Month: May 2019

A beautiful concert of Romantic symphonic music from the NZSO under Thomas Søndergård

Posted on by Steven Sedley

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Thomas Søndergård
Denis Kozhukhin (piano)

Beethoven: Coriolan Overture, Op. 62
Schumann: Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54
Sibelius: Symphony No. 6 in D minor, Op. 104
Sibelius: Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 105

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 18 May, 2019, 7:30 pm

This concert had no challenging contemporary works, no surprises. It was romantic music, all within the bounds of the traditional, standard symphonic repertoire, but it was all beautiful music. The programme spanned 127 years of musical development from Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture of 1807 to Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony of 1924. Over that period the world changed and this was reflected in the music. The individual responsibility, accountability, sensibility and the individual’s role in nationhood became the focus of the European cultural landscape.

Coriolan, the classical hero, or perhaps anti-hero was the subject of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture. It was inspired by Heinrich Joseph von Collin’s 1804 play. Coriolan is an ambitious and arrogant character who turns against his own people, but succumbs to his mother’s pleading not to destroy Rome. He cannot, however, reverse the onslaught he started and kills himself (unlike in Shakespeare’s version, in which he is murdered). The music depicts the drama, the conflict between war and compassion and ends with the fading chords of Coriolan’s slow death. The contrasts in the music, the sense of drama were beautifully, clearly articulated.

A generation later the cult of the individual as hero, something started with the adulation of Beethoven, was dominant. The virtuoso gained ascendancy in the concert halls. Schumann’s Piano Concerto was, in its time, a significant departure from earlier concertos. Schumann wrote in 1839 that:
“Modern pianistic art wants to challenge the symphony [orchestra], and rule supreme through its own resources; this may account for the recent dearth of piano concertos.”

After composing a large number of works for solo piano, he took up the challenge to write a concerto, but having lamented the state of piano concertos, it took him six years before he completed this concerto and was satisfied with it. He saw in the work the reflection of two opposing impulses in himself, the boisterous, impetuous and passionate on the one hand, and the dreamy, gentle and poetic on the other. There is a lovely interplay between the orchestra and the soloist, starting with the beautiful oboe solo enunciating the theme and the piano’s reply. Kozhukhin responded to the orchestra with great sensitivity and mastery, taking up the theme but also enhancing it. His playing was magical, drawing the listener in, with every phrase, every note full of meaning. It was a sensational performance. Kozhukhin rewarded the enthusiastic applause of the audience with an encore, playing Grieg’s To Spring, from his Lyric Suite (Op 43 No 6).

By the time of Sibelius the dominance of the grand romantic symphony was drawing to a close. Playing two Sibelius Symphonies written after each other was interesting programming, and hearing No. 6, followed by No. 7 shed new light on both of these works. No. 6 starts with a sombre opening,  followed by playful passages. There is darkness and light. Unlike in some of Sibelius’s other orchestral works, the themes are fragmented, there are no overarching melodies. The folksy tunes are overlaid on top of each other and interrupted. There are abrupt transitions. This is the most difficult and least often played of Sibelius’s symphonies, yet listening to it one can appreciate its beautiful if personal qualities.

The Seventh on the other hand is dramatic, starting with mournful chords that seem to mark the end of an era. The traditional musical forms, tonality, structure, were all falling apart. Sibelius was familiar with the new trends but did not adopt them. He was always a loner, a composer with a unique voice, his own sound and view of music. In this symphony he abandoned the usual four movement structure. Instead he created a work made up of multiple sections distinguished by frequent changes of tempo, which cohere into a seamless whole. The symphony was in gestation for many years. In the end Sibelius seemed to have considered that he had nothing further to add. At the time when serious classical music was dominated by the music of Schoenberg and his followers, by the barbarism based on folk idioms of Bartók,  by the harsh brutal dissonance of Stravinsky, Sibelius wrote a grand romantic symphony that wallowed in rich sounds. This was his final major work, and it has the stamp of finality about it.

Playing the two symphonies one after the other worked well. It provided an enriched insight into Sibelius’s world. This was a great concert. The orchestra under Thomas Søndergård played with lovely sonority and attention to subtle details. It was, however, Denis Kozhukhin’s wonderful playing that made the concert memorable.

 

Rossini’s “Little Solemn Mass” from the Bach Choir at St.Andrew’s triumphantly reaches towards the stars

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Bach Choir of Wellington presents:
ROSSINI – Petite Messe Solennelle

Nicola Holt (soprano)
Linden Loader (contralto)
John Beaglehole (tenor)
Roger Wilson (bass)

Thomas Nikora (harmonium)
Douglas Mews (piano)

The Bach Choir of Wellington

Shawn Michael Condon (conductor)

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

Saturday, May 11th , 2019

I was sure I’d heard this work on at least one occasion previously, and more especially once the music had started – from early on in the opening “Kyrie” there were cadences, phrases and sequences that kept on sidling up to me and nudging me in my inner ear’s ribcage as if to say “Oh, you again! – where have you been?” or more cheekily, “Remember me? – ha! you’re stuck, aren’t you?” – and I was “stuck”, indeed, right until the moment I got home afterwards and looked up the Middle C Archive, to confirm that, on November 20th 2010 I had attended a performance of the work at the Hill St. Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, given by the Festival Singers, and directed by Rosemary Russell. What was more, I had actually reviewed it (oh, dear!), with two of the singers in this afternoon’s performance (Linden Loader and Roger Wilson) also having taken part in that earlier presentation. I’m happy to say that, as per the review I enjoyed the performance enormously!

Apart from my lamentable lack of specific recall, I was pleased I had sufficient juice in my memory-bank to be able to make this previous connection, and then, of course, confirm it with renewed pleasure through hearing the work again. Almost ten years after that first encounter my delight in the music remains undiminished – if anything I was even more taken aback this time round by the composer’s unashamed (and uncontrived) boldness in evoking a musical style more readily associated with the theatre than with a church for a work purporting to be a religious statement, and by the elan with which he brought it off. The swaggering rhythms and heroic vocal manner with which the performers here put across the “Domine Deus” section of the “Gloria” added a further dimension to the depth of feeling built up by the opening “Kyrie” and “Christe” sections to the music, each sequence beautifully shaped by conductor Shawn Michael Condon and delivered with a steadiness and luminosity of tone that did the choristers proud.

