Month: June 2018

Harmony of the Spheres in tandem with life on earth – Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) from Baroque Voices and instrumentalists

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Loemis presents:
A Winter Solstice Offering in Medieval Song and Dance

Harmony of the Spheres
The music of Abbess Hildegard von Bingen

Baroque Voices, directed by Pepe Becker
Pepe Becker, Jane McKinlay, Virginia Warbrick, Milla Dickens, Andrea Cochrane, Alexandra Granville, Toby Gee
Instrumental Ensemble
Warren Warbrick (nga taonga puoro), Pepe Becker (shruti-box), Gregory Squire (medieval fiddle), Robert Oliver (rebec) Laurence Reece (drums, bells, shruti-box)

Hall of Memories, National War Memorial
Buckle St., Mt Cook, Wellington

Sunday 17th June 2018

More of a spiritual/aesthetic experience than merely a “concert” was Baroque Voices’ evocative and atmospheric presentation “Harmony of the Spheres”, triumphantly bringing together singers, instrumentalists and audience to share and delight in the joys of exploration, wonderment and celebration wrought by the music of the twelfth-century Abbess Hildegard of Bingen. No more ambient and timeless sounds than those of Hildegard’s music intermingled with both contemporaneous dance rhythms and the haunting strains of a taonga puoro instrument could have been conceived – and no better venue for such a venture in the capital could have been chosen than the Hall of Memories at the National War Memorial in Mt.Cook’s Buckle St., beneath the Carillon.

Added to this for we listeners was the sense of participation in a living form of ritual – we were encircled by the musicians, the seated instrumentalists in front, and the singers standing at the sides around the auditorium, the latter moving one position clockwise in between each of the sequences and chants, and in doing so enclosing us in a diaphanous web of vocal sounds, almost as if we were part of the choir itself. Of course the nature of such isolated voice-placements resulted in the unison lines acquiring for a number of reasons more of a soft-focused communal roundness throughout, instead of the ensemble’s usual sharply-etched homogeneity of sound. It seemed almost as if we were privy to worship carried out by an actual community of nuns and novices, as bent on connecting with the spiritually expressive content of the words they sang, as concerning themselves with a certain quality of sound.

I had previously heard Hildegard’s work performed in concert, occasionally by Baroque Voices themselves, though invariably in tandem with the work of other composers. Having her music presented with the kind of focus and historical context provided here couldn’t help but make a profound impression on anybody’s sensibilities, a feeling of tapping into some kind of transcendental creative force that simply couldn’t be denied or thwarted by earthly impediments – a notion which was afterwards reinforced by my reading Pepe Becker’s informative programme-notes, which included a brief biography of the composer, of the kind that makes one realise how puny one’s own achievements in life really are!

Included also in the printed programme (which I didn’t get to read until after the concert!) were translations of the original Latin texts of the Hymns, which were also written by Hildegard! What Pepe Becker calls her “expressive and rapturous” imagery in places predates that of the English metaphysical poets writing five hundred years later, in terms of physical and erotic imagery – the Antiphon “Hodie Aparuit”, for example, which speaks of the Virgin’s womb opening only for the Son of God – “from it gleams within the dawn the Virgin Mary’s flower”. The body for Hildegard is at once the holiest and most responsive of sanctuaries, as these words in praise of the third-century Saint Eucharius’s holiness show – “In your mouth Ecclesia (a female personification of the Church) savours the old and the new wine which is the potion of holiness”. There’s an exhilarating freedom about such use of imagery  – “from your womb, O dawn, has come the sun anew!” – which disarms with its wholeheartedness and candour.

Complementing the vocal performances were the efforts of the instrumentalists whose distinctive tones played their part in evoking the presentation’s duality of medieval ambience and timelessness. An extra dimension of place was wrought by taonga puoro player Warren Warbrick’s plaintive bird-like realisations on the pūtōrino, whose sounds began the presentation proper, then alternated utterances with the voice of Pepe Becker in “O Ignis Spiritus”, and the vocal ensemble in “O Euchari”. Both vocal and pūtōrino timbres drew from one another a common sense of something spiritual and extra-terrestrial, a girdle of sounds whose combination seemed to readily encompass the entirety of the globe.

Earthiness of a different order pervaded the contribution of the remaining instrumentalists, a quality readily conceded by the excellent violinist Gregory Squire, in his note about the presentation’s instruments-only contributions – he remarks that while song was a “constant” in the church, “dance was, more often than not, the preserve of the illiterate rabble”. As well as contributing these sequences the instrumentalists also provided discreet accompaniments to some of the singing, usually in the form of “drone-like” pedal notes from the string instruments, or occasional bell-chimes, with the aforementioned pūtōrino making its voice heard occasionally. There was also a kind of “squeeze-box” called a shruti-box whose delicate whisperings  nevertheless created telling ambiences.

But it was the dance music which made the most enduring impression, the players seemingly drawing from the earth itself the necessary energies and articulations that made this vigorous music “speak”. We heard quick music whose sequences were called Trotto (Latin – trottare – to trot) and Ghaetta (an Italian city’s name, and also Spanish for bagpipes), as well as a more extended sequence called “Lamento di Tristano”, a musical representation of the search for the Holy Grail, which contained various narrative references in the form of different tempi and moods for different parts of the piece. Both Robert Oliver (rebec) and Laurence Reese (drums, bells) hove to with a will in tandem with their violinist, generating as lively and visceral a response in the energetic sequences as, were, in contrast, their contributions to the slower pieces delicate and thoughtful.

Altogether we were transported by the sounds and their realisations to a time and place in keeping with a more natural order of things, our sensibilities delighting in the juxtapositioning of the sacred and profane, and marvelling at the ease and flow of co-existence between the two. It was part of the genius of Pepe Becker and her collaborators that such disparate elements as the creative genius of Hildegard of Bingen, popular medieval dance music and timelessly ambient sounds from Aotearoa were brought together with such memorable and resounding effect.

 

 

 

 

 

Lawrence Renes, NZSO and Simon O’Neill in superb Wagner songs and monumental Bruckner 4th

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Lawrence Renes; tenor: Simon O’Neill

Wagner: Wesendonck Lieder
Bruckner: Symphony No 4 in E flat

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 16 June, 7:30 pm

This subscription concert was advertised as ‘An Evening with Simon O’Neill’, obviously in the hope that the name of New Zealand’s internationally most distinguished singer would match that of the recently retired Kiri Te Kanawa. But it didn’t work as the auditorium was hardly half full. Nevertheless, O’Neill is indeed one of a small handful of leading tenors in the Wagner class. Sure, he doesn’t compete in the public mind with his contemporaries Roberto Alagna, Jonas Kaufmann, Juan Diego Florez, Josef Calleja, Rolando Villazon, because he has emerged as a superb Helden-tenor, the fach particularly associated with Wagner. But he has done much else, for example as Otello, Cavaradossi in Tosca in New Zealand, Papageno in The Magic Flute and symphonic tenor roles such as Mahler’s Eighth and Beethoven’s Ninth. Clearly, Wagner in Europe and North America now keeps him very busy; why on earth not here?

So I wondered whether the orchestra might better have programmed him in the real thing: in a couple of the great excerpts from the music dramas like Siegmund’s ecstatic, passion-driven episode in Walküre Act I, ‘Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond’, or the Prize song from Die Meistersinger, or ‘In fernem Land’ from Lohengrin.

