Month: July 2016

Buxtehude’s credentials solidly confirmed at the 6th of the organ series at Saint Paul’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Buxtehude Project – Programme 6
Richard Apperley – organ

Buxtehude: Praeludium in C, BuxWV 136; ‘Nimm von uns, Herr…’ BuxWV 207; Fuga in B flat, Bux 176; Magnificat primi toni, BuxWV 203; Canzona in C, BuxWV 166; Praeludium in A minor, BuxWV 153

Wellington Cathedral of Saint Paul

Friday 15 July, 12:45 pm

On 17 June I covered some of the background to the formidable complete organ works of Dieterich Buxtehude, after the first four of the series had eluded me (read: Middle C, or I, had neglected them, a grave oversight).

Here was the 6th of the series.
The first work in the programme was fairly large, employing three fugues; optimistic in tone, as the key of C major seems to inspire in composers. It started with an imposing, somewhat rambling, rising scale – a kind of prelude to the Prelude. The middle fugue sounded more orthodox, in common time, coherent and interesting in its progress and it led to the third fugue cast in a gigue rhythm.

Next came a piece based on a chorale, a set of chorale variations which, to begin, employed much less formal registrations than the Praeludium: flutes and lighter reeds, suggesting bird-song. A second variation was more densely textured, and the subsequent variations continued to offer interesting forays in imaginative registers, often with quite bold counter-melodies underlying the main themes.

The Fuga in B flat was an elaborate exercise, as its several lines of counterpoint were punctuated by dense passages that were occasionally coloured by nasal sounding stops.

A Magnificat setting followed, in which the actual fugal passages alternated with more rhapsodic music, succeeding in exhibiting the fecundity of the composer’s melodic imagination and his ability to fuse grandeur and decorative passages.

Another Canzona (I heard one in the previous recital on 17 June) offered yet another vehicle for the composer’s ingenuity and mastery of the rich variety in styles of organ music that existed in the late 17th century: rippling meanderings; airy, whispering stops suggesting shimmering light; peaceful and lyrical phases; quite striking colour changes as hands moved from one manual to another.

And finally, a Praeludium that was even more imposing and engrossing than the opening one: this time in a minor key: Apperley’s note confessed to its being one of his favourites, and his virtuosic performance was convincing evidence of his opinion. It encompassed music of ever-changing mood, melodic and developmental richness and mastery. It moved through fugal phases and highly decorated scales and arpeggios, changing tempi and rhythms and abrupt changes of direction, all ending with a tumbling, highly complex and thrilling coda that must have left his congregation in the Marienkirche in Lübeck wide-eyed and stunned.

I confess to finding myself in a somewhat similar state after this second dose of the great Danish-German master. And this condition has to be very substantially attributed to the wonderful mastery of the cathedral’s organ by Richard Apperley.

You should look out for the next in the Buxtehude series: there’s nothing boring or pious about this music.

Coming up next Friday, the 22nd, is the first of the Mendelssohn series from Michael Stewart; then Buxtehude Episode 7 from Apperley on Friday 19 August.

 

Interesting variety of arias and songs from NZSM voice students

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Songs by various composers

Voice students of Te Koki New Zealand School of Music, accompanied by Mark W. Dorrell (piano)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 13 July 2016, 12.15pm

A variety of voices was heard at today’s concert, and a great variety of songs from 18th, 19th and 20th century composers – interesting repertoire.

Stefano Donaudy (1879-1925) was a composer new to me; he was Italian-French, and a resident of Palermo in Sicily.  He composed mainly vocal music, including operas, and is known today for a number of songs, of which ‘O del mio amato ben’ is one.  It was sung to open this student recital by Olivia Sheat (soprano), a fourth year student.  She has admirable voice production and her tone was beautifully sustained.  Along with well enunciated words and inaudible breathing, she made great work of this aria, as indeed with the utterly different ‘I shall not live in vain’ by Jake Heggie (b. 1961), where she characterised the splendid words of Emily Dickinson aptly and mellifluously.  However, I found Mark Dorrell’s accompaniment in the first song, and elsewhere in the recital, rather too loud at times.

Olivia Sheat’s third contribution was the wonderful ‘Mi tradi’ from Mozart’s Don Giovanni.  It was notable that the singer’s spoken introduction to the audience was very clear, and loud enough (without microphone!).  She did not drop her voice, after starting, as so many do.  The aria was sung very dramatically.  She will make a fine opera singer; presence, voice and interpretation were all in line.

Nicole Davey, another soprano (second-year), has a lighter voice, but she gave it plenty of variety.  A problem I find with a few quite noted singers is that although they have voices of fine quality, and sing accurately, they do not vary the timbre or even the dynamics very much.  A Pergolesi aria from his Stabat Mater suited Nicole well, and her ‘Vedrai carino’ from Don Giovanni was sung with very pleasing tone; she phrased Mozart’s lovely music splendidly.  Appropriately, the singer adopted a different vocal quality for ‘Bill’ from Jerome Kern’s Showboat.  In any case, it was set low in her voice.  Not all the English words were clear.

The opposite was the case with mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Harré’s singing of ‘The shearer’s wife’ by Dorothea Franchi, a New Zealand composer (and harpist), who died in 2003.  Here, the English words were clear and precise.  It was interesting to hear a voice so different from the previous singer’s.  Harré’s darker, deeper tone suited her first song: ‘Au cimetiére’ by Fauré.  This was very accomplished singing from a second-year student.  Her legato singing was superb, and her French pronunciation excellent.  It was a very touching performance.

Her final offering was ‘Smeton’s aria’ from Anna Bolena by Donizetti.  The lilting character of this aria was well portrayed.

Another soprano was Elyse Hemara, a third-year student.  She displayed a wide vocal range in her songs, with a rich tone throughout.  Her first song, the lovely ‘Lilacs’ by Rachmaninoff, started low in the voice, while the second, the same composer’s ‘How fair this spot’, was quite high.  Both were sung in Russian, and both, as befitted Rachmaninoff, the great pianist and composer for that instrument, had gorgeous accompaniments, beautifully played.  Her third aria was by Massenet, from his opera Herodiade: ‘Il est doux, il est bon’.  Hemara’s mature voice and good French pronunciation made a good job of it; one could imagine her singing it on an operatic stage, but she would need rather more facial expression and characterisation.

Here, as elsewhere, Mark Dorrell was required to play some complicated accompaniments when substituting for an orchestra, in the operatic arias.

The last singer was another third-year student, baritone Joseph Haddow.  His first song was ‘Die beiden grenadiere’ by Schumann, a setting of words by Heine that needs to display the irony in both poet’s and composer’s views of Napoleon and of war.  Haddow has a strong voice, and sang this song with suitable bravado and panache.  His habit of poking his head forward rather, needs to be overcome.  For ‘Ah! Per sempre io ti perdei’ from Bellini’s I Puritani he adopted a more dramatic tonal quality that suited the aria well.  This was fine singing: he has plenty of volume, but used subtlety as well.  There were one or two slight lapses of intonation – the only ones I heard throughout the recital.

It was a pleasure to hear fresh, new voices; I think that the opening singer was the only one I had heard before.  All were obviously well-taught, and gave intelligent and musical performances.  Naturally, their skill levels varied somewhat, but I think all present would feel pleased with what they heard.

