Twelfth “Comfy Concert” at Roseneath’s “The Long Hall”
(Benefit for Arohanui Strings)
Chamber “Pot-Pourri” Ensemble
Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello) / Helene Pohl (violin)
Sophia Acheson (viola) / Robert Orr (oboe)
JS BACH – Suite No. 2 in D MInor, for solo ‘cello
Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)
BENJAMIN BRITTEN – Phantasy Quartet for Oboe and Strings
Robert Orr (oboe) / Helene Pohl (violin)
Sophie Acheson (‘viola) / Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART – Quartet for Oboe and Strings in F Major
KV 370 – Robert Orr (oboe) / Helene Pohl (violin)
Sophia Acheson (viola) / Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)
The Long Hall, Roseneath, Point Jerningham, Wellington
Saturday, 26th September, 2026
Somehow I had missed out on hearing the previous “The Long Hall” concert in Roseneath, one that had featured a new string quartet ensemble – the “Amada Quartet”, who, on all accounts had played a wonderful programme that included a composition for String Quartet (“One vision” 2026 – world premiere) by one of the group’s members, violinist Lorna Zhang. The ensemble also performed an excerpt from Schubert’s monumental C Major String Quintet with cellist Rolf Gjelsten, as well as, for good measure, a complete Mendelssohn string quartet (No.6 in F Minor Op. Posth.80). So, I was determined to not let this latest one pass me by, and especially as the “Pot-Pourri Ensemble” was incorporating the services of none less than oboist Robert Orr and violist Sophia Acheson for the concert, and featuring the music of Benjamin Britten in this, his anniversary year, a fleeting fifty years since his death!
This concert was also part of an ongoing “benefit series” for the Arohanui Strings, whose patron is, of course Helene Pohl – the Arohanui’s representative who warmly welcomed us to the concert made a point of telling us that the Trust had enlarged its tuition options to include woodwind, and including, of course, the oboe, giving an extra kind of “hands-on” relevance to today’s repertoire, which included Britten’s youthful “Phantasy” Oboe Quintet.
Written when he was nineteen and still a student at the Royal College of Music in London, the quintet’s appearance was marked by a 1933 BBC broadcast in which the work was played by its dedicatee, oboist Leon Goossens. The interest generated enabled the work to be taken the following year by Goossens to an international contemporary music festival in Florence, where its reception established Britten’s reputation as “an important new voice” both at home and abroad.
In this concert at The Long Hall the work was appropriately framed by music from two other composers whose music had already exerted a profound influence upon Britten, and which would continue throughout his creative life. One was JS Bach whose own Suites for solo ‘cello were a direct inspiration for Britten’s similarly constructed works, all three of the latter’s Suites being composed for the Russian ‘cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Britten was also a noted interpreter of Bach’s music as a conductor, having directed and recorded performances of works such as the Brandenburg Concertos, and the St,John Passion. The other major influence was Mozart, whom Britten considered to be the greatest of all composers, and whose music he performed both as a conductor and a pianist – his own music was steeped in Mozart’s own methodology, keeping the latter’s scores on his own piano, and frequently referring to them for inspiration. His most well-known definition of what he considered the older composer’s genius was his remark that “Mozart showed how to be “new” without destroying what came before” – which accounted for his love for the Mozart operas, and especially in the light of the music of a third “genius” revered by Britten, that of Henry Purcell. But it was the elegance and mastery of Mozart’s Oboe Quartet that here bore out Britten’s admiration, and which we were to hear in his own youthful Quartet featuring the same instrument.
Beginning the concert with Bach was cellist Rolf Gjelsten, reminding us in his introduction that the Second Suite was in the “Requiem” key of D Minor, which had given rise to the suggestion that the work as a whole was conceived as a “tombeau” (a musical composition commemorating a person’s death, taken from the French word for “tomb” or “tombstone”) one that paid homage to the composer’s first wife, Maria Barbara, who had unexpectedly died in July of 1720 after thirteen years of the couple’s marriage. For us, a further, unexpectedly “other-worldly” touch then came with the cellist’s disclosure that his beautiful instrument had actually been made in 1705, and therefore predated the music he was about to play!
A sombre and dignified Prelude opened the work, the three-note opening phrase a kind of springboard for the movement’s slow dance, delivered here with incredibly-varied nuance and spontaneity of expression within the framework of the piece’s subdued trajectories, reaching a kind of spaciously-conceived series of triple-stopped chords, each one a deeply-measured breath suggesting a calmness of sorts, relating to a state somewhere between grief and acceptance. The Allemande (from a French word, meaning “German”, incidentally) is next, a livelier, more discursive piece filled with what seemed like entirely unpredictable detours and diversions, and with double-stopped “left hanging” harmonics that tease the ear awaiting resolution – the piece’s “second half” seems even more exploratory than the first, which adds to the fun of listening! Here in the playing was energy, poise, circumspection and abandonment, and all for our pleasure!
As if the Allemande was just a warm-up, the following Courante was even livelier, almost more aggressive in its fleet-fingeredness in places, and contrasting with the irruptions of emphasis that occasionally pin the line to the greater whole, a by-product of the flying “skin and hair” the occasional “rogue” tones flying off the bow strings in sync with the piece’s delight in a certain abandonment! What a difference with the Sarabande, the movement in this work most frequently giving rise to the idea that Bach composed it in his late, beloved Maria Barbara’s memory – it seems, at the outset, to express the inexpressible, whatever emotion being mooted held here in a gentle but firm grip of patience, the playing making reference to sorrow that seems to have been lived with, borne, and accepted.
