EARTH
Wellington Youth Orchestra,
Wellington Youth Sinfonietta,
Wellington Youth Choir
Solace Ward (viola)
Conductors: Mark Carter (WYO)
Chris Van Der Zee (WYS)
Rowan Johnstone (WYC)
Programme:
JAAKKO MANTYJARVI – Announcements
SARAH HOPKINS – Past Life Melodies
REUBEN RAMEKA – Waita
ANDRE J THOMAS – Rockin’ Jerusalem
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Overture “Egmont”
ANTHONY RITCHIE – Viola Concerto
Interval
FRANZ SCHUBERT – Symphony No. 8 (Ist Movement)
JAKE RUNESTAD – “Earth” Symphony
GIUSEPPE VERDI – Grand March from “Aida”
A “One-of-a-kind” Concert, said the publicity – and in terms of range of repertoire, performers and level of achievement, this presentation by the combined forces of Wellington’s various “Youth” music ensembles certainly lived up to its description! Nor were the items all “standard” repertoire, but in some cases were chosen to highlight particular aspects of the concert, adding to the “special character” of the event. Consequently, we were treated to a feast of different kinds of music-making, both instrumental and vocal, and featuring individual as well as ensembled skills.
A particular feature of the afternoon’s presentation was award-winning solo violist Solace Ward’s performance of New Zealand composer Anthony Ritchie’s Viola Concerto. At the conclusion of the concerto, and to the delight of the audience, Solace was presented with the Tom Gott Cup (from the trophy’s actual namesake himself!) which added to the pleasure and singularity of the occasion!
In a masterstroke of programming, the concert’s opening was one of delightful singularity from the Wellington Youth Choir under Rowan Johnston – a whimsical item courtesy of Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi, sporting the unnecessary title Announcements. We were both informed of and enjoined by the choir to observe the usual pre-concert protocols associated with health and safety, including emergencies – my favourites were the request for our cell-phones to be switched off, with its paused reminder “Do it now!” which followed – and the somewhat Kafka-esque (ICE-like?) message that “unaccompanied minors will be removed – and may be destroyed” …..
Australian composer Sarah Hopkins’ work Past Life Melodies which followed was once performed by a choir of over 7,000 students with orchestra, didgeridoo and harmonic whirlies at a 2000 international sports event – while this performance didn’t replicate the sheer magnitude of that presentation, it still presented a unique kind of ambient realisation of what the composer terms her “deeply resonating inner voices”, besides drawing upon influences such as “open-throated” chant singing from Eastern Europe traditions, and Aboriginal-inspired chant and overtone singing. Its beginnings were hummed, then differently voiced, the chant-like melody accompanied by drone notes, the sounds then fanning out beautifully, employing different repetitive patternings and vocalised syllables. Gradually whistling sounds joined the textures, whether voice- or instrument-produced I couldn’t tell, but the effect was certainly at once inner-worldly and redolent of incredibly vast spaces and long- past times…….
At first I thought the next item’s title was a misprint for the word “waiata” – but it turned out to be Reuben Rameka’s Waitā – the name of one of a collection of stars whose grouping creates the Matariki cluster, one associated with the oceans and the foods gathered from it, and with the associated tides and floodwaters. Waitā speaks to listeners of the responsibilities of caring for the ocean environment to which, of course, we owe such gratitude for our continued sustenance.
The words and music described the mingling of fresh and salt waters, the tides that ebb and flow, and the journeyings made to these places of great abundance in the domain of Tangaroa. Single voices evoked the coming together these waters from the land to the sea, the choir giving voice to the star clusters of Matariki to shine upon the people below and give them signs for the necessary gathering of food, naming the great oceans and the multiplicity of food that abounded in them.
Different voice texturings described the tides that ebb and flow and move in unison and as the various fish species were named, the soprano voices floating a unison over the more vigorous lines. Single voices exchanged lines as the canoe moved to shallower waters, to gather seafood “for a mouth-watering feast from the domain of Tangaroa” – the piece readily evoked a sense of ritual, of order , and of tradition regarding such resource-gatherings – “Ki tai toitu te marae a Tangata Toitu te tangata”…..
Concluding the Youth Choir’s bracket of items was Andre J. Thomas’s Rockin’ Jerusalem, a song in the Afro-American tradition – the choir’s male voices began a jazzy rhythm, joined by women’s descant voices, who then took up the rhythmic patterns and punched out the words with crystal-clear declamation! Heartfelt and inspiring, in an upbeat and compellingly physical way, the performance scored a great ovation at the end, a tribute incorporating the choir’s overall achievement!
Came the Youth Orchestra’s turn, introduced by conductor Mark Carter, and beginning with the inspirational “Egmont” Overture by Ludwig van Beethoven – a work based on a play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about a 16th-century nobleman, Lamoral, Count of Egmont in the Netherlands, one executed by the Spanish for his resistance against the oppressors of his country. Mark Carter got splendid attack from all his players right from the opening chord, and especially with those famous repeated lower string notes right in the middle of the allegro section, answered so plaintively by the winds. And how well the players kept up the excitement of the concluding “Victory Symphony”, with its steadfast piccolo flourishes ringing splendidly out at the end!