 

Hammers and Horsehair speak volumes – Douglas Mews and Robert Ibell

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music Hutt Valley presents:
HAMMERS AND HORSEHAIR – Period Pieces for Fortepiano and ‘Cello

Music by BEETHOVEN, BREVAL, MOZART, ROMBERG and MENDELSSOHN

Douglas Mews – Fortepiano
Robert Ibell – ‘Cello

St.Mark’s Church, Woburn Road, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 13th July

What a fascinating and splendidly-realised concept this was! With instruments able to reproduce authentic-sounding timbres and tones of a specific period, and with two musicians in complete command of those same instruments, and well-versed in the style of performance of that same period, we in the audience at St.Mark’s Church, Woburn, in Lower Hutt, were treated to an evening’s evocative and authoritative music-making.

Part of the occasion’s success was its mix of normal concert procedure with a distinctly un-concert-like degree of informality, of the kind that might well have been the case when these same pieces were premiered. Concert-halls of the kind we’ve become used to would have been few and far between at that time, and music would have more likely as not been made in private houses belonging to rich or titled patrons of the arts, often with connections to royalty.

Different, too, was the etiquette displayed by performers and audience members at these concerts. Until Beethoven famously made a point of insisting that people actually listen to his playing whenever he performed, those attending these gatherings often talked during performances if they weren’t particularly interested in the music or the performer or both, or if something or somebody else caught their fancy. Performers, too would wander into and through the audience talking to friends and acquaintances as the fancy took them, often interpolating extra items in their performances in the same spontaneous/wilful manner.

To us it would have seemed an awful hotchpotch, but audiences of the time would have relished the social aspects of the gathering, as much as (if not more so) than the music. While Douglas Mews and Robert Ibell didn’t actually encourage the people in the audience to talk or move around the church while the music was being played, each musician readily talked with us at various stages of the concert, the pianist inviting us to go up to the fortepiano at halftime and have a closer look at it.

But  before the concert proper actually began, Douglas Mews wandered up onto the performing area, sat down, and unannounced, began to softly play the opening of Mozart’s charming set of variations “Ah vous dirai-je, Maman”, K. 265/300e, whose tune we know as “Twinkle, twinkle, little star”. Audience members were still talking, and to-ing and fro-ing, while the music sounded softly, at first as background, and then, as people still arriving got themselves to their seats, and conversations gradually ceased, the music took over.  The fortepiano tones, at first almost apologetically faint and almost “miniature” in effect gradually filled the performing space as the variations grew more elaborate, and our ears became increasingly “attuned” to the instrument’s sound-world and its capabilities.

By this time the lights had been dimmed to the effect of candle-light, adding to the atmosphere of a time and place recreated from the past. Once the variations had finished, ‘cellist Robert Ibell welcomed us to the concert, encouraging us to imagine we were at a music-making occasion in the music-room of a grand European aristocratic house – though most of the concert’s music was written before 1800, Bernhard Romberg’s Op. 5 ‘Cello Sonata, published in 1803, pushed the time-frame into the early nineteenth-century). First up, however, was the winning combination of Mozart and Beethoven, being the latter’s 1796 variations on the former’s lovely duet “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” from “The Magic Flute”.

What a joy to listen to these two musicians playing into one another’s hands so winningly and expressively, allowing the instrumental dialogues such eloquence and energy!  Though fortepiano and ‘cello were made at different times (the fortepiano in 1843, and the ‘cello from an eighteenth-century maker), their respective voices blended beautifully, neither dominating or overpowering the other. The fortepiano had more elaborate detailing than the ‘cello throughout the first handful of variations, the keyboard writing showing extraordinary inventiveness – one of the sequences featured a “sighing” cello figure over an intricate piano part, while another employed an invigorating running-bass on the ‘cello beneath garrulous keyboard elaborations.

Not all was “tally-ho and high jinks”, however, with variations 10 and 11 taking a sombre, almost tragic turn, the keyboard dominating the first of these while the ‘cello’s deep-toned lament garnered our sympathies throughout the second. All was swept away by the waltz-time final variation, delivered with great panache from both players throughout, including a couple of modulatory swerves and a cheeky reprise, right up to the deliciously po-faced ending.

Robert Ibell talked about the ‘cello he was using, an original 18th Century instrument gifted to him by his teacher, Judith Hyatt, and once owned by Greta Ostova, from Czechoslovakia, who came to New Zealand in 1940 to escape Nazi oppression, and eventually became a founding member of the National Orchestra (now the NZSO). The instrument’s rich bass and plaintive treble was very much in evidence in the brilliantly-written Sonata in G Major by Jean-Baptiste Bréval (1753-1823), composed in 1783 as Op.12 No 5, one of a set of six sonatas. A ‘cellist himself, Bréval wrote a good deal for the instrument, including concertos, sonatas and duets. The sonata gave the ‘cellist a real “work-out”, requiring the player in each of the movements to inhabit the instrument’s upper registers for a good deal of the time. It was a task Robert Ibell performed with aplomb, the occasional strained passage mattering not a whit in the sweep and excitement of the whole.

Introduced by his duo partner as “Hammers”, Douglas Mews then spoke to us about the Broadwood fortepiano he was using, previously owned by a family in the Shetland Islands, and brought to New Zealand by them in 1874. Perhaps the concert’s next item, a piece not listed as being on the programme, but one entitled “Song Without Words” by Mendelssohn, didn’t show off the instrument’s capabilities to its fullest extent, though both players certainly realized the music’s essential lyrical qualities in perfect accord, moving fluently through the pieces brief central agitations to re-establish the ending’s serenitites. I wasn’t sure at the time whether the piece was a re-working of one of the composer’s famous solo piano pieces, or whether it was a true “original” – but my sources have since told me it was a “one-off” written by Mendelssohn for a famous woman cellist Lisa Christiani (who also died young).

What did illustrate the Broadwood fortepiano’s capacities was the following item, Mozart’s Keyboard Sonata K.330 in C major. If ever a performance illustrated what was often missing from renditions of the same repertoire by pianists using modern pianos, then this was it (an exception being, of course, Emma Sayers’ Mozart playing in her recent recital). It wasn’t simply the instrument and its beguiling tonal and timbral characteristics, but the playing itself – though like philosophers arguing about the essential differences between body and soul, one can’t avoid conjecture and evidence illustrating a kind of “inter-relationship” between the two. So I felt it was here, with Douglas Mews understanding to such an extent the capabilities of his instrument that he was able to inhabit and convey the music’s character through these unique tones and articulations to an extent that I’ve not heard bettered.

Often so difficult to make “speak” on a modern piano, here Mozart’s themes and figurations straightaway took on a kind of dynamic quality that suggested something instant, spontaneous and elusive on single notes, and a ‘breathed” kind of phrasing with lines, sometimes explosive and volatile, sometimes sinuous and variegated. There was also nothing whatever mechanical about Mews’ phrasings and shaping of those lines, nothing machine-like about his chordings or repeated notes. I was struck instead by the music’s constant flexibility, as if the old dictum regarding rubato (Italian for “robbed time”, a term implying expressive or rhythmic freedom in music performance) – that it was the preserve of Romantic music and musicians – needed urgent updating to include all types of music from all eras.

Some brief remarks about the individual movements – the opening Allegro Moderato was played very freely throughout the development sequence, which I liked, as it gave the music a depth of enquiry, of exploration, and even of questioning, resulting in the music taking on an elusive and even enigmatic quality, contrasting with the exposition’s relative straightforwardness of utterance. The Andante Cantabile second movement maintained a kind of improvisatory quality throughout, including a telling ambient change for the minor key episode, one whose shadows were magically dissolved by the return of the opening theme. The player took an extremely rapid tempo for the finale, skipping adroitly through the arpeggiations, and creating what seemed like great surges of instrumental sound at certain points (all in context, of course – Douglas Mews said after the concert to me that he thought Mendelssohn’s music was as far into the Romantic era as the instrument could be taken, though we agreed that certain pieces of Schumann could work, rather less of Chopin, and hardly anything of Liszt….)

