Month: November 2019

NZSO: Salonen’s Violin Concerto points in a fruitful, inspiring direction; Schubert’s Greatness persists through 200 years

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Edo de Waart with Jennifer Koh (violin)

Esa-Pekka Salonen: Violin Concerto
Schubert: Symphony No 9 in C, D 944 (‘Great’)

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 8 November, 6:30 pm

Here was another NZSO concert that merited a bigger audience. Again, as at the 24 October concert, the gallery was well inhabited but the stalls rather sparse. A concert that is dominated by a very long work, unless by Mahler or perhaps Bruckner, suffers from a lack of variety and there needs to be a smaller, first-half piece that will overcome it, probably a familiar and well-loved concerto.

Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen is well-known as a conductor, but few would have heard any of the compositions he has been writing in an effort to establish a different career, and to contribute to a repertoire of more accessible music. But he may not yet be widely known, and it was unlikely that a much admired, and even popular violin concerto by him would thus get the kind of reception accorded to Beethoven, Tchaikovsky or Sibelius. Predictably, a couple of acquaintances remarked adversely about it at the interval.

Salonen’s Violin Concerto was written on the eve of his departure from 17 years as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 2009. It was commissioned by The Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, among others, as a collaboration between Salonen and Canadian violinist Leila Josefowicz, who played the first performance. United States violinist Jennifer Koh, comparably alive to and inspired by the music’s character, played here. The programme notes quote his remarks at the time, writing that his move to the United States caused him to question the assumptions that his experiences in Europe had taught him: inter alia, to “avoid melody, clear harmonic centres and clear sense of pulse … over here I was able to think about this rule that forbids melody. It’s madness!”

So the concerto avoids most of the forbidding characteristics of a lot of music written in the past half century; yet it could never be heard as other than very ‘contemporary’. The first movement, Mirage, is far from what that word suggests; it’s hectic and energetic, a “razor-sharp violin toccata in constant motion”, Alex Ross called it. The solo violin opens as if in mid-flight and it’s soon joined by, first, subtle celeste sounds, then glockenspiel and vibraphone and some ringing chords from the harp.

Flutes and clarinets were added and then brass, along with prolonged string chords (noticing that Concert Master Vesa-Matti Leppänen’s place was taken by associate concert master Donald Armstrong while his place was taken by Martin Riseley). However, it’s the woodwinds and celeste that are the soloist’s main companions in the semiquaver department, though Koh was vividly centre stage, playing constantly through the near ten minutes of the first movement for all but a dozen or so measures.

The sound was uniquely Salonen, and I came to feel delight as the music of the first movement stormed along, steadily gaining familiarity, helped by the changes of tempo from time to time.

Two Pulses and Adieu
The next two movements are entitled Pulse I and II, driven in turn by an astonishing refinement in the singular orchestration, and then in Pulse II by an utterly different impulse, a sort of concerto grosso for violin and drum kit. It employed the log drum and other percussion again, acquiring the character of rock music by engaging with the jazz or rock percussion, including cymbals, tom-toms and occasionally vibraphone and marimba. And at the end the drum set is told to ‘go crazy’.

The finale, Adieu, is the longest movement, beginning with a quiet, dreamy solo violin, accompanied tellingly by solo viola, soon joined by bassoon, harp and quite prominently, cor anglais. Finally we heard from the battery of tuned gongs suspended behind the horns. As elsewhere in the concerto there were sounds, especially combinations of instruments, whose source eluded me, individually or in ensemble: from the gongs, vibraphone, harp, celeste…: their spirit was no less haunting than those in the elusive Pulse I. Edo de Waart knew how to exploit and enhance these beauties and managed it all with full attention to clarity, balance and expressiveness.

