Month: July 2024

Henry Wong Doe, and a paean in praise of piano recitals…….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

      Wellington Chamber Music presents :
HENRY WONG DOE – Piano Recital

FRANZ JOSEF HAYDN – Sonata in E Minor Hob.XVI:34 (1784)
LEONIE HOLMES – Time Rustling for piano and fixed media electronics (2023)
ALBERTO GINASTERA – Piano Sonata No. 1 Op.22 (1952)
FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN – Nocturne in D flat Major Op.27 No.2 (1836)
MODEST MUSORGSKY – Pictures at an Exhibition (1874)

Sunday 21st July 2024
St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Welliongton

Consider, reader, if you will, the piano recital – a presentation involving a single musician playing on an instrument which has inspired some of the greatest, most profound and far-reaching musical compositions ever devised by human beings within the framework of Western civilisation.

The classical repertoire alone for pianists seems boundless, including sounds associated with early keyboards and gradually evolving over centuries to the majestic tones wrought by today’s concert grands – instruments capable of reproducing near-orchestral swathes of tones and timbres which give multifarious tongue to all kinds of compositions, both original and transcribed from any era or alternative sound-source. And the music written for a single player and instrument alone is itself so richly-extensive as to commandeer a lifetime’s attention and satisfaction.

Which leads me to pose the question – WHY is it that the piano recital itself has seemed of recent times to have lost some of its former frequency, or currency, or status, or allure, or more to the point, NECESSITY in the music programmes of various organisations?

Time was in Wellington, for example, when every international piano soloist (or guest instrumentalist or singer) who appeared with the NZSO gave a solo recital as well. Quite apart from the stellar line-up which I “missed out” on seeing over the years (including luminaries like Claudio Arrau, Annie Fisher, John Ogdon and Tamas Vasary), I WAS fortunate enough to hear in the 1970s and 80s artists such as Alfred Brendel (an all-Beethoven programme), Vladimir Ashkenazy (Mozart and Chopin), Alicia de Larrocha (an extraordinary all-Spanish recital), Peter Frankl (Chopin),  Jorge Bolet (Schumann, Grieg and Liszt) and Stephen Hough (Schubert), in recital in the Town Hall playing music that seemed their “meat-and-drink” when compared with the fast-food popularity of the “standard” piano concerto repertoire they also performed with the orchestra.

Now I love piano concertos – don’t get me wrong, here! – who wouldn’t want to hear those works by Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Saint-Saens, and Ravel, played by a world-class pianist? – It’s just that piano concertos represent a one-sided aspect of pianism when set against the solo repertoire that’s just as much their and our heritage. And it’s a heritage we concertgoers in t  his part of the world are being deprived of.

Such a loss was underlined in spectacular fashion last weekend at a Wellington Chamber Music Concert which featured a magnificently-played solo recital by Auckland-born pianist Henry Wong Doe, who’s back home in New Zealand to visit family and take some time out from his current duties as Professor of Piano at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I had not long ago reviewed Wong Doe’s most recent recording for Rattle Records of one of today’s recital’s “jewels”,  Musorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” –  https://middle-c.org/2018/02/two-resounding-recordings-from-rattle-classics-and-a-feisty-newcomer/ – so I was interested to have the chance to compare my impressions of the two readings.

While the CD enterprisingly linked the Musorgsky with another work inspired by pieces of art, New Zealand composer Eve de Castro Robinson’s, fantastically-wrought “A zigzagged gaze”, Wong Doe included at today’s St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace recital, a work by Aucklander Leonie Holmes, Time Rustling, for piano and fixed media electronics. This had been one of six works commissioned by the pianist from different Kiwi composers living both in New Zealand and in places around the world in 2022, Wong Doe inviting them to write pieces illustrating their experiences and perspectives during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Otherwise the programme was a kind of compendium of the recitalist’s art, with works from the classical, romantic and twentieth-century eras, one which could be simplistically described as a “something for everybody” presentation, but whose essence expressed much more than any such glib kind of prospectus – each piece had its own “attitude” and special character in its own right.

Take the Haydn E Minor Sonata Hob.XVI:34 which opened the recital, for instance – the first movement so intriguingly equivocal at the beginning, the pianist’s upward arpeggios quizzical and questioning, and with “full stops” at the ends of some of the sequences – what might Haydn have been thinking? – Wong Doe generates moments of volatility to the discourse, contrasting dynamic levels and places where the horse seems to be momentarily given its head before being reined in,  sounding in places not unlike a young Beethoven, but ultimately with more circumspection than certainty, especially at the movement’s end.

The slow movement sounded vocal-like from the outset, the line florid and decorative. The middle section explored both minor and major key changes before returning to the opening, Wong Doe’s agile fingers making the lines seem like embellishments of themselves, steering the music towards the final movement’s darker territories without a break. He then spurted into the finale’s Vivace molto with a will, presenting incredibly quicksilvery fingerwork, relying on velocity and brilliance for effect and playing down the opportunities for variety of touch and droll humour that a slightly more varied  tempo would have given – still, the effect was undeniably exhilarating!

After this came the Leonie Holmes work, part of the pianist’s “Perspectives 2022” project referred to above, and which Wong Doe recorded for Rattle Records on RAT D147 2023  (see this review’s heading). This was one of two pieces from the set whose composers used electronic sounds in their work (Leila Adu-Gilmore’s work “Home” was the other), the remainder being entirely for acoustic solo piano and player.

I’ve always liked the unvarnished honesty of Leonie Holmes’s work, the most recent one I’ve heard being an orchestral piece “I watched a shadow” premiered by the NZSO on consecutive nights (May 17/18th) in Auckland and Wellington. I thought Holmes’s work on that occasion easily out-grew its inspiration, a friend’s somewhat homespun poem, the resulting orchestral rhapsody convincingly conveying an austere soundscape undergoing what seemed as much oceanic as tectonic forces at work, enlivened by ebb-and-flow wind-and-brass irruptions.

Here, by comparison, the stimulus originated more from within, a meditation upon time characterised strongly by the isolation of the Covid-19 era. Holmes wanted to “grow the piece” via the “strange ways” of time by refracting her initial sketches of memories of the sounds of wind rustling through the branches of trees through an electronic media, then mixing the later piano timbres with these earlier memories.

