Month: September 2025

Orchestra Wellington – Secrets spectacularly revealed

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Marc Taddei and Orchestra Wellington –  Photo: Andrew Best

Orchestra Wellington presents:
SECRETS
WILLIAM PHILIPSON – House of the Faun
with Arohanui Strings
Lior Balachness – conductor
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART – Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat Major K. 364
with Benjamin Baker – violin
Yura Lee – viola
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH – Symphony  No. 4 in C Minor Op.43
Marc Taddei – Music Director
Orchestra Wellington

Michael Fowler Centre,
Wellington

Saturday, 20th September, 2025

This, the fourth concert in Orchestra Wellington’s 2025 season will go down in my memory as one of the most remarkable! Everything about it seemed from the outside like a collection of  interestingly vivid but disparate ideas. These had chronological “through-lines” of their own, but however “connected” with previous and future happenings they seemed almost totally unrelated to one another as part of a single evening’s music-making. And yet, despite such seeming “randomness” there was, from the opening item onwards, some over-riding synergising force , coded liasoning routine or archetypally-understood aspect which either dissolved or flowed over, through or around all impediments, and, against all odds, sculpted out from the music an impression that nothing was impossible, ill-fitting, awkward or cross-purposed which couldn’t be put to rights or made to work if the spirit was willing, resourceful and determined!

Classical music concerts have in the more recent past been mostly streamlined, well-organised, uninterrupted, stylised, moderated, time-honoured events whose success nearly always depended on a certain degree of homogeneity in terms of presentation relating to style, content, repertoire and performance standard. All of these things have been features of Marc Taddei’s successful tenure as Music Director of Orchestra Wellington, but his ever-increasing readiness to interact with his orchestra’s “community”, has established and enabled a wider homogeneity with local musicians, composers and music educators who make up the fabric of musical life in the capital.

An ongoing relationship with such a group has been with the ever-delighting and tantalising Arohanui Strings’ group, whose students of all ages have often participated in the Orchestra’s concerts, as was the case this evening. The programme prioritised the group’s involvement by beginning with a work from William Philipson, a 2025 SOUNZ commission for Orchestra and Sistema Youth Orchestra, “House of the Faun”, one inspired by Philipson’s visit to the ruins of Pompeii, Italy,  where remnants of a famed “House” were excavated, many centuries after the Mt Vesuvius eruption. Distracted as I was  by talking with various people nearby and watching the stage comings-and-goings, I didn’t get to read the composer’s descriptive programme notes, before the Arohanui Strings’ conductor Lior Balachness was on the podium, and, with the older Arohanui students sitting in front of the Orchestra, ready to begin the piece!

Opening impressively. with arresting percussion-primed introductory chords, firstly with strings and then winds and brass, the music set us amongst ambiently rolled-out sound-pictures featuring languid winds, gradually nourished by strings and then reinforced by the brass and percussion – osmotic scenes of slow, but momentous waves breaking and washing over gorgeously-sculpted beachscapes. It all seemed to unfold of its own accord, thus suggesting an ancient, even timeless kind of process, though with the subsequent crescendi levels approaching the seismic in both volume and monumentability – occasionally a solo instrument characterised an individual detail (I noted a solo cello at one point and a solo violin at another) – but though the human element was briefly represented, it was the music’s Ozymandias-like implacability that stayed in the memory, tending to dwarf such detailings as faun statues, mosaic floorings and Doric columns, all muted in the face of nature’s disdain for these past glories.

All the while I thought the playing a well-nigh indissoluble match for the music – but once “The House of Faun” had  sounded and then relinquished its spell, we were then given a  demonstration of the group’s abilities with a “classic”  –  in this case a strings-dominated version of Tchaikovsky’s “Russian Dance” from the evergreen “Nutcracker” Suite,  bringing forth more of the same appreciative audience response.

Next, we were charmed by the entrance of the even younger Arohanui players, mostly with their violins, though I noticed a single horn-player, not much bigger than the instrument she (I think) carried, but possessing rhythmic skills proving of inestimable value to the proceedings!  I actually didn’t know the first tune the group presented, but the horn-player kept the piece’s trajectories on the rails with penetrative notes inserted in the right places each time round. I knew “What shall we do with a drunken sailor?”, which bounced along in fine style, but the best came with “Tutira mai nga iwi”, with which we were encouraged to join in ( with all those years of “Music in Schools” doing the trick here, nicely! – I even heard the occasional “Aue!” from some of the audience!).

During the performance stage’s rearrangement after the youngsters’ departure, Marc Taddei introduced the orchestra’a 2026 programme, “Collaborations”, giving nothing away except a general idea involving partnership “with  (to quote the maestro himself) as many extraordinary individuals, ensembles, choirs, dancers and composers as we can”!  So, with that tantalising glimpse into the oncoming musical year with Orchestra Wellington, we were then able to settle down to enjoy the next item on this evening’s multifaceted programme – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s adorable Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat, for violin, viola and orchestra, K.364.

I had seen and heard Kiwi Ben Baker play before, but Yura Lee was a name new to me. Korean-born, and currently Los Angeles-based, she had begun her musical career as a violinist but was attracted to the viola because of the instrument’s frequent exploration of a deeper range of internal harmonies and sonorities than the violin afforded – so she’s now a virtuoso on both instruments, here taking the viola’s part. The rapport between the two musicians made tonight’s performance one I shan’t leave behind for a long time!

From the beginning, the soloists played with the orchestra, creating a kind of visually “integrated” feeling about what the players were doing with this music, advancing musical rather than display-centred attitudes about the work, and, of course, giving that opening tutti an enhanced richness and sonority, especially the “Mannheim crescendo-like” buildup to those wonderfully “tone-drenched” repeated notes at its climax – a simply marvellous moment! Then, when the soloists came in, their sounds simply grew out of the textures in a most naturally-evolving fashion.

Together Baker and Lee as much “danced” as “conversed”  their exchanges, in places with almost “Astaire and Rogers” accord, their interactions feeding the growing excitement which then broke out so joyously at the first big orchestral tutti in terms of pleasure and delight, underlining the minor-key seriousness of the development all the more, as well as the relief of the lines being able to come together again for the opening’s brief recapitulation. The same infectious orchestral energies highlighted the playfulness of the cadenza’s “anything you can do” exchanges and the satisfactions evinced by the orchestra’s concluding measures.

We could hear from this work’s slow movement something of the composer’s grief at his mother’s unexpected death the previous year , all poignantly shaped by conductor and orchestra at the beginning, with the occasional emphasis on certain notes tugging at the heartstrings. Baker and Lee intertwined their utterances mellifluously, giving an impression of one voice “listening” to another before replying, with perhaps the most heart-stopping moments to be found in the shared cadenza, where the two voices mirrored each other’s tones at once in accord and yet so distinctively.

After this the finale was pure release! – light and quick and playful, with characterful interchange suggesting ongoing rather than conclusive utterances! Baker and Lee make it all music of response and interaction rather than anything striving for effect – each player’s concluding flourish feels like an invitation to the other to share rather than a declaration of independence! It all produced a great and demonstrative ovation at the end for all concerned.

And so to the Shostakovich Symphony, the work which had to wait for twenty-five years after its completion before being performed. The composer had finished the work in 1936 for its premiere with the Leningrad Philharmonic, and rehearsals were actually under way, when suddenly the scheduled performance was abandoned. Accounts differ as to why this actually happened, but the consensus has adjudged the work was withdrawn because of pressure exerted by the authorities in the wake of the “Muddle instead of Music” attack on Shostakovich’s opera “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District” made by Stalin and his Pravda minions earlier that year.

Orchestra Wellington Strings play Shostakovich – Photo: Andrew Best

Though the full score of the abandoned symphony was lost during the war a complete set of orchestral parts were found and the score was reconstructed. But though this was some time after Stalin’s death it was not until December of 1961 that the Fourth Symphony received its actual premiere  in Moscow, with Kyril Kondrashin conducting. When the composer was later asked whether his later work would have been more like the abandoned symphony had the latter been played and accepted in the 1930s, he replied, “I would have displayed more brilliance, used more sarcasm, I could have revealed my ideas openly instead of having to resort to camouflage; I would have written more pure music….” And then he added, “But I am not ashamed of what I have written – I like all my compositions.”

