Month: June 2016

Wonderful Lieder recital ends Schubertiade at St Andrew’s, with powerful case for more

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Ein Liederabend
A score of Schubert songs

Barbara Paterson, Maaike Christie Beekman and Jared Holt and Bruce Greenfield (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 5 June 2016, 6:30 pm

I got to four of the five concerts in this splendid little Schubert Festival which I like to refer to as a Schubertiade. I know of no other such social/musical circle that formed spontaneously around a living composer; the sure sign that not only did plenty of people in the Vienna of the 1820s recognize Schubert’s enormous gifts, but they actually loved the guy.

The most famous contemporary version of the institution is in the small towns Hohenems and Schwarzenberg in the Vorarlberg province of Austria, close to Liechtenstein and Switzerland. The festival, growing bigger every year, moves between Hohemens and Schwarzenberg six times from late April to early November; there are about 90 concerts each year, and many are hard to get tickets for.

They feature song, piano recitals and all kinds of chamber music, and for many years the music has extended well beyond Schubert, and just occasionally reaches before 1800 and after 1900. Think of almost any prominent name and you’re almost certain to find him or her appearing at some stage each year.

Wellington’s version isn’t quite as busy. Five concerts involving about 22 musicians, with attendances at the concerts I attended between 40 and 70, at a guess; but the quality of the audience members was, naturally very high: quality, not quantity.

However, the series is a huge credit to the perseverance and judgement of Richard Greager and Marjan van Waardenberg.

All the earlier concerts were of solo piano or chamber music, but the Saturday and Sunday evenings were in part or wholly devoted to song. This one consisted of 19 songs, from three singers, covering the range of fachs from soprano through mezzo to baritone.

The opening songs were familiar and among the best loved; one with a melody that was used in a great string quartet, and ending with deep Angelegenheit with ‘An die Musik’.

The singers scattered their offerings throughout the programme. From high to low voice:

Barbara Paterson
Soprano Barbara Paterson began hers with one of the three popular songs that opened the recital: ‘Frühlingsglaube’ (Faith in Spring). Hers is a high, bright soprano which could not have matched the song’s spirit more successfully. She next sang three of the so-called ‘Mignon songs’, from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Schubert set the three Mignon poems several times; the group listed in Deutsch’s catalogue as No 877, published as Op 62 in 1826, included four songs, including the 5th and 6th settings of ‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht…’. There was more than one setting of the other two poems as well. There is also the famous ‘Kennst du das Land’, D 321

The first was ‘Heiss mich nicht reden’, which Paterson sang with a voice that alternated between timidity and boldness; though I’ve heard this sung by a mezzo with a different emotional result, Paterson’s high voice was convincing.

‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht…’ was also famously set, perhaps more famously, by Tchaikovsky and known in English as ‘None but the lonely heart’: the essence of longing – Sehnsucht, which I reflected on in my review of Saturday evening’s concert. Slender, pale, and with a tender though penetrating voice, she expressed the sentiment beautifully. And Goethe would have loved the singing of the third song, ‘So last mich scheinen’, as the music seemed to fit the words so well, both in their melodic shapes and in the way it reflected the poem’s emotion.

Paterson later sang three songs in successions: ‘Am See’, ‘An die Laute’ and ‘Die junge Nonne’.

‘Am See’ should be translated ‘On the lake’: Sea is Das Meer. Not to confuse with the Heine song, ‘Am Meer’ that Richard Greager sang the previous evening.

‘Am See’ responded beautifully to Paterson’s pure, lyrical voice, also exhibiting a resolute edge and holding her last note chillingly, without vibrato. ‘An die Laute’ (to the lute) was also in a swaying triple time, featuring a charming piano part. ‘Die junge Nonne’ is a poignant and dramatic song, with vivid Romantic character that depicts a storm and a chiming bell, clear in the turbulent piano part.

Maaike Christie-Beekman
Mezzo Maaike Christie-Beekman both opened and closed the recital: ‘Im Frühling’ at the start and ‘An die Musik’ at the end. Hers is a confident and accomplished voice that probably sits more comfortably with many of Schubert’s songs and these much loved songs offered her a comfortable setting, to be heard to her advantage.