Bernhard Romberg (1767-1841) featured next on the programme with his Grand Sonata in E-flat Op.5 No.1, the first of a set of three. A contemporary of Beethoven’s, whom he met as a fellow-player in the Prince Elector’s Court Orchestra in Bonn, Romberg has achieved some dubious fame in musical history by rejecting the former’s offer to write a ‘cello concerto for him, telling Beethoven he preferred to play his own music. Commentators have wryly remarked that such admirable self-confidence was partly fuelled by Romberg’s inability to understand Beethoven’s compositions, but, judging by the charm, beauty and excitement of the work we heard played here, no-one need be put off from seeking out and enjoying Romberg’s music for what it is. It would be like neglecting the music of Carl Maria Von Weber, simply because he had proclaimed, after hearing Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, that its composer was “fit for the madhouse”.

In fact Romberg, judging from contemporary accounts of his playing, was one of the great instrumental virtuosi of the early nineteenth century, exerting an enormous influence on the development of ‘cello-playing techniques. HIs qualities as a performer were, naturally enough, reflected here in the ‘cello writing – my notes contained scribbled remarks like “arresting opening flourishes, with attractive floating themes shared by both instruments”, “a soaring second subject leading to exciting runs from both ‘cello and fortepiano”, and in the development, “plenty of energy and excitement”. The Andante second movement had an almost fairground aspect with its musical-box-like tune, from which came a number of variations. Then, the finale took us out into the fields and along country lanes at a brisk clip, the playing dynamic and in places hair-raising in its virtuosity, especially on the ‘cellist’s part. There were even some Beethoven-like chords set ringing forth at one of the cadence-points, along with other individual touches, Douglas Mews bringing out in another place a lovely “lower-toned edge” to the timbres.

By this stage of the evening the wind outside was making its presence felt, with its moaning and gustings, and rattlings and creakings of various parts of the church roof – all adding to the ambience, I might add, and not inappropriate to the evening’s final item, Beethoven’s F-Major Op.5 ‘Cello Sonata, the first of two in the set. Amid all of the aforementioned atmospheric effects we heard a most arresting introduction to the work, the players seeming to challenge one another’s spontaneous responses with each exchange, building the tensions to the point where the reservoir of pent-up energies seemed to bubble over spontaneously into the Allegro’s sheer delight. With the development came some dramatic harmonic exploration (probably one of the passages which made the aforementioned Romberg feel uneasy), the music easing back into the “home-key” with the resolve of a navigator picking his way through a storm, at which arrival-point Douglas Mews hit a glorious wrong note on the fortepiano with tremendous élan, one which I wouldn’t have missed for all the world! The recall of the movement’s slow introduction and its just-as-peremptory dismissal were also treasurable moments.

THe players took a brisk tempo for the Rondo, notes flashing by with bewildering rapidity, Beethoven’s inventiveness in the use of his four-note motif astonishing! I loved the “schwung” generated by both players in the second, pizzicato-accompanied theme, and the wonderfully resonant pedal-point notes from Robert Ibell’s cello a little later, in the midst of the music’s vortex-like churnings (more disquiet from Romberg’s quarter, here, perhaps?). After some improvisatory-like musings from both instruments near the music’s end (even the wind outside seemed in thrall to the music-making at this point!), the coda suddenly drove home the coup de grace, fanfares and drumbeats sounding the triumphant return.

Douglas Mews and Robert Ibell plan to take this programme for a South Island tour later in the year, having already visited several North Island venues. I would urge people on the Mainland to watch all spaces for “Hammers and Horsehair” – a delightful evening’s music-making.

Excellent performance by Nota Bene of Rossini’s marvellous Petite Messe solennelle

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Petite Messe solennelle by Rossini
Nota Bene conducted by Peter Walls

Soloists: Georgia Jamieson Emms, Maaike Christie-Beekman, Patrick Geddes, Simon Christie
Piano: Fiona McCabe; harmonium: Thomas Nikora

Wellington Cathedral of Saint Paul

Saturday 9 July, 8 pm

Rossini’s end-of-life setting of the Mass has a somewhat special place in the repertoire – secular or sacred? serious or ironic? Thus, some more humourless music lovers have difficulty in enjoying it as some of the music is a bit unusual in tone, remote from the way a ‘proper’ sacred or liturgical work should be.

I think it would be hard to perform it in a way that suggested any lack of sincerity or seriousness however. For a work on this scale and in the knowledge that it was his last composition, it would be a remarkably shallow, not to say stupid, composer who would have devoted so many of his last days to something that was not a little bit important to him. It was clearly important to him both as music and as an expression of his Christian faith.

In any case, Rossini’s well-known words in his last rites, asking God to bear in mind his Stabat Mater and this mass setting as evidence of his faith, are rather persuasive.

For the audience, seated in the front of the nave, the sound was uncluttered and diction clear. A spirit of delight reigned from the very first staccato motif on the piano which in this performance sounded distinctly more brilliant and life-affirming than some performances with orchestra I’ve heard. They might succeed in creating a more liturgical, more grand atmosphere, but not so special. As it progresses the tone does become more serious, as at the ‘Et Resurrexit’, for example, which climbs to a distinctly more triumphant tone in keeping with its subject.

One of the most distinctive, and perhaps unorthodox aspects, is the accompaniment by piano, and by a piano part in which one can easily hear Rossini himself playing (for he was a splendid pianist).

Rossini originally scored it for two pianos and a harmonium but a couple of years later, he orchestrated it, knowing that if he didn’t others would; that too shows how well he regarded his late masterpiece. Here we had only one piano and a harmonium though the harmonium, played by Thomas Nikora, on the right was generally not very audible to me, sitting on the left.

Fiona McCabe did a wonderful job in the composer’s possible role (we know that he only acted as page turner for the first piano at its first performance). It succeeded in being brilliant, witty, marvellously adapted to its role as support for the singers whether a solo or the full choir. The piano lent the entire work a singularity of tone and spirituality, an ever-present lightness and ebullience, bringing a remarkable immediacy to its spiritual qualities. In fact, I suspect for most listeners the piano is one of its most engaging and individual characteristics throughout, nowhere more conspicuously than in the ‘Credo’ where its colour and clarity gave it something that a big orchestra couldn’t really equal.

Rossini apparently intended it to be sung by just eight choir members and four soloists; there were 23 choristers at this performance, plus the four soloists, which was fully justified here, as the premiere was in a private mansion in Paris where small forces would have been enough.

A memorable hearing
It was certainly the piano sound that made an impact at my first live hearing which I will plead forgiveness for reminiscing on. In Paris in 1992, after I’d spent a week with the NZSO at the Seville EXPO, I ran into the late Gary Brain (former NZSO timpanist and after a wrist injury, an orchestral conductor in Europe) in a street near the New Zealand Embassy. He was full of excitement, about to go to his first professional conducting engagement after his studies in Paris; would I like to come? Where? At a small festival at St-Florent-le-Vieil on the Loire, between Angers and Nantes.

I took the train down there next morning, found at the first hotel out of the railway station and across the river, that Gary had booked me a room; then I found my way to the small church where the festival was held. The church was full (about 300) that evening for Gary’s performance of the Petite messe solennelle, with the choir and four soloists from the Opéra-Comique in Paris, with a piano and a harmonium (memory a little uncertain – maybe two pianos). I think it was a very good performance, in my memory very much like what I heard on Saturday evening.

Next evening, back in Paris, I dictated a purple-prosed review to the nice copy-taker in The Evening Post where it was printed next day.

