Category: Reviews – Concerts

Ghost Trio’s St.Andrew’s concert haunts the memory

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music presents:
Ghost Trio –
TAKEMITSU, BEETHOVEN, DOWNIE and SHOSTAKOVICH

The Ghost Trio – Monique Lapins (violin), Ken Ichinose (‘cello)
Gabriela Glapska (piano)

TAKEMITSU – Between Tides (1993)
BEETHOVEN – Piano Trio in D Major Op.70 No.1 “Ghost”
GLEN DOWNIE – Sonata da chiesa (2024)
SHOSTAKOVICH – Piano Trio No.2 in E Minor Op. 67 No.2

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Te Aro, Wellington
Sunday 17th August, 2025

Review for “Middle C” by Peter Mechen

“What’s in a name?” could well have been the unspoken phrase hovering about St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace on Sunday afternoon prior to the opening of Wellington Chamber Music’s most recent presentation, whose first item was, as per the written programme supposed to be Beethoven’s D Major Piano Trio Op,70 No.1, better known as the “Ghost”, due to its haunting second movement, ripe for association with  famous theatrical “ghosts” such as those that occur in Shakespeare – Hamlet or Macbeth coming most readily to mind. And here, on the performers’ platform was scheduled  none other than an eponymously-named trio of musicians to open the concert by “playing their song”. What happened instead, of course, is now history, with the musicians themselves deciding that Beethoven’s somewhat overwhelming string of “ghostly” scenarios could result in tidal waves of resonance that would swamp the gentle undulations of the work by Tōru Takemitsu due to follow.

So, in the minds of listeners who knew the Beethoven, and would have prepared themselves for the exhilaration of that tumultuous opening salvo of energised sounds, the surprise intervention by the Takemitsu work “Between Tides” would have seemed like the proverbial sea-change into something rich and strange! – beginning with such delicacies of sound evoked by lightly astringent piano harmonies, answered by string phrases whose solo lines variously trail into their own silences, or intertwine, Ravel-like in places, briefly touching on their own worlds before returning to the piano’s sway, and awaiting the next version of exchanges.

Throughout, the instruments’ voicings create a world of  chameleon-like pursuit of one another, every wave of impulse with its own variant of the same life-force. I was reminded while listening of human breath when still, and of surrendering to impulses not necessarily my own – also of the infinite variety of the experience in terms of what comes with it from one’s imagination – whole worlds of difference, individually with the harmonics or tremolandi played by the strings or the free-ranging spaces between piano notes, contrasted with assertive unison utterances that give further musical food for contemplation. It’s a piece I found throughout to be “in waiting” in general terms, though its tensions occasionally bubble up and almost right over – its ending is satisfying enigmatic, leaving one with the idea of, in TS Eliot’s words, “an eternal action, an eternal patience” ……

Having been suitably dispersed over vast vistas by the action of tides, our sensibilities were then gathered in once again with a vengeance by the promised Beethoven! I was at last allowed the delayed indulgence of pointing out an obvious kind of coincidence, correlation or conjunction with what seemed to me like paradigmatic “ownership” of this music by the ensemble – right from the very first whirlwind ascending phrases there was, I felt, a “this is what we do” feeling of full-blooded identification! The intensities of this work are concentrated, throwing together both heroism and turmoil throughout the opening movement,  with as much sprung intensity in the hushed exchanges of the second subject as in the flamboyant opening unison – how “breathing as one” they sounded, here, throughout these contrasting episodes, and how much they relished the concerted singing passages in the development as the more vigorous “horse-and-rider” episodes leading to the recapitulation – such an invigorating journey!

Cello and violin are vibrato-less at the slow movement’s beginning, the piano interspersing with suitably ghostly eloquence, extended by the ‘cello and violin who together voice the feeling of some kind of other-worldly presence, though leading us towards some consolation amid the gloom. The music’s central section begins darkly, the cello leading the way, contrasting agitated and desolate-sounding lines, suggesting personal sorrow, loneliness and frustration in the music’s explorations, the players leaving us with a single repeated enigmatic note over which to ponder at the end.

How resilient the mind that can produce such a finale after so downcast a mood! Here, like with the first movement, was a “tour de force” of ensemble playing, with absolutely brilliant pianism from Gabriela Glapska, and equally stunning dovetailing of their concerted passages from Monique Lapins and Ken Ichinose. The “questioning” aspect of the opening theme led to all kinds of suspensions and adroit manoeuvrings of both the whimsical and helter-skelter variety, leaving us all breathlessly invigorated at the end, and somewhat gob-smacked at both the individual and concerted virtuosity of the players!

Glen Downie’s was a new name for me, as was the work, Sonata da Chiesa, a piece written this year for the Ghost Trio to take on tour. The music takes its name (literally, “Church Sonata”) from baroque times, and was inspired by music written by Vivaldi for the ‘cello. In a programme note Downie talks about the music “breaking away” from its original inspiration (characterised by ruins of “worn material”) and attempting to rebuild anew from the “surviving stone”. A specific inspiration for the piece was a UK building, the Christchurch Priory, originally a Norman building, but containing layers wrought by different eras in the building’s history, a quality Downie intended his piece to replicate as “a uniform expressivity”

In four movements, the piece began with piano arpeggios, and attention-grabbing violin notes, the latter reverting to a sombre exploration of the piano figurations, whose buildup suggests an architectural quality, with a dancing violin astringency supplying outward detail and reaching a climax as the cello supports the structure with an ostinato-like figure.

Beginning with a rushing piano figure, the second movement highlights strings pinging , burning and slashing, with the piano’s chords structurally resonating at first at first, then exchanging spiky figurations with the strings. The more resonant-sounding piano notes beautifully morph into pregnant-like water-droplet notes, as the cello and violin play “out of the air” pizzicato harmonics – the piano finishes as it began, with agitatedly mobile figurations.

Sostenuto-like cello chords begin the third movement, here backed by limpid piano sounds – the violin. something of a decorative, outwardly-defining constant force, plays more tortured figures as the cello muses with the piano – what lovely, long-held notes! – the violin again sounds acerbic, and we hear the “clash of seconds” that the players had demonstrated beforehand, which then gradually resolve – very architectural, solidly-based timbres and tones – from meditative to grand and imposing!. The violin “grows” a lighter, more evanescent outward texture, as the music for cello and piano goes deeper, more inward, the players digging into their tones with rolling figurations – very ‘cello-centred! The violin remains a more quixotic-flavoured  figure, here, its tones  pointilistic in effect, with harmonics and pizzicati, and in places almost pentatonic-sounding!

The fourth movement has a very pointillistic beginning – knockabout notes from the strings, pizzicato and arco, and the piano very punch-line in effect! The strings are very legato against the piano’s cryptic staccato comments – the movement is very short!

Certainly it all suggests something I feel that’s structural in the music’s bones – I would like to hear it again, being able to relate parts more readily to the whole – there would have been many connective references I didn’t place in context first time round, and am keen to explore that connective tissue aspect of the work relating to architecture and to the ravages of time on any kind of structure given such status by my experience and imagination! It was all brought off with the greatest of aplomb and confidence by the players!

The concert concluded with Dmitri Shostakovich’s deeply personal 1944 Piano Trio in E Minor, composed in memory of the composer’s friend Ivan Ivanovich Sollertinsky who had died in February that year of a heart attack at the age of forty-one. As with many “documented” incidents on Shostakovich’s life, accounts differ as to when the composer began work on the Trio (principally whether it was before or after hearing the news of Sollertinsky’s death, the latter event even presenting in one account as a rumoured NKVD (Russian Secret Police) murder rather than a heart attack) – however, a certain consensuality (as with the present programme’s notes on the music) places the first movement as all but completed when Shostakovich received the news.

The work’s been represented variously as a requiem, either for one man or for the millions of Russians who perished during the war, as a protest against the anti-Semitism rife in the Soviet Union culminating in the Nazi atrocities committed against Russian Jews in the death camps of the time, and as an indictment of the Soviet System in general under the iron-fisted Stalin, whose censorship of the composer’s music reached its nadir at this time, causing the Trio to be banned from public performance in1948 as “decadent “ and “formalist”. Not until the dictator’s death in 1953 did the work begin to gradually return to favour

It’s now celebrated as one of the greatest of Shostakovich’s works, and part of an enviable “piano trio” tradition in Russia alone  – Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Arensky, Borodin, Taneyev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Cui and Rachmaninov all helped “pave the way” for the younger composer, whose own writing, however, eschewed the prevalent quasi-orchestral textures of the Romantic piano trio, choosing instead a sparser, more transparent sound-picture, not without force and impact, but with a bleaker, and less “cushioned” effect. Shostakovich had always professed an admiration for Jewish music, delighting in what he called its “multifaceted” quality  – appearing to be happy when in fact it is expressing tragedy (a quality shared by Mahler’s music) – and this ambiguity of expression comes to the fore in the Trio’s finale, a veritable Todtentanz with macabre associations, more of which below. The work as a whole gravitates from being the composer’s grief for his friend’s death to a catalyst for his feelings regarding the other tragedies whose impact were weighing increasingly heavily on his existence.

