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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!

 

World Premiere at “The Long Hall” – Gao Ping’s tribute to Dmitri Shostakovich

Posted on by Peter Mechen


WORLD PREMIERE AT WELLINGTON’S “THE LONG HALL”

Erwin Schulhoff – Duo for Violin and ‘Cello (1925)*
Gao Ping – A Lingering Echo (2025) World Premiere
Dmitri Shostakovich – String Quartet No.9 in E-flat Op.117

The Chamber Pot-Pourri Ensemble
Helene Pohl (leader)* / Monique Lapins (violin) / Christiaan van der Zee (viola)
Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)*

Event held in conjunction with the Kaibosh Food Rescue Charity

The Long Hall, Point Jerningham, Roseneath, Wellington
Saturday, 22nd March 2025

One of Wellington’s best-kept secrets of recent times is a building in Roseneath called “The Long Hall”, situated on the land high up from where Oriental Parade turns into Evans Bay Parade, overlooking Point Jerningham. The area is a place best known as a venue for “21-gun salutes” made to honour visiting dignitaries to the capital – but more lately the once-dilapidated hall further up the hill from where the guns are fired has been enjoying a beautifully-restored lease of life, far from those days when it was first set up as an RSA clubroom, and later a practice-venue  for the City of Wellington Pipe band, and then allowed to fall into disuse and disrepair. Rather than lose what seemed to be an obvious community resource, various people reactivated local interest in the hall, among them dance-teacher and events-organiser-extraordinaire Jennifer Shennan, whose particular vision, interest and energies inspired others to join with her to encourage ever-increasing use of the venue,  forming a Trust in 2008 to help organise the hall’s proper restoration.

Today, “The Long Hall” (named to honour the extent of the restoration processes) is proudly and stylishly reclad with native timber floors, a new roof, and its original kauri table-tops refurbished, to the enjoyment and satisfaction of a  host of current users and audiences who gather for events such as today’s concert –  the beginning of a new series of “benefit concerts”, this one in aid of a well-known food rescue charity known as Kaibosh (begun as long ago as 2008!) which collects and redistributes excess food produce to community groups.

Styled as “Comfy Concert #1” by way of emphasising a more relaxed concert atmosphere here in “The Long Hall” the event was introduced by former New Zealand String Quartet leader Helene Pohl, whose group, enterprisingly named “The Chamber Pot-Pourri Ensemble” also included two other former members of the NZSQ, violinist Monique Lapins and ‘cellist Rolf Gjelsten, as well as freelance violist Christiaan van der Zee. The group chose a programme containing works by composers whose music had some commonality or connection – both Erwin Schulhoff and Dmitri Shostakovich suffered the privations of official disapproval of their work at various times (terminally in Schulhoff’s case), and a third and later composer, Gao Ping, has expressed a fervent admiration for Shostakovich’s music, manifested in a new work “A Lingering Echo” which on this occasion was receiving its actual premiere performance.

The concert opened with Erwin Schulhoff’s Duo for Violin and ‘Cello, composed in 1925. Helene Pohl called the piece “a thrilling musical kaleidoscope” in her programme note, which she and ‘cellist Rolf Gjelsten further elaborated by demonstrating  some of the technical and ultra-expressive devices used by the composer (himself a brilliant string-player),  alerting us to the piece’s incredible extremes of tones, timbres and dynamics across its four movements.

A hymn-like opening theme gradually divested itself of gravitas in pursuit of  more exploratory elaborations – before long the players had energised these more quixotic figurations into gestures that gradually took them to bleaker realms, the instruments sharing a wistful theme made ethereal by  harmonics, a “strained” dialogue that intensified into an “agitato” encounter, but ran out of energy! – the lines then re-emerged, somewhat chastened, in a “molto tranquillo” whose tones dissolved into a kind of tenuous distance.  The second movement’s “Zingaresca” Allegro giocoso was just that, a rollicking exchange of dance-like energies readily evoking a folkish Central European gathering, one whose momentums were engagingly tumbled down the hill at one diverting point, the players musically picking themselves up and carrying on, finishing with a disarmingly wry pizzicato gesture!

We were charmed by the Andantino’s opening exchanges of pizzicato-accompanied melody between the players, until the similar arco exchanges brought a rather more strained, acerbic quality to the interactions, an ”edge” to the heartfeltness. The finale at first seemed to bring back the work’s opening, like a meeting of old friends, though one which here appeared to stumble into contention and argument rather than pleasant exchange, though a heart-stopping series of tremulously beautiful ascending thirds seemed to quell any over-querulous spirits for the moment. However, waiting on the concluding pages was the Presto fanatico, introduced by the galloping cello, upon whose back the violin whooped and  hollered, until the music dramatically slowed, bring the players together in a cheek-by-jowl unison which then reared up spectacularly and delivered its concluding flourish! Wow!

Next to be performed was the afternoon’s “World Premiere”, a work by Chinese composer Gao Ping (a figure well-known to New Zealand audiences by dint of his presence in this country for a number of years as a composer, teacher and performer), written as a tribute to Shostakovich, The work’s title “A Lingering Echo” came from a statement written for the concert’s programme by Gao Ping concerning the work’s genesis, one which deserves to be printed here in full: –

“Shostakovich was part of the reason I became a composer. He was a hero for whole generations of Chinese musicians. Like a lingering echo, he exists in our musical memory, but more than that, he holds a special symbolism in our consciousness. In his life’s struggles and compromises, and in the fierce and defiant expression in his music we witness a human condition that resonates with us regardless of era or space. A Lingering Echo for string quartet is my personal response to the man and the musician. There is no direct quotation from him in the sense of borrowed material, but in all three movements there are constant references to the Shostakovich in my memory and imagination”.

Of interest is the historical association three of this afternoon’s quartet musicians have with the composer. During Gao Ping’s years of residence in New Zealand while an Associate Professor of Music at Canterbury University, he frequently worked with the New Zealand String Quartet as both a performer and composer at the time when Helene Pohl. Rolf Gjelsten and Monique Lapins were members of that same Quartet. Today’s performance would have benefitted considerably from the degree of first-hand experience and identification with the composer’s music in general brought by these same musicians to the occasion. With such  things in mind we awaited all the more eagerly the appearance of the quartet to give this work its first public hearing. In such an intimate environment as “The Long Hall” the occasion seemed all the more direct and epoch-making. I had attended the occasional premiere of New Zealand works in the past but none seemed more “laden” and singular than this one!

The music began with a kind of processional, the textures open and simple at first, but growing more complex as the work proceeded, the two violins intermingling their lines  and the lower strings underpinning the textures – the composer’s directive here was simply “Slow, steady, lonely”, very Shostakovich-like indicators of tone, trajectory and atmosphere. Tremolandi accompanied a first violin recitative as the music took on an almost pointillistic aspect with single notes sounded amidst the ambiences – as the first violin took up the vistas with harmonics the second filled in the dots with pizzicato, everything having begun to drift stratospherically as befitted the composer’s directive – “lonely” – joining forces at the end with the awaiting silence….

