Day: 28 June 2017

Schumann song programme – solos, duets, quartets – everything admirable except the relentless clapping

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Songbook: Schumann in Spain

Imogen Thirlwall (soprano), Jess Segal (mezzo), Declan Cudd (tenor), Daniel O’Connor (baritone), Catherine Norton (piano), Fiona McCabe (piano)

Songs for soloists and ensembles by Robert Schuman

Adam Concert Room, New Zealand School of Music

Wednesday 28 June 2017, 7:30 pm

A single song and two cycles of songs were performed to a small but appreciative audience; it was marvellous to have an all-Schumann concert.  After applause following the first ‘stand-alone’ song, the audience then applauded after virtually every song in the cycles; frustration at this breaking up of the continuity of the cycles showed at times in accompanist Catherine Norton’s body language.

The first song, ‘Der Hidalgo’ was appropriately a love song sung by the baritone, posing as a swashbuckling young Spanish man; appropriate, because it was written on the day in 1840 when the court ruled that Robert could marry Clara Wieck, despite her father’s objections.  Daniel O’Connor sang it very expressively, in excellent German.  His voice was strong, with attractive tone.

I was a little surprised to see that the piano lid was on the long stick, given that the room is not large, and the floor is of polished wood.  However, despite finding it a little too loud in the first song, it did not bother me later – either I adapted, or the pianist did!  However, I did frequently find the singers too loud; they must adapt their volume for each venue in which they are singing.  I began to long for some pianissimo.

The Spanisches Liederspiel  Op. 74 is the first of Robert Schumann’s two song cycles based on Spanish folksongs, and, like the second (Spanisches Liebeslieder, Opus 138), it was drawn from a collection of German translations of Spanish poets by Emanuel Geibel.  Like the second cycle, it combines songs for solo voices with duets and quartets.  Both were written in 1849.  I was not familiar with any of these wonderful songs, and it was great to hear duets and other vocal ensembles, which we very seldom do.

The first cycle began with ‘First meeting’ (I give the titles in English.  The songs were sung in German; English translations were printed in the programme).  It was a lovely duet for the two women.   Their voices were well-matched, and their singing was always together, in impeccable German.  Appropriate, given the song was about a young man by a rosebush, there was a vase of flowers on a small table next to the singers’ seats.

Next was ‘Intermezzo’, a duet for the two men.  Their tone was attractive, and their vowels were beautifully matched, as they demanded the girl come, even through the deep river.

The women returned for a gorgeous duet: ‘Love-sorrow’.    Scores were used by all the singers, but it was a pity that most of the time, heads were buried in them; only Declan Cudd looked up at the audience more than just occasionally.  Next was a song that began as a solo by Imogen Thirlwall: ‘In the night’, and it was here that I began to find the singing a little to loud for the space.  The tenor joined in after being seated at first.  There were several items with this kind of, shall we say, choreography, which was very effective.

After a quartet, Imogen returned to sing ‘Melancholy’.  As throughout the recital with all the singers, the German language was clear and with excellent pronunciation.  Her projection and expression were both fine.  A melodious duet, ‘Message’ from the women followed, then ‘I am loved’ was a very jolly, sprightly offering from the quartet; a change from the character of most of the earlier songs.  Appealing harmony, some of it quite complex, had the singers nevertheless all absolutely spot-on together.

Two gypsy songs completed the set, both entitled ‘Little gypsy song’.  The first was from Daniel O’Connor, who sang very directly and strongly about how he was dragged from his dungeon, but fired the first shot himself.  Jess Segal followed with a quite different character, and a sad ending.  Throughout, Catherine Norton’s accompaniments were splendid.

The second cycle was lighter in tone, even amusing at times.  It began with a piano duet Prelude.  The two pianists proved to be good duettists (a genre I don’t always enjoy) – they were absolutely together, which is not always the case with two pianists accustomed to playing on their own.  All the songs were accompanied in this way, played with impeccable taste, dynamics and musicality.

Imogen Thirlwall gave a good rendition of ‘Deep within my heart’, in suitably doleful tones.  She was followed by the tenor ‘O how lovely the maiden is’, sung forcefully with excellent expression of the words, for example ‘Tell me, proud knight, you who walk in shining armour’ and ‘Tell me, shepherd lad, you who tend your flock… whether the meadows, or even the mountains could be as beautiful’.

The women sang ‘Cover me with flowers’.  The poem talks about death and the grave; surely some pianissimo would have been appropriate here?

‘Flood-rich Ebro’ (river) was sung by the baritone; one could hear the river bubbling by, in the accompaniment.  This was followed by a piano duet ‘Intermezzo’, which had a lively, bouncy character in the first part, then a quieter, more thoughtful last section.

Declan Cudd’s singing of ‘Alas, how angry the girl is!’ was delightful; he expressed the words in an innocent , piquant manner, which he conveyed well, by looking frequently at the audience.  ‘High, high are the mountains’ was Jess Segal’s next contribution, then the men sang ‘Blue eyes the girl has’ (though I prefer the translation ‘maiden’).  This slightly mocking song was sung with masterful timing.

Finally, there was a very effective quartet ‘Dark radiance’, that portrayed the opposing emotions of love, ‘peace and war within a single heart’.  It made a thematically appropriate end to the cycle, and the recital, which was pleasantly out-of-the-ordinary.

It was pleasing to have a programme printed in a large enough typeface to be read easily, and it was planned so that there was no need to turn pages during individual songs.  It would have been enhanced by a few programme notes.