Though not a New Zealand premiere, the work by dint of its rarity in performance still generated some interest and excitement akin to a landmark event in Wellington’s musical life. It might be apposite to mention here that, tenuous though the connection might have been, the composer himself was not unaware of interest in his music in this part of the world – when in 2008 I interviewed the wonderful Invercargill-born pianist Janetta McStay towards the end of her long and fruitful life she told me that, late in 1957, upon hearing about a particular new work of Shostakovich’s and making an enquiry she was eventually sent a copy of the score of his recently-written Second Piano Concerto from the Russian firm who published his music – and included in the package was a little note of thanks from Shostakovich himself concerning her interest in his music – she soon afterwards gave the New Zealand premiere of the work!

Though its own premiere took place shortly after the new Piano Concerto’s composition the Fourth Symphony’s music, written fifteen years earlier, couldn’t be more different – by turns epic and ironic, grandiose and volatile, harrowing and playful, desolate and garrulous. Its size (over an hour), its instrumental proportions (normally over a hundred players, with more strings than Orchestra Wellington could muster on this occasion) its gargantuan formal structurings (sonata forms of outsize proportions) and its incredible profusion of thematic ideas (both outer movements are mini-epics in themselves!) seemed to ally Shostakovich with Mahler as a symphonist, as did ear-tickling moments like the cuckoo calls in the first movement, the ironic second movement’s dance-like rhythms, recalling the scherzo from the older composer’s “Resurrection” Symphony, and the funeral march that begins the third movement, drawing from  the older composer’s own death-marches from his First and Fifth Symphonies.

Orchestra Wellington winds – Photo: Andrew Best

I need to state unequivocally that, in giving this music its best possible chance to “speak”, Marc Taddei and his Orchestra Wellington players sensationally performed miracles! I wrote some observations down as best I could while things unfolded in spectacular fashion! – to begin with, the opening had incredible impact, with winds and brasses striding out firmly and purposefully, followed by the strings’ and winds’ suggestively furtive handling of their subsequent polyphonies, then coming together with the brasses to create a textural panoply that astonished as much with its vigour and confidence as in its sense of knowing  where it was going! The winds did brilliantly with their triplet overlays and warning-sounding chorales, but the ensuing orchestral crescendi that grew out of the string murmurings were not to be denied! To the rescue came the bassoon, as it would do repeatedly throughout the work, with empathetic support from the harps (such a feast of texture, timbre and colour! – and wot larks were enacted between perky strings and poisonous sounding brasses at one point!) Sterling tuba and trombone warnings were ignored by similarly vociferous winds, who simply wanted a good romp, despite the brass raspberries that came their way. And then the strings once again!  – playing well above their weight, at Marc Taddei’s bidding they dashed into the insanely frenetic fugato that rippled through the ranks – incredible stuff! The brasses couldn’t resist, and neither could the percussion! What a furore! The strings stepped away and into a nebulous realm out of which timpani and orchestra came swinging with huge roars – away went the winds, climbing onto the backs of the double basses and swinging away down the symphonic road, but coming suddenly to three wise sages, a cor anglais, a solo violin and a bassoon (with a double!), each of whom gave his/her own version of “sensible advice” of the “take a break” variety – so they/we did, and so it proved, the cor anglais double-checking with us, just to make sure!

Came the middle movement – moderato con moto – a droll four-note theme was our companion, first with the strings, then the winds and then the brass and timpani – a wistful second theme (strings again) was augmented by lovely horn-playing, before the winds decided to have some raucous fun until being told off by the timpani. The strings just couldn’t resist some fugal play, capricious but easy on the ear – “we can do that too!” intoned the winds, then deliberately playing atonal lines just to annoy others, until the brass brought things back into line by interrupting with the second theme, more martial than wistful, which fired everybody up! – suddenly, it was if as if a skeletal apparition had appeared, dancing to the tune, grinning spectrally and – vanishing!

Orchestra Wellington horns and percussion – Photo: Andrew Best

There was something undeniably Mahlerian about the finale’s opening, the portentous tread of footsteps and the plaintive cries of the winds all combining to produce a funereal atmosphere which some icy string chords helped along – the textures piled up splendidly as the brass and percussion joined the march – some echt-Shostakovich string textures were evocatively floated, and the winds contributed a mournful cantilena – as the winds intensified the line the strings jumped in with two-note phrases that suddenly became urgent and thrustful with the brass’s help – suddenly all was turmoil with wailing winds seemingly trapped with the strings in a kind of sound-vortex, becoming a vigorous tattoo with brass and timpani joining in, then subsiding – but what was this? Was the circus coming to town? Who were these knockabout figures? Extraordinary! What was happening to this music? Shostakovich suddenly introduced a kind of commedia dell’arte scene into which all kinds of characters made an appearance – whimsical playing from the many solo instrumentalists all of whom covered themselves with glory – such lovely swooning string-playing at one point, immediately followed by some kind of comic-turn, the instruments contributing all kinds of show-time star-turns! – and then it seemed, almost without warning, to melt into thin air, as if it never was – until out of the silences strode the timpani, repeatedly leading a tumultuous orchestral onslaught capped by the brasses and percussion. (Was it something Shostakovich obviously needed to get out of his system?) – Here in the Michael Fowler Centre I had never before heard quite such an orchestral tumult! – the aftermath was as if the cosmos had been somehow cleft in twain and left in tatters with only a few pitiless wind chords, a lone trumpeter-sentinel of the watch, and a gently weeping celeste left, the latter leaving us with a single, if equivocally ascending note.

To have made this symphonic journey anywhere would have been a profound experience – but to have been taken on such a one with such music brought to life by conducting and playing as we experienced here was to have been given something well-nigh unforgettable in cherish! Resounding kudos to Marc Taddei and his intrepid players for what I shall long continue to call a “sensational’ musical experience.

 

Handel, Ysaÿe, Shostakovich and Mendelssohn – courses and causes at Roseneath’s Long Hall.

Posted on by Peter Mechen
Helene, Rolf and Peter Gjelsten perform Handel at The Long Hall

The Chamber Pot-Pourri Ensemble presents:
GEORG FRIEDRIC HANDEL – Trio Sonata in B Minor
EUGENE YSAŸE – Ballade for Solo Violin Op. 27 No 3*
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH – String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor
FELIX MENDELSSOHN – String Quartet No.2 in A Minor Op.13

Helene Pohl and Peter Gjelsten* (violins)
Nicholas Hancox (viola) / Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

The Long Hall, Roseneath, Wellington
Saturday, 20th September
(A Concert to Benefit Kaibosh Food Rescue)

Violinist Helene Pohl’s and ‘cellist Rolf Gjelsten’s ever-resourceful Pot-Pourri Ensemble was joined today at the Long Hall by Peter Gjelsten on second violin as well as violist Nicholas Hancox. I’d previously encountered the latter’s excellent contributions to this series on a couple of occasions, but this was my first encounter with violinist Peter Gjelsten (Helene’s and Rolf’s son) in these concerts.

This was a programme which offered interest and delight through music from different eras, containing contrasts and connections of different kinds. Though not presented in chronological order, the pieces’ remarkably varied intensities could be said to form a sequence begun by Handel’s B Minor Trio Sonata No, 1 with its “boldly inventive variety and expressive range” (to quote from another review I happened to read of a recent recording of this work), and continuing throughout Eugène Ysaÿe’s brilliant demonstration of virtuosic violin-playing capabilities in one of his solo Violin Sonatas. With Dmitri Shostakovich’s dark and iconically dissident Eighth String Quartet from 1960 the intensities reached levels of extremity which the extraordinarily accomplished Mendelssohn Quartet that concluded the programme both defused and yet echoed in the music’s youthful impetuosities with considerable confidence and elan.

The opening item required just three players for two violins and a ‘cello, the ensuing combination bringing forth a delightful rendition of Handel’s delectable work, one that straightaway brought to my mind the composer’s wonderful Op.6 Concerti Grossi, and from whose manifold thematic treasury there may have even been some cribbings, as was the composer’s wont in certain instances elsewhere. Exquisite phrasings and ear-catching tonal variations brought gorgeous duetting between the two violins in the opening Andante, and a particularly fetching lead-in to the allegro ma non troppo, with the two violin lines playfully nudging one another, and the ‘cello dancing in attendance – we especially enjoyed, towards the movement’s end, the spicy discord, beautifully resolved.

The Largo which followed, gracefully and ceremonially, brought an opening sequence that was “echoed” in a subtle and more intimate way by the players, before the rather “hunky” finale made its unashamed entrance with its rustic kind of rhythmic  charm. Altogether, it was a perfect “ear-opener” with which to experience both the music’s subtleties and more forceful characterisations of mood in preparation for what was to follow.