Her second appearance was with the two Sukeika songs, based by Marianne von Willemer on a Persian love story. Though I’ve heard them before, I didn’t remember them. ‘Was bedeutet die Bewegung’ (what does this stirring mean?) starts quietly and weaves a song that slowly makes a strong case for itself. In ‘Ach um deine feuchten Schwingen’ (Ah, I envy your watery wings) a pulsating, repeated note gives the piano a strong presence, as it helps in the depiction of the West wind, echoing the East wind’s portrait in the first song. Shelley wasn’t alone in sensing the Romantic qualities of the winds (His Odd to the West Wind was written in 1819 while these songs were written in 1821: pure coincidence I guess. I can’t think of an East Wind poem in English though). The song seems to accelerate excitedly, suggesting a messenger on an urgent mission.

Maaike’s songs continued with two entitled Life and Art. ‘Im kalten rauben Norden’ (In the cold raw north) from Aus Heliopolis 1 by Mayrhofer, one of Schubert’s closest friends. It reads in English: “In the cold, rough north, I received word of a city – the city of the sun”; in the words of the intelligent programme notes, “the ideals of the Enlightenment reign supreme”.

In the same aesthetic vein, Goethe’s ‘Der Musensohn’ (Son of the muses), Christie-Beekman captured the feeling of ecstasy, her voice brilliant in racing delivery, with arms wide-spread, almost outpacing Greenfield’s piano in full flight. Here her smiles really meant something!

And she sang the last song in the programme, the beautiful masterpiece ‘An die Musik’, with aching emotion.

Jared Holt
Jared Holt continues to make fine contributions to Wellington’s music scene. His range of songs here was extensive, starting with the lovely ‘Auf dem Wasser zu singen’ (on the water at sunset), in register quite low and resonant. Then ‘Ganymede’ was another song drawn from Classical mythology, showing how the Romantic movement by no means set itself against Classicism in subject matter, or in fact in form as the ordinary four-line rhyming stanza is generally the shape of choice. Holt caught its monumental character, after the piano had subtly set the scene. And the third of this group, Goethe’s ‘Rastlose Liebe’ (Restless love) revealed a totally different, disturbing quality beginning with ‘Dem Schnee, dem Regen, dem Wind entgegen’ (against snow, rain and wind….); it’s short and dramatic. Early it certainly is, but ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade’ was written the year before, in 1814 (he was 17) and ‘Der Erlkönig’, ‘Heidenröslein’ and ‘Wanderers Nachtlied’, like ‘Rastlöse Liebe’, in 1815.

Later Holt sang ‘Gondelfahrer’ (The Gondolier), which I didn’t know; it’s in a slow triple rhythm, not quite the rhythm of a barcarolle which is suppose, literally, it really is. It had a mysterious quality, and lay rather high for a baritone, but it didn’t bother Jared. The song whose theme was used for the famous string quartet, ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’, is not as familiar as one would expect, with its sombre tone, in which the girl resists Death’s blandishments (story obviously echoing ‘Erlkönig’: is this a German ethnic stereotype?). ‘Auf der Bruck’ was Holt’s last song, powerful and urgent, and he seemed to identify confidently with its desperate spirit of pursuit; Greenfield’s piano once again made its indispensable, matchless, apparently untiring contribution.

A wonderful penultimate piece before the calming, quasi-religious ‘An die Musik’.

I remain convinced that if promoters were to present song recitals, carefully composed of enough thrilling masterpieces such as we heard today, the wearisome view that there’s no market for vocal recitals within a chamber music context would be dispelled.

Schubert’s Chamber Music Swan-Song at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SCHUBERT AT ST.ANDREW’S
Concert Four – The Aroha String Quartet

String Quartet in E-flat major D.87 (Op.125 No.1)
String Quintet in C major D.956 (Op.Posth.No.163)
(with Ken Ichinose, ‘cello)

The Aroha String Quartet
Haihong Liu, Simeon Broom (violins)
Zhongxian Jin (viola) / Robert Ibell (‘cello)

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

Sunday 5th June, 2016

It’s almost inconceivable that a “Schubertiade” of the kind organized here at St.Andrew’s-on-the-Terrace would not include the composer’s last and greatest chamber music work. This, of course, is the String Quintet in C Major D.958, which was completed just two months before Schubert’s death, a work he never heard performed. In fact it had to wait until 1850 for its first public performance, and another three years before it was actually published.

Despite his having completed fifteen string quartets, and numerous other chamber works besides the String Quintet, Schubert was never taken seriously by his contemporaries as a chamber music composer. He was probably inspired by Mozart’s and Beethoven’s work (both also wrote string quintets in C Major), except that Schubert chose to use a second ‘cello instead of the additional viola employed by the older composers.