One can’t help wondering why a certain Wagner passion that arose with the 1990 Festival production of Die Meistersinger, which had four pretty full houses in the Michael Fowler Centre, evaporated so soon; Auckland’s Flying Dutchman a couple of years later didn’t do well and that a wonderful, semi-staged, all-New Zealand-singer Parsifal twenty years later didn’t even get one full house.

So this concert might better have been ‘An Evening with Bruckner’, for that was both three times as long as the Wesendonck Lieder, and is a greater work.

Wesendonck Lieder
However, O’Neill’s performance of the little song cycle, even promotionally spiced with references to the possible love affair between poet Mathilde Wesendonck and the composer, beautifully sung as it was, hardly competed with the possible alternative of two or three excerpts from Wagner’s stage works.

O’Neill’s voice is much more than either a fine lyric tenor or a commending Helden-tenor; there is a remarkably warm, polished and simply beautiful quality that was immediately obvious from the first notes. His performances seemed to be fully sensitive to the meaning and the fervid emotional feel of the slender poems in the flavour of early 19th century German lyric poetry. All five songs are linked in mood and musical feeling, though it is the third, ‘Im Treibhaus’ with its clear relationship with the music in Tristan und Isolde that seems to make the strongest impression, and where O’Neill’s instinctive affinity with Wagner’s musical complexion was present.

Its generous setting allowed more time for the mood to unfold that in ‘Schmerzen’, the next song, which moved through its text more brusquely, sounding more Lohengrinish than Tristanean.

And in the last song, ‘Träume’ (the programme note lost the umlaut) which, like ‘Im Treibhaus’, was marked by Wagner “study for Tristan und Isolde”, O’Neill created an uneasy, unsettled mood in a song that can be somewhat more sanguine in the hands of some singers, at least in its central passages. I had the unusual experience of having expected the last song to evolve more and in differing ways; not for the first time, I felt that Wagner might have made a more extended – indeed elaborate, Tristanish meal of it.

Even though Wagner only orchestrated this last song, they feel incomplete without orchestra. Felix Mottl orchestrated the others. There’s a 1976 orchestration by Hans Werner Henze which employs lighter textures, and observing fewer players in some parts of the orchestra, I had wondered whether that was used. But the orchestra tells me that Renes had simply reduced the string numbers.  For an account of the various orchestral arrangements over recent years look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesendonck_Lieder.

Bruckner 4th
Much as it was a pleasure to hear such a fine and idiomatic performance of these songs, the main fare was undoubtedly the Bruckner symphony. It did surprise and disappoint me that so few of my fellow citizens felt it important to hear this very approachable Bruckner symphony in live performance, especially, I assume, the second version which is quite a bit shorter than the first of 1874.  Perhaps a better known conductor might have made a difference, but I felt from the very beginning that in Lawrence Renes, here, was a man with a splendid grasp of the music’s demands. The biographical note made no reference to his major orchestral performances (a lot of opera however – odd when he’s here for an orchestral concert).

Not all symphonies create such an immediate feeling of expectancy, like the start of a much looked-forward-to trip. But that, to my delight, was the impression from the secretive opening horn solo; that restraint seemed to be prolonged since much of the first few minutes are in the hands of solo or duetting instruments over quiet tremolo strings. The atmosphere Renes created in the superficially repetitive first movement had miraculous characteristics of suspense, expectancy and calm, constructed on that rare, octave-wide motif that never out-lived its hypnotic power.

If the first movement was, as Bruckner instructed, ‘Bewegt, nicht zu schnell’, for 20 minutes, the true slow movement, though marked ‘Andante, quasi allegretto’, felt as if the rest of one’s life might fruitfully be absorbed by this rapturous music, and its 15 minutes or so seemed to be over far too soon. Renes’s approach was scrupulous, handling every detail as if his listeners were already in a state of trance or rapture. Here the weight rested with strings: violas and cellos, along with often quite exposed solo woodwinds, which seemed to carry its essence, even when the whole orchestra eventually became engaged, then subsided as they played the little dotted motif over and over.  I could understand the hesitant clapping at the movement’s end: I would guess it was from those who actually knew and loved it so well that this beautiful performance and its hallowed ending had moved them so profoundly.

So after more than half an hour of generally painstaking, meditative music, the Scherzo can seem as if Bruckner was simply responding to audience expectation of a brisk, even jolly, movement. But he gets it out of the way in about 10 minutes, including the charming little Ländler-like Trio section, led by clarinets and strings. It seemed, as always, a bit unexpected when the superbly polished trumpets and trombones of the orchestra which launched the Scherzo, return to punctuate its predominant string and woodwind filigree.

But the Scherzo has prepared the audience for a Finale of the traditional sort, in the kind of sonata form that is the usual first movement architecture. Yet the work’s limpid charm never abandons it, and the orchestra shifted from blazing brass-led fanfares to the most delicate passages where solo flute or horn for example flutters over shimmering strings with basses delivering a commanding beat.

Renes worked with the orchestra about seven years ago I gather, though I have no memory of having heard him conduct. He is an acolyte of music director Edo de Waart; I hope his return, very soon, can be arranged. Along with the chance to hear Simon O’Neill singing in his home territory, this was a superb concert.

 

Chris Hainsworth – “Perfection of Sound” on the Fernie organ at St.Mary of the Angels

Posted on by Peter Mechen

CHRIS HAINSWORTH ON THE FERNIE ORGAN

A book-prelaunch celebration – “The Perfection of Sound” – the story of the “Fernie Organ” at St.Mary of the Angels Church, Wellington

Music by Franck, Chaminade, Quef, Torres, Bonnet, JS Bach, Gounod, Debussy, Vierne, Lefebure-Wely, Mine, Widor

Chris Hainsworth playing the organ at St.Mary of the Angels Church,
Boulcott St., Wellington

Friday, 15th June, 2018

This, of course, was a concert with a difference, being the occasion of a book pre-launch, though regarding the actual music performed, perhaps to a less idiosyncratic extent for those who, unlike myself, have previously attended one or more of organist Chris Hainsworth’s recitals. Hainsworth has, on previous occasions at the St.Mary of the Angels Church organ, given presentations of a somewhat less-than-highbrow nature, partly due to his well-documented philosophy of avoiding solemnity in his programmes and countering passivity amongst his audiences! – see two previous “Middle C” reviews of the organist’s recitals,  one from 2013 –  https://middle-c.org/2013/02/organ-megalomania-christopher-hainsworth-courtesy-maxwell-fernie/ and the other from 2009 – https://middle-c.org/2009/04/christopher-hainsworth-at-the-organ-of-st-mary-of-the-angels/

Perhaps the humour was rather less overtly-expressed this time round, the programme contents themselves at first giving little outward cause for eyebrow-raising, sorting themselves dutifully into theme-groups such as the opening “A Suite of Carols for Midwinter”. I did wonder how Hainsworth then came to characterise a pairing of a Serenade by Charles Gounod and an arrangement of Debussy’s much-played “La fille aux cheveux de lin” as “A Baptism and a Funeral” – (shades of Ravel’s “Pavane pour une Infante defunte” perhaps?)

However, this mystery paled into insignificance when compared with the organist’s wonderful title for his last bracket of pieces – “A Fake New Symphony”. My Middle C colleague, Rosemary Collier, with whom I was sitting, leaned over and commented – “Well, he’s come up trumps with this one!” Four diverse pieces from different composers’ organ symphonies were followed by an improvisation-finale in the best virtuoso-composer tradition, one based on “Personent Hodie” a Christmas Carol originating from Scandinavia in the Middle Ages.

