Elgar, whose concerto was written over forty years later.

The orchestra began the concerto grandly, and there was much work for the brass to do.  However, the soloist was to the fore almost throughout the work, mellifluous phrases following one after another, with staccato interjections from the winds; indeed, the latter ended the first movement (Prélude: lento – allegro maestoso).

The second, Intermezzo: andantino con moto – allegro presto, began with muted strings.  There was more gorgeous romantic melody from the soloist, and phrases of the utmost delicacy.  Sparse orchestration in this short movement meant no brass or percussion.

The final movement (andante – allegro vivace) opened enigmatically; the soloist with very quiet string accompaniment, initially only cellos.  Suddenly the brass erupted.  Dotted rhythms predominated here and elsewhere.  Parts of the solo in this movement were elegiac.  The playing was never flamboyant, the cello producing a variety of tones that were always lambent, passionate, tender, thoughtful, or whatever was needed.

An encore after a concerto now seems to be an expected addition to the programme.  Moser played the sarabande (another Spanish influence here) from the first Bach Suite for unaccompanied cello.  This he took slower than had Khamidullin on Wednesday in the latter’s sarabande from the third Suite.  It was soulful, considered playing, and at times the utmost pianissimo gave an ethereal quality.  The audience greeted the encore with rapture.

Scheherazade
The major work in the concert was Rimsky-Korsakov’s suite, based on The Arabian Nights.  Scheherazade calls for a large orchestra: there were five horns, nine double basses, a tuba, and large numbers of other instruments too, compared with the requirements of the Lalo concerto.

It is wonderfully dramatic music – I just wish that Radio New Zealand Concert did not play it, or parts of it, quite so frequently.  After the portentous opening depicting the Sultan, it was magical to hear the harp and violin duet denoting the princess (or Scheherazade herself).  These two themes are played countless times, often with melodic, rhythmic or tempo variations, throughout the work’s four sections.  Then the sea took over, relatively calmly at first.  The waves work themselves up gradually, before calm is restored with horn and woodwinds.

The rougher seas return, repeating loudly the theme we first heard as the delicate solo violin and harp near the beginning.  The theme is varied and given many manifestations before returning to the gentle opening.  This ends the section entitled “The sea and Sinbad’s ship”.

This same theme opens the second section, “The Kalendar prince”.  This part follows the pattern of all the sections, in having a variety of tempo markings through its course.  Muted double basses accompany sumptuous oboe and bassoon solos most effectively.  Then a cello joins in, and takes over the solo.  Sinbad’s ship appears to strike some trouble, the brass sounding warnings.  But then everything becomes jolly and highly rhythmic before the bassoon again asserts itself over pizzicato, and the theme returns.

The excellent programme notes (apart from misspelling ‘sprightly’ as ‘spritely’ more than once) mention ‘Rimsky-Korsakov’s mastery of instrumentation’, so much to the fore in this section.  The following one (“The young prince and the young princess”) opens with lyrical music that almost sounded like English music, with its calm melody.  However, it becomes increasingly exotic, and the orchestration richer.  After various goings-on the harp and violin theme returns, then full orchestra takes over again.

The bombastic sultan theme reappears followed by the harp and violin, this time in most virtuosic twists for the latter; Vesa-Matti Leppänen’s solo passages were quite beautiful.  Syncopated rhythms and exciting percussion burst forth,  with lots of concerted string playing, along with brass and percussion interjections.  The strings repeat the big theme.

Wikipedia quotes Steven Griffiths about this work (A Critical Study of the Music of Rimsky-Korsakov,1844-1890. New York: Garland, 1989): “The reasons for its popularity are clear enough; it is a score replete with beguiling orchestral colors, fresh and piquant melodies, with a mild oriental flavor, a rhythmic vitality largely absent from many major orchestral works of the later 19th century, and a directness of expression unhampered by quasi-symphonic complexities of texture and structure.”.

The audience gave a very appreciative response; Harth-Bedoya more or less forcibly removed the orchestra from the stage at the end of quite a long concert.

 

An organic awakening at a Friday lunchtime at St Paul’s Cathedral

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Buxtehude Project at Saint Paul’s

Richard Apperley – organ

Dieterich Buxtehude’s works for the organ, from the Buxtehude catalogue, BuxWV 136-225

Wellington Cathedral of Saint Paul

Friday 17 June, 12:45 pm

This was the fifth recital in the series of lunchtime recitals that are designed to cover Buxtehude’s works for the organ. Compared with the Bach family, remarkably little is known positively about Buxtehude, including the place and date of birth, though the best evidence is between 1637 and 1639 in Helsingborg (now in Sweden), a city a short distance to the north of Malmö on the Öresund, opposite Copenhagen. However, his father had lived in Helsingør (on the north-east tip of the island of Zealand in Denmark: in English it is Elsinore – see Hamlet). The only Buxtehude house is in Helsingør where Dietrich himself was organist at Saint Olaf’s church from 1660 to 1668, when he went to Lübeck, to the Marienkirche (St Mary’s).