Schubert’s work is therefore richer- and darker-sounding that those of his models, in a sense befitting the composer’s desperate personal circumstances at the time of the work’s writing. Of his other chamber works only his last String Quartet in G Major D.887 can compare with the Quintet in its range and scope of tragic expression – like the Quintet it was not performed in the composer’s lifetime and not published until 1851.

For this concert the Aroha String Quartet enlisted the services of NZSO ‘cellist Ken Ichinose to join with the group to play the Quintet. I had previously heard the Quartet perform the work with another NZSO ‘cellist, Andrew Joyce, and was interested as to what the ensemble’s response to the work would be like this time round with different personnel (as well as a different ‘cellist, the Quartet’s second violin had changed, Simeon Broom having taken over from Blythe Press).

I also liked the Quartet’s choice of an earlier chamber work by the composer as part of the concert, highlighting the extent of Schubert’s incredible creative advancement throughout his short life. We heard String Quartet No.10 in E-flat major D.87, written in 1813, when the composer was sixteen. Though the work lacks tonal variety (all movements being in the same key), there’s a good deal of assurance in the writing expressing itself in humourful gesture and characteristic lyricism – a perfect foil, in fact, for the later work.

In the case of each work on the programme, the Aroha Quartet’s approach took a direct, “take no prisoners” manner, which I found exciting and exhilarating in the quicker music, and incredibly intense in the slower, more lyrical and inward sequences. Right from the beginning of the earlier work, the players’ receptivity to the music’s light-and-shade was evident, mellow and relaxed for the opening exchanges, then dynamic and volatile when dealing with the development section’s agitations.

I enjoyed the palpable “squawkings” of the scherzo’s opening phrase, noting the mischievous, but also wraith-like echo of the ascending figure, sounded each time just before the players plunged back into the opening’s reprise. The Adagio brought out a different kind of earthiness to the sound, a grainy, sappy beauty at the beginning, which was transformed into something hushed and delicate when the sweet and lullabic second theme was floated on the air. After this, the finale’s tumbling energies was a kind of “hold on tight” ride in places, relaxing for the songful second melody, but plunging into the brief development section and the reprise of the opening with invigorating exuberance.

After the interval came “le déluge”, of course, in the form of the String Quintet, the players (this time with ‘cellist Ken Ichinose) losing no time in coming to grips with the work’s intentions, digging into the second brow-furrowed chord, and then relishing the fanfare-like cascadings counterpointed by the second cello’s sombre opening-theme musings. Then, the second subject sequence fell upon our ears like a lullaby, given firstly by the two cellos, and then by the two violins, both parings so very graceful and reassuring in effect, making the energies that bubbled up seem like exuberant pleasantries. The first-movement repeat brought out a sharper-focused response with a touch more theatricality, so that one seemed to notice more readily things like the second violin’s chattering volubility beneath the first’s melodic line, or the viola’s counterpoint to both of them at the same time.

A new realm came into view with the magical modulation into the middle section of the movement, giving rise to rougher, more physical textures cheek-by-jowl with the loveliness of the viola’s and ‘cello’s duetting, followed by a return to confrontation, the separate lines seeming to “square up” to one another and almost come to blows just before the recapitulation of the opening music. Only a brief lapse of poise in the upper strings resulting in a strained handful of notes distracted our sensibilities from the surety of the ensemble’s “putting things back together” and bringing the movement to a tremulous close.

The second movement (for which descriptive words seem inadequate) brought out playing which transcended time and space over those opening measures – long, flowing lines and beautifully-mirrored pulsations, the strings both bowed and plucked. Even more other-worldly were those sequences when the pared-back textures admitted only the pizzicati notes echoing across the charged sostenuto spaces, the players building the intensities with unerring purpose. In the agitated central section I admit I found myself craving more trenchant, less CIVILISED ‘cello-playing, the upper strings seeming to me to lack a deeply-disturbed enough foil for their lament. But in what seemed no time at all we found ourselves back in those opened-up sostenuto spaces, marveling all over again at the music’s strength and eloquence, the bitterness and anguished overlaid by the first violin’s sweetness of determined resignation.

What a contrast with the Scherzo’s opening, the ensemble’s performance almost frightening in its ferocity and abandonment – the intonation might not have been impeccable in places, but the music’s gutsiness and desperation was palpable – and here, the ‘cello’s counterweighted outbursts galvanized the ensemble’s energies splendidly. Just as profound was the group’s response to theTrio, those richly-upholstered downward plungings into darker regions giving us a sense of the composer’s extremities of despair and limits of privation – after the music delved as deeply as it could go, the Scherzo abruptly returned, whirling us along like some kind of juggernaut to its unequivocal conclusion.