For me, this enchanting, energetic work epitomised the feelings I’ve long had, winning lively disapproval from avant-garde quarters, lamenting the prolonged dominance of music over the past century by determinedly difficult, academic, melody-free music. For this was a happy combination of the refined, deeply felt, sophisticated music from Europe, and some of the music of America which has been closer to popular roots and a better awareness of the likely death of classical music through intellectual, esoteric, universities-driven ideas. And it was played by a stunning young violinist evidently steeped in the idiom, with impressive conviction and a deep belief in the music’s worth and importance.

The Great Symphony
Schubert’s ninth symphony is one of music’s great masterpieces, and though I love Schubert’s music, there are features of this last symphony that give me a bit of trouble. The numbering of the symphonies is one interesting topic (there are perhaps three incomplete or perhaps non-existent ‘symphonies’ which would make The Great No 12 if they were counted); but of more musical concern is a matter the programme note ventured to discuss: the many repeats of melodies, without interesting development. Ever since the work’s discovery by Schumann in 1838, there have been questions about Schubert’s repetitive melodies that lacked change and variety. A common defence has been that Schubert was more interested in variety through tonal modulation, which scholars have pointed out was not common in the 19th century.

The first movement makes its claim to greatness right at the start with horns opening the 4-minute-long Andante: warm, legato sounds conjured a wonderful sense of peace. The brass section as a whole, that is the trumpets, trombones as well as horns, sounded unusually rapturous, building expectations of something portentous in the main body of the movement, Allegro ma non troppo. The pace, the dotted rhythms and the magnificent balance maintained by De Waart throughout, quickly created an expectation of a near hour of musical fulfilment and inspiration.

The Andante con moto marches at a steady pace gaining interest, as usual, through modulations that were not a common feature at the time, but making a profound impression: particularly the lengthy preparation for the stunning, dissonant climax in the middle of the movement, dramatically delivered. After that, the remaining half of the movement generated a sense of peace and beauty that never seemed too long.

Each movement is around a quarter of an hour, and after the slow movement, the formally repetitive Scherzo and Trio can sound too mechanical. Yet there are constant modulations, and one’s response depends on one’s openness to them; after all, the shift from C to A major at the Trio might hardly sound very exciting.

The repetition affair has, for me, been a noticeable matter in only some performances; and this was not one of them. There’s never any problem with the first ten minutes or so of a Schubert movement, and in the finale, Allegro vivace, audiences can read some kind of message in the famous Beethoven quote early in the second part of the movement. Beethoven is also there with Schubert’s use of trombones which had only just been used by Beethoven for the first time. The splendidly calm pace added to the sense of grandeur and contentment.

At a certain point the last movement might seem to repeat its main themes too often, but if you are presented with a performance from a conductor like De Waart who grasps the entire structure and is capable of investing it with grandeur and spiritual conviction, those repetitions actually help sustain it. And they speak to any listener with open ears and capable of perceiving genius in a work of art. Even a self-effacing composer like Schubert surely knew that his symphony was a masterpiece and an imposing sequel to Beethoven’s. That’s certainly what I experienced, and I felt exhilarated, deeply moved and at peace at the end.

 

Helen Moulder and Sir Jon Trimmer warmly invite all of us to “meet Karpovsky” at Wellington’s Circa Theatre

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Circa Theatre and Willow Productions present:
MEETING KARPOVSKY
A dance-drama devised and written by Helen Moulder and Sir Jon Trimmer
Directed by Sue Rider

Sylvia Morton (Helen Moulder)
Alexander Karpovsky (Sir Jon Trimmer)

Music by Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Adam, JS Bach, Hérold (arr.Oliver), Weber (arr.Berlioz), Lincke

Original design – David Thornley (stage) / Philip Dexter (lighting)
Lighting – Deb McGuire
Sound recording – Joe Hayes

Circa Theatre, Wellington

Wednesday, 6th November 2019 (until 16th November)