Gao Ping’s instruction for the second movement, “Restless, desperate” promised a different kind of experience – and so it proved. Begun with slashing, thrusting chordings, and weighed with heavy, restless phrases, the imposing sound-blocks fitted themselves into a formidable trajectory – a tonal juggernaut throwing out fusillades of sound –  though there was plenty of volatility going along with the ride. Zigzagging individual criss-crossing lines had their say before being superseded by the pompous, heavily-weighted sound-boulders on their grinding journey, continuing the exchange until a violin solo atop a strong, groaning theme brought a sense of lamenting – the first violin’s line piteous, and the second exuding anxiety and agitation – but their pleas halted the dragging, behemoth-like sounds previously heard, clearing the soundscape to allow a sprinkling of the first violin’s harmonics, the second’s tremolandi along with the viola’s, and the cello’s “bounced” notes. The music became fugue-like, using both arco and pizzicato – here, my notes read “violins repeat theme, ‘cello makes a gruff comment, viola grimaces in reply…”  (it sounded as if Dmitri Dmitriyevitch would have readily approved of it all…) – the fugue-like writing continued, both violinists pushing their instruments along fiercely, interspersing the lines with pizzicato and with bows striking using the wood! – the instruments all appeared to rain blows upon an invisible assailant! – and then, with a sudden snarl, the music stopped!……

Mercifully, the composer allowed some outward calm following such a maelstrom – for the final movement, Gao Ping wrote “Measured, static, icy”, which music we settled back down to hear, perhaps not entirely free of trepidation, but released from any further out-and-out assault…here were sounds diametrically different to what we had just heard, bloodless, frozen tones, resembling slowly-melting ice……music shifting and swaying backwards and forwards,  the lower strings performing an ostinato while pizzicato notes gently dropped from the violins, who continued to sigh and creak and squeak…..leaving the lower strings to proclaim their hegemony with stronger chordings and moments of agitation, while the upper strings busied themselves with tentative climbing and falling figures – it seemed almost an ”Endgame” kind of scenario, with the state of things removed from contentment, and consigned to a kind of enigmatic oblivion. All that remained to add was that we, the audience, applauded lustily at the place we deemed was the end!

“The Long Hall” proved a very pleasant “interval” place in which to enjoy a respite from the demands exerted by such concentrated listening efforts (I mean no disrespect by prioritising the needs of the audience over those of the performing artists who’ve been doing all the “real” work, of course!). Still, it was a joy to have people so close at hand to talk with, which of course is all part of the “shared” experience of such an event.

In no time at all, it seemed, we had been summoned back to our seats (the quartet players were actually on the platform before many of us had sat down again!) and were ready to experience at first hand something of composer Gao Ping’s pleasure and wonderment at the music of his “hero”, Dmitri Shostakovich himself!  Earlier, I was thrilled to hear Rolf Gjelsten tell us of the plans of the Quartet to “share” (with the NZSQ) the presentation of the composer’s complete set of string quartets during this, the 50th anniversary year of Shostakovich’s death. What riches we can anticipate enjoying! –  having two groups of musicians at hand capable of doing justice to these remarkable works of art, among the greatest of any in the string quartet medium!

Today we were to hear String Quartet No. 9, written in 1964 after a kind of hiatus of creativity regarding the quartet genre, when, three years before, in a burst of self-criticism, the composer reportedly burnt the first version of the quartet – accounts differ as to what happened next, as references are also made in some quarters to ANOTHER (this one incomplete) 9th Quartet NOT burnt in the stove and marked as Op 113, its surviving Allegretto movement bearing some resemblance to the opening Moderato con moto movement of the finished work. Whatever the case, the new (and completed) No. 9 was dedicated to the composer’s third and surviving wife Irina Antonovna, whom he had married in 1962.

Reckoned as the last of Shostakovich’s three “personal” quartets, (the Seventh dedicated to his first wife, Nina, and the Eighth an autobiographical work, the Ninth shares another feature with the aforementioned ones, with movements that “flow” into one another without interruption. However,  the Ninth singularly has four short movements leading to a finale that’s practically a quartet in itself, as long as the other movements put together. So, though a lighter, less harrowing listen than the Eighth Quartet, it has its moments of anxiety and unease amid the sardonic humour and occasional high spirits.

The first movement’s opening has never seemed to me quite the “relaxed, self-satisfied” outpouring of good humour touted by some commentators – I’ve always heard a bitter-sweetness in some of the chromatic writing for the violins, though there’s the occasional jauntiness of the ‘cello writing which here and there tempts a smile. The immediacy of the venue gave the performers’ tones, textures and trajectories the same incredible intimacy and impact we’d of course already registered with the Schulhoff and Gao Ping items!

Chris van der Zee’s viola took us into the bleak beauty of the second movement’s Adagio, the music’s solemnity delicately treads the line between the sound’s Janus-faced tenderness and desolation – from this Helene Pohl’s violin made the first tentative impulses leading to a sudden vigorous polka-like Allegretto movement, with passing resemblances to Rossini’s “William Tell Overture – the excitemement grew when Monique Lapins’s violin excitingly upped the dynamic levels of the dance, and the music’s temperatures rose! – a kind of ghostly shiver then takes over the ensemble as the first violin makes ghoul-like utterances, repeated by the second violin before the music subsides once again into a second Adagio, darker and stranger than before, with a particularly gripping quality heightened by the closeness of the players – a quality heightened by Monique Lapins’ startling pizzicato, later replicated by Chris van der Zee’s viola – and what great playing by Helene Pohl in her impassioned recitative over the drone-like ambiences of the other instruments!

The beautiful chording which followed prepared us not a whit for the onslaught of the final movement’s aggressively-launched Allegro, the driving rhythms holding sway for a few measures before being taken over by a galumphing peasant-dance, Rolf Gjelsten’s cello contributing a superbly anguished and heartfelt sequence, before being led back to the wild dance by the viola, with the others joining in what sounded like “a devil of a fugue” before the ensemble concluded a tremolando passage with a “great gulp”. Cello recitatives and pizzicato chords seemed then to hold the ensemble in thrall, the concerted response being a series of ensembled pizzicato in reply – but a remarkable passage begin by the cello seemed to mould fragmented gestures from all the players together and stimulate enough concerted movement to  inspire the return of the cantering rhythm that brings back the “William Tell” motive, and  increasedly concerted excitement, leading to a gutsy, determined, “give-it-all-you’ve-got”  build up to a final unison statement of arrival! Its somewhat angular, offbeat trajectory allowed the final payoff to surprise everybody! – so there was a heartskipping moment of silence before we in the audience realised that the composer had actually left the building and it was time to applaud!

Casting the memory back over the afternoon gives one the feeling that it couldn’t have been done better! – very great honour and heartfelt thanks to all concerned for such a richly-appointed and meticulously-wrought show!