In such a setting, and witnessing Gary’s professional debut, the music had a very special significance and excitement. Any new performance brings up enchanting memories of that one on the Loire.

Composers of mass settings often vary the divisions between the sections, and Rossini divides his into 14. There is no separate section for the ‘Benedictus’, for example, which simply flows as part of the ‘Sanctus’.

The mass has attracted composers over the centuries for the varied, dramatic possibilities offered by its summary of Christian ritual and stories, in its varied purposes; Rossini identified the possibilities for engaging with a secular audience as much as with a religious congregation. And Peter Walls inspired the choir to find as much entertainment and religious feeling too, from the words and from the character of the music at every stage.

The soloists
We heard all four in the ‘Kyrie’ and the ‘Gloria’, some a cappella moments in the ‘Kyrie’ offering a taste of their excellent balance and verbal clarity. The first soloist to stand out was Simon Christie, in the ‘Gloria’, wonderfully robust and strongly projecting as it was later in the ‘Quoniam’ where again he shone with his steady descents below the stave, with an operatic, dotted rhythm; elsewhere his voice had an imposing prominence that was never out of place.

Tenor Patrick Geddes had his solo turn in the ‘Domine Deus’, and on his own his pleasant voice created a feeling of enjoyment that quite overcame a touch of insecurity.

After a charming piano introduction, the two women sang unaccompanied in the ‘Qui tollis peccata mundi’, most excellently, as one after the other caught a penitential note; but not for long, as there is also a distinctly lyrical, operatic quality. Each also had her place in the sun elsewhere: Georgia in the ‘Crucifixus’ where her voice soared with a sort of happiness that might seem out of keeping with the marking of Christ’s crucifixion. Maaike had solo moments with two other soloists in the ‘Gratias’; the warmth and polish of her voice was most engaging. But her big solo came in the ‘Agnus Dei’ where she used her voice movingly, weaving around the voices of the choir.

Four soloists from the choir sang at certain points, notably in the ‘Credo’, where the ecstatic quality of ‘Cum spirit sanctu’ suddenly changes to something serious, a statement of belief. They reappeared in the ‘Sanctus’, where a more sombre tone is also required.

The centre point of the mass might well be the ‘Cum sancto spiritu’ and here I can be forgiven for thinking that its tremendous youthful verve and melodic glory, striking with piano, actually does sound even more impressive and thrilling with orchestral accompaniment. Nevertheless, Peter Walls’s vigorous gestures here helped create a rising excitement, ending with the ecstatic ‘Gloria in excelsis’.

Just about everything in this performance of a marvelous work was admirably judged and accomplished, once more demonstrating the choir’s musical gifts, as well as the apparently happy relationship with Peter Walls who took over the choir at the end of last year.

The audience, not quite as big as the performance deserved, was highly appreciative.

Youth and experience together produce brilliant and heartfelt Messiaen

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
Olivier Messiaen: ÉCLAIRS SUR L’AU-DELÀ (Illuminations of the Beyond)

Sir Andrew Davis (conductor)
The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
The NZSO National Youth Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday 8th July 2016

Elizabeth Kerr’s pre-concert talk, gratifyingly well-attended and enthusiastically received, placed its listeners right in the epicenter of things relating to Olivier Messiaen and his final completed work Éclairs sur l’au-delá (Illuminations of the Beyond), whose performance by the NZSO/NYO was to follow shortly after.

In a masterstroke of juxtapositioning she took us straightaway to an event that took place in January 1941, in a German prisoner-of war camp, Stalag 8A at Görlitz in Silesia, where the thirty-two-year-old Messiaen had been interned after being captured. It was here that he wrote a work for a quartet featuring violin, ‘cello, clarinet and piano whose first performance has long since passed into legend, the players all prison inmates, and with Messiaen himself as the pianist.

Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time) was thus first heard outdoors, and in the rain, on somewhat battered instruments  which were the only ones available, before an audience of about 400 people, other prisoners and their guards. Messiaen commented, later, “Never was I listened to with such rapt attention.”

The idea of beginning this talk with reference to a quartet written by the same composer fifty years earlier than the work which was to be the last he completed was to show how consistently Messiaen applied certain fundamental elements of his creativity to his music. Religious belief, birdsong ornithology, colour/synthesia, modes, and a sense of timelessness were presented as integral aspects of his output, as evidenced by the salient characteristics of both the early Quartet and this last completed masterpiece for orchestra.

Elizabeth Kerr also talked about the composer’s music having a quality of “dazzlement”, describing its manifestation in terms of a kind of supernatural experience which, naturally enough, expressed religious faith. Messiaen himself described his own antithesis to this quality, an experience he underwent while composing Éclairs sur l’au-delá – “I imagined myself in front of a curtain, in darkness, apprehensive about what lay beyond….” The “dazzlement” of what the composer was able to imagine behind that curtain helped form the basis of the work we heard played by the two orchestras later that evening.

Conductor Zubin Mehta was to conduct the premiere of Éclairs in 1992 with the New York Philharmonic, but to his intense despair, Messiaen died before he could give Mehta any guidance as to the work’s performance – “The birds in this piece are self-explanatory – everything else is not!” lamented the conductor. However, the composer’s widow, Yvonne Loriod, was able to supply some of the work’s origins of inspiration, not the least being various quotations from the Book of Revelations and the writings of both Thomas Aquinas and the Benedictine scholar Dom J. de Monleon, which prelude the individual movements. Loriod summed up for Mehta the work’s essentials in the following words (printed in the evening’s programme):

The work is inspired by the Holy Scriptures, and also by the stars (my husband was interested in the latest discoveries in astronomy), by the colours of precious stones in the Apocalypse, and by birds….this is a work of faith, a very rich work which comprises all the discoveries about rhythm, harmony and melody which my husband made in his whole life….

On the podium for this evening’s performance was one of Britain’s leading conductors, Sir Andrew Davis, lately of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Sir Andrew greeted us before the concert in the auditorium, expressing his pleasure at making his “New Zealand debut” with such a significant work. He spoke about his work in collaboration with Messiaen himself and with the aforementioned Yvonne Loriod (herself an accomplished pianist and celebrated interpreter of her husband’s piano music).  Sir Andrew talked about the work’s performing challenges, even taking us into his confidence regarding the difficulties of directing the orchestral players in the work’s aleatoric ninth movement (in which the players are directed to set their own tempi for their individual lines). He told us about what he called “one of the tricks of the trade” in keeping the “liberated” players under some kind of control – it was all very communicative and good-humoured!

These preambles completed, the two orchestras took the stage, firstly the NZSO, and then, filling the spaces next to the “normal” complement of players, the members of the 2016 National Youth Orchestra, all told a total of 128 players. From this vast ensemble came an incredible array of textures, colours and rhythmic patternings over the next hour, as conductor and players made their way through the composer’s infinite variety of expressive outpourings. Besides the massive sonorities we heard, what also became apparent was the music’s lightness of touch in places, the composer treating the gigantic resources at his disposal with both strength and delicacy, and handling the ebb and flow of contrasting sequences with great sensitivity.

The work began almost ritualistically, with solemn, stepwise brass chords whose progressions seemed at once predetermined and free-flowing, claustrophobic and outward-reaching – it was as if we were being invited to observe an imposing, solidly-built and slightly angular structure from different angles and with different illumination. This was the opening Apparition du Christ glorieux (Apparition of Christ in glory), the NZSO/NYO brasses producing granite-solidtones, multi-surfaced textures and infinitely mysterious ambiences.