I thought, both for myself and for the readers of “Middle C”, I’d explore the colourful genesis of Circa’s current production “Meeting Karpovsky”, as it was something I for one knew very little about, having not seen the original 2002 production. It all came about through actress Helen Moulder wanting to bring to fruition a long-held desire to be able to dance with Sir Jon Trimmer, the doyen of New Zealand ballet dancers – she then shared her idea for a “woman admirer meets famous dancer” scenario with Cathy Downes, director of the Court Theatre in Christchurch, who encouraged her to get in touch with Sir Jon and get something going. So, late in 2001 she contacted Trimmer, and to her delight received an interested and enthusiastic reply, as she did also from Australian director Sue Rider with whom she had previously worked (and whom Court Theatre were keen to have working there). So, with the participants, director, and venue sorted, and technical support, funding applications and projected dates set in place, what was then urgently needed was the actual play!

Gradually the scenario, along the lines of the original idea, took shape between actor, dancer and director, the title evolving from “The Woman and the Dancer”, through “Sylvia Fantastique” to “Meeting Karpovsky” (a fictitious name and character), the woman talking and the dancer communicating with “mime, dance and stillness”. Pictures of Trimmer (as Karpovsky) in “his most famous roles” were used to flesh out both the life-story of the woman,  Sylvia Morton, and the career of the dancer. Additional elements, such as the numerous boxes piled up in the room, and containing things such as a willow-pattern tea-set, found their place in the presentation’s unfolding. And, of course, there was the music, with excerpts from the ballets depicted in the posters taking pride of place in turn with other excerpts occasioned by different references, for example to the ballerina Anna Pavlova.

Reviews at the time were unhesitating in their praise of the presentation – worth quoting is that from the Listener of November 23rd 2002: –  “Moulder is remarkable as the helpless, hopeless Sylvia. She has a luminous quality and imbues the unworldly Sylvia with a rare beauty and charm. Trimmer plays Alexander Karpovsky with delicate grace. He glides silently, elegantly around the stage, tender as a love poem and replete with compassion and kindness. Together, they are magnificent: she a jittery, wounded gazelle gambolling alongside his sure dance of love and understanding”.

Moulder and Trimmer then toured New Zealand with the play in 2003/4, the production winning “The Listener Best Play” and Moulder the “Chapman Tripp Actress of the Year” awards. The production returned to Circa and then to some North Island venues in 2012 before touring the whole country with “Arts on Tour” in 2015.  This current Circa season of eleven performances is to commemorate Sir Jon Trimmer’s 80th birthday. From what we saw this evening no-one could guess as to the play’s extended performance history, everything seeming freshly-minted, and wrought out of impulses whose histories appeared to us to enliven and quicken the senses rather than weigh down and bedraggle the responses or blunt their edges.

Technically, the play is superbly presented, firstly at the very outset and then frequently and startlingly punctuated with disturbingly visceral sequences of sounds of trains passing, as it were “through the middle of the house”, a technical tour de force of evocation, though one felt the intention was more a psychological than a physical assault, akin to an inward cry of terror or scream of pain inflicted by a recurring memory or nightmare. Otherwise the darkness seems to be cultivated as a benign element rather than anything forbidding, especially as it brings the dancer, Alexander Karpovsky, into the room where Sylvia Morton is engaged in an endless struggle with her minutae, her memories and her demons.

Helen Moulder’s comprehensive ownership of her character draws us inexorably into Sylvia’s chaotic world criss-crossed with invisible strands she spontaneously activates, which in turn resonate others, often with through-line gentleness, but at other times with disconcerting, even panic-stricken switches of impulse. These invisible strands are woven through and around each of the large posters of Karpovsky dressed for his most famous roles, which Sylvia refers to in turn during the play’s action – thus she equates her hero Karpovsky with the charismatic Herr Drosselmeyer from Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker”, compares her relationship with her own daughter Anna to that of the Widow Simone’s and her daughter’s from “La Fille Mal Gardee”, sees the character of Albrecht, in “Giselle” as similar to that of Charles, her husband, who betrayed her, and identifies with the pain and sufferings of  the puppet Petroushka in Stravinsky’s eponymous ballet.