The Chamber Pot-Pourri Ensemble at Roseneath’s “The Long Hall” –  from left, Helene Pohl, Monique Lapins, Rolf Gjelsten and Chris van der Zee

 

World Premiere at Wellington’s “The Long Hall” – Gao Ping’s tribute to Dmitri Shostakovich

Erwin Schulhoff – Duo for Violin and ‘Cello (1925)*
Gao Ping – A Lingering Echo (2025) World Premiere
Dmitri Shostakovich – String Quartet No.9 in E-flat Op.117

The Chamber Pot-Pourri Ensemble
Helene Pohl (leader)* / Monique Lapins (violin) / Christiaan van der Zee (viola)
Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)*

Event held in conjunction with the Kaibosh Food Rescue Charity

The Long Hall, Point Jerningham, Roseneath, Wellington
Saturday, 22nd March 2025

Review for “Middle C” by Peter Mechen

One of Wellington’s best-kept secrets of recent times is a building in Roseneath called “The Long Hall”, situated on the land high up from where Oriental Parade turns into Evans Bay Parade, overlooking Point Jerningham. The area is a place best known as a venue for “21-gun salutes” made to honour visiting dignitaries to the capital – but more lately the once-dilapidated hall further up the hill from where the guns are fired has been enjoying a beautifully-restored lease of life, far from those days when it was first set up as an RSA clubroom, and later a practice-venue  for the City of Wellington Pipe band, and then allowed to fall into disuse and disrepair. Rather than lose what seemed to be an obvious community resource, various people reactivated local interest in the hall, among them dance-teacher and events-organiser-extraordinaire Jennifer Shennan, whose particular vision, interest and energies inspired others to join with her to encourage ever-increasing use of the venue,  forming a Trust in 2008 to help organise the hall’s proper restoration.

Today, “The Long Hall” (named to honour the extent of the restoration processes) is proudly and stylishly reclad with native timber floors, a new roof, and its original kauri table-tops refurbished, to the enjoyment and satisfaction of a  host of current users and audiences who gather for events such as today’s concert –  the beginning of a new series of “benefit concerts”, this one in aid of a well-known food rescue charity known as Kaibosh (begun as long ago as 2008!) which collects and redistributes excess food produce to community groups.

Styled as “Comfy Concert #1” by way of emphasising a more relaxed concert atmosphere here in “The Long Hall” the event was introduced by former New Zealand String Quartet leader Helene Pohl, whose group, enterprisingly named “The Chamber Pot-Pourri Ensemble” also included two other former members of the NZSQ, violinist Monique Lapins and ‘cellist Rolf Gjelsten, as well as freelance violist Christiaan van der Zee. The group chose a programme containing works by composers whose music had some commonality or connection – both Erwin Schulhoff and Dmitri Shostakovich suffered the privations of official disapproval of their work at various times (terminally in Schulhoff’s case), and a third and later composer, Gao Ping, has expressed a fervent admiration for Shostakovich’s music, manifested in a new work “A Lingering Echo” which on this occasion was receiving its actual premiere performance.

The concert opened with Erwin Schulhoff’s Duo for Violin and ‘Cello, composed in 1925. Helene Pohl called the piece “a thrilling musical kaleidoscope”, in her programme note, which she and ‘cellist Rolf Gjelsten further elaborated by demonstrating  some of the technical and ultra-expressive devices used by the composer (himself a brilliant string-player),  alerting us to the piece’s incredible extremes of tones, timbres and dynamics across its four movements.

A hymn-like opening theme gradually divested itself of gravitas in pursuit of  more exploratory elaborations – before long the players had energised these more quixotic figurations into gestures that gradually took them to bleaker realms, the instruments sharing a wistful theme made ethereal by  harmonics, a “strained” dialogue that intensified into an “agitato” encounter, but ran out of energy! – the lines then re-emerged, somewhat chastened, in a “molto tranquillo” whose tones dissolved into a kind of tenuous distance.  The second movement’s “Zingaresca” Allegro giocoso was just that, a rollicking exchange of dance-like energies readily evoking a folkish Central European gathering, one whose momentums were engagingly tumbled down the hill at one diverting point, the players musically picking themselves up and carrying on, finishing with a disarmingly wry pizzicato gesture!

We were charmed by the Andantino’s opening exchanges of pizzicato-accompanied melody between the players, until the similar arco exchanges brought a rather more strained, acerbic quality to the interactions, an ”edge” to the heartfeltness. The finale at first seemed to bring back the work’s opening, like a meeting of old friends, though one which here appeared to stumble into contention and argument rather than pleasant exchange, though a heart-stopping series of tremulously beautiful ascending thirds seemed to quell any over-querulous spirits for the moment. However, waiting on the concluding pages was the Presto fanatico, introduced by the galloping cello, upon whose back the violin whooped and  hollered, until the music dramatically slowed, bring the players together in a cheek-by-jowl unison which then reared up spectacularly and delivered its concluding flourish! Wow!

Next to be performed was the afternoon’s “world remiere”, a work by Chinese composer Gao Ping (a figure well-known to New Zealand audiences by dint of his presence in this country for a number of years as a composer, teacher and performer), written as a tribute to Shostakovich, The work’s title “A Lingering Echo” came from a statement written for the concert’s programme by Gao Ping concerning the work’s genesis, one which deserves to be printed here in full: –

“Shostakovich was part of the reason I became a composer. He was a hero for whole generations of Chinese musicians. Like a lingering echo, he exists in our musical memory, but more than that, he holds a special symbolism in our consciousness. In his life’s struggles and compromises, and in the fierce and defiant expression in his music we witness a human condition that resonates with us regardless of era or space. A Lingering Echo for string quartet is my personal response to the man and the musician. There is no direct quotation from him in the sense of borrowed material, but in all three movements there are constant references to the Shostakovich in my memory and imagination”.

Of interest is the historical association three of this afternoon’s quartet musicians have with the composer. During Gao Ping’s years of residence in New Zealand while an Associate Professor of Music at Canterbury University, he frequently worked with the New Zealand String Quartet as both a performer and composer at the time when Helene Pohl, Rolf Gjelsten and Monique Lapins were members of that same Quartet. Today’s performance would have benefitted considerably from the degree of first-hand experience and identification with the composer’s music in general brought by these same musicians to the occasion. With such  things in mind we awaited all the more eagerly the appearance of the quartet to give this work its first public hearing. In such an intimate environment as “The Long Hall” the occasion seemed all the more direct and epoch-making. I had attended the occasional premiere of New Zealand works in the past but none seemed more “laden” and singular than this one!

The music began with a kind of processional, the textures open and simple at first, but growing more complex as the work proceeded, the two violins intermingling their lines  and the lower strings underpinning the textures – the composer’s directive here was simply “Slow, steady, lonely”, very Shostakovich-like indicators of tone, trajectory and atmosphere. Tremolandi accompanied a first violin recitative as the music took on an almost pointillistic aspect with single notes sounded amidst the ambiences – as the first violin took up the vistas with harmonics the second filled in the dots with pizzicato, everything having begun to drift stratospherically as befitted the composer’s directive – “lonely” – joining forces at the end with the awaiting silence….