The succeeding movements then took us through a cornucopia of light and colour, stillness and energy, strength and filigree impulse, each episode in its way expressing a manifestation of the composer’s vision of the world’s “beyond”, either through natural phenomena, such as birdsong or the play of light on surfaces and atmospheres, or by way of “seeing through” material constraints and into worlds further afield than this one.

In the predominantly birdsong movements we were able to enjoy the players’ skills in realising instrumental detailings of a phenomenally complex order, with winds and percussion expertly providing a central core of rhythmic and textural incident, augmented by strings and brasses with wonderful delicacy.

The third movement, L’Oiseau-lyre et la Ville-fiancée (The Lyre-bird and the Bridal City) made an astonishing effect with its angular volatilities from strings, winds and percussion, as did the following Les Elus marques du sceau (The Elect marked with the seal), which was a kind of kitchen utensil display with babbling birds in concert over ambient strings and little toccatas for percussion. As for Plusieurs oiseaux des arbors de Vie (Many birds of the trees of Life), this “chaos of delight” was superbly realized, the wind players enjoying their taste of aleatoric freedom with raucous gusto.

The movements in which birdsong vied with other instrumental groupings seemed to look outwards with a kind of barely-disguised longing, characterized by frequent upward-thrustings and frissons of agitation. The composer’s characterization of his star-sign Sagittarius (La Constellation du Sagittaire) depicted a kind of chorus of earth-bound disparates coming together and gesturing towards the heavens, while the more elaborate Les Étoiles et la Gloire (The Stars and Glory) more pro-actively and somewhat alarmingly brought together its disparate forces at the sequence’s end, resembling a kind of irresistible force of will, conductor and players bent upon goading the music to try and break through all earthly barriers towards light and enlightenment.

Even more confrontational was the penultimate Le Chemin de l’invisible (The Path of the Invisible) its strident declamations and ferocious energies recalling the composer’s “Turangalila” Symphony in places, the whole ensemble engaged in a rhythmic, colourful and cross-currented confrontation of impulses, culminating in some huge cosmos-shaking shouts of whole-hearted purpose.

That “purpose” seemed to me to be fulfilled by at least three of the movements, each of which struck me as purely transcendent, as depictions of what might be “intended” by our existence. The first, Demeurer dans l’amour (Abiding in love) featuring sweet sostenuto strings soaring and gliding above a sea of gently undulating string-tone. The musicians beautifully maintained the music’s serenities before going with its passionate intensification towards the end, so very stratospheric and unworldly for a few precious moments.

In complete contrast was the apocalyptic vision of Les Sept Anges aux sept trompettes (The Seven Angels with seven trumpets), in its way overwhelming, with brass and percussion announcing a kind of “day of reckoning”, the quote from Revelations literally set to music – I thought, here, the effect more ritualistic and cumulative than instantly terrifying, compared with, say, the all-out percussive onslaughts in parts of both Berlioz’s and Verdi’s Requiem Masses. This seemed more like ritual than theatre, impressive in its implacability, and here played steadily and relentlessly to underline that quality.

And so we came with a kind of inevitability to the work’s concluding movement, a tremulously-expressed paean of ecstatic fulfillment sounded by the strings and wreathed with the gentle tintinabulations of triangles. Here, the effect was incredible, with that aforementioned sense of timelessness allowed to drift in around and over the entire listening-space, as if the entire cosmos was imbued with this music of the spheres, which the composer characterized as Le Christ, lumière du Paradis (Christ, Light of Paradise). We in the audience were held in thrall, as much by the sound as by the silences which followed for what seemed like a moment of blissful eternity……it was all beautifully realized by the conductor and players and contributed as much as what had gone before to the strength of acclamation which followed. From the beyond, Messiaen himself would, I’m sure, have beamed his approval.

An intriguing anniversary concert from Jonathan Berkahn and Heather Easting at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

1816 on the piano
Jonathan Berkahn and Heather Easting solo and duet piano

Music by Clementi, John Field, Weber, Schubert, Diabelli and Beethoven

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 6 July, 12:15 pm

For me, there is a rather compulsive fascination with musical and other anniversaries, and with the fitting of events, of births and deaths, into a time-frame. Here I’d met a kindred spirit who introduced the programme by referring to some of the major events of around two hundred years ago. They had mainly to do with war – the Napoleonic Wars and most closely, the Battle of Waterloo, which took place six months before the year in question. The Congress of Vienna too, had run from the end of 1814 to the June in which Waterloo had taken place. The Congress was intended to and largely did dismantle everything that Napoleon had achieved, and effectively restored absolute monarchy wherever it had prevailed before. It was in the city where the waltz was becoming a craze and where someone responded to an enquiry how the Congress was faring, saying “il ne marche pas, il danse” (a play upon the dual senses of ‘marcher’, being both, literally, to march and to come along or to progress.

Jonathan Berkahn’s contribution to Congress lore was to remark that it experienced much but learned nothing, a variant on ‘Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it’ (how many egregious examples could we find today!).

There were one or two names we’d heard of, like Schubert and Beethoven, and others like Weber (no not Webern) known to the scholars, and others who might have become more famous if their names had started with B or S.

Clementi, for example, opened and closed the show. Those who’d learned the piano for a couple of years knew his name on account of nice if somewhat unmemorable pieces, probably called sonatinas, that were regarded half a century ago as good for children. There were flashy bits that were not very hard but could, in the right hands, sound impressive; but Jonathan played a piece from a huge collection of exercises called Gradus ad Parnassum (Latin: ’steps to the home of the Muses’); No 18, comprising an Introduction and a Fugal allegro, first a series of arresting flourishes and then a not very fugal but confident and courtly number. He captured the spirit, serious and a little tongue-in-cheek.

The final piece, also by Clementi, was a Waltz in C, Op 38 No 9 which Berkahn characterized learnedly as cheeky and cheezy; indeed it gave one renewed respect for the composer as someone who could be flippant and playful, and excellent at writing ideal pieces to end concerts with.

One of Clementi’s students was Irishman John Field, famous for inventing the Nocturne, one of which Berkahn played, the second, in C minor: rolling arpeggios and a melody that might indeed have had a trace of the blarney.

The arrival on stage of Heather Easting to take her cosy place at the bass end of the piano, provided the occasion for some pertinent and amusing musico-political asides. Weber was not one of Clementi’s pupils but was nevertheless a brilliant pianist who wrote a lot of often showy music for his instrument (his most famous piano piece today might well be Invitation to the Dance which we know almost solely through Berlioz’s orchestration). His Rondo from a set of pieces for piano-four-hands, Op 60, was lively and entertaining, for both the players (evidently) and the audience.

Jonathan assumed in his audience a depth of musicological erudition when he said that Diabelli had written more than just the tune that Beethoven set to a massive and famous set of variations in his latter years. He was also a music publisher and a decent pianist who, remarked Jonathan, wrote music for four hands on an industrial scale, and he referred to blood and thunder as elements of his armory which we could discern in the spirited playing by both keyboardists, and which we could agree was all in good fun.

Schubert and Beethoven
Then came the composer who in 1816 was, i) only 19, and ii) probably considered during most of his life, inferior to all those whom we had already heard: Schubert. The piece Berkahn played (by himself now) was an Adagio from what seems to be a musicological conundrum; D 459 was earlier thought to be perhaps a five-movement sonata, but its third movement (this one), together with movements 4 and 5, was later amputated and then called ‘Three Piano Pieces’, D 459A. That left the first two movements as a putative two-movement sonata in E.