Obviously a lot of thought had gone into Hainsworth’s choices of music, each piece played during the evening having some kind of connection with the man to whom the organ in St.Mary of the Angels’ Church owes its unique existence, distinctiveness and reputation, organist, choirmaster and visionary, Maxwell Fernie (1910-1999). However, it was some time before the actual musical side of things got going, as part of the evening’s business was to officially announce the projected appearance of a book, “The Perfection of Sound” – the history of the St.Mary’s organ with all the correspondence between Max, the organ builder, the pipe makers and the parish priest.

The Parish Priest of St.Mary’s Church, Father Kevin Conroy SM, welcomed what was a goodly Friday evening audience to the concert, before inviting James Young, the current organist at the church, to introduce a number of speakers with something to tell us regarding their association with Max Fernie, with the organ, and/or with the forthcoming book, to be published by Steele Roberts at the year’s end.

It fell to Roger Steele to begin by telling us about the book project and enjoining those present to avail themselves of the chance to gain first-hand knowledge of the organ’s genesis in its present form. After Fernie’s widow, Greta inherited all her husband’s papers and the correspondence associated with the organ’s rebuilding, she thought such detailed documentation would constitute a unique story if gathered together and edited to make a book. Alan Simpson, who had been a pupil of Max’s and was also interested in technical aspects of organ specifications, edited the bulk of the material, including correspondence and interviews; while another former student Ros Johnston drew from a 1996 interview with Max by journalist Anna Smith, writing a substantial introduction to the correspondence in the context of Max’s career. The whole will be curated by Roger Steele for eventual publication.

Two further speakers were firstly John Hargraves, an organ-builder and director of the South Island Organ Company, who worked with Fernie from 1979 on the organ’s completion and subsequent refurbishments. He elaborated on Max’s insistence at developing specific tonal characteristics in the organ, adding a reminiscence of his involvement with Max in the 1985 restoration of the Wellington Town Hall organ. The final address came from Elizabeth Kerr, arts administrator, who talked about her experiences of Max as a teacher, with whom she had singing lessons as a chorister and a soloist, and as a “compelling” interpreter and conductor of the music he loved.

Introductions, documentations and reminiscences then made way for the sounds of the organ in question, Chris Hainsworth duly welcomed and introduced, and beginning his concert with music by Cesar Franck, a “Grand Choeur”. This was stirring stuff commencing with the “Noel” tune, grand and imposing, and continuing with a sprightly march with lots of dotted rhythms, the music employing a variety of timbres and building up to a series of contrasts between grandeur and energetic excitement to great effect.

A complete contrast in mood was wrought by Cecile Chaminade’s beautiful and nostalgic “Pastorale pour la Nuit de Noel”, gentle dotted rhythms and mellifluous tones contrasting with more plaintive reed-like sounds at the end. It made a fine contrast with little-known composer Charles Quef’s “Noel Parisien” with its rattling toccata-like passages and celebratory themes.

Hainsworth’s selection certainly played up the contrasts, with Eduardo Torres’s “Lullaby for the Holy Infant” again applying balm to our stimulated sensibilities with appropriately soothing and utterly charming “piping” timbres, a kind of “trio” section affording some contrasts of texture before returning to the opening. The suite’s finale was Joseph Bonnet’s “Rhapsodie Catalane”, music that brought out a pronounced virtuosic element, specifically with the use of the pedals, whole cadenzas in fact! After the relatively restrained music we’d heard thus far, this piece seemed to open up the instrument’s latent power and brilliance to spectacular effect, the pedal sounds almost seismic in their visceral impact. Based on two Catalan carols, the music’s second section featured even more spectacular pedal virtuosity in places which, when the hands joined in, produced easily the grandest sounds of the evening thus far.

Respite, if needed, from these all-out expressions of grandeur was given by the music of JS Bach, in the form of two Chorale Preludes, the first being the beatific, timeless-sounding  “Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier”, while the second was a somewhat more anxious and insistent “Ich ruf zu dir”. These certainties of faith were followed by a curiously-titled pairing of pieces by Gounod and Debussy – “A Baptism and a Funeral”. I got the “Baptism”concept without too much trouble, Gounod’s “Serenade” offering a suitably attractive nascent quality not unlike parts of Faure’s “Dolly” Suite – but, as already stated, I struggled when equating an organ transcript of Debussy’s piano Prelude “La fille aux cheveux de lin” with a funereal kind of association. When listening to this much-played piece, I thought how much more exciting it would have been to hear a different prelude of Debussy’s served up on the organ, one appropriate to the surroundings – La Cathédrale engloutie (The Submerged Cathedral) – though perhaps there might not of course have been a connection with Max that justified such an inclusion.

The concert’s finale was the “trumped-up” – sorry! – the “Fake New Symphony”, with Hainsworth inventively bringing four existing movements from other “organ symphonies” together, along with an improvised finale. This form was developed almost exclusively by French composers inspired by the new sonic capabilities and growing sophistication of organs built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll during the nineteenth century. The first “movement” was supplied by Louis Vierne, taken from his own “Organ Symphony No.2”, one with an attention-grabbing opening and a gentler, major-key second subject, the development alternating the music’s sterner and more lyrical aspects, until the symphony’s opening returned with even more strength and expressive power, its conclusion grand and definite.

After this Alfred Lefebure-Wely’s Andante sounded very small beer indeed (“A lot of rubbish!” sniffed somebody sitting alongside where I was) – yes, it was mawkish-sounding, complete with “cooing doves” effects in places, but I thought the effect at the very least delightful, and certainly no more insipid than a rather trite scherzo contributed next by one Joseph Mine, a composer from the period in France regarded by music historians as “barren” – between Rameau and Berlioz – rather like Mozart’s self-mocking “Kaiser Song”, replete with empty fanfare-like gestures.

I liked how Hainsworth then eschewed the “obvious” finale from the genre, firstly taking from its composer, Charles-Marie Widor, the Adagio movement (a pleasant piece, pure and serene) from that very same Symphony No. 5, and then finishing with the organist’s own improvisation, based on the previously-mentioned Christmas Carol “Personent Hodie”. It rounded off an extraordinary, and appropriately flamboyant concert, and provided a sonorous demonstration of the fruits of Max Fernie’s labours in the shape and form of the present St.Mary of the Angels’ Church organ.

For those interested in the whole story the proposed book promises to be enthralling reading. To find out further information, or to place an order, go to Steele Roberts Aotearoa Ltd – http://steeleroberts.co.nz/contact/, or send an e-mail to Roger Steele at  info@steeleroberts.co.nz.

 

 

Engaging and exploratory viola music from NZSM students at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts 
New Zealand School of Music viola students, with accompanist Catherine Norton

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 13 June, 12:15 pm

This is the time for music students to use the facilities and be exposed to audiences at St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts in preparation for their first semester assessments. For audiences too, there are a couple of benefits; invariably, there are students who surprise, sometimes astonish, with their level of musicianship and technical skill; and there’s the chance to hear some unfamiliar, sometimes very engaging music. Some is chosen to display students’ strengths regardless of the interest of the music for the general, musical public, but there’s always some that is little known and prompts curiosity and thus an impulse to do a little research, to look for recordings in the library or on YouTube.