Gao Ping’s instruction for the second movement, “Restless, desperate” promised a different kind of experience – and so it proved. Begun with slashing, thrusting chordings, and weighed with heavy, restless phrases, the imposing sound-blocks fitted themselves into a formidable trajectory – a tonal juggernaut throwing out fusillades of sound –  though there was plenty of volatility going along with the ride. Zigzagging individual criss-crossing lines had their say before being superseded by the pompous, heavily-weighted sound-boulders on their grinding journey, continuing the exchange until a violin solo atop a strong, groaning theme brought a sense of lamenting – the first violin’s line piteous, and the second exuding anxiety and agitation – but their pleas halted the dragging, behemoth-like sounds previously heard, clearing the soundscape to allow a sprinkling of the first violin’s harmonics, the second’s tremolandi along with the viola’s, and the cello’s “bounced” notes. The music became fugue-like, using both arco and pizzicato – here, my notes read “violins repeat theme, ‘cello makes a gruff comment, viola grimaces in reply…”  (it sounded as if Dmitri Dmitriyevitch would have readily approved of it all…) – the fugue-like writing continued, both violinists pushing their instruments along fiercely, interspersing the lines with pizzicato and with bows striking using the wood! – the instruments all appeared to rain blows upon an invisible assailant! – and then, with a sudden snarl, the music stopped!……

Mercifully, the composer allowed some outward calm following such a maelstrom – for the final movement, Gao Ping wrote “Measured, static, icy”, which music we settled back down to hear, perhaps not entirely free of trepidation, but released from any further out-and-out assault…here were sounds diametrically different to what we had just heard, bloodless, frozen tones, resembling slowly-melting ice……music shifting and swaying backwards and forwards,  the lower strings performing an ostinato while pizzicato notes gently dropped from the violins, who continued to sigh and creak and squeak…..leaving the lower strings to proclaim their hegemony with stronger chordings and moments of agitation, while the upper strings busied themselves with tentative climbing and falling figures – it seemed almost an ”Endgame” kind of scenario, with the state of things removed from contentment, and consigned to a kind of enigmatic oblivion. All that remained to add was that we, the audience, applauded lustily at the place we deemed was the end!

“The Long Hall” proved a very pleasant “interval” place in which to enjoy a respite from the demands exerted by such concentrated listening efforts (I mean no disrespect by prioritising the needs of the audience over those of the performing artists who’ve been doing all the “real” work, of course!). Still, it was a joy to have people so close at hand to talk with, which of course is all part of the “shared” experience of such an event.

In no time at all, it seemed, we had been summoned back to our seats (the quartet players were actually on the platform before many of us had sat down again!) and were ready to experience at first hand something of composer Gao Ping’s pleasure and wonderment at the music of his “hero”, Dmitri Shostakovich himself!  Earlier, I was thrilled to hear Rolf Gjelsten tell us of the plans of the Quartet to “share” (with the NZSQ) the presentation of the composer’s complete set of string quartets during this, the 50th anniversary year of Shostakovich’s death. What riches we can anticipate enjoying! –  having two groups of musicians at hand capable of doing justice to these remarkable works of art, among the greatest of any in the string quartet medium!

Today we were to hear String Quartet No. 9, written in 1964 after a kind of hiatus of creativity regarding the quartet genre, when, three years before, in a burst of self-criticism, the composer reportedly burnt the first version of the quartet – accounts differ as to what happened next, as references are also made in some quarters to ANOTHER (this one incomplete) 9th Quartet NOT burnt in the stove and marked as Op 113, its surviving Allegretto movement bearing some resemblance to the opening Moderato con moto movement of the finished work. Whatever the case, the new (and completed) No. 9 was dedicated to the composer’s third and surviving wife Irina Antonovna, whom he had married in 1962.

Reckoned as the last of Shostakovich’s three “personal” quartets, (the Seventh dedicated to his first wife, Nina, and the Eighth an autobiographical work, the Ninth shares another feature with the aforementioned ones, with movements that “flow” into one another without interruption. However,  the Ninth singularly has four short movements leading to a finale that’s practically a quartet in itself, as long as the other movements put together. So, though a lighter, less harrowing listen than the Eighth Quartet, it has its moments of anxiety and unease amid the sardonic humour and occasional high spirits.

The first movement’s opening has never seemed to me quite the “relaxed, self-satisfied” outpouring of good humour touted by some commentators – I’ve always heard a bitter-sweetness in some of the chromatic writing for the violins, though there’s the occasional jauntiness of the ‘cello writing which here and there tempts a smile. The immediacy of the venue gave the performers’ tones, textures and trajectories the same incredible intimacy and impact we’d of course already registered with the Schulhoff and Gao Ping items!

Chris van der Zee’s viola took us into the bleak beauty of the second movement’s Adagio, the music’s solemnity delicately treads the line between the sound’s Janus-faced tenderness and desolation – from this Helene Pohl’s violin made the first tentative impulses leading to a sudden vigorous polka-like Allegretto movement, with passing resemblances to Rossini’s “William Tell Overture – the excitemement grew when Monique Lapins’s violin excitingly upped the dynamic levels of the dance, and the music’s temperatures rose! – a kind of ghostly shiver then takes over the ensemble as the first violin makes ghoul-like utterances, repeated by the second violin before the music subsides once again into a second Adagio, darker and stranger than before, with a particularly gripping quality heightened by the closeness of the players – a quality heightened by Monique Lapins’ startling pizzicato, later replicated by Chris van der Zee’s viola – and what great playing by Helene Pohl in her impassioned recitative over the drone-like ambiences of the other instruments!

The beautiful chording which followed prepared us not a whit for the onslaught of the final movement’s aggressively-launched Allegro, the driving rhythms holding sway for a few measures before being taken over by a galumphing peasant-dance, Rolf Gjelsten’s cello contributing a superbly anguished and heartfelt sequence, before being led back to the wild dance by the viola, with the others joining in what sounded like “a devil of a fugue” before the ensemble concluded a tremolando passage with a “great gulp”. Cello recitatives and pizzicato chords seemed then to hold the ensemble in thrall, the concerted response being a series of ensembled pizzicato in reply – but a remarkable passage begin by the cello seemed to mould fragmented gestures from all the players together and stimulate enough concerted movement to  inspire the return of the cantering rhythm that brings back the “Willam Tell” motive, and  increasedly concerted excitement, leading to a gutsy, determined, “give-it-all-you’ve-got”  build up to a final unison statement of arrival! Its somewhat angular, offbeat trajectory allows the final payoff to surprise everybody! – so there was a heartskipping moment of silence before we in the audience realised that the composer had actually left the building and it was time to applaud!

Casting the memory back over the afternoon gives one the feeling that it couldn’t have been done better! – very great honour and heartfelt thanks to all concerned for such a richly-appointed and meticulously-wrought show!

 

Shostakovich and Mozart – different kinds of intensities and delights at Roseneath’s Long Hall in Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SHOSTAKOVICH AND MOZART

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

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH – String Quartets – No. 11 in F Minor Op,122
No. 13 in B-flat minor Op,138
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART – String Quintet in D Major K.593

The Chamber Pot-pourri Ensemble

Helene Pohl, Anna van der Zee (violins)
Nicholas Hancox, Julia Joyce (violas)
Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

SHOSTAKOVICH -String Quartet No. 11 (1966) – in memory of Vasily Pyotrovich Shririnsky
Introduction, Scherzo, Recitative, Etude, Humoresque, Elegy, Finale

String Quartet No. 13 (1970) – dedicated to Vadim Vasilievitch Borisovsky
(Quartet in One Movement)
Adagio, Doppio movimento, Adagio

MOZART – String Quintet in D Major K.593  (with Julia Joyce – viola)

The Long Hall,
Roseneath, Wellington
Saturday 19th April, 2025

This was the second 2025 “Comfy Concert’ at Roseneath’s “The Long Hall”, part of a benefit series to assist various charities, on this occasion spotlighting the inspirational Arohanui Strings (of which violinist Helene Pohl is the Patron), a visionary Sistema-inspired music-teaching organisation and registered charity based in Lower Hutt. Founded in 2010 by professional musician and El Sistema advocate Alison Eldridge in the belief that all children have a right to a music education, this programme has offered musical instruction to more than 4000 children in some of Wellington and Hutt Valley’s most economically challenged communities.

