Month: July 2017

Excellent Kiwa String Quartet (NZSO players) in programme of quartet masterpieces and a couple of fun pieces

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Kiwa Quartet: Malavika Gopal and Alan Molina (violins), Sophia Acheson (viola) and Ken Ichinose (cello)
(Wellington Chamber Music)

Beethoven: String Quartet in B flat, Op 18/6
John Adams: ‘John’s Book of Alleged Dances’
Gareth Farr: Mondo Rondo
Tchaikovsky: String Quartet No 1 in D, Op 11

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 9 July, 3 pm

We have reached the mid-point in Wellington Chamber Music’s seven-concert 2017 series of Sunday afternoon concerts. A string quartet of players from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, with an intelligently balanced programme that might well have attracted a much bigger audience.

It opened with the last of the set of six quartets, Beethoven’s Opus 18 No 6.
It begins with a movement marked Allegro con brio, and so the players approached it, energetically, even brusquely, taking pains with the distinct contrasts between the violins and the viola/cello, and to give emphasis to particular beats, and moving between certain notes with a distinct ‘scoop’ or glissando, which till recently has been frowned upon, but such rigidity is declining. In the second movement, the second violin’s subdued handling of the second theme, was interesting, sounding muted though it wasn’t; it was later taken up by the cello and passed around, but violin 2 struck me as having a special voice here. It’s a movement with a curious hushed, secretive quality that they captured very nicely.

The entire set contains music that no one other than Beethoven could have written and the Scherzo is no exception, with a strongly contrasting Trio that doesn’t lead to a repeat of the Scherzo itself. The most original part of the work is the Finale with its Malinconia opening that continues for nearly four minutes, with abrupt, strong interjections, before the conventional spirit of a Finale breaks through, with the leader’s violin dominating for a long time before others pick up elements of the themes. The Malinconia returns briefly and it was handled again with a fine sense of its strangeness.

John Adams’s sense of humour – of the droll perhaps – is marked, and the quartet handled four of the pieces from John’s Book of Alleged Dances, playing out his penchant for the unorthodox, in the right spirit. I was not certain about the order of the pieces played as the notes had them in a different order from the way they were listed in the heading. They were intended, one assumes, as pieces that a string quartet could use to punctuate a programme, and the players had no difficulty in capturing the wit in its many aspects, especially in the task of keeping in step with the sounds from the pre-recorded tape accompanying each, making a curious, surprising commentary on what the live players were doing.

A step back to the serious business in hand came after the interval with Gareth Farr’s Mondo Rondo which gets played fairly often. Three parts, or movements, if that’s not technical a term; the first with tumbling passages indulging in a range of playful violin techniques. The second part, Mumbo Jumbo, alternates soft pizzicato, hard bowing, and then prickly pizzicato and a long-breathed melody from the second violin; while Mambo Rambo goes fast, offering a mock melody of rich emotional substance. The quartet again displayed a lively versatility in which elegant, polished playing wasn’t relevant, but which revealed many other qualities.

Tchaikovsky’s first string quartet was an excellent way to end the recital, handling the hesitations of the first theme with rather moving simplicity; though it’s symphonic in tone, individual instruments have turns in the spotlight, particularly the cello which, somewhat to my surprise, seemed to occupy the emotional centre at times.

Such a hugely popular movement as the Andante cantabile might invite knowing reactions from audiences intent on finding blemishes; every performance is slightly different and here it was low key, modest, not given to excessive sobbing or tragic colouring, even with in the viola’s particularly moving episode later. It was a beautiful performance.

There is something very symphonic, again, about the scoring of the Scherzo which really responds to energetic playing with rich ensemble, ending so enigmatically. The last movement has a dense contrapuntal character that rewards attention, and I loved the way the cello led the way toward the rallentando, near stopping, before the brilliant little Coda.

I’m not sure that I’ve heard this quartet before, though the note said they formed in 2015. Middle C’s first (and only) review of them was in November last year when they played the same Beethoven quartet and a couple of the John Adams’s pieces.

We should be delighted at the chance to hear four gifted professional musicians from the best orchestra in the country, playing programmes that combine entertaining curiosities with truly great masterpieces of the string quartet repertoire. They deserved a full house.

 

 

Kapiti Chamber Choir with the Romantic Triangle: Brahms, Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Brahms: Motet – Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Mühseligen
Hungarian Dance WoO1/1
Liebeslieder Walzer, Op.52
Clara Schumann: Drei Gemischte Chöre
Robert Schumann: Requiem, Op.148

Kapiti Chamber Choir conducted by Eric Sidoti, with Jennifer Scarlet and Kay Cox (piano), Heather Easting (organ), Karyn Andreassend (soprano), Elisabeth Harris (mezzo), Jamie Young (tenor), Simon Christie (bass)

St. Paul’s Church, Paraparaumu

Sunday, 9 July 2017, 2.30pm

As I observed of the last Kapiti Chamber choir concert I reviewed  (three years ago), none of the choral items in the first half was an easy sing, and most  were unaccompanied.  Good observation of dynamics was a significant feature throughout the concert.  The items were sung in the original German language except the Requiem, which was in Latin.  English translations were printed in the programme.

Before the concert began, the  choir’s chairman paid tribute, this being its 25th jubilee year, to Paddy Nash, who, Lyall Perris said, had persuaded Professor Peter Godfrey to form the choir and conduct it.  Paddy had been an almost one-person administrator for a considerable period of the 25 years.

The first item was the first part only of Brahms’s motet.  Sung unaccompanied, it began with a good attack and spot-on intonation.  However, this happy situation did not last.  The motets of Brahms are difficult, with shifting tonalities and unexpected intervals. It was rather a lacrymose opener, talking about misery and those who ‘…are glad when they find the grave’.

Clara Schumann’s Three Mixed Voice Choruses (Abendfeier in Venedig; Vorwärts; Gondoliera) were composed as a surprise gift for her husband Robert on his 38th birthday. They were being sung for the first time in New Zealand, according to conductor Eric Sidoti’s introductory remarks.  Though they were written in 1848, they were unpublished until 1989.  They too were unaccompanied.  The words of the first two, and translation of the third (from the English of Thomas Moore) were by Emanuel von Geibel.  It is less than two weeks since I reviewed a concert in which the poet’s songs translated from the Spanish set by Robert Schumann were performed.

The first was ‘Abendfeir in Venedig’ (Evening in Venice). The singing revealed lovely tone at the opening, especially from the sopranos and the male voice parts, in piano and pianissimo singing.  However, the blend among the altos was not so good, with one strident voice obvious at times.  Descending phrases sometimes fell too far.

The second song, ‘Vorwärts’ (Forward) was more jolly and faster than the first, and demonstrated the fine choral writing of the composer.  Here, attention to the words needed to be more precise than with the slower music; it was not always.

The tuning became more problematic in the third song, ‘Gondoliera’, which was a pity, for this lovely love song.

Brahms’s Hungarian Dances are well-known, and usually heard in their orchestral versions.  However, they were originally written as piano duets, and that is how we heard the first one today.  (I played another of the set in this form in my teenage years.)  The duettists performed it very competently, and in perfect accord with each other.  The character of the gypsy dance was well conveyed.

The same composer’s Liebeslieder Walzer are a collection of love songs in folk-song style.  I have never heard the whole set of 18 Op. 52 songs performed together before.  Here again, the piano duettists were absolutely splendid.

