WELLINGTON CITY ORCHESTRA
Justus Rozemond (conductor
with Sophia Acheson (viola )
Nicolai â Â Overture âThe Merry Wives of Windsorâ
Rachmaninov â Tone-Poem âIsle of the Deadâ
Berlioz â âHarold in Italyâ â Symphony with Viola obbligato
St,Andrewâs-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Saturday, 5th April 2025
Concert viewed via video â thanks to Nick Baldwin (camera)
and Angus Webb (editing)
Thanks also to Rowena Cullen (Wellington CO President)
Review for Middle C by Peter Mechen
Iâd seen this programme by the Wellington City Orchestra advertised, and was instantly drawn to its boldness, variety and colour, with three works owing nothing to one another but irresistibly drawn together by their very singularity and vividly-wrought panoply of contrasting human emotion. Itâs the kind of programming to which orchestras that have a variety of music-directors can bring enterprise and exploration in the form of each maestroâs particular enthusiasms, and whose audiences benefit from such wide-ranging presentations.
So when circumstances conspired against my attending the concert I was delighted to be able to âcatch upâ with what took place via the kind auspices of Rowena Cullen, the Orchestra committeeâs President, through a video of the concert made by Nick Baldwin and Angus Webb, from which I could write a âreportâ of the proceedings (as I was able to for the orchestraâs final 2024 concert under similar kinds of circumstances). In each case, what Iâve really liked about the results Iâve seen and heard is that along with the judiciously-balanced sound quality the film replicates a single audience memberâs view of the concert, rather than the usual âfrom all-anglesâ viewpoints, so that one feels like a âbona fideâ concertgoer rather than some kind of âvoyeurâ hovering about the ranks of the players, closely watching them activating their mouthpieces and fingerboards!
Where Otto Nicolaiâs exuberant Overture to his opera âThe Merry Wives of Windsorâ brings together a veritable farrago of characters with engaging personalities and conflicting intentions making for a âspice-of-lifeâ variety of interaction, Sergei Rachmaninovâs darkly-brooding, phantasmagorical tone-poem âIsle of the Deadâ presents a bleak scenario of a solitary lifeâs journey reaching its inevitable conclusion at a forbidding and ultimately pitiless place of interment. No two cheek-by-jowl presentation scenarios could have been more profoundly different!
In some ways, Hector Berliozâs âHarold in Italyâ is even more visionary in its uniqueness â a work for solo viola and orchestra which brings together both compositional ingenuity and idiosyncrasy with little more than quasi-Byronic characterisations by way of portraying the âadventuresâ of the musicâs ostensible hero. In fact the Childe Harold of Byron is largely absent from Berliozâs depictions of the chief protagonist, the latter being drawn largely from the composerâs own Italian experiences, however much he might have identified with the general traits of the poetâs title character. The work is a collection of scenes through which the traveller passes, bring to each his own, by turns, exuberant, poetic, introspective and downcast set of moods, with Berlioz’s firebrand inspiration setting even the touches of banality in the story alight! -are those indefatigable brigands, for example, perhaps having one round of carousing too many?
Whatever the conjectures regarding any aspect of these presentations, it seemed expectations were simmering when conductor Justus Rozemond stepped up to the rostrum to begin the afternoonâs concert with Nicolaiâs âThe Merry Wives of Windsorâ. And what a beginning! – such a gorgeous opening paragraph to a work! â here were the first notes so magically âsoundedâ by the violins, the theme fulsomely so by the lower strings, and all repeated by the violins, staunchly but gently supported by the winds and the horns! It  brought the first signs of mischief afoot, with a perky theme tossed back and forward between the strings and the winds â  a couple of loose notes quickly tucked out of sight! – and then the fun began, with the gossipy exchanges between winds and strings building up a real head of steam â âHe wrote what? â Look, it says so here! â the old rogue!â as the two  âMerry Wivesâ read the fat knight Sir John Falstaffâs fawning letters and resolve to plot his downfall! Some smartly brought-off quick-fire exchanges between instruments â âAre you ready? Here he comes! Quick, hide!â and the famous melody sings out, nicely ânudgedâ at its top note by the strings, and given plenty of sensuous âswayâ by conductor Rozemond. The excitement knew no bounds as brass and percussion joined in, anticipating the fat knightâs downfall â and his entry was delicious, the music suddenly acquiring great girth and pomposity from the heavy brass (though I wish theyâd kept those heavy accents going through all the unfortunate miscreantâs music!) as the object of the deception fled in shame when he realised his ruse had been thwarted â the music then repeated the sequences almost as before, though reintroducing the âbig tuneâ (one of the worldâs charmers, in my opinion) earlier, and with the brasses and percussion helping to celebrate the triumph of goodness and modesty over self-importance and connivance. All in all, It made a splendid opening for the concert.
To grimmer business, then, with Rachmaninovâs âIsle of the Deadâ, his sombre evocation of a painting depicting the carrying of a body over water to its resting-place, the music a dark-toned barcarolle whose âwanderingâ 5/8 time suggests the steady rowing of the oarsman as the boat with its coffin and robed white figure neared a kind of âburial islandâ. This was an image which the composer first saw in a black-and-white reproduction in Paris in 1907, composing his âtone poemâ two years later.  Rachmaninov himself conducted the workâs premiere in Moscow in 1909, and subsequently recorded the work with the Philadelphia Orchestra in America in 1930. Incidentally, the artist, Arnold Böcklin, actually made several versions of the work, all slightly differently detailed – and itâs fascinating to learn that Rachmaninov, on subsequently viewing one of the original colour copies of the picture, remarked that he would not have composed the work if he had seen the painting in colour!
I thought the performance by the orchestra a remarkably fine achievement – the opening sounds were steadily and remorselessly brought into play, Rozemond and his musicians conveying a proper âheaviness of spiritâ and a sense of lamentation, steadily and patiently maintained. What the winds and strings were doing so well, the brass sturdily continued, helping to build up to the first of the workâs vantage-points, where the music briefly paused, muttered, sighed and exclaimed (lovely work by all concerned, strings, wind and brass, with the latter using their mutes superbly) before resignedly accepting that the journey ought to continue.
And so the lower strings rebegan their steady 5/8 rhythms with even more energy and purpose, building the columns of sound up steadily and impressively, with the brasses sturdily holding the top lines. The winds elaborated on the repeated motifs, the brass moaned, and the strings had a short-lived moment of warmth before the âDies Iraeâ melody made a sombre appearance on the cellos, sparking a response through the whole orchestra, the players putting all their energies into the theme, driving it upwards and outwards like an avenging spirit, and propelling the cortege to what seemed like its resting-place on or near the shores of the forbidding island.
The brass sounded the theme (superbly played), weighing down upon us with a kind of finality â but out of sheer desperation came a beseeching strain, a different, more human-sounding plea, led by the strings but coloured by wind and brass, one seeking solace and perhaps salvation from a certain quarter. Such was not to be, as the brass and wind tones rose from out of the orchestral panoply and brutally mocked any such supplications. This brought fabulously full-blooded playing from the strings, and was augmented at the climax by the winds and brass as the harsher realities of death delivered their judgement â one from which it seemed there could be no escape.
Perhaps the most telling sequence in the whole work was the aftermath of this crushing utterance  â a steady pizzicato from the strings, repeating the Dies Irae theme, various solo instruments sounding variants of the theme, and the entry of the solo violin playing an agitated tremolando version before ascending to join the winds â oboe and clarinet then linked to the brass, who sounded a kind of âRequiemâ (so reminiscent of the last movement of Tchaikovskyâs âPathetiqueâ Symphony here!) â before the strings again took up the ârowingâ 5/8 rhythm, decorated by descending winds, and with the lower strings playing a fuller version of the Dies Irae theme, locking its strains in our memory for all time, and leaving its last few notes floating in the fading ambiences of the scene â amazing!
After such an experience one imagined that the actual concert needed an interval for its audience to be properly revived!  Everybody having used the space accordingly, the concertâs second half could proceedâŠ..at this point I need to confess to taking a while as a youthful listener to properly âgetâ Berliozâs âHarold in Italyâ, the last work on the programme. My first reaction to the work was somewhat akin to Schumannâs famous opinion of Chopinâs âFuneral Marchâ Sonata, whose movements he described as âfour of Chopinâs maddest childrenâ. But a beautiful recording by violist Nobuko Imai with Colin Davis drew me afresh into the workâs magical realm â and so it was here with the playing of the soloist, Sophia Acheson, whose gorgeous tones encompassed sounds ranging from a beautifully-wrought self-communing meditation to places requiring full-throated energy and lyricism. However, the great violinist Paganiniâs complaint about the work Berlioz had written for him â that there was too little for the soloist to do â certainly bears scrutiny, especially in the light of other concertante works that appeared at around this time, though the composer had never intended to (and never did) write a concerto in a conventional sense!
The workâs sombre opening found the conductor and orchestral players gently coaxing the music out of the void and into some kind of coalescence, introducing a minor-key variant of the melody in the winds that would come to dominate much of the work , with the lower instruments shepherding the lighter ones (the winds and upper strings) into being from their places, patiently and gradually painting a Mediterranean-like ambience into which the character of the wanderer could be introduced. It all came when the musicâs key turned to the major, prompting solo viola and harp to speak together, with violist Sophia Acheson responding poetically to her harpist Anne-Gaele Ausseilâs beatific tones, and drawing out further responses from the orchestra, a sunnily-wrought statement of the theme expressed in heartfelt terms. The music took a quixotic turn, with the orchestra sounding fragments of the allegro theme which would dominate the first movement, and the soloist, hesitatingly at first, taking the same music up, and instigating a fascinating interplay between viola and orchestra – the theme was tossed between the participants with glee and gusto, the players handling Berliozâs capricious demands with skill and perseverance, and bringing real elan to the build-up of excitement and culmination at the movementâs end.Sophia Acheson, Viola
Of the four movements my out-and-out favourite has always been the second, the âMarch of the Pilgrimsâ, music which so impressed Berliozâs friend Franz Liszt he made a solo piano transcription of this movement alone to perform at his recitals, besides transcribing the whole work for viola and piano! Itâs a wondrous soundscape of a kind of processional pilgrimage moving though all kinds of natural and man-made vistas â Berlioz wrote in his memoirs of observing âreturning gleaners from fields singing soft litanies to the accompaniment of the sad tinkling of the distant convent bellâ, which ties in with the musicâs progress here being continually drawn onward by a bell-like sound (in a different key to the music that both the orchestra and the viola are playing â so magical and memorable an effect!). Over this evocative and varied wall of sound the soloist played her first movement melody, and other variants, including a sul ponticello (the bow on the strings close to the bridge) sequence of arpeggiated chords (Berlioz apparently liked to strum his guitar on his mountain walks!), all adding to the overall atmosphere. I would have liked the tempi a notch or two slower and dreamier in this movement, but this pacing brought a kind of âfervourâ to the proceedings, which the ending beautifully dissipated as the repeated orchestral notes echoed and re-echoed the bell-like sounds after the pilgrims had disappeared, leaving the viola to make a final arpeggiated comment by way of a farewell.
After this the peasant revelries swung into earshot with the third movement, the winds attractively rustic-sounding at the beginning, with the cor anglais leading the way for the âserenadeâ section, matched by the oboeâs plaintive tones, as well as the horns, giving golden support. Â The winds beautifully framed the soloistâs entry, and continued to decorate her figurations with all kinds of felicitous gestures â though the horns missed their footing momentarily, they made amends a few moments later with a similar passage sonorously negotiated. The dance resuming, a particularly beautifully flute solo towards the end of the movement, left the strings to usher the dancers off (the orchestral violas having a brief moment of quiet glory!), leaving the soloist pondering as to whether it was all a dream.
The finale began with a crash! – the music veered between gloom and frantic excitement as the soloist reprised some of the themes from the previous movements. The orchestra âcaressedâ some of these fragments in partnership with the viola as if in a dream-like state (a particularly lovely sequence largely with the clarinets), but seemed unable to escape the âallureâ of the brigandsâ carousings (and driving the soloist from the platform as they did so!), keeping the incisive whiplash rhythms coming splendidly! It seemed everybody was caught in a kind of vortex of brigandish euphoria and largesse! â musically, everybody covered themselves with glory in embracing these bacchanale-like excesses, and especially during the over-the-top repeated passage for strings against snarling brass –Â fabulous stuff!
Just when the brigandsâ excesses had begun to boil over for a third time a deathly hush suddenly overtook the scenario â in the distance could be heard a reminiscence of the Pilgrimâs March (two offstage players) and at the back of the orchestra reappeared the viola soloist, appearing to join in with these sounds, but gradually overcome by the orchestraâs somewhat rogue inclination to rejoin the brigands! Which they did, to brilliant and conclusive effect, the players giving out as if their lives depended on the outcome!
Kudos aplenty to all those people who played a part in both performing and bringing this concert into being â even on film I found it a totally involving and astonishment-provoking experience! Â The thrill of witnessing a group of musicians literally playing their hearts out in tandem with one another has been a pleasure and, indeed, something of a privilege to witness. Again, congrats to the conductor and the players, to the sterling group of organisers and enablers, and, of course, the supporters, who gave well-deserved acclaim to these performances – by turns, delicious, profound and adventurous!