Lübeck
And that’s where he made his name, becoming such an eminent organist that Bach felt it was worth walking the 400km from Arnstadt, in 1705, aged 19, to learn from Buxtehude.

Three years ago I spent a few days in Lübeck, explored the Marienkirche, failed to catch an organ recital but had very interesting conversations with assistants in the church, about Buxtehude, the church and the role of the notable Hanseatic town, and Free Imperial City; we also touched on the dreadful bombing of Lübeck by the RAF in 1942, some believe, partially, in retaliation for the Luftwaffe’s firebombing of Coventry in 1940. Anyway, the Marienkirche was among the major churches destroyed and the smashed remains of the bells are preserved where they fell to the floor below the belfry tower of the faithfully rebuilt church.

The Buxtehude catalogue lists 135 vocal works and 80 for organ as well as many other keyboard and chamber music compositions.

The programme sheet contained some interesting details. The keys of the works carefully adhered to the recent convention of indicating minor keys in lower case, the major keys, logically, in capitals, meaning there’s no need to stipulate major/minor. Most programme writers seem not to understand, writing ‘major’ or ‘minor’ as well as using caps or lower case; but here the usage was correct. I have not followed that practice, continuing the old style, writing ‘major’ and ‘minor’ with the keys in capital letters.

The Music
The first work in the recital was the Prelude (Praeludium) in F sharp minor, BuxVW 146. It had begun as I entered and I thought I was hearing Bach, for the music was rather grand and conspicuously elaborate, played for the most part on typical diapason stops. It also occurred to me that some might have found it unidiomatic, though I have no problem with hearing baroque music in fairly modern dress, on a big, powerful organ with a greater variety of registrations than existed on a 17th century instrument.

A Chorale fantasia: Te Deum laudamus (BuxVW 218), followed, in five parts, that were most attractively varied. In the Prelude a quite prominent theme was richly decorated harmonically and with ornaments of the period (I’m quite sure!); while the next section was the main thematic statement of the chorale itself, which I found substantial and probably, given another hearing, memorable. Each of the successive sections had its characteristics through varied registrations, tempi, dramatic shifts from one manual to another. If I’d had a feeling, from not very much previous experience of his music, that Buxtehude was a good deal less interesting than Bach, I had my mind changed on Friday. It certainly sounded much more of Bach’s time, even our own time, than German music of half a century earlier, composers like Schütz, Scheidt, Schein….

The Canzonas are among the pieces grouped in the catalogue as ‘free organ works’, that is, not connected with a chorale. BuxVW 169, in E minor, brought lighter registrations, sitting in the middle of the keyboard and keeping within the range of the human voice, as the title would seem to suggest. And the last piece in the programme, a Praeludium in D was well chosen to end the recital; light and almost dazzling in its spirit with a lot of fast decorative writing in a high register. I thought of its inspiration as the sun came through brilliant stained glass of a rose window at the west end of a great gothic nave.

The pieces in between were Chorale Preludes. Danket dem Herren (BuxWV 181) did indeed suggest someone offering warm thanks for some kindness, fairly succinct and sunny. The last two were also in the nature of thank you notes addressed to God; the first, BuxWV 194, Ich dank dir, lieber Herre was rather formidable in its arresting chordal opening and dense textures. Given the registrations chosen by Apperley, it came to sound much more of the 19th century, from France even, a bit opulent for Lutheran Germany just after the end of the terrible Thirty Years War.

But Ich dank dir schon durch deinen Sohn (BuxVW 195) began with considerable dignity, the words presumably dwelling on God’s gift of his son to rescue mankind from misbehavior, a process that’s taking longer than the credulous of the first century CE might have expected. There were slow, rambling, sonorous passages, enlivened by varied dynamics and registrations, often with the sun shining through.

I came away feeling that I should not have left so long my first immersion in the wonderful world of Buxtehude, at least his world as viewed through the imaginative and colourful eyes and ears of Richard Apperley. There is likely to be a Buxtehude reappearance on these pages, and I urge you to make space for a sampling, Friday lunchtimes. Anyway, grand and spacious churches are wonderful places to spend a while, even for an atheist.