I believe that programme notes taken straight from Google should be acknowledged.  Yes, if they are from Wikipedia copyright is not a problem, though some online sources are copyright.  But they should have been acknowledged especially when the printed piece is word-for word from the original source.

The first of the 18 songs of the Liebeslieder Walzer was ‘Abendfeir in Venedig’ (Evening in Venice). The men needed a little more clarity, and accuracy in singing intervals.  The third song was about women ‘…how they melt one with bliss!’.  It was a fine duet from Jamie Young and Simon Christie, although it lacked some of the lightness implied by the words “I would have become a monk long ago if it were not for women!’

The women soloists followed; their voices were well matched; dynamics were excellent, and the men’s tone was good when they joined in.

One of the songs with which I was familiar, was about a small, pretty bird.  Tenors opened each verse, a little weakly, then the excellent basses joined in.

After a delightful solo from Karyn Andreassend, the choir returned with a lovely song in a swinging folk-song rhythm, ‘When your eyes look at me’.

The song to the locksmith was a great exclamation, about locking up evil mouths.  Men had their turn (with Simon Christie helping out in the choir here, and in some other songs), in a brief song about the waves and the moon.  It was admirable that the choir endeavoured to express a different character for each song.

Perhaps singing the entire set was a strain on the concentration – not all the songs command attention.  Nevertheless, it was a splendid effort.

Schumann’s Requiem is problematical.  Why is it almost never performed?  The answer is apparent in the music.  It has not the variety of musical expression or invention of those great Requiems that are performed regularly: those by Mozart, Brahms, Fauré, Dvořák, Verdi, Bruckner, or more recently, John Rutter.  Its dreary ambience is little relieved, in the way that those of the other composers is.  Although written in 1852, towards the end of the composer’s fore-shortened life, it was not published for some years, edited by his widow, Clara.

It is scored for orchestra, but some recordings exist with piano accompaniment; here we had a digital organ; it was a pity not to have a pipe organ available to give fuller tones and more nearly approximate orchestral sound.  Nevertheless, Heather Easting did a superb job, and it was notable how much more accurately the choir sang with a strong accompaniment.

A slow, subdued entry introduced the hymn-like ‘Requiem Aeternam’.  It was effective, despite its rather restricted harmonic language.  By contrast, ‘Te Decet Hymnus’ was declamatory, and utilised both the splendid soloists and the choir.  This was strong singing.  The ‘Dies Irae’ was solemn and grand, and featured much chromatic writing, and similar chords on the organ.

‘Liber Scriptus’ began with the choir, then the soloists entered one by one. Here, their voices really shone; a very fine performance from all four.  ‘Qui Mariam’ Featured excellent singing from the choir, and particularly from soloist Elisabeth Harris.  The movement ended with gorgeous quiet singing from the choir ‘…dona eis requiem’.

Declamation returned with ‘Domine Jesu Christe’, then Karyn Andreassend and Elisabeth Harris plus choir sang ‘Hostias’.  I couldn’t help but think of the wonderful ‘Hostias’ in Mozart’s work: so full of exaltation, positivity and musical invention.  Here again the choir showed admirable variation of dynamics, giving the music interest.

The final movement, ‘Benedictus and Agnus Dei’ started interestingly with the quartet of soloists unaccompanied, and organ chords in between their phrases; the final lines were grand and portentous.

Summing up: the work was tedious in places and lacking in musical invention.  However, soloists and choir made the best of it, and mostly succeeded in providing a good performance.

 

Destination Beehive 2017 at Circa Theatre – too serious to be taken seriously

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Circa Theatre presents:
DESTINATION BEEHIVE 2017

Written by Pinky Agnew and Lorae Parry
Directed and choreographed by Jan Bolwell
Music played and directed by Clinton Zerf
Lighting and Set Design by Lisa Maule

Circa Two
Circa Theatre, Wellington

Saturday 9th July 2017
(until 5th August)

Legend has it that American songwriter and political satirist Tom Lehrer gave up satire when American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s perhaps just as tempting for any present-day satirist to take a similar stance in the face of the antics of those real-life dodgers, shysters, con-artists and masters of illusion we know as politicians – why bother, she or he might argue, drawing attention to their absurdities when they themselves do it so much better simply by BEING themselves?

Fortunately for us here in Godzone, that intrepid duo of Pinky Agnew and Lorae Parry, having tasted blood in the run-up to the 2014 election with their expose of the goings-on in the “swinging seat” of Port Nicholson give these personalities even MORE rope with which to hang themselves from various vantage points on the brand-new electorate of “Tinakori Heights”. By way of the “Kiwi Media” Show, driven (flailed?) along at a great lick by personalities Katrina Coleman (Lorae Parry), Tina Fisher (Pinky Agnew) and Bryce Allen (Tom Knowles), we are brought close-up and personal to this year’s power-hungry hopefuls, ready and willing to try and fool all of the people all of the time!

The authors themselves seemed well aware of the danger of being outflanked, at any given moment, by their moving targets’ next unscripted moves – a case of “expect the unexpected” thus prevailed, both onstage and out there in cloud-cuckoo Beehiveland, a flux which kept our ears pricked, our toes stretched and (thanks to newly-developed rear-end surveilance methods installed, so we were informed, in our audience seats) our buttocks ready for lateral activation – left, or alternatively right, for you-know-who, blurring ideological divisions and all! Like the redoubtable election-night coverage “worm” of a few rounds ago, one was mesmerised by the process, whatever the outcomes!

After the cinematoscopic hype of introduction from Katrina, Tina and Bryce, the whole cast launched into a bubbling, energetic “Hokey-Tokey” – sorry, make that a “Votey-Votey”! – giving the well-worn adage “turning the other cheek” a whole new lease of theatrical and political life. Throughout the show music and movement was a constant delight, with old, seemingly played-out numbers (eg., “I will follow Him”, “Anyone who had a Heart”, “I got you, Babe” and “Santa Baby”) springing back to life with freshly-worked words , messages delivered with dangerous feistiness that delightfully belied the original banalities.

This was just part of a show which featured nine singers/actors (with stage Manager Neal Barber sometimes roped into the goings-on) playing over thirty characters between them and delivering over a dozen songs, the whole co-ordinated by director/choreographer Jan Bolwell with tremendous energy, vision and authority, and backed up by musical director Clinton Zerf’s brilliant and fluid keyboard realisations. Together with co-authors Pinky Agnew’s and Lorae Parry’s effervescent and outrageously provocative dialogues and song-lyrics, it makes for an “everything you wanted to hear” entertainment package which ticks all the appropriately risible boxes.

Of the actors, the doyen is of course Dame Kate Harcourt, celebrating her real-life status as a nonagenarian by conjuring up a populist tide of electoral enthusiasm (motorised chair “bestriding” the stage) as the Tinakori Heights NZ First Candidate, Maude Hornby. In what seems a remarkable “coup”, she was introduced by none other than a pre-recorded Winston Peters, appropriately scripted, and joining in the fun with a will, – with such advocacy, one was prepared to surrender all to the visceral jungle-drum rhythms of an updated “I will follow Him”, sung by Harcourt and her entourage with Messianic conviction!