Though the concert may have been relatively short in performance-time, it surely made amends for any brevity-related aspersions in terms of “moments per minute”. Each of the three works displayed a distinctively wrought sound-world whose singular qualities nonetheless found common cause in their surety of utterance and burgeoning character. And what we heard throughout the afternoon was an “every note counts” quality for which musicians such as Helene Pohl and Rolf Gjelsten have earned unstinted renown over their quartet-playing careers to date, and which their colleagues, Anna van der Zee, Nicholas Hancox and Julia Joyce were readily able to replicate in partnership over the concert’s duration.

In an earlier “Chamber Pot-pourri Ensemble” presentation in this same venue a month previously, we’d heard another Shostakovich String Quartet, the Ninth, along with a new work by Chinese composer Gao Ping which was dedicated to Shostakovich’s memory to mark this 50th anniversary year of his death. On that occasion, the second violinist was Monique Lapins, and the violist Chris van der Zee. Given the remarkable variety of the quartets given thus far in this survey, it might be that Helene’s and Rolf’s necessarily pragmatic choices of colleagues for each occasion could arguably add to the music’s appeal, piquantly suiting the “living dangerously” aura around Shostakovich’s own creative efforts in general. Of course, by the time he had come to writing quartets the composer had ostensibly survived his most hazardous brush with the tyrannical Soviet leader Josef Stalin (specifically over the latter’s reaction to the opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”), and had since embarked on a series of works which he hoped would give rise to less scrutiny than his more “public” works.

By the time he came to write the aforementioned Ninth Quartet it was 1964, and the composer had appeared to have largely “broken free” from the constraints of a system that had told its creative artists how they should make their art. A Tenth Quartet was written in the same year, and the Eleventh was begun the following year. The latter was the first of a group named the “Quartet of Quartets”, and written for  the violinist Vasili Pyotrovich Shirinsky, a member of the Beethoven Quartet, the ensemble  to whom the composer came to entrust the premieres of all of these works right up to the Fourteenth Quartet. Shirinsky actually died before the work’s completion and the remaining players had seriously considered disbanding the quartet – however Shostakovich had argued for the group to continue, as he maintained the group had “acquired the status of a national institution”.

Rolf Gjelsten introduced this work, commenting most tellingly that it was “great string quartet music which created powerful effects”. The work consisted of seven closely-connected (all marked attacca) miniature movements, beginning Andantino with a short, rhapsodic violin solo, here, beautifully-focused throughout all its appearances by Helene Pohl – answered and echoed by her colleagues, largely expressing a kind of calm acceptance, briefly spliced by a “wrench of agitation” but returning to an integrated kind of poise. The first violin moved things along with the Scherzo – a repeated-note theme, played more legato than pointed and playful, followed by the viola and ‘cello, “dug in”, and with occasional stinging upward glissandi! Together, the violins gave the motif a sinister element by beginning the phrases in fourths, “worrying” the notes insistently – after this all died away, the players suddenly “attacked” the Recitative, with stinging opening sounds, and dissonant resoundings, briefly playing some uncannily ambient “Vaughan Williams-like” contrasting harmonies before returning to the opening, though letting the “stinging” attacks gradually disperse.

Again, the mood suddenly changed with the “Etude”, the solo violin embarking on a sinuous whirling-dervish episode, to which the other players reacted  almost dreamily at first, but then almost grotesquely as the solo violin intensified its flailing attack, the others enacting a kind of drunken sailors’ dance, before anarchy broke out, with the ‘cello joining the fray, as if possessed of its own accord! Out of nowhere, it almost seemed, came  the Humoresque, with an urgent, warning-like two-note ostinato-like figure from Anna van der Zee’s violin, to which both violin and viola took fright (Nicholas Hancox’s viola matching Helene Pohl’s violin in sheer ghoulishness of tone) – such transfixing sonorities made it seem as if we had taken a brief but scarifying turn into a Little Shop of Horrors!).

The Elegy brought sense and feeling to the proceedings in spadefuls – ‘cello and viola first dark and sombre, but still sonorous  and affecting, then the second and afterwards the first violin returning us to daylight, their sounds emoting like prisoners from dark places espying light. And so the Finale was on us, with the players teasing out by turns the work’s past themes, the process filled with conflicting emotions as the memories returned on the various instruments, and ending with Helene Pohl’s violin reaching the work’s final high C with a variously pre-constituted sense of fulfilment….

Aptly chosen as a companion-work for this concert was the similar-but-different Thirteenth Quartet, of roughly an approximate length though differently constituted, having a single movement, albeit with contrasting episodes – an ABA structure similar to Bartok’s Third Quartet. It’s dedicated to the Beethoven Quartet’s violist Vadim Vasilyevich Borisovsky, who had just retired, leaving his replacement Fyodor Druzhinin to take part in the premiere in December 1970. Shostakovich was by then a sick man, having suffered a heart attack shortly after the Eleventh Quartet’s premiere in 1966, and was receiving treatment throughout 1970 at an orthopaedic clinic – the new work’s largely pessimistic outlook stems from his awareness of approaching his life’s end. It’s reinforced here by a late inclusion in the outer movements of some of the composer’s music for Grigori Kozintsev’s film “King Lear”, originally conceived as “Lamentations” for a string quartet.

In introducing the work Helene Pohl made mention of the remarkable “jazzy” elements in the second part, quoting the composer as saying  to somebody “I’ve written a short little quartet – with a “joke” middle!” – a sequence which another commentator had, I read, characterised as “a jam session from Hell”, and which came across as a grim “dance of death”, the composer joining forces with his great predecessor, Musorgsky, in regard to the latter’s “Songs and Dances of Death”.

Appropriately, it was the viola which began the work, a sorrowful solo with others joining in– bare, astringent sounds  with occasional dissonant note combinations. The players took their time, with the violin taking the lead working up to a “crying  out” sequence with the second violin, and encouraging the viola and ‘cello to join in. When the meditative tone resumed I caught a further reminder of a bleak “Vaughan Williams” voice in the harmony, along with the unsettling half-tone dissonances.

Helene had demonstrated to us the repeated-note phrase that began the more volatile middle section, emphasising for us its mournful rather than playful character with more legato-like phrasing. The murmuring lines from the others developed into harsh, stabbing chords set against an angular descending seventh figure from Nicholas Hancox’s viola – which in turn lead into a wonderful, once-repeated “augmenting” chord, the instruments joining in stepwise, punctuated by the repeated-note figure, and the viola’s falling-seventh declamations!  – jaw-dropping stuff!

What developed next seemed to me almost Dada-like! – a viola tremolando, pizzicato figures from the others, and rapid-fire exchanges of the same activated the ‘cello with Rolf Gjelsten giving us a “grooving-along” kind of running jazz pizzicato, prompting the violins into a “cool” dotted- rhythmed note pattern to which the players occasionally beat the wood of their instruments with their bows in syncopated strokes! – these jazzy, syncopated rhythms proceeded to “fight” against mournful, downwardly-sighing  lines from the viola, which grew to resembling a kind of all-out aerial attack on the scurrying inhabitants below! – all so visceral and palpable!