The finale doesn’t explore the extremities of expression as viscerally as do its companions, but makes as great an overall impact through cumulative expression of a gritty determination, devoid of any self-pity. From the beginning the playing’s gait proclaimed strength and purpose, leavened by the beauty of the contrasting lyrical episodes – beautiful work here from the pair of ‘cellos, amply supported by the first violin’s lovely “thistledown” texturings and the ever-responsive ambient beauties of the middle-voices strings. In other places, the full-bloodedness of the playing brought out an occasional stridency, as if the upper strings weren’t always completely at one regarding intonation – but this mattered far less when set against the players’ whole-heartedness and sense of commitment to the composer and his coruscating vision of the fragilities of being.

Somewhere earlier I made mention of the last occasion on which I heard the Aroha Quartet perform this work, with a different second ‘cellist – having now re-read my review of that concert, I’m all the more buoyed up by this music’s renewable aspect, a sense of being “wowed” all over again by the same piece and (mostly) the same performers, but in a way that belongs entirely to “this time round”. There was nothing second-hand or reworked about the music-making, here – it all came to us with startling and invigorating immediacy, on its own terms truly memorable.

 

 

 

Schubertiade Hohenems/Wellington at St Andrew’s: piano and song

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Schubert at St Andrew’s
(Wellington’s answer to the famous Austrian Schubertiade at Hohenems and Schwarzenberg)

Diedre Irons (piano), Richard Greager (tenor)

Piano Sonata in A minor, D 784; Moments musicaux, D 780
The Heine songs from Schwanengesang D 957

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Saturday 4 June, 6:30 pm

The weather assorted poorly with Schubert’s anguished, obsessional Sonata in A minor. It had been sunny and calm, though cold; but the music was penetrated with sudden squally gales and dark clouds, broken by only brief shafts of light and fleeting moments of repose. Diedre Irons understood, as her programme note made clear, how the tragic illness revealed in 1823 must have affected his music. Though she responded to the relative peacefulness in much of the enigmatic Andante, she understood Schubert’s black mood and handled it powerfully in the first and last movements: the emphatic fortissimo chords, punctuated by short gentler phases. And she maintained the compulsive pulse throughout.

While the Andante’s tone is generally more calm, a fearfulness, even despair, remains near the surface, and the relentless wind howling through the streets seemed to dominate the atmosphere of this great work whose nearest models must be heard among Beethoven’s sonatas.

The Moments Musicaux (oddly, Schubert’s French appears not his strongest suit as he called them ‘Six Momens musicals’) were in sharp contrast to the sonata, though one of Irons’s gifts is to give expression to the unease and pain that can be heard at times, as in the Andantino or the fifth Moment, Allegro vivace.

The last of the pieces, Allegretto, seemed to illustrate the word Sehnsucht (longing) that, as a student, I came to feel represented the prevailing tone of German Romanticism. It seemed to be the most used word in the Sturm und Drang and Romantic poetry from Schiller, Goethe and Körner onwards.
However, it was a rare treat to have them played in sequence, just as it was the sequence of songs that Richard Greager sang next.

Schwanengesang – the last collection
It was an imaginative stroke to lift the Heine songs from Schwanengesang (Swan Song) and present them in the order in which they are found in one of Heine’s early collections of poetry, Die Heimkehr, which a year later was included in the big collection, Buch der Lieder, published in 1827. So it was published only a year before Schubert set these six poems, showing how immediately Heine’s verse took root. However, they are the only Heine poems that he used and there is some opinion that Schubert did not find his poetry congenial, one critic suggesting that Schubert “rejected Heine’s ironic nihilism and would not have set more had he lived longer”.

It is probably tempting to feel that these Heine songs evoked music of more interest and depth than his settings of more minor poets, but I don’t think today there is much support for that, considering that almost all the best known and most loved songs are not set to great poetry, apart from those by Goethe.

Though in his introductory remarks Richard Greager suggested that some linkage between the songs was to be better observed in the original order, I must confess that I couldn’t detect any hint of a narrative or a theme in common, other than the afore-mentioned ‘ironic nihilism’. That did however, give these songs a tone in common.