Zephyr Wills is a first year student who played a Potpourri for viola and piano by Hummel. A few decades ago Hummel’s name meant a pedantic and flashy pianist, a rival of Beethoven in virtuosity who wrote superficially attractive music. A lot of his music has been unearthed including some, yes, attractive and exciting music, a lot for the piano, but also orchestral, chamber and choral music. This piece was very listenable and proved both manageable and at times challenging for a student. It offered music that suited Wills’s flair for easy rhythms and long lyrical lines, employing tunes that were familiar, though not always identifiable. As with each of the pieces played, Catherine Norton, undoubtedly one of the finest accompanists working in New Zealand, supported and enlivened the performances.

Allegro appassionato, by Paul Rougnon, presumably composed as an examination piece at the Paris Conservatoire where he taught, was played by Debbie King, a second year student. Rougnon was a contemporary of Fauré and Massenet (and such disparate composers as Chabrier and Widor too), though I didn’t notice any conspicuous similarities. Not melodically very distinctive, the music had a generally lyrical feel that showed through its shape and textures; it is probably fair to say that its aim seemed mainly to demonstrate students’ technique, which King made tasteful, not showy use of; she played with confidence and musicality.

The Prelude to Bach’s first solo violin suite (BWV 1001), was played in an unattributed scoring for viola, by fourth year student, Charlotte Lamb. The listener is no doubt at a disadvantage attempting to listen objectively to music that is very familiar since so many famous and deeply musical performances lurk in the mind, perhaps to the disadvantage of the present player. It was different, of course, more warm and mellow than on the violin and so less brilliant. Lamb’s playing was accurate and rhythmically coherent but something of Bach had been diminished: this in spite of my secret preferring the tonal range of the viola over that of the violin.

The next piece, When Gravity Fails, in three parts, by Christchurch composer Philip Norman was shared by three players: Grant Baker with Flingamango Tango, Zephyr Wills with Evening Romance and Lauren Jack playing Isla’s Blues. Each section was vividly different and the word ‘quirky’ often comes to mind in characterising Norman’s carefully insubstantial, sometimes ironic or flippant music; but its great virtue is his interest, not shared by a large number of contemporary composers, in entertaining his listeners. In each of the markedly different pieces, the aim was to amuse rather than challenge or to demonstrate a mastery of complex forms or recondite musical vocabulary. The odd smudge or blurred phrase felt like fun, unimportant, and all three seemed to feel at liberty to enjoy the varied emotions or images that invested Norman’s creations.

The most substantial, main-stream work was Bloch’s Suite Hébraïque rhapsodie in which Lauren Jack discovered a depth of feeling that was recognisable to anyone familiar with Bloch’s Schelomo for cello and orchestra, a piece that I discovered in my teens and has had me looking for comparable music by Bloch ever since (there is some). Lauren Jack, another talented first year student, gave it a very thoughtful and enjoyable performance, and I felt it went some way to meet my longings.

The recital ended with two players returning to play pieces that complemented what they’d played before. Debbie King moved from an obscure French composer to an obscure German one. Eduard Pütz was born in 1911 but I can find nothing about his life though he obviously lived through the Nazi years. His Blues for Benni clearly suggested jazz and employed agreeable if somewhat complex jazz rhythms through three distinct phases. King sounded very comfortable in her handling of the idiom and its rather particular demands, though I felt, obviously in my first hearing, that the piece rather outlasted its material.

And Grant Baker ended the recital with a piece by Belgian violinist and composer Vieuxtemps (a contemporary of Franck, Lalo and Gounod, even Offenbach, if that’s in any way relevant), best known for his violin concertos. This Elégie for viola and piano was melodically attractive and Baker gave it an excellent account with lyrical playing, tinged with a gentle pathos. It called for a good deal of embellishment from both viola and Catherine Norton’s unfailingly sensitive and supportive piano, which the pair handled with flair.

Orchestra Wellington – a “Golden” beginning to its 2018 season

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents:
GOLDEN CITY – Music by Mozart, Bartok and Dvorak

MOZART – Symphony No. 38 in D major  K.504 “Prague”
BARTOK – Violin Concerto No. 2 (1938)
DVORAK – Symphony No. 5 in F Major B.54

Amalia Hall (violin)
Marc Taddei (conductor)
Orchestra Wellington

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 9th June, 2018

Orchestra Wellington and Marc Taddei got their 2018 season off to an arresting start with a concert of three resplendent-sounding works, one whose effect simply got more and more celebratory and engaging as the evening went on. Aiding and abetting this state of things was the welcome presence of guest Concertmaster Wilma Smith, and a goodly-numbered audience whose support for the orchestra was richly rewarded. First came what I thought an exciting and vital, if in places a tad frenetic, reading of the Mozart “Prague” Symphony, followed by two absolutely stellar performances,  firstly, of Bela Bartok’s Second Violin Concerto, and then of a concert rarity, the Fifth Symphony of Antonin Dvorak.

The inclusion of this latter work is, of course, part of a series featuring the “great” Dvorak symphonies, beginning with this F Major work which Dvorak had written in 1875. It was first performed in 1879 as Op.24, but the publisher, Simrock, wanting to invest the work with increased status to boost sales, brought out the work in 1888 as Op.76, despite Dvorak’s protests. After Dvorak’s death no less than four earlier unpublished symphonies were discovered, necessitating a complete renumbering of the canon – up to that time, and for a long while afterwards, for example, the “New World” Symphony, which we know as No.9, was called No.5. Though worthy of the occasional hearing, the earlier symphonies each have fewer “moments per minute” than do the final five, though there have been many recordings made of the complete set.

Getting the evening off to a vigorous start was a performance of Mozart’s bright and energetic “Prague” Symphony, so-called because of the composer’s happy association with the city over the years, beginning in 1787, when a concert organised for his benefit included this newly-composed Symphony. Prague was, at that time, known as the “Golden City” – Zlatá Praha (Golden Prague in Czech) – due to its many towers and spires, some of which were reputedly covered in gold – hence the concert’s title. Also, Bohemian wind players were regarded as Europe’s best, and Mozart’s exemplary writing for winds in this work was very probably with such players in mind. Another unusual feature of the work for its composer is its three-movement structure, Mozart having always written a Minuet for his Viennese audiences. The likely explanation is that Prague’s musical public were accustomed to the three-movement form, as evidenced by the work of other symphonists whose music was performed there at around that time.

Looking back over my previous impressions of Marc Taddei’s Mozart conducting, I note great enthusiasm regarding a 2014 performance of the late G Minor Symphony, one which brought out the music’s strength and darkness through trenchant and insistent orchestral playing. I was therefore looking forward to his interpretation of the “Prague”, an expectation which was straightaway galvanised by the symphony’s opening, with forceful timpani, winds and brass (foreshadowing the opera “Don Giovanni”) tellingly contrasted with an attractive plaintive quality in the string phrases. The syncopated rhythms of the allegro’s opening swiftly and directly thrust the music forward, the playing having a dynamic character whose nicely-judged balances allowed each section a “voice”. Taddei swept the music’s momentum along through the development section, again beautifully dovetailing the elements of discourse – only a lack of real girth to the string tone in places (too few players for this venue!) prevented the performance from really taking wing.

Mozart cleverly combined slow movement and minuet-like impulse in the middle movement, probably conscious of the Prague audience’s usual fare of three-movement symphonies! Here there was sinuous sweetness in the strings’ chromatic figurations at the opening, answered by strong, purposeful winds, the playing both graceful and forthright. The composer’s awareness of the quality of Prague’s wind players was also reflected in the prominence allowed the winds throughout, a character here readily given sonorous and well-rounded purpose by the Orchestra Wellington players and their conductor.

