Month: July 2025

THE SHOCK OF THE NEW REVISITED – New Zealand premieres from Orchestra Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

                                                                                                     Shostakovich and Britten

PARTY FAITHFUL

BRITTEN – ‘Cello Symphony Op.68
SHOSTAKOVICH – Symphony No. 3  in E-flat Major Op. 20 “The First of May”*

Lev Sivkov (‘cello)
Marc Taddei (conductor)
*Orpheus Choir of Wellington(Brent Stewart, director)
Orchestra Wellington

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Saturday, 26th July 2025

Review for “Middle C” by Peter Mechen

What an occasion! – TWO New Zealand premieres, Britten and Shostakovich, in one evening! While perhaps not unique in this country’s concert-giving history, such an event’s “blue-moon” aspect provoked all kinds of responses from the capital’s music fraternity, with the music’s unfamiliarity seeming at once a drawcard with its own kind of excitement and sense of discovery, and something of a risk! – the relatively unknown administered here in what might have seemed to some like over-sized doses! With characteristic adventurousness, Orchestra Wellington and the Orpheus Choir of Wellington plunged into the fray, and emerged triumphant on all fronts, the audience’s enthusiastic response at the conclusion of each of the concert’s halves unequivocally and unstintingly great-hearted, more than making up for the marginally thinner attendance compared with the numbers present at the season’s first two concerts.

How was this near-miracle of approbation brought off so heart-warmingly? – several reasons; firstly by the charismatic cellist Lev Sivkov’s “owning” of the somewhat elliptical solo part of Benjamin Britten’s formidable ‘Cello Symphony; secondly, via conductor Marc Taddei’s remarkable mastery of the scores and control of his orchestral and choral forces; and lastly through the astonishing results of the intrepid musicians’ meticulous efforts in regard to each of the works’ completely different demands!  So it was that Marc Taddei would have felt more than justifiably vindicated in his pre-concert enthusiasm regarding the “adventure” of this undertaking.

First up was one of the more enigmatic works by Benjamin Britten, his singularly-titled “Cello Symphony” begging the question regarding the piece’s actual genre, having an instrumental soloist in a work styled as a “symphony”, and bringing together what might normally be regarded as differently-constituted musical narratives. It wasn’t an entirely unknown format, with previous works by various composers entitled “Sinfonia Concertante”, and with composers (like Berlioz in his work for viola and orchestra “Harold in Italy”) having produced “symphonies” with solo instrumental parts.

Such works had in the past produced problems of thwarted expectation on the part of musicians (the most well-known being the legendary violinist Paganini’s dismissal of Berlioz’s aforementioned work, and which the former never played). Britten’s dedicatee was the renowned cellist Mstislav Rostropovich (for whom he had already composed several pieces), and who had probably expected a brilliant instrumental concerto showpiece compared with what he actually received. What Britten was writing proved to be a tribute to the ‘cellist’s musicianship as much as to his technical brilliance, as the work casts the soloist as an equal partner with the orchestra in their exchange and development of the work’s themes and juxtapositions and contrasts.

An enjoyable and intriguing aspect of tonight’s performance was the engagingly demonstrative playing of the cellist, Lev Sivkov, whose gestures had an expressiveness which choreographed the musical line and strengthened the interplay between soloist and orchestra. Though the cello’s opening double-stopped chords were brusque compared to the orchestra’s darkly-conceived lines, they had a pliability that suggested  dialogue more than opposition, even when the soloist’s increasing  energies  brought “spiky” wind chordings and “snappy” brass notes, as subsequent lyrical exchanges between the cello and clarinet and flute phrases more readily suggested, and which the oboe and brass softly continued. Particularly memorable was a touching sequence of interplay between pizzicato strings and cello outpourings, even if the latter’s somewhat anxious two-note phrases against the strings pizzicato began suggesting more darkness than radiance and conflict afoot, brought into increasing prominence by the timpani’s repeated patternings, and the  winds and heavy brasses exchanging chords. But a desire for accord persisted with brass-and-percussion irruptions balanced  by beautifully poignant-sounding wind-harmonies – almost fairy-tale sounds – as if simultaneously-wrought “threads” were constantly trying to “dance around” each other, with the cello playing a kind of “fulcrum” role, keeping determinedly businesslike amid the claustrophobia of heavy percussion irruptions, brass “pedal-notes” and skitterish wind passages. We sensed relief with the soloist’s response to it all – poised pizzicato chordings over resignedly rumbling lower instruments, while the winds played a Mahlerian “dying fall” theme – a soft gong-stroke and a few pizzicato notes later this absorbing movement came to an enigmatic close.

What a marvellously nocturnal scherzo we got next! – the cello  quicksilver,  playful and even furtive, and straightaway alerting the muted brasses! The soloist’s dancings were answered throughout with either gruff single notes or quixotic, melismatic figures haunted by the brasses’ echoings. Constant movement and exchange became  increasingly frantic, halted at the end  by the cello’s animalistic whimperings and a dismissive grunt from the brass – all brilliantly-conceived, and  here superbly-realised! By contrast, the Adagio’s solid, granite-like tones brought a solemn march, the cello’s solemn, step-wise theme replete with massive timpani ramparts and mournful keenings from winds and an evocatively responding horn solo – and what beauties the soloist with supporting horn, strings and gentle percussion gave us here! The rest of the movement returned to the march-like opening, the brass splendidly building the music’s progress towards a grim magnificence while the cello increasingly rhapsodises in defiance, and eventually breaking into a cadenza, one whose progress soloist Lev Sivkov mesmerically “defined” for us with his rapt, seemingly improvised gesturings throughout

Without a break, the music transmorgrified into the finale, the solo trumpet sounding a kind of “liberation” as the cello seemed to walk from the darkness and into the light afforded by the concluding Passacaglia’s six variations. I loved the winds’ dancing  sequences, the cello’s mad scamperings pursued by winds and percussion, and the intensely Mahlerian rhapsodic fervour of the cello’s musings immediately before the great surge of long-awaited optimism given to us by the whole orchestra’s tsunami-like concluding response to the soloist’s heartfelt efforts!

If I’ve dwelt overmuch on the music’s detailings at the expense of its actual delivery,  here, it’s because the performance was a further (and remarkable) step towards my own appreciation of what I found an initially challenging listen! – I hope these reams of self-indulgence have some point for the reader, especially any finding themselves going through the same process of determined discovery!

Shostakovich’s Third Symphony, another work new to me, was a different kind of journey, one no less fascinating, but somewhat less “layered” than the Britten work, though it brought its own set of distinctions to the concert, One of these was its composer’s own remark, now forever associated with the work – “It would be interesting to write a symphony where not a single theme would be repeated”. one that he strove to fulfil with this remarkably vernal, pulsatingly “in-your-face” music.

What made the performance more than worthwhile was the up-front orchestral playing, and the “joyful and triumphant” tones of the evening’s “rent-a-socialist” ensembled voices, the Orpheus Choir. Printing the English words in the programme was tongue-in-cheek enough – a real blessing was being given these indecipherable words as sterling statements unimpeded by on-stage visual translations! – heed was taken of conductor Vasily Petrenko’s words in the programme notes concerning the “banal, amateur” poetry – and the supreme irony of the presentation came with the performance’s full-blooded commitment to the cause (of the music, of course!). Maybe some day we’ll get to hear some of those later Shostakovich symphonies from this orchestra as well! (imagine the subscription numbers generated by the thought of THAT series!)

For now, we had our ears bent in somewhat different directions as Marc Taddei and his seemingly tireless musicians took to Shostakovich’s most irreverent piece of symphonic writing to date. Despite its beautiful opening for two clarinets (superbly delivered) the work soon accelerated into a veritable ferment of action. dissonant passages crowding one another as the trajectories rang the changes from grim martial rhythms to maniacal scamperings, culminating in grotesque “horror-chordings” and continued reckless headlong careerings, whose frenzied momentums were lessened  by a side-drum’s call to attention, a solo clarinet succeeding in quelling the energies of the flight, and bringing an uneasy calm to the soundscape after further horror chordings reacquainted acquainted us with the obstacles still to be surmounted.

From here, we were given a few stress-free moments of relative tranquility from solo violin and eerily spectral winds, the latter gradually shrugging off their ghoulish aspect in search of some much needed pastoral charm, gladly welcomed by the strings, their warmth  persuading other elements that a salvation of sorts might be imminent –everybody dug more deeply, pulling from out of the depths of texture sonorities and impulses which seemed to gradually ignite the whole orchestra! A fresh burst of momentum brought in compulsions of rhythm, particularly Russian in flavour, whose energies pushed the music onto a kind of plateau of heroic expression, underlined by a great percussive onslaught –something momentous was being enacted, leaving us awaiting the arrival of some great endpoint, a kind of magnificence whose presence we sensed but whose entry was still being prepared. Then, with a great cymbal crash, the choir suddenly stood up, electrifying us all!

A brief orchestral introduction and the voices burst out, whole-heartedly, lustily –  oceanic waves of sound punctuated by percussive irruptions, peaking and breaking over the edges and washing over their listeners.  We knew and did not know of what they sang – it mattered less than their fervour and spirit and sense of joy!  And at the conclusion, with the musicians having given their all, we relished their achievement  amidst our shared relief and exhilaration!

Joanna Dann and David Neild – a feast of ‘cello-and-piano presentation at St. Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St, Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Lunchtime Concert series
JOANNA DANN (‘cello) & DAVID NEILD piano)

ROBERT SCHUMANN – Fantasiestücke Op.73
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Sonata for ‘Cello and Piano No. 4 in C Op. 102/1
SERGEI RACHMANINOV – Andante (third mvt.) from Sonata for ‘Cello and Piano Op.19
FRANZ SCHUBERT (arr. David Popper) Du Bist die Ruh (Rückert -1823)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Wednesday, 16th July, 2025

Some blithe spirit must have quietly done the rounds and spread the word  regarding this particular recital, with  St.Andrew’s Church close to being more-than-usually packed by eager lunchtime-concert-goers, as noted by the organiser who welcomed us and introduced the artists – it would have been especially heartening for both cellist Joanna Dann and pianist David Neild upon entering to encounter such a veritable sea of eagerly awaiting faces! The programme was, of course, a drawcard in itself, containing the kind of music which would warm both senses and sensibilities in a direct “simply add water” kind of way – and so it proved, judging by the warmth of the reception the pair’s playing of these works drew from the audience at the end.

Robert Schumann’s Op.73 Fantasiestücke opened the concert – is there another composer whose music always so quickly betrays its creator’s identity? Both performers drew forth lovely, light-and-lyrical tones from their instruments, moving easily between the major and minor modes, and with neither instrument claiming any ascendancy – the cellist almost uncannily “matched” the piano tones whether in lyrical tones or quicker figurations, producing a kind of seamless interplay. This continued throughout the second movement’s “lebhaft – licht” (Lively – light), in which the players achieved an almost fairy-like grace with their interactions, the pianist’s gossamer-like tones mirroring the similarly “will-o-the-wisp” peregrinations of the cellist. I was, however, expecting rather more forthright sounds than we got in the “Rasch und mit feuer” finale, where I began to crave more cello tone expressing Schumann’s more assertive writing, his ardour and muscularity which contrasts with those passages where, once again, the interplay between the voices seemed like a “marriage of minds” – but in other places  I couldn’t help feeling  like a kind of Oliver Twist, asking the cellist for more!

Beethoven, in his five ‘Cello Sonatas of course transformed the previous role of the cello in this genre from being either a solo instrument with extemporised “accompaniment” by one or more players, or an obbligato instrument for a keyboard sonata. His first two Cello Sonatas (Op. 5) were written in 1796, and in fact designated “Two Grand Sonatas for the Harpsichord or Pianoforte with a Violincello obbligato”, but unlike those earlier “obbligato” sonatas, both of the Op.5 works had through-composed cello parts which in places were independent of keyboard figurations. By the time he had reached his two Op.102 Cello Sonatas in 1815, the composer had embarked upon his “late” period of composition, so that these works readily display those characteristics we’ve come to recognise as typical of that time, such as unconventional form, and deeper, more probing expression.

His Fourth Cello Sonata begins with a ‘cello solo, beautifully voiced, gently joined with by the piano, the lines concentrated and sonorous, seemingly “captured from the air” rather than composed, the instruments gently nudging the sounds together, until a sudden vigorous unison breaks the spell! Here the forceful piano somewhat dominated the ‘cello, whose notes one had to strain to hear in all but during the occasional quieter episodes, somewhat negating the composer’s intention of giving the instrument more of a “voice”! What I could hear of the cellist’s playing sounded true in terms of rhythm and intonation, but the piano was so much to the fore, it sometimes couldn’t help giving an impression that the cellist was playing more for herself than for us.

The Adagio brought the ‘cello back to us again, the players each giving us enough to better balance the sound, with the long sombre lines of the opening, and the beautiful exchange between the instruments that followed working really well in relative terms – though I thought there was still scope for the ‘cello to “sing” even more in places. The finale’s beginning with its playful exchanges made a properly whimsical impression, and the ‘cellist bought out some of the darker lines, but the higher, brighter melodic exchanges needed to bubble and sizzle more equally more often! One could hear there was a fine interpretation there, but it was simply a question of coaxing more tone from the ‘cello for the music’s course to sustain its full and glorious effect!

The Rachmaninov ‘Cello Sonata’s  Andante movement in places brought out the best qualities in both players, with the wonderful major/minor key sequences of the piano’s opening paragraph gorgeously realised, as were plenty of subtle gradations enticing our ears further and further into the piece; while the ‘cellist replied in kind with much sensitive articulation of those long melodic lines – though the tone lessened as the line moved up the stave she chose to give her lines a quieter, more reflective sound, even though I could occasionally have done with more “outward push” in some of the phrases – but still, what gloriously vibrant music emerged in places from these players’ efforts (I should have liked to have heard the whole sonata, accustomed as I am to wanting more of such things!)

Instead we got what was surely the highlight of the programme for most people – this was cellist David Popper’s arrangement for ‘cello and piano of one of Franz Schubert’s most beautiful songs  – the composer’s 1823 composition “Du bist die Ruh”. Both the pianist and ‘cellist by turns realised this music to exquisite degrees – a beautiful piano introduction was gorgeously augmented by the ‘cellist’s tones in her opening phrase – has anybody composed anything more heart-rendingly beautiful than this? When it came to the song’s climax, that glorious ascent towards a celestial high note, we were taken by the composer and his two musicians to some kind of Elysium-like place for a moment, not once, but twice – and of course there are as many ways to “sound” that final note as there are musicians! Between them, Joanna Dann and David Neild gave us untold pleasure with such moments – a most satisfying way to end any lunchtime’s music-making!

A double bill from Wellington Opera which pulled no punches – Dame Gillian Whitehead’s Mate Ururoa, with Ross Harris’s Notes From the Front

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ROSS HARRIS – Notes from the Front (texts by Vincent O’Sullivan)
DAME GILLIAN WHITEHEAD – Mate Ururoa (libretto by the composer)

ROSS HARRIS  –  Song-cycle “Notes from the Front”
Richard Greager (tenor), Matthew Ross (violin), Emma Sayers (piano)

DAME GILLIAN WHITEHEAD – Chamber Opera “Mate Ururoa”
Cast: David Tahere (Captain Roger Dansey)
Brent Allcock (Commanding Officer)
Ariana Tikao (Whaea / Taonga Puoro)
Director: Sara Brodie
Theatrical Designers: Jacob Banks/Rebecca Bethan Jones
Conductor: Hamish McKeich
Stroma Contemporary Ensemble

The Hannah, Wellington

Friday, 11th July, 2025

Wellington Opera has surely brought off a kind of coup with these two works, Gillian Whitehead’s opera Mate Ururoa and Ross Harris’s song-cycle Notes from the Front being brought together for performance at a time when people everywhere on our planet surely have no greater, nor more urgent cause to question the rationalization, antecedents  and vindication of war.  Each of these stories draws from the same source, the conflict known as the First World War (1914-18), in which millions of people, mostly soldiers, but also civilians, perished, and which, ironically, drew in significant participation from the country geographically furthest from the actual conflict – Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Of these two works the earlier (2014) and first-performed was Ross Harris’s Notes from the Front  (the title in this context practically self-explanatory), with the text of the seven songs drawing from the letters “home” of Dunedin-born Alexander Aitken, who enlisted with the Otago Infantry as part of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. The letters were written in places where he served in action, from Gallipoli to the Somme, at which latter place he was wounded. Aitken was particularly remembered for smuggling a violin into his “kit” to take with him and play on occasions in between the sequences of  “action” (the instrument miraculously survived all of this and was brought home, to be later donated to the Otago Boys School, where it is currently on display).

Though not all verbatim quotes from Aitken’s letters, poet Vincent O’Sullivan based the songs’ texts on the latter, summarising the soldier’s traumatic (and in places even surreal) experiences while on active service, and poignantly rounding the sequence through a declaration to Winifred, his future wife, whom he had met when a student, and with whom he subsequently emigrated to Scotland, taking up a mathematics professorship at Edinburgh University.

Aitken’s feelings regarding the war and its effects upon humanity in general were here laid bare in the first, and in places hallucinatory song  Visions, much later, which delineate the psychological traumas that haunted him throughout his life – “nightmare seizes me – the veiled figures…….I count on nothing more….”  – words hauntingly voiced by tenor Richard Greager, and underpinned by pianist Emma Sayers’ beautifully-focused touch, along with violinist Matthew Ross’s wraith-like postscript. The second song The Notes depicts Aitken hauntingly playing his violin in situ, “between concussions”, the latter suggested by short, sharp piano irruptions – along with bemused “that’s his violin” comments from his listeners.

Bitter irony and  savage underlinings characterise the third song’s outbursts, the piano subdued, its notes almost cowering, as the singer describes the hell of the trenches, a nightmare like nothing described in official dispatches – “it’s the blood – and the guts – and the stink of the flies!….that’s how you tell we’re Anzacs!…….” – Richard Greager grips our sensibilities as he describes people he knew from home – “Harry..…the bloke from Tuatapere……the sun turns black!….” as these people’s lives are destroyed, and the bitterness reaches its peak at the words  “…..it’s a change from Gallipoli, soldier, when you reach the Somme….”

The violin begins the elegiac fourth song On a Different Note as if playing “Deutschland Uber Alles”, accompanied by a deep piano rumbling which then breaks off – the notes the violinist plays reminds the singer of Haydn’s tune, heard at another Christmas from a German’s violin –“….a single line, defying war…..”  expressed in deep-throated tragedy. The next song Pretty Much Verbatim is the blackest irony possible, as the singer and piano characterise a fellow-soldier “Clark of Dunedin” with a description of how this friend sacrificed himself against a live grenade, holding it hidden from his mates –  “…….it is pride enough to tell I was there…..what I breathe is his….”.  Though more rhapsodic, the sixth song  Close as this is just as unsparing, describing the soldier’s imagined reunitement with a friend killed on the battlefield, but alive, back in Otago – “on the peninsular……we met where one of us had no shadow, one of us living, one of us dead….close as this……”

The last piece, Song for Winifred is a tribute to Aitken’s wife and an impassioned hope for a return to a normal life together – begun by the violin and joined by the piano, the singer passionately declaims “….Love, love in any weather….in the summer grass – and God! – the seasons pass……”  – beautiful and intensely moving. The work’s but one all-too-eloquent example from Ross Harris’s and Vincent O’Sullivan’s group of resounding collaborations regarding the subject of war’s inhumane ambition and senseless carnage.

Besides its own intrinsic qualities the Harris work made the perfect introduction to Gillian Whitehead’s Opera Mate Ururoa (a title translated as “fight bravely” or “fight to the death”, and taken from a Maori  whakatauki, or proverb “Kaua e mate wheke, mate ururoa” (Don’t die like the octopus  (that gives up easily), die like the shark (that keeps on fighting)). Whitehead undertook to write the work at the behest of David Tahere, a US-based Maori baritone whose whanau, he discovered, had close historical connections with that of Roger Te Kepa Dansey, the central character of the opera who enlisted as a member of the “Native Contingent” formed here when Britain declared war on Germany in 1914.

Dansey’s wartime story tells of the humiliation of both the Maori and Nepalese Gurkha soldiers being regarded as “second class” by the British hierarchy, and relegated to performing menial jobs like digging trenches – only when the casualty lists at places like Gallipoli deemed it necessary were Maori and Gurkhas allowed to fight. Promoted to the rank of captain, Dansey then fell foul of his commanding officers by refusing to follow orders which would result in his men facing certain and pointless death, resulting in his disgrace through accusations of cowardice and desertion, in the wake of his famous assertion regarding fighting a “white man’s war” where soldiers were “sent into” battle rather than “the Maori way” of men led by their chiefs from the front.

Thanks to the efforts of influential Maori politicians of the time Dansey’s true qualities of leadership were recognised and he was reinstated. After returning to the frontline in France at the Somme, he was gassed and had to be sent to England to recover – he remained in Europe for the next nine years, working on rehabilitation schemes in Belgium before returning to New Zealand in 1927 and settling in Rotorua, where he died in 1938 of complications resulting from his war injuries.

Whitehead wrote her own libretto for this work, intending at first for it to be a “working draft”, but deciding as she developed the piece further to retain it as a strong “from scratch”  initiative, one  creating its own on-going tradition. She was assisted throughout by David Tahere’s knowledge through his connections with Dansey’s surviving whanau, and by director Sara Brodie’s enthusiasm. respect and feeling for the project However, preparations for the first performance of Mate Ururoa at Carnegie Hall, New York, in November 2021 were unexpectedly thwarted by the Covid epidemic, so the “premiere” had to be rescheduled, not inappropriately, to its Southern Hemisphere origins.

Interviewed a couple of days before the premiere, the triumvirate of composer, director and lead singer delineated aspects of their respective journeys towards the oncoming performance.  Whitehead, with several music-theatre pieces of different kinds under her belt, was calmly philosophical regarding outcomes, emphasising the phenomenon of a work existing only in the moment of performance, and expressing quiet confidence in the extent to which her colleagues would help successfully realise these outcomes. For Brodie there was “a humbling satisfaction” at what she felt privileged to be part of (she and Whitehead had previously worked together on a 2016 music-theatre piece of the latter’s, Iris Dreaming).  Tahere characterised the opera as resembling something presented in a kind of “dream state”, with many “fragments” of the protagonist’s experience brought into play in vastly differing situations involving diametrically-opposed cultures, drawing attention to the composer’s representation of these differences, with the used of both conventional instruments (and taonga puoro (Maori instruments), straightaway giving an extra dimensional feel to these different worlds.

As with the earlier Ross Harris song-cycle, the presentation of the opera generated its own singular ambience of almost claustrophobic intensity in its depiction of a single individual pitting himself against almost insuperable odds with courage and resolve……my notes are as follows: Upon entering this wonderfully indeterminate but pliable performance space finely modulated by designer Rebecca Bethan Jones, and ambiently lit by Jacob Banks, David Tahere’s presence as Captain Roger Dansey flows into its world like a beam of light awakened by the taonga puoro “call” from one of the bird-song-like indigenous instruments played by Ariana Tikao, the singer’s words making reference to his birthplace, near Ohinemutu, in Rotorua – “Here the steam rises – my home, my resting place”…. and at once we realise that here is a man looking back over his life, the first reminiscence being his confrontation with Brent Allcock’s stiff upper-lipped Commanding Officer accusing Dancey of defying orders at Gallipoli in order to save the lives of his men. Conductor Hamish McKeich keeps his Stroma Ensemble forces on the boil throughout, their frequent interjections representing both the establishment and the individual, tracking the exchanges between both personalities and the interaction of modern instruments and taonga puoro to underline the conflict between not only Pakeha and Maori but officers and enlisted men.

The mention of a “white man’s war” and Maori’s progress from being an “enemy” of the British to an “ally” brings great declamatory tones from Tahere, and a distinctive “conch shell-like” call from Ariana Tikao’s taonga puoro instrument accompanied by the cracking together of percussive stones. As Dansey recounts his people’s history of interaction with the British, McKeich and his players elaborate with music that fuses sounds of warfare with ceremonial regimental-like calls – and the singer intones the opera’s theme ”Kaua e mate wheke, mate ururoa!”  (Die not like an octopus, but like a hammerhead shark!) before breaking into the famous haka, followed by a lament, in Maori “Let me weep for my dead! – they are not like the cabbage tree that springs up again!” (according to witnesses the haka by the soldiers apparently took place on the beaches at Gallipoli….).

Seemingly unimpressed, the British Officer again appears demanding an explanation for Dansey’s disobedience, to which, to the accompaniment of the taonga puoro  Dansey refutes the charge and sings about the chiefs in Maoridom “leading their warriors into battle” – unlike in the “white man’s war” where soldiers alone are sent to slaughter! His explanation is ignored, and he is dismissed and sent back to New Zealand – sostenuto wind tones then are sounded to haunt the words  “I saved many lives”, to a ferment of instrumental affirmation!

From here the music and the scenario becomes almost transcendent, with Tahere recounting his subsequent reinstatement due to intervention by influential Maori politicians of the time, his return to Europe and his experiences in the trenches at the Somme, where he is gassed and has to be relocated to England to recover – we witness his delirium (a bull-roarer sounding what seemed like a heartbeat as he struggles to rid himself of the poison in his system) – the players blow soundlessly through their instruments to further depict the desolation – and he imagines being comforted by his mother (who is sung by Ariana Tikao), her words foretelling his recovery and his work in post war Belgium, helping people recover their lives.

The Soldier sings a duet with his mother – these exchanges have a “time standing still” feeling, as we sense when she sings to him he has since returned to his present back in New Zealand and is near death. “You will stay here beside the rippling waters of Lake Rotorua – Kua wheturangatia” – words which means “Return to the celestial realm of your ancestors”…… –  What gave this particular performance a unique turn at this point was the voice of an audience member suddenly replying with a poropororoaki (a farewell to the dead) to the singer playing Dansey and then the rest of the assembled whanau of the story’s dying man standing and singing  “Aue Ihu tirohia”, the official hymn of the 28th Maori Battalion….. and so we sing the displayed words with them…

The lights eventually do come up and we applaud, most vociferously when Gillian Whitehead comes to the stage to acknowledge our tribute – a redolently memorable glimpse into aspects of our nation’s past that continue to give crucial relevance to our somewhat tumultuous present!

 

Flinders Quartet and Michael Houstoun’s singular “Of itself and part of…” concert

Posted on by Peter Mechen

 

Wellington Chamber Music Sunday Concert –
Flinders Quartet and Michael Houstoun

BEETHOVEN – String Quartet No. 11 in F Minor Op. 95 “Serioso”  (1810)
DEBORAH CHEETHAM FRAILLON – Bungaree (for String Quartet) – 2020
DVOŘÁK – Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major Op.81 (1887)*

Flinders Quartet – Elizabeth Sellars and Wilma Smith (violins), Helen Ireland (viola),Zoe Knighton (cello) – *with Michael Houstoun (piano)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Sunday, 6th July, 2025

Now here was an enterprising programme, with cosmopolitean content allied to a distinctly trans-Tasman flavour supplied by the Melbourne-based Flinders Quartet, whose second violinist today was Fijian-born ex-New Zealander Wilma Smith  – and was joined in the programme’s second half, by a Wellington audience favourite, pianist Michael Houstoun. Contributing to the “Antipodean” feeling of the occasion was the Quartet’s presentation of the New Zealand premiere of a work by Aborigine Australian composer Deborah Cheetham Fraillon, a beautifully ambient work for string quartet with the title “Bungaree”, a musical characterisation of one of the most significant “First Peoples” in early colonial Australia, and of whom there’s more later in this review.

Firstly, though, came music by the acknowledged “everyman” of composers, Ludwig van Beethoven, though here in an uncharacteristic, less-than-all-encompassing mood, with a quartet he himself described as “never to be performed in public”. This was his Op.95 F Minor Quartet which takes its nickname from the composer’s own designation of the third movement – Allegro assai vivace ma SERIOSO (my emphasis), a description that eminently suits the remainder of the work as well, such as  its intensely wrought opening. The composer’s determinedly experimental features included a fierce condensation of expositional material,, unpredictable modulations and incendiary contrasts as if fuelled as much by anxiety and fury as by any exploratory impulses.

I thought the Flinders Quartet utterly “possessed’ these same impulses from within, particularly throughout the first three movements – the players’ quick-fire dynamic and trajectorial  contrasts during the first movement were to be relished, as with both the viola’s and cello’s gorgeously lyrical playing of the second theme, and, later, the wonderful “sting” of the violins’ off-beat notes during the coda, followed by that almost unnervingly quiet ending to the music! And in the second movement I thought the themes compellingly “shaped” (a lovely, plaintive tone from the viola in particular in the fugue, for instance). It seemed the later “ornamentation” of the fugue here was more “shadowy” than I’d often heard, more, perhaps of an “intimate” quality, and suggesting further that the composer was primarily writing the music for himself. Compelling, too, were the lovely free and floating tones of the ‘cello in the introduction’s return, and with those “wrong note” cadences here sounding wistful and remote rather than self-consciously attention-grabbing.

Those same “quick-fire dynamics” helped launch the Scherzo, into which the players plunged with tremendous forward drive, and whose momentums all the more underlined the almost vertiginous “upward lurch” into the Trio, the winsome sounds having a kind of improvised, “out of the air”  quality. I did enjoy the Scherzo’s return on each occasion for the players’ heightened sense of overlapped “gambolling” and the “what now?” reappearance of the Trio, this time very much aware that its time was limited (as was the Scherzo’s itself!).

The “sighing” opening of the finale held our expectations momentarily in suspense before transforming its tentative two-note concluding phrase into quicksilver. – suddenly the trajectories galvanised with the theme urgent and agitated, the group superbly bringing together the strands for the vortex-like repetitions from whose clutches the music wrestled its way forwards and into moveable space – incredible twice-times over excitement, but all done by the players here with as much whimsy as desperation! They put a bit more “schwung” into the strong, resolution-like phrases which took the work to its softly-voiced, enigmatic, “out-of-nowhere” F-major chord releasing the music from its slough of despond, and taking us all here at breakneck speed into an ending which one commentator described as “absurdly and deliberately unrelated” to the work as a whole. I liked the programme’s reference to American composer Randall Thompson’s remark re the ending that “no bottle of champagne was ever uncorked at a better time!”

The programme’s next item would have been for many people in the audience something of an unknown quantity, as would have been its composer – Deborah Cheetham Fraillon, born in 1964, is an Aboriginal Australian soprano, composer, playwright and educator who has worked ceaselessly to help re-establish her and her people’s First Nations Australian heritage. Separated from her birth-mother when only three weeks old, she grew up with adopted parents in Sydney, discovering only later that many of her original First Nations family members were musicians – and so music became an integral way of reconnecting at what she called “a much deeper level”. She now champions the voice and visibility of indigenous musicians by means of the example of both her own pioneering work as a creator and an organiser, and of her many achievements and awards in these same performing arts, as well as her continuance as an instigator and director for the development of indigenous artists.

Cheetham wrote Bungaree in 2020, a work named after the historical figure Bungaree, a leader of the Garigal clan at Broken Bay, north of Sydney, one whose intelligence and ability to interact with the growing colony of Europeans enabled him to quickly learn English and befriend English explorer Matthew Flinders and travel with him as an intermediary with indigenous people they would meet on Flinders’ circumnavigation of the Australian continent in 1802-03. Afterwards Bungaree became a familiar figure for colonists in the Sydney/Port Jackson area, together with his “principal” wife. Karoo (also known as Cora Gooseberry). He was patronised by the Governor, Lachlan Macquarie and granted an allotment of land at George’s Head, achieving a kind of celebrity status as “Chief of the Broken Bay Tribe, though his importance was arguably seen through colonial eyes as “quaint” rather than significant for his people and their cultural heritage. He died in 1830.

I was fascinated, while exploring the resources I needed to build up a “picture” of this singular personality, to encounter frequent “cautionary” messages intended for indigenous people who might similarly encounter this material which “contained names, images and voices of deceased persons” – obviously a cultural “non-practice” practice, similarly alluded to in the programme note when it points out the musical depiction of Bungaree’s name is something that in itself deserves sensitivity in relation to certain people. This was here how the work began – the three lighter instruments playing long-held notes, while the ‘cello in recitative style “sounded” the name – the violins and viola then played melismatic elaborations of the held notes, elaborating on the ‘cello’s solo, all strangely and satisfyingly ritual-like to my ears! Motifs were sounded variously as pizz. and arco, continuing to frame the sonic landscape as the variations seemed to push out the boundaries. The music had a hypnotic quality of energy and timelessness, with the cello’s repeating of the “name” sparking some energies which ranged from playful to furious – in places I was reminded by the sharp-edged tremolandi figures of Sibelius’s “Lemminkainen in Tuonela” and I wondered whether these and further were suggestive of Bungaree’s and Flinders’ experiences while circumnavigating the continent.

The second movement, Kaaroo, was a depiction, we were told, of Bungaree’s wife, highlighting her “beauty and strength of character”, which the rhapsodic nature of the ensuing music lost no time in
declaiming, upon all the instruments, with the ‘cello then adding a separate voice, and the “portrait” incorporating passages of agitation suggesting movement, action, and even conflict. These were repeatedly alternated with sequences recalling the beauty and tranquility of the piece’s opening – a stunningly vibrant and feisty personality, perhaps? A brief pause brought in the final section “Navigating the Truth”, whose “totality” I confess puzzled me a little (perhaps here I’m like the concertmaster in cellist Zoe Knighton’s story, who played those famous violin solos in Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben brilliantly without ever realising they were “about” something specific!) – Cheetham  began the piece in epic-like fashion, depicting a great vista and suggesting the beginning of a journey. But though the melodic detail developed plenty of variation, and the players began to increasingly “dig into” the material towards the end I found myself wondering (perhaps like the hapless concertmaster at the end of his terrific solos) just where the music had taken us to – I was expecting some kind of obvious transformative revelation, (as suggested by the title), but  Cheetham’s “way” was perhaps too subtle for me to glean on a single hearing from this music, all of which left me with the desire to hear the work again. with more (fewer?) open-minded expectations!

I was on surer ground with the concert’s concluding item, a favourite chamber work I’d known since my student days, Antonin Dvořák’s adorable Piano Quintet, his second and more satisfying attempt at the form (he’d initially planned to revise his earlier (Op. 5) Quintet, but thought better of it, deciding to start afresh!) This new work begins beguilingly with a cello theme accompanied by the piano, before the other instruments burst into the picture, the players relishing the contrasts between the music’s lyrical and energetic sequences. I loved the “openness” of Dvořák’s textures, even in the most heavily-scored places, and the enchantment of exchange  in those passages where, firstly, the first violin replies so tenderly to the piano’s reiteration of the opening, and then when the first movement’s “second” theme (introduced beautifully by the viola) undergoes all kinds of changes before the instruments gather in the trajectories as the piano plays haunting diminished-note flourishes which bring in the development – Dvořák is so gorgeously exploratory, throughout, and  the sense these players give of journeying with us through these fascinating sound-vistas is palpable, right to the movement’s end!

The slow movement’s opening is so very Bartok-like for any ex-piano student (on hearing that melody I could practically “see” the title page of my “For Children” Bartok piano-book all over again!) – and here, adding to the nostalgia of remembrance was the beauty of the viola’s “reply” to the piano’s plaintive opening phrase. The players moved the music to a happier place, with ingratiating pizzicato trajectories from the violins, the ‘cello then taking a richly-toned turn at solo before the music jumped suddenly into activity with a vigorous jig-like tune! – one that, when we’d all breathlessly welcomed the melancholic three-note theme back, we realised it was actually the same tune, but on “speed” or something similarly enlivening! For Dvorak this is, conversely, something of a Brucknerian movement in terms of its scale, with the players here beautifully sustaining its mood and variety of energies and utterances.

Then came one of those Dvorak movements – a scherzo – that can’t help but delight with every hearing! – after the strings and then the piano trip the light fantastic opening, the ‘cello gets the brief but gorgeous second tune, before the opening returns, the piano so effervescent with those wonderful “top of the keyboard” notes that I always listen out for. Each of the violins has alternated turns at the winsome second theme – BUT WHAT A GORGEOUS TRIO! – solemn and chordal but gently rhapsodic in a heart-rending way, before the scherzo dances back in and whirls us all about to its conclusion.

The finale’s ”get ready “ introduction primed us up for more fun – though I’ve a soft spot for the “rustic jollity” approach, I’ve always enjoyed the “brilliant and breathless”, with exhilaration and energy rather than bucolic charm on the menu. I must admit the mid-movement fugato is very exciting at this speed – a kind of “hang on tight” approach that works really well – afterwards the players saved their great crowning gesture of effusive homecoming for the coda proper with the strings and piano then enjoying the concluding rush of energised celebration. We in the audience took our cue from this and joined in at the end with like acclaim!