The first song, ‘Das Fischermädchen’, made quite an impact, not on account of any high drama, but through the vivid piano part and with the unusual intensity of Greager’s tenor voice which seemed straight away to capture the edginess of the song with Heine’s typical message that nothing is quite as innocent or as blissful as it might first appear.

The next two, ‘Am Meer’ (On the sea) and ‘Die Stadt’ (The town), were touched by mystery, death, water, and when the sun does shine, it is to reveal the place where his love drowned; trembling, poignant. One noticed how careful was his phrasing and the refinement of his breath control; with striking support from Irons’s rushing arpeggios in ‘Die Stadt’.

‘Doppelgänger’ and ‘Atlas’
Then came a song with an arresting title, which has been engraved on my mind perhaps more than the sound of the song itself: ‘Der Doppelgänger’ (The Double). I’ve been watching a rather engrossing BBC TV documentary on the age of the Gothic revival, not just in architecture, but also in writing, music and the visual arts that dealt with horror and depravity, the daemonic, the supernatural, the irreligious, and here was a song that represented the supernatural in German poetry. The chilling bass piano chords illuminated the poet’s enigmatic loss of his love (‘mein Schatz’) in the vision of a pale ghost, his ‘double’, through the words, the music, and Greager’s singing, and most impressively Diedre Irons’s piano.

‘Ihr Bild’ (Her picture) is an elegiac piece with the poet contemplating his lost love, a calm, unhistrionic song. ‘Der Atlas’, about the afflicted Greek proto-god, of the race of Titans who were defeated by Zeus and his race, and punished with the task of supporting the heavens and earth. It’s pithy, but I have always felt it as a rather inadequate account of the monstrous fate of a giant. Schubert invested it with considerable weight and mythic significance and so did Irons’s big piano presence alongside Greager.

Finally, the un-Heine-ish poem, ‘Die Taubenpost’ (Pigeon Post) by Johan Gabriel Seidl, which is not only reputedly Schubert’s last song, but also the last in ‘Schwanengesang’. After the dubiously metaphysical creations of Heine, this is a plain, old-fashioned lyric by an ordinary and unpretentious poet, and Greager and Irons succeeded in lightening the atmosphere in the church with optimism and a belief in human goodness, in the face of climate change and the economic and social catastrophes facing today’s world.

Regardless of this reviewer’s irrelevant political preoccupations, this was a lovely concert, balanced between powerful and lyrical piano music and beautifully performed songs from the last days of Schubert’s life.

 

Marvellous music at St Andrew’s Schubert festival: The Trout and Notturno in E flat

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

‘The Ripple Effect’

Schubert: Piano Trio ‘Notturno’, D.897                   `
Piano Quintet in A ‘The Trout’, D.667

Anna van der Zee (violin), Chris van der Zee (viola), Jane Young (cello), Richard Hardie (double bass), Rachel Thomson (piano)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Saturday 4 June, 3pm

This was the second concert in the enterprising ‘Schubert at St. Andrew’s’ series over Queen’s Birthday weekend, organized by Marjan van Waardenberg and Richard Greager. Not as many people attended this concert as compared with the well-filled church on Friday evening, but it was still a respectably-sized audience.

The name ‘Ripple Effect’ was appropriate not only for the ‘Trout’ Quintet, but also for the ‘Notturno’ one-movement trio (violin, cello and piano), which opened with beautiful ripples on the piano. The plucking of the strings, too, has a watery feel, which made the work a good precursor to the famous quintet. The musicians played it with the utmost sensitivity to Schubert’s wonderful subtleties.

The dreamy opening of the ‘Trout’ features plucked notes on the double bass, providing a wonderful underpinning to the piano part in particular. Melody is tossed between the instruments in a most skillful but natural-sounding way. I sometimes found the highest notes on the violin rather metallic, at various points in the work. In Schubert’s day, all strings would have been made of gut, therefore the sound would have been less piercing.

The pianist has a very busy part. In fact, the work almost becomes a sextet, when the pianist’s two hands are taken into account.

In the first movement (allegro vivace), the piano often sets the theme, with the other instruments following. This movement ends triumphantly. The second movement (andante) opens with limpid beauty from the piano; again, this instrument leads the themes. Rachel Thomson performed her role superbly well, varying her tone and dynamics depending on whether she was leading or accompanying. The movement was full of rhythmic interest.

Outside, the sky was blue and the sunshine golden. The church interior is painted in these colours, and the music too was sunny, yet cool (in both senses of the word).   The movement ended calmly.