Sir Jon Trimmer’s equally remarkable assumption of the all-but-silent role of Alexander Karpovsky created the perfect foil for Moulder’s unilaterally besieged characterisation of the beleaguered Sylvia. His aspect was at once the personification of some kind of spontaneous extra-terrestrial whim, and a true figure for the ages, albeit one entirely without a baleful or sinister aspect – a “quality of stillness” instead conveyed his importance, if at first in a truly open-ended way. Dancers are, of course used to such meaningful conveyance, deprived as they are of the use of speech, and, like artists of mime, having to conjure meaning without words. Trimmer’s was a veritable “master-class” in this respect, including that enviable art of creating unprompted impulse, a quality unique and fresh (one, of course, that’s highly prized across all artistic disciplines). For this reason I felt the show’s single flaw was the “one word” uttered by the dancer – perhaps as an idea it seemed to have its own special impact on the process of Sylvia’s emotional journey, but in situ I felt more “deflated” than galvanised by the “alien” sound of the dancer’s voice, and found myself wishing that a simple gesture had been used instead – I thought it a blip of a distraction rather than a revelation.

Having gotten that very idiosyncratic judgement off my chest (I’m certain this aspect of the play would have been “put to the sword” on many an occasion by all and sundry – and by dint of its presence has obviously survived sharper anatomisings than my relatively blunt critical instrument could ever furnish!) I’m bound to say that it mattered hardly a whit to my overall reaction to the play. I thought it all touched greatness in so many places, not the least in conveying the dichotomy of having a character “imagine” and bring into being another character who then appears to step outside the boundaries of the original conception, all by way of portraying an “opening up” of understandings and strengthening of feelings. I could readily relate to it all, and imagine that others would also have invariably been touched in some way by this exceedingly gentle in places but at times surprisingly powerful piece of theatre – my thanks and congratulations to all concerned!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diverting and varied concert in The Queen’s Closet, devoted to all the pleasures at the Prefab

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Queen’s Closet period instrument ensemble

All the Pleasures:
Music by Henry and Daniel Purcell, John Barrett, William Topham, Godfrey Keller. a Holy Roman Emperor, Vincenzo Albrici, Johann Schmelzer, John Eccles, and Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber

Instrumentalists: Gordon Lehany (trumpet, recorder), Peter Reid (trumpet, cornetto), Sharon Lehany (hoboy), Rebecca Struthers (violin), Hyewon Kim (violin), Anne Loeser (violin), Peter Maunder (sackbut, recorder, trumpet), Jane Young (cello), Craig Bradfield (bassoon), Lachlan Radford (double bass), Kris Zuelicke (harpsichord), Laurence Reese (percussion)

Prefab Hall, 14 Jessie Street

Sunday 3 November, 5 pm

The lively atmosphere of the Prefab on Jessie Street provides a happy environment for all kinds of music, not least for classical music of all kinds. It facilitates experimental and early music, instrumental and choral, serious and whatever the opposite might be.

The Queen’s Closet consists partly of NZSO and Orchestra Wellington players as well as some whose provenance I don’t know.

The English Restoration
They devote themselves to the Restoration, the permissive, perhaps degenerate period from the return of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II, till, well, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when William of Orange and Mary took the throne, after which the more boisterously licentious plays and poetry faded away. The term is used most commonly about drama and Restoration Comedy is one of the liveliest, and indeed most licentious periods of the English theatre, with playwrights, Congreve, Dryden, Wycherley, Vanbrugh and Aphra Behn (a rare woman playwright). As well as poets, the most sexually frank being Rochester whose poems got quietly circulated around my English literature classes at university.  Please excuse the side-tracking; one became familiar with a lot of this in the 6th form in the days when English (and other) literatures were basic in the curriculum. Though at college, Congreve’s Way of the World was more acceptable than Wycherley’s The Country Wife …

None of the licentiousness could be detected in the music however.

The first item, the ‘symphony’ and ‘aria’ from Come ye Sons of Arts by Henry Purcell (1659-1695). (His younger brother Daniel, was represented later in this concert), exposed sackbuts, trumpet, the hoboy (early oboe), recorders, bassoon, strings, and the only appearance of the cornetto. The splendid introductory ‘Symphony’ exposed some of the technical challenges of the early wind instruments. Nevertheless, it left a lively impression of the emotional character as well as the fun that inspired music of the late 17th century.

Cornettos and sackbuts
For that’s what the concert was devoted to. Genial remarks by Gordon Lehany (I think) followed the Purcell, drawing attention to the less familiar instruments which included the cornetto played by Peter Reid. It’s an early, hybrid trumpet-recorder sub-species whose curious characteristics I sorted out many years ago, but I have no recollection of hearing it played live before this. But my efforts to record what was said and by whom was unreliable as some faces were unfamiliar and not all voices were loud or clear enough; and at times I could not see all players or the instruments they were playing. (I’m grateful to Sharon Lehany for help in clarifying things).

Though I am reasonably familiar with the early instruments used, it was interesting to hear Peter Maunder speak about the sackbut and its descendant, the trombone, and Peter Reid’s remarks about the cornetto. Reid and Gordon Lehany also played natural trumpets (without valves) impressively in John Barrett’s (1676-1719) music for the comedy, The Yeoman of Kent. (Looking it up: “Tunbridge-Walks, or, The yeoman of Kent : a comedy, as it is acted at the Theatre Royal by Her Majesty’s Servants”, was written by one Thomas Baker and printed in 1703.

The range of music chosen was highly diverting, and its performance sparkling and lively, at the small price of a (very) few fluffs from the fine replica instruments played.

An Imperial composer
The John Barrett piece was followed by a piece by ‘Emperor Joseph I of Austria’ (1678-1711) actually, I think, he was Archduke of Austria and at his father’s death became Holy Roman Emperor, a curious, elected imperial position involving weak hegemony over much of Europe). Anyway, he was a musician and the ensemble played a piece called Alma Ingrate, in which Maunder’s sackbut, supported by harpsichordist Kris Zuelicke, played its smooth, warm melody that required some fancy ornamentation towards the end.

There were 12 pieces in the programme; half were works entitled ‘sonatas’. The first of them was by one William Topham (1669-1709), ‘compos’d in imitation of Archangelo Corelli’, didn’t remind me of Corelli, involving two natural trumpets (Gordon Lehany and Peter Reid), as well as two violins.

The next sonata, by Godfrey Keller (??, died 1704), was for two flutes (actually two recorders played by Gordon Lehany and Peter Maunder) and two violins (Rebecca Struthers and HyeWon Kim?), Sharon Lehany’s hoboy and double bass (Lachlan Radford).

The third successive sonata was by Vincenzo Albrici (1631-1687): simply Sonata a 5 (spoken in Italian, ‘a cinque’). It involved two violins and double bass, then two trumpets and bassoon: rhythmic and quite short.

Daniel Purcell, Schmelzer. Biber and Eccles
The second half began with a Symphony to an Ode for Saint Cecilia’s Day by Daniel Purcell (1664-1717). Heavy timpani (Laurence Reese) introduced it; all three violins took part, first lamenting and later in fast triple time where the trumpets took charge.

There were three further sonatas, by Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (??1620-1680). He worked in the Habsburg court in Vienna under Emperor Leopold I (the father of the earlier mentioned Joseph I). The first of them, Per camera “al giorno delle Correggie”, employing sequences of rising then falling motifs, where I was attracted to Craig Bradford’s comic, perhaps rude, bassoon and HyeWon Kim’s violin.

I came across John Eccles (1668-1735), first as composer of a cello sonata and later in the music theatre context. He was perhaps, after Henry Purcell, the most famous English composer in the concert. He famously set Semele, an English ‘all-sung’ opera libretto by Congreve, in 1607, in the face of the domination of London by Italian opera; but it was not performed till 1972. Handel however set the libretto in 1744 – his only English language opera. Many believe that had Eccles’s opera been performed it might well have put an end to Italian domination, have led Handel to compose opera in English and profoundly changed the face of opera in England over the next two centuries.

More successful at the time was Eccles’s setting of Congreve’s masque The Judgement of Paris. They performed the ‘Symphony for Mercury’, the music distinctly more interesting and elaborate than much that had gone before: high trumpets echoing , then outshining violins; then a slow lament and a return to brisk dancing music led by Reese’s hand-held tambourine. It gave real life to the concert.

There were two further Schmelzer sonatas: the first – a sonata a tre – featuring a sort of competition between trumpet and Rebecca Struthers’ violin and Jane Young’s cello. And a multi-lingual ‘sonata con arie zu der kaiserlichen Serenade’, switching abruptly from noisy timpani to a calm adagio, brisk common time and then a sort of gigue, and marching, hard-hit timpani again.

The penultimate piece was by another important German composer Heinrich Ignaz Biber (1644-1704): a passacaglia using just four descending notes, repeatedly, with increasing decoration, as well as slowly becoming more complex and difficult, with growing emotional involvement. It ended as a much more interesting piece than its opening had suggested.

At the end a sort of encore emerged from the cello, and the sackbut: maintaining the spirit of the unexpected and unorthodox with always a quiet humour that kept the audience surprised, mocked, enlivened, puzzled, but overall, satisfyingly entertained.

Exceptional recital from Alexander Gavrylyuk gets tumultuous applause at Waikanae

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Alexander Gavrylyuk – piano

Waikanae Music Society

Mozart: Rondo in D, K485
Brahms: Rhapsody in G minor, Op 79 No. 2
               Intermezzo in B flat minor, Op 117 No. 2
               Intermezzo in C sharp minor, Op. 117 No. 3
Liszt: Paganini Étude No 6
Saint-Saëns: Danse-Macabre (Liszt / Horowitz)
Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition  

Memorial Hall, Waikanae

Sunday 3 November 2019, 2:30 pm

Alexander Gavrylyuk, the internationally celebrated Ukranian/Australian pianist, has become a regular visitor to Waikanae. He played there in 2017 and 2016, so I knew that we would be in for an exceptional concert. Peter Mechen, my colleague at Middle C, had written about the pianist’s ability to enchant his listeners with every note and in doing so, display a Sviatoslav Richter-like capacity to invest each sound with a kind of ‘centre of being’. Reviews of his concerts from all over the world attest to his brilliance. Engaging him for Waikanae after New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Russia, France, the Netherlands and the Wigmore Hall in London is a great coup for the Waikanae Music Society.

The hall was full. The gorgeous Fazioli piano, perhaps the best piano in New Zealand, was on the stage, and the artist, a slight modest young man, appeared from behind the screen, sat down and started to play.

Mozart Rondo in D K485
The notes, flew like butterflies, effortlessly. This was a magician conjuring up music with cascading notes, the music reflecting different shades with each repeat of the theme; an understated humour distinguished the piece. Gavrylyuk played it fast with a light, ethereal air. This is a joyful piece. The main theme was borrowed from Johann Christian Bach and it appears in various transformations, modulating into distant keys and transposed from treble to bass, making this a fairly complex but delightful Rondo.

Brahms Rhapsody and Intermezzi
The Mozart Rondo was followed by a bracket of Brahms works calling for a very different musical vision. Though the Rhapsody was written in 1879, the two Intermezzi are late Brahms, when he came back to writing short works for the piano, creating new genres for these pieces. The Rhapsody in G minor is built around a grand theme, which Gavrylyuk played broadly with a rich, mellow sound. The piece gradually increased in intensity, yet within this intensity he brought out the full flowering of the lyrical passages.

The two Intermezzi were of contrasting character. The music critic, Eduard Hanslick, described them as thoroughly subjective, personal monologues. The B flat minor Intermezzo is gentle, singing, with themes which evolve and transform one into another. The C sharp minor Intermezzo is a profoundly sad work which Brahms described as the lullaby of all his griefs. It is like a song, a prayer.

Gavrylyuk brought out its dark yet resigned depth.

Liszt Paganini Étude No 6
Paganini gave new meaning to the idea of the virtuoso. He produced sounds and effects on the violin that were previously unimaginable. He had the personality of the virtuoso showman. Liszt, with his incredible technique on the grand piano set about cultivating an image of the virtuoso like Paganini’s and wrote these studies on themes by Paganini and as a homage to him, arranging them after Paganini’s death. Of these No. 6, based on Paganini’s 24th Caprice is the best known. It is spectacular and fiendishly difficult, showing off the potential of the instrument and the skills of the artist.

Danse-Macabre
My father, when he was a young man, had heard Horowitz in concert, and for him there was no pianist like him, he was indisputably No. 1. I grew up with a 78 rpm record of Horowitz playing this piece. It is brilliant and hair-raising. Liszt transcribed Saint-Saëns’ orchestral tone-poem for piano and Horowitz added further embellishment and technical difficulties to Liszt’s version. It did not, however, daunt Gavrylyuk. He played effortlessly, showing off what a fine pianist can do. The performance was fun and his mastery of the technical challenges was prodigious.

Pictures at an Exhibition
Mussorgsky’s ten colourful piano pieces were composed in memory of his friend, the painter, Victor Hartmann. Each piece captures in sound one of Hartmann’s 400 paintings. They range from the comic, Gnomus, the nostalgic The Old Castle, the playful Tuilleries, the frentic Ballet of the Unhatched Chickens, the ponderous turning of the heavy wheels in Bydlo, the pompous and satirical Goldberg and Schmuyle, the busy Marketplace at Limoges, the ghostly Catacombs: Roman Sepulchre, the absurd and bizarre Little Hut on Chicken Legs, and finally the majestic Great Gate of Kiev. They are connected with Promenades, each Promenade different, suggesting a spectator walking, in anticipation, from picture to picture. There is mystery, melancholy and humour in the work and a measure of the Russian spirit of national identity reflected in the Great Gate of Kiev with its Russian Orthodox chants. A spectacular and memorable performance.

This was an amazing concert and the tumultuous applause of the large audience reflected their enjoyment and appreciation; it was a privilege to hear one of the great pianists of the younger generation. His playing was stunning, and the memory of it will be cherished by all who heard it. The nagging question, however, is why we had to travel to Waikanae, a small seaside town, to hear one of the finest pianists to visit New Zealand. Alexander Gavrylyuk plays in some of the greatest concert halls of the world, but those responsible for providing the best in music for the New Zealand public can’t organize a concert for him in the Michael Fowler Centre: neither a solo recital nor a concerto appearance in Wellington with the NZSO. Before the New Zealand Broadcasting Service and the then National Orchestra were restructured such a concert would have been held in the Town Hall and would have been broadcast for a wide audience to enjoy. Much has been lost in the restructuring.

Post scriptum
It is unusual for a reviewer to comment on his own review, but I regret that although I consider that I wrote a fair and accurate review of Alexander Gavrylyuk’s concert I failed to capture its essence.
It was not a concert like any other. It was an experience that would stay with those who were there. The music seemed to just sprout from the artist, like someone musical utterance in a trance. Perhaps it was an idiosyncratic performance. Some of the pieces might have seemed a little faster or slower than usually played, but they all seemed to be the expression of the inner of the soul of the artist. There was a spontaneity and fluidity about Gavrylyuk’s playing that is impossible to capture in words. He just created music there in front of us, totally absorbed in the music. The music spoke directly to the listeners’ inner beings. It was magic.
Steven Sedley