It was here that Berkahn engrossed his audience with an autobiographical snippet about a 17-year-old, grade 7 level piano player who discovered volumes of Schubert’s sonatas in the Wellington Public Library (probably still there: have a look), which included this. It was an immediate epiphany, a Road to Damascus, leaving the pianist with a permanent affliction with which to titillate his listeners ever after.

As with most of Schubert, every exposure is a fresh, profoundly musical discovery, and Jonathan’s playing supported his story.

It might be hard to insist that was on a par with the Beethoven sonata that followed and one would not try. This was one of the four that form a sort of inter-regnum between the ‘Middle’ and ‘Late’ periods, between the Appassionata and Op 101. In fact, he could have played the sonata Op 101 here as it was actually written in 1816, but Berkahn clearly wanted to make a case for the three or four somewhat wayward sonatas, Opp 78, 79, 81a and 90; it was the last, Op 90, in E that he played, and in the context of the other more or less contemporary music played, perhaps we listened through altered ears and musical associations. It also allowed Berkahn to quote Beethoven’s perhaps apocryphal remark that its two movements represented first, a battle between head and heart and second, a love-song between the two. It was a delightful image which the music seemed to be in accord with.

The entire programme delivered a liveliness and spirit of delight, perhaps not always note perfect but which had the far greater virtue, on the part of both pianists, of being contagiously persuasive and fun.

If you were to get the impression that I’d rather enjoyed myself, in both the head and the heart, throughout the concert, I would have to plead guilty.

 

 

 

Change of players leads to interesting programme nevertheless

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Hutt City Lunchtime Concert Series

Mike Curtis: Five Huapangos
Bréval: Two Airs for violin and cello
Schulhoff: Due for violin and cello

Konstanze Artmann (violin) and Margaret Goldborg (cello)

St. Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt

Wednesday, 6 July 2016, 12.15pm

Sadly, the change from the advertised programme, Maaike Christie-Beekman, mezzo-soprano, with Catherine Norton, piano, was caused by the singer’s illness.  We trust that she is making a speedy recovery.

In its place was an interesting instrumental programme – a different combo from what we usually experience: violin and cello.

Mike Curtis is a contemporary American composer and bassoonist, much influenced by Mexican rhythms, as here, in his suite of Huapangos.  The huapango is a Mexican dance that mixes different time signatures.  The first movements are all named after cities, towns or locations in Mexico. The first, “Santa Cruz” was fast, while the second, “Las Islitas” was slower and more graceful.  The third had a familiar ring to it: “Miramar”.  As well as being a suburb of Wellington, Miramar is a beach resort in south India, and a city in Mexico.  The solo cello played a large part of this movement, a faster one than the previous dance.

“Ofelia” followed, and was more doleful – whether because the location in Mexico City is sad, or due to the famous character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, I do not know.  Again, there was an unaccompanied cello section.  Finally, we heard “El Llano” (the name of a municipality, i.e. county, in Mexico), a light and airy, strongly rhythmic piece.  The entire unfamiliar work was admirably well played, and enjoyable to listen to.

Jean-Baptiste Bréval (1753-1823) seems to be having a small local revival; his music is being performed by Robert Ibell and Douglas Mews in their current series of concerts around the country for Chamber Music New Zealand.  We were told that his writing for cello was in the viola da gamba style.

The first Air was in theme-and-variations form.  There was much work for the cellist high on the fingerboard, and a great deal of double-stopping for the violinist.  A few intonation lapses in this piece did not spoil the delightfully simple melody line.  The complex variations added a lot of difficulty, however.

The second Air was in a minor key.  Again the air was stated, followed by increasingly complex variations.  The melody alternated between the instruments, which were very well balanced tonally.  The whole had a pleasing effect.

Jewish composer Erwin Schulhoff  (1894-1942) was born in Prague; he died in a concentration camp during World War II.   His duo, written in 1925, was full of interest.  The first movement, Moderato, incorporated left-hand pizzicato for the violinist and playing sequences of harmonics for both musicians.  Mutes were employed to great effect towards the end.  “Zingaresca” lived up to its gipsy name, being bouncy and highly rhythmic.  Left-hand pizzicato was required of both players, and glissandi added excitement.  The movement had a dynamic and jolly effect.

Andantino was the inscription for the third movement.  It began with a sombre theme, and employed lots of pizzicato.  Finally, the last movement was marked Moderato again,  followed by Presto fanatico.  The first part became quite impassioned, then returned to its opening serenity.  That was replaced by chords, followed by the fanatico.  The cello played spiccato, the bow bouncing on the strings while the violin played pizzicato chords.  These effects were interspersed with repeated anxious phrases.

The overall effect was intriguing and musically interesting.

The audience was most appreciative of a concert of unfamiliar but exciting works and of the excellent playing of the musicians, called on at short notice.

 

 

Fine concert from a three-nations piano trio in a three-nations choice of great music

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Waikanae Music Society

Ravel: Piano Trio in A minor
Gao Ping: Su Xie Si Ti / Four Sketches
Schubert: Piano Trio in B flat, D.898

Calvino Trio (Jun Bouterey-Ishido, piano; Sini Simonen, violin; Alexandre Foster, cello)

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 3 July 2016, 2.30pm

A Canadian cellist, a Finnish violinist and a New Zealand pianist got together at Prussia Cove in England in 2013, and have made a very competent and successful trio.  We were honoured to hear such a fine group of young musicians.

The Ravel work is a much-loved and often performed trio.  It was one of the works performed by the former Canterbury Trio, the death of whose outstanding violinist and teacher, Jan Tawroszewicz, was sadly noted this past week.  There’s a link here: Jun Bouterey-Ishido studied with Diedre Irons when she was a member of the Trio.

The work is a gift for the pianist; the ethereal opening for that instrument is a wonderful start to the trio (first movement: modéré).  It does not end there; the strings enter and add to the magic.  All three instrumentalists are given the opportunity by Ravel to fully exploit the sonorous qualities of their instruments.  They produced vigorous playing when required.

Despite there being little eye contact between the performers compared with what happens in some chamber music groups, these players were obviously well aware of each other, and their ensemble lacked nothing.  The audience sat attentive and spell-bound.

The opening of the second movement (Pantoum: assez vif) was startling; so different from the first.  There was much diversity and liveliness: a vociferous mélange of different sounds and rhythms.  The third movement (Passacaille: très large) begins on the piano, then velvety sounds from the cello and violin emerge.  Noble passages for piano follow.  A muted section for strings was quietly intense.

The fourth movement (Final: animé) was always thoroughly alive; all of Ravel’s twists and turns were meticulously rendered.  One could imagine watching dancers on  a summer’s day, the bees buzzing as the dance became more and more agitated.  This quartet demands much of the players; the Calvino Trio had it in spades.

The Gao Ping work had been written for NZ Trio in 2009.  The first sketch was entitled Xiao (Boisterous), and indeed it was.  Each player was all over the place.  One could feel the bumpy motorcycle ride described in the programme notes.   The second (Cuo Diao; Split Melody) used an intriguing sequence of individual notes; charming. For the third (Dui Wei; Counterpoint), the violinist disappeared, and played her part from behind the screen that masked the door through which the players enter.  Piano and cello began solemnly – this movement refers to  funeral procession, but the violin plays ‘happy music’ while cello and piano continue with mournful music.  This sketch would be challenging to play, but it was both interesting and evocative to listen to.

The final movement (Shuo; Shining) had the violinist back in her place.  Pizzicato on all the instruments was very effective, the staccato continuing on the piano against chords and glissandi on the strings  All was excitement in ending the work.

After the interval came the glorious and familiar Schubert trio.  It opened with verve.  Jun Bouterey-Ishido appeared to be in his element.  He is a very sensitive pianist and colours his phrases beautifully.  All three players seemed well attuned to each other.