The Anthony Ritchie Viola Concerto brought soloist Solace Ward onto the stage for what I thought a by turns sensitive and invigorating performance – the work got away to a wonderfully attention-grabbing opening, with almost Oriental-like texturings bolstered by exotic-sounding winds and percussive splashings, and the viola vigorously dialoguing with garrulous winds, giving an impressive of being on an urgent journey to somewhere! The brass cooly and insouciantly slowed things down (I was reminded of Holst’s “The Perfect Fool” ballet music momentarily) while the viola tended to gravitate towards the more fun-loving strings and winds’ tumbling antics, despite a brief but arrestingly expansive interlude. We were again borne aloft by the music’s renewed momentums, with the viola striding confidently along in the flow of it all, when a gong seemed to sound a “that’s enough” kind of warning, bringing the flow of fun to an end.
But what a heartfelt outpouring from the soloist we then heard, taking over the new movement’s beginning, with horns giving the player support and the theme additional colour! Oboe and piccolo joined in with the strings in supporting the continuance of the soloist’s melodic venturings until a timpani sounded a kind of counter-trajectory, the viola dancing with the winds as the timpani strengthened its rhythmic pulsings – but the soloist steered the music back to the rhapsodical – leading to a further idyllic cadenza and making the most of these “all creation standing still” moments!
Came the dance, hesitant and quixotic at first from the viola, but gaining confidence and elan, the orchestra joining in – suddenly the mood was almost Coplandesque, the rhythms proudly prancing, the viola folkishly “bending” some of her notes and an even more vertiginous mood overtaking the trajectories. And then, with the music seeming to flip-flop between sinuous grace and vigour, the brass decided to sound a concluding note as if enough fun had been had for one day! I actually enjoyed it all immensely and could have gone on dancing and singing until the cows (?) came home, but…..still, well-deserved applause for Solace Ward as much for her partnership with others in the concerto as for her soloistic efforts – one day, if I’m lucky, I hope I will hear her play the Walton viola concerto!
After the interval it was a largely symphonic second half, with firstly Chris Van Der Zee on the podium and his charges, the Wellington Youth Sinfonietta, taking on the first movement of Franz Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony – a big “ask” for anybody when considering the enormity of the piece in so many different ways, but a task that the young players seemed to relish! The lower strings struck the right amount of gravitas with the opening, the oboe and horns articulated their notes with suitable wonderment, and the whole orchestra dug into the chords that completed the sequence. The second subject had a lovely “lilt” to all its parts, with tenderly-phrased string-tones, contrasted with the sharp attack on the answering chord and its successors! We got a repeat of all of this which more than doubled the pleasure, before the players took to the awaiting excitements of the development section with gusto, Chris Van Der Zee guiding them through the varied soundscapes of conflict and respite with ease and surety.
Then came the concert’s most ambitions item, a performance of US composer Jake Runestad’s “Earth Symphony”, a five-movement work with chorus, whose text by poet Todd Boss chronicles a “conscious history” of Planer Earth over eras of awakening, longing, devastating, lamenting and renewing, with human beings characterised as “mirabilia”, whose marvels and miracles were misused by ambition, characterised by archetypal legends such as the fall of Icarus, and the lamenting by the betrayal and death of the Carthage Queen Dido, but with Nature planning renewal on her own terms, with the eventual return of “a day like the first day”.
I had no text to follow at the concert, being a technophobe when it came to ‘phones and cyber-things, but still caught enough of the choir’s message to follow the basic outline of the run-together sequences, marvelling at the forebearance and stamina of the musicians involved in their unflagging saga of presentation throughout the work – the epic scale of utterance and its many contrasts enough to demonstrate what seemed a cosmic tale of endeavour and tragedy.
Beginning the work with primordial-like utterances from percussion and lower instrumental forces, an archetypal scenario of self-creation brought forth “humankind” with the name “Mirabilia” from thought and desire, with instruments and voices almost lullabic in describing the act with the words “You mirrored me to you”. A parallel was drawn with the Icarus legend by the choir’s fearful “How have you fallen so soon?”, a scenario growing from joyous dance and exhilaration to tragedy at ambition so overweening – “waxen wings undone” – the exultation breaking off, with the brass sounding warnings and the sounds gathering weight and urgency. The choir gave voice to fears with cries of “terrore atmosphaera” as a litany of destruction was enacted, the earth itself crying “I am rage! I am war!”, and most damning of all rebukes – “Briefest of species, what have you done?”,. The brasses sounded grotesque mutterings and the strings and cor anglais took up a lament, as the words “Sleep now, my children” were intoned by the choir to Purcell’s well-known “Lament” from “Dido and Aeneas”, the Earth reiterating its message by the full choir delivering the melody and the orchestra following with a tortured, twisted version of the same.
The final “Recovery” seemed beyond time as we know it with eerie sounds characterising what seemed like a now-humanless world, which the choir described as “empty space – dormant stone”, then murmuring an almost “Sleeping Beauty” scenario of nature overgrowing and subsuming all “human stain”. However, the enigmatic ending, after describing a “none shall witness – none shall weep” kind of realm, had the Earth addressing this thought to the empty spaces using the aforementioned name “Mirabilia” – is human life here being given a second chance?
Whatever one’s thoughts regarding the work, the achievement of conductor Mark Carter and his forces in bringing it to a level of performance enabling its merits to be considered was of stupendous mettle! – I would have been supremely content to have left the hall at this point with such a multifarious panoply of sounds resonating in my memory – but under the circumstances an all-in finale involving both of the youth orchestras was as appropriate in a different sense! – so the midships were crowded for a spirited rendition by all available hands of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Grand March” from “Aida” which certainly brought the house down in a different way! Great singing and playing did it all proud, with the brass in particular heartily enjoying themselves – as, in fact, did we all!