Dame Kate’s fellow-thespians are a mixture of familiar and new, the former including the show’s two aforementioned writers, both of whom assume the trappings of a bewildering array of personalities in very different ways – Pinky Agnew is the shapeshifter of the two, effecting breath-catching transformations from TV show host to none other than the resplendently red-clad Hillary Clinton, adroitly re-aligning her geographical surroundings with the help of flash-card prompting , before morphing into the Mrs.Mopp-like Faye McFee, who’s the ACT Party candidate’s campaign manager, and then (most stunningly of all) reclaiming the international limelight as Angela Merkel, complete with anti-Trumpery antennae.

By comparison, Lorae Parry’s no less able assumptions involve relative micromanagement of appearances, mannerisms and pronouncements enabling simple, strongly-etched portrayals of personalities such as her alter ego Helen Clark (here to introduce a “surprise” Labour candidate, who’s already been mentioned), a co-anchor of Foxy TV, Parris la Touche, the “gnat-in-a-bottle” Lynette Scott who’s the Tinakori Heights ACT candidate , and then none other than Theresa May, still a force to be reckoned with, and here with Angela Merkel to help further the cause of the local pussy-hat brigade by confronting the actual cause célèbre in person.

Carrie Green’s another election veteran with a couple of long-(self?)serving characterisations such as “born-again centrist” Metiria Tureia, along with a somewhat addled-value Paula Bennett with resplendently fluid thigh-support, a sequence that Green herself wrote. She also gave us a scary Marama Fox (who scatters the National sympathisers like chaff in the wind), as well as partnering Lorae Parry as the “other” Foxy TV anchor, Felicia Fanning, and is the centre of focus for the Justin Bieber take-off “Youth Song” – high energy input, here, with exhilarating results.

Similarly traversing the spectrums of ideology and character with versatility and elan was Tom Knowles, one of the three “Kiwi Media” presenters (Bryce Allen) at the start, and then by turns an opportunistic Grant Robertson (I’ve got you, Labour”), a platitudinous National candidate Dick Webster (“We aim to make our rivers WATERSKIABLE! – by 2040!), a feline-phobic Gareth Morgan with a feline-phobic moustache, and (Trumping everything else!) the world’s No.1 pussy-predator on a fake-news-finding visit to Godzone, involving “your President English!”, with riotous outcomes!

And then, there were the newbies, four student actors from the “genius tutelary” of Whitireia, whose song-and-dance skills added considerable “schwung” to the proceedings and whose characters all hit the ground running! – Molly Weaver relished both her TOP candidate Jilly Caro-Cant and a starry-eyed Jacinda Ardern in thrall to Labour’s latest “recruit” with style and surety, while Alexandra Taylor’s alarmingly abandoned Jekyll-and-Hyde take on United Future candidate Celine Smith rivalled in effect the legendary Salome’s besottment with the head of John the Baptist in her all-but-visceral orgasmic reaction to images of a bemused-looking Peter Dunne!

Shawn Keil traversed the interchangeable credibility gap between Green (“May the Forest be with you”) and ACT party personalities with schizoid skill, drawing from both Bizet’s “Carmen” and the late, lamented Trevor Rupe, in a rose-between-teeth realisation of David Seymour as a fantasy figure to Habanera accompaniment, augmented by Agnew and Parry in their vociferously operatic “Seymour!” – an equally far cry to Keil’s “always-going-somewhere” Bill English take, bouncing between put-downs by various world leaders. And the elegant Charles Masina as Dr.Riki Te Rapa, the Māori Party candidate, made the most of his advocacy from Carrie Green’s Marama Fox and his expedient coming-out reaction of “I’m bi!” to questions regarding ethnicity.

In all, a show which elevates politics to the status of love in terms of its sufferers – a tragedy to the heart and a comedy to the intellect! Those who saw the 2014 version of the show and enjoyed it (and how could anybody not?) can take heart that it’s more of the same but very different. And for those who are first-timers – well, along with everything else one expects from entertainment, it’s also something of a healing experience!

See also reviews by Ewen Coleman (The Dominion Post)
https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/stage-and-theatre/94551736/theatre-review-destination-beehive-2017
and John Smythe (Theatre Review)
https://theatreview.org.nz/reviews/review.php?id=10397

Magnificent NZSO concert, with percussionist Colin Currie, under James MacMillan

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by James MacMillan with Colin Currie (percussion)

Thomas Adès: Polaris
James MacMillan: Percussion Concerto No 2
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No 4

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 8 July, 7:30 pm

I had rather expected that, even if the pieces by Adès and MacMillan had not exactly created a stampede for tickets, that the remarkable, let’s even say ‘great’ symphony by Vaughan Williams would have done the trick.

But no, it didn’t. However, if it was something of a statement about the timidity of Wellington audiences, it was not a disgrace.

Thomas Adès
For another thing, I’d have thought the name Adès might have chimed with a few hundred on account of the operatic notoriety Adès achieved in the 1990s. For some time after the 1995 premiere of his Powder Her Face, it looked as if a new era of box-office success might result from opening the stage to rather explicit sexual flagrancy, in our new age of public pornography.

But opera news, even highly spiced, doesn’t penetrate much into mainstream media.

Based on the flamboyant life and eventual humiliation of the Duchess of Argyll, Powder Her Face was commissioned from the Almeida Theatre for the Cheltenham Festival in 1995, made headlines at once and over the following decade was produced widely across Europe and North America.

Polaris (formerly known as the Polar Star, till it was renamed after a submarine) clearly, is not in quite the same class as Powder Her Face. It’s an astronomical tone poem based formally on rather arcane musico/mathematical, acoustic, even metaphysical notions (and Adès writes of magnetic relationships between notes), none of which is probably of help to the uninitiated; and is a rather more apparent and visually affective evocation of the Arctic (I suppose) sky, with aurora borealis thrown in.

It was a quarter-hour long, fairly spectacular, orchestral extravaganza, employing six percussionists plus timpanist, as well as piano, two harps, glockenspiel and celeste. If first impression was of a show-piece demonstrating Adès’s command of musical erudition and extreme orchestrational skill, a combination of close attention plus a suspension of intellectual effort, revealed an evocation of infinite space, that might have been beyond rational comprehension and any easy definition but created an undeniable impact.

A kind of rotating, machine-inspired theme underlay the music, which rose to a climaxes followed by tonality changes, perhaps three times. The range of sounds and their effect was kaleidoscopic (did someone say ‘prismatic’?); sometimes, faced with the employment of very large and disparate orchestral forces with a seeming lack of much basic musical inspiration, one is sometimes tempted to hear it all as no more than composer exhibitionism. This music was emphatically not of that sort, and its eventual impact made such scepticism hard to sustain. Yet: is it music that warms the heart and compels rehearing?

MacMillan’s 2nd percussion concerto
One suspected that Polaris was chosen in part to support the stage-full of percussion instruments that had been prepared for McMillan’s second percussion concerto (the first, named Veni, veni, Emmanuel was played by the NZSO under Alexander Shelley in 2010, a fact that I’d have expected the programme to have mentioned).

MacMillan had spoken a little about the percussion, particularly the aluphone, a long row of small, tuned, bell-shaped aluminium gongs across the right side of the stage. The other soloist’s percussion at the front of the stage, not individually listed in the programme, but to be found in Wikipedia, included: crotales, cencerros, vibraphone, marimba, steel drum, four wood blocks, two gliss gongs, eight “assorted pieces of metal”, floor tom-toms, high tom-toms, and a pedal bass drum.