Peter Gjelsten then introduced a solo violin item, the Sonata for Solo Violin in D minor ‘Ballade’, Op. 27, No. 3  by Eugène Ysaÿe. a one-movement work from 1923, and the third in a set of six sonatas for solo violin. Each of these works, we were told, was intended as a tribute to a famous contemporary violinist, the first being dedicated to Josef Szigeti, whose performance of one of Bach’s solo violin sonatas was Ysaÿe’s direct inspiration for the set as a whole. Today’s work was dedicated to the Roumanian violinist and composer Georges Enescu.

Ysaÿe begins the work with a rhapsodically ascending, double-stopped figure – an arresting gesture and here compellingly played! Having captured our attention, the music brought us in closer with a musing line, in places partnered by a similarly-inclined harmonising voice. Secure and definite chording joined with the long-breathed lines, the double-stopping assuming a heroic character in places, the young player giving his all to these strongly-chiselled statements, whether lyrically or heroically-stated. An almost furtive, will-o-the wisp character suddenly took over the lines, the music materialising and dematerialising as the notes from the strings responded to a more mercurial touch, out of which the heroic manner emerged even more strongly, and with a more purposeful sense of direction.

As the piece pushed excitingly onwards I got the feeling that the music and player were actually driving one another, sharing in the exhilaration of the quest approaching its raison d’etre, the completion of a uniquely-characterised journey, and one resonantly demonstrated with a resolute ascending double-stopped figure falling onto a single concluding note  –  a splendid “That’s it” gesture! Since the concert, I’ve found a sentence in an article about this music that has enhanced the enjoyment of my memory of Peter Gjelsten’s splendid performance, something which Ysaÿe himself wrote about it: “I have let my imagination wander at will – the memory of my friendship and admiration for George Enescu and the performances we gave together…..have done the rest”.

The musical discourse seemed on a roll by now, having generated sufficient interest and momentum for our sensibilities to be exposed to what seemed would be the afternoon’s most demanding and mind-stretching experience – a performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s well-known Eighth Quartet, a work that’s haunted me for most of my music-listening life ever since hearing a famous 1960s recording (probably the first!) by the Borodin Quartet (though I wasn’t as “close to the cutting edge” as that remark sounds, as I didn’t encounter the recording until the 1970s!).

The work itself has invited plenty of animated discussion regarding what it actually signifies – there are the composer’s own words inscribed on the score – “In memory of victims of fascism and war” and his remarkable completion of the work in three days while on a visit during 1960 to Dresden, the city almost completely destroyed by Allied firebombing in 1945. Set against all of this is conjecture arising from the composer’s liberal use of the notes D-E-flat-C-B, which, in German notation is an abbreviation of his own name, DSCH (the composer had used it before in his Tenth Symphony), a motif which appears right at the work’s beginning, It proceeds to dominate the whole work, appearing in tandem with fragments of other works by Shostakovich – the First, Fifth and Eleventh Symphonies, the Second Piano Trio and the First ‘Cello Concerto – and there’s a significant quotation from the composer’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk, So why all this self-quotation in a work dedicated to “victims of fascism and war?”

For those who ascribe to the composer’s posthumously-published (and widely-disputed) memoirs, Testimony, edited by Solomon Volkov, the Quartet’s subject is instead autobiographical, the music directly referring to Shostakovich’s own personal sufferings and sorrow. This view was reinforced by events of that time, of his despair and feelings of guilt having to join the Communist Party when promoted as Head of the Union of Composers of the Soviet Federation – even contemplating the option of suicide (in a letter to a friend Shostakovich wrote re the finished work, “You could write on the cover – “Dedicated to the memory of the composer of this Quartet”).

From the beginning it all feels too self-obsessed and deeply stricken to be anything but an undilutedly personal utterance – the Largo opened with the solo cello voicing the DSCH theme and the other instruments giving the same theme slow canonic treatment. The violin played eerie chromatic lines, echoed later in the movement by the ‘cello, as the accompanying instruments “held the lines”, their implacability creating all kinds of tensions and expectations, with viola and cello steadfastly continuing as the two violins counterpointed their themes – what a wonderful “mini-crescendo” mid-movement with a reiteration of the DSCH theme! – and while the ‘cello played its chromatic figures I could almost “hear” strands of Russian church chanting, before the DSCH theme gathered the strands together for a bit of pre-onslaught bolstering up…..

Almost without warning the Allegro burst upon us, assailing us with the first movement themes presented as vehemently and viciously as possible, and alongside the DSCH motiv, throwing in things like the “massacre” music figurations from the Eleventh Symphony in the lead-up to the Jewish folk-theme – all so heart-rending in this context, the players immersing themselves, body and soul, in the music’s agony! – and with the composer refusing to spare them or us when he reintroduces the DSCH as its own accompaniment before returning to the Jewish tune! – such macabre moments, with the climax followed by a wrenching split-second of silence!

One wondered during that split second whether anything else could be as shocking as what we’d just heard – the answer, when it came with just as much force and similar intent was the black humour of the third movement Allegretto, Helene Pohl’s violin throwing the DSCH motif into the air with spiteful Mephistophelean glee before beginning a waltz whose crude trajectories and mocking tones were further underlined by Peter Gjelsten’s wonderfully eerie violin trills decorating the dance’s obsessive “waltzification” of the DSCH theme. A second theme was even more pitiless in its crudity and brutality, a mood relieved only by the music suddenly switching trajectories and quoting the composer’s First ‘Cello Concerto (but with the ‘cello theme played by the violin). Then while the violins played a strangely wind-blown chromatic sequence, Rolf Gjelsten’s cello in its high register gave us a stunningly eerie-sounding passage, the music seeming as though it had lost its way – after a few more desultory waltz-measures, and another ‘Cello Concerto quote, the violin then retreated into a self-communing world, leaving the remaining instruments to rap out an ominous three-note tattoo, by way of signalling the Largo fourth movement’s arrival, a motif that recurred at various stages.

This movement’s rather more Janus-faced character was evident in its alternation  between the sobering appearances of both the DSCH quotation and the hammering three-note motif’ and what proved to be the work’s most poignant expressions of human emotion – firstly came a lament-like quote from the Eleventh Symphony, and then a moving sequence from a revolutionary song “Exhausted by the hardships of prison”, with the melody played on the violin. However the most beautiful of these was an excerpt from an aria sung by the principal character, Katarina, from the composer’s opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”, here played most affectingly on the ‘cello’s high register by Rolf Gjelsten. And even though the sequence’s last word (continuing into the final movement) was the lately ubiquitous “hammering” motif, the presence of these glimmerings of a universal kind of human spirit testified to the power of hope in the most outwardly unpromising circumstances.

No easy solution, then, was forthcoming – and the finale’s music simply deepened the work’s enigmatic profile, reinforcing the idea of the Quartet as “autobiographical”  – We heard the DSCH motive introduce the finale, lightened by a kind of counter-melody, but offering little actual redemption, leading to a dark and final reprise of those ineffably enigmatic notes before they disappeared into the silences. We sat at the end, stunned by the immediacy of it all, uncomfortably mindful of the music’s delineations of an individual’s tragedy which continues to speak for countless numbers of people – there, but for fortune awaits the world’s sorrow for any of us.

What a relief, then, after the interval, to journey into a different world, that of a young and gifted composer who’d encountered love for the first time and bravely borne its loss, both in life and in his music! Felix Mendelssohn was a child prodigy comparable to Mozart (Robert Schumann called him “the Mozart of the 19th Century), and at the time of writing the A Minor String Quartet we were about to hear, the 18 year-old had already produced 12 String symphonies, a String Quintet, the first of his five “mature” symphonies, the Overture “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and his renowned “Octet” for strings, not to mention a number of unpublished earlier string quartets. The Quartet showed the influence of Beethoven’s late quartets, especially the latter’s inclinations towards cyclic form which many later nineteenth-century composers were to fully exploit – here, one of Mendelssohn’s own songs, Frage (“Question”) Op.9, No. 1 haunted each of the movements (the composer actually had the song published in tandem with the quartet to emphasise the connection).