Violin pizzicati provoked a full-blooded response from the cello, whose  mournful lines eventually prevailed against the jazzy rhythms,  with murmuring lines gathering to subdue the ground zero activities and establish an uneasy, ghostly, tremolando-like calm – a couple of  bleak pizzicato repeated-note whimperings from the violin stimulated another startling, though short-lived  outbreak of the repeated note pattern before it too gave up the ghost. All of this was thrill-a-minute stuff, brought into being with an immediacy that, especially in such unprepossessing settings, simply took the listener’s breath away!

Out of the thicket emerged sighing violin lines and trenchant ‘cello responses, with the violin ascending heavenwards in search of some form of redemption/oblivion, its companions resonating in support, the exchanges again briefly sounding that distinctive “Vaughan Williams” ambience that brought to my mind the latter’s Sixth Symphony – most affecting! Then came the viola’s solo, augmented by cadaverous tappings from the second violin – after which the viola continued, joined by the first and second violins in an extended B-flat which slowly burgeoned towards a piercing climax.

Julia Joyce (viola) and the Chamber Pot-pourri Ensemble play Mozart

The intrinsic greatness of Mozart’s music would, of course, have easily survived a cheek-by-jowl placement with these twentieth-century goings-on intact, but the interval break was nevertheless appreciated at that point! It did give one the chance to ponder what we had heard in relative isolation, and especially apposite given the cultural “head start”  enjoyed by an eighteenth-century classic work when pitted against a later “arrival”. I had enjoyed my own particular “first encounter” with Mozart’s K.593 many years ago, courtesy of a fellow bus-driver I befriended during my “mis-spent youth” period of exploration! This particular individual was a Rastafarian-like figure, complete with dreadlocks! – one who completely belied his appearance by frequently conversing with me about art, literature and music, and ultimately making a present for me of a recording of two of the Mozart Quintets in question, one of which was K.593 (and which he himself adored!).

It was a “head-start” of sorts for me with this work, of course, which I grew to love all the more – and on a later, box-set pressing of the same recording (the stereo Amadeus with Cecil Aronowitz)  I also got to know the “alternate version” of the finale’s opening, the phrase written chromatically, rather than in stepwise fashion, and which is now recognised as the “authentic” opening – Helene Pohl pointed this out, playing both versions for our delight, though stopping short of proposing an “audience vote” on the matter!

It was one of a number of delights associated with this performance, another being Rolf Gjelsten’s engagingly individual way with the ‘cello phrase that began the work, repeated in different keys in ways that made the player on my Amadeus recording sound relatively po-faced and non-commital! Also, I’d never before properly “connected” this episode with the music of Haydn, despite owning recordings of things like the “Drum Roll” and “London” Symphonies for years and years, works with similar kinds of slow introductions, and with the same returning at the end of the opening movements! And finally, the presence of the NZSO’s principal violist, Julia Joyce, in the ensemble gave the performance a wonderfully “burnished” glory of exchange, particularly evident in the slow movement, with its frequent conversational violin/viola passages – all very theatrical, as well, I thought, with the tuttis bursting almost to full with expression.

A quickly-flowing Menuetto followed, less about “beats” and more about emotion ”flowing like oil”, as the composer would have said, and, with the Trio, a showcase of ascending arpeggios, a veritable welter of them on at least two occasions, both collegial and celebratory. As, of course, were the wry interlockings of the finale’s workings, where the sheer contrapuntal elan of the writing becomes an “Anything you can do” kind of musical feast with an “Of course!” series of  rejoinings, the exhilaration of matching knife-edged impulses and resplendent tones a glorious display, and one for all of us to savour and remember for a long while to come.

A long and circuitous route from the Guildhall

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand School of Music presents:

A Guildhall Trio Reunion

Barbara Hill (flute) / Debbie Rawson (clarinet) / Donald Maurice (viola)

with Jian Liu (piano)

Music by Max Bruch, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Maurice Durufle, Alfred Uhl, Francois Devienne, Jenny McLeod

Adam Concert Room, NZSM Kelburn Campus,

Victoria University, Wellington

Wednesday 27th March, 2013

“…..a musical reunion? – ooh, yes, a lovely idea! Remember some of those things we unearthed and played, and had so much fun with? Yes, they’ll sound great, especially with a few wines, and plenty of yummy food – what’s that? A concert? You mean, the real thing? – an audience? – Ooo-er! – eh? – what was that? – No, not at all! – I’m on if you two are on! What gave you that idea? – I’m keen if you’re keen. Yeah, a couple of those things are at home somewhere, at the bottom of some pile. No, it’ll do me good! What about you? – you haven’t played that since when?……well, it won’t have gone stale, then……”

Of course one “invents” scenarios for effect – and truth is often stranger, funnier and more interesting than any fabricated exchange. But this trio of musicians, made up of Debbie Rawson, clarinet, Donald Maurice, viola and Barbara Hill, flute, were simultaneously flatmates and fellow-students at London’s Guildhall School of Music during the 1970s. During the intervening years they’d mostly gone their separate musical ways, except for periods where two members of the trio played together in different ensembles – but up until this present concert the threesome hadn’t performed together or alongside each other since their student days.

Now, along with the help of pianist Jian Liu, the three reunited for the present concert, though most of the repertoire presented involved no more than two of the group at any one time. Happily, the last item on the programme did use the whole ensemble – Jenny McLeod’s Suite – jazz themes was written in 1987 for the Zelanian Ensemble, in fact while Debbie Rawson and Donald Maurice were both members of the group. So the reunion was complete, and honour was well-and-truly satisfied.

Throughout the concert pianist Jian Liu’s playing was both the solid rock on which the different instrumental combinations stood and delivered, and the chameleon whose aspect adapted its tones to whatever was required by the music’s character at any given moment. The programme was largely a twentieth-century one, with the honorable exception of a Duo for flute and viola by Francois Devienne (1759-1803). Though Max Bruch (1838-1920), is generally thought of as a nineteenth-century romantic, his Eight Pieces for clarinet, viola and piano, four of which were played here, were written in 1910.

It was the Bruch which began the concert, Debbie Rawson and Donald Maurice joining forces with Jian Liu to give us Nos. 2, 5, 6 and 7 from those Eight Pieces. At the age of seventy the composer probably wasn’t concerned with fashionable trends in composition, drawing instead from a lifetime’s experience of his own creative impulses and other people’s music. So the Nachtgesang (No.6) which opened the concert had a mellow, sometimes Brahms-like, sometimes Schumannesque character, here beautifully realised, with the players taking turns to accompany one another most sensitively.

The short No.2 (Allegro con moto) was rather more lively, again reminiscent of Schumann, and with the piano part expressing miracles of quiet, nervous agitation (there was a delicious gurgle of appreciation from a very young child in the audience, right at the end of the piece!). No.5, the Rumanische Melodie was true to its description, the solo violin gypsy-like, and the folksy clarinet rhapsodizing by turns gaily and darkly. And what a contrast brought out by the players with the Dvorak-like No.7, beautifully setting the long-held melodic lines over infectious skipping energies, all with the lightest of touches.