As for the finale, the deftly-sounded introduction led to a virtual explosion of energies whose exhilaration and excitement, while befitting the presto marking, seemed to me to almost rush the music off its feet in places. The players coped magnificently, but I thought Taddei’s speeds allowed less humour than breathlessness in certain passages (the “cat-and-mouse” passages of the development, for example), and tended to turn the music’s chuckles to excitable babble, which, of course, still made the music “work”, though in a more extreme way to that which I preferred. In fact the big outburst mid-movement here sounded to my ears more angry and terse than I’ve ever previously heard it, though it did make more sense of a remark I encountered made by one commentator, who said that Mozart sounds in places in this movement more like Beethoven than anywhere else in his music. While not convinced wholly, I still took my metaphorical hat off to Taddei and his musicians for their bravery and daring at tackling the music so fearlessly!

Leaping forwards over a whole century, the concert then took us to the world of Bartok, in the shape and form of his Second Violin Concerto. The soloist was Amalia Hall, normally the Orchestra’s Concertmaster, which was why Orchestra Wellington had procured the services of Wilma Smith in the role on this occasion, a most distinguished substitute! It was of course Wilma Smith who brought another of the twentieth century’s most significant violin concerti to Orchestra Wellington audiences two years ago (goodness – how time flies!) – which was Alban Berg’s “To the Memory of an Angel” Violin Concerto. Now, courtesy of Amalia Hall (and presided over by Wilma!), it was the turn of Bartok, with a work that was regarded by the composer as his “only” violin concerto, an earlier work (1908) having never been published by the time of the composer’s death.

From the concerto’s richly evocative beginning Amalia Hall seemed to “inhabit” the music’s wide-ranging moods, seeming equally at home with both the work’s evocative beauties and rapid-fire volatilities – she addressed the atmospheric warmth of the opening folk-tune with full-bodied tones, along with plenty of energy and “snap” to her phrasings.  Throughout she seemed to encompass whatever parameters of feeling the music sought to express, in complete accord with conductor and players. And the music was extraordinary in its variety, by turns lyrical, quixotic and whimsical, and grotesque bordering on the savage – the composer’s seemingly endless invention meant that we as listeners were in a constant state of anticipation, ready to “go” with the soloist’s lyrical inwardness, sudden whimsicalities or flashes of brilliance as required. The orchestra, too had plenty of surprises for us, Taddei and his players evocative in their lyrical support of the soloist and brilliant and biting in their more combatative exchanges – some gloriously raucous sounds were produced by the winds and brass at appointed moments!

The slow movement was launched by the solo violin over magically-realised string textures, a beautiful melody eventually taken up briefly but wholeheartedly by the strings in Kodaly-like fashion. Again, the soloist made the themes and their variants throughout the movement her own, rhapsodising over pizzicato strings throughout one sequence, then joining with the winds and the harp to create a stunningly lovely fairyland ambience within another. The more quixotic variations also came off well, also, firstly a slithering theme played by the soloist over uneasily shifting orchestral chords, and then a playful march drawing delicately pointillistic exchanges between violin and orchestra, Hall’s playing throughout beautifully combining poise with real and constant presence.

The orchestra impatiently plunged into the finale’s opening bars, to which assertiveness the soloist replied with a sprightly folk-dance-like figure, the subsequent cross-exchanges leading the orchestra into almost  “road music” for a few glorious measures. Though the music refused to settle on any one mode for too long, Hall and the players rode the wave-crest of its restless spirit, tenderly realising the gentler, soulful evocations while eagerly tackling the more physical interchanges. Some of the orchestral tutti passages seemed to anticipate the “Concerto for Orchestra”, such as a toccata-like passage mid-movement capped off by the brass with infectious enthusiasm. Though not possessing the world’s heftiest tones, Hall addressed the more trenchant passages of her interactions with what seemed like remarkable strength and dexterity, enough to be hailed as a worthy hero by the orchestral brasses, before her final flourishes swept upwards to join the work’s final brass shouts! What an ending, and what a performance!

What would have been, a relatively short while ago, something of a musical curiosity was the final work on the evening’s programme, Dvorak’s Fifth Symphony, now widely accepted as the first of the composer’s nine completed examples of the genre to display his genius consistently throughout. I can recall reading about the work in “Gramophone”, encountering an ecstatic review of conductor Istvan Kertesz’s 1965 recording with the London Symphony, one which contained the words “….the expression of joy so intense it brings tears…..” All these years later, I still share that reaction whenever I get the chance to hear this work, and listening to Orchestra Wellington’s performance with Marc Taddei was certainly no exception.

Right from the beginning we were beguiled by the music’s mellifluous tones, wrought by the work of the orchestra’s clarinettists, whose welcoming calls established the symphony’s breathless beauty and ineffable charm, a quality which was maintained throughout the work by the obvious care and affection bestowed on the music by the conductor and players. Vigorous and dramatic gestures abound throughout the music, though the whole was bound by the captivating strains of that clarinet-led opening. Incidentally, this was clarinettist Moira Hurst’s final concert as section leader in the orchestra, the work a fitting vehicle for demonstrating something of the beauty of her playing – fortunately for us she will continue working with the orchestra as an Emeritus player.

As well as enlarging the work’s range of expression with its sombre opening theme on the lower strings, the slow movement also demonstrated the composer’s growing instrumental and structural mastery – here was evidenced a transparency in the scoring, which, despite the playing’s intensity, maintained a luminous clarity throughout. And hand-in-glove was a rhythmic fluency between the music’s different sections, a graceful dance-like trio lightening the seriousness of the movement’s opening. Taddei and his players brought the two sections together easefully and coherently, adding to our pleasure.

Another transition involved the second and third movements, the former’s initial phrase “summoned” by wind chords and then redeployed as a statement of growth and change, taking us away from seriousness to a prospect of something more positive and engaging – suddenly the scherzo had grabbed us by the hand and was running with us down the hill, through grassy paddocks of pastoral delight, amid laughter and sunshine! As expected, there was also a trio section here, one which the winds led us towards with smiles and enjoinings to “let ourselves go!”, if only for brief moments, until we were back with the boisterous scamperings of the opening, whose bright dream came to an end all too soon.

In a sense the finale lacks some of the spontaneity of the preceding movements, though its structuring “grounds” the work as a symphonic statement, the agitated opening idea developed at length by the composer, before being contrasted by a “sighing” counter-subject. Taddei didn’t leave any room for uncertainty, pushing his players along, while giving ample space for the more lyrical episodes to develop their own character. Dvorak modulates his material amply, before returning to his opening music, but quells the agitations momentarily with a gorgeous oboe solo, as well as allowing strings and winds to reintroduce poignant echoes of the symphony’s very opening. These felicities, so tenderly given voice with some sensitive playing, were then lost to the whirlwind of excitement of the work’s coda, Taddei and his most excellent company “giving it all they had” for a properly grandstand finish! After this we were left in no doubt as to the prospective delights of the Orchestra’s remaining 2018 concerts – roll on, the rest of the Dvorak symphonies!

 

 

 

 

 

Faith and Commitment: Tony Vercoe and the Kiwi-Pacific Records Story

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Kiwi-Pacific Records Story
Tony Vercoe, talking with Tony Martin

Steele Roberts Aotearoa 2017

One doesn’t know whom to thank most heartily regarding the appearance of this book, “The Kiwi-Pacific Records Story” – perhaps the triumvirate of storyteller Tony Vercoe, interviewer Tony Martin and publisher Roger Steele deserves equal shared credit. It’s a book whose subject – the formation and development of a truly homegrown recording company determined to support the work of classical and indigenous composers, musicians, poets, artists and designers within Aotearoa – belongs with other inspirational histories of local artistic endeavours. These include Donald Munro’s Opera Company, Richard Campion’s New Zealand Players and Poul Gnatt’s Ballet Company, ventures which also helped change New Zealand forever during the 1950s.

When long-established publishers AH and AW Reed began Kiwi Records for educational purposes in 1957, the company envisaged certain projects involving music, but lacked any personnel with the experience and expertise to organise any such recordings. The right person in the right place at the right time happened to be Tony Vercoe, at that stage working for the Broadcasting Corporation in Wellington, and whom Reeds approached (on the recommendation of the legendary music scholar and broadcaster John A. Gray, who was also working for Radio) to handle the production of some of their projects on an ad hoc basis.

Vercoe, working in his spare time at first, was able to do this for a brief period until summoned by his Broadcasting bosses and told that his activities represented “a conflict of interests”. When Reeds heard about his predicament, the company offered Vercoe a full-time job, which, after careful consideration with his wife, Mary, he accepted, regarding the new venture as “a challenge and an opportunity”. That he, along with Mary’s unqualified support and assistance, made an enormous success of this venture up to his retirement from the operation in 1989, is the story that this book absorbingly tells.

It does so by reproducing a series of interviews between Vercoe and his nephew, Tony Martin which were begun in 2013. Though specifically concentrating on the story of the Kiwi-Pacific Records involvement, some of the background to the story is also covered, giving Vercoe’s decision to go with Reeds a “context” of previous experience, inclination and interest. Thus the book begins with his post-war years spent in London, his training as a singer at Trinity College and then at the Royal College of Music, and his experiences as a performer, both in the 1951 Festival of Britain and the 1952 Edinburgh Festival, with leading roles in a couple of productions. Mary had come to Britain in 1950 to join him, and they were married in London, and able to enjoy together the plethora of musical and theatrical activity which Vercoe later described as formative and, in retrospect, instructive regarding what he was eventually to become involved in with his management of Kiwi Records.

We learn about the circumstances accompanying the couple’s return to New Zealand at the end of 1953, a decision made upon expecting their first child, though Vercoe had by this time worked successfully, if intermittently, with the Old Vic Company for a period and had just received a singing job offer from the prestigious Sadlers Wells Opera Company. For some reason the narrative’s chapter order relegates the couple’s re-establishment in New Zealand to after a handful of chapters discussing Kiwi’s early Maori, Pacific and Folk and Country ventures – only after these are “done” do we get back into the “swing” of events that led to Vercoe moving from the broadcasting job that he’d taken on returning home, to full-time employment with Reeds Publishers and Kiwi Records. However, the book doesn’t pretend to follow strict overall chronologies, concentrating instead upon beginnings and developments within different individual themes and genres, making it more “accessible” as a reference source to any given vein of activity.

So, while not necessarily told in a conventionally “what happened next” kind of way, the thread of Vercoe’s progress from post-war London through those times of burgeoning creative and artistic activity in New Zealand during the 1950s and 1960s to the fully-fledged activities of Kiwi-Pacific Records throughout the 1970s and 1980s, can be found within the chronicles as tautly-wound and finely-tuned as ever, up to his retirement as owner-manager of the company in 1989. One gets the feeling because of this, that for Vercoe, the raison d’etre of the story’s retelling was never HIM, but the company and its different aspects under his stewardship. He reveals enough throughout, regarding his own attitudes and values, to shine forth as a personality, a determined and no-nonsense “mover and shaker” of things, principled and unswerving in his commitment to “the cause”. But we’re constantly being invited to focus on and admire the view, rather than the guide’s exposition of it.

For this reason one is stimulated, rather than disconcerted, by the book’s criss-crossing of general flow with specific detailings, perhaps generating something of the “what happens next?” aspect of the operation’s range and scope. Vercoe himself admitted, both in the book and elsewhere, that he didn’t envisage when taking the job on the extent to which the company would diversify its interest in creative homegrown activities, and that he “learnt by doing” for much of the time. Each of the categories he discusses and elaborates on regarding what took place has in the telling its surprises and unexpected twists and turns – something which Vercoe came to regard as “the territory” and accounting for his unshirking commitment to what Douglas Lilburn referred to as “our musical identities”, and more besides.

Entirely characteristic of Vercoe’s attitude in this respect was the outreach towards the sounds and music of the nearby Pacific Islands, hardly any of which had, if ever, been commercially recorded at that time, culminating in Kiwi Records’ coverage of the various South Pacific Festivals of Arts – an approach which pleased both academics wanting the preservation of traditional material and the general public who responded with obvious enjoyment to the entertainment. Of course, both traditional Maori and early Pakeha folksong material provided rich veins of material for the same reasons, Vercoe utilising the talents of performers as diverse as the great Maori bass Inia te Wiata and folksingers Neil Colquhoun and Phil Garland.  Each of these categories gave rise to the discovery of talents which flourished in other directions – Kiri te Kanawa, for example, made her first recording for Kiwi Records of “Maori Love Duets” with Rotorua tenor Hohepa Mutu; and songwriter/performers Peter Cape, Willow Macky and Ken Avery took New Zealand folksong into a more contemporary realm with the company’s support and espousal.

In the classical field, Kiwi’s first venture, helped by Vercoe’s “connections” with Broadcasting actually used an NZBS recording of Douglas Lilburn’s “Sings Harry”, an EP (extended play 7” disc) which became THE iconic recording, though the first orchestral LP also featured Lilburn’s music, containing as it did “Landfall in Unknown Seas”, with poet Allen Curnow reading his verses. Another iconic recording was that of David Farquhar’s  music for “Ring Round the Moon”, as was the first of Lilburn’s electronic compositions to be recorded, a setting of Alistair Campbell’s poem “The Return”. All of these and other ventures, along with descriptions of Vercoe’s dealings with individuals and groups whose names constitute a “Who’s Who” of New Zealand classical musicians, are described and placed in a context where corresponding activities such as recording steam trains, bird song and pipe bands were also given valuable time and effort.

The story isn’t without its moments of drama and conflict, as with Vercoe’s initiative in arranging with the Russian record label Melodiya access for Kiwi to Russian recordings featuring the top Soviet artists of the day, and even pressing the discs here for distribution, an activity which, at the height of the “Cold War” inevitably earned Kiwi some attention from the SIS, the acency wanting to know about everything that had been discussed with the Russians, fearful of a possible “security risk”. Later than this and more profound in effect was a physical attack on Kiwi Pacific’s premises in Wellington’s Wakefield St. by the henchmen of a developer who wanted to occupy the whole of the building, and took umbrage at the Company’s refusal to give up its lease –  fortunately the damage wasn’t irreversible, and compensation was duly paid.

To anatomise the whole range and scope of the company’s activities as presented here would be pointless – better to read the original and enjoy what Douglas Lilburn’s “definitive interpreter”, pianist Margaret Nielsen, who commented to me on “the interplay between the two Tonys”, described as “like a superb piece of Chamber Music”. All credit, then, to Vercoe’s nephew Tony Martin, whose questionings allowed the process of interaction and flow of information full sway, and to Steele Roberts Publishers for producing a characteristically accessible, attractive and spontaneously-readable book, furthering their ongoing espousal of things which matter here in New Zealand. It’s an issue which I’m sure would have given Tony Vercoe himself immense satisfaction.