Each succeeding section of the work here unfailingly conveyed its special character – both piano and harmonium trumpeted and rolled out their excited, jubilant chords and flourishes at the opening of the “Gloria” in a way that suitably galvanised the voices, leaving us in no doubt of the composer’s desire to acknowledge the Almighty with sounds that reflected His glory. The soloists added resplendent tones to their individual strands, beginning with Roger Wilson’s imposing bass delivery of  “Et in terra pax….” then joined by the others over the “Laudamus te” sections, the soprano leaving the remaining trio with the emphatic, oft-repeated reiterations of “propter magnum gloriam tuam” (for Your great glory), Douglas Mews’ piano conjuring both Lisztian sparkle in the flourishes, and poetic serenity in the quieter concluding measures. After tenor John Beaglehole had thrilled us with the energies and high-wire accomplishments of his “Domine Deus” solos we were brought back to our “vale of tears” by soprano Nicola Holt and contralto Linden Loader in “Qui tollis peccata mundi”,  piquant and heartfelt instrumental tones setting the scene for beautifully expressed vicalisings,  both individually and in concerted blendings in places such as the repeated “Miserere nobis” as the sequence came to its end.

Harmonium player Thomas Nikora sensitively coaxed some plaintive modulations from his instrument , bridging the way to the piano’s building up the rhythmic excitement for Roger Wilson’s assertive “Quoniam”, big-boned and heroic, Rossini making something of a meal of this part of the work (perhaps wanting to curry plenty of favour with the Almighty), complete with its Beethovenian-like accompaniment! After a whimsical piano transition, some great, orchestra-like chords from piano and harmonium brought in the choir for “Cum Sancto Spiritu”, first the gleaming-toned sopranos, and then the rest of the choir, a moment whose magnificence was then somewhat disconcertingly energised by the sopranos’ polka-like rhythmic gait which began the fugue, put across by all the musicians with a delicious sense of fun, complete with long, discursively sinuous “Amen” lines that concluded with a reprise of “Gloria in excelsis Deo” and with the “Amens” appearing more assertively and vigorously  than before!

After an interval, the Credo returned us to the fray, amid instrumental flourishes and great cries of “Credo” from the choir, the music settling down to a flow with the soloists joining in, and the choir occasionally reminding us that this was, in fact, a statement of faith, by reiterating the word “Credo”. The soloists wove their lines into and through the momentums of the texture, conductor Shawn Michael Condon allowing the musical fabric to billow out splendidly in places, but keeping an all-important sense of forward motion, right through to the sudden self-consiousness of the words “et homo factus est”.

Soprano Nicola Holt gave us a long-breathed, beautifully-coloured, by turns anguished and inward “Crucifixus”, securely nailing those fiendish entries at the word “passus” with great aplomb, and conveying so very movingly the sorrow and resignation of the message throughout. The choir launched themselves whole-heartedly into the “Resurrexit”, before alternating with the soloists throughout the beautiful “Et ascendit in caelum” and the more vigorous “Et viterum venturis” and “Et in Spiritum Sanctum” sections, during which it was a pleasure to register the strong focus of the male sections of the choir.

With piano and harmonium returning to the “Et ascendit in caelum” figurations the choir and soloists began “Et unam, sanctam, catholicam”, the choir dominating with their cries of “Confiteor”, racing expectantly towards the “Ex expecto resurrectionem” passages with a sense of great and proper conviction, before plunging into the fugal “Et vitam venturi saeculi” at an exhilarating lick! The choir splendidly took us with them as the music surged unstoppably through the “Amens”, allowing a brief hiatus of murmuring rapture from the voices and instruments before concluding with a final all-affirming shout of “Credo”.

At this point, Rossini inserted a “Prelude Religieux and Ritournelle pour le Sanctus” which, to my ears was played by Douglas Mews, with nary a contribution from Thomas Nikora’s harmonium (throughout I found the harmonium hard to hear in any case as I was sitting over to the right and the instrument was on the platform’s left – and I couldn’t see the player to be able at times to “register” any physical movement)……none of this detracted from Mews’ playing of this very Lisztian episode, the sounds filled with fantasy and fancy. The harmonium did take up the argument just before the voices instigated the Sanctus, the opening beautifully “sounded” by the choir, and “answered” in radiant, declamatory fashion by the soloists. Rossini rang the changes throughout regarding both voices (choir and soloists) and music –  the unfolding of the whole, with its unpredictable juxtapositionings of the different voice-qualities had an almost improvisatory air which enchanted and compelled one’s attention at all times.

Affecting, too, from the very beginning, was the concluding “Agnus Dei”, the piano playing a quixotic Grieg-like opening figure, followed by what sounded almost like an indolent gondola song, over which the contralto, Linden Loader, intoned the famous prayer with every word clearly-focused and precisely-weighted, and the piano/harmonium combination at once remorseless in rhythm and affecting in timbre. The choir’s responses to the soloist in places sounded almost like voices from another world – it seemed to me that the singing beautifully “contoured” the music’s emotional intensities, while the choir’s responses were almost to die for – and what a “frisson” of emotion was unleashed when the voices joined forces for a reprise of  “qui tollis peccata mundi” – as powerful emotionally, I thought, if on a smaller physical scale, as the cataclysmic concluding moments of the “Libera Me” of Rossini’s countryman Giuseppe Verdi, in his “Requiem” – even if the latter, by all accounts wouldn’t thank me for daring to suggest such a thing!