A delightfully sprightly passage with cello pizzicato was superbly played, as was the following section with the melody on the cello.  Schubert’s inventiveness was fully on display here.  Dynamics were observed with great panache.  Cellist Foster’s sotto voce pizzicato was delicious.  The pianist, too, had wonderful pianissimo passages that he played with an enviable lightness of touch.  The effervescence of this long movement could not fail to capture the audience.

The andante slow movement was very affecting in its solemnity.  Slight rubati were absolutely consistent between the players.  The many variations held each its own delights and profundities; in short, gorgeous. The scherzo revealed Schubert at his good-natured best.  The waltz trio features off-beat piano accompaniment – an enchanting touch.  The return of the scherzo was given depth as well as liveliness.

The rondo finale was dance-like, with quieter interludes; delicacy and robustness alternated.  It was a joyous performance.  Just a slight loss of intonation towards the end of this movement was the only lapse – otherwise, the playing was faultless.

The pianist always looked as if he was enjoying himself; the violinist often had a slight smile on her face, though the cellist was more impassive, expressing himself through his beautiful playing.

This was a fine concert indeed, and all would wish the Calvino Trio success and enjoyment on the rest of their tour for Chamber Music New Zealand, and in the future.

 

Stunning clarinet playing and a “Great” symphony courtesy of the WCO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Orchestra presents:
MOZART – Overture “The Magic Flute”
WEBER – Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra – No.2 in E-flat Op.74
SCHUBERT – Symphony No.9 in C Major D.944 “The Great”

Wellington Chamber Orchestra
Vincent Hardaker (conductor)
David McGregor (clarinet)

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

Sunday 3rd July 2016

Mozart’s Overture to his opera/pantomime “The Magic Flute” began the Wellington Chamber Orchestra’s latest Sunday concert at St.Andrews in grand and ceremonial fashion, though it wasn’t long before the music slyly stepped out of its ritualistic garb and started to dance. Conductor Vince Hardaker kept the players up-to-speed throughout the introduction with a flowing tempo that moved easily into the allegro. Though there was obviously a “warming up” aspect to the playing, with the wind tuning taking time to settle, the ensemble eventually “found” itself, with some solid work from the individual sections, including adept solos from flute and oboe.

The brass acquitted themselves well with their noble chording in places (the three stately fanfares midway – the flute “helping out” here as well – were played “straight”, without any distancings or echo effects, as is sometimes done in performances in the opera house).  Those tricky subsequent strings-and-wind dovetailings, though occasionally loose-limbed in effect, were generally handled confidently, and conductor and players built up the music to a resplendent final tutti – great brass with rasping trombones, and imposing timpani-playing brought it all to a satisfying conclusion.

We were then introduced to the afternoon’s concerto soloist, clarinettist David McGregor, a former NZSO National Youth Orchestra principal, and a winner of the NYO Alex Lindsay memorial Award two years in succession. His studies included working at Victoria University in Wellington with one of the NZSO’s co-principals, Philip Green, and more recently at the University of Tasmania in Hobart with Sydney Symphony associate principal clarinet, Francesco Celata.

Carl Maria von Weber’s concertino works are de rigueur for capable clarinettists, though perhaps because of their extreme difficulties they seem not to appear too often in concert. I had never heard the second of Weber’s two clarinet concerti performed “live”, so was looking forward to this with some eagerness. I certainly wasn’t disappointed, as, right from the beginning the orchestral playing had a surety and sharpness of focus, and David McGregor’s solo playing was simply breathtaking, right from his first two-octave “leap into space” entrance!

Throughout the first movement, soloist and players seemed to enjoy their interactions, tossing their phrases back-and-forth with great aplomb, the clarinet-playing exhibiting a winning range of dynamic and colouristic responses to the music, capping everything off with a terrific ascent to the high E-flat just before the recapitulation. Another feature of McGregor’s playing was his breath-control – such long, liquid runs with nary a pause in which to gasp for even a skerrick of air to replenish the resources – a remarkable display!

The slow movement brought us romantically murmuring strings supporting long lines for the soloist, again, demonstrating amazing breath control – the programme-note talked about the lyrical lines having ‘the benefit of being unbroken by the breaths that a singer would usually require…” – all very well, except that wind players have to breathe sometime, too! (I did, however, look up some information about something called “circular breathing” which may well be an integral part of most wind players’ technical resource these days…). Conductor Hardaker got very settled playing from his ensemble throughout, making the theatricality of the movement’s “recitative” section all the more striking, the soloist playing as if improvising, and the orchestra following.

Came the jolly “Polacca” finale, which the players were encouraged to take at a real “lick”, in fact faster than the soloist’s fingers wanted briefly to go at one point where a flourish went slightly off the rails. The excitement, though, was palpable at that speed, and soloist and players risked all with their rapid-fire dialogues. Eventually, an exciting orchestral crescendo led to a series of “sextuplet flurries” from the clarinet, the soloist really demonstrating his mettle throughout the work’s final pages. Deserved accolades rang through St.Andrew’s at the piece’s conclusion for David McGregor’s spectacular playing and the support from orchestra and conductor.

After the interval came a differently-flavoured kind of business, a performance of one of the most remarkable of nineteenth-century symphonies. This was Schubert’s Ninth, in the key of C Major, and known also as “The Great” (the composer had written an earlier C Major Symphony, one which posterity has since conveniently nicknamed “The Little”). The music’s had a checquered history, unperformed during Schubert’s lifetime, and then rediscovered by Robert Schumann in the late 1830s, who, upon looking through the work coined the immortal phrase “heavenly length”. It received its first performance in Leipzig in the hands of Felix Mendelssohn, who appparently had more success with the work on this occasion than later on in London in 1844 where the players appparently refused to perform the symphony on account of its length and repetitive figurations.

No such strictures inhibit the work’s performance in this day and age, though along with much of the instrumental repertoire of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the symphony has been “authenticised”, or, in other words,“cleansed” of over a century of romantic “overlay” by many of today’s performers. Consequently, it simply isn’t fashionable to play the work in the manner I first got to know it, via recordings by Furtwangler, Barbirolli, Klemperer, Krips, Bohm and Boult, the great Schubert conductors of the post-war era – taking Robers Schumann’s phrase “heavenly length” at its word, those performances drew out the tempi of sequences such as the work’s introduction, and adopted a free, almost improvisatory attitude to the music’s trajectories, especially in the first and second movements.

Vincent Hardaker’s interpretation of the work reflected these revisionist trends – from the outset we heard sprightly, smartly-paced tempi, which imparted a jauntiness to the music, removing the “poetry of awakening” which romantic sensibilities invested in the opening horn-call and the answering woodwinds. There was still grandeur in the big unison statement of the opening theme, but no longer did we experience the thrill of the accelerando from a stately opening tempo to the urgency of the first movement allegro. To my ears, there were gains and losses – the music certainly took on a fresh overall urgency, but lost some of the grandeur and poetry I’d always associated it with. There was some engaging swagger once the allegro got under way, the playing a bit raucous-sounding in places (partly the fault of the confined St.Andrew’s acoustic, which doesn’t take kindly to a fair-sized orchestral tutti), but with plenty of spirit.

One or two of the transition passages sounded awkward for the players, particularly the change from the first subject’s dotted rhythm into the second subject, though a similar passage leading into the development section was negotiated far more tidily. Here the brass came into their own, the trombones lovely and noble-sounding, while the winds “ensembled” nicely with their triplets leading into the recapitulation, and the horns contributed some telling detail. Energies were gathered up most effectively as the coda was approached, with the brass again resplendent and exciting, and though the tempo was pushed hard right through the sequence conductor and players held it all together, with only the slight rallentando before the final chord catching the ensemble out.

A somewhat Charles Ives-like element was added to the music at the slow movement’s beginning, with a fire alarm sounding from an adjacent building. To their credit conductor and players continued, undaunted by the ensuing cross-rhythms, catching the music’s gait with angular but expressive playing from the winds, though clarinet and oboe seemed to have slightly different ideas as to the tuning at this juncture of the music. Brass and timpani coloured the ambiences strongly and securely at this point, as they did right throughout the movement. The oboist did a splendid job with his extended solos, as did the strings in the movement’s trio-like second subject group, violins singing and cellos counterpointing most fetchingly.

I found it difficult to really “get into” the scherzo, as it seemed the players were feeling the pulse of the music at a slightly slower rate than their conductor wanted – the music’s gait was, I thought, a fraction too rigidly applied. Thus, the second, “swinging” melody on the strings was phrased by the players at a more naturally expansive pulse than the accompaniments, which kept on getting ahead.  The trio was more “together”, if still a bit breathless (usually one of music’s most charming and lovable sequences), with the strings steadfast and the winds and brass dovetailing their rhythmic patternings patiently and accurately – a lovely horn counterpoint at one point added to our pleasure.

Amends were made in the finale by Vince Hardaker’s steady, well-controlled tempi at the opening, allowing the orchestral shouts and the answering rhythmic patternings enough space to properly tell, and, later bring out the “spin” of those repeated sequences which incensed those London players in 1844 to the point of mutiny. The winds did well with the “Beethoven Ninth quotation” episode, and the brass then took to the music with a will, followed by the strings in canonic repy, again directed with plenty of controlled energy by the conductor. And the coda’s growing excitement was unerringly detailed by the winds and coloured by the brass towards those great surges of tone which broke over the soundscape at the end so splendidly and energetically. Hard-won, but exhilarating to achieve, and a sterling effort from all concerned.

Full vindication of the glories of the violin and piano repertoire, courtesy the Michael Hill violin competition

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Suyeon Kang (violin) and Stephen De Pledge (piano)
Chamber Music New Zealand

Mozart: Violin Sonata in E flat, K 380
Ravel: Violin Sonata No 1 in A minor (posthumous)
Schubert: Sonatina in G Minor, D 408
Kenneth Young: Gone
Stravinsky: Divertimento

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 2 July 7:30 pm

Suyeon Kang won last year’s Michael Hill International Violin Competition and it is thanks to the splendid relationship between the competition and the chamber music organization that the winners can be heard in a series of concerts throughout New Zealand.

There are others in this project: the Queenstown Winter Festival (where the preliminary rounds of the competition are held), Musica Viva Australia (where two of the concerts in the series take place) and the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. Together with pianist Stephen De Pledge, Suyeon is in the middle of a sixteen-concert tour of New Zealand and Australia.

Presumably of Korean descent, Suyeon is Australian, and her early training there culminated at 16, in winning the Symphony Australia ABC Young Performer’s Award.  Since then she has won major prizes at many international violin competitions, and has played with eminent orchestras, such as Camerata Bern and the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester (which was the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra till 1993), and in chamber ensembles with leading musicians. Clearly the Michael Hill competition attracts experienced violinists on the verge of major careers.

Stephen De Pledge, her partner in this concert series, was an Auckland University graduate who studied at the Guildhall in London and had a flourishing career in Britain and many parts of the world before returning in 2010 to teach at Auckland University.

While on the context of this concert, I might mention that those arriving a bit early were invited to listen to competitors in this year’s Schools Chamber Music Contest, finalists from Wellington’s preliminaries who competed for the semi-finals. I heard the final few minutes of the Apollo Trio playing part of Gareth Farr’s Mondo Rondo and then Trio Funky Dumky playing the Poco Adagio from the eponymous Dvořák piano trio: quite magically expressed, slow, hushed and breathless. See: http://www.chambermusic.co.nz/news-and-reviews/free-pre-concert-events

It might be fair to observe that, even more than solo piano recitals, duos involving violin or cello and piano, seem to have become rare events. And so, violin sonatas that remain in the memory from my teens have had very few occasions to be refreshed in recent years; which was the case with both the Mozart and the Schubert.

I was enraptured right away with the playing of Mozart’s E flat sonata.  The violin spoke with a febrile tenderness, elegant, her bow moving lightly over the strings, producing subtle colours; and De Pledge echoed her mood and expressiveness, producing from the Steinway a sound that approximated somehow the spirit of a fortepiano of Mozart’s era. There were no histrionics or false emotions. The Andante continued in a similar, thoughtful way, and although in the minor key, it wasn’t sadness so much as restlessness that ruled this beautiful movement.

There was pure classical levity and pleasure in the finale – Allegro, the playing confident yet discreet, phrased in the most sophisticated, sensitive way and, if you like, oblivious to the troubles surrounding Mozart’s world.

It is surprising that Ravel, whose output was not all that large, would have forgotten about a piece that he wrote aged 22, while at the Paris Conservatoire. But that’s the story of his sonata in A minor, not unearthed and published till the 1970s. It would take rather specially gifted ears and perhaps wishful thinking to hear much of the typical Ravel in it, but there’s Fauré and perhaps Chausson and perhaps Lekeu. In one movement, it reveals taste and a refined musicality, no tunes that are likely to pester you as you try to get to sleep, but just very agreeable music, and played with exquisite care and persuasiveness. In fact there were arresting passages which offered some contrast though nothing that could be mistaken for high drama.

Schubert’s ‘Sonatina’ in G minor is one of three that Schubert wrote in his teens and had called sonatas but were posthumously published by Diabelli as sonatinas; perhaps on account of the relative brevity. In some composers, brevity would be gratefully accepted, but not in these. Its strength is conspicuous at once as; in a fairly serious tone, the piano takes the tune through fast, pulsing violin figurations; then their roles reverse. It remains lively and interesting through the Andante, with agreeable understatement and restraint. But I wondered a little at the third movement – Menuetto, which purported to be allegro vivace, but where the energy seemed to ebb a little.

Competitions usually have a compulsory set piece, and it was Kenneth Young who was commissioned to write something that would expose weaknesses as well as strengths (am I right about its purpose?). His piece for solo violin was called Gone. The programme notes explained how emotional labels of many kinds could be attached to it, and so it was played. In the event, scope for identifying and exploring conspicuous pains seemed limited, which might point to emotional incapacity on my part; but Suyeon navigated its alleged storms and frustrations with technical ease and even a certain detachment.

Finally, Stravinsky’s Divertimento; four movements drawn from themes in the charming 1928 ballet Le baiser de la fée, which in turn had drawn on songs and other music by Tchaikovsky whom Stravinsky was particularly fond of. That is a sufficient reason to be predisposed to rejoice in its inventiveness, melodic charm and humour (a uniquely Stravinsky but hardly a Tchaikovsky quality) and, in this case, admiration for and delight at the ingenuity and awareness of its characteristics by both players who truly captured all its balletic and theatrical charm. It, and the Suite Italienne (which they play in the other programme which you could catch at Palmerston North on 8 July), are treasurable additions to the violin and piano repertoire.

They acknowledged the strong applause with the Heifetz arrangement of Debussy’s youthful song Beau Soir.

I began by reflecting on the supposed lack of interest in solo chamber music or duos such as for violin, and the not overflowing size of this evening’s audience did seem to justify my speculations. For me this was a quite delightful concert both for the choice of music and for its stylistically and technically superb performances.