In addition, there was a fairly formidable range of percussion behind the orchestra: glockenspiel, two marimbas, tuned gong, siren, bass drum, suspended sizzle cymbal, tam-tams, tubular bells, tomtom drums, snare drums, two suspended cymbals, two triangles, thunder sheet; plus harp, and piano.

The ability of the normal audience member, including the non-specialist critic, to distinguish all these individual sounds, and to accord them some kind of purpose, is probably extremely limited and one really has to accept it in a spirit of quite profound bemusement. Generally, because of course there was only one player of all the front-of-stage hardware, only one implement (instrument?) played at a time which ensured a degree of sonic clarity. However the complementary array of machinery behind the orchestra often compensated for much prolonged quietness.

Currie is among the most versatile and virtuosic percussion practitioners in the business, multi-tasking to beat even the most gifted female achiever in that sphere. In addition to which he appeared to be handling his multifarious equipment from memory.

The novel item, the aluphone, opened the soloist’s performance, soon joined by the marimba, immediately behind it; and from then on one tried to be alert to significant and repeated motifs in order to gain a sense of its narrative, its emotional journey. Even though such attempts largely failed, the evolving dynamic patterns, which at times drifted to near silence, with gentle harp and murmuring trombones, succeeded in holding attention, suggesting that at a second or third hearing a path through the maze would take root in the memory. In the midst of the near frenzy emerged a near lyrical string episode in an adagio section, as Currie caressed reverberant cow bells, with flutes and double basses among the few contributors.

It was not only a showcase for the extraordinary soloist, but presented the orchestra and the composer/conductor with a formidable challenge which was met with impressive success, evidenced by unusually heart-felt, mutual applause from all parties involved.

Vaughan Williams’s fourth may be his most sunless, atypical symphony; and it might be compared with Sibelius’s fourth in mood, though it’s more fiery and varied. It does evoke something other than the landscapes, townscapes, seascapes and the avian world; the emotional opposite to the sunny fifth which he wrote in the middle of World War II. The fourth was written avowedly with no programme in mind, but it’s hard not to believe that a politically aware composer was not depressed at state incompetence in dealing with the human tragedy of the Great Depression of the early 30s, not mention the advent of Hitler.

The composer’s wife, Ursula, recorded this comment about the symphony: “The towering furies of which he was capable, his fire, pride, and strength are all revealed and so are his imagination and lyricism.”

Here, if MacMillan had not proven his powers already, was an electrifying performance of huge intensity, displaying anger and ferocity right from the start. What attack and energy he drew from his players! What powerful momentum and compelling rhythms! Though it is almost always tempered, for example, by string-led more meditative moments, finely judged.

The second movement, slower in tempo and more calmly sombre and even beautiful, but no less biting even if there are no clues as to their emotional origin. The third movement is the traditional Scherzo, a symphonic movement that I used to enjoy in my youth, but often less these days. But this scored high with me; a most energetic and colourful performance, evoking in very quick triplets, a spirit of chaos with dark, muted brass, before the sudden mysterious subsiding just before the close, leading with no pause to the Finale, Allegro molto. It too is full of starkly contrasting episodes, often pulsing, trombone-led, to be followed by beguiling, muted strings: an extraordinarily arresting passage, that continues for some time before the return to the pulsing passages that with MacMillan became hypnotic, even nightmarish.

This great performance confirmed how much I love this symphony, with the fifth, my favourites. I place it very high among Vaughan Williams’s works; it was a privilege to hear it played by such an orchestra under a conductor so much attuned to the composer’s spirit.

Jeux, Debussy’s quiet revolutionary, steals Orchestra Wellington’s show

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents:
The Impresario – Concert 2

DEBUSSY – Jeux – poème dansé
MOZART – Piano Concerto No.20 in D Minor K.466
BRAHMS – Piano Concerto No.1 in D Minor Op.15

Michael Houstoun (piano)
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Friday July 7th, 2017

This was the second of Orchestra Wellington’s 2017 series of concerts containing works commissioned by the renowned impresario Serge Diaghilev for the dance company he had formed, the Ballets Russes, regarded by many performance historians as the most influential dance company of the 20th Century. It was the Ballets Russes company which, thanks to Diaghilev’s commissions, was to premiere three of Igor Stravinsky’s most famous ballets, the Firebird, Petroushka and Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), along with numerous others in their 30-year history.

Another of the commissions was a work called Jeux (Games), written by Claude Debussy. At first the latter rejected the proposal after receiving Diaghilev’s scenario for the work – a game of tennis between two women and one man, involving lost balls, suggestions of amorous interactions and an aeroplane crash on the court (Diaghilev’s initial idea was for the dancers to be three young men – but he thought better of it). Debussy described it all as “ludicrous”, though when Diaghilev offered to double his fee for the work, the composer relented, on the condition that the concluding “aeroplane crash” idea be dropped! – he got his way, and the resulting work has come to be regarded by commentators as one of the century’s most significant and seminal pieces of music.

For a good while, though, the impact of Jeux on the musical world in general was overshadowed by the sensational premiere of another Diaghilev-inspired ballet only a fortnight later, that of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps. Unlike Le Sacre, Debussy’s Jeux produced no riot, no furore, no scandal of the stuff that legends are made of, but neither were there plaudits and rave reviews. In fact the music seemed scarcely to be noticed by the critics, who reserved their bemused reactions for dancer Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography. Debussy himself had called his work “music without legs”, and was thus appalled by what he saw, derisively commenting, “…the man adds up demisemiquavers with his feet, and proves the results with his arms….it is ugly…” It was actually the first known ballet to be performed in contemporary dress, being actually announced by the Ballet Russes as a “plastic vindication of the man of 1913”.

Debussy at this time was suffering from the cancer that would eventually kill him, so the commission was a timely one, providing him with a much-needed income, and engaging his sensibilities to an extent that even he was surprised at – he wrote “How was I able to forget the cares of this world, and manage to write music that is nevertheless joyous and alive with droll rhythms?” It took him a mere three weeks to write, and only the ending, with its hint of the suggestive, gave him difficulty – “…the music has to convey a rather risque situation – but of course, in a ballet, any hint of immorality escapes through the feet of the danseuse and ends in a pirouette….”

It took until the 1950s to be recognised as a masterpiece, and in the concert-hall rather than in the theatre. Though the score readily suggests each choreographic movement of the action – one critic reviewed a performance making full use of the tennis association, writing sentences like, “…a vulgar forehand drive from the string section is deftly turned by a mysterious lob from the solo flute……” – what is most striking about Jeux is its organically elusive quality, with each episode “growing” out of the other in an entirely spontaneous and unpredictable way – “every theme is the child of the one before” as one commentator put it. Debussy himself intended such a continuous renewal, what he called “a drawing together and separating of poles of attraction”, and constantly achieving new ways of balancing the same material. He wrote to a friend, “I would like to make something inorganic in appearance and yet well-ordered at its core” – and that seems to be the essence of Jeux.

I thought Marc Taddei’s and Orchestra Wellington’s performance of the work miraculous and sure-footed, bringing all of the piece’s inherent characteristics to the fore – the mystery at the work’s beginning (mysterious, haunting whole-tone chords at the beginning, sounding like the passage of consciousness through magical portals into wondrous dream-like realms), the constant ebb-and flow of the rthythmic trajectories, the endlessly varying treatment of melodic fragments, and the kaleidoscopic shifts of colour and texture brought to us as the work unfolded. A friend said afterwards that he thought the performance wasn’t sufficiently “ravishing” – but he admitted he had heard Pierre Boulez conduct the work in London with the BBC Symphony! For my part I had recently played and listened to FOUR different versions from recordings, and found them all very different! Orchestra Wellington’s playing under Marc Taddei wasn’t quite the most warmly ravishing of those I heard, but the detailing was superb throughout, and the piece’s sensuality at times was given an edge which for me gave the music a tingling, vital quality.