The scherzo third movement (presto – trio) was extremely lively, but its contrasting trio in the middle had poise and contemplation in its make-up, before the scherzo took over again, with vigour and élan.

Then we came to the movement (andantino) that gave the quintet its nickname, ‘Trout’. The theme was Schubert’s song of that name, upon which wondrous variations were based. The treatment of the theme is both delightful and innovative. One variation has the cello and double bass playing the theme while the piano ripples the water over their heads. Then an impassioned variation takes charge in a forte section. The cello’s solo variation is exceedingly beautiful, while the violin’s, in partnership with the viola, returns us to the original song, with piano accompaniment.

The fifth and final movement (allegro giusto) was indeed played with the required gusto, with great regard for the dynamics and with excellent cohesion. Various stormy winds blew in this movement, but the ensemble maintained itself. Throughout, the playing never lost its finesse, nor its onward drive.

The audience fully appreciated the marvellous music, and the musicality of those who performed it for us.

Schubert Concert at St.Andrews promises a weekend’s abundance

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SCHUBERT AT ST.ANDREW’S
Concert One “Cornucopia”

Arpeggione Sonata in A Minor D.821
(for double bass and piano)
Oleksandr Guchenko (double-bass) / Kirsten Robertson (piano)

Octet in F Major D.803
(for strings, clarinet, bassoon and horn)
Yuka Eguchi, Anna van der Zee (violins) / Belinda Veitch (viola) / Ken Ichinose (‘cello) / Oleksandr Guchenko (double-bass) / Rachel Vernon (clarinet) / Leni Mäckle (bassoon) / Heather Thompson (horn)

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

Friday 3rd June, 2016

This was the first of what promised to be a delightful and rewarding “Schubertiade” of concerts featuring various solo artists and ensembles. The title “Cornucopia” possibly referred to the variety of instruments used throughout the evening; or else, to the range and scope of the composer’s writing for these instrumental combinations. Whatever the case, the results suited the “abundant supply of good things” description suggested by the word, regarding both the amount of interest generated by these combinations, and the quality of the music coming from its composer.

This concert began with something of a performance-rarity, that of the exotically-named “Arpeggione” Sonata which Schubert wrote originally for an instrument which had a brief period of popularity in the 1820s. This was a kind of ‘cello, played with a bow, but with a fretted fingerboard, just like a guitar. What possessed the maker to produce such an instrument is anybody’s guess, as it never really “caught on” among musicians.

Schubert’s work, in fact, was the only piece of any great significance written for the instrument. And, as if to underline this “poignancy of neglect”, the sonata was one of those works by Schubert which wasn’t published for many years after the composer’s death, by which time the arpeggione had all but disappeared. Today, the sonata is played most often on the viola or ‘cello, which made the prospect of hearing the work this evening on the double-bass an exciting and unusual prospect.

I confess to some surprise at what we were getting, as I would have thought the ‘cello more in keeping with the original instrument’s tonal qualities – and on the one recording I have of the piece, there’s a ‘cello (which had already disposed me more favourably towards that instrument in this work). However, I was, as the saying goes, keeping an open mind (and ears, of course), as we waited for the instrumentalists to take the stage and begin.

Our double-bass player was Oleksandr Gunchenko, a native of Kiev, whose early music training culminated in a professional orchestral appointment in Russia at the age of nineteen, emigrating to New Zealand in 1999 to play in the Christchurch Symphony, and then joining the NZSO in 2007. He was partnered in the Sonata by Christchurch-born pianist Kirsten Robertson, a graduate of Canterbury University and an ex-pupil of Diedre Irons, at present the NZSO’s principal keyboard player.

Used as I was to the ‘cello’s register, the first few notes of the double-bass line were a surprise, and took some getting used to – but what immediately took over from this was an impression of the performance’s fluency and musicality of tone, of phrasing and of give-and-take between the instruments. Apart from the occasional strained note in the double-bass’s highest registers the playing of both Guchenko and Robertson was impeccable, the pianist ever-mindful of her partner’s mellow-voiced instrument in helping to maintain the balance of the music’s sound-world.

The work’s middle movement gave ample opportunity for expression from both instruments, the piano beginning the hymn-like theme, then handing over to the double-bass, whose varied and characterful playing brought out the music’s sombre qualities with the help of some near rock-bottom notes! After this, the finale lifted the sombre mood with flowing, flavoursome sequences both in minor and major keys (the composer occasionally in “Hungarian Melody” mode). A particular delight was a sequence featuring pizzicati from the double-bass against the piano’s decorative statements,and the deftly-played lead-back to the flowing, dance-like passages, the music’s gentle major-key closure wrought by a mellow-sounding pizzicato chord – all very delicious.