Heitor Villa-Lobos’s music isn’t heard nearly enough in our concert-halls, and the composer’s brief but high-output Chôros No.2  merely whetted our appetites for more. One of a series of diverse instrumental combinations, this one threw Barbara Hill’s flute and Debbie Rawson’s clarinet together, lyrical outpourings, angularities and all, Debbie Rawson advising us at the beginning to “tighten our seatbelts” in anticipation of the same – a highly diverting and totally idiosyncratic entertainment.

No greater contrast could have been devised than with the music of Maurice Duruflé which followed, the Prelude, Recitatif and Variations for flute, viola and piano. Where Villa-Lobos’ music seemed all knees and elbows and nervous energies, Duruflé’s richly resonant sound-world conjured up depths of feeling whose surfaces occasionally shimmered and bubbled, realms of liquid and of air brought into active play, and presented for our delight and wonderment. Only during the final variations did the music take on a more physical aspect, and almost always with a light touch, though the notes were appropriately and splendidly scattered over a wide area by way of the work’s exhilarating conclusion.

I’d not heard any music previous to this concert by Alfred Uhl – by dint of the work’s title Kleines Koncert, and the composer’s Viennese connection, the spirit of Mozart seemed to be present from the start, although Uhl was very much a twentieth-century composer, with a number of film scores to his credit. Pianist Jian Liu introduced the work, emphasizing its wit and charm, and its references to the music of other composers. I thought its opening very burleske-like – crashing chords, running chromaticisms and sinuous melodies created a kind of “music for the pictures’ ambience. I particularly enjoyed the “half-lit” sequences, the eerie harmonies and half-tone shifts – all great fun! The players also appeared to enjoyed themselves greatly, moving with relish from the mordant wit of the duo-cadenza-like exchanges at the first movement’s ending to the gothic, dark-tread of the music at the slow movement’s beginning, with viola and clarinet sounding their notes like warning-bells at sea.

As if enough swirling energies hadn’t been expended by this time, the work’s finale reached new heights of vertiginous abandonment, driving the music giddily along within  the confines of closely-worked harmonies. It was a “heads down and scamper” kind of scenario among the musicians, their full-blooded playing screwing up the tensions brilliantly right to the end – all very accessible stuff, uninhibited and entertaining.

Barbara Hill was the obvious choice to tell us about the next composer’s work, as the other musicans would have been quite breathless for a while after putting across Uhl’s riotous music so engagingly. And, of course, Francois Devienne’s work featured the flute, in a duo with the viola. An eighteenth-century composer, performer and teacher in Paris, Devienne’s music isn’t well-known to concert-goers, though there’s a fair deal of it extant,  (over three hundred numbered works, mostly involving wind instruments). This two-movement work nicely contrasted an expressive style at the outset, with a more energetic Rondo, the latter incorporating a photo-finish kind of ending, which must have gone down well with the punters at the time. Barbara Hill and Donald Maurice conveyed a palpable sense of enjoyment to us of both the music and of their partnership in realising its many delights.

There can’t have been many classical music concerts which featured a musician talking about putting down a hangi on a back lawn somewhere in London, as Donald Maurice did here by way of illustrating a context for the group’s connections with the next item and its composer. Jenny McLeod’s work Suite – Jazz themes splendidly performed its dual function of entertaining its audience and rounding the concert off most satisfyingly. Debbie Rawson invited people to dance if they felt so inclined at any stage, which added a kind of physical dimension to people’s listening, even if no-one actually leapt from his or her seat during the performance.

The work’s five movements had many ear-tickling sequences, particularly the first one, Zelania, with its syncopations and “wandering stresses”. The following Chaconne lazily drifted its sounds through ambiences of memory and nostalgia, its slow dance evoking a very rural and idiomatic feeling of familiar vistas. In contrast, the perky Blue Classic had an almost “Beckus the Dandiprat” feeling about it, chirpy, droll, and very much with “attitude”, the cross-rhythms leading to a lovely throwaway ending.

The following Reverie seemed like a kind of daydream or sleep-encircled experience, sounds almost turned in upon themselves, with just touches of reverberation here and there – its taciturn aspect throwing the final Gypso into bold relief, rhythms flailing from piano and viola, saxophone lustily calling out juicy and jazzy themes and flute counterpointing merrily above it all. And to cap it all off (possibly because the hangi wasn’t quite ready out the back!) Donald Maurice insisted that the group play the final Gypso again, ostensibly because, in his own words to us, something “wasn’t quite right”.

The group’s reprise seemed more freely and energetically characterised, the different instrumental roles more sharply-focused – though being able to hear them twice in quick succession in this piece would have on its own “cleansed” everybody’s listening palette. Altogether, it made for a splendidly-delivered ending to a happy and rewarding musical occasion.

 

 

 

CD review – Guitarist Matthew Marshall’s “Brighter than Blue’ contains rich and varied rewards

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BRIGHTER THAN BLUE
Music by Philip Norman, Anthony Ritchie and Kenneth Young

Matthew Marshall (guitar)

with Carol Hohauser (flute)
Heleen du Plessis (‘cello)
Tessa Petersen (violin)
Sir Jon Trimmer (reciter)
Dame Kate Harcourt (reciter)

RATTLE CD RAT-D108 2020

Guitarist Matthew Marshall conceived the idea for this beautifully-presented 2020 RATTLE CD album as long ago as 2016 – and for some reason and another it’s taken me as long (2024) to find the opportunity to write something about it. What gave my own inclinations the impetus needed was the most recent of a series of heartfelt public tributes prompted by the untimely death (October 2023) of dance legend Sir Jon Trimmer, who had been associated with Marshall in one of the works on this recording as a reciter of Alastair Campbell’s poetry. Marshall had spoken and performed at each of the two tribute events to Sir Jon I had attended, and had, at the most recent one (organised by the distinguished dance critic Jennifer Shennan) drawn particular attention to the great man’s willingness to participate in different artistic activities with the same commitment and attention to detail as he had to dancing.

Marshall also attributed his own varied collaborations with the different artists on this recording to Trimmer’s example, with the latter’s suggestion resulting in the work by Philip Norman on the disc – It’s Love, Isn’t It?, which was first performed in Dunedin in 2017 with Sir Jon and actress Tina Retgien reading certain of both Alistair and Meg Campbell’s poems. The work is one of a number of works commissioned by Marshall from various composers, and all here are world premiere recordings.

The CD begins with an earlier work, Tense Melodies (1981, rev.2016) for flute and guitar by Philip Norman, featuring Marshall duetting with flutist Carol Hohauser. There are six pieces, originally written by Norman as incidental music for two Christchurch theatrical productions during the early 1980s. It’s interesting to learn that the first four of these are drawn from from incidental music for a 1980 Court Theatre production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, while the fifth is an adaptation of a song from a 1981 production of Ken Hudson’s play for the Canterbury Children’s Theatre, The Revenge of Badsky. The final piece was intended as a “rounding off” piece for the set’s publication that year, one re-evoking the “tense” aspect of the title as referring more throughout to a juxtaposition of past and future, rather than any “highly strung” mood. The set was first performed in 1995 by Marshall and Hohauser on a national Chamber Music NZ tour, and then revised in 2016 in preparation for this recording.