What, then, of this performance? In a word, gripping, from its very first intensely spectral harmonic note intoned hauntingly by cellist Ken Ichinose almost at the top of the instrument’s range and soaring above the violin’s conventionally-voiced though similarly elegiac tones and the piano’s basso profundo utterances – the spell’s intensity was palpable, the instrumentation a play of parallel states of being, dream floating alongside consciousness, and both far above deeper and darker reality – within  the same being, or with three different beings cast adrift?  Briefly, the cello “comes back to earth” then joining the violin in a steady single-note rhythm, exchanging single-note-accompanying and melodic roles as the momentums continue with both tempi and intensities building, until the music swings into a dark-browed and determined jogtrot mode! The musicians seem gripped by the music’s compulsions, pizzicato exchanges, trenchant piano chordings, slashing single-note string utterances, all suggesting some kind of search for a way through, with Monique Lapins’s violin-playing in particular, in places incredibly exploratory!

If respite was sought, it was not to be found in the second movement – Allegro con brio, the music proclaimed, with violin and cello flexing muscle and expiating energies, and further driven along by the piano’s pounding chords and trumpeting arpeggiations.  What began as a high-spirited fun dance seemed to get more obsessive and trenchant, descending into repetitions of groaning drone-like tones trapped in their own vortices – a trio-like section almost promised the dance-theme some breathing-space, but the wildness soon returned, pianist Gabriela Glapska’s seemingly endless energies spearheading the music’s drive towards a breathless concluding flourish! Whew!

But then! – bleakly spaced-out piano chords seemed to slice the ambiences pitilessly  into shards, with first the violinist and then the ‘cellist picking up from the fragments a tragic, elegiac theme – a Passacaglia, with violin and cello continuing to play variants of the theme over the piano’s repeated sequences. The sense of desolation grew with the instruments’ gradual descent into depths of sorrow, the mood at its darkest  suddenly interrupted by the piano beginning an insistent, hypnotic rhythm ,and introducing the Mahlerian irony of a Yiddish-like dance, one whose themes the composer would repeatedly use in his later music (Shostakovich later described them as dances of death and despair, perhaps mindful of accounts he had heard of atrocities such as Jewish prisoners in the “death camps” made to dance on their own graves by their Nazi captors before being executed).

I found this music extraordinary, even almost hallucinatory jn places, thanks to what seemed like the three performers’ total and unstinted immersion in its composer’s world. The build-up to the music’s ironic interplay of humour and savagery in the finale was overwhelming, with the gradual evaporation of that nightmarish scenario right at the work’s end leaving one utterly drained and aghast at what one had just been told.

Even among what must surely seem for Wellington Chamber Music over recent times like a plethora of outstanding performances, this one by the superb Ghost Trio had, I thought, something uniquely special to return to in one’s memory and relish anew.

 

 

 

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!

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!

Superbly-wrought varieties from The Chamber Pot-Pourri Ensemble at the Long Hall

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Comfy Concert No. 4,  from The Chamber Pot-Pourri Ensemble

FRANZ SCHUBERT – Allegro for String Trio in B-flat Major (1816)
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH – String Quartet No.10 (1964) – dedicated to Moshe Weinberg
Elegy from “Lady Macbeth of Mtensk”
Polka from “The Golden Age” Ballet
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN – String Quartet in D Major, Op.76 No. 5 (1797/8)

Helene Pohl and Anna van der Zee (violins), Nicholas Hancox (viola), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

The Long Hall, Roseneath, Wellington
Saturday, June 2nd 2025

This was the fourth concert in the series of Helene Pohl’s and Rolf Gjelsten’s inspirational “Comfy Concert” presentations at Roseneath’s eponymously-named “The Long Hall”, a venue whose “comfy” aspect per se might be regarded by some as an imagination-stretch, but whose musical rewards have been unanimously acclaimed by attendees I’ve spoken to on each of the occasions so far. Central to the undertaking have been performances by Helene’s and Rolf’s variously-constituted “Chamber Pot-Pourri Ensemble” of a number of Dmitri Shostakovich’s string quartets, as a way of  commemorating the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death. However, the fare we’ve enjoyed has intriguingly involved additional concert items, all enhancing our appreciation of the Shostakovich works through fascinatingly different viewpoint perspectives.

Certainly this concert’s entertaining varieties possessed more to them than met the ear – at the time we were highly diverted by the “quantum leaping” between realms which at first seemed chalk-and-cheese, as with the plunge from the beautiful pliabilities of Schubert’s adorable String Trio Allegro into a world of ever-present unease embodied by Shostakovich’s music in general and in particular his string quartet-writing, then tangentially to Haydn’s domain of “invention, fire, good taste and new effects” circa 1798 – and with a delightful “extra” at journey’s end in the form of a 20th century return to Shostakovich at his most sardonically playful, the famous “Polka” from the ballet “The Golden Age”.

Even more diverting was the idea that the concert might have included an item from the First Smile Gamelan ensemble, whose instruments are housed at The Long Hall, and whose gong had on earlier occasions been ceremonially resounded as a kind of taslismanic beginning to these concerts – alas, indisposition of personnel put paid to such an appearance, depriving us of further colourful variance!

Still we were able to bear our loss thanks to the riches whose rewards were securely sounded – and despite the differences mooted above one could easily equate certain through-lines connecting the pieces by taking larger views of the juxtaposings – Schubert, for example, was no stranger himself to unease of a different but still existence-threatening kind, even if his music could cheerfully and stoically step outside his very real fears (as Shostakovich also did on occasions, such as here with his outrageously irreverent “Polka”). And Haydn’s ambitious treatment of form and substance in his Op.76 No.5 work resulted in the music acquiring the name Friedhofsquartett (Graveyard-Quartet) on account of the slow movement’s extended length and remote F♯ major key, characteristics that align the work with much of Shostakovich’s string quartet output.

With these thoughts in mind my memories of this concert resonate all the more – Helene Pohl began proceedings by warmly welcoming us to the Hall and drawing our attentions to the programme note concerning the music-teaching organisation Arohanui Strings, of which she herself is Patron, referring to the inspirational work done by affiiliated music tutors in many parts of the Wellington region with youthful musicians, and to the support which concerts like these can give via people’s donations to such a cause.

Then came the music, beginning with Schubert’s Allegro for String Trio (violin, viola and ‘cello), a work that broke into song immediately, while ensuring sufficient strong and definite statements around which the melodies could be adorably placed. Here the dialogue (or, “trialogue”) between the instruments was so ear-catchingly “give-and-take” it gave one an almost-naughtily enjoyed frisson of well-being, a pleasure in sound akin to relishing a portrait or landscape whose structures and hues have a kind of mutually-assured compatibility of a striking and memorable kind. With the development section we were straightaway drawn into what seemed like new page of upwardly-modulated wonderment, with the previously-voiced themes being given different aspects to explore –  the playing flowed seamlessly into the recapitulation, an absorbing same-but-different journey homewards, a lovely “did we dream you or did you us?” kind of experience.

Violinist Anna van der Zee then joined the group for the Shostakovich Quartet No.10, a work introduced by Rolf Gjelsten, whose words “music that’s never truly comfortable” seemed aptly to characterise the whole of the composer’s output – certainly all that I’ve heard, anyway. He described the Tenth Quartet as something of an enigma, music by someone “who has been through darkness and tragedy”. Part of the work’s enigmas is the violently aggressive second movement, Allegretto furioso which gave rise to a quote repeated by Rolf (and whose source I’ve not been able to find) that the movement, for instance, contains “not a single human note in the music”. After this there’s an elegy in Passacaglia form consisting of eight variations, and to finish, a fourth movement Allegretto whose dance-like manner variously revisits parts of the work then returns us to the notes with which the quartet commenced.

Beginning with a kind of bugle call, part quirky dance, the first violin opened the work, the three other instruments commenting nonchalantly on the tune, which returned on the violin as the others continued their responses. These included a more resonant ‘cello melody and an eerie sul ponticello viola passage presaging the return of the bugle tune with pizzicato and gently-retiring arco support, all ambiently and pin-pointedly placed.

Any such vestige of tranquility or delicacy was then exploded in the violence of the Allegretto furioso’s attack, the violin playing an aggressive theme punctuated by stinging chords from the others. The onslaught then continued as it began, with the players often pairing for a double-edged effect – such as  violins grotesquely repeating the opening together, then screaming with anguish against tremolandi from cello and viola, before taking up stinging mirror-phrases against those of the cello and viola, the latter groaning heavily against the two violins’ shrieking repeated-note patterns – and so on, until a brutal concerted repeated-note unison lambasted its way to a relentlessly hammered out ending! We sat there, gobsmacked!

The Adagio began its Passacaglia – eight variations, promising at least some visceral if not emotional relief, judging from the passionately-played opening – apart from a brief major key flirtation with a first violin phrase the mood remained sombre and dark-browed throughout, until the viola began the first few measures of the Allegretto finale – a dance which grew out of the last variation’s sustained tones and with which the second violin joined. The momentums were by turns wafted and coloured by drone-like notes, then jogged along more gratefully by various pizzicato accompaniments, the players gradually turning up the tensions as the forward moment became more restless and volatile!
We found ourselves “leaning into” the trajectories more and more with the players as the violins emphasised their running rhythms and the violist and cellist punctuated the textures with sforzandi, the music splendidly threading these elements together – gradually it all fell back until we registered to our surprise that the first violin’s reiterations of the jogtrot rhythm had become mere fragments, leaving only the music’s remnants and then silence.

The interval gave us sufficient time to readjust to the here-and-now, and for more Shostakovich! This was a precious remnant of the composer’s infamous opera “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District”, the work which had sparked a serious falling-out for Shostakovich with Josef Stalin, who found the work not at all to his taste (the Soviet newspaper Pravda published a review of the opera, allegedly written by Stalin at the time, called “Muddle instead of Music” – it was later proved to be the work of  a “ghost writer”) but at the time Shostakovich found himself a near-outcast of the establishment, with all the attendant fears one associated with being “out of favour with the Great Leader”). It took, of course, the writing of the composer’s Fifth Symphony to win back the Leader’s approval!

Wellington audiences will have the opportunity to experience at first hand some more of the actual “Muddle” in question (though, alas, not the whole work!) when Orchestra Wellington performs excerpts from the Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District opera as part of the orchestra’s concert series in October of this year! For now, we had to be content with a transcription (by the composer)  for String Quartet of the “Elegy” from the opera – an arrangement of the heroine Katarina’s aria from Act One, Scene Three of the opera, in which she is lamenting the boredom and oppression of an unhappy marriage.

The aria’s melody is taken up by the first violin – sad, desolate, bitter-sweet, almost lullabic in places, but with an agitated middle section. A more elegiac sequence after the music’s climax is faintly reminiscent of parts of Schoenberg’s “Verklarte Nacht” – there’s a kind of cadenza for the viola before the violin recommences the melody, the music rising through the strings before a final kind of “Amen”.

The concert’s bounteousness wasn’t yet exhausted – no less than a delectable Haydn String Quartet awaited our attention, a counterweight of sorts (or so I imagined would be the case), to the gravities exerted earlier by the Shostakovich Quartet. One of Josef Haydn’s Op.76 Quartets, it was No, 5 of the set, thus one of the last such works the composer completed. Its key is D Major and there are four movements, the first being somewhat unusually in variation form. The 6/8 opening movement began brightly and breezily, the composer beginning simply and then elaborating detail within each of the variations in ear-catching ways. The second variation, begun by the cello at the same tempi as the opening, suddenly gathered its garments and broke into a mad galloping sequence, returning at the behest of the viola who was then able to “lead off” another round at a sensible tempi, but had to put up with individual instruments “making a dash for it” every now and then! Most diverting of all was the final variation, played attacca, in which everybody simply put their ears back and went for it, up hill and down dale! Very satisfying!

The slow movement, Largo, Cantabile e mesto, was rich and strange merely in terms of its somewhat contradictory markings – “lyrical and melancholy” which reflected something of the music’s capacity  to generate both contentment and sobriety or pensiveness, and accounting, of course, for its aforementioned nickname in some countries. Without recourse to any kind of tragedy or profound sadness the music demonstrated a capacity for affectiveness regarding a more-than-usual range of poignant sensibility.

Haydn then gave us a sprightly, eager, and even thrusting kind of Minuet (but not too much so, as per the marking!), one with lovely off-beat downward trajectories in places, and with a Trio that again expresses a greater emotional range of expression that one might normally expect – all beautifully realised, here with the players alive to those mood-variants and making them “tell”. The finale is one of those that “begins with an ending!” – those two opening notes would make a most exciting conclusion to any piece! in fact, come to think of it, the whole Quartet could seem in some moods as if it was composed in reverse! This was in effect the most enchanting game of chase, and was thrown off with incredible skill by the players, to the considerable enjoyment of all of us present.

And, of course, one mustn’t forget the afternoon’s “star turn” as regards pure entertainment! This was another Shostakovich arrangement for string quartet, one which even more resoundingly, I thought, proclaimed the composer’s genius as a writer for strings. Normally one hears the world-famous “Polka” from the Ballet “The Golden Age” with all its orchestral accoutrements, including a colourful range of percussion, without which the work might seem somewhat plain and lacking in essential surface impact. Here? Not a bit of it! Despite having played the original countless times as a “party piece” recording for guests (one which never fails to extract visible signs of pleasure) I got as much enjoyment and delight and titillation from the efforts of the four quartet players and the sounds they produced from their instruments as I’ve ever done – I was expecting to be entertained, but was left literally and truly beside myself with almost unspeakable pleasure!

 

Wellington City Orchestra – a Matariki celebration of nature, legend and art

Posted on by Peter Mechen

JENNY McLEOD – Three Celebrations for Orchestra (1986)
ANTONIN DVORAK – The Noonday Witch B.196
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Triple Concerto for Violin, ‘Cello and Piano Op.56

The Ghost Trio – Monique Lapins (violin), Ken Ichinose (‘cello) Gabriella Glapska (piano)
Hamish McKeich (conductor)
Wellington City Orchestra (concertmaster, Paula Carryer)

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

Sunday, 22nd June 2025

Why have I never before encountered Jenny McLeod’s cheekily iconic “Three Celebrations for Orchestra”? – particularly as the pieces are each so heartwarmingly “grounded” in atmospheres that readily recall my own childhood memories, of forests, beaches and rural celebrations that proclaim a uniqueness of experience with tradition that’s in danger of disappearing as life here becomes increasingly “global”. I thought also that it’s music that “connects” with other examples of composers’ depictions of environments and activities worldwide – the opening “Journey through Mountain Parklands” for me strongly echoed parts of Finnish composer Jan Sibelius’s “Legends”, as well as similar landscape evocations from American composer Aaron Copland – and the final ”A&P Show” was startlingly redolent in places of the latter’s ballet “Rodeo”.

As a sometimes-conductor of the Wellington contemporary music ensemble Stroma, today’s conductor Hamish McKeich was able to draw from his performing experience to recall for us Jenny McLeod’s earlier compositions as being “rather different” in style and flavour to what we were about to hear from this, a later period of her work. By then she had turned away from the avant-garde and towards more “populist” styles, declaring at one point that “both writing and performing music should definitely be enjoyable!” – a disarming attitude that has earned her compositions increasingly diverse interest and respect from audiences.

Here, we revelled in the epic, voyaging opening of the “Mountain Parklands” journey, the trajectories straightaway moving the ground beneath our feet as the textures pushed out the vistas and spectacularly opened up the scenarios – exhilarating! Those Copland-like impulses further detailed our responses, the saxophone bringing to the ambiences shimmerings of romantic allure and the piccolo chirruping its delightful birdsong, before the Sibelius-like brasses brought a renewal of the adventurous nature of our journeying, accompanied by “music blasting away on the car stereo” – (the composer’s own down-to-earth comment on the proceedings at that point!). It all made for something terribly nostalgic for me – at times I was flashbacking to those family holidays in the car again, following railway lines, traversing hills, crossing bridges and catching sight of those, my own, mountains of memory……..

Next we found ourselves “At the Bay”, the cor anglais setting a different scene, with mellow winds dancing a slow waltz with a ‘cello – such lovely wind decorations and with the horns adding beautiful colours. Strings and percussion and then horns poured out the emotion, the mood enlivening gradually and spreading though the orchestra – the brass seemed to be enjoying themselves hugely, while the percussionists kept things rolling. As the mood quietens a slow dance ensued, coloured by wood-block-like beats – everything had a relaxed “by the sea” feel, with the winds encouraging a solo cello then joining in themselves with counter-themes and decorations. it all built up to a burst of emotion from strings, brass and percussion, and then, like memory sometimes does, slipped almost mischievously back into hiding with piano-and bassoon-notes, a sliver of percussion and wind, all as elusive as a dream….

To finish, how wonderful to have an A&P Show here documented! – I loved them so much! Like one’s own pent-up youthful excitements, the music was full-on, right from the start – a big, striding theme,  buoyed by strutting brass and a sinuous saxophone (the latter, incidentally, played superbly throughout by Tessa Frazer, whose name unfortunately wasn’t listed in my programme’s orchestra personnel lineup!). The winds played a kind of chirpy cakewalk, and we caught the sounds of a distant hoe-down, but here, mixing in with cameo-like episodes of different side-shows, we had a kaleidoscopic experience of images as well as sounds, everything very “outdoor” and mixing fairground excitements with more pastoral ambiences. But, like the real thing, it was all over too soon, as a percussion flourish steered us excitingly into and through that world of fantastic entertainment, everything working like a well-drilled whole – ha! – another hoedown! –  taking our sensibilities for a final ride with a wind-and-orchestra gesture of all-too-familiar satisfaction and regret!

Having had our own national identities reaffirmed we were then transported to the diametrically opposite realms  of Central Europe, and to a world of folkloric atmosphere marked largely by unease, superstition and brutality  – Antonin Dvořák spent the last few years of his compositional life returning his attentions almost exclusively to the folklore of his native Bohemia, writing orchestral music inspired by verses from the nationalistic poet Karel Jaromir, who had published a collection called Kytice (Bouquet), one of which was Polednice (The Noon Witch). a tale which, if not exactly bloodthirsty in a visceral sense was still blood-curdling!

Though all of Dvořák’s orchestral music has a readily recognisably Bohemian character, he hadn’t before fully exploited a penchant for descriptive orchestral writing in the manner of his fellow Czech composer Bedrich Smetana with his out-and-out nationalistic work Ma Vlast  (“My Country”) – it was only after Dvořák had completed his From the New World Ninth Symphony that he turned to the musical form of the “tone poem” that had been introduced by Franz Liszt and then ceaselessly pilloried by conservative critics such as the notorious Eduard Hanslick, who, up until this time had praised Dvořák’s “pure, absolute music” compositions.

In fact Polednice (“The Noon Witch”) is a masterpiece of musical description! – it’s basically, a “cautionary tale” of a mother whose child is so badly behaves she threatens him with the spectre of a witch who traditionally appears during the hour before midday to steal naughty children away. Inevitably, the Polednice DOES appear, and a battle ensues between the mother and the witch over the child, which ceases when the midday bell sounds and the witch disappears. But when the father returns home he finds his child lifeless, smothered in the arms of his unconscious wife.

The orchestral winds opened the story in deceptively charming folk-tale style, with firstly the clarinet and then the oboe depicting the naughty child and his toy cockerel. The mother’s anger burst forth from the strings, agitating in fine style, the whole orchestra then plunging into a splendidly vivid evocation of what the Polednice would do to the boy if she came to claim him! Seemingly undeterred the child sounded his toy cockerel again and the mother reiterated her anger and frustration at his naughtiness, further describing what sounded like a veritable “witch’s ride” in the orchestra.

Suddenly an ominous note on the lower brass introduced a sinister passage as the witch DID enter! – the splendid lower brass playing sounded uncannily like the dragon, Fafner, in Wagner’s “Siegfried” emerging from his cave! A kind of “fate” motif was ominously sounded by the orchestra as the witch advanced on the mother and child, the strains repeated by the clarinet and strings, and further hurled out by the brasses. We held onto ourselves or to each other as the witch came closer, orchestral momentums scarily depicting the mother’s struggles to keep hold of her child – until the noon-bell sounded and the spectral figure vanished.

In the wake of all of this, how carefree the homecoming father’s music sounded at first! And how uneasily the oboe and clarinet put the questions in his mind as to why his house seemed so silent! A brief moment of relieved recognition was followed by the unfortunate man’s rapidly escalating anxiety at finding his wife unconscious and then his ultimate horror to discover his child was dead! The orchestra’s whiplash-like concluding chords were here merciless, brooking no help or pity!

The interval provided extra entertainment for those who chose merely to stay put/or to stand and stretch their legs in front of their seats, enabling a life-enhancing view of various orchestral members and “behind-the-scenes” helpers “moving” the piano from its place up on the next platform down to a central front position for the Beethoven Concerto which was to follow – an operation performed with the utmost aplomb on the part of all concerned.

Something of the concert’s opening “holiday” mood had returned, now that the strictures of the Dvorak piece had passed, with the arrival on the platform of the soloists for Beethoven’s adorable “Triple” Concerto (violin, ‘cello and piano) one of the composer’s happiest creations! Though not ideally spacious as a performing venue (underlined by the extra space required for the three soloists!) the church’s layout ensured an extra “intimacy” of music-making, an almost “cheek-by-jowl” performer/audience situation, which gave the experience a uniquely treasurable flavour for the memory to lock away!

The first two movements gave me, quite simply, undiluted pleasure! Hamish McKeich’s direction brought forth an exciting and ear-catching range of dynamics at the beginning, getting the lower strings to “murmur” the opening phrase as if all the players were awakening the music from a dream, sounding the brief crescendo just before the top of the phrase, falling back to a whisper, and then springing the sounds forth with a start at the “rise and shine” call of the horns! All was then galvanic action, as the music snowballed into the first tutti, the energies joyous, the interplay delightful! As for the soloists, Ken Ichinose’s cello and Monique Lapins’ violin by turns sang their opening lines as irresistible invitations to “come and play”, to which pianist Gabriela Glapska responded in kind with gleeful eagerness, the three dovetailing their parts winningly in their concerted passages.

In response, the second orchestral tutti, though brief, was all whole-hearted agreement, as well as introducing a new theme, on which the soloists pounced with glee, Ichinose’s cello (as per usual in this work) leading the way, Lapins’s violin following with a winning  “anything you can play I can play higher!” kind of aspect, and Glapska’s piano retorting with a “Well, I’m going to play something else – follow me if you dare!” kind of spirit! It was such a celebration of teamwork, both in the accepted “trio” sense and in the interplay of the soloists with the orchestra. I loved, too, the ebb and flow of the work’s intensities, how the lines and figurations could express something so simply and beautifully, and yet within a few seconds be pushing the musicians’ fingers into and through intensely-wrought variants of the same and emerge still in tandem at the end!

The slow movement brought lovely “covered” tones from the orchestral strings at the outset, and playing to “die for” from the soloists – firstly Ichinose’s particularly radiant lines throughout his extended opening solo, and properly concomitant responses from firstly Glapska and then Lapins, in duet with Ichinose. The movement’s a remarkably short one, and part of its time is spent “shaping up” towards the finale, which, here was taken at what could be described as a “good lick” – I even wrote down the phrase, “a “devil-may-care” tempo”, at the time! This was followed by another phrase, hastily scribbled – “Wow! – they (the soloists) are flying along in those running passages! – Very exciting!” Which was true in places, though being “The Ghost Trio” they were always in remarkable, and often enchanting accord, as with the “whose turn is it?” passages where they toss pairs of notes between each other in what seem like delightfully random “first to pick up” fashion!

The orchestra played along suitably in the exchanges as well, but at times I felt Hamish McKeich and the band would noticeably move the finale’s various tutti along, rather than pick up the soloists’ way with those delicious polacca rhythms – Ichinose, Lapins and Glapska gave the movement plenty of delicious “schwung” in their solos and ensembles (and which Beethoven actually seems to indicate for the orchestra as well by including a grace-note “kick” in their descending figure that leads to the minor-key beginning of the Polacca section). It’s a small point, but I always enjoy, as here, soloists in this work who give those trajectories in the finale something of a playful character which the orchestra can respond to in kind. But hey! – far more important was all of the acclaim, such happiness and such bubbling excitement both throughout and at the concert’s end (I sat next to two people I didn’t know at all, and soon found myself chatting enthusiastically with them about the music and the playing in between each of the items!) – it was that sort of occasion, and one that the orchestra and its members and organisers and friends should definitely consider a great and resounding success!

 

 

 

Éblouissant! John Chen’s recital of French piano music

Posted on by Peter Mechen

John Chen –  French Piano Music Recital
(presented by Wellington Chamber Music)

FRANCIS POULENC – Three Novelettes (1928)
HENRI DUPARC (transcr. John Chen) – 4 Melodies (1869)
CÉSAR FRANCK – Prelude, Chorale et Fugue (1884)
GABRIEL FAURÉ – Theme and Variations in C-sharp Minor Op.73 (1895)
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS – Six Etudes Op.111 (1899)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Sunday, 15th June 2025

In his biographical note accompanying the programme John Chen was described as having “a passion for twentieth-century French music”, even though only one of the works in today’s recital – Francis Poulenc’s Three Novelettes of 1928 – would have qualified for inclusion in that category. On the basis of the overwhelming success of this concert one could justifiably conclude that the pianist’s sympathies had definite historical precedents in this repertoire, with playing whose style, brilliance and commitment extended backwards to works whose influence on twentieth-century French composition was undeniable.

It was, therefore, ironic in a sense that Chen’s recital today opened with music that was the programme’s sole direct twentieth century representative. Poulenc’s first of his Three Novelettes began with a beguiling sense of weightlesness, of “floating” with the music throughout the opening paragraph, in parallel with a wealth of counter-themes – a minor key episode brings a wistful touch that cheers up when firstly a toy-soldier marches by and then a clockwork dancing couple strut their stuff, before the music returns to the opening.

Chen played the next piece very much akin to the “frantic scherzo” description, with stinging attack suggesting reckless abandonment, a dimension of energy extra to how I’d previously heard the piece delivered (and blowing the cobwebs from the rafters of my idea regarding the music’s droll ambient humour in spectacular fashion!). Amends were made to my sensibilities with the last of the three pieces having a beautifully flowing, almost “grateful unfolding” kind of trajectory with its sights set upon a profound serenity.

Next came four of Henri Duparc’s 1869 Melodies, but with a difference – these were the pianist’s own transcriptions of the songs, realisations whose apparent sympathy with the ethos of the originals would surely place them in the category of a precious gift for any recitalist.  The first, L’Invitation au Voyage is a setting of Charles Baudelaire’s sensuous plea to a lover to accompany him on a journey of ”abundance, calm and sensuous delight”, the music around the melody all gratuitous suggestion and scintillation. The second with its title Elégie resembles Rachmaninov’s similarly “charged” depth of feeling for keyboard texture in its rendering of words by Irish poet Thomas Moore describing the pain of a bereaved lover.

Chen’s gift for story-telling irradiates the somewhat gothic “layers” of Duparc’s setting of Francois Coppée’s La vague et la cloche (“The wave and the bell”), a dream depicting a hapless adventurer’s storm-tossed sea-voyage and a somewhat macabre bell-tolling episode in a remote bell-tower. Finally, in a rather more conventionally romantic scenario, the final Extase is a sinuously-crafted setting of a poem by Jean Lahor expressing the feelings of a lover sleeping on his beloved’s breast.

César Franck was long considered a somewhat sanctimonious and sentimental figure who composed primarily for the organ, achieving fame with his setting of the sacred song “Panis Angelicus”, which for many years hampered even his D Minor Symphony and the popular Symphonic Variations for (piano and orchestra) from being taken seriously. But the re-emergence of works like the Violin Sonata , the Piano Quintet, the String Quartet, and solo piano works such as the present Prelude , Chorale and Fugue has allowed a far more important and significant creative figure to emerge and be given his proper dues. His piano works in part represent his early career as a keyboard virtuoso with their formidable technical demands, though this work (1884) dates from his maturity as a composer and the emergence of many of those works on which his reputation now stands.

As with the later solo piano Prelude, Aria et Final, this present work features the composer’s potent amalgam of mystical solemnity, robust structural strength and a fluent melodic gift – Chen enabled both its declamatory strength and fluid animation to coexist at the Prelude’s beginning, all the while keeping to the fore that enlivening spirit, a kind of ineffable energy bent on searching for a purpose.  The opening strands having explored the terrain, they then regrouped to acclaim the first strains of a chorale theme (one perhaps inspired by the bells in Wagner’s “Parsifal’) buoyed up by arpeggiated chords which moved from section to harmonic section with majestic assurance in Chen’s hands!

From this ever-increasing splendour grew a Lisztian passage that tipped the excitement over into the fugue, a descending opening figure whose explorations Chen took on a totally absorbing journey, involving different registers and inversions, building towards a sonorous climax, at which point a cadenza like passage called forth the wonderful “Bell” chorale theme and the fugue’s subject together in a stunning peroration-like coda, the notes flailing amid fanfare-like cascades before the crashing concluding chords – what more could we ask of a work and its performer but that?

There was plenty to talk about at the interval, so much so that when the pianist reappeared we all had to break up our discussions and scurry back to our seats so that the concert could “get on”! The second half began with a work that was actually new to me, and to which I had listened from a recording and failed to really enthuse about – I thought at the time the music, Gabriel Faure’s Op. 73 Theme and Variations, all a tad tired-sounding, and so was inclined to share the blame between composer and performer. To my surprise, right from John Chen’s playing of the first phrase I was made to prick up my ears as if I was hearing a different piece of music! Here the opening was strongly delivered and finely shaped, the theme not so much “solemn” in character as forthright and determined.

The variations also seemed to have acquired stronger, more characterful outlines, so that instead of waiting for each one of them to end I found myself here eager for a new one to begin! Variation One has Chen meticulously balancing the theme in the bass with gentle filigree patternings in the treble register. Next is a scherzo-like piece with contrasting energies, at first madly rushing about, then looking about to see who else might be listening, an activity which then morphed into earthier, more vigorous “jumping” figures with onlookers shaking heads in disbelief and despair! Even more exploratory were the next variation’s far-flung figurations, decorative and demonstrative, and attention-grabbing. Then came a great roulade of sounds turning like a ferris-wheel, as onlookers watched from below, craning necks as the wheel turned.

I found the sixth variation equally arresting, pinpointing both stratospheric and near-subterranean notes with great arches between them, and the seventh filling the spaces thus created with regular note suspensions run up and down like ladders. The eighth variation was a beautifully wistful and thoughtful version of the same, complete with onlookers’ “oo-er-ings”, while the ninth was even more rhapsodical and far-thinking via its creation of hitherto unglimpsed views. A restless spirit then overtook the music for the tenth variation, an insouciant up-and-down ride pushing back the boundaries of adventure to the point where the composer’s zeitgeist must have intervened at the point of such excess with the next and final variation, lifting the music suddenly beyond all striving and searching, and quietly exulting in a fulfilment of serenity.  Such a different experience to my first hearing of the work, and so very rewarding…….

Camille Saint-Saens was, of course in temperament something of the joker to Faure’s philosopher. Saint-Saens was ten years older, and the relationship began as master and pupil, but it lasted sixty years, and ended as one of compositional contemporaries. They had their differences, Saint-Saens’s tastes being the more conservative, but the latter was always solicitous towards the younger man’s music, though disapproving of some of his colleague’s enthusiasms.

Their musical differences were heavily underscored by John Chen’s staggeringly brilliant presentation of Saint-Saens’s Six Etudes Op. 111, music that revelled in a number of aspects of spectacular technical display. Beginning with Tierces Majeures et Mineures (Major and Minor Thirds), the right-hand figurations’ gossamer delicacy was then eschewed by those for the left-hand in favour of a more turbulent character, after which the Traits Chromatiques (chromatic figurations) seemed to let loose a whole swarm of Rimsky-Korsakov’s eponymous Bumble Bees! Prélude et Fugue grandly acknowledged JS Bach’s pre-eminence in this form, giving a forthright theme an insistently varied accompaniment between the hands, and a fugue which followed more conventional lines while tossing in toccata-like touches such as the irresistible flourish right at the end.

The Lisztian Les Cloches de Las Palmas (which, in places, recalled for me Jack Body’s Five Piano Pieces!) is simply replete with resonances as if Saint-Saens had unlocked some kind of deeply  archetypal stimulus to memory inside the listener which somehow transcends the title’s specific geographic reference. Different evocations rang out in No.5, Tierces majeures chromatiques (Chromatic major thirds) whose particular sonorities readily conjured up whole swathes of the macabre in feeling and sensation long before film composers turned such devices into cliches (Chen’s astonishing finger-dexterity here garnering jaw-dropping awe from his audience which, if anything, turned into childlike bemusement at the piece’s throwaway ending!

But all of this had to defer to the composer’s outrageously indulgent self-pillaging of a previously completed work in the concluding Toccata d’après le 5e Concerto (Toccata from the finale of the Fifth Piano Concerto)! Dedicated to one of the most eminent French pianists of the time, Raoul Pugno, the piece’s ebullient virtuosity draws from different sequences in the concerto’s finale, mingling near- exact passages with more extended and rhetorical ones while keeping the pulses and energies of the original at fever-pitch, the solo piano at the very least rivalling the soloist-and-orchestra combination in the concertante original.

Fired-up as our enthusiasms were at this point, our sensibilities were mercifully allowed to gradually reinhabit less rumbustious living-spaces by the concert’s end, with John Chen giving us the adorable slow movement of Mozart’s Piano Sonata in C Major K.330, which I knew, but couldn’t place, name-wise – the pianist came to my rescue! It closed, quite perfectly, an afternoon of uncommonly sublime music-making which will linger in my memory and in that of others – what a telling and resonant advertisement for the need many of us crave (and occasionally voice) for more piano recitals! Thank you, John Chen!

Revolution, Innovation and Fantasy from Russia new and old

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Dmitri Shostakovich

Orchestra Wellington with Marc Taddei rehearsing Shostakovich

FAVOURED SON – Orchestra Wellington 2025

SHOSTAKOVICH – Symphony No.2 in B Major, Op.14  “October”
TCHAIKOVSKY – Piano Concerto No. 3 in E-flat Major Op. 75
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV – Scheherazade Op.35

Jian Liu (piano)
Orpheus Choir of Wellington (Music Director: Brent Stewart)
Orchestra Wellington (Concertmaster: Amalia Hall)
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 7th June, 2025

It goes without saying these days, you might think – but there was very little that was usual or routine about this latest Orchestra Wellington concert. And even when everything might seem pre-announced and sewn up and ready to go, there’s always something that feels special in the air, a kind of anticipatory excitement involving what COULD happen, or emerge from up the collective sleeve of the orchestra and Marc Taddei. So, this was the case when we all trooped into the MFC for the year’s second Orchestra Wellington concert featuring a work by Dmitri Shostakovich in honour of the composer’s 50th anniversary year, and this time alongside two works by fellow-Russian composers of a previous era, Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov – on paper alone, a colourful combination indeed!

We knew a piano concerto was scheduled, a happening almost always figuring as part of a concert’s first half – but where was the instrument? – languishing, unattended, to one side, as if forgotten, or its accustomed role perhaps topsy-turveyed! Something was definitely afoot, as up above, a stream of choristers were filing into their choir positions – were they here as listeners? It didn’t seem so as the figures stood alert, and waiting – and on came conductor, Marc Taddei, acknowledging the applause, but without any further ado, turning to the orchestra, and almost imperceptibly, setting the music in motion (the choir would surely have sat down, though I can’t remember them actually doing so) – like everybody else in the hall I was mesmerised by, firstly, the silence, and then what seemed like a distant subterranean rumbling, the origin of which was the bass drum softly beginning the work  before being joined by the lower strings of the orchestra! Such rapt playing! – a charged quietitude with a quality not unlike that which I remember Russian conductor Vassily Petrencko getting from the NZSO players during the first movement of the same composer’s “Leningrad” Symphony, back in 2011! Incredible concentration on the part of all of these musicians, something one seemed to “feel” as well as actually hear……

By this time we had figured out the game-plan, this music by Shostakovich actually being a New Zealand premiere of the work, the playing as committed to the composer’s cause as it seemed possible to be! Those pianissimo sounds gradually coalesced into something which seemed as much “interior” as “other-worldly”, as if from either deeply within or a long distance away, the sounds gradually quickening their impulses as the strings make their entrances section by section, creating a “muted hive of activity” to which the brasses joined in what sounded like the same manner – most extraordinary! – only the trumpet plays something that could be called a “theme”, gradually joined by the flute and piccolo’s similarly protruberant lines, and with the tuba adding its sagacious voice to the commentary – gripping stuff!

Suddenly, the lower strings began a dancing rhythm which gradually built up as the trajectories spread throughout the orchestra, like a kind of “danse macabre”, capped off by a fusillade of percussion, the timpani goading firstly the lower strings and then the tuba into droll responses. After a great circular wave of scintillating impulse broke through and over the entire orchestra, the solo violin began what sounded to my ears the work’s most extraordinary sequence, an impudent dance-like, fugal-sounding elaboration into which the players joined one by one, the music again ‘”gathering in” the instrumental voices as the augmented body of sounds swept onwards and into a percussion-led precursor (?) of something like a “Movietone News” trailer – outrageous, but totally mesmerising!

Consternation! – had these trajectorial efforts sapped the music’s strength? Were the pulses fading? What were these desolate tones and hollowed- out brass notes? Had all hope faded? The clarinet elaborated further, joined by the solo violin, the music then climbing into the ether as if in farewell – it was the kind of moment which could have either completely broken, or reached out and salvaged human resolve! Into the void came a crashing blast of percussion and a factory siren! – sensation aplenty, as the choir leapt to its collective feet and began to intone the (dreadfully banal) words of the poem extolling Lenin and Socialism! But to my non-understanding sensibilities those massed vocal tones sounded splendidly forthright, optimistic and noble, the orchestral instruments boldly and grandly colouring the utterances, leaving one’s imagination to freely invent felicitations of meaning and import in accord with one’s own inclinations – not unlike a Catholic worshipper who would admire the beauties of the old Latin Mass though unable to understand a word of it!

I loved the instrumental passages where the horns’ heroic calls were augmented by the trumpets and lower brasses, all decorated by the winds – all very uplifting! A cymbal crash and the choir ecstatically re-entered, the full orchestra panoply helping the voices to celebrate! The music flirted briefly with the return of the opening “hive of activity” music before being redirected by the factory siren to the business in hand! More exultation, culminating in a “Listen to this announcement” percussion roll, the voices forcefully shouting rather than singing the words of praise for “October, the Commune and Lenin”. Massive Mahler-like crashes, wailings from the siren, and a final brass-led peroration brought the work to a tumultuous close! In every which way this seemed to me a fantastic performance, taking the music where its composer intended, far and beyond the platitudinous dogmas of the words and into the Beethoven-like realms of the human spirit. It was a moment to remember and treasure.

How was the remained of the evening’s programme going to fare after such a singular and distinctive outpouring? Part of the answer was to “ease” into more “established” kinds of expression (e.g. the aforementioned piano concerto!) – but not just ANY concerto, any “random rabbit pulled out of the hat” affair! This was a different-again kind of novelty, one continuing the enterprise of Orchestra Wellington in a tangential direction, though maintaining a “Russian” profile. Tchaikovsky’s Third Piano Concerto has always had “Cinderella” status compared with its two far more worldly sisters through being styled as something of an “unfinished failure” right at the outset of its career, even by the composer, who wrote on the score of the completed first movement “The end – God be thanked!”. All of this has prompted less-than-enthusiastic attitudes towards the work, despite it receiving some superlative recordings (which I’ve spent a bit of time this morning checking out!). Before the concert I had even been wondering whether something else could have been found, another, perhaps more rewarding concertante work with a Russian flavour (a list including works by Arensky, Lyapunov, Rubinstein, or even Stravinsky’s “Capriccio”.). As it turned out, I simply needn’t have worried!

Marc Taddei introduced our soloist to the platform, one who had recently received a good deal of independent acclaim after being proclaimed as Te Manu Taki Tuauki o te Tau – Best Classical Artist in the Aotearoa Music Awards 2025. This was Jian Liu, already a favourite with audiences through numerous previous appearances, though his award made this occasion all the more special and eagerly awaited. Thanks to his brilliant pianism and the sterling support of conductor and players, I was able to “rediscover” this somewhat maligned Tchaikovsky work fragment and regard it afresh as a jewel worth preserving.

All through the lyrical passages of the opening, shared by both soloist and orchestra, it made just the right kind of “sit-up-and-take-notice” impression, which continued into the dance episodes instigated by Liu’s dancing fingers the excitement reinforced by Taddei’s and his players’ support. The orchestral tutti that followed made the most of the melodic fragments created by these interactions, after which the piano gave us an elaborate cadenza, jaw-dropping in some of its demands, even if, towards the end one sensed the repetitions began to take something of a desperate “where’s the way out?’ kind of aspect for the composer! It was a case of the cavalry to the rescue, as the pianist’s scintillations descended from the keyboard’s precipitous heights to be gathered in by the orchestra and danced all about in triumph! A heartfelt “sighing” theme was shared by Liu with the players until the timpani called everybody to order for a final dance, one we’d previously heard and welcomed like an old friend, one in which piano and orchestra seemed to link as partners for a last hurrah before the culminating unison chords brought down the music’s curtain.

The pianist was justly recalled to the platform after the concerto, electing then to delight us even further by playing an encore – one which both bewitched and frustrated me because of the piece being something I “knew” but simply couldn’t name – was it Schumann, or Grieg, or, perhaps, Dvorak? I had to be “helped” in this instance (thanks are due to Marc Taddei!), because it was actually more Tchaikovsky , and from a work I had heard but obviously didn’t know well enough – “Autumn” from “The Seasons” (some editions call it “The Months”, as there are twelve individual pieces) – this one was enchanting in every way!

By that stage, it was obviously OK for the concert to revert to “standard repertoire, more of which in a moment –  firstly, yet another “surprise” was in store for us, with Marc Taddei paying both a spoken and musical birthday tribute to one of Orchestra Wellington’s staunchest supporters, John Comerford, by directing a rendition of Igor Stravinsky’s “Greeting Prelude”, which uses the well-known “Happy Birthday” tune in what it’s composer described as a kind of “singing telegram” (Stravinsky had originally written it for the conductor Pierre Monteux, who had conducted the premieres of both Petrouchka and The Rite of Spring!). Elsewhere he had referred to the music’s use of serial techniques in a diatonic kind of context as “a very learned prelude, all fugue and canon”! For most of us it was enough that the famous natal day tune was even recognisable!

From these cerebral hi-jinks we then switched to one of the most popular of all classical repertoire pieces – but what repertoire! Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” has been a “go-to” piece for me over the years, never losing its charm or magic! – and in a good performance it can define a “gold standard” of romantic orchestral achievement. It got away to an excellent start this evening with the appearance of the orchestra’s concertmaster Amalia Hall clad in a stunning red dress as befitted her “storyteller with violin” status – in terms of apparel that was as far as she needed to be different in her role, especially as the history of “Scheherazade” on record over the years is bedecked with a series of LP covers that feature very much “of-their-time” culturally cringe-like images of definitely non-Arabic-looking women, each of whom was masquerading as a bona fide Scheherazade!

To the music! – and Marc Taddei conducted what I thought was a richly-detailed performance, bringing out many a salient detail to enhance the piece’s general atmosphere and story-telling ambience – the Sultan’s fearful motto theme right at the work, for instance, had plenty of menace warning Scheherazade to be on her guard and keep her husband-slash-executioner entertained, interested and eager for more – Amalia Hall’s violin entry as Scheherazade was the most silvery and enchanting one could imagine, enhanced by the harp’s equally magical accompaniment. Detailed though it all was I thought the music’s trajectories in the first movement depicting Sinbad’s ship a little sluggish at first, wanting some “setting out on the voyage” kind of excitement and urgency in places – though the strings “dug into” their phrases, I wanted a bit more forward-surging rise and fall from the ship going through those waves as palpably as could be made. But the various instrumental solos – solo ‘cello, horn, flute, oboe, clarinet – were superbly taken, and the solo violin never missed a storyteller’s nuance as it all unfolded – and the second big “tutti” had more oceanic urgency to match the girth, with the trumpets capping off the tumultuous figurations most excitingly.

The second movement was notable for the many instrumental characterisations – the silvery Scheherazade-violin at the beginning, this time with a touch of excitement denoting a different episode of the story, begun by a great bassoon solo, furthered by the oboe and harp, and then by the strings, delivering the melody with ever-increasing urgency! Great work from the trombone and the trumpet, exchanging calls with the strings and building up terrific excitement! And what a plethora of magical detailings followed! – a clarinet over pizzicato strings, an piccolo piping its presence in  “wait for me” way (and, though I was sure somebody missed an entry here, the music kept up its momentum!), brass and woodwind exchanging signals, strings climbing skywards as if sailors were ascending masts to their lookouts, with calls resounding between brass, winds and strings as the excitement grew – it all drove the story onwards, leaving all of us hanging on for dear life, right up to that forlorn flute solo, echoed by the horn (lovely “stopped” tones!)  violin, and cello, all of which then made way for the whirlwind ending!

I thought the slow movement here (“The Young Prince and the Young Princess”) one of the loveliest I’d ever heard, the melody shaped to perfection, with the prince’s voice neither too ardent nor too languid at the beginning. A pity I found the side-drum accompanying the princess’s reply just too soft to really “tell” –  hard to play and not sound too “percussive” I would imagine! – of course, with the clarinet having the melody, the accompanying “whisperings” were ultra-poetic! And all was extra-gorgeous at the reprise of the Prince’s melody with the “cascading violins” borrowed from Scheherazade’s melody (is THAT where Mantovani got the idea from for his strings?) beautifully “echoed” by the oboe solo, and with the climax given plenty of romantic warmth but not too much! The horn gratefully introduced the “epilogue” (on my very first recording of Scheherazade I remember in retrospect this whole section being cut most cruelly right up to the last descending woodwind phrases), here unedited and complete!

A fast and furious introduction to the finale caused our Scheherazade some consternation, with the Sultan’s theme now sounding impatient and foreboding, and the solo violin suitably agitated in response, and quickly leafing through her diminishing repertoire to come up with something! Then, with a flourish we were off on a wild ride, like a “cops and robbers” chase through a crowded exotic market-place – such infectious excitement! When this ran its course, Scheherazade plunged into her “piece de resistance”, the wrecking of Sinbad’s ship in a furious storm – “the ship is dashed to pieces by the waves on a rock surmounted by a bronze warrior!” Nobody could question the percussionists regarding the vigour of their onslaught, here, but I wondered whether the mighty bass drum hammer-blows could have best been gradually “built up” towards the climactic moment in tandem with the final gong-stroke – here, the energy seemed to have already been spent when the tam-tam was sounded – just a thought!

The epilogue was as satisfying as I’ve ever heard, with the sultan’s voice no longer threatening, but  contentedly rumbling in accord with his storyteller, whose own violin-voice ascended repeatedly and beatifically (more securely with each ascent) into the skies and enshrining her place for all time as a true model of constancy and devotion. We were left ecstatic and transfigured after this, with plenty of agreement afterwards that it had been an evening of remarkable range and scope of repertoire and expression!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Home for the Winter with Hannah Darroch and Liam Wooding

Posted on by Peter Mechen

“Home for the Winter”
Liam Wooding (piano) and Hannah Darroch (flute)
Music by Jasmine Lovell-Smith, Henri Dutilleux, Lachlan Skipworth, Aaron Copland and Lili Boulanger
Bedlam and Squalor – Level 1, 18 Garret St,. Te Aro, Wellington
6:00 pm, Thursday,15th May, 2025

Things were “swinging away” in great end-of-the-day style at “The Rogue and Vagabond”, the watering-place right next to central Wellington’s Glover Park, as I made my way, a little tentatively, just around the corner and further along Garret St, to where there stood, self-assuredly in its own modest way, the entrance to “Bedlam and Squalor” (ah, thought I – a first cousin to “The Rogue and Vagabond!) – but I was straightaway taken by the contrast of the sombre doorway (of the “abandon hope” sort) with the profusion, above and besides this entrance, of coloured-pencil like horizontal stripes one might have correlated to a kind of urban kindergarten or some sort of art-gallery where the Hogarth-like images I’d entertained of “Bedlam and Squalor” were in reality reverse-euphemisms  for “fun and games”, and obviously nothing worse than “madness and merriment”.

Up the stairs I went, leaving those around-the-corner jollities earthbound as I ascended, finding myself in a quiet, comfortable and welcoming space not unlike a bar itself, but with tables and chairs set up in a rounded area at the room’s end, where there was a piano, beside which the two artists, Hannah Darroch and Liam Wooding, were discussing aspects of the music they were about to perform, and greeting us (myself included) as we came in. Pleasantries completed I had just settled down, finding a seat next to an acquaintance whom I’d made at previous concerts and always found most agreeable, when I discovered that, in my haste at leaving home I’d snatched up one of my notebooks, but had forgotten to bring a pen! Help was at hand in the shape and form of a bartender, who was greatly amused by the piquancy of the plight of a music critic who had come without a stylus, but who kindly brought my agony to an end by producing one – I was happy to have thus contributed a “storm-in-a-teacup” strand of incident to the proceedings now that things had been resolved!

So! – here were Hannah Darroch and Liam Wooding, formally welcoming us (we were a small but appreciative audience in that relatively intimate space) and telling us about what they were going to play for us, beginning with a piece which had give the whole recital its name, “Home for the Winter”, a piece written in 2020 for Hannah by Jasmine Lovell-Smith, and whose title was inspired by the “homeward” move made by many New Zealanders in response to the Covid 19 outbreak. The sounds seemed coaxed from out of the air, firstly for the piano, and then for the flute, the lines having a natural, organic kind of flow as if wrought by impulse, a feeling for the actions of wind and water all around – having been brought into being these elements seemed to take human form in song, which became a sort of minstrelsy, a chorus that rose up as the piano intensified the exchanges, before breaking off and leaving the opening resonances as a memory.

Having proclaimed a kind of “this is where we are” introduction, Hannah and Liam took us next to more peopled terrain, with a work by French composer Henri Dutilleux. Though it was one I’d not heard before, I knew and had already been enchanted with pieces by Poulenc, Francaix and Ropartz, and this proved, to my delight, similar kind of territory. I was almost straightaway disarmed by the opening piquancies (mysterious piano octaves echoed and gracefully “danced all about” by the flute) – and I loved the “Peter and the Wolf” opening dialogues of the second movement between the piano’s predatory wolf and the flute’s frightened but intrepid bird, and the following rhapsodic exchanges between the two, suggesting something of a singular “entente cordiale”.

A sudden escalation of energies (brilliant “molto perpetuo” playing from both musicians) seemed to clear the air of menace, entirely, and give the scenario over entirely to the pleasures of tit-for-tat exchange, our sensibilities being given plenty of air and space in places by some soaring lines before being returned to the dance! Towards the end, a cadenza-like episode from Hannah’s flute took us to a Ravel-like place not unlike Daphnis and Chloe’s enchanted grove, before the pair rejoined forces for an ever-accelerating coda, exhilarating for us all in its shared energies and pleasures.

Next was a recently-composed (2022) sonata by Australian Lachlan Skipworth, introduced by Liam, and described by him as “very refreshing” to play, though adding the proviso that the time signatures in the score with their frequent changes – 20/16, 10/16, 18/16 – certainly posed something a “challenge”. From the beginning I found the work a same-but-different experience to that of the Dutilleux, here an almost Gaelic world of exhilaration, with the opening “chaos of delight” morphing into a folk-dance blend of carefree abandon and strongly-pulsed movement.

The piano breaks off to play a solemn, repeated note-pattern to which the flute adds a lovely, rustic song-like sequence, borne along by its own airiness and spaciousness, hymn-like when the piano intensifies the mood, and seemingly tossed into the play of winds and waves when both instruments dance along the hilltops of the melody’s liberated lines – entrancing! Just as spell-binding is the dialogue of voices sequence which follows, like a pair of birds enacting a defining of territories, or a courtship ritual, one which leads back to the exuberance of the folkdance – if the conclusion isn’t quite of the grand finality one might expect, one might say it has an attractively insouciant “well, there it is!” manner at the end.

Our “food for thought” interval was sufficient to process what we’d heard (delightful!) and clear our decks for the next offering, a “different again” experience promised, which Hannah described for us  as “Americana in music” – this was Aaron Copland’s Duo for Flute and Piano, again something I hadn’t heard (oh, the ignorance of some music critics!), and naturally looked forward to an introduction to the piece. The opening movement, marked as “Freely” by the composer, takes us straight into the world of the latter’s ballet “Appalachian Spring” with the flute playing solo, a “voice in the wilderness”, spacious and nostalgic, with the piano’s entry contributing to the characteristic, almost unmistakably “open” sound. The flute begins the dance, strands of movement varying its trajectories, with the piano amusingly “oom-pah” at one point just before the big flute solo! Another pronounced “echo” for me is the similar ambience to the Third Symphony towards the end, a kind of salute to an idealised past…..but, then, what a quirky kind of conclusion! – those sharply-abrupt chordings are almost amusing in their air of dismissiveness!

“Poetic, somewhat mournful”, says the composer at the head of Mvt.II – piano and flute seem to be either looking for or avoiding one another at the start – most of those open harmonies have closed up, and whatever congress the instruments strike, each seems somewhat nonplussed by the other – there’s a moment of accord in a more animated and heartfelt middle section, but compared to the opening, it’s a bit like the difference between a dream and an awakening (whichever suits which!).The piano returns to its lonely furrow, and the flute raises its head for a heartfelt and sonorous single-note look-around!

Both espy a notice saying “Lively, with bounce!”  – so the piano “bounces” and the flute catches on! And what better than a square dance? – lovely, palms-skyward trajectories, with quirky harmonic comings and goings, with the flute occasionally intoning “Where are you?” as the piano rumbles up and down the stairs! – “Back to the dance!” they both chorus, nostalgically smoothing-over the rhythms here and there, but as quickly resuming their “hide-and-seek” – suddenly Hannah’s flute espies an open window and with Liam’s piano in hot pursuit catapaults right through it! – freedom!

Has this been music I’m writing about or some sort of “anything you can do I can do better” kind of game? It just seems that way, at times – but whatever the case, we in the audience were tickled to pieces by it all – and just to show that life bears SOME resemblance to art, we were invited by our stalwart artists to return to our lives with a kind of encore, a piece by Lili Boulanger appropriately entitled “Nocturne”, the flute singing a lullabic song over piano octaves, the tones soaring and settling over gorgeous keyboard undulations, while the harmonies coalesce slowly and beautifully.

Hannah and Liam, you and your instruments brought about such delight and contentment for all of us present this evening – any thoughts of bedlam and squalor were forgotten as I took my leave of my companion (deftly remembering on the way out to return the borrowed pen!) and descended those stairs and met with the open air once again, trying to recall what day it was, where I was, where I was going and what the music was that was playing in my head as I walked through streets that bore no relation, it seemed, to any of those sounds….and I thought it was definitely all part of something well worth remembering……

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cantoris – opera that’s tuneful, rhythmic, magical, exotic, funny, murderous, tragic, pompous, escapist, real – what more could you want?

Posted on by Peter Mechen

CANTORIS – A Night at the Opera

Cantoris Choir
Soloists: Barbara Paterson (soprano), William McElwee (baritone)
Music Director: Ingrid Schoenfeld
Piano: Heather Easting

Ruggero LEONCAVALLO – Bell Chorus from I Pagliacci
Giuseppe VERDI – Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore
George Frideric HANDEL – Chorus of Enchanted Islanders from Alcina
Giacomo PUCCINI – Humming Chorus from Madama Butterfly
Georges BIZET – Habanera, with Chorus from Carmen
Toreador Song, with Chorus, from Carmen
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART – “Heil sei euch Geweihten” from The
Magic Flute
Christoph Willibald GLUCK – “Quel est l’audacieux” from Orphée et
Eurydice
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART – Voyagers’ Chorus from Idomeneo
George Frideric HANDEL – “How Strange their Ends” from Theodora
Henry PURCELL – Dido’s Lament and “With Drooping Wings”
from Dido and Aeneas
Giuseppe VERDI – Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Nabucco
Brindisi (Drinking Song and Chorus) from La
Traviata
Carl ORFF – Chorus “O Fortuna”  from Carmina Burana

St.Peter’s-on-Willis-Street, Te Aro, Wellington
Saturday, 10th May 2025

What a splendid blockbuster of a way for a choir to begin a season! – and with so many wonderful moments that have actually transcended their “high art” origins and are now “in the culture!” – and none the worse for it! So often certain pieces of music are deemed well-known to the point of cliché, and are therefore passed over, in favour of something more “interesting”. But! – as I fondly remember from my own formative years, it was often one of these very pieces, which would have been regarded by others as “hackneyed”, whose first hearing hit me like a ton of bricks, and to the extent that life was never the same again afterwards!

At school, in the Fourth Form, I had the good fortune to have a teacher who was himself an opera fan – so he would play to us pieces from a recording (of which I now have a prized copy!) of “Opera Choruses”, ALL of which I simply fell in love with on first hearing! – it was partly the way he introduced them to his class of rough-diamond, mostly rugby-playing and pop-music-loving boys who probably didn’t at that stage know Wagner from a Weet-Bix packet, but who listened, spell-bound as he described scenarios to go with the choruses, such as how a rich man, sitting miserably in his house surrounded by his wealth, suddenly heard a crowd of pilgrims passing in the street outside, singing “Alleluiah” at the tops of their voices as they went by the man’s window – and how the man was galvanised by what he heard, and, leaving his house and possessions behind, rushed down the road to join them! – and then, of course, our teacher played us the actual recording of the chorus, and we were “there”, listening to these voices, and imagining how we would have been filled with wonderment at the sounds and jumped up at the end to follow the voices ourselves. This particular chorus (the Pilgrims’ Chorus from Wagner’s “Tannhauser”) wasn’t among Cantoris’s presentations, but the others had an effect this same evening that vividly brought back that memory to me, of my sensibilities being unexpectedly “ignited” by something whose appeal was direct and enduring!

What was especially wonderful at the Cantoris concert was how the choir, with the barest minimum of forces (no orchestra, and no elaborate stage or theatrical trappings with which to fill out the scenarios), was able to generate from their music-making something of this excitement of both discovery and rediscovery amongst their audience. For this they could thank in addition an inspirational music director, Ingrid Schoenfeld, a brilliant pianist, Heather Easting, and two solo singers, soprano Barbara Paterson and baritone William McElwee who threw themselves wholeheartedly into their characterisations of various roles associated with certain of the choruses. Audience reaction to each and every one of the items (even those whose unexpectedly abrupt endings might have taken by surprise people who were just beginning to “groove along” with things – however, opera, as any enthusiast knows, thrives on the unexpected!) was enthusiastic and wholehearted, and the programming with its variety of settings, situations and characterisations meant that one’s interest never flagged.

Within this variety were placed a number of sure-fire favourites with tunes that everybody seems to have heard somewhere or other, those “part of the soundscape” melodies which seem to have always been there – such were two of the Verdi choruses (the “Anvil” Chorus from “Il Trovatore”, and the “Hebrew Slaves” Chorus from “Nabucco”), Bizet’s perennial favourite “Habanera” (solo-and-chorus) from “Carmen”, and the more recent “classic” from Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana”, that’s made up for lost time on various television advertisements, “O Fortuna!” Each one had plenty of impact of satisfyingly varying kinds, even if in the “Il Trovatore” excerpt the anvils sounded more “Janissary-like” than whole and ringing, and the gypsy men fudged their first “All’opra! all’opra!”, probably through thinking too much about the gypsy women! Such a distraction wasn’t a problem with Barbara Paterson’s alluringly three-dimensional  portrayal of Carmen in the “Habanera” (the singer using the church’s central aisle to palpable dramatic effect!) – and though baritone William McElwee couldn’t quite match her range of vocal colour and impulse, his confident “presence” as Escamillo in the Toreador’s Song, did ample justice to the bullfighter’s swaggering character, both singers backed to the hilt by the choir’s support and the unfailingly buoyant trajectories of Heather Easting’s accompaniments!

On a different emotional plane were two other solo-and-chorus presentations which resounded afterwards in the memory, firstly Gluck’s chilling “Quel est L’Audacieux” from Orphée et Eurydice, featuring the choir of Furies guarding the Underworld with tones fearsome and implaccable  – and the baritone a tremulous but staunch and persistent supplicant, driven desperately by his love for Eurydice to bring her back from the land of the Dead – the atmosphere generated by the confrontation was properly chilling, with the choir’s tones dark and malevolent before being moved to pity by McElwee’s plaintive pleas – a memorable evocation. Though not cheek-by jowl on the programme, fortunately, we still couldn’t help but register the contrasts in almost every way between the Gluck scenario and Henry Purcell’s famous “Dido’s Lament”, one of opera’s most heart-rending scenes, and given all the space needed for both impulse and stillness to work a powerful spell – Paterson’s singing was beautifully-poised, purer of tone on her second-time-round ascent at “reMEMBER ME” and thoroughly affecting altogether, as was the choir’s following “With Drooping Wings” chorus, its sombre tones and heartbeat-like phrasings seeming to put all of us closer to our tenuous grasp upon life than we might have otherwise wanted.

I don’t intend to scroll through the entire programme in this review, but would like to register some more specific enjoyments, such as the opening “Bell Chorus” from Leoncavallo’s “I Pagliacci”, which gave us plenty of bright, vibrant bell-sounds and ear-catching dynamic variation. Another was the chorus from Handel’s “Alcina”, well-remembered from an enterprising production I attended some years ago at Day’s’ Bay Opera, and bringing back some lovely evocations of that time. In fact the programme as such had a number of lesser-known choruses from works such as from another Handel work, an oratorio “Theodora” (again, adventurously performed, and heard by me, at Day’s Bay, incidentally, as an opera!). Any memory of the work had by this time gone, so it seemed like a new and wondrous experience for me, a solemn, processional-like journey sustained partly by long-held notes, and at other times closely-worked phrases that seemed to gestate from these same lines like a plant coming into flower, the whole suiting the passage of thought and expression of wonderment – for me, a delightful rediscovery!.

Another came from Mozart, this time his “Idomeneo” (one which gave Barbara Paterson another chance to shine as Elettra, one of the characters in the opera’s story, here expressing hopes with some trepidation for a calm voyage to her homeland with the person she loves) – a kind of Mozartean “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage” work, here given with flowing, undulating tones from the choir, taking the treacherous upward leap towards the end in their stride!

Comments in general? These are mere opinions and can be regarded as such – but I have to confess to wishing that the trajectories of just a couple of the items had been allowed to flow more easily and dreamily – Puccini’s “Humming Chorus”, for instance, I prefer to hear sounded as if it’s almost “breathed” rather than sung and that we listeners are eavesdropping on something really private and close to the heart! To an extent I thought also that the “Va, pensiero” Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves could also have been taken as if in a dream at the start, making the “outburst” in the middle more of a kind of the captives’ “awakening” a demonstration of despair and grief at their predicament – “O harp, why do you hang so silently?…rekindle the memories in our hearts!”

Enough! – reviewers of concerts should talk about what and how things were done, played and sung, rather than compile wish-lists of such things as “could-have-beens!”! It will be obvious that I got such a lot of pleasure from out of the concert, a good deal of which was reinforced by the enjoyment of those sitting close to me and of other people I talked with afterwards. Congratulations and thanks are due to all concerned for their part in such a warm-hearted enterprise!