To my ears, the Michael Fowler Centre acoustic doesn’t give much added warmth or body to the sounds made by orchestras, something which I thought was apparent during the programme’s other items as well. This relative leanness of sound suited the Mozart Concerto better than it did the Brahms work, both of which were played with exemplary clarity by the soloist, Michael Houstoun, and supported by incisive playing from the orchestra. I enjoyed the “attack” from the players – very “whiplash-like” in the MFC acoustic, giving the performance plenty of “edge”. It was an interesting idea to “bind” the two concerto performances by key and see what came of the treatment given D MInor by two different composers. Most obviously, both showed their classicist leanings, Brahms, writing sixty years after Mozart, being, of course, the “chosen one” of the conservatives in their struggle to uphold traditional principles against the onslaughts of the “new music” of the radicals of the nineteenth century, most prominently Liszt and Wagner.

In each composer’s concerto, there’s the same inherent D Minor darkness, reflecting in a shared “ambience” between the two works of sombre mood, of struggle, of gritty determination and of aspiring towards the light of resolution or victory over forces of darkness. Each uses the language of his time, so that there’s no mistaking which of the works are from what era – Mozart’s motivation in writing such a dark work remains unclear, and in any case his habit of writing his piano concerti in pairs often produced diametrically opposed emotional results (this one was written at roughly the same time as the bright and sunny C-Major work K.467, confounding any “biographical” revelations in either piece).

In Brahms’ case, however, the young composer’s accompanying personal circumstances definitely influenced the heartfelt character of HIS D Minor Concerto in more ways than one – a situation brought about by his champion, Robert Schumann. Originally the work was intended to be a symphony, and its composer encouraged in the venture by Schumann, until the latter was tragically committed to an asylum after an attempt at suicide. By way of maintaining his creative spirits in parallel with his continuing support for Schumann, his wife Clara and her children, Brahms first toyed with the idea of turning the failed symphony into a work for two pianos, but after considerable angsting, created what became this, his first Piano Concerto – but not a fashionable “virtuoso concerto” as a vehicle for star soloists! This sounded more like a symphony with piano obbligato – and what a piano part!

Michael Houstoun has performed this work in living memory at the Michael Fowler Centre with the NZSO, as part of a Brahms festival a number of years ago. Worthy though that performance was I had high hopes of the combination of Houstoun with Marc Taddei, whom I thought would give the orchestral contribution to the proceedings plenty of energy and dynamism and be more of a “match” for Houstoun’s pianism. In the event, I don’t think anybody could say that Orchestra Wellington didn’t bend collective backs, strain sinews and manipulate muscles to the nth degree to help bring off this work – it’s just that I felt the ensemble seemed ultimately to lack the numbers of strings to give the performance the sheer weight it needed in places throughout the work, given that the venue was, predictably, not much help in terms of orchestral warmth and amplitude.

What did surprise me was Marc Taddei’s slowish tempi throughout the concerto’s first movement – fine if one is conducting an orchestra with a full-strength complement of strings, and in an acoustic which gives something back to the musicians! – but here, the players sounded to my ears pushed to fill out their tones in order to properly saturate and sustain those bar-lines with sound. The result at times were tones that, from where I was sitting in the hall didn’t have enough heft for me, in certain places. In the past Taddei had invariably chosen quick tempi when conducting the classics (sometimes bordering on the excessive, but always with exciting results), but on this occasion asking for a truly big-boned maestoso in the first movement and a long-breathed treatment of the lines in the second movement seemed to me to put the players under a lot of pressure.

Where the combination of soloist and orchestra began to conflagrate as expected was during the third and final movement, after the brief fugato-like passage for strings and winds, and piano and orchestra had swung into the reprise of the opening theme. The exchanges between soloist and ensemble began generating more and more excitement, with the cadenza adding to the music’s resolve and the contrasting whimsical playfulness between the instruments (lovely work by the horns) suddenly bubbling over and releasing surges of energy which brought about a satisfyingly triumphal conclusion. In the Town Hall the impact of the whole would have been mightier, but here the musicians by sheer determination brought it all off for the finish and made even the MFC resonate with glad sounds!

So, roll on to the next Orchestra Wellington impresario concert (Saturday 5th August) – masked balls (Schumann) and Hellenic pastorales (Ravel) await our impatient pleasure!

Steel and McCabe, flute and piano in delightful recital at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Rebecca Steel (flute) and Fiona McCabe (piano)

Taktakishvili; Sonata for flute and piano
Bach: Sonata for flute and keyboard in E minor, BWV1034
Debussy: Flute Sonata, arrangement of the Sonata for violin and piano

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 5 July, 12:15 pm

A fortnight ago at St Andrew’s we heard Rebecca Steel as a member of a quintet of flutes from the RNZAF Band in a splendidly diverting programme of music (mostly) arranged for five flutes. So I had hesitated about coming to hear more flute music in a particularly busy week for me. But squeezing it in proved an excellent decision.

Rebecca was back this time with her piano partner, Fiona McCabe to play an equally interesting and perhaps slightly more musically mainstream music.

Otar Taktakishvili lived in Georgia from 1924 to 1989. He was one of the republic’s leading composers/conductors and a recipient of the Stalin Prize. This flute sonata seems to have been his best known work, though there are symphonies, concertos, symphonic poems, operas, songs, much of which has been performed and recorded in the Soviet Union/Russia and some in the West.  Judging by the character of the flute sonata, there are likely to be quite a few rewarding discoveries to be made.

When the dust settles and Soviet atrocities take their place among many violent regimes that nevertheless nurtured great art, we’ll find a huge amount of approachable music in Russian and Ukrainian (and other) archives.

Taktakishvili’s sonata lives in the sonic sphere of Debussy and/or Françaix, Ibert, and is certainly a descendant of the Jean-Pierre Rampal flute revival. Lightish in tone, but not trivial or sentimental without the hard-edged melodic shape of Prokofiev or much direct Shostakovich influence, though he was a friend of Shostakovich. Not conspicuously folk music influenced either.

But it lay happily and idiomatically for the two instruments and their uniformity of feeling reflected the players long-standing musical friendship.

J S Bach’s flute sonatas are not as familiar as his many suites and partitas for keyboard, violin and cello, but this performance of the E minor, BWV 1034, awakened, at least my, interest in them. There is a group of six, plus one outlier.  Most of Bach’s instrumental works seem to be perfectly comfortable in arrangements for other instruments, and one can easily imagine the violin taken by the flute, or the oboe, or the viola, and vice-versa.

This one, in E minor, somewhat sombre in tone, would be interesting on the cello for it weaves an emotional scene in the slowish first movement that is somewhat complex, suggestive of a beautiful vocal piece; and the second movement, an Allegro that’s not too boisterous, features endless rippling arpeggios that our flutist managed breathwise most skilfully (she’d remarked on Bach’s thoughtlessness regarding the player’s breathing needs). The third movement is again dominated by a long vocal style melody, that caused me to be surprised that I didn’t know this and, perhaps, the other flute sonatas. The final Allegro might have been some kind of ‘Badinerie’ but refrained from unbridled speed and gaiety, to be merely a delight.

Debussy
Finally, an actual arrangement, of Debussy’s last work, his violin sonata. As I reflected above, it showed how some music for flute or violin moves easily from one instrument to the other without offence. In fact it sounded as if written for the flute, its ornaments translating exquisitely (I couldn’t recall with confidence whether they were exactly as written for the violin). It was arranged by the player, though I see that there have been other arrangements. There are long, slow notes that lie in the alto flute range, in between flutters high into the treble, and it all sounds perfectly natural.

Debussy gives a rather specific indication to the second movement: ‘Fantasque et léger’, and it was an awakening to hear those phrases in the middle where the piano beats repeated notes and the flute echoes and decorates the ideas. All the fantastic touches reproduce in exactly the spirit of the original. At one point I scribbled that the accompaniment actually sounded more interesting with the flute as companion.

The last movement is flighty, with little trills and accelerating scales, spiky series of four flute notes that are so idiomatic, and fill one with wonder not only at Debussy’s ever-evolving musical imagination, but his unique feeling for the sounds of individual instruments which in cases like this encompass more than one. If you have doubts, just listen more lovingly.

Rich and diverting recital of songs by Takiri vocal quartet and piano at Waikanae

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Waikanae Music Society
Takiri Ensemble: Anna Leese Guidi (soprano), Maaike Christie-Beekman (mezzo), Cameron Barclay (tenor). Robert Tucker (baritone), Kirsten Robertson (piano)

Schubert: Songs from Schwanengesang;
Songs and ensembles by Fauré, Ravel, Somervell, Quilter, Vaughan Williams

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday, 2 July 2017, 2.30pm

The reviewing of this concert was shared by Rosemary Collier and Lindis Taylor.
First part: Rosemary Collier 
Two years ago the ensemble sang for the Waikanae Music Society; on that occasion the mezzo was Bianca Andrew and the tenor Andrew Glover.  That programme also began with a bracket of well-known Schubert lieder, then progressed to Schumann (I’m embarrassed to say his songs were the Spanische Liebeslieder, which in a very recent review of another ensemble I said I was unfamiliar with).  The programme continued with New Zealand composers, then Britten and Vaughan Williams.

Our present concert followed a similar structure, but no New Zealand composers were performed.

While some of the songs were in a sad mood, many were not, so I was sorry to see the women of the ensemble dressed entirely in black.  However, the singers conveyed the moods of the songs very well, and not necessarily in sombre fashion (some connection with a certain sports event?).

Anna Leese Guidi opened the programme (and was the only one to sing her solos without a score), with the first of the Schwanengesang songs: Liebesbotschaft, with a beautifully rustling brook from Kirsten Robertson on piano.  What a gorgeous voice this soprano has!  It seemed to me that her voice has more shine that it used to have.  Her dynamics were subtle, and the words beautifully expressed and shaded.

Frühlingsehnsucht was sung by Cameron Barclay.  He sings with a splendid, forward tone, energy and urgency.  His singing of the repeated word ‘Warum’ had real feeling.   Ständchen is one of the composer’s best-known songs, and Maaike Christie-Beekman’s singing of it was simply lovely.  It was sung slower than I have usually heard it, but was none the worse for that.  It was interesting that the superb accompaniments from Kirsten Robertson were all played with the piano lid on the short stick, even the quartets, whereas at the recital I attended on Wednesday, the lid was on the long stick.

A quicker song was Abschied, sung by the tenor; he had a tendency sometimes to slip off, or onto, the note.  It was followed by Der Atlas, was sung by Robert Tucker very dramatically with a strong, rich sound and excellent words.  This is a demanding declamatory song.  An uncertainty about one entry was resolved without breakdown between himself and his accompanist.

Das Fischermädchen was a charming song in the capable hands of Maaike Christie-Beekman, while Robert Tucker gave a very accomplished rendition of Der Doppelgänger.  He treated the text with due solemnity, intensity and emotion not to mention a wide range of dynamics.  Finally we had Die Taubenpost, sung deliciously by Anna Leese Guidi; a light and bright song to end the cycle.

Next were three ensemble song by the same composer.  Der Tanz was performed by quartet; a jolly piece, followed by a duet from Leese and Barclay: Licht und Liebe.  It was very appealing – calm and thoroughly pleasant, and beautifully sung.  Last in this half was another quartet: Gebet.  It was rather Ländler-like (folk-song).  Each singer entered in turn, with a little solo passage, the quartet demonstrating excellent blend.

The large audience thoroughly enjoyed the Schubert, and hearing four voices of character and accomplishment.

Second part: reviewed by Lindis Taylor
The second half of the concert was devoted to non-Schubert, French and English songs.

Before the concert I had rather expected a group of real French songs by Debussy, Duparc, Fauré, Berlioz, Poulenc, Ravel and so on. But the French offerings were limited, arrangements, and outweighed by English.

It opened with a Fauré song: Lydia, the poem by Leconte de Lisle, one of Fauré’s earliest, Opus 2. I hadn’t come across the poem either in collections of French poetry or among Fauré’s songs.

It had been arranged by the pianist Kirsten Robertson, for all four voices. Kirsten spoke engagingly about the song and its transformation. She also remarked on Fauré’s using the title as a reference to the Lydian mode – the ancient Greek mode that amounts to a scale on the white notes beginning on F.

This may have been in sympathy with the poetic movement led by De Lisle called les Parnassiens, who rejected romanticism and personal emotion, returning to the notion of ‘art for art’s sake’ in the literature of classical antiquity.

So, this was a song that was cool in character, treating a classical theme of love culminating in death.

As I’ve written before, I have misgivings about arrangements but, as before,  I have finished up being surprised at having so enjoyed them. This was the case here too. Nothing about it detracted from its essential Fauré-esque quality, on either the vocal line or its harmonies.

As earlier, Anna Leese Guidi’s voice contributing descant passages, stood out in the second stanza, perhaps outshining the others at times, but what could she do about that?

The other Fauré song was a duet, Pleurs d’or (Tears of gold), a setting of a poem by a much more obscure poet, Albert Samain, and again not a song I knew. It was sung by the two women (though I’ve now encountered it by soprano and baritone). I confess, not my sort of poem and perhaps that’s why Samain isn’t up there with Baudelaire and Verlaine. Their voices were attractively contrasted and the piano rippled unobtrusively under them.

The next song was a real curiosity – an arrangement by English baritone and composer Roderick Williams of the second movement of Ravel’s piano concerto in G. It proved a singularly lovely candidate for such an arrangement: the original was for eight voices and several French verses, which the programme did not identify; the vocal part was based on the orchestral score while the piano solo served as the accompaniment. The effect was more than a little entrancing, though I suspect eight voices would have been even better.

Then France was abandoned (as the British seem wont to do) and we heard a song by one Arthur Somervell to Twist me a Crown of Wild Flowers, a poem by Christina Rossetti who was associated, with her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti with the Pre-Raphaelites, that somewhat effete brotherhood of writers and artists that included Holman Hunt, Millais, Burne-Jones, Waterhouse, William Morris, Ruskin, Swinburne and so on… It was a rather charming, languid song, sung by all four.