The opening track “Piangevole” has an engaging, plaintive-sounding “Once upon a time” feel to its brief, if sombre storybook manner, the recording beautifully realising the characteristic sound-quality of both instruments. The following folk-like “Cantabile” deliciously animates the line with its rhythmic “snap” evoking a highland kind of feeling, one which the third piece “Tempo rubato” straightaway dispels with the guitar’s jarring opening notes and the flute’s anguished rejoiner, the two continuing a strained, canonic sequence of confrontation and avoidance which ends in what seems like a kind of impasse, the guitar finishing with a quixotic “have it your way” spread chord that dissolves into silence. Whatever one makes of the following “Animato”, the piece balances both delight and determination with a spirited dance, the instrumental lines leaping between harmony and discord in suggestive rather than combatative ways. There’s something French-sounding about the “Dolento” which follows, a dignified processional whose feeling hints at its purpose without actually stating it, and certainly avoiding resolution. And the final, whirlwind “Con Moto” has a breathless delight whose angularities send one’s senses home afterwards wondering whether it had all been a kind of fevered dream – it’s all certainly a set of pieces to enjoy as much in unfettered surrender as delight in curiosity.

Anthony Ritchie’s piece Autumn Moods which follows adjusts the listener’s focus towards a different time and place, with a kind of elemental earth-awakening from pulsating cello tones, which are then joined with chiming guitar notes – how gently and beautifully the cello’s dark cantabile line rises from the gloom and engages the guitar in winsome responses. Impulsively the guitar initiates movement, gracefully bearing the cello’s supple line on its back as the music moves through the different autumnal shades of light and gloom, the music’s flow strengthening and quickening as the two instrumental voices intertwine and reach an expressive climax – from this both of the voices wend their way back through their newly-discovered soundscapes musing contentedly over their journeyings together.

Having enjoyed the ready bonhomie displayed between different instrumental voices in the first two items, I found Kenneth Young’s 1978 Suite in three movements for violin and guitar something of a different proposition. The first piece began with a thoughtful, largely pensive “Andante moderato” whose opening was dominated by the guitar, and with Tessa Petersen’s violin something of a “shadowy presence” up until the instrument seemed to “find its voice’ with an expressive mid-movement outburst of feeling. The violin seemed then to re-enter its “world of shadows’’, the music returning to the “Andante moderato” guitar-dominated mood, the violin diffidently repeating a brief and sombre four-note phrase which we’d previously heard before the instrument’s “big moment”……a bleak and insistent Adagio follows, one whose remorseless intensities don’t let up, even across a kind of interlude in which the place we’ve been taken to by the music gives little joy, and despairingly rebegins the opening trudge to its end.

The final movement, Moderato sostenuto, offers little relief from the gloom, the violin line bringing to mind for me a child’s loneliness in an orphanage, wanting to make sense of his or her isolation and craving any kind of quasi-parental warmth. So, a challenging piece, one which I found at first hearing difficult to like – it took my sensibilites into increasingly cheerless vistas from the second movement onwards, the music’s rhythmic shackles unrelieved by any feeling generated from the melodic content. Of course, having been an admirer of Kenneth Young’s work in the past I’m obviously determined to revisit these exacting pieces and give them another try – it won’t be the first time I’ve gone through such a process in my listening…..

Still, what a different world we seemed then to enter, as if rescued from these oppressive strains, by firstly, the sounds of a vast ocean doing its age-old thing, and then the brimful-warmth of the voices of, firstly, Sir Jon Trimmer and then Dame Kate Harcourt, bringing to flesh-and-blood life the first of Alistair and Meg Campbell’s poems that the two exchanged over years of marriage, fifteen of which Philip Norman had chosen to accompany in alternation with music, drawing his title It’s Love, Isn’t It? from the verses’ first publication in 2008.

Listening to those two beautifully-modulated and winningly-phrase voices picking their separate-but-together ways through the ups and downs of a marriage made for a heart-rending experience, here discreetly (and appropriately) flavoured by Philip Norman’s music, to which Matthew Marshall responds with playing of crystalline simplicity. The first poem “Wild Honey” here takes the verse from Alistair’s original “Wild Honey” about Meg (here delivered ardently by Jon Trimmer), and fuses it with one from the latter’s poetry (spoken more reflectively by Kate Harcourt) – words affirming in the former’s case a ”charged” lovemaking memory, and in the latter’s a life-long love. Philip Norman’s music makes much of simplicity, the emotion largely reflected in a kind of “impulsive tranquility.”

Throughout, there’s a chameleon-like response to the vagaries of emotion laid out by the various poems from both reciters, which the music mirrors, the latter rather more abstractly for the most part in a “variations on a theme” way – though I was especially taken by the play of surface ripples and darker undercurrents in pieces like “Brown Peahen”, “To Rid Myself of You”, and “To a Young Girl”, where the music in each case teases out the nooks and crannies of a relationship under stress – the “funkiness” of the music for “To a Young Girl”, for instance, presented for our edification an age-old stimulus, however illicit.

There’s also a mythic strand which occasionally vibrates in both words and music, in fairy-tale fashion in “The Way Back” which reworks the Hansel and Gretel story as a kind of deliverance of the boy from the temptations of the Witch; and in more dreamlike, chimerical fashion in “Gift of Dreams” there are fancies and imaginings of Nature bending to the human will in the music speaking as the natural world with its patterns and cadences.

Gathering these various fluctuations into almost metaphysical being is “A Confession”, where love in a youthful abstract is linked to an actual embodiment, an outpouring whose words echo John Donne’s “A Dream of Thee”, with the music’s beautiful, self-generating sense of that same eventual embodiment. The “Bee of Anger” which follows runs a gamut of a woman’s anger at her partner’s self-evident fantasies – the music here suitably tortured, twisted and self-inflicting – before turning inwards towards the following “Resistance”, in which a simple hibiscus flower re-ignites the power of love and its essential preservation, as represented by petals pressed into a book and their beauties  captured as an essence in the words “Love is not ending”. And, to conclude, there’s “Tidal”, a valediction by the poet for his wife, written and then given to the winds and the ocean to bear the words as nature might bear feelings of love – the music is also valedictory, rising at the end to hover, resonate and pass – very moving.

So, a recording to savour for a number of reasons – undoubtedly a heart-warming souvenir of two of New Zealand’s most distinguished performers in their fields coming together to make the creative word flesh in language terms – and thanks to the advocacy of one of the country’s most skilled musicians in collaboration with several equally talented colleagues, this Rattle disc has achieved a coup of both creative and recreative distinction – long may it continue to give the greatest of pleasure!

 

 

Worlds within and alongside worlds – solo and duo pianists Dénes Várjon and Izabella Simon at Waikanae

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata in C Minor Op.13 “Pathetique”
LISZT – Petrarch Sonett No.104 “Pace non trovo” (from Annees de Pelerinage – Deuxième année: Italie)
BARTOK – Roumanian Dance Op.8a No. 1
MAHLER (arr. piano duo by Bruno Walter) Symphony No. 1 in D Major “Titan”

Dénes Várjon and Izabella Simon –  solo and duