Month: September 2023

Pasifika (m)Orpheus operatic presentation a poignantly human tale

Posted on by Peter Mechen

(m)ORPHEUS –
a reimagining of Gluck’s “Orfeo ed Eurydice” (reorchestrated by Gareth Farr)

Cast
Samson Setu – Orpheus
Madison Nonoa – Amor
Deborah Wai Kapohe – Eurydice

Production Design : Tracy Lord Grant
Director: Neil Ieremia
Assistant Director: Jacqueline Coats
Lighting: JAX Messenger
Conductor: Marc Taddei
NZ Opera Chorus, Black Grace Dancers
Orchestra Wellington : Concertmaster – Amalia Hall
Violin (Vivian Stephens ), Viola (Susan Fullerton-Smith), Cello (Jane Young)
Clarinet & Saxophone (Mark Cookson)
Trumpet & Flugelhorn (Matt Stein)
Trombone & Euphonium (Peter Maunder)
Marimba (Naoto Segawa &Yoshiko Tsuruta)
Guitars (Gunter Herbig)

Opera House, Wellington September 23rd 2023

I didn’t know until I began exploring the recent performance history of Gluck’s opera that Orpheus and Eurydice had been “reimagined” here in Aotearoa New Zealand before – a 2018 production at the Auckland Arts Festival presented the work as “A Dance Opera” directed and choreographed by Michael Parmenter, and designed then by the present designer, Tracy Lord Grant – on that occasion the opera was sung as the action was “danced”, with everything integrated into a contemporary-style presentation, including numerous visual ”links” and various enactments of and between the opera’s action and everyday society. From the reviews I have read I’m compelled to say that it was certainly something I greatly wished I had seen.

This very different 2023 reworking of a “dance-opera” idea came from director/choreographer Neil Ieremia, one unhesitatingly presenting a Pasifika view as confidently and naturally as one would a world view – throughout, the confidence and surety of the chorus regarding both singing and movement drew me into the central idea of the story’s world, the Samoan words at the extremities of the action effectively “ritualising” the storytelling as potently as any non-vernacular opera libretto does as a matter of course. In fact the chorus here under Ieremia’s direction were as much a “fulcrum” to the action as in any classic Greek play, thus forging links on a number of counts between times and places delineating humanity at large – a heartwarming achievement on the part of both director and players.

Further advancing both the Pasifika and classical European view of life and death is the concept of an  “underworld”, here brought to visual, though not especially dramatic use in the story, being used more effectively in stasis than in movement between. Perhaps the most effective moment confounding this assertion was the staging of the Furies at the beginning of Act Two hanging upside down from an elevated level like predatory bats before realigning themselves firmly on the floor of Hades itself to challenge Orpheus’s presence. These were Neil Ieremia’s own dance group Black Grace, dancers who have already made an impact with both traditional and contemporary presentations, and here they excelled as much with their aggressively baleful aspect as the Furies as with their contrastingly lyrical dance depictions of hero and heroine as a couple and what seemed like stylised re-enactments of Orfeo’s attempt to lead Eurydice out of Hades and back to life.

Interestingly, this production styled itself in its title as Orpheus alone, but with a parenthesised “m” suggesting both the power and influence of sleep (“Morpheus”) over the title character, while also playing down the role of Eurydice almost to the point of being a dream-like figure who, having already died before the story’s beginning lived only in Orpheus’s imagination. Neil Ieremia advances the view that, with Eurydice’s loss, Orpheus is now without his “feminine” side, namely his “compassion, empathy and sensitivity”. Still, we couldn’t help but respond to what happens between then during the course of the story as a kind of lovers’ tragedy, as in the Gluck original of 1862, even if the presentation’s final scene has Orpheus and Eurydice parted once again, with the hero up the stairs in isolation while Eurydice’s body lay inert on the level below…….one is reminded, amid the tragedy, of a phrase such as “did we dream you or did you dream us?” underlying the feeling of isolation and bewilderment of human loss……

The voices of the principals uncannily reflected their situations both during and at the conclusion of the opera – Samson Setu’s rich, golden tones beautifully filled out Orpheus’s fully-committed anguish and grief at the opera’s beginning, strengthening his tones with resolve when confronting the Furies, and melting with tenderness at the thought of seeing his Eurydice once again. However, neither his voice nor his body language “caught” for me the ambiguities of his despair at firstly having to “give in” to Eurydice’s pleas that he look at her at the climax of their flight from the Underworld, before helplessly watching her die. As Eurydice Deborah Wai Kapohe similarly charmed us with heartfelt and delicate sounds at first but couldn’t then summon the vocal heft to “galvanise” my sensibilities with her despairing cries as her end approached. Of the three principal singers the most flexible and responsive to both text and situation was Madison Nonoa as Amor, at once girlish and worldly, pink-puffer jacketed and denin-jean shorted to boot, as if she’d just drifted in from Courtenay Place here in Wellington, her laid-back humour a perfect foil for the seriousness of the other two characters.

Composer Gareth Farr responded to the challenge of “reinventing” Gluck’s orchestration of the work with Pasifika-like elements and gesturings, bringing into play an amalgam of brass and woodwind mixed with marimba, and underpinning the soundscape with a string-quartet like continuo for the action’s unfolding, along with a guitar (played by Gunther Herbig) as Orpheus’s lyre idea, all of which sounded “similar yet different” to the 18th-century original. Conductor Marc Taddei’s robustly controlled trajectories kept the action moving, getting playing from the Orchestra Wellington musicians that was spot-on in terms of accuracy, ensemble and atmosphere. Tracy Lord Grant’s stunning designs, Jacqueline Coats’s able directorial assistance and JAX messenger’s lighting all played their part in evoking in the Wellington Opera House’s atmospheric precincts this resonantly Antipodean realisation of the age-old darkness-and-light story of love and loss.

 

Evocations of Spain, from Ewan Clark and the Wellington City Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington City Orchestra presents:
CHABRIER – Espana
TURINA – Danzas Fantasticas
BIZET – Carmen Suite No. 1
RODRIGO – Concierto de Aranjuez
(Owen Moriarty – guitar)
BIZET – Carmen Suite No. 2

Wellington City Orchestra
Conductor – Ewan Clark

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

Saturday, 16th September 2023

There were probably quite a number of people attending this concert who were in exactly my situation regarding our relationship with the music we were about to be served – the Chabrier, Bizet and Rodrigo Items I had heard many times before and knew reasonably well, but the Turina work,  Danzas Fantasticas, never.

Audiences are more often than not disparate and largely unconnected fraternities, but here from the outset one sensed a kind of “anticipatory listening camaraderie” hovering about St.Andrew’s Church  in view of the afternoon’s programme. I liked imagining that it promised both the pleasure of hearing so many well-known items, and the thrill of discovering and getting to know at least one work of Turina’s – whose title alone promised more of the same qualities as its companions in the programme.

Well, I can’t speak for my companions in the church this afternoon, but by the time the Danzas Fantasticas had strutted its stuff, I was flabbergasted! I kept on thinking, listening to conductor Ewan Clark’s expert “putting the players through their paces” reading of the work, why have I never before investigated this music ? What a peach of a work! I had actually heard of it (probably the only Turina work I could name if pressed to do so), but it didn’t for me provoke anything like the “instant recognition” that any of the other pieces on this afternoon’s listening menu did. It would therefore be fair to say than Joaquin Turina isn’t as yet a “single-work composer” in the popular regard of things, as one could say about Chabrier with his Espana” or Rodrigo with his “Concierto  de Aranjuez” – and, in many people’s minds, perhaps even Bizet with his “Carmen”.

However, it wasn’t for me the only reason that this Wellington City Orchestra concert gave such particular pleasure on this occasion – though not yet entirely consistent in its responses to the demands of the music, I felt that the band under conductor Ewan Clark had captured the character of every piece we heard, from the vibrancy of rhythm and colour evident in Chabrier’s Espana” to the sheer variety of emotion and situation portrayed for us in Bizet’s music for his opera “Carmen”. A friend afterwards remarked upon the vividness of the playing’s recreation of the opera’s powerful atmosphere and intensely dramatic situations. And besides the vividness of Turina’s picture-postcard evocations of Spanish life, the playing of guitarist Owen Moriarty brought home to us the intensely-wrought emotion embedded in the famous “Aranjuez” Guitar Concerto, the orchestral response to the soloist’s and his heartfelt ruminations impressively of a piece with the music’s character and depth of feeling.

A few remarks regarding what I heard here and there in the music and its playing – at the very beginning of “Espana” there were a few tentative moments with the difficult syncopations between strings and wind (I played in this work once in my halcyon days as a percussionist, and remember never feeling entirely sure of what I was doing in relation to my fellow-musicians, including the conductor! – AND I also remember not being able to get Perry Como’s famous “Hot Diggety Dog” song out of my head for some time so I could properly concentrate on Chabrier!). Here, the introduction came together beautifully as the players overcame these uncertainties and started to develop the music’s engaging feeling of “schwung”, the piece’s occasional “rolling crescendi” also carrying us along with great exhilaration! Ewen Clark got a treasurable moment from the strings with a “comma” inserted at one point just before the players’ big-hearted taking-up of the juicy lyrical theme! – and I also liked the elan with which the brasses made their alternating calls just before the coda.

Next up was the Turina work, about which I must report that my anticipation was all the more whetted by the appearance on the platform at that point of a contrabassoon that seemed twice the size of the player who was carrying it! Despite my slight bewilderment at the programme note not being entirely “on the button” with its descriptions of the openings of each of the first two movements, I still thoroughly enjoyed the sounds that I heard! The first opened with mysterious string chordings, followed by a sudden irruption, stimulating rhythmic sequences of sounds by turns lively and sultry, with a lovely, romantic melody dug into by the strings varied by some beautiful lines from a cor anglais  – then the strings returned with their mysterious opening chords before bidding us a kind of sweet and nostalgia-ridden series of “adios”. A bracing call to attention began the second movement, which then morphed into a more relaxed and somewhat angular 5/4 rhythm with beautiful writing for both strings and winds. Yes, the finale was indeed of a “lively and rhythmic character” – very Spanish, with the themes contrastingly sultry and charming, with an exciting coda, a brief cello solo, and a coruscating orchestral pay-off!

We then got the first of the two Carmen Suites from the opera, beginning most appropriately with the baleful “Fate” theme (which I recall never before hearing until I encounted the opera proper!) – great brass and lower strings here! The Aragonaise theme came next, delivered with great brilliance and atmosphere – it was followed by the beautiful “Intermezzo” a moment of flute-and-harp calm in the opera amidst a sea of troubles! Carmen’s tempting invitation to Don Jose, the Seguedille followed – after a slightly shaky start, oboe and strings nailed it! Les Dragons  d’Aicala, Don Jose’s marching tune, featured both bassoon and clarinet in fine fettle, while the suite’s most popular number Les Toreadors made an excellent first-half concluding piece, not too rushed, but delivered with real swagger!

After the interval Owen Moriarty took the platform with his guitar, to perform the much-played but ever-enchanting “Concierto de Aranjuez” by Joaquin Rodrigo – this occasion was no exception, as the soloist despatched his part with a remarkable amalgam of spontaneity and fluency throughout – did the wind players occasionally get slightly ahead of the soloist at times when he seemed to “give space” in  the turning of a phrase-end? – even if such was the case, no violence to any particular bar or phrase that I could pinpoint was enacted by any of the players in the making of this music! A deservedly-mentioned highlight of the performance was the playing by Rodney Ford of the cor anglais solo in the second movement, for which the latter received acknowledgement at the work’s end – the playing had a plangency I couldn’t remember being bettered in any previous performance I’d heard. In fact the “live” occasion gave the music an extra level of intensity throughout that made a huge difference to how one responded to the work as a whole, the occasion thus more deeply “touching” my sensibilities than has been usually the case with the music.

Nothing could have “rounded off” the concert better after this than the second of Bizet’s “Carmen” Suites – though Owen Moriarty did his best to help us return to our lives with an encore by a Serbian composer Miroslav Tadic – a most entertaining and vigorous piece called “Walk Dance”, which certainly “cleared the air” of any Iberian excess that may have hung around after the concerto’s final notes had died away. Then it was all orchestral hands on deck again for the Bizet, beginning this time with a more-than-usually circumspect piece for this opera, the Marche des Contrebandiers  (Smugglers’ March), but whose relative unfamiliarity was made up for in spadefuls by the deservedly famous Habanera. Afterwards came some of the most beautiful music from the opera, that given to Micaela, Don Jose’s would-be sweetheart, in the throes of searching desperately for him in the mountains – lovely horn-playing, at first, followed by the solo violin with the melody, the Concertmaster Paula Carryer here doing an excellent job!

More familiar to those who hadn’t yet seen the opera would have been the following Chanson du Toreador (Song of the Toreador) expressing the necessary courage and bravado of Escamilo, the bullfighter, with solo trumpeter Neil Dodgson making a brilliant job of it, as do the brass in general in the following La Garde Montante (The Changing of the Guard) together with the winds, giving the scene plenty of ceremonial elan! Finally, we heard one of Bizet’s most exciting creations, the Danse Boheme, sung in the opera by Carmen and two of her gypsy cohorts in a vivid description of a wild and abandoned gypsy dance, Ewan Clark and the orchestra responding by pulling out all the stops, as they say in the classics, and bringing the concert to a suitably brilliant conclusion. We clapped and shouted our approval of it all, a great and deserved success for all concerned – well done on all counts to guitarist Owen Moriarty, to conductor Ewan Clark and to the stalwart players of the Wellington CIty Orchestra.

 

 

 

Cantoris Choir resonant in Rutter and determined in Durufle….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Cantoris Choir presents:
DARK AND LIGHT
JOHN RUTTER – Gloria
MAURICE DURUFLE – Requiem

Cantoris Choir,
conducted by Thomas Nikora
with Jonathan Berkhan (organ)
and Samuel Berkhan (‘cello)

St,Peter’s-on-Willis Church, Wellington
Saturday, 9th September 2023

Two markedly different but satisfyingly complementary works were presented at St.Peter’s-on-Willis on Saturday night by Cantoris Choir, conducted by Thomas Nikora. The concert had been plagued with difficulties, due to various people’s unexpected incapacitation for various reasons, but the show went on in the time-honoured manner, to everybody’s great credit under the circumstances!

The first half consisted of John Rutter’s “Gloria”, which I had seen and heard  Cantoris perform before – in April of 2019, to be exact – a concert I remember had the choir in confident and vigorous form on that occasion. I’m presuming that tonight’s concert was affected by the difficulties alluded to above, though Thomas Nikora was able to steer his voices safely and sonorously through all but the most angular and demanding moments. Rutter’s three part work emphasised the joyousness of the text at the outset, Joinathan Berkahn’s organ-playing at the beginning setting the scene with a couple of majestic irruptions of sound and adding resonance to the choir’s opening unison “Gloria in Excelsis Deo”, I liked the composer’s differentiation between celestial splendour at the outset and the “more suitably earthbound” contrast with the humbler “et terra pax” , and also the jazzier return to the opening, with an emphasis upon the word “Deo” at the end.

Straight away the piping organ tones at the beginning of the next part reminded me of Christopher Smart’s cat Jeffrey, in Britten’s “Rejoice in the Lamb”. The voices rose with the words “Domine Deus Rex Caelestis” while the organ tripped merrily on, (in places the work almost had an “organ sonata with vocal obbligato” kind of effect!) before the vocal lines descended nicely with hushed tones at “Qui tollis peccata mundi”, including a “splinter group” of voices who had retreated to give an evocative  “cry from the wilderness” impression. Together with the words “Qui sedes ad Dextram Patris ”, the sweetly-intoned “Miserere nobis” hauntingly echoed to the end.

The vigorous opening of the finale, underpinned by the organ, featured the “Quoniam” with its repeated “tu solus” acclamations of “You alone” driving the music on, the phrase tossed about the choir with surety in preparation for the build-up to the “Cum Sanctu Spiritus” and leading on to the fugue-like Amens”, the dancing rhythms propelling everything forwards, conductor and singers finding more radiance as the music proceeded, if also showing the stain of Rutter’s insistent demands in places. However,  over the final pages of the work and concluding with the reprise of the “Gloria”. the voices acquitted themselves splendidly.

IN this world of two distinct halves the Durufle Requiem certainly occupied the darker side of the sphere as per the programme’s title, though the work itself certainly doesn’t take us to the same degree of Dante-esque terror via  theatrical and cataclysmic “Dies Irae” sequences, as did both Berlioz and Verdi in their respective “Requiems” – like the Durufle work’s “twin”, which is the Faure Requiem, the scenario presents the idea of faith as the “ultimate answer to the mystery of life after death” with the concluding “In Paradisum”, a sequence not used by either Berlioz or Verdi. Durufle’s work also differs from Faure’s in that the composer sought to replicate the style of Gregorian chant, rather than invent his own themes, as Faure did. Thus we are conscious all through Durufle’s work of the influence of the ancient chants, giving this Requiem a unique kind of character, at once a timeless and a universal sense of origin.

A great opening organ chord! – and straight away the Cantoris voices drew us into a world that at first seemed more like plainchant than in Faure’s eponymous work, with the men’s voices steadily intoning the “Requiem aeternam” – a lovely effect was the women’s voices floating over the top, the voices coming together beautifully for “et lux perpetua”.   The “Kyrie”, which followed immediately, sounded like plainchant which I myself could remember singing long ago at Mass! Durufle’s contrapuntal lines  merged here into radiant outpourings over both Kyries and Christes. The “Domine Jesu Christe had a sombre beginning on the organ, the women beginning the “Domine Jesu Christe” chant-like tones before the choir burst out vehemently with “Libera eas de ore leonis” (Deliver them from the mouth of the Lion), then continuing with even more stress-wrought pronouncements – “Ne absorbeat eas Tartarus, ne cadat in obscurum” – (Lest Tartarus swallow them up and they fall into darkness” ) – and the organ going almost beserk with agitation as well! (those of us not hugely familiar with the words really needed the text at hand to follow what was being  expressed specifically, though one of course naturally concluded from  encountering other requiems that the scenarios being described were anything but sweetness and light!)….the women’s voices which then  invoked St.Michael’s guidance did restore some order! – and their “Quam olim Abrahae” further renewed a sense of faith and hope “….into the holy light which once you promised to Abraham and his seed….”

The male soloist who then came forward did well with his “Hostias et preces tibi, Domine” (We offer to you, Lord), the organ plumbing the expressive depths in support – and several women members of  the choir suddenly retreated further into the sanctuary and intoned from the distance their lines once again, before returning – an atmospheric touch!

The “Sanctus” so beautifully swirled into one’s hearing by the women’s voices, like cascading water swirling deliciously all about, with lovely organ accompaniments! When it came to the Hosannas the men did so well, their voices forthright and joyous, suitably inspiring the remaining voices to add their cries to the acclamations. the Benedictus adding to the swirling motions, albeit very briefly. With the  following “Pie Jesu” a solo ‘cello (played by Samuel Berkhan) accompanied a soprano voice, a lovely melody shared between the two – very low for the singer at first, but the voice sounded freer and happier in its subsequent “soaring” mode.

A purposeful beginning by the organ launched the “Agnus Dei”, with the women’s and then the men’s voices taking their turns, then dovetailing the sonorous lines as the piece proceeded, creating  gorgeous harmonisings as the “Dona Eis Requiems” were intoned, along with a breathtakingly lovely “Requiem sempiternam”.  Falling organ note-cluster-harmonies then introduced the “Lux Aeterna”,  again reminiscent of Gregorian chant, before intoning haunting single-note lines, interspersed with the organ’s improvisatory-like recitatives – the single note chantings suggested a possible air of finality and impending peace, one however roughly broken into by the organ’s summonsing of the  forbidding-sounding  “LIbera me”.

The men pushed the lines along what seemed a torturous way, assisted by the women’s voices; and the solo baritone re=entered, a little unsteady at first then finding his voice, with the most fearful of the work’s texts given tongue at this point, the men confronting the “Dies Illa/Dies Irae” warnings throughout the “no-souls’ land of the music at this point,.Finally,  the choir grasped onto their reprise of the “Libera Me” with appropriate conviction and beseechment.

It was given the organ to wreathe from the uneasy calm the strains of “In Paradisum”,  the voices tentative at first, and then with “Chorus Angelorum te suscipiat”  (There may the chorus of angels receive thee) the music seemed to find its path amid the suspended chaos, and beckon all to follow.

Those of us who might have expected to encounter a kind of dutiful reminiscence of Gabriel Faure’s earlier work found ourselves at the conclusion of Durufle’s work forced to consider the proper implications of what we had just experienced – a masterpiece in its own right, forged and performed with some difficulty but plenty of singular and enduring purpose from all concerned……..