Roger Quilter came second to Schubert in the number of his songs (six) in the recital. Shelley’s Love’s Philosophy sung by Anna alone, her brilliant top handled the setting admirably. And then Tennyson’s Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal, offered mezzo Maaike a contrasting song, handling the more subdued music very sensitively.

Quilter himself wrote the words for the next song, Summer Sunset, and the two men sang it, a harmless, sleepy piece in which the two found a happy accord.

The poem by one Norah Hopper, Blossom Time, was for the two women, a feather-light song, rather melancholy perhaps, but occasionally, Quilter goes a bit deeper than he is wont to do. And those moments were arresting.

Cameron Barclay alone sang an anonymous song, Weep you no more, Sad Fountains, which I thought didn’t do him any favours, as it drew attention to a certain inability to project characterfully.

Finally another anonymous 16th century song: Fair House of Joy where Robert Tucker suddenly revealed a stronger and more colourful voice than I’d been hearing earlier. Perhaps because the song plumbs rather greater depths and it drew a more dramatic strain, fuller, and well projected.

The concert ended with a song that was arranged by Robert specifically for the ensemble: Vaughan Williams’s, Silent Noon, a sonnet by the above-mentioned Dante Gabriel Rossetti (interestingly, originally written in Italian). Appropriately, this very well loved song was for the full complement, each voice taking its turn at the beginning, but soon the four voices came together, and here was truly exposed the strengths of a quartet of professional voices, and compelling admiration for the arrangement. In response to the audience reception the quartet sang Vaughan Williams’s Linden Lea: these two great songs establishing the real qualities of the English song tradition.

 

Magical Mendelssohn and tempestuous Tchaikovsky from the Wellington Chamber Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Orchestra presents:
MENDELSSOHN and TCHAIKOVSKY

MENDELSSOHN – Overture “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” Op.21
Violin Concerto in E Minor Op.64
TCHAIKOVSKY – Symphony No.4 in F Minor Op.36

James Jin (violin)
Andrew Atkins (conductor)
Wellington Chamber Orchestra

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

Sunday 2nd July, 2017

First impressions are, as they say, important, although they can sometimes be misleading. If one took the opening few minutes of the Wellington Chamber Orchestra’s Sunday concert, featuring Felix Mendelssohn’s adorable Overture “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, and peremptorily judged the concert’s music-making by the short-winded and unatmospheric opening chords, and the somewhat unseemly scramble of upper string lines attempting and failing to co-ordinate their rhythmic patternings right throughout this sequence which followed, one would then be completely confounded by the real and heart-warming quality of the remainder of what we heard that afternoon.

It was as if the fairies of Shakespeare’s (and Mendelssohn’s) wood had somehow gotten themselves into all sorts of momentary bother at the outset before Oberon, their King, imperiously called for order with the first big unison chord, one which was delivered with tremendous authority (and probably some relief!). Conductor Andrew Atkins would have had none of such a ragged beginning at rehearsal, of course, but as this was a “real” performance he kept things going and, to his and the players’ credit, pulled the errant woodsprites and their out-of-synch connivings back into line!

With the return of these same elfin scamperings at various places throughout the Overture, things greatly improved and confidence was gradually restored – and, happily, there was as well more to enthuse about regarding other aspects of the performance. All of the orchestral sections pulled their weight admirably – the winds, especially the clarinet, contributed some strong individual work as well as some secure ensemble, as did the horns after some opening-note hesitancy with their descending, dovetailed calls. I loved the contribution of the tuba there, particularly redolent and imposing at the bottom of the scale. The brasses in general, though a bit hit-and-miss with some of their atmospheric calls in the work’s middle section, gave things plenty of wonderful “grunt” in tutti, especially leading up to the famous braying ass’s “hee-haws”!

Something I thought worked well was moving the timpani to a place centre-back, instead of the usual place to one side – in this venue it seemed to work wonders for the tones of the individual notes, the sounds made by the player far more clear and focused than I can recall in previous concerts.

The strings sounded rich and warm and suitably romantic in their “singing” of their lyrical lines, though I regretted the conductor’s refusal to allow the players to”indulge” in that glorious descending-scale melody at the end, just before the final wind chords (I once heard Yehudi Menuhin in rehearsal at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London do exactly the same thing with that theme at the end, stopping the orchestra at that point, and insisting that the players observe the “a tempo”, which I thought “unmagicked” the music, making it suddenly sound a bit routine and dull!).

So, having gotten things properly back on the rails, conductor and orchestra then joined forces with Auckland-based soloist James Jin for a performance of a perennial favourite, Mendelssohn’s E Minor Violin Concerto. Here, the orchestral playing was, I thought, beautifully-paced by the conductor at a steady tempo, and proving the perfect foil for the silvery tones of the soloist. At times one might have thought his playing, for all its sweetness and dexterity insufficiently commanding of tone and lacking in proper physical heft, but when it came to some of the opening movement’s big flourishes, James Jin “took over” the notes in properly commanding fashion, though without ever “barnstorming” or appearing to hector the music.

I thought the first movement beautifully shaped by both soloist and conductor, and deftly played by the ensemble. The winds survived a glitch at the beginning of the second subject group (and made amends with the passage’s repetition after the cadenza), and the strings generated real “schwung” in the tutti just beforehand, digging into the notes and keeping the rhythms buoyant under their conductor’s direction, right up to the single held bassoon note (beautifully sustained) that without a break transported the music most marvellously into what Robert Schumann might have called the”other realms”of the slow movement.

Here we heard a subtly-nuanced singing line from the soloist and steadfast support from the strings, their voicing of the poignant second subject episode evoking all the feeling one could wish under Atkins’ direction. Despite a slight rhythmic stumble with his accompanying figurations at one point Jin kept his poise, replying in kind to the orchestra’s lyricism before adroitly responding to the finale’s “call to arms” from the brass with a couple of impish flourishes. Quite suddenly the ambience sparked and crackled as Jin’s violin danced into the allegro molto vivace a half-step ahead of the ensemble, who made valiant attempts to catch up with his fleet-fingered progress, occasionally getting within heel-snapping distance, with thrills and spills aplenty – all tremendously exciting!

It didn’t really matter that the winds came to grief during the brief exchange with the soloist near the music’s end, with only the flute maintaining its poise – the players then rallied and danced their way to the end amid coruscations of excitement, violinist and orchestra taken up with the music’s spirit to engaging and invigorating effect – most enjoyable!

Having recently heard these same musicians bend their backs to the task of making a splendid job of Elgar’s great A-flat Symphony, I was looking forward enormously to hearing how the ensemble would take to the equally formidable task of realising Tchaikovsky’s mighty Fourth Symphony, in particular the wave-upon wave intensities of the work’s opening movement. So it’s with very great pleasure that I’m able to report that these musicians threw themselves unflinchingly into the fray and gave a most exciting and memorable performance of the work.

Any fears I might have had regarding the players’ ability to “find” the notes at cardinal points were put to rest by the opening fanfares, delivered firstly by the horns and lower brass with sonorous weight and energy, and then by the trumpets, gleaming with brilliance and excitement! Then, added to this was the melancholic gravitas of both winds and strings as the allegro proper got going, conductor Andrew Atkins giving the players enough elbow-space to find their notes and make something of their phrases without losing momentum or tension.