Such a romantic and lyrical opening! – one that immediately bore out what cellist Rolf Gjelsten said in his introduction about music one readily imagines as having words being sung  – I loved, for instance, the loaded three-note phrase practically speaking the words “Is es wahr?” (Is it true?), just before the music swept into the Allegro vivace in the key of A Minor, aptly suggesting a telling degree of angst in the notes’ expression – (how often were composers from Beethoven onwards to use that same three note-progression for various expressive purposes, with both Liszt and Brahms immediately coming to mind!).

Being new to this work I couldn’t help but be astonished by its sheer facility, with interaction between all the players worked into a seamless flow, and no part seemingly relegated to that of a mere accompanist – no wonder that a contemporary listener to one of the young Mendelssohn’s similar efforts was overheard to say to a companion – “Which quartet of Beethoven’s is this?”

Similarly, in the Adagio non lento movement which followed, the fugato section, deliciously played, captivated with its feeling of integration of all the voices, the young composer then daring to insert a kind of dancing fugal holiday for the players, with the theme an enthusiastic, if sometimes inverted, and in places, even wayward and rumbustious fellow-traveller. By way of helping to restore order, the players then gave the return of the opening a gentle, jewelled-like rite of passage to the finish.

The Intermezzo was next, dancing its somewhat circumspect way along, when it was more-or-less “ambushed” by allegro di molto fairy-music with at first wonderfully-confusing rhythmic patternings for this hapless listener (I was eventually “sorted”, here, even without being rich!), and with lyrical lines deftly floating over the scamperings! – having run out of “puff”, the music slowed and regained its composure (with a brief but delightful whimsical coda!) – then, suddenly, from our fairyland-like observation-platforms we were assailed with fierce tremolandi from the lower strings and an anguished recitative from the first violin, the strings tumbling down a slope towards a second-tier onslaught (not quite as fierce!) of more tremolandi, this time gathering up the voices and proceeding with the finale’s agitations – dramatic stuff!

We heard fast-moving passages revisiting the first-movement’s agitations, interspersed with recitative-like sequences, and another fugal-like sequence launched, as in the second movement, by Nicholas Hancox’s sonorous, ever-steady viola – the reappearance of the tremolandi that began the movement’s precipitate beginning still carried some of the young composer’s “hurt”, but after further agitations and deliberations, a third and final recitative-like series of more circumspect tremolandi-like gestures indicated a softening of resolve, as did a poignant return of the quartet’s opening. A final sounding of the three-note “Is es wahr” phrase and the dream of love was put to rest – perhaps the youthful Mendelssohn’s most candid outpouring of emotion in music, and done rich and sensitive justice here by these players.

Lights which keep us from darkness – CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI – Vespro della Beata Vergine 1610

Posted on by Peter Mechen

CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI – Vespro della Beata Vergine 1610

The Tudor Consort, directed by Michael Stewart

Sopranos: Anna Sedcole, Erin King, Jane McKinlay, Lydia Joyce, Pepe Becker,
Rebecca Stanton   Altos: Andrea Cochrane, Alexandra Granville, Helene Page,
Alexandra Woodhouse-Appleby, Kassandra Wang, Maaike Christie-Beekman
Tenors: Axel Tie, John Beaglehole, Josh Long, Phillip Collins, Philip Roderick,
Richard Taylor   Basses: Brian Hesketh, David Houston, Frazer MacDiarmid,
Joshua Jamieson. Keith Small, Matthew Painter

Violins: Greg Squire, Anne Loeser   Violas:  Sophia Acheson, Lynsey Mountford
‘Cello: Jane Young    Viola da gamba: Imogen Granwal   Violone: Joan Perarnau Garriga
Cornetti: Danny Lucin, Matthew Manchester, Peter Reid   Recorders: Kamala Bain,
Katrin Eickhorst  Sackbuts: Peter Maunder, Byron Newton, Jon Harker
Dulcian: Ben Hoadley   Lute; Jonathan Le Cocq   Organ: Bethany Angus

St.Mary of the Angels Church, Boulcott St., Wellington
Saturday, 13th September 2025

Claudio Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespro della Beata Vergine (Vespers of the Blessed Virgin) could well lay claim to be the composer’s equivalent “signature work”  to that of Georg Frideric Handel’s  Messiah. Of course the latter’s popularity has never been in doubt,  triumphantly surviving even its somewhat grotesquely-inflated periods of presentation throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries, and continuing (in more “authentic” formats) to be widely-performed today. Monteverdi’s work, on the other hand, written well over a century earlier, has by comparison both a mystery-shrouded genesis and early performance history.  The work’s 1610 publication was in the form of eight partbooks rather than as a single, complete score, of which it seems only one has survived – and no performance of the Vespers in the composer’s lifetime has been documented. It wasn’t until 1932 when the first “complete” edition of Monteverdi’s works appeared that the work as a whole began to receive attention from scholars and performers, attention which has since come to represent almost iconic status!

Today with the help of both recordings and (happily, here in Wellington) “once-in-a-blue-moon” stellar live performances, we can be freshly astonished at the grandeur and splendour wrought by such an opulently resonant sound-window as that thrown open by the present performance. My own introduction to the work was in 2010 at the same venue through St Mary of the Angels’ then music director Robert Oliver’s magnificent celebration of the work’s 400-year existence with local singers (Baroque Voices) and instrumentalists (Academia Sanctae Mariae) – see the review at https://middle-c.org/2010/08/resplendent-monteverdi-at-st-mary-of-the-angels/  A quote from that review equally applies to what I heard just the previous evening (incidentally, with a few of the same singers and instrumentalists who performed the work in 2010) – one that remarked upon “virtuoso singers and players with a brilliant command of all the instruments and techniques”.

Tudor Consort director Michael Stewart chose not to use the Antiphons included by Oliver in his performance  (antiphons are texts, sung or spoken, used in conjunction with Psalms (quotations from the Old Testament) to rejuvenate the meanings of the latter in a more “Christian” sense). Monteverdi pairs each Psalm with a Motet, the latter termed  “sacred concertos” intended more as a contrast to, rather than an expansion of the Psalms – the wonderful verses Nigra sum and Pulchra est, for example, both being texts from the Biblical “Song of Solomon” – though the Psalm Lauda Jerusalem, is followed by a Sonata sopra Sancta Maria. Such differences between performances serve to indicate (here, admittedly, in a relatively minor way) how arguments might have developed regarding what ought/ought not to be included in the Vespers, and which have continued over the years since the work’s new-found world-wide popularity. Like all great music, it remains a work in progress rather than a museum piece!!

Long before the first note of the work was sounded, the atmosphere in the church was burgeoning and vibrant, the venue having almost filled up half-an-hour before the starting-time – amazing! If ever one wanted an indication that the city’s receptiveness towards and appetite for the performing arts was demonstrative and urgent, this all seemed as propitious a sign as any. To enthusiastic applause the musicians at last appeared to take their positions, the work beginning with tenor John Beaglehole’s ringing entreaty of the Almighty  – the opening of Psalm 70, with the words  “Deus, in adjutorium,meum intende” ( O God, make haste to deliver me!)  – followed immediately by the choir’s equally sonorous “Domine,  adadjuvandum me festina”!  (O Lord, make haste to help me!) accompanied by a fanfare-like orchestral panoply that its composer had previously used to begin his opera La favola d’Orfeo, a melody whose impact holds fast to its theatrical and emotional glory here as much as elsewhere.

What an amazing roller-coaster ride Monteverdi gives both his musicians and his listeners! Time and space obviously precludes a detailed description of the entire performance, so a modicum of description will serve to illustrate – suffice to say that Michael Stewart’s consistently vital direction infused his singers and instrumentalists with an infectious sense of joy and purpose throughout even the most complex figurations and deeply-felt sonorities realised by the presentation. And, as much to the work’s sense of the momentous and ceremonial, we were drawn into its rather more personal and intimate moments by the singing’s and playing’s beauties, evident in particular during those various “sacred concerto”  motets.

Beginning with that solo-voiced declamation, and those answering fanfares and choral entreaties came the first psalm setting, “Dixit Dominus”,  with its six-part choir combining steady sonorities in places (Sede a dextris meis – “Sit at my right hand”) with exciting rapid-note and -phrase emphases (Donec ponam inimicos – “Until I make  your enemies your footstool”). Sopranos Anna Sedcole and Erin King  voiced beautiful exchanges and adroit teamwork (Virgam virtutis tua emittet Dominus ex Sion – “The Lord shall send out the rod of thy strength from Zion”), while the choir’s different voice strands created great excitement with Dominus a dextris tuis confregit in die ira sua reges (“The Lord at thy right hand shall destroy kings in the day of his wrath”), the whole, with its interspersed contrasts between tonal beauty and physical excitement enticingly preparing us for what was to follow further.