Thank goodness for the relief of Minuets, one often feels! – this one here kicks up its heels with a modicum of relief, though it’s well-grounded with those triple-stopped chords frequently inviting a more insistent and deliberate accent, making every subsequent note of the line a kind of “reaction”, nothing taken for granted. And how winsome and circumspect the Menuet II sounds in tandem, freer in expression and with a definite “looking on the bright side” kind of air, only to surrender with a shrug to the more assertive twin’s return! And for anybody who thinks Bach’s music lacks wit, the Gigue would have been a mordant treat! – the droll opening, under Rolf Gjelsten’s fingers, had an initial kind of amiably-suggestive girth which then threw off its weight as it indulged in part-mischievous, part assertive running passages, often with a drone-string-accompaniment which reflected in places an amusing dual-purpose expression, especially in the dance’s second half.
We were thus well-grounded for the Britten work which followed, and which brought violist Sophia Acheson and oboist Robert Orr to the platform to join with our two regular Pot-Pourri Ensemble members, Rolf Gjelsten and violinist Helene Pohl. Robert Orr helpfully set the scene for us, describing, and then with his colleagues’ help, demonstrating a number of what he called “signposts” in the work whose registering could, he suggested, enhance our enjoyment of the piece! The very opening, a march seemingly approaching from a great distance, begun by the ‘cello, and gradually swinging into full view (hearing?) was capped by a lyrical oboe melody whose repetitions made us almost want to get up and stroll about with the music! This led to the players’ lines effervescing and excitedly running in all directions, stringa arco and and pizzicato, and oboe staccato, and enthusiastically playing fanfare-like calls as the strings s gurgled in resonating accord!
There have been numerous instances of composer-genius manifesting itself at an early age – and this work seemed astonishingly confident in its organic, non-formulaic use of its material. One’s ear was constantly led on by Britten’s adventurous detailing recognisably part of a whole but used in adventurous- sounding ways – the work’s middle sections presented us with an almost Mahlerian variety of treatment of thematic material, much of the mood pastoral in an “outdoor” sense, but subjected to spontaneous mood-changes which could disturb and ruffle the sensibilities. Robert Orr’s plangent oboe tones led me in places later in the piece to think of woodland glades of the kind that abounded in Greek mythology – and I wondered whether the young Britten had already discovered these tales of antiquity long before he thought of writing his better-known Six Metamorphoses after Ovid, for solo oboe. In particular I thought of the story of Pan and Syrinx, and the god’s pursuit of the nymph, only to lose her to the water nymphs who transformed her into a thicket of marsh reeds. In his later work Britten’s solo oboe depiction bore the title “Pan, who played upon the reed pipe which was Syrinx, his beloved”. Listening to it again afterwards led me to wonder whether its lamenting, long-breathed lines could be said to show so
‘pokjme kinship with the younger composer’s earlier treatment of the instrument’s gentler, more reflective moments, so gratefully realised for us in this concert’s performance.
We then had the inestimable pleasure of listening to the work which surely played an inspirational part in Britten’s writing of his own youthful masterpiece – Mozart’s similarly-scored Oboe Quartet, which Robert Orr characterised as a work that would have at the time pushed the instrument’s capabilities to the limit. He cited as an example the passage in the finale where the composer simultaneously employed two time signatures – 2/2 for the oboe and 6/8 for the strings! Simply the thought of it sounded precariously daring, as did the players’ brief demonstration!
Mozart wrote this work in Munich, while visiting the city to supervise the production of his first opera seria, Idomeneo, somehow finding the time to reacquaint with the virtuoso oboist, Friedrich Ramm, whom he’d previously met in Mannheim in 1777, and write him a concerto! With this new work Ramm was able to display his considerable skills and showcase the “improvements” made to the instrument of the day. From the beginning, the sprightly articulation gave all of us considerable pleasure, with the “give and take” between the oboe and strings one of the performance’s most pleasing features. In places the phrasing, if slightly more insistent than on a much loved recording I’ve owned for years, had the effect of sharpening my reactions to it all to all the more engaging effect! With music one knows well the slightest divergencies from those performances one has gotten used to renews and refurbishes the shapes and nuances of the sounds so remarkably (and more often than not, pleasurably!)
Strings alone began the second movement, the oboe adding its plaintive, long-breathed tones to the fourth bar, the lingering notes making for a somewhat melancholy mood at the outset, and enabling the music to float freely and expressively before gathering in the lines once again – a remarkable sensation. Just as magical was the oboe’s recitative-like solo which similarly made the aural spaces its own without severing the music’s actual flow, one sensing the other players inwardly traversing those same lines by way of maintaining the connectiveness of it all.
All the more delightful, then, was the spirited activation of the finale, whose joie de vivre was realised by. firstly, the oboe-led opening, and then the gregarious strings, into which company the former couldn’t help but join! The infectious “schwung” of the trajectories here gave the impression of whole bodies, rather then merely arms, fingers, lungs and breath, were helping to make the music! An exciting moment was the “poly-rhythmic” sequence , during which the oboe “danced” through the passages, reconnecting in time for the much-heralded ascent to a top note, one that, most divertingly, seemed more “imagined” than taken before the player was nonchalantly riding the recapitulated wave of the main theme once again! (I feel certain that Friedrich Ramm didn’t have a score that was decorated with coloured inks and (humorously?) insulting remarks of the composer’s making, as did the hapless horn-player Joseph Leutgeb! – perhaps it WAS all in good fun!) Here, the humour was rather more subtly applied, though I was surprised to look at the score and find a forte marking for the oboe’s final ascending three-note phrase, which I’ve sometimes heard played, as here, in a deliciously matter-of-fact way! All so delightfully and affectionately delivered!