 

Flutes of the RNZAF Band demonstrate their flair and versatility at St Andrew’s lunchtime concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Flute Force Five (Rebecca Steel, Elizabeth Bush-King, Hannah Dowsett, Mitchell McEwen and Katie Macfarlane

Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
Three opera pieces: The Humming Chorus from Madama Butterfly; Berceuse from Godard’s Jocelyn; ‘Caro nome’ from Rigoletto
Walton: Three pieces from Façade: The Popular Song, Jodelling Song and Tarantella
Zequinha de Abreu: Tico Tico

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 28 June, 12:15 pm

A concert by flute students from the New Zealand School of Music had been scheduled for this lunchtime and the change had come to my attention only a couple of days before the date. There were several aspects that, even in advance, suggested a very interesting recital.

One, a chance to hear just a few of the players from the RNZAF Band which is based in Wellington, but which seems to be fairly reticent about giving public concerts (I must add, a couple of days later, that someone has explained to me the extent of the band’s activities – mainly formal official and defence-type occasions, but more ordinary public exposure than I’d been aware of). Second, five flutists all together; third, at least a couple of pieces that were particularly enticing: Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, and three pieces from Walton’s Façade.

And once the players came out, a detail of airforce officers in most elegant deep-blue dress uniforms (took me back to my CMT – Compulsory Military Training – experience in the mid 50s at long-gone Taieri air base), we were presented with an interesting range of flutes, from the piccolo through normal (soprano) flutes, the not-so-common alto (in the hands of Mitchell McEwen), to the rare, impressive-looking bass flute (played by Katie Macfarlane), with a tube that bends back on itself, bassoon-like; it really did lend an important sonic foundation to most of the pieces.  The music stands were adorned with air force pennants.

It all offered a rather different ambience from the usual lunchtime concert, and I felt ill-dressed without suit and tie.

The Debussy piece of course opens with a flute solo, played exquisitely by the leader, Rebecca Steel. But the entire work (often regarded, by Boulez at least, as the music that truly announced the beginning of musical modernity – whatever that means) was arranged so subtly for flutes alone and played with such enchanting sensitivity that it would have been easy to hear it as the work that Debussy had actually longed to write, if he hadn’t realised that conventional scoring was likely to be more marketable.

In fact, these sounds might have better reflected the character of Mallarmé’s poem, a pastoral, an eclogue, roughly modelled on Virgil’s Bucolics, in which a faun apostrophises nymphs: flutes, Pan’s pipes for example,  were de rigueur in classical myth: Greek myth meets the symbolism of late Romantic French verse. After hearing it performed, Mallarmé wrote to Debussy: ‘I have just come out of the concert, deeply moved. The marvel! Your illustration of the Afternoon of a Faun, which presents a dissonance with my text only by going much further, really, into nostalgia and into light, with finesse, with sensuality, with richness. I press your hand admiringly, Debussy’.

I am one who tends to favour adherence to what a composer actually wrote and am ready to disapprove of arrangements, such as RNZ Concert are delivering far too much of now, but sometimes, like here, an exception screams out for acclamation. The variety of sounds generated by the five instruments would have changed Mozart’s opinion of the flute as an instrument capable of a wide range of colour and emotional expression.

There followed three arrangements of opera favourites. I was surprised at how well the flutes captured the Humming Chorus from Butterfly, which I rather expected to be a bigger challenge, but again it surprised me by sounding so apt and felicitous that I had no difficulty imagining it spinning Cio-Cio San’s vain hopes as she sleeps, awaiting the despicable Pinkerton.

The lovely Berceuse from Benjamin Godard’s opera, Jocelyn, that hardly maintains a place in the theatre, is heard occasionally on air and in singing competitions; it’s a piece that makes one certain that there must be other neglected goodies by the composer; just as you feel about Catalani’s ‘Ebben. Ne andro lontana’ from La Wally, or Boccherini’s Minuet, or The Sorcerer’s Apprentice or Gustave Charpentier’s ‘Depuis le jour’ from Louise, and hundreds of other ‘one-hit-wonders’. It responded most delighfully in these garments.

Third was ‘Caro nome’ from Rigoletto in a lovely arrangement, full of colour with a nice cadenza in the middle from Steel.

Rebecca Steel spoke a little about the music’s origin, and the group’s inspiration by the Quintessenz – Leipziger Querflötenensemble which has the same instrumentation as this ensemble and was presumably the source of at least some of the arrangements. Most are flutists in the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester.

A truly adventurous choice was the three pieces from Walton’s Façade: The Popular Song, Jodelling Song and Tarantella. Plus Edith Sitwell’s words recited with speed and rhythmic precision by Elizabeth Bush-King, dressed with eccentric, perhaps-twenties accoutrements and a big black hat. Only her voice didn’t always overcome the remaining four enthusiastic flutes. These arrangements were especially right, in fact brilliant in the Tarantella, as flutes were really just a more sparkly enhancement of the essentially satirical, nonsense verses, in the original scoring for flute/piccolo, clarinet, bass clarinet, alto sax, trumpet, percussion and cello. The audience was delighted.

Finally a Brazilian samba-bossa nova concoction called Tico-Tico that I came to like through its frequent playing on radio in my youth – let’s say that was AB – Ante Beetleos (is that the proper accusative plural ending?).

The applause after that was even more rowdy. There was a general sense that the Air Force needs to make these musicians (and no doubt many others of their 60-strong band) more publicly visible: it might just help create a more positive attitude towards the uses of our armed forces. I gather they’ll play in a month or so in the Old Saint Paul’s lunchtime concerts.

But this exposure of a small part of the band was an admirable and highly successful initiative by Rebecca Steel and her colleagues.