An unfortunate audience sneeze briefly interrupted (but fortunately didn’t impede) the beginning of the beauteous Nigra Sum one of two excerpts from the “Song of Solomon” – texts used here in both cases for motets intended to be “antiphon substitutes” in a Vespers Service.  Here, tenor soloist Richard Taylor Taylor relished the delicious word-painting describing a black woman’s beauty, and the music’s animation at the King’s response to her charms, concluding with a gracefully-delivered final Tempus putationes advenit (“The hour of pruning is at hand”).Though the texts of this and Pulchra Es seem almost to border on the erotic, there was at this time in certain quasi-sacred works something of a sensual view of the soul of the Mother of God in line with being a spiritual kind of “Bride for the Church” – a similar attitude voicing this somewhat elevated kind of eroticism in relation to Mary appears also in the Psalm Audi Coelum later in the Vespers.

The ensuing Psalm Laudate Pueri Dominum was suitably adorned by warm and fluid texturings from the outset, individual voices  introducing separate strands beautifully cohering into descriptions of “the rising and the setting of the sun” (A solis ortu usque ad occasum) and of transformations of peoples lives – the men’s voices proclaiming Suscians a terra inopem (“He raises the simple from the dust”) and joining with the women’s voices to simply proclaim Ut collocet cum cum principibus (“That he may set him with princes”) – so beautiful! I enjoyed also (as did the singers) the “happy ending” of the phrase concerning the “barren woman” as becoming  matrem filiorum latantem  (“A joyful mother of children!”).

While not effacing my memory of Pepe Becker’s and Jayne Tankersley’s voices in 2010 with the erotic charge of their “Pulchra Es”, sopranos Anna Sedcole and Erin King here blended and intertwined their voices with echoes of the same, if with a notch or two’s gentler suggestiveness. In “Duo Seraphim”  it was the turn of the “Three Tenors” to shine, with Phillip Collins’ and Richard Taylor’s voices both floating their individual lines and negotiating their repeated-note phrases with confidence, joined by Philip Roderick at Tres sunt, qui testimonium  (“There are three who bear witness”) to reaffirm the Trinity. The ten-part double-choir forces of the succeeding “Nisi Dominus” gave us great, rolling sound- trajectories at the beginning, with energies aplenty enlivening both  Vanum est vobis ante lucem surgere (“It is vain for you to rise before dawn”)  and the rapid-fire triplet passages at Sicut sagitta in manu potentis (“As arrows in the hands of the mighty”), followed by a grand and rolling “Gloria” with a blazoned “Amen”.

The second half brought us an exquisite setting of the Psalm Audi Caelum, tenor Phillip Collins  pouring  whole draughts of feeling into the opening words Audi verba mea plena desidero et perfuse gaudio (“Hear my words full of longing and pervaded by joy”) – and straightaway beginning a paean of fulsome praise of the Virgin Mary as a woman, again enthusiastically blurring any boundaries dividing secular worship from  sacred devotion, the text somewhat coming to its senses as the declamations continued! Throughout, the echoed responses of the distantly-placed Philip Roderick seemed to exert a charged, “time-standing still” effect on the scene giving rise to a kind of magical wonderment of being.

“Lauda Jerusalem” which followed was guaranteed to break such a spell with gusto! – the singers seemingly to “melt” the bar-lines and fuse the irresistible trajectories of the  music into a kind of unstoppable flow! A stately and solemn Gloria at the end brought us to an equally conclusive and undisputed “Amen”, From these unbridled energies we were able to rest on what seemed like the immutable structures of the hymn “Sancta Maria”, the sopranos resembling snow-capped mountain peaks rising from the plethora of forests, ravines and plateaus suggested by the variegated instrumentql forces in their tireless, priestlike task of constant accompaniments of the “same-but-different” choral repetitions of the prayer.

In what seemed like no time at all we had left the mountaintops and were gazing at a star whose light spanned a vast ocean – Monteverdi’s first three verses of the hymn Ave Maris Stella (Hail, Star of the Sea) praise the Mother of God, rename Eve, the first woman, with the word “Ave”, and petition her with putting wrongs to right, light to darkness and bad to good. Each verse was followed by a different instrumental scoring with the aforementioned three choral (all delightful), the next three with solo voices (all characterful – soprano Rebecca Stanton, alto Maaike Christie-Beekman and bass Frazer MacDiarmid) and with a return to the choir for the last one. And with that we came to the Magnificat, the equivalent of a skyful of stars!

Monteverdi included two setting of the Magnificat in the 1610 Vespers publication, the first seven-voice part one being that used here. The twelve sections each feature a vocal line, either solo or with other voices, sometimes silent and at other times joining the instruments in the elaborations – the clear, long tones of the chants are thus festooned with what must have seemed like “music of the spheres” to Monteverdi’s musicians and listeners – as one critic put it, “dazzling variety married to simple unity” – as if it were the “Maris Stella” of the piece,  the steady light to which all else seems drawn. I enjoyed the vigour of Matthew Painter’s and Joshua Jamieson’s  Quia fecit (“For he that is mighty”), as I did the evocative echo-play between Phillip Collins and Philip Roderick against the women’s beautiful “Gloria”  – but found myself equally touched by two well-remembered voices from that 2010 Vespers, soprano Pepe Becker’s and alto Andrea Cochrane’s blending beautifully and indeed appropriately at Esurientes implevit bonis (“He hath filled the hungry with good things”).It was an apt metaphor for the musical feast to which we were being treated.

Such works as these Vespers stay in the memory as do lights which keep us from darkness  – what can one say, except to express boundless gratitude to the composer and his work’s devoted performers!

 

The Monster in the Maze – putting community on the stage

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Ipu Laga’aia as Theseus, Sarah Castle as his Mother, and Joel Amosa as Daedalus with some of the community chorus participants   –   photo, Emma Brittenden

New Zealand Opera presents:
The Monster in the Maze by Jonathan Dove, libretto by Alasdair Middleton.
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, community singers and musicians
Cast: Maaka Pohatu – King Minos of Crete
Ipu Laga’aia – Theseus
Sarah Castle – Theseus’s Mother
Joel Amosa – Dadaelus
Conductor: Brent Stewart,
Director: Anapela Polata’ivao ONZM
Creative Producer: Stacey Leilua
Choreographer: Petmal Petelo
Production and Lighting Design:
Filament Eleven II – Rachel Marlow / Bradley Gledhill

Friday 12th September, St James Theatre (Wellington)
Until September 19 and 20 (Auckland).

Review by Peter Mechen (Middle C)

I took my six-year-old nephew to the St James Theatre in Wellington to see “The Monster in the Maze” – his first-ever opera experience! Of course, I was as excited as he was, expecting something completely and fascinatingly different to the usual operatic experience afforded by works such as “Carmen”, “The Magic Flute”, or “La Traviata”. For one thing, this production places as much importance upon its own unique style of presentation as it does on the story and its characters – the people on the stage ranged from opera “professionals” (a few members of the New Zealand Opera Company) to amateur singers, mostly young people who make up most of the 150-plus chorus members.

For another, the story is a simple, basic version of the age-old and well-known myth about the Greek hero Theseus and his plan to kill the terrible half-man, half-bull Minotaur who lived in a fearful maze called “The Labyrinth” on the island of Crete. And for a third, the situation which the opening of this production presents has resonances which are anything but distant mythological tales confined to the never-never land of fantasy – the cruel and barbarous regime of the King of Crete and his murderous plan to subjugate the Athenians he has just conquered bears an almost sickening likeness to the present genocidal situation  in the Middle East being inflicted upon the Palestinians in Gaza by their remorseless Israeli oppressors.

Maaka Pohatu as Minos, King of Crete    –   photo, Emma Brittenden

In fact the opening scene of the production had enormous theatrical weight and dramatic menace, thanks to the spine-chillingly forceful energies of Maaka Pohatu (King Minos of Crete) who totally dominated the stage with his delivery of the words (clearly spoken rather than sung) and his brutally boastful presence. He was actually given surtitles of a kind inscribed on the archways, somewhat ironically, as he was the one character least in need of them for his intentions to be conveyed to his riveted audience! For this reason I found a good deal of what the other main characters sang hard to decipher – always a problem with opera, even when  in English! I thought surtitles should have been continued throughout (though certainly NOT on cell-phones, as was suggested at one point – why would we go to opera only to have to read things on our cell-phones?)