Beginning with electronics whose sounds resembled a chord which burgeoned and refracted, the piano responded with gently-voiced melancholic tones., the combination sometimes augmenting or taking turns with one another – a tolling-bell sequence mirrored, then drifted apart, while the tape’s rumbling, sighing ambiences prompted low, murmuring chordal utterances from the piano, Bartokian chords growing into scherzando-like animations. As the intensities faded, gentler Debussian piano sounds took over– gentle pin-pricks of sound-light gradually bade those beautifully ambient chords a farewell.

Next we heard a starkly contrasting piece, Alberto Ginastera’s First Piano Sonata, a tribute by the composer to the folk rhythms of his native country, Argentina, and producing a coruscating display of keyboard physicality from the pianist. As well as their South American flavour, the themes had a Prokofiev-like energy and piquancy with the music’s more lyrical moments of the music framed in toccata-like trajectories which kept the listener’s blood pulsating right up to the coruscating repeated-note onslaughts of the movement’s final flourishes.

This was followed by a presto misterioso second movement, setting sinister “whirling dervish” textures against breathlessly-repeated toccata-like sequences. Wong Doe’s feathery brilliance conjured up something of a nightmarish soundscape traversal which disappeared at the end as eerily and wraith-like as it had begun. What a contrast with the slow movement’s building from the silences a series of quietly expressive “figures” their immobility imbued with portentous mute intention, before opening up and giving tongue in agitated tones. After a climax the sounds seemed to withdraw into themselves once again as mysteriously as before.

Suddenly the finale’s “ruvido ed ostinato” erupted, joyously and frenetically under Wong Doe’s fingers, the dance-like rhythms whirling all of us along on a growing tide of energy and exuberance,  animating those infectious-sounding folk-melodies beloved of the composer  – the whole movement represented an irresistible bubbling-up of exhilaration towards a final, volcanic surge of energy from the pianist up and down the keyboard. It was Incredible stuff, bringing some people to their feet, and leaving others like myself too gobsmacked to do little more that applaud as if in a daze!

After some of us had “talked among ourselves” over the interval and calmed down, we were ready for the second half, beginning with a Chopin Nocturne, and concluding with Musorgsky’s famous “Pictures”. The Chopin work, in D-flat major Op.27 No. 2, was one of a “pair”, which the composer was fond of crafting with these works. This one, in contrast with the more turbulent No. 1, was more consistently song-like throughout, a mini-crescendo of excitement apart in the middle section of the work (very operatic-like, and betraying the composer’s fondness for the voice.)

Wong Doe charmed us with this, beautifully demonstrating to us the well-known description of  “Chopin rubato” – the leaves of the tree are being blown every which way by the wind, but the trunks remain solid and keep strictly in time.

I hadn’t heard Wong Doe’s recording of the Musorgsky for a while, and thought I’d prefer to encounter it afresh, in any case – at the start I thought the gestures suitably invigorating and virile, presenting a composer who, rather than bowed by grief at the loss of his artist friend, Victor Hartmann, seemed determined to do his memory justice via the inspiration given to him by the artist’s pictures.

While making the most of the contrast the cycle afforded, Wong Doe didn’t go into “Horowitz territory” in terms of over-orchestrating the different subjects – The Gnome, for instance he played hard-and-fast, carrying over some of the opening promenade energies without a pause or break,  and emphasising the creature’s malevolence. The Old Castle evoked the Troubadour, but not so much his song as his playing, as also with the caprice and playfulness of the children in Tuileries. But Bydlo (The Ox Cart) was here superb, massive and relentless at the climax, and with its decrescendo given all kinds of variants of tone and colour. The Ballet Of Unhatched Chicks then properly enchanted, while the two Jews, Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle were brilliantly operatic in their interactions.

I enjoyed the delightful garrulity of the Marketplace at Limoges, here contrasted stunningly with the eerie Catacombs – suddenly we could scarcely dare to breathe in between those massive chords and their silences! I also remember the almost Lisztian transcendence of the Cum Linguis in Lingua Mortua (Musorgsky’s own schoolboy Latin!) and the lump-in-throat effect Wong Doe’s playing had, both here and in his recording.

Baba Yaga was simply breathtakingly done with almost blindingly brilliant finger-work, with the central part’s eeriness and menace strongly drawn! Some pianists hold back with the introduction of the Great Gate of Kiev theme, as if hearing it from a distance the first time (which I quite like), but Wong Doe gave it his all straight away! Both the succeeding priest’s hymn and the massive bell strokes were begun softly, but the re-entry of the Promenade theme caught us up in its growing excitement until it all seemed nothing but great festive bell sounds, a ceremony as all-embracingly spacious and reverberant as one could want at the end.

I wish I’d taken more notice of the Gareth Farr encore, whose name I don’t even remember, such were the resonances still playing in my head from the Musorgsky! I remember soft, tolling bell sounds, with rhythms beginning to bubble and shimmer, while underpinned by deeper, richer sounds, until the shimmering textures reached a bubbling-over point, after which everything gradually receded, and calm was restored again. Someone who had kept his or her head better at this point might well be able to add to this somewhat distracted account of mine with more information – I was still wandering in my head, lost somewhere in Kiev, in thrall to those sounds that had made the afternoon’s piano recital such an enthralling experience……

“Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet” -Pepe Becker (voice) and Dan Poynton (piano)

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Lieder from Schumann and Brahms – Pepe Becker (soprano) and Dan Poynton (piano)

Two performances: Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul, Molesworth St.
Friday, 5th April 2024
Goethe Institute, Cuba St., Te Aro
Friday, 19th July 2024

ROBERT SCHUMANN
LIederkreis Op. 39 –  Mondnacht No.5, Auf eines Burg No.7, Zwielicht No.10
Op.40 No.2 – Muttertraum
Dichterliebe Op. 48 – In wunderschönen Monat Mai No. 1, Ich will meine Seele tauchen No. 5,
Hör ich das Liedchen No.10, Am leuchtenden Sommenmorgen No.12,
Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet No.13
Piano Solo – Gesange der Fruhe Op.133 No.1

JOHANNES BRAHMS
Die Mainacht Op.43 No.2
O wüsst ich doch den Weg zurück Op.63 No.8
Sommerabend Op.85 No.1
Mondenschein Op 85 No.2
O Tod, wie bitter bist du Op.121 No.3

Encore: SCHUBERT – Winterreise D.911 No.24  Der Leiermann

Soprano Pepe Becker and pianist Dan Poynton gave lovers of German art-song in Wellington a a rare treat recently, by performing two identical recitals of Lieder by Schumann and Brahms, but at different venues in the city.  Each of the venues provided such sharply contrasting sound-worlds as to make the concerts two markedly different listening experiences.

The earlier occasion, in April, took place in the voluminous precincts of Wellington’s Cathedral of St. Paul in Molesworth St, a venue noted for its sound’s warmth, luminosity and long-lasting reverberation. Afterwards I learned that Pepe Becker and Dan Poynton had decided they would repeat the same programme at a different venue, one whose smaller, more intimate proportions would allow much greater clarity and presence, and listeners given a “truer” idea of what singer and pianist were themselves “doing” with these songs.

So, in July, more than three months after the initial concert some of us made the pilgrimage to the Wellington Goethe Institute’s modestly-sized performance rooms situated on the sixth floor of a Cuba St. building in Te Aro (prudently made agreeably accessible via an elevator!). Recognisable though artists and songs undoubtedly were from the duo’s last presentation, their s0und had undergone several changes, chiefly to do with the acoustic  colouration of voice and piano sound – the singer’s tones had seemed at the Cathedral wreathed with a markedly present reverberant beauty as song followed song, a kind of heavenly procession of celestial sounds which mingled with the dulcet piano figurations and gave the recital a kind of overall ritualistic loveliness.

Here at the smaller venue was straightaway a more “unvarnished” quality to the sound, one which focused on the musicians for the infinitely greater variety of dynamics, colour, and shadings to the musical lines. Had singer and pianist been content with their first recital and left it at that, we would still have regarded the experience as a uniquely beautiful projection of art-song in a grandly transformative sound-environment. How wonderful, then, to be able to “revisit” these very same works and with the same artists in a different world of sound!

No better introduction to the concert could have been devised than Schumann’s setting of a somewhat macabre Hans Christian Andersen poem “Muttertraum” with a macabre twist at the end, the piano lines floated through the spaces as the singer tells of a mother watching over her infant child in a kind of reverie, while outside the window the ravens plot to seize the child for their supper. The next song, Brahms’s “O wüsst ich doch den Weg zurück” also suited Pepe’s childlike tones in this lament for a lost youth, particularly poignant at “Und nichts zu forschen, nichts zu spähn” (To quest for nothing, to hunt for nothing).

I liked the “old-worldliness” of Schumann’s “Auf Eine Burg” , Pepe’s voice expressing the solitariness of the knight in his “silent den” – the words suggest a once-real person become as lifeless as stone while undertaking his centuries-old vigil on the watch. Singer and pianist negotiate the silences, the third verse “Draussen ist es still und friedlich’ bringing forth a stillness of the ages, which even the fourth verse’s wedding party cannot relieve – “Und die schöne Braut, die weinet” (And the beautiful bride, she weeps). The following Brahms song “Die Mainacht” (May Night) brought similar colourful treatment via a passionately-delivered second verse befitting the “darker shadows”, Pepe stemming the flow of fraught emotion in the face of the night’s enchantment. until the last line’s touch of despair was encompassed in a single tear – “bebt mir heisser die Wang’ herab” (trembling hotter on my cheek…)

A beautiful bracket of songs from Schumann’s “Dichterliebe” brought us face-to-face with what Dan Poynton described to us as a “year of song” for the composer, a “Liederjahr”, here augmented with one of the composer’s Op.133 Gesänge der Fruhe (Songs of the Dawn) with hymn-like chordal sequences whose melodies and atmospheres brought to my mind the deep contemplations of  earlier works like Kreisleriana, complete with a brief vehement middle section characteristic of the volatilities found in those pieces. We also heard from Dan regarding the composer’s generosity of spirit contrasting in places with Brahm’s habitual (and much-documented!) gruffness of manner.

The ”Dichterliebe” songs were balm for the spirit – the yearning opening (like the petals of a flower) of “In wunderschönen Monat Mai”  (Pepe nicely “softening” the repeated rise of the melodic line) was followed by the similarly ardent and more urgent “Ich will meine Seele tauchen”, as befitted the words “Das Lied soll schauern und beben” (The song should shudder and tremble”), while the “little” song “Hor’ ich das Liedchen klingen” was here given plenty of varying impulses in its colourings and impulses, from “wildem Schmerzendrang” (Savage surge of pain) to “Ubergrosses Weh!” (Overwhelming grief!). The concluding “Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet” (which had given its name to the whole presentation) had all the ghostly unease of a nightmare scenario, with Pepe turning her back to us for the spectral delivery of the piteous vocal line sardonically echoed by Dan’s brusquely-muttered piano chords, voice and piano uniting briefly in anguish amid the dream’s nightmarish conclusion to the scenario – all theatrically and superbly brought off!

Three of the remaining songs featured moonlight, all in different ways – the first, by Brahms, with words by Heinrich Heine, “Sommerabend”, linked the magic stillness of moonlight to the unexpected irruptions of the alluring charms of a water-nymph, singer and pianist relishing the contrasts between the song’s tranquil opening and the playful splashing of the nymph’s arms in the water. Brahms and Heine again gave us another “Mondenschein” song, with Pepe and Dan fraught and anxious-sounding at the start as the traveller considers the unfamiliar way and the loneliness and weariness of the journey, but then finding solace in the  “silent blessing” of the moonbeams, the song’s final two lines given a pure, radiant line by the singer – “My torments melt away / And my eyes brim over” – so very touching…..

The final “Moonlight” song was Schumann’s, pure bliss in essence, right from Dan Poynton’s poetic “heaven-and-earth” marriage of sounds with Pepe Becker’s pure child-like utterances of radiance and wonderment, Joseph von Eichendorff’s words returning my own sensibilities to memories of that same moonlit magic I felt when a child, allowing earthly escape for what seemed like moments in that huge darkness akin to eternity…..even so, Death then trumped lunar effulgence on this occasion, with Brahms’s song “O Tod, wie bitter bist du” given the programme’s last “official” utterance, a Janus-faced presentation, with an agitated and declamatory opening verse regarding Death as one who threatens happiness and contentment, followed by a contrary view which regards Death as a release from suffering – all most satisfyingly expressed by the musicians, to our pleasure!

As with the earlier presentation, Pepe and Dan offered an “optional” encore, whose performance the last time round caused a good deal of surprise and delight, regardless of the work’s subject-matter – this was the final song Der Leiermann (No.24”) of Schubert’s “Winterreise”.The ambient resonance I previously recalled was here exchanged for a more appropriate tonal bleakness and bitter resignation in the words’ acceptance of a forsaken lover’s desolate withdrawal from the world. If Pepe and Dan do decide to perform Schuber’s entire “Winterreise”, it would be a journey I wouldn’t hesitate to want to make with them…..

Aroha Quartet goes even one better with Oleksandr Gunchenko’s double-bass

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Aroha Quartet, with Oleksandr Gunchenko


GEORGE ONSLOW – String Quintet No.15 in C Minor Op.38 “The Bullet”
LOUISE WEBSTER – Swim the Sliding Continents (2012)
ANTONIN DVOŘÁK – String Quintet No. 2 in G Op.77

Aroha Quartet –  Haihong Liu (leader), Konstanze Artmann (violin), Zhongxian Jin (viola)
Robert Ibell (‘cello)
– with Oleksandr Gunchenko (double-bass)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Friday, 12th July, 2024

I had heard the name George Onslow mentioned in various reviews of recordings over the years, but had never “taken the plunge”, being culpably averse to taking up the music of any “new” composer unseen or unheard – I must admit to a sneaking propensity for the “bowled over by something new” experience  in such matters, which is exactly what happened on Friday evening at St.Andrew’s in Wellington, with a first hearing of one of Onslow’s String Quintets, sensationally presented by the Aroha String Quartet with double-bassist Olelsandr Gunchenko.

This was the composer’s Fifteenth String Quintet, and one bearing the title “De la balle” (The Bullet), whose inspiration was drawn from Onslow’s experience of being accidentally shot in the face while watching a hunt in a forest. While not exactly programmatic as to the actual event, the different movements delineated an almost Berlioz-like reimagining of what was obviously a life-threatening personal experience, the second movement (Minuetto: dolore – suffering) and a Trio (febbre e deliro  – fever and delirium), the third Andante sostenuto – convalescenza), and the triumphal finale (Allegro – guarigione) healing. I was left stunned by the impact of it all, and, not unexpectedly, resolved to explore some more of this fascinating figure’s output to make up for what I might well have been missing for all these years!

It was actually a guilty pleasure (not always the case!) to re-read my notes afterwards, written at the same white heat as the performers were generating, simply by way of trying to “keep up” with what was happening! – I enjoyed the C-minor opening of the work’s suitably dark, cavernous sound, with the voice of the double bass adding to the textures, and contrasting markedly with both the brilliant violin figurations, and the beautiful second subject solo from the ‘cello. The music made much of these contrasts throughout, with upper strings suggestively elfin disturbances, and the lower strings bringing darker intensities to the argument. Then came that astonishing Menuetto with its opening whirlwind figurations and spectral tones, creating a almost Gothic mini-scenario with eerie chromatic resonances and sudden outbursts, and the Trio’s “Febbre e delirio” deliciously feverish in effect!

The Andante sostenuto brought some relief (the programme note termed it “hymn-like”) suggesting a release from “the nightmare”, which the work’s final movement confirmed in no uncertain terms with its vibrant, over-the-top “Convalescenza” (a lovely word!), evoking a polar-opposite exuberance to the travails of what had gone before, and to which I couldn’t help at one point but laugh out loud, to the surprise of my neighbours! Afterwards I had to apologise to at least one of them, my excuse being that I thought the music sounded as if it had been composed on “speed” or something similar!

Not for the first time this year have I found myself jumping on the internet at home after a concert, and (in this case) almost as feverishly looking for a recording of the Quintet, at which point I was surprised again by how many recordings WERE actually available of George Onslow’s music, and not merely his Quintets.  As I sent off my order to make good my discovery, I felt something along the lines of what Allen Curnow once wrote in a different context– “Simply by sailing in a new direction you could enlarge the world…..”

Ahem! – were there other works played at this concert? – oh, yes! – my apologies! Different worlds again, to be sure, and as an assemblage rich and strange, though of course united in instrumentation.
An interval after the Onslow did allow the more fanciful souls present (such as myself) to regain their composure before the second half brought us a work by New Zealand composer Louise Webster, one written originally for a school chamber orchestra from Auckland’s Westlake District Schools, “Swim the sliding continents’.

The work’s title was suggested by some lines from a poem by Australian Judith Wright, words which expressed movement through both air and water, “swimming , floating and drifting above lands/ gulfs/chasms…..” as the programme notes put it. At once sparely and concentratedly written, the work began with the direction “drifting” for a violin solo and double bass and cello pizzicato, the violin accelerating, impassioned, and joined by an ostinato from the second violin, to various responses from the others rising from the depths. When movement was stilled, there were haunting passages of different voices, the first violin rarefied, the second repetitive and mesmeric, the viola and cello echoing certain phrases and the double bass a deep-voiced bedrock foundation – a brief two-violin-voiced coda, and the piece ended, suggesting for me rather more than it actually spoke.

Having explored what could be considered two diametrically opposed ends of the emotional spectrum in music, George Onslow’s almost Gothic horror-adventure complete with its Disney-on-steroids ending and Louise Webster’s cool abstractions of tectonic relocation, the Aroha Quartet with its distinguished guest Oleksandr Gunchenko opted for some middle ground with the concert’s final item, Antonin Dvorak’s single String Quintet that uses a double-bass, his Op.77 in G. This work, originally composed in 1875 with five movements, was published as Op. 18, but then revised by the composer with an “intermezzo” movement removed (and later republished).  Dvorak’s publisher then gave the Quintet the later Opus No. of 77, a ploy Simrock was fond of using to persuade people that certain works of the composer’s were more “mature” than was the case.

While this work has never been one of my favourites of the composer’s (for me the second and fourth movements lack the melodic and rhythmic attractiveness of the rest) the quintet of players here obviously felt no such impediments as they by turns attacked, caressed, sang and danced to the music with a will. The first movement in particular leapt gleefully off the pages to our ears, the players’ strong and flexible pulses bringing out both the music’s  leaping, thrusting character, and the rustic charm of the more lyrical passages – particularly wonderful was the final reprise of the principal theme and its acceleration into the excitement of the coda!

The players did their best with the somewhat repetitive scherzo, the best part of which was the winsome Trio sections whose swaying motions charmed the ear more than usually – but the performance really “glowed” with the slow movement’s gorgeous singing cello melody, and rapturous first violin responses which reprised beautifully with triplet decorations later in the movement – for me the performance’s highlight! But however much energy the players put into the rhythms of  the finale, I remained puzzled by the composer’s reluctance to turn to anything more than variations of downward scales for lyrical effect to go with the generated excitement of the movement’s trajectories.

I’m reminded of a story I once read about Handel who reputedly once looked at a manuscript by a contemporary of his, one Maurice Greene, before opening the window and dropping it outside with the remark that “it needs air!” – by which, of course, he meant melody. Dvorak’s music normally doesn’t “need air” of any kind, in my usual experience, hence my relative disappointment here, and especially in tandem with all that rhythmic energy. Of course one doesn’t have to like EVERYTHING any composer does, and judgements of this kind can be subjective and ornery, and there was, as I’ve said, absolutely nothing lukewarm about the players’ response throughout. The rest of the evening’s music produced untrammelled delight– and in the case of Onslow’s music it was the sort of musical discovery one would, as a friend of mine was fond of saying, die for! So, my thanks are due to the Aroha Quartet and Oleksandr Gunchenko for their wondrously committed efforts, and especially in bringing to life music whose sounds I felt “enlarged my world” that evening.

 

 

 

A Cornucopia of musical delights and pianistic thrills from Duo Enharmonics

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music  – Sunday Afternoon Concert Series 2024 Duo Enharmonics – Beth Chen and Nicole Chao (piano duo)

J S BACH – “Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit” (from Cantata BWV 106 – arr. György Kurtág)
FRANZ SCHUBERT – Fantasy in F Minor D.940
MAURICE RAVEL – La Valse (arr. Lucien Garban)
JOHN PSATHAS – Fragment (2001)
SERGEI RACHMANINOV – Six Morceaux Op.11
J.STRAUSS Jnr. – Blue Danube Fantasy (arr. Greg Anderson)

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

Sunday, 7th July, 2024

This concert was a further instalment in the wondrous evolution of my exposure to the astonishing talents of Duo Enharmonics, the piano duo team of Nicole Chao and Beth Chen, the most recent of Wellington Chamber Music’s Sunday Concert Series. Until that sensational presentation I attended almost two years ago, featuring the duo’s performance of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring”, I’d been something of a voyeur regarding the talents of these musicians, relying upon enthusiastic reports from other reviewers of things such as the “energy and force” of their “outstanding teamwork” (Steven Sedley, Middle C, September 2020), and especially in regard to music I myself dearly loved, such as Mozart’s KV 381 Duo Sonata, or Ravel’s “La Valse” in a four-hands transcription. Here, now, was a second chance for the word to become flesh for me in musical terms, and especially with the delectable Ravel work on today’s programme!

What struck me with increasing force and intensity as today’s programme unfolded was the sheer depth of musicality of what we heard in both compositional content and its presentation. Any sense  of the four-handed piano repertoire being a “lesser” or even somewhat “contrived” art-form was properly negated by the purity of focus and the surety of vision displayed by the performers in each of the pieces presented. Even in instances such as the transcription of “La Valse”, which one might regard as a lesser entity compared with the orchestral version, I felt the spirit of the latter evoked as surely as if I had been listening to Ravel’s original sound-world.

With the exception of the last piece on the programme, a fantastical four-handed arrangement of Johann Strauss Jnr’s famous “Blue Danube” Waltz by Greg Anderson (of its kind, a stunningly colourful demonstration of the range of sonorities possible on a keyboard played by four hands), the pieces presented today by Nicole Chao and Beth Chen needed no further augmentation as sound for their essential messages to reach out to and enfold our sensibilities – in other words, I found it hard to imagine any of the performances today done better, revelling as I did in the enchantment of each and every recreated moment throughout.

The concert was a model of its kind in terms of the range and scope of the pieces – and it couldn’t have begun more enticingly than with György Kurtág’s arrangement of the beautiful introductory music to JS Bach’s funeral cantata “Gottes Zeit is die allerbeste Zeit” (God’s time is the very best time). Begun by the secondo player, Beth Chen, the opening textures were augmented by an intertwined combination of secondo and primo hands, the end result interesting to watch, but absolutely enchanting to listen to – a brief but ravishing introduction to the afternoon’s music-making.

Has anybody composed a more poignant amalgam of conflicting emotions than in the Fantasy in F Minor of Franz Schubert’s? The work’s rolling, undulating Allegro molto moderato opening suggested a vast interior landscape of quiet despair, Nicole Chao and Beth Chen finding a proper “Schubertian pulse” in the music – a brief major-key flirtation prompted more agitated sequences, before the opening returned. The players threw down the gauntlet for the dramatic, almost operatic Largo with its declamatory utterances, double-dotted phrasings and long trills – there was but momentary relief from a more conciliatory episode before the music lurched into an allegro vivace Scherzo, the players performing miracles of varied touch and phrasing by way of conveying the music’s multifaceted mood, bringing out the piquancy of the Trio’s music as a contrast to the almost grim determination of the Allegro vivace. And the dramatic return of the work’s opening music here generated feelings both of reprieve and inexorable futility, the players generating a torment of fugal-like conflict and variance, but all to no avail in the face of the theme’s grim final triumph.

After this, Ravel’s “La Valse” was almost a relief at first for the individual spirit, suggesting, as it did a different, more societal kind of fatalism and dissolution – interesting, though, that, despite the plethora of commentary in the interim suggesting the music as representing the decline of the “old” pre-First World War era of European civilisation, Ravel himself categorically denied any such scheme in his music, stating that the work expresses nothing more than his “intense attraction to these wonderful (waltz) rhythms”….still, this having been said the composer was seriously affected by the horrors of warfare, gleaned from his own personal experiences as a soldier (he was a truck driver and often near the front) as well as the deaths of numerous friends in combat, though stoically managing his grief and despair in works like “Le Tombeau de Couperin” and “La Valse”.

I’d gotten to know this music well in its orchestral guise, ever since hearing the piece at the very first orchestral concert I attended, back in the 1960s! – what a thrill that memory still evokes!  Though unfamiliar with the piano duo version, I felt Nicole Chao’s and Beth Chen’s all-embracing touch uncannily breathed life into those ghostly, inchoate scenarios at the work’s beginning, gradually liberating both form and movement from the “whirling clouds” of the composer’s own description, and bringing various dancing couples into view – and what dancers gradually emerged! – all of them seemingly refracting themselves into “an immense hall, peopled with a whirling crowd”, with every detail of the composer’s recaptured by Lucien Garben’s faithful transcription.

As well as Ravel’s score glitter and glamour we heard its darker, more sinister and grotesque aspects, evident in a couple of the dance’s more disruptive sequences, and calling for some spectacularly-essayed keyboard figurations from both ends of the sound-spectrum before order was restored and the music continued. From beneath the seemingly tireless and supercharged fingers of the duo the waltz displayed all of its glamour, allure, charm and coquettishness, recovering anew from whatever irruption bubbled up from beneath the music’s surfaces – but suddenly  reaching the point at which it realised its moments of glory were numbered and the game was up! The music gathered itself from within and transformed its hitherto lilting rhythms into thrusting, flailing gestures signifying death-and-glory oblivion. Our pianists seemed transfigured at this point, imbued with this same all-or-nothing spirit and with flailing arms and fingers pushing and thrusting themselves, the music and us into a vortex of chaos and confused silence, hammered home by those apocalyptic final chords! Sensational stuff!

Judicious programming gave us the interval to recover from the onslaught; and the two pianists themselves re-emerged differently garbed and with their primo and secondo roles reversed,  Nicole Chao as secondo beginning a piece by New Zealand-Greek composer John Psathas, called Fragment, originally written for two marimbas – beautifully-modulated repeated chords made a hypnotic effect, which the entry of the primo player, Beth Chen attenuated with birdsong-like notes, together creating a kind of “moment in time” stillness, a kind of aural metaphor of solitariness, but with awareness of a surrounding environment rather than mere emptiness – by the piece’s end the different elements seemed to have merged, with either the solitary individual subsumed by the surroundings or the ambience enhancing or elongating,  or even being redefined by the presence of the “new” element, perhaps a redefinition of sorts reading  “To be solitary is to………”.

Sergei Rachmaninov’s Six Morceaux Op.11 was new to me, but had especially excited my interest with its relatively early composition date, 1893 – two years before the completion of the composer’ First Symphony, which had its disastrous premiere in 1897. I’ve long believed that the failure of the first Symphony had an adverse long-term effect on the composer’s compositional abilities, and have accordingly been interested in hearing anything he wrote before the symphony’s first performance. For me, this work bore out that view, in that the pieces exuded the kind of confidence and originality of a young composer who hadn’t yet been told that his work was a failure (as Rachmaninov was to experience to a devastating degree in 1897 after the symphony’s first unfortunate performance).

In six movements, the Op.11 set began with a Barcarolle in G Minor, built simply from a rocking rhythm at the outset, with a melodic line that patiently builds an elongated and fruitful utterance whose central section spontaneously breaks into amazing filigree figurations which briefly return as a potent echo at the piece’s ending. The second piece, Scherzo, has a mischievous, almost devil-may-care insouciance, requiring incredible virtuosity as well as a quixotic, tongue-in-cheek sense of  fun – a great piece! The Theme Russe was simpler, more soulful and melancholic, its theme given various accompaniments, incorporating thunderous octave-scales, whirling figurations and grand and celebratory, imperial-like chordal passages. Next came a Valse, more salon-like than Chopin’s, with some cheeky descant counterpoints and some gorgeous AWOL harmonies, including a “wrong modulation” ending to boot!  A darkly passionate, somewhat obsessive Romance revealed a young composer unafraid to express his feelings – and the last of the pieces was Slava, which rather wonderfully used the well-known Russian “choral theme” from Musorgsky’s “Boris Godunov”, Rachmaninov indulging in his obvious love for church bells of all different kinds. These near-thunderous sonorities came to dominate the latter stages of the piece, the playing making the precincts of St. Andrews ring with more-than-usually-Slavic intensities!

Fittingly, the concert’s final item was the duo’s act of homage to the astounding Piano Duo team of Elizabeth Joy Roe and Greg Anderson which had toured New Zealand in 2018, and whose Wellington concert I had the good fortune to attend as well. Certainly, the choice by Nicola Chao and Beth Chen of one of the American duo’s “calling card” items as today’s concert finale indicated that the Duo Enharmonics pair had little to fear from any comparison, and the latter’s performance here in my mind put the seal on that viewpoint. The astonishing “Blue Danube Fantasy” obviously represented the ”display” aspect of a two-piano combination, of which Chao and Chen proved entertainingly more than capable; but the rest of the programme brought to the fore the pair’s musicianship of a deeper, and more satisfying kind, making their activities on our behalf something of an ongoing treasure to be cherished and deeply valued.

 

Orchestra Wellington and Marc Taddei – legacy of The Classical Style

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington Music Director, Marc Taddei – photo credit: Latitude Creative

SERGE PROKOFIEV – Symphony No. 1 “Classical”  Op.25
GERMAINE TAILLEFERRE – Piano Concerto (1924)
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Symphony No. 9 in D Minor “Choral” Op. 125

Somi Kim (piano)
Emma Pearson (soprano), Margaret Medlyn (mezzo-soprano),
Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono (tenor), Robert Tucker (baritone)
Orpheus Choir of Wellington
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Saturday, 6th June 2024

Orchestra Wellington’s visionary and compelling 2024 survey of concert music and some of its significant milestones certainly lived up to expectations with “The Classical Style”, a most attractive and “something for everybody” selection highlighting pieces whose composers took their inspiration from classical forms through which they were able to refract their own individuality and distinctive voices.

The highlight of the evening for me was undoubtedly the Piano Concerto by the French composer Germaine Tailleferre, a beautifully luminous and engaging piece whose relative neglect until recent times I find difficult to fathom on the strength of pianist Somi Kim’s sonorous, attractive playing and Orchestra Wellington’s gorgeously sinuous accompaniments. Also, framing this work were two far better-known but still ineffably fascinating pieces by Prokofiev and Beethoven whose “add water” appeal would have nicely eased audiences into Tailleferre’s relatively unchartered territories.

Before the concert began, maestro extraordinaire Marc Taddei took the liberty of using the occasion to promote an important new recording project involving the orchestra and himself, one paying tribute to the music of a composer whose work Taddei and the Orchestra have valiantly supported over the years, New-Zealand-Greek composer John Psathas, (born in Wellington, in 1966, to Greek parents). This is a recently-recorded two-disc (both vinyl and CD) set on the Atoll label titled “Leviathan” containing four concerti, three for percussion and one for tenor sax. (“Leviathan” is, of course the title of one of the percussion concertos). With the help of concertmaster Amalia Hall, Taddei displayed the LP set with its stunningly-contrasted coloured vinyl (one disc white and the other blue), all with the kind of “fatal attraction” allure that a vinyl-collector like myself would find impossible to resist – as with the orchestra’s previous unmissable recording project involving two Beethoven symphonies to which, of course , I readily succumbed! If this paragraph sounds like an advertisement, it’s because I simply can’t help myself at this point! – so, back to the concert! (see the conclusion of this review for details regarding the recording’s availability)….

Where was I? – Oh, yes! – one finds it difficult to think of a better choice to begin such an evening as we had scheduled than with Prokofiev’s self-proclaiming “Classical” Symphony, and in a performance which, for three of the four movements seemed to me to attain an “ideal” regarding the ever-tantalising balance in performance between surface execution and feeling.  The opening movement properly launched itself upwards with great gusto, but with enough ‘wriggle-room” for the momentums to generate the piece’s infectious eagerness while allowing a flexibility of movement between the different themes.

The adorable slow movement was by turns tender, limpid, forthright and glowing – I particularly enjoyed the enticing “lift” to the triplet rhythms that accompanying a later reprise of the principal theme, and the quiet dignity with which it all ended. The Minuet I also found utterly charming, Marc Taddei allowing his players enough “expression” in their exchanges to reinforce the idea that these were real dancers, rather than simply marionettes going through the motions. After these delights I thought the finale a tad too hasty, to my mind exchanging some of the music’s deliciousness for the sake of sheer brilliance (though the orchestra certainly rose to the occasion, the wind players in particular performing miracles of fingering and tongueing in keeping up the tempo!).

French composer Germaine Tailleferre has until relatively recently been known by the musical world at large merely for her membership of the French group of composers named “Les Six”, and for little else, a similar fate to two other group members, Louis Durey and Georges Auric. Tailleferre, who had distinguished herself as a pupil at the Paris Conservatoire, and who received further encouragement from both Erik Satie and Maurice Ravel, became a member of “Les Six” in 1920. She composed a great deal during the 1920s and 30s, much of which was lost during World War Two after she had fled France for the United States – her creative output continued after her return to France up until her death in 1983, by which time she had produced almost two hundred finished works. Her 1924 Piano Concerto survived the war, becoming one of several concertante works she completed, including a Second Piano Concerto, a Violin Concerto, a Double Piano Concerto and a Double Guitar Concerto!

Somi Kim, piano, plays Germaine Tailleferre’s 1924  Piano Concerto with Orchestra Wellington – photo credit: Latitude Creative

Though not a long work the Piano Concerto features the piano playing practically without a break, a task which the soloist Somi Kim undertook sporting a sparklingly eye-catching dress which seemed to visually echo the music’s constantly effervescing glitter throughout the three movements, and especially in the outer ones, with coruscations continually flying off in all directions!

The first movement, in lively, quick-march tempo, straightaway engendered a sense of a festive occasion, with music that seemed to be purposefully “on the move” somewhere, the playing beautifully gradated by both pianist and orchestra to a similar objective, whatever the orchestrations and however discursive the key-changes. Throughout, I was put in mind of JS Bach’s First and Third Brandenburg Concerti with their constant sprinklings of instrumentation channelled towards both the act of interchange and the establishment of a kind of overall “understanding” between the participants as a desirable and complementary process, rather than any kind of duel or contest.

The slow movement seemed the emotional “heart” of the work, with Somi Kim’s piano solo seamlessly enhanced by the winds, and Marc Taddei enjoining the strings to make the most of an ongoing sinuousness melody. The ensuing tutti took it up, buttressed by rich chordings from the piano and further warmed by a sappy trumpet solo – so much achieved, I thought, with relatively simple means! A warm-hearted oboe solo then gave way to a “worrisome” flute, bringing a forlorn note to the proceedings before the movement’ concluding surprise – a remarkably haunting and certainly unexpected modulation to distant realms right at the end!

I enjoyed the ambivalence of the finale’s opening rhythm, my ear jumping to and from different numbers of beats to the bar as the music’s trajectories evolved, keeping me guessing in delicious-sounding ways. Again, It’s all more of a concertante work than a concerto, really, a true partnership in the baroque/classical manner, rather than any kind of contest between soloist and orchestra – Kim and Taddei dovetailed their piano and orchestral parts splendidly throughout, and the solo cadenza near the end gave the pianist the chance to “sound out” a couple of beautiful church-bell-like cascades before the solo trumpet invited the rest of the orchestra back into the discourse for the work’s coda, one not unlike a gentler, more urbane version of the final bars of Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto, with its prominent solo trumpet part! Certainly, I felt,  a work to get to know better.

Somi Kim responded to the warm audience applause at the end with a lithe, nimble-fingered encore rendition of the well-known Rondo a la Turca from Mozart’s Piano Sonata K.311. I would have enjoyed as much her playing something by Poulenc or Satie or even Ravel, if only to keep up Gallic appearances, but the audience obviously loved it – so c’est bon!

After the interval, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony might have seemed “le deluge”-like at such a concert – it was, after all, the nineteenth’s century’s most influential symphony with even its “number” becoming an insuperable burden for at least seven subsequent symphonists I know of who ventured into those same numerical realms and faltered – Schubert, Dvorak, Bruckner, Mahler, Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold and Roger Sessions. Marc Taddei further stressed the significance of Beethoven’s work by talking about the composer’s simultaneous adherence to tradition (four contrasting movements, including a sonata-form opening movement, a scherzo and a slow movement) AND to the work’s ground-breaking aspects (the work’s epic length, and with a symphonic finale like no other with vocal soloists and choir!) So the work epitomised a composer’s knowledge, experience, use and further develop of this creative ethos called “The Classical Style” like no other had done up to this time.

As I’d found with his conducting of the “classics” occasionally in the past I found Marc Taddei’s very direct and at times to my ears more-than-usually brusque approach to Beethoven’s opening movement of the Ninth Symphony hard to get in accord with at first – I’d always thought of Beethoven’s opening movement as having a rugged epic grandeur which explodes in places with excitement – but Taddei’s “never-let-up” tempo made the whole movement seethe with barely-contained energy, exciting in its way, but hardly with a “epic” quality.  I thought the famously seismic “middle section” of the movement, for instance, didn’t have the sheer impact I was accustomed to feeling because much of the rest of the movement had already been given so agitated a character. It certainly made me rethink what Beethoven himself might have been after – something less monumental and more kinetic and volatile, which Taddei and his players certainly put across with few holds barred and with such elan and brilliance! I did come to the end of the movement thinking “Golly! It’s over, already!” having lived for so long with more colossal-sounding traversals. This one was, for me, quite a wake-up call, and certainly an ear-opening experience!

I could far more readily equate with Taddei’s treatment of the Scherzo, the opening biting and incisive, the timpani blows galvanising and the rhythms spot-on throughout – the movement’s  compelling amalgam of high spirits and restlessness was put across with incredible panache, both in an ensemble and individual sense – the timpani’s almost visceral attack was exhilarating, and the wind-and brass playing throughout the Trio sections were a joy to listen to! And I did appreciate the repeats, enabling us to enjoy that feeling of physical excitement and exhilaration for much of the piece all over again!

As with the first movement I took a bit of getting used to the quicker pulsings of the slow movement, again wanting a longer-breathed, more “epic” quality to prevail, something which, as my own rhythms “caught up” with the conductor’s, I increasingly enjoyed as the movement progressed, Taddei actually allowing the strings enough space for their phrases to bloom,  and the lines to sing. The sequence with the winds and the solo horn took on a lovely glow in places (the latter player’s brief solo flourish was gorgeous!). And though I again felt the triplet variation section was overly pushed along, it was given a charm of its own by the superb playing. I didn’t like the excessively staccato treatment of the great fanfares, wanting them to have more of a “resounding” character in those celestial spaces hovering around and about the notes. In all, the movement certainly sounded beautiful playing-wise, even if I felt my listener’s usual “transfigured”  sense of feeling  in this music thwarted by its quicker-than usual pace…..

Soloists Emma Pearson (soprano), Margaret Medlyn, (mezzo-soprano), Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono (tenor) and Robert Tucker (baritone), with the Orpheus Choir of Wellington, Orchestra Wellington, and Music Director Marc Taddei –  Photo credit: Latitude Creative

And so to the finale! – what a magnificent “horror chord” opening utterance we got, straightaway! The recitatives then jumped out of their blocks quickly, perhaps with not enough weight to convey firstly their disapproval (instrumental versions of “O Freunde. nicht diese töne!” – O friends, not these sounds!) and then their exultation when the “Ode to Joy” melody finally appears (“O Freunde, freuden vollere!” – O friends, more joyful ones!). The orchestral basses were INCREDIBLY quiet at the beginning of their “Ode to Joy” theme, while the strings and winds partnered really well for their verses, and the brasses were simply magnificent in their utterances!

A second “horror” chord introduced the soloists – and Robert Tucker made a tremendous initial impression with his recitative, though less so with his verse, the line being low for his voice – I suddenly felt that the soloists perhaps ought to have been at the front with the conductor, and not behind the orchestra – surely Beethoven wanted them to be heard, and not just as solo choral voices! I was surprised when I realised that Margaret Medlyn was singing the alto part, and not Melissa Crennan, as per programme (I was told later that the latter had fallen ill). Generally the soloists were audible, though soprano Emma Pearson’s clear, bell-like tones stood out from the rest. The Orpheus Choir were the real heroes – great shouts of “Vor Gott” (Before God) ushered in the tenor solo, (Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono), though he was hampered by the trajectories disappointingly sped up and the rhythms flattened out, leaving him almost no swagger in his step, and little room for any real heroic timbre in his voice!

I wondered why the horns sounded here as if they were “joining” their pairs of repeated notes in the brief introduction to the choir’s reprise of “Freunde, schöner Gotterfunken” (they WERE playing very softly)…..the latter was splendidly done, as was the whole “Seid umschunglen, Millionem” (Oh, you millions, I embrace you!), during which sequence I at last got a real “cosmic” sense from the music, thanks to the “space” accorded the singers by the conductor, expressing the moment’s mystical and epic gravity. Perhaps the Orpheus’s most splendid moment was the great Choral Fugue “Seid umschunglen, Millionem” which then followed, the voices and orchestral brass achieving real grandeur together!

The solo quartet’s “moment of truth” came at the end of the sequence with the choir at “Freude, Tochter aus Elysium”  (Joy, Daughter from Elysium), and the “Alle menschen werde Bruder” (All men shall be Brothers) sequence, where the soloists individually rhapsodised over the words, raptly concluding with a high B-flat from soprano Emma Pearson – nicely, if a wee bit circumspectly rounded off! Then it was the famous final presto sequence, choir and soloists intoxicated with joyful feeling and racing to the work’s conclusion, with the orchestra having the final riotous say!

Away with the perfidy of critics! – all were heroes, singers, choristers, players, conductor! – and all were enthusiastically and resoundingly applauded, and the magnitude of their achievements, singly and corporately,  given their just dues. I babbled about the performance highlights afterwards to anybody nearby who would listen, and gleaned from the exchanges that those present absolutely revelled in what they’d just heard, drunk with those copious dollops of “Freude, schöner Gotterfunken”, given to humankind as a gift for the ages.