The encore, a setting of Schubert’s “Ave Maria”, seemed at first to undo some of the beautiful work the players had done earlier – at first I found the piano too loud, the tones obscuring the double bass’s lines, which from my vantage point in the auditorium seemed to have little or no “carrying power” played in such a deep register. Things improved in that respect when the players repeated the verse with the bass up an octave higher – though more precarious as regards intonation, the balance between the instruments was more pleasing, and the string instrument seemed to find its singing voice, to our great delight and enhanced pleasure.

The concert’s second half presented us with a completely different sound-world, being Schubert’s Octet, for strings, clarinet, bassoon and horn. As with a couple of Schubert’s other works and Beethoven’s Septet, the Octet quotes a theme from an existing work by the composer, albeit a not very well-known duet from an early opera Die Freunde von Salamanka. I certainly didn’t experience any surprising and/or delightful “I know that!” reactions of the sort afforded by the “Trout” Quintet and the “Death and the Maiden” String Quartet, or Beethoven’s cheeky reminiscence in his Septet of a movement taken from his PIano Sonata Op.49 No.2.

All the musicians in the performance were either permanent or casual players with the NZSO, which accounted for the sheer technical aplomb of the music-making – this being the starting-point, the group mightily impressed with its teamwork and characterful individuality at all points. The composer certainly gives all the instruments the chance to shine, and these chances were taken most excitingly by each of the players – horn player Heather Thompson described the experience of playing the work as “climbing Mt.Everest”, which seemed to me as good a way as any of characterizing both the effort and the achievement of realizing the music in performance.

We got a beautiful, sonorous opening chord from the ensemble, the kind of sound that straightaway gives rise to unaccountable but luxuriant feelings of well-being – obviously a great beginning to the enterprise! Strings and winds played off against one another tellingly throughout, creating stores of energy and tightening tensions which the allegro then released in varied ways via exuberant ensemble playing and colourful solo lines. The music’s course was clearly-defined at all times, the essential character of the contrasting sequences of exposition and development brought out by the playing. I particularly enjoyed the adroitness of the interplay between the strings as well as the golden tones of the horn, the latter enabling a beautifully nostalgic ending to the movement after the joyously eruptive fanfares had sounded their “conclusive” bits!

The clarinet-led opening of the second movement Adagio was a heavenly sequence, continuing the pleasure with the first violin in duet, along with beautiful coloristic touches from horn and bassoon. Always the ensemble remained alive to the music’s expressive possibilities, “leaning into” the impulses of emotion which accompanied different sequences of the music, such as a splendid ceremonial-like statement from the horn, mid-movement underlined by the lower strings, and a lovely viola-supported flourish from the violin leading back to the reprise of the opening. There were, in fact, too many gorgeous solos to enumerate, each of them contributing as much to a sense of teamwork as to individual moments. And both the fateful-sounding accompaniments which towards the movement’s end pounded menacingly beneath the music’s surfaces, and the bleak, almost bone-bare moments soon afterwards were given their all-important weight as a reminder of all the things of heaven and earth undreamt in our philosophy…..

The ensemble took the Scherzo movement at a great lick, most excitingly exploring the music’s dynamic range to great effect, and achieving a whimsical contrast with the lyrical, long-breathed Trio. As much a different world was the following Andante, a “theme-and-variations” movement with some delicious moments, a lovely skipping sequence for clarinet and strings, a self-satisfied, semi-pompous sequence for horn, followed by a skipping, carefree ‘cello solo, and a swirling, minor-key variant  with strings supporting the winds. Following this was a sweet-voiced strings-and-clarinet episode whose execution was simply to die for, and then, like some kind of wind-up clockwork conglomeration, a delicious dovetailing of rhythmic patterning, allowed to run down in a lovely, child-like “is it finishing?” kind of way.

Not content with merely a Scherzo, the composer had recourse to a Menuetto and Trio to boot, the music seeming akin to a prayer, one delivered with great poise and steadfastness, the clarinet contributing a lovely counter-theme to the dance-steps, with the horn adding a sonorous variant. An extremely “gemütlich” Trio completed a sense of relaxation, or, perhaps escapism, which the opening of the finale proceeded to demolish with frightening purpose and a sense of desolation – perhaps a premonition of death? An “are you ready?” gesture, and we were suddenly off on a gloriously garrulous jog-trot, one in which good humour prevailed right through almost to the piece’s end. There was a marvellous passage mid-movement in which fugal lines tightened around and about the trajectories, maintaining the tensions until the release-point of the main theme’s reprise, which all of the players almost physically threw themselves into – most exhilarating!

But then! – after a number of energetic, but elongated lead-ins to a long-awaited coda, we were instead suddenly confronted with darkness once again, agitated tremolandi on lower strings and a whimpering, frightened violin pleading with “I told you so” winds. Fortunately it was nothing more than a cloud crossing the sunshine’s path – and the players picked up the strands and held them tightly, urging the music quickly to its conclusion, frightening to experience, but marvellous to come through! What a piece and what a performance! And what a beginning to a whole weekend of the composer’s music!

Happy concert from the New Zealand School of Music saxophone ensemble and soloists

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concert

NZSM Saxophone Orchestra directed by Simon Brew (Kim Hunter, Reuben Chin, Geneviève Davidson, Peter Liley, Giles Reid, Frank Talbot, Graham Hanify)

Music by Piazzolla, J S Bach, Debussy, Peter Liley, Milhaud, Johann Strauss Sr.

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 1 June, 12:15 pm

The woodwind (more specifically, the Saxophone) department of the New Zealand School of Music has become a fairly conspicuous player in the school’s activities. It’s led by Deborah Rawson, who, as well as being a clarinetist often seen in professional orchestral ranks, plays saxophone, usually the soprano sax.

While she introduced this lunchtime concert, the ensemble was directed by Simon Brew, an ‘artist teacher’ in the school.

The concert began with a piece by Astor Piazzolla which has become very popular, Histoire du Tango: the second movement, Café 1930. Originally for flute and guitar, it exists in several arrangements (evidently none for bandoneon, surprisingly), this time for Kim Hunter, soprano saxophone and Dylan Solomon, guitar. It starts secretively, plaintively, and becomes lively in the middle section as it moves from the smoky Buenos Aires café seemingly into the open. It was nicely played though it could have survived a little more seductiveness.

Then came an arrangement of the Allegro movement of Bach’s concerto for two violins (in D minor, BWV 1043), nicely translated to soprano saxes of Reuben Chin and Kim Hunter, together with the five-piece saxophone ensemble (consisting of soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxophones). The foreign sound took a moment to adjust to, and even though Bach’s music is generally very adaptable to all manner of treatments, it was perhaps just a fraction too far from its origin: interesting rather than convincing, but very nicely played.

Debussy’s Petite Suite survived the process much more successfully, perhaps because Debussy worked in an environment that was host to the saxophone family (he wrote a Rhapsody for alto saxophone and orchestra). Petite Suite was an early work, c 1889, originally written for piano four hands, but was transcribed for orchestra, presumably with Debussy’s concurrence, by Henri Büsset; that has given licence for a number of other transcriptions. The ensemble, now seven after the two soloists in the Bach joined the ranks, played all four movements. The range of saxophones provided quite a lot of variety of tone as well as spanning several octaves, and the four interestingly contrasted parts proved very listenable. Cortège was bright and tumbling in character, successfully disguising any imperfections. It contrasted well with the more 18th-century sounding Menuet where the saxophones did seem a little anachronistic; on the other hand, the accents of the inner lines of the piece still identified it as belonging around the turn of last century.

One of the players had composed the next piece: Waltz for Saxophone Ensemble by Peter Liley. He introduced it in mock seriousness, employing the pretentious expression “world premiere” with nicely judged drollery. It was an engaging little piece, with hints of the charm and playfulness of Satie or Ibert; I’d guess it could have a life after its premiere – a rarer event than a premiere.

Two pieces from Milhaud’s delightful suite, Scaramouche, were arranged by Debbie Rawson for the ensemble with alto sax, which suited the music beautifully and was probably much easier to listen to than to play. The popularity of this music, Modéré and Brazileira, irritated Milhaud after a while as there were endless demands for arrangements, one for 16 saxophones. But I wasn’t inclined to sympathise with Milhaud, as music that people love and don’t get tired of is not in oversupply, especially of music written lately.

Things ended in the same way as Vienna’s New Year’s Day concerts in the Musikverein, with Strauss Senior’s Radetzky March, where Simon Brew invited the audience to clap, as is the custom in Vienna; incidentally, Brew exhibited singular panache as conductor, not only in Radetzky, but in all the lively and attractive music that this happy band of musicians played.