 

Adventurous, surprising, unorthodox, informal concert by the NZSO in a waterfront shed

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra 
Shed Series: Conductor: Hamish McKeich

Haydn: Symphony No 38 in C, Hob.1:38 (‘The Echo’)
Leonie Holmes: Elegy
Revueltas: Homenaje a Federico Garcia Lorca
Ravel: Le tombeau de Couperin
Penderecki: Polymorphia
Jonny Greenwood: 48 Responses to Polymorphia (New Zealand premiere)

Shed 6, Wellington Waterfront

Friday 10 May 7:30 pm

Good Music in Sheds
The “Shed series” of concerts were a new enterprise for the NZSO last year, when there were three concerts of music that was a bit off the beaten track and in an atmosphere unfamiliar to traditional audiences, though essentially classical rather than popular or rock music; perhaps the word ‘crossover’ might here apply. Last year, it was suggested that they would appeal to audiences aged under 40 which was one of the reasons that Middle C failed to review them, as well as the feeling that we might be a bit out of our depth.

We took the plunge with the second of 2019’s Shed Series, in Shed 6 on the Waterfront. It’s a large space (though smaller in audience capacity than the MFC) which is used for a variety of more popular events, pitched at a more casual audience. Last year for example I was there to hear a talk by the stimulating United States music critic Alex Ross (“The Rest is Noise” and “Listen to This”) along with live music from Stroma and soprano Bianca Andrew.

A similar routine is being followed this year: a start with a very approachable, early Haydn symphony, a couple of pieces, one by a familiar composer (Ravel) one by a commonly avoided one (Penderecki); plus a New Zealand piece and a couple by unclassifiable composers: here, Mexican, Revueltas and rock guitarist Jonny Greenwood.

Though the audience is provided with some miscellaneously placed seats, but most had to and seemed happy to stand, to walk about exchanging a few quiet words with friends, getting a drink from the bars on the west side of the auditorium as well as lending an eye and an ear to what the orchestra was doing. The orchestra was subject to another rock influence, Split Enz: in the first half of the concert the orchestra was at the south end, later in the north; and the auditorium was lit rock-style, though with enough light for a critic to see what he was scribbling. Players wore black or near-black clothes – no tails and white ties.

The series is masterminded by NZSO associate conductor Hamish McKeich, and he spoke casually yet informatively about each piece.

Penderecki’s Polymorphia and its successors
Central to this concert might have been Penderecki’s Polymorphia (of 1961) and the 48 Responses to Polymorphia by Greenwood. (Greenwood’s There will be Blood film score was played last year). Both Penderecki’s and Greenwood’s pieces would have slightly stretched the tastes of the average NZSO subscription series audience. Penderecki’s gets a huge variety of reactions: terrifying prophetic, disturbing, horror, angst, someone on YouTube wrote: “I just love it. I cried like a baby” and “This may be the greatest thing I’ve ever heard”.

It’s played by 48 strings, though much of the central, steady crescendo of sound seemed to emanate from percussion instruments that I couldn’t see.

The beginning presented the singular phenomenon of seeing infinitismal gestures by conductor and even less by players, rising slowly from utter silence to a sea of confused though somehow musical sound, tapping strings as well as bowing. The first four minutes or so are scored aleatorically, that is, allowing players to bow spontaneously, at will but within the composer’s prescription. The central section begins with normal pizzicato chords but drops back to the shape of the first part, slowly crescendo-ing again like a screaming swarm of Hitchcock Crows. To build to an amazingly coherent, musical cacophony, finally creating a powerful emotional impact. And it ends on a quite disorientating C major common chord, followed by mighty noisy acclamation.

Guitarist of Radiohead, Jonny Greenwood, collaborating with Penderecki, wrote his 48 Responses for the same orchestral forces. In a RNZ Concert interview he would have pleased McKeich and the NZSO:

‘While he’s used to playing in front of large crowds with recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Radiohead, [Greenwood] thinks the orchestra is the ultimate acoustic gig. “There’s no way of hearing such musical colours any other way,” he says.

‘Greenwood anticipates the kiwi audience will feel the same way. “I hope that they are spurred to see far more live orchestral concerts. There might be a few magical moments in my piece, but there’ll be thousands in next week’s NZSO concert. Get your tickets now!” he laughs.’

His nine ‘Responses’ may not have had ‘thousands’ in the audience, but I hope it was recorded (I didn’t spot any microphones) and will be broadcast later for many thousands. These responses were certainly less overwhelming and astonishing than Penderecki’s, but still agreeably reflecting the Polish composer’s creation. The audience however, responded whole-heartedly.

Et al. Haydn, Holmes, Revueltas, Ravel
Well, the rest of the concert was relatively uneventful. The one item that did not reflect on death was Haydn’s Symphony No 38 (though I suppose its name ‘The Echo’ gets it past the theme censors)  from his early years at Esterhaza and it promised well for his future as a great composer. Leonie Holmes little Elegy was a much more conventional piece, among several rather more radical items: nicely written for a well-imagined variety of instruments.

Revueltas was a leading Mexican composer of the first half of the 2Oth century (he died at 40 in 1940). Homenaje a Federico Garcia Lorca, his reaction to Garcia Lorca’s assassination in 1936 was typical of world-wide shock at this early mark of Franco’s murderous intentions. It uses traditional Mexican instruments – or rather approximations available in a symphony orchestra – and the result is surprisingly radical in rhythm and vivid colour, recreating a somewhat primitive, peasant quality, ending in the sort of dance-hall that Copland was inspired by about the same time.

Ravel’s orchestration of four pieces of the six piano pieces from Le Tombeau de Couperin took us back to familiar musical territory. A bit overdue as a funeral ode for Couperin (François died in 1733); each of the six pieces is dedicated to one of his friends killed in WWI and it’s probably not irrelevant that Ravel’s mother died in 1917.  But the tone is reflective rather than tragic: McKeich quoted Ravel’s own remark: “The dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence”. One member of the audience drew attention to the absence of any ponderous funereal character, by walking with her percussive, hard heels, through the crowd and out the door, leaving it to bang shut.

Nevertheless this was a most appropriate work in the midst of a concert of very different music, anchoring it to the universal store-house of classical music that needs to be present in any intelligent programme of music that seeks to represent more than the music of the past five minutes.

These concerts, and there are two more of them this year, are an important enterprise; judging by the size, character and final noisy ‘response’ of the audience, they work, and their presentation, in style, in venue, in the appropriateness of McKeich’s pithy and pertinent remarks, is excellent.

 

An excellent lunchtime concert from university string students at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concert
Performances by string students of the New Zealand School of Music

Zephyr Wills (viola), Rebecca Warnes (cello), Hayden Nickel (violin), Ellen Murfitt (violin), Emily Paterson (cello), Tamina Beveridge (piano)

Music by Bach, Hindemith, Saint-Saëns, Mendelssohn

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 8 May, 12:15 pm

Though I had thought not to write a review of this lunchtime concert, but simply to have a pleasant hour listening, I found my mind changing however, a couple of minutes in to the first item: the Allemande from Bach’s fourth Cello Suite, in E flat, played on the viola by Zephyr Wills. Sometimes such transpositions don’t work, but this one did, beautifully. Wills, only a second-year student, has acquired a warm flawless technique on his instrument. The Allemande is a relatively sedate, moderately paced dance and it flourished in his flowing, note-perfect playing. I’m not always happy about other instruments playing music the composer carefully crafted for one in particular. Here, it sounded as if the viola was what Bach really had in mind.

Hindemith’s viola 
More challenging in a sense was the first two movements (Breit and Sehr Frisch und straff) of Hindemith’s sonata for solo viola, Op 25 No 1 (it has five movements). Though opening with an arresting dissonance, it quickly settled into the sort of piece one expects from the Weimar Republic in the 1920s.

The viola was Hindemith’s own instrument and he wrote several sonatas for solo viola as well for viola and piano. I came across a good quote in Gramophone magazine:

“Throughout these works … there is an almost overwhelming competence. The sheer mastery with which he was able to go about making one instrument express the creativity of his extraordinarily fertile mind is quite breathtaking. … There is a strong feeling that it emanates from an era of unrest: the constant moving-on from one idea to another and the rapid harmonic shifts are symptomatic of this. The role of the viola is somewhat solitary.
“Alfred Einstein encapsulated Hindemith’s relationship to his audience thus: ‘’He is unwilling to exploit his feelings publicly and he keeps his two feet on the ground. He merely writes music, the best that he can produce.’ … it is in the four sonatas for solo viola that one is closest to his essence, an essence that is rather bleak and certainly highly cerebral.”

I felt that, for a young student (yet only about four years younger than Hindemith at the time), this sample of the sonata also showed a surprising grasp of the essence of Hindemith.

Saint-Saëns: the whole concerto
The next piece was advertised as the first movement of Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto in A minor (No 1). Rebecca Warnes is a fifth year student at the School of Music (which perhaps means she’s studying for her Masters’, or even a PhD). No high degree of musical discernment was needed to hear a highly accomplished performance from her and her pianist Tamina Beveridge who was a more than adequate orchestra substitute. If it wasn’t for the conspicuously concerto-flavoured cello part, it wouldn’t have been hard to hear it as a cello sonata.  Because I’d forgotten how short the first movement is (about 5 to 6 minutes), I thought the more charming and lyrical second movement was an episode of the first, but realised by the time the third movement began that I was listening to the whole concerto which usually runs a bit over 20 minutes. The excellence of the playing never diminished, and the many virtuosic sections were dealt with, by both players, with undiminished competence and that sense of delight that a mid-30s composer and an early-20s cellist can deliver.

Mendelssohn was still to come (and it was already about 12.50). Hayden Nickel played the first movement of his violin concerto as Tamina Beveridge stayed at the piano. His violin had a bright tone well suited to the spirit of the first movement (this time it was only the first); though it might have exposed both instruments in the more taxing passages. But that accelerating cadenza that leads excitingly into the second movement came off excellently.

And to end, the first movement of Mendelssohn’s last string quartet, Op 80. The players were Haydn Nickel and Zephyr Wills again, plus second violinist Ellen Murfitt and cellist Emily Paterson. They captured the anguished urgency of the Allegro vivace assai (which might as well have been named the ‘appassionata’) music that creates, for me, one of Mendelssohn’s rare, thoughtful, deeply felt utterances.

‘Twas an excellent lunchtime concert!

 

A memorable concert from the Aroha Quartet: exciting Ligeti and a Beethoven masterpiece

Posted on by Steven Sedley

‘Metamorphoses’
Aroha Quartet (Haihong Liu and Konstanze Artmann – violins, Zhongxian Jin – viola, Robert Ibell – cello)

Mozart: String Quartet No. 17 in B flat K 548 ‘Hunt’
Ligeti: String Quartet No. 1 ‘Metamorphoses Nocturnes’
Beethoven: String Quartet No. 13 in B flat Op. 130

St Andrew’s on the Terrace

Tuesday 7 May 2019, 7:30 pm

With concerts by two string quartets, the New Zealand String Quartet and the Aroha Quartet within two days, the Brodsky quartet on the 20th and the Kiwa quartet on the 26th of May seems like a festival of string quartets. With so much music, it is the works that challenge that makes these concerts memorable.

The Aroha Quartet played Mozart and Beethoven, beautiful but familiar music, but it was György Ligeti’s First Quartet that stood out and made one think. The piece was written in 1953/54. Ligeti was 30 years old. He had survived the war in which he served in a Jewish labour service unit, while both his brother and father died in concentration camps. In the years after the war he studied with renowned teachers at the Budapest Music Academy, Kadosa, Veress, and in particular, Kodaly. He was making a name for himself as a composer of choral pieces and settings of folk songs. His early works were often an extension of the musical language of Bartók. But some of his pieces could not be played under the Communist regime of Hungary: too difficult, too cerebral. His First String Quartet was not performed until he fled Hungary in 1956 and settled in Vienna. He called the piece Metamorphoses; it is a transfiguration, the changes of a four note theme, G, A, G sharp, A sharp over a chromatic bass played by the cello into a series of variations like distinct segments. These segments include vigorous rhythmic sections, peasant dances with heavy stomping of boots, passages that recall Bartók’s night music, gentle, melodic, surreal There are huge dynamic contrasts, barbaric dance themes, humour, sarcasm, buzzing mosquito passages. At the end the piece returns to the four notes it started with. It is an exciting work and we should be grateful to the Aroha Quartet for introducing it to us.

Beethoven’s Quartet No. 13 in B flat is a colossal piece in six movements. It encompasses a whole world of emotions, from the noble opening Adagio followed by an energetic contrasting section, then to the simple children’s playground theme of the rollicking Presto in which voices taunt each other, there is humour, there is the courtly dance of the Andante, the jolly rhythm of the Alla danza tedesca, and ultimately the quartet culminates in the haunting Cavatina that brought tears to Beethoven’s and probably many listeners’ eyes, which is finally resolved in a light-hearted Finale. The great architecture of this work is assembled from simple, at times naïve parts. The Aroha Quartet played it with passion, with beautiful tone and meticulous clear phrasing.

The concert opened with Mozart’s ‘Hunt’ Quartet, one of the half dozen he dedicated to Haydn. Although it shares the key with the Beethoven work, it comes from a different world. Written in 1784, it reflects the last years of the ancien régime, a perceived stability in which all was orderly. It is a beautiful work and The Aroha Quartet captured its spirit.

This was a memorable concert and the Aroha Quartet are one of the great musical assets of our city.

 

 

Orchestra Wellington takes Vivaldi and Piazzolla to Upper Hutt with great success

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Classical Expressions, Upper Hutt
‘Eight Seasons’

A chamber orchestra drawn from Orchestra Wellington, conducted by concertmaster Amalia Hall

Vivaldi: Four Seasons
Piazzolla: The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires
(solo violin in both: Amalia Hall)

Expressions Arts and Entertainment Centre, Upper Hutt

Monday 6 May, 7:30 pm

This programme was presented in the Opera House, Wellington on Saturday 4 May. Even considering venues in the central city, there is probably no auditorium as well appointed as Expressions in Upper Hutt’s Arts and Entertainment Centre where I was very happy to catch them.

There were 22 musicians on the stage, perfectly accommodated both visually and acoustically.  In the place of the usual concertmaster, Amalia Hall, was Martin Riseley, associate professor and Head of Strings in Victoria University’s School of Music; Amalia conducted and took the part of solo violin. Those two, along with other section leaders, comprised the ‘Concertino’ players in the Vivaldi pieces.

Yet it was still something of a surprise to hear, right from the opening bars of the first Allegro, playing of such polish, with varied colour and expression, sounding like any of the notable baroque-style chamber orchestras that one hears on the best commercial recordings: crisp and elegant. Though one hears them often on RNZ Concert, and as ‘elevator’ music in all kinds of public places, the experience of a live performance awakened one, with surprise, to the wonderful variety between each movement: so the following Largo had a surprising chill about it, drawing attention, as well as to the soloists, the simple pairs of quavers from the ‘Ripieno’ (the rest of the orchestra) players. And there was still something cool and gently discreet about the third movement, Allegro, as if winter has hardly disappeared.

After each of the Vivaldi pieces, the orchestra played the equivalent Piazzolla concerto (don’t think he called them concerti). All their very different characteristics were fully to be expected. Nevertheless, I can imagine some might have felt they broke up the integrity of Vivaldi’s pieces; though I did not: we are so used to hearing snatches of them in all sorts of situations.

Piazzolla’s Spring conveyed an attractive feeling of lingering cold and increasing stretches of warm weather. Both Vivaldi and Piazzolla employed the solo violin in flamboyant passages which Amalia Hall delivered spectacularly. In Autumn, Brenton Veitch’s cello also enjoyed an extended and meditative episode, later mirrored in another similar solo by Amalia. The colour was generally darker in Winter, and again there was another soulful solo from Amalia, this time with all the cellos. The harpsichord also had attractive passages in this season and double basses were prominent in some of the Piazzollo pieces.

In some ways Piazzolla created a richer more complex picture than Vivaldi, having the freedom to use musical styles of 350 years more complexity (they were written in the 1960s). Even though one could argue that both composers shared a common Latinesque origin, the Argentinian, tango influence removed Piazzolla’s entirely from any useful comparison. One of the oddities was the occasional reference to tunes from Vivaldi: the work of an arrangement commissioned by Gidon Kremer from Leonid Desyatnikov. The insertions were brief, quite cleverly blended, and momentarily drew a smile; nor did they spoil the nature of Piazzolla’s very different composition; Piazzolla seems to be a composer who musicians commonly make free with, arranged for almost any instrumental combinations.

One is never quite sure about the appropriate response to some of Piazzolla’s gestures: the frequent glissandi (perhaps whip-lashes, is a better description), scratchings below the bridge.

Though in the past I have not warmed particularly to Piazzolla, this live performance from an excellent, thoroughly rehearsed ensemble, was both interesting and enjoyable and significantly altered my feelings about the composer. And the linking of the two composers’ descriptions of the seasons was an interesting approach.

This enterprising concert was a complete vindication of the collaboration between Orchestra Wellington, and the Upper Hutt Music Society and the Entertainment Centre.

A large and enthusiastic audience filled the auditorium.

New Zealand String Quartet produce joyousness and profundity for Wellington Chamber Music

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Wellington Chamber Music
New Zealand String Quartet

Beethoven: String Quartet in A Op. 18 No 5
Jack Body: Bai sanxian (2009)
Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 10 in A flat  
Brahms: String Quartet in A minor Op. 51

St. Andrews on The Terrace

Sunday 5 May, 3 pm

A concert by the NZ String Quartet is always an event to look forward to. This is the quartet’s 32nd season, and over the years they have gained an international reputation. In this concert they covered a broad period of the musical development of the string quartet.

In 1798 Beethoven was a budding piano virtuoso, who had moved to Vienna and was gradually making a name for himself as a composer. He lived in the shadow Haydn. Like Haydn, he published his first set of quartets, Op. 18, as a set of a half dozen. No. 5, in A major, is playful, with a touch of humour and Haydn-like surprises, a graceful dance movement and an extended set of variations that explore the potential of a simple theme. This piece received an energetic sparkling reading, but for this listener at least, some of the charm, the light touch was missing.

Jack Body’s Bai sanxian was something entirely different. The music of Asian cultures is a recurring theme of Jack Body’s work. He deliberately and provocatively stepped outside the main stream of Western music. This short piece comes from a collection of transcriptions and arrangements of music from some of the Chinese minority nationalities of Yunnan province in South-West China. The string quartet imitates the Chinese traditional instruments, the first violin and cello plucking their instruments while the second violin and the viola carry the melodic line. The music challenges the listener to explore unfamiliar musical traditions, to listen carefully and perhaps ask questions about the universal nature of music.

Shostakovich is a controversial composer. William Walton described him as the ‘greatest composer of the 20th century’, while Pierre Boulez dismissed him as ‘the second or even third pressing of Mahler’. There is certainly a special Shostakovich sound and a Shostakovich perception of what music is about. He is the Holy Fool, who witnesses all the terrible as well as all the joyous things around him. The overall character of the 10th String Quartet is dark, in some places sinister and fearful. It opens with a four note motive played by the solo violin, then the other instruments join in one at a time. An unanswered question hangs over the movement. This is followed by a furious second movement played fortissimo. At one moment the viola and plays on the bridge of her instrument to create the effect of a sinister Mephistophelean laughter. The Adagio is a mournful passacaglia that gradually turns darker. The final movement breaks away from the mournful character of the earlier movements and is jaunty and carefree at the beginning, but then returns to the melancholic air of the whole piece. Life was tough in Shostakovich’s Russia, but he implies that there is light amidst the gloom, life must carry on.

The final work in the programme was Brahms’s Second String Quartet, Op. 51, No. 2. Beethoven’s colossal final quartets weighed heavily on Brahms. How could one write a string quartet that could follow up these works. He had a number of attempts at writing a string quartet and destroyed all of these, until at the age of 40 he published, after numerous revisions, two works with which he was satisfied. Brahms worked in the idiom he inherited and used the language of German folk music, but he deconstructed these haunting themes, broke them up, turned them into deep, meaningful conversations between the four instruments. There is light and joyousness in the second movement and grace in the third, Minuetto, but Brahms never abandons himself to a rollicking good time. In the last movement he revisits the Hungarian czardas that provided many happy themes for his music, but notwithstanding all the jollity, the music is subdued. This was a profound performance.

It was a very satisfying afternoon of music, enjoyed by a large and knowledgeable audience. The quartet’s many years of playing together was reflected in their seamless, smooth playing. May they keep this up for many more years and enrich Wellington’s musical life.

 

Still “waiting”, with time ticking away for humanity – “Waiting for Godot” at Circa Theatre, Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

WAITING FOR OURSELVES?
Circa Theatre presents: “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett

CAST:  Estragon  –  Jeff Kingsford-Brown
Vladimir  – Andrew Foster
Pozzo  –  Peter Hambleton
Lucky  –  Jack Buchanan
Boy  –  Alex Buyck

Director  –  Ross Jolly
Set Designer –  Andrew Foster
Lighting Designer  –  Marcus McShane
Costume Designer   –  Sheila Horton

Circa Theatre,
I Taranaki St, Wellington

Saturday, 4th May 2019

(until 1st June 2019)

It’s interesting that my first, completely “out of the blue” experience of “Waiting for Godot” was provided some time during the mid-1960s, by a group of actors who called themselves “The Southern Comedy Players”, a foursome if I remember, who frequently toured the country’s secondary schools, and fortunately for me, had our school in Palmerston North “on their list”. The group performed excerpts from various plays, presenting a wide range, including classics (Goldsmith – “She Stoops to Conquer”), New Zealand works (Mason – “The Pohutukawa Tree”), and twentieth-century works (Beckett – “Waiting for Godot”).

I saw this group perform in their “school visits” context at least twice, and perhaps even three times over those years – but the trio of presentations mentioned above are the ones that have stuck in my memory. The name of the troupe “The Southern Comedy Players”, and the droll, whimsical humour of what I remember of the “Waiting for Godot” excerpt on that occasion indelibly etched in my brain the idea that Samuel Beckett’s play was indeed a kind of bizarre, bare-bones comedy. I would imagine that the performance on that occasion would have shared many of the qualities I enjoyed in Circa Theatre’s new production, most strikingly of all, a laconic, home-grown, “she’ll be right” way with the engaging characterisations of the two major protagonists, Estragon and Vladimir.

In fact my initial reaction here to the personas and interactions of each of these characters was a kind of “Hang on a minute, mate/One of Us” familiarity, as if both Vladimir and Estragon had wandered out of the pages of the Sam Cash novels by Barry Crump, the “everyman” characters fitted out both visually and vocally with a rugged, old-fashioned Kiwi context, however skin-deep. I somehow “knew” them of old, and reflected as the play’s essential inactions mirrored, refracted and regurgitated throughout how those archetypal Kiwi blokes had, in Beckett’s hands, become emasculated by the enactment of what seemed like a never-ending ritual of “waiting for Godot”.

Whomever Godot is or was, we in the audience never found out – the “waiting” consisted instead of a variety of discussions, mostly between Estragon and Vladimir, interrupted by encounters in each of the two Acts with a man and his servant, and also with a boy, the latter telling them on each of his appearances that Godot could not come “today” but would come “tomorrow” instead. We were left at the very end with the omnipresence of the play’s “theme” of essential inaction brought about by the “waiting”, when both men agreed to leave – but neither moved!

So, like figures performing a slow dance, the two characters pirouetted painstakingly through the play’s two Acts, one for each day, displaying with both word and action what seemed like endless preoccupation with minutae, every so often punctuating their exchanges with resonances that promised much but led to little (Vladimir’s Biblical reference to the two thieves crucified with Christ, for instance, or the inconsistencies between the four Gospel accounts regarding the thieves’ presence). Uncertainties abounded – the place, the time, the objects, the circumstances – everything mentioned was unconfirmed, made more nebulous than it was before being mentioned – For example, what day was it? Saturday? – Or Sunday? Or Monday? Or Friday!? Was the tree where they were to meet Godot really a tree? Or a bush? – perhaps a shrub? Were they here yesterday? What did they do, yesterday? Did they recognise the place? Did it make any difference?

These two “chapters” of dysfunctional connectivity between co-dependent characters were similarly interrupted by two ”arrivals”, firstly by a kind of master-servant pair roped together, respectively Pozzo and Lucky; and then by a boy bring the news of Godot’s “postponement” of the promised rendezvous with Estragon and Vladimir. Of the master-servant combination, Pozzo’s portly, well-heeled figure presented a stark contrast with that of Lucky, who, though dressed more as a carnival-performer-cum punk-rocker complete with bleached-blonde hair, appeared to be his slave. Pozzo’s cruel and disdainful treatment of Lucky, tethered at the end of a rope, made for directly uncomfortable watching, as did Lucky’s almost shell-shocked obedience of Pozzo’s every curtly-delivered command. The former’s sickening obsequiousness was allayed for a few spectacularly-delivered moments of maniacal speech and dance, outpourings of controlled energy which justly earned the actor a round of impulsive applause from an agog audience!

The reappearance of these two in the Second Act reversed their situations, with Pozzo having gone blind and Lucky guiding him while taking refuge in dumbness, Pozzo’s previous overbearing manner now replaced with humility and some insight (in the play as a whole there are a handful of parallels of this kind –  the vagabonds’ reflections on “nothing to be done”, Estragon’s thoughts of madness, and Pozzo’s blindness – with Shakespeare’s King Lear). In stark contrast to all of this  was the fresh-faced, straightforwardly-spoken boy messenger from the enigmatic Godot, a ray of equable sunshine on each of his appearances, when compared to the idiosyncratic tramps, Estregon and Vladimir, and the almost hallucinatory pairing of Pozzo and Lucky. How Beckett was able to imbue his work with so distinct an “everyman” quality via characters of such idiosyncrasy and grotesquerie is one of the miracles wrought by both a playwright’s skills and the theatre’s transforming power of suspended (and, here, metaphoric) belief.

All of this was realised for us with a directness of presentation in its sight, sound and general physicality which brooked no interference with whatever messages we in the audience chose to receive. Designer Andrew Foster put us in the action’s space, with everything clearly and mercilessly-focused – not especially rugged, but satisfyingly bleak, and in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, a tree and a block of concrete-like material forward of a suggested pathway running along the upstage. In tandem with Marcus McShane’s unambiguous, implacably advancing “day’s journey into night” lighting, the scenario unerringly conveyed a feeling of the characters’ utter helplessness against and subjection to endless cycles of time, the action of each act framed beautifully by sombre string-quartet-like music and an ambiguously striking half-sentinel, half-spectre presence of a moon.

I’ve already commented on Estragon’s and Vladimir’s engagingly familiar kind of “down-under vagabond” garb, Sheila Horton’s costumes for the pair for me hitting the spot, with Vladimir, as befitted his more philosophical and pro-active speech, somewhat more organised appearance-wise than his more bedraggled companion. Pozzo and Lucky couldn’t have been more of a contrast, the former most nattily attired, formality enlivened with colourfully psychedelic shoes, and the latter part-punk, part-gothic in his garb and coiffure – each, nevertheless, lost in their respectively-stated worlds of self-expression, and even in their visual assurance as helpless as were the two vagabonds in their “live-and-sleep-rough” garb. A hat-play sequence between the characters allowed Beckett scope for certain vaudeville goings-on, as well as symbolising certain aspects of each individual’s identity (in the first productions everybody wore bowler hats – a standard vaudeville prop, incidentally, though nowadays, as here, directors tend to opt for discernably different headgear). Lucky’s hat was important to him for thinking, Pozzo’s for social status, and Vladimir’s as a source of knowledge – only Estragon seemed “liberated” from whatever talismanic potential possessed by his headgear, putting his trust instead in his boots.

Unfortunately I never saw director Ross Jolly’s previous (and legendary) production of “Godot” in Wellington twenty years before. Without directly knowing what his earlier approach was, I’m wondering whether he’d decided to more consistently “lighten” the interactions, ambience and textures of the whole this time round – for the simple reason that I was expecting something more deeply disturbing, more extreme at each of the spectrum’s ends, the humour more manic, the desperation blacker and more cutting. It would be in line with a “distillation of response” over that time involving a more insoucient touch, a freer use of humour – though all of this is pure conjecture on my part. However it all was, nothing here was superfluous or wasted or lacking in motivation or conviction in the results achieved by his direction and the audience’s outward responses to them.

In fact his actors seemed here to relish the freedoms of light and space and warmth at the work’s beginning, with both Jeff Kingsford-Brown as Estragon and Andrew Foster as Vladimir readily filling the opening spaces with their respective preoccupations, Kingsford-Brown at intervals  beautifully conveying almost child-like sequencings of curiosity, puzzlement, irritation, delight and impishness, however quickly each impulse returned him to his default-setting of anxiety and “wanting to be off”. His introductory struggles with the removal of his shoes had a Blake-like “world in a grain of sand” preoccupation which put him akin to an animal struggling to survive in, let alone make sense of a world of nightly beatings and daily vigils of hopelessness.

More of a thinker and a free-wheeling philosopher, Andrew Foster’s Vladimir readily and more pro-actively fleshed out his curiosities and irritations with an engaging charm and bright-eyed quickness of manner, though as the play unfolded we realised that his somewhat more energised and quixotic impulses and responses to things were actually more style than substance. More superficially rational and empathetic than Estragon, he repeatedly reminded his companion, even amid their most trenchant tribulations of whom they were supposed to be waiting for.

Peter Hambleton’s well-dressed, arrogant, self-regarding Pozzo ably pushed all of our buttons in the expected manner upon his arrival with the rope-bound Lucky, whom he treated as his slave with the utmost contempt and degradation, while addressing Estragon and Vladimir with hardly less disdain, the episode presumably a kind of “comfort stop” for Pozzo on his journey to wherever. As Lucky, Jack Buchanan’s physical control of his back-breaking position of utter servitude was no less remarkable than his sudden outburst of both manic dancing and clearly-enunciated nonsensical diatribe whose completion compelled his audience to spontaneous clapping – that it was more entertaining circus-act than piteous lunatic raving was due as much to Beckett’s alienatory settings as to the production’s more absurd than tragic leaning.

When Pozzo and Lucky returned in the Second Act, their roles were somewhat reversed, Lucky leading his now-blind master back across the vistas, the cortege collapsing in a heap midway to the piteous cries of the once-dominant and overbearing Pozzo, Estragon taking his opportunity amid the melee to kick Lucky in revenge for his first-Act injury. The play ended as the first half ended, with the boy arriving carrying the message that Godot will not come today but tomorrow for sure, and Vladimir and Estragon agreeing that they will go, but instead stay.

By the play’s end the hopelessness of the situation of Estragon and Vladimir was complete – amid the chaos they remained trapped, steadfast to the idea that their only choice was to wait for “Godot”. In this way, the production consistently expressed the dictum (not Beckett’s) “a tragedy to the heart and a comedy to the intellect”, and in the best existential tradition, left the question of “the best course” unanswered. A question for humanity at large, perhaps, waiting for us to “wake up to ourselves?”.

The essence of Don Pasquale splendidly delivered by Wanderlust Opera at St Andrew’s lunchtime concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts

Wanderlust Opera
Donizetti: Don Pasquale – selections, in English

Director and narrator: Jacqueline Coats
Piano: Mark Dorrell
Stuart Coats (Don Pasquale), Barbara Paterson (Ernesto), Georgia Jamieson Emms (Norina)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 1 May, 12:15 pm

For several years Wanderlust Opera has been on the road doing what our professional opera company should be doing (did do for a couple of years in the 2000s): taking cut-down versions of opera to the provincial cities and towns. They’ve performed a variety of shows: Sondheim, a pot-pourri of songs from musicals, Cosi fan tutte and The Marriage of Figaro.

Pasquale toured eight centres in January and February this year and in August will continue with Tauranga and Hamilton. Unfortunately, Middle C missed the Wellington performance in February. We’re not sure whether there might be another performance in Wellington. This was a very reduced one, in English: just three singers, with the major role of Doctor Malatesta unsung because of Craig Beardsworth’s unavailability.

But the three singers here created a splendid opera-buffa style show, all three delighting in the farcical opportunities that Donizetti and his librettists knew how to exploit. (incidentally, the opera was based on an earlier opera by Stefano Pavesi, Ser Marcantonio in 1810, which was drawn from a Ben Jonson play of 1609, The Silent Woman. Strauss’s late opera Die schweigsame Frau, libretto Stefan Zweig, was also based on the same play).

We skipped the opening scene where Dr Malatesta describes a young lady who will make Pasquale a wonderful wife while Pasquale tells Malatesta of his plan to kick his nephew out of the house for refusing the offer of a wife who will presumably benefit, not the nephew so much as Pasquale himself.  We had Stuart Coats energetically overacting his reaction to the prospect of marriage, the Italian ‘Un foco insolito’, a brilliant waltz-style aria that set the scene irresistibly. Malatesta was present in the form of a small plaster bust.

Ernesto, the nephew, a tenor role, was sung by soprano, perhaps a strange substitution but it was explained that ‘We wanted to use a tenor but none of them could yo-yo as well as Barbara Paterson”. The substitute trouser role quickly became just so right! The confrontation, demands rapid shift from Ernesto laughing at Pasquale’s marriage plan to dismay when he refuses Pasquale’s offer of a bride.

It is Malatesta who is the manipulator, and narrator/director Jacqueline Coats created his presence with lively narrative and gestures; it is Malatesta’s sister, Norina, with whom Ernesto is in love, reciprocally, and whom he seems to be offering Pasquale as wife. She falls in with Malatesta’s plan to thwart Pasquale by producing Norina, momentarily as the shy, obedient, convent-educated ‘Sofronia’, acquiescing obediently to marriage. But then, after the marriage, she turns into Georgia Jamieson Emms, the real Norina, a fearless virago: refusing to obey, ordering clothes, coaches and horses, more servants, announcing she’s going alone to the theatre. Jamieson Emms revealed many of her histrionic talents as she confronted Pasquale and took command of everything with bold yet interesting voice and flamboyant behaviour.

Even though much of the music is left out, there is no lack of brilliant and engaging arias and duets in those bits of the opera that were presented. Donizetti’s brilliant orchestra that supports and comments on the action with wit and sensitivity is compressed into Mark Dorrell’s piano rendition which very often reinforces the emotion, such as when Pasquale realises that he’s been made a fool of and a subdued piano accompanies his pathetic defeat.

In the third act, ‘Sofronia’ drops a note that reveals to Pasquale, who picks it up, that she will meet her lover in the garden that night, and Pasquale decides on divorce. That is easily accomplished since the marriage was a sham. In a full staging the business in the garden can seem a bit protracted; but here we heard nothing that wasn’t a highlight, and those who didn’t know its twists and turns and the many equally brilliant or delightful numbers that were missing, would have been fully convinced by this three-quarter-hour’s worth of admirably sung, accompanied and ‘staged’ Donizetti.