 

Some impressive performances from NZSM string students at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand School of Music String Students and Catherine Norton (piano)

Music by Haydn, J.S. Bach, Hans Fryber, Mozart, Wieniawski and Max Bruch

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 6 June 2018, 12.15 pm

On the coldest day of the winter so far, there was still a respectably-sized audience at the lunchtime concert.

The students introduced themselves and their music, but unlike the wind students I reviewed two weeks ago, these students did not use the microphone, and so several of them were inaudible, speaking as though to a few people sitting in front of them.  One who spoke in audible tones nevertheless was too fast for his words to carry in a large auditorium.  The concert ran somewhat over the usual time; two players performed after one o’clock, but only a few of the audience left before the end.

Naturally, there was a range of abilities and experience displayed.  However, it was a diverse programme, full of interest, and we heard some excellent playing.

The first item was the allegro moderato first movement from Haydn’s cello concerto no.2 in D, played by Rebecca Warnes with Catherine Norton accompanying on the piano.  This is quite a lengthy movement, and demanding for the players.  Catherine Norton made a splendid job of being a one-woman orchestra, and despite having the lid of the piano on the long stick, she was never too loud.

The soloist played the movement from memory.  There were numbers of episodes of imperfect intonation, especially at the beginning, whereas in the difficult cadenza towards the end, almost every note was in place – since it was her unaccompanied solo, perhaps she had practised it more?  It went right down to the extreme bottom of the finger-board, i.e. very high notes.

Her legato passages were excellent and fluent, and her bowing technique likewise.  Once she got into her stride the intonation improved.  It was great to hear this warmly lyrical movement.  Double-stopping featured in this difficult score, which was mostly given an accomplished reading.

The second student to perform was Leo Liu, on the violin.  He played from memory and unaccompanied Bach’s Gigue in D minor, BWV 1004.  He explained that he was a second-year student.  He was confident and capable.  His playing was very fine, and his tuning almost perfect.  He played the tricky, quite extended piece with flair.

He was followed by Jandee Song, who played the double bass, performing Allemande from Suite in the Olden Style, by Hans Fryba, an Austrian double bass player and composer (1899-1986).  At first, the music had the performer playing at the extreme low end of the finger-board.  This unaccompanied piece was played from memory.  Intonation was very accurate but she did not give much variation in tone or dynamics.

Next was Patrick Hayes, violin.  He performed Fugue from Sonata no.2 in A minor, BWV 1003 by J.S. Bach.  This was another solo piece, played from the score.  Notable was his good phrasing; double-stopping and chords were handled well.  However, his tone was sometimes harsh.  Nevertheless, Patrick coped with the difficult, and quite long, movement well.

The remaining three pieces were all for violin, and were accompanied by Catherine Norton.  First, Charlotte Lamb performed Rondo in A, the third movement of Mozart’s fifth violin concerto K.219.  It is a delightful movement; its Turkish elements earned it the nickname of ‘Turkish’ concerto.  It was played with appropriate style and nuance.  A few intonation inaccuracies there were, but good tone and dynamics were present throughout the performance.  The contrasting ‘Turkish’ and minuet sections of the movement made it continually easy on the ear.

Edward Clarkson played Obertass Mazurka Op.19 no.1 by Wieniawski.  Grove informs me that obertass or obertas denotes a faster form of mazurka.  Edward had a clear, strong voice when giving his brief introduction.  The same characteristics were present in his violin-playing.  This was one of the composer’s showy pieces.  The violinist played it from memory, and gave it plenty of variety and lightness.  Harmonics were interspersed at high speed, plus fast trills and left-hand pizzicato. It was a short but very accomplished performance.

Last up was Sarang Roberts, who played the finale (allegro energico) of Max Bruch’s well-known and highly romantic first violin concerto, Op.26.  The playing was fast but well-controlled.  Her legato was excellent, and she played with a fine, warm tone, from memory.  Catherine Norton’s assignment in accompanying was quite a tough one, but she played with her usual aplomb.  The two musicians brought out the work’s mood and aesthetic splendidly – bravo!

The students performing would be at several different levels in their studies.  I assumed that these last two were senior students.  I had a few words with Martin Riseley, Head of Strings at the New Zealand School of Music at Victoria University, after the concert.  He informed me that these two were both first-years!  Their skill would seem to indicate a bright future ahead.

 

 

Rachmaninov from Rustem Hayroudinoff, via Halida Dinova……

Posted on by Peter Mechen

RACHMANINOV – The Piano Sonatas

Piano Sonata No.1 in D Minor Op.28
Lullaby (Tchaikovsky) Op.16 No.1) arr. Rachmaninov
Piano Sonata No.2 in B-flat Minor Op.36

Rustem Hayroudinoff (piano)

ONYX 4181 (available from Presto Classical)

What on earth, you are asking, am I doing reviewing a CD by a pianist whose name would be largely unknown to New Zealand audiences? The answer is that Rustem Hayroudinoff is the brother of the remarkable Tatarstan pianist Halida Dinova who has relatively recently toured New Zealand on two occasions, giving, at the Lower Hutt Little Theatre during her visit here in 2012, one of the most remarkable recitals I’ve ever witnessed – go to https://middle-c.org/2012/05/halida-dinova-russian-soul-from-tatarstan/ for more details. At the time, I thought Dinova’s playing seemed to epitomise a style long associated with Russian-trained pianists, one which invariably resulted in music-making that powerfully conjured up a compelling amalgam of pictorial, emotional and structural associations out of whatever repertoire these pianists performed.

On the strength of the brilliant music-making to be found on this new Onyx CD from Rustem Hayroudinoff, that tradition certainly runs in the family – it’s a further example of a musician’s alchemic “ownership” of the notes and their recreation in performance. Coincidentally enough, I had already encountered Hayroudinoff, in a previous issue of Rachmaninov’s music on the Chandos label, featuring the composer’s complete Preludes (CHAN 10107),  long before I knew of the connection with Dinova.

This time Hayroudinoff turns his attention to the Piano Sonatas, adding a well-judged interlude in the form of Rachmaninov’s transcription of Tchaikovsky’s Lullaby Op.16 No.1, placed between the two larger works. Hayroudinoff comments in a thoughtful note printed in the CD booklet, that this was Rachmaninov’s last composition, dating from 1941, aptly completing a circle of creativity which had begun as a 13 year-old with another Tchaikovsky transcription, that of the latter’s Manfred Symphony for piano duet.

Still, whatever the Tchaikovsky Lullaby transcription’s merits, nobody will be buying this disc with this piece first and foremost in mind – though the Sonatas (especially the Second) have had their “champions” (one thinks of John Ogdon’s ground-breaking 1968 LP of both works, for example, and Vladimir Horowitz’s espousal of the Second over the years), it’s only in comparatively recent times that these pieces have become widely accepted as masterpieces. The First was rarely performed, and the original version of the Second wasn’t played for many years, so that a proper “performance tradition” is only now being established for each of the Sonatas by a newer generation of super-virtuosi.

Rather like the case with Bruckner and several of his own symphonies, the Second Sonata’s original 1913 version was called to question by Rachmmaninov himself, who drastically revised it in 1931, cutting the original by six or seven minutes. For a long time afterwards interpreters either followed the composer’s revised score, or played a version that combined elements of the two editions, such as Horowitz made (with the composer’s blessing), and Hayroudinoff himself does here. The original 1913 version is finding increased favour with more interpreters, and recordings, among them Leslie Howard of the “complete Franz Liszt” fame, who states unequivocally in a note accompanying his own recording of the original, “…..no musician should ever give a passing thought to a “pick-and-mix” version of the two texts”. As with the aforementioned Bruckner Symphonies, it may well happen in time that the various combined-edition versions will come to be regarded as curiosities next to either the original or composer-made revised version – all part of the work’s overall genesis and process of acceptance!

Hayroudinoff’s present recording certainly contributes to that process in the case of both of the sonatas, even if he takes little heed of Leslie Howard’s comments regarding the Second Sonata, by offering his own “amalgam” of the two versions, obviously from deep-rooted conviction……

“I strongly believe that in his quest for conciseness, Rachmaninov excised so much in the revised edition of the Sonata that the structure of the work suffered. Where I felt that some of the logic of the continuity of ideas was compromised, I discreetly reinstated them from the original edition. I hope that the listener will not judge me as an insolent desecrator. I did this out of love for this extraordinary work, and with the humble intention to restore its coherence……” (Rustem Hayroudinoff)

Even if Rachmaninov aficionados reading this review agree with Leslie Howard’s negative opinion regarding the “hybridisation” of the Sonata, they should, in my opinion, still try and hear Hayroudinoff’s extraordinary playing of it, irrespective of the pianist’s own cross-references to the Sonata’s original edition. With the chromatic descent that opens the work, Hayroudinoff emphatically plunges the listener into a world of unique sensibility at once expansive and volatile, each note imbued with purpose and “attitude” which gives both expansiveness and weight to those opening declamations and the tremendous “rolling” crescendi whose peaks then fall away so resonantly and ambiently before the second subject’s heart-easing lyricism (to my ears a precursor of the Fourth Piano Concerto’s similarly bitter-sweet melodic outpourings).

Hayroudinoff’s innate sense of the music’s organic flow allowed both the music’s tenderness and pent-up energies to interact, bringing out the “growing” of the downwardly chromatic motif with ever-increasing insistence to the point where the sounds transcendentally became as sonorous church bells (one of a number of recurring influences of Rachmaninov’s compositional life), linking the Sonata to another work from that same time, his choral symphony “The Bells”.

Seemingly from out of the air Hayroudinoff floated the notes which set the second movement on its course, patiently building the music’s richly-laden decorative aspect towards, firstly, a full-throated melodic peroration, and then another bell-like evocation, this time darker and disturbingly remorseless. After delivering panic-stricken flourishes of shriller voices in response, the pianist brought a beautifully consoling order to the uneasy resonance of echoes and consoling voices, a “calm before the storm” aspect which heightened the effect of the third movement’s onslaught!

An almost militaristic aspect dominated the opening, Hayroudinoff’s incredible strength and dexterity driving the music forward excitingly, though with playing always alive to quixotic changes of mood, with their attendant variations of touch and sonority. Again, I thought the pianist’s rendering of the music’s different facets extraordinary – here bound together with an alchemic sense of ongoing purpose, a living quality which quickened this listener’s senses as well as the emotions and the intellect. Still, overwhelming as the result was, the playing’s illuminating quality left part of me wishing that Hayroudinoff had “gone for broke” and given us the original 1913 version of the music.

Thankfully no such lasting equivocations affect the music of the First Piano Sonata, composed in 1907 when Rachmaninov was in Dresden, simultaneously writing his Second Symphony and his opera “Monna Vanna”. The sonata has the same epic proportions as the symphony, and Rachmaninov characteristically expressed dissatisfaction with both works on their completion, and even after publication of the symphony suggesting numerous cuts for performers to apply. Of course, in the wake of the disastrous premiere of his First Symphony in 1897, it was perhaps understandable that the composer would, even after the new symphony’s initial success, “lose his nerve” in the face of eventual critical disparagement, the upshot being that his suggested cuts were “sanctioned” and invariably followed in subsequent performances up until the late 1960s/early70s when the work at last began to be played “complete” once again!

A different fate awaited its “companion piece”, the D Minor Piano Sonata, which, while maintaining its content since its publication in 1908, had already been cut extensively by a worried composer after a “trial performance”. Describing the work in a letter to a friend as “wild and endlessly long”, Rachmaninov remarked ruefully that “no-one will ever play this work” due to its “dubious musical merit”. Mostly non-committal regarding any “programme” or other source of inspiration for his compositions, the composer let it slip in the same letter that the work’s “idea” was made up of “three contrasting characters from a work of world literature”. He refrained, however, from telling the sonata’s first public interpreter, Konstantin Igumnov, until AFTER the latter had performed the work a few times, that the “work of world literature” was Goethe’s “Faust”, and each of the three movements related to a particular character in the story, as was the case with Liszt’s “Faust” Symphony.

Hayroudinoff tells us that he believes an awareness of Rachmaninov’s original programme is a key to understanding the complexities of this work – Rachmaninov said as much in another statement from the letter quoted above – “…..I am beginning to think that, if I were to reveal the programme, the Sonata would become much more comprehensible…..”. The pianist quotes from Faust’s monologue at the beginning of the play, one which expresses the character’s inner conflict, and explains his actions throughout the drama’s course – Faust speaks of his “two souls”, one loving the world, the other longing for higher things “beyond the dust”. Thus, in his playing, Hayroudinoff stressed certain themes that for him illustrated this conflict, making the music’s trajectories throughout the “Faust” movement interact and confront one another in the most visceral and dramatic ways, though always preserving the grand sweep of the whole, demonstrating something of that ability which Sviatoslav Richter’s teacher Heinrich Neuhaus described his pupil as having – that ability to soar above the whole work, even one of gigantic proportions, with an eagle’s flight, and take it all in at a single glance with incredible speed.

In the second “Gretchen” movement, there’s straightaway a sense of a young girl’s innocence and purity, in tandem with a quickening of impulsive longing as the line is “counterpointed” by a would-be lover’s voice, real or imagined, the long-breathed themes encircled and sensitised by the sinuous patterning of the accompaniments, and intensified in feeling by ecstatically elongated trills. Hayroudinoff here showed himself equally at home with evocations of tenderness and sensitivity as with brilliance and strength, as the lovers’ union reached a kind of fulfilment, before the music unhurriedly returned both the characters and their intentions to the imaginations’ shadows.

Characterising in his accompanying notes the sonata’s final movement as “the realm of Mephistopheles”, Hayroudinoff then made the word flesh with playing of staggering bravado, giving the “Spirit of Negation” all the swagger and energy that accompanied his quest for possession of Faust’s soul. Suggestions, echoes and variants of the Latin hymn “Dies Irae” abounded as the forces of good and evil, and light and darkness did battle, Rachmaninov’s astounding vision here put across with unsurpassed conviction and irresistible command by the pianist.

This issue, in my view, takes its place among the great Rachmaninov recordings of recent times, a number of which feature the same two-sonata coupling (from Xiayn Wang, Leslie Howard, Nikolai Lugansky and Alexis Weissenberg, by way of example, along with a recent reissue of John Ogdon’s famous 1968 RCA recording). With the advocacy of such illustrious names as these, along with that of Rustem Hayroudinoff’s, the shade of the composer may well rest contentedly at last regarding this vindication of two of his greatest compositions.