Such was the power of Pohatu’s delivery of the pitiless proclamation we were stunned, almost as if we ourselves were under the King’s sway along with the Athenians. Certainly, the scenes involving the Athenian children required by Minos to be sacrificed (either every seven or nine years, depending on which version of the myth one reads!) by being put on a ship to Crete bound for the labyrinth in which they will be fed to the Minotaur had enormous poignancy – the children’s youth, beauty and innocence touching on feelings of pity, dread and horror, all exacerbated by a sense throughout the theatre of all-pervading “involvement”.

We were, of course, all buoyed up by the arrival of Theseus (variously lyrical and heroic of voice, and clear of diction) wanting to know what was “up”, and after being told the situation, determinedly announces that he will go with the children and with his machete put an end to the Monster! His mother (Sarah Castle) was, of course aghast at losing her son but Theseus was adamant – he will save Athens and its people from this oppression!

The set design was wonderful, broad-brush-stroke stuff, beginning with dark, starkly-lit pillars evoking King Minos’s forbidding palace as the king issued his proclamation from its depths, then withdrawing the pillars in favour of horizontal beams which rose and fell as requiring opening or more constricted spaces, then criss-crossing with the pillars when the children accompanied by Theseus entered the boat to take them to Crete.  The ship’s progress was then effectively and atmospherically “plotted” on a series of horizontals along which the image “sailed”, slowly diminishing in size, the watchers sadly dispersing, led by the Mother, after the ship leaves.

As the ship approached Crete, we saw some of the inhabitants waiting, cast here as a quasi- oppressed group of people, darkly, almost militaristically dressed in near-combat attire, moving about a dim and dismal scenario, enacting a kind of reception-party. The children and Theseus disembarked, the set forming a kind of criss-cross matrix of imprisonment with a small entrance, through which the visitors passed – despite the walls, portals and columns being stylised, straight-sided matrices they more-than- readily invited the audience’s individual imaginations to flesh out their dramatic reality as the  beginnings of the labyrinth. Unexpectedly, the intended victims then encountered a fellow captive, Daedalus (Joel Amosa), the actual designer of the Labyrinth (in some versions of the legend, was himself lost in the intricacies of the maze) – whatever the mythic detail, the character he was no friend of King Minos, and so helped the story’s hero to find his way to the Minotaur, a manifestation, incidentally, whose appearance was not quite what one might have expected….

As his fearful companions hid behind various outcrops or in secluded configurations, Theseus probed deeper – the colours became increasingly lurid (the lighting scenarios were magical in their evocative power) and the appearance on the stage of what seemed like an infernal band of brass musicians was a masterstroke of theatre, especially as the tension was mounting with the viscerally-frightening prospect of the Minotaur’s arrival! – to a blaze of rasping tones from the musicians the hero was confronted with his invisible but incredibly “present” enemy, on whom he fixed his gaze, while slashing and jabbing with his machete! – we were terrorised and fearful, convinced that Theseus was fighting for his life against an enemy we couldn’t actually see but KNEW was there! Theseus companions sang and shouted encouragement as the hero gave his utmost to the fray. By this time the lighting had soaked the setting’s textures in blood from which Theseus arose, machete aloft and triumphant! The devil might be in the detailing, but this unseen devil was now no more, and the way was now open to freedom, release and continuation of life! How more cathartic a feeling could have been conveyed than this one? It remained only for the sadistic Cretan King Minos to express his anger, grief and despair at the destruction of his plan for total subjugation of the Athenian people, thanks to the heroism of Theseus, who was triumphantly reunited with his family and his people!

Community chorus participants in “Monster in the Maze”  –    photo, Emma Brittenden

More, much more, than a splendid depiction of heroism overcoming tyranny, this production spoke for a kind of power of involvement obviously leading up to and throughout the story which, by the end seemed to have resonated with every single person in the theatre. For those of us who were regular opera-goers the unbridled exuberance we found ourselves witnessing on the stage among performers and enablers of the production seemed no less than intoxicating! And people on either side of me in the audience whom I spoke with immediately afterwards (none regular opera-goers) seemed overwhelmed by what they had just seen and been themselves caught up with! As for my six-year-old nephew – he was most gratifyingly entranced by the whole show!

It made memorable the moment when everybody involved with the production, from director Anapela Polata’ivao, creative producer Stacey Leilua, choreographer Petmal Petelo, and the Filament Eleven II design team of Rachel Marlow and Bradley Glkedhill,  together with conductor Brent Stewart and his onstage/offstage musicians, gathered together on the stage at the end to unite with the audience to enjoy the fruition of those expressions of mutual appreciation and communal achievement which in the words of NZ Opera General Director Brad Cohen, come from experiencing storytelling through the power of the human singing voice.

 

 

“The Phantasmagoria is constant!” – Ravel approves his magical new 1925 opera!

Posted on by Peter Mechen
Charlotte Secker as the Child. and Francesca Fagan as the Mother (shadow)

MAURICE RAVEL  –  Opera in One Act – “L’Enfant et les Sortilèges”
(libretto by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette)
Students and staff of Te Kōkī / New Zealand School Of Music
Victoria University of Wellington / Te Herenga Waka
– in association with Toi Whakaari / NZ Drama School

Sara Brodie – Director
Therese Hanaray – Assistant Director –
Martin Riseley – Conductor and Head of Strings
Kathryn Mosley – Chorusmaster and Head of Collaborative Piano
Grace O’Brien – Set and Costume Design
Alex Fisher – Lighting Design
Brooklyn Saunders – Production Manager\

Cast and Musicians
Charlotte Secker  –  The Child
Francesca Fagan  –  The Mother, the Cup
Charle Rainey –  The Armchair, the Male Cat
Greer McCarthy – The Bergère Chair
Joseph Clinton – The Grandfather Clock, a Tree
Elias Nguyen – The Teapot, the Arithmetic Teacher, the Tree Frog
Chu My Duyen – The Fire, the Nightingale
Cadence Chung – A Shepherd, the Dragonfly
Eve Parker-Groves – A Shepherdess, the Bat
Emilia Gray – The Princess
Eunice Ng – the Female Cat, an Owl
Tiaki McArdle – the Squirrel

Members of Te Kōkī Orchestra, New Zealand School of Music

The Hannah, Hannah Playhouse, Cambridge Terrace, Wellington
Saturday 6th September, 2025

Maurice Ravel’s only operatic ventures during his remarkable compositional career were two smaller-scale works, written and performed a number of years apart – firstly, in 1911, came the brilliant, tongue-in-cheek satire “L’Heure espagnole” (The Spanish Hour), and then (in the wake of the Great War) succeeded by an ostensibly less “adult” but more deeply-felt creation, “L’Enfant et les Sortilèges” (The Child and the Magic). The latter is a work whose explorations of a child’s world don’t spare the listener occasional moments of cruelty, darkness and sorrow touched upon in places by the story. The original idea for the scenario came from the author Colette, whose first intention was for the story to be told in the form of a ballet. Ravel, however, had been persuaded that an operatic successor to “L’Heure espagnole” was needed, and had meantime been stimulated by the “new wave” of musicals and revues with new dance-forms by composers such as Gershwin. As the new work took shape so too did the composer’s enthusiasm for these “operetta-style” features take wing, to the point where Ravel could enthusiastically describe preparations for the first performance in Monte Carlo in March 1925  with the words “…an extraordinary production – the roles are numerous and the phantasmagoria is constant!”

This 2025 realisation was co-ordinated by Jenny Wollerman, Head of Classical Voice at Wellington’s Te Koki School of Music, bringing together students and staff members from both the Music School and Toi Whakaari (NZ Drama School). It joins a number of memorable productions by the Music School over the years, with, to my mind  Benjamin Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Verdi’s rarely-performed “Il Corsaro” readily resonating in my memory still, as I write this.

Director Sara Brodie’s production at “The Hannah” most appropriately celebrated the work’s one-hundredth birth-year, echoing triumphantly the composer’s enthusiastic description of the original event with its “continually and intimately-mingled” dancing on the part of the singers. She made splendid use of the venue’s multi-levelled and -entranced features, encapsulating the audience within bevies of singer/actors on two sides and musicians on the remaining two, so that we felt at times as much participants in as observers of the story’s by turns dream-like, quixotic, unpredictable and heart-warming expositions.

Straightaway, Ravel’s innocently sinuous Prelude drew us into the dream, a kind of twilit world of light and shadow, suggesting the “old-fashioned Normandy country home” of Colette’s setting, complete with armchair, fireplace and Grandfather clock – even the shadow cast by the offstage character of the Mother effectively reinforced the “old-world” atmosphere and its sense of well-established order.

These things were, of course then shattered, literally, to pieces, firstly by the disobedient Child’s tantrums in destroying or disabling almost everything she could find in the room, then by the fantastic “coming to life” of many of these same objects, each bent on demonstrating to the Child her wilfulness, selfishness and even cruelty in carrying out her unthinking acts of destruction and unkindness to both creatures and objects that co-existed in her world.

Even when escaping to the garden, the Child’s relief was short-lived, as the trees themselves confronted her with the “wounds” she had subjected them to, her guilt intensified further by a dragonfly whose mate she had killed so as to pin to a wall, and also a squirrel she had enclosed in a cage. Overcome by shame, she called out for her Mother, infuriating the creatures, who then attacked her – in the subsequent melee, a squirrel was wounded, and the remorseful Child confounded the creatures present by dressing the squirrel’s wounded paw. Moved by this change of heart on the part of their previous tormenter, the animals and trees then sang “Il est bon, l’enfant, il est sage” (The Child is good and wise”), at the end of which she was reunited with her (still offstage) Mother.

The power of emotion in Ravel’s music never ceases to amaze me, as here – above all else, it’s the depth of sadness in the music, including that expressed by the Child for her much-loved but now-forsaken “Princess” which indicated the composer’s capacity for depth of feeling behind the accustomed “coolness” of the mask. But more bleakly and tragically we shared the Child’s confrontation with her part in the dragonfly’s loss of its mate and the squirrel’s equally heart-rending loss of its freedom, moments which cumulatively “seeded” the animals’ final forgiving chorus to produce a lump-in-the-throat effect which for me flooded those concluding ambiences, and was here achingly, almost cathartically realised by the singers and players.

The set’s atmospheric qualities buoyed up every scene, sometimes amusingly, sometimes poignantly  and sometimes startlingly, invariably making the point to the Child that each irruption was the consequence of her doings. As the Child in the Blue (Second) Cast whose performancce I attended, Charlotte Secker was superb in both her singing and acting delineations of her character’s situation, and in her reactions to her accusers, taking us on a kind of journey through her various stages of realisation. In each instance she demonstrated fear, guilt and remorse in appropriate and ever-changing proportions as the encounters clicked over, her voice eloquent both in exclamation and song (particularly so in her serenade to the Princess).

As for her various accusers, every scene had a particular flavour of characterisation brought out either in voice, in demeanour or in both, by each of the single protagonists or groups. In every case the physical characterisations were admirable, the olde-world aspect of the pair of chairs, “LeFauteuil” and “La Bergere”, the petulant Grandfather Clock, the quixotic Teapot and Cup, the excitingly fearsome Fire, the pastoral charms of the Shepherds and Shepherdesses, and the beautiful Fairy Princess (for me, shades of the “Fairy” in the “Pinocchio” story I often read as a romantically-inclined child!), not to mention the manic, attention-grabbing  Arithmetic teacher and his well-drilled coterie of numbers! – such brilliant singing, movement and staging!

Two wonderfully-characterised Cats then made the most of their delightful “rubber ball” scene, managing to be suggestive together (without resorting to Andrew Lloyd-Webber-like vulgarity!) – before the story took the Child outside to the Garden. Of course there was no respite there, with everything, trees, insects and animals, testifying to the by-now remorseful Child’s cruel and insensitive treatment of Nature, with even the group of bats’ beautifully-lit movements and the frog group’s lilypad cavortings suggesting flight and escape as much as play, and the dragonfly’s and squirrel’s vocal contributions in particular so very tragic and touching and beautiful.

This was a classic “ensemble” affair, in which everybody – singers, musicians, directors, designers, stage-managers, technicians, and enablers of all kinds – gave of their best to bring to fruition something which should resonate in memory for a long time to come! – very great credit to Sara Brodie whose direction of it all made possible such a captivating operatic experience.

 

NZTrio – “fantastique” here in Wellington in every way

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NZTrio presents “Fantastique”
Music by Turina, Shostakovich, Chen Yi, Psathas and Franck

JOAQUÍN TURINA – Circulo (1936)
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH – Piano Trio No. 1 in C Minor (1923)
CHEN YI – Tibetan Tunes (2007)
JOHN PSATHAS – Angelus (2025)
CESAR FRANCK – Piano Trio No. 1in F-sharp Minor (1841)

NZTrio – Amalia Hall (violin) / Callum Hall (‘cello) / Somi Kim (piano)

St.Andrew’s on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Saturday, 30th August, 2025

To my surprise I discovered my last encounter with the justly-vaunted NZTrio took place no less than seven years previously – though the Covid pandemic can be held responsible for numerous  cancellations, dislocations and reorganisations of music presentations over time, such a biblical duration of estrangement in this case hardly seemed likely! On further investigation I found I had actually been “gazumphed” on a handful of occasions by my fellow-reviewers who’d obviously snaffled the Trio’s more recent Wellington appearances for their own delectation!

Now, here in 2025 I realise this is not the same NZTrio I had seen and heard perform in 2018 – in fact, not even slightly! These are three different musicians whose qualities have naturally realigned my expectations, but whose performance has predictably given rise to a “vive la difference” reaction, and particularly as I had already encountered both Amalia Hall and Somi Kim as concerto soloists in concert to spectacular effect.

To enrich matters even further, the group had a “guest” cellist on this occasion, one who’s currently filling in for the recently-appointed Matthias Balzat – apparently the Trio are using “guest” cellists in different programmes throughout the year, of which Callum Hall (who happens to be Amalia Hall’s brother) is one for this Fantastique programme. Whether this arrangement will continue in future seasons, or the Trio will eventually “secure” Balzat’s occupancy of the cellist’s chair remains to be seen!

Described as “a programme of contrasts”  this Fantastique presentation certainly filled the bill, with a positively global range of evocations! Joachim Turina’s music is slowly finding its way back into concert programmes of all kinds, my memory being of a recent performance in Wellington of the once-popular and colourful Danzas fantásticas, and of not-so recent but still-remembered occasional outings for the composer’s second Piano Trio. Tonight’s work was new to me, and a joyful surprise – a brilliant evocation of an Andalusian day, whose title, Circulo, suggests the metaphorical “circle” of a regular world-wide phenomenon of progression from dawn through midday to dusk – there are, of course, “no words to make the sun roll east”, as New Zealand poet ARD Fairburn once wrote….

The music appropriately began with Amanecer (Dawn), with darkly and deeply pondering cello and piano exchanges, from which grew an opening melody on the cello – the violin took it further, and with the piano’s full-blooded support united with the ‘cello in a soulful string unison utterance! How beautifully the NZTrio players then nudged the growing light of day forwards, colouring the changes beautifully with alternating harmonies and reaching a point where the music was liberated into the morning’s fullnesses! Here the violin and ‘cello soared upwards as the piano cascaded light-and-sound energies in all directions, the music conveying an irresistible sense of joyous delight at the day’s promise amid pending excitement, then breaking off exultantly at the top of the music’s concluding phrase!

The second movement, Mediodia (Midday). plunged us into the world of flamenco trajectories and sonorities, with flailing pizzicati from the strings and crunching rhythms from the piano dramatically riveting the listeners’ attentions, see-sawing throughout the movement  from pizzicato to arco and from jagged accents to sultry lines – the flamenco rhythms gathered themselves for a final sequence of exuberant swashbuckling gesturings before grandly tipping over and into the work’s final Crepúsculo (Dusk) movement, redolent with feelings of spent energies and relaxed release, the music gradually and beautifully surrendering its buoyancies and high spirits to the oncoming night and its mysteries – gorgeous string  playing from Amalia Hall and Callum Hall, with sonorous support from Somi Kim’s piano here, redolent with a nostalgic sense of farewell – with such playing it was easy for me to fall madly in love with this work.

As promised each item brought with it a markedly different sense of “place”, with Dmitri Shostakovich’s youthful Piano Trio in C Minor bringing a new world to view. The marked contrasts within the piece itself were somewhat accentuated by the seventeen year-old composer’s somewhat agitated state when the work was written, of having fallen in love and subsequently dedicating the work to the object of his affections  – she eventually married someone else having left her indelible mark on this music’s wildly passionate character! Adding to the music’s character are the pronounced influences of Scriabin, Rachmaninov and Glazunov, the last-named  Shostakovich’s composition teacher at the Petrograd Conservatory. Despite its juvenile aspects the music readily hints at a number of the composer’s lifelong traits, such as his love of grotesquerie in various forms – sudden changes of mood through contrasting dynamics, timbres and trajectories, His occasional employment as a cinema pianist also shows through –  I read an account of Shostakovich actually rehearsing his part in the work with others as an accompaniment to some films he was playing for!

The piece had almost everything its instrumentalists could want as regards satisfying and involving display of all kinds – trenchantly-involving lines, lyrical display, brilliant and quixotic passages of teamwork, and in certain places near-fulsome virtuosity – both Amalia Hall’s violin and Callum Hall’s ‘cello caught the heart-on-sleeve melancholy of the opening exchanges, but were equally at home with the skitterish contrasting episodes which boiled over in places, the players appearing to relish the “sparring” aspects of the sequences – as for pianist Somi Kim, her playing delivered in spadefuls every variation of mood, from the deep, full throated utterances of the opening, through the more gently-lyrical Rachmaninovian sequences to the all-out virtuosic sweep of the work’s more coruscating moments! Another tidbit of information I picked up from elsewhere was that the final section of the work had at some stage been lost, so that the piece’s last 16 bars in the work as published (not until after the composer’s death) were apparently “added” by one of Shostakovich‘s pupils (Boris Tischenko).

Next came music by Chinese-born American-based composer Chen Yi, a work called “Tibetan Tunes”, one which I’d previously heard twelve years ago, when it was played by the “old” NZ Trio at a memorable “China meets New Zealand in music” concert held at Victoria University of Wellington.  Chinese-born Chen Yi, now living in the United States was trained as a classical violinist, but was inspired by her contact during the Cultural Revolution with Chinese folk music to take up further studies of her folk music heritage. She moved to the US in 1986 to continue her musical studies at Columbia University, and at present is Distinguished Professor of Music and Dance at the University of Missouri/Kansas City.

Her two-movement work Tibetan Tunes, written in 2007 for the New Pacific Trio and premiered by them the same year was inspired firstly by a Tibetan folk melody “Du Mu” which is the name of a god of Tibetan Buddhism, one which the composer here wished  to depict “in a serene mood”. I remember thinking at my previous hearing of the work how evocative of something “elsewhere” was the writing for the instruments – as it was here, the violin’s harmonic-like held notes contrasting with the rhapsodic, folkish cello tune while the piano’s echoed the exchanges with decorative roulades. After some gentle, widely-spaced canonic gesturings, the strings joined in unison to celebrate the god’s all-encompassing equanimity, and afterwards reflecting individually, leaving the piano with the last word.

The second piece, “Dui Xie” had its genesis in ensembled folk-music featuring bowed and plucked strings and bamboo flutes – dance-like from the beginning, and altogether livelier than the opening work, the strings sang a melody and its variants over the piano’s rhythms, the cello’s lines having a particularly folkish kind of portamento character in places – charmingly old-fashioned! This excitingly changed to exciting string pizzicati and driving piano figurations, before the opening returned bringing  expressive, recitative-like harmonics – amazing playing from Amalia Hall – along with piano ostinati, sustained trills from the strings and a climactic mid-air finish!

Appropriately one of the concert’s stopover places was Aotearoa New Zealand,  represented here by a work from John Psathas, a piece with the name Angelus and freshly commissioned from the NZTrio itself. It’s actually in part derived from an earlier work for ‘cello and piano called “Halo”, one whose final movement Psathas reworked for NZTrio – these are the composer’s comments at the time of writing the complete work: –

I created this piece around the time of my mother’s death, something I’ve always found it difficult to write about.

The pre-recorded sounds in this piece are very subtle, and in a live performance it should not be visible to the audience how and when these sounds are beginning and ending.

The ‘circle on the head of an angel’ is a good metaphor for these extra sounds; they are like an audio ‘halo’ around the live sounds. They should be quiet enough that the listener isn’t sure if they are hearing them or not, almost like it’s an invisible processing of the natural piano sound.

They are supposed to represent the presence of a spirit from ‘the other side of life’ – for me it is the presence of my mother’s spirit in the room. For you or anyone listening, it could be anyone in your life or mind or heart.

The last movement is really about (the memory of) conflict between child and parent. This conflict is fuelled by strong emotions, mostly love, and is often powerfully dramatic. The way our anger and conflict can be shaped by love within our closest relationships.

The last LH idea in the piano is a way to end with a question, and also a representation of the infinite, and also a dissolving of the physical (the live instrument sound) into the spiritual (the invisible audio halo). I love this ending very much – it is like music from beyond life. (John Psathas)

From the piece’s abrupt beginning the music grabs the listener with its insistent driving rhythms, the syncopations activating exhilarating criss-cross rhythmic thrusts and tugs, with pizzicato violin set against arco cello set against running piano, the intensities rising and falling as the violin’s sul ponticello tones rasp and sting, with the strings  descending into the depths, the tremolandi tones intensifying, and the piano sounding doom-laden pronouncements. As the ambiences descend further the composer’s “audio halo” sounds as if from another world, eerily activating a harmonics response from the strings, a strange and wondrous dialogue of connection of sounds floating through space.

Out of the exchanges come impulses of urgency, the energies pushing all ways, upwards, downwards and forwards simultaneously, the piano elaborating on an ever-ascending chorale-like theme which leads to an impassioned kind of recitative from the strings, additionally “whipped up” by swirling piano figures – the resonant sonic wave emanating from the sudden climax of this cornucopian all-together is almost heart-stoppingly allowed to run its course until a gentle piano ostinato emerges, registering first a violin then a cello tremolando response – and, as the piano continues to gently rhapsodise and the strings murmur their assent, the sonic halo reappears, transfixing our riveted sensibilities into an indefinite silence…..what an experience!

I was looking forward to the César Franck Piano Trio at the programme’s end, fascinated at its Op.1 place in this composer’s output and marvelling upon further investigation at there actually being two other similar works sharing the same Opus number! These works were praised by both Mendelssohn and Liszt, the latter generously organising further performances throughout Germany – but Franck’s early years and works were blighted by his difficult relationship with a dominant father, resulting in eventual estrangement and the young man going his own way, pursuing the career of an organist and only returning to chamber and symphonic works in his maturity. As someone who loves masterpieces such as the Violin Sonata and the Piano Quintet, this Op.1 Trio was for me fascinating in sounding occasional pre-echoes of the inspiration that would eventually flower to produce those resounding achievements of Franck’s later years.

A stepwise piano figure opened the work, joined by cello and violin elaborating on a soulful theme, with the exchanges intensifying the interaction – out of a sudden pause came a charming second theme, the instruments then building the triplet rhythms up with gusto, Somi Kim’s piano pounding out the trajectories  as Amalia Hall’s violin passionately sang the melody, with Callum Hall’s ‘cello-tremolandi filling out the quasi-orchestral textures with urgently upward-rushing figures! These vigorous peregrinations wound the exchanges down through major-minor key shifts to a crashing,almost apoplectic-making concluding chord!

An allegro molto movement followed, the piano tapping out a repeated note triplet rhythm and the strings urging along a kind of horseback-ride melody – splendid stuff, with the strings adding skitterish figurations for exciting effect! – the trio section did well with simple means, a downward-rushing scale in canon between piano and strings, varying this effectively with the strings ascending against the piano’s descent! A return to the triplet scherzo music had the solo strings varying the  mix with pizzicato repetitions of the horseback music, almost to sinister effect in places – this led to an unexpectedly resounding plunge, attacca, into the work’s finale – a stirring transition which worked splendidly, so that, almost before we knew what was happening, the Allegro Maestoso was on its way, complete with  great pianistic flourishes and gesturings from Somi Kim.

Easeful, lyrical and whole-hearted playing from Amalia Hall’s violin and Callum Hall’s ‘cello engaged our interest through contrasting minor-key episodes and some singular, almost honky-tonk modulations – the young Franck determined to flaunt his wares! – that done, the players raced into what felt like the movement’s coda, at the conclusion of which , the unexpected pause before the final flourish caught us out, as it would have done many audiences before, bursting in as we did, with premature applause! –  followed, of course, by subsequent laughter and giggles all around at the combination of our eagerness and the youthful composer’s largesse! All in all –  Fantastique! – just as promised!