In fact, throughout the first movement each climax-point was so unerringly built, so strongly-focused and shaped, that I was able to “feel” the full force of the composer’s singular genius as a symphonist, with every section of the orchestra playing its part – the wind solos introducing the second subject group of themes, the strings, timpani and winds building the excitement with the same material, and the brasses literally playing for keeps, with the horns in particularly sonorous form. All the while there was patience and steadiness from the podium, Atkins allowing the music’s natural momentum to gather both weight and tension, so that the “fate” theme heard at the work’s opening seemed a natural outcome of the process at various flashpoints along the way.

The slow movement was nicely launched by the oboist, heartfelt and melancholic in effect despite one or two hesitant moments, and then with strings and winds carrying the mood over to the gorgeous second theme, here given rich and generous treatment typical of the performance as a whole. A nicely-played Borodin-like sequence from winds and horns, led to the somewhat droll second subject, one from which only a genius like Tchaikovsky could create something so intense and radiant in feeling. Again the conductor’s patient direction gave the players the space they needed to catch and fill out the “dying fall” atmosphere, as the opening theme returned, piquantly decorated by the winds with first the clarinet, and then the bassoon especially lovely – and how beautifully the horns, clarinet and bassoon wound things down at the end!

The scherzo provided another instance of steady, unrushed direction paying dividends, the string pizzicati lines “finding” their places and tumbling playfully over one another, as the composer intended. The oboe melody was characterfully pesante here, with the other winds, including a gloriously shrill piccolo, chiming in, and then squawking all the more energetically as the brass marched in, quick-step-style! Towards the movement’s end they all congregated again, with strings and winds exchanging words, and the brass quick-stepping into the fray only to find, quite suddenly, that everybody was friends again!

A glorious welter of sounds ushered in the finale, which continued with great surges of upward-thrusting and downward-tumbling energies from all quarters, providing the greatest possible contrast with the delicacies of the first winds-and-triangle sequences – though had I been the conductor I would have encouraged the player to sound the triangle a bit more assertively. Snarling brasses and crashing cymbals built up the excitement, the performance catching the music’s see-sawing emotions, with the motto theme’s eventual return calling a halt to the exuberant revelries, before the music’s unquenchable human spirit reasserted itself and roared out a kind of joyous final defiance. All of this came across with plenty of well-directed energy and focus, with these musicians giving Tchaikovsky’s music the amplitude it needed to make a resounding impression. Thrills and spills included, it was, I thought, a most successful concert, then, for both orchestra and conductor.

Beautiful contemporary choral music from Cantoris: if only an orchestra!

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Cantoris Choir conducted by Thomas Nikora with Mark Dorrell – accompanist and Barbara Paterson – soprano

Chris Artley: O magnum mysterium
Rutter: Magnificat
Lauridsen: Sure on this Shining Night

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Saturday 1 July, 7:30 pm

It was a calm, cool, drizzly night, when most of Wellington’s population was either at the stadium, in pubs or at home watching a rugby match between New Zealand and the combined British-Ireland team. Very few: to wit, about 30, felt free to attend a rather fine concert by one of Wellington’s longest surviving choirs (almost 50 years).

Those happy few had a wide choice of seating.

The concert opened with an a cappella setting of the Medieval Latin, liturgical chant, O magnum mysterium, which has inspired many of the great composers, particularly in the Renaissance.

Chris Artley was born in Leeds, then lived elsewhere in Yorkshire and Lancashire, went to school in Bolton, graduated from Bristol University (1981-84), did teacher training at Cambridge University. Then he worked in London until coming to Auckland ‘13 years ago’ (2004?), as he told Eva Radich on RNZ Concert back in February. In 2010 he took a graduate diploma in music at Auckland University, including conducting with Karen Grylls and composing with John Elmsly. He’s worked with and composed for Terence Maskell’s Graduate Choir, and currently teaches at King’s College, Auckland. O Magnum Mysterium was written for the Nelson Summer School Choir in 2013. (See https://www.chrisartley.com/biography)

Though it’s a short piece, it is based on several short but coherent and ear-catching motifs, and ends with the choir calling sweetly and engagingly, ‘Dominum Christum. Alleluia!’ Artley’s lucid and unpretentious music is a nice contribution to the fast-growing body of new music written to be enjoyed by singers and audiences alike, and Thomas Nikora guided his singers through a sympathetic, well-delivered performance of it.

The main work was Rutter’s Magnificat. Again, a liturgical text that’s been set by everyone from Josquin, John Taverner (and John Tavener), Tallis and Victoria, Monteverdi, Schütz, Vivaldi and Bach, Mozart, Bruckner and Franck to Arvo Pärt and, well… Rutter.

It opens at a fine clip, in triplets and the high voices of the choir generated a joyful clamour. The first of the sequence of mood shifts, to a sort of English pastoral scene, was again dominated by higher voices, which I came to feel was more an observation on the exposure and smaller numbers of tenors and basses. But then came a return to the almost operatic lustiness of the opening, though as this part of the work ended, in spite Mark Dorrell’s excellent handling of the piano, sensitive and colourful, some of its excitement may have been missed in the absence of an orchestra. You only need to look at the scoring that includes harp, four horns and rich percussion: glockenspiel, snare drum, cymbals, tambourine, bongos to see the importance Rutter placed on an orchestra. But what to do, given the poverty of New Zealand’s artistic resources? Funds are needed to meet the costs of an orchestra of the calibre of Orchestra Wellington, for a job on this scale. Wellington has the singers and the professional instrumentalists for a work like this, but how to pay them, as one must, without even a tiny fraction of the public and private funds that are readily found for sport?

Rutter’s insertion of the lovely Middle English poem, Of a rose, a lovely rose, might have seemed a curious aesthetic move, but it’s not too much at odds with the spirit of the religious canticle.

It was good to have the words of ‘Of a Rose,’ in the programme but it would also have been useful for those not so conversant with Catholic liturgy to have had the Magnificat’s text as well, so that the several sections into which the work was divided could be identified confidently. For example, one needed to read the sense of ‘Et misericordia’ as soprano Barbara Paterson sang this section. Initially her voice sounded slightly tremulous, rather than lyrically reverent, but her confidence and accomplishment sustained her performance there and at her reappearance in the ‘Esurientes’ movement where she expressed a humane message in a moving melody: ‘He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away’.

But between the two soprano sections, came the almost ferocious ‘Fecit potentiam’. I couldn’t catch enough words here to make sense of it, though it was jagged in rhythm suggesting some kind of revolutionary action. Again it would have been good to know that it was a plea to overcome that very contemporary political evil of gross economic and political inequality: ‘He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek’.

The final section, Gloria Patri, is a further plea to banish oppression against the powerless that Rutter, actually a non-believer, clearly took rather seriously. ‘succour those in need, help the faint-hearted, console the tearful: pray for the laity … intercede for all devout women’ (mm.. what about all women?); and it was full of ecstatic energy with its fierce dotted rhythms, repeated rising phrases, and crescendo.

The choir and its accompanist had done very well.

The last piece was Morton Lauridsen’s Sure on This Shining Night (setting a poem by American novelist and poet James Agee). Unusual poem, much given to repetition of the title, I can see its attraction to a composer, to whom such techniques are commonplace. Opening with graceful notes on the piano and the slow emergence of first, men’s voices and then women all coming together to develop an indescribably beautiful melody, again exquisitely handled by conductor, pianist and choir. I will draw contempt from certain quarters in saying that, for me, this music and that of the other two composers handled here, surely point the way to a revival of approachable and simply beautiful music that gifted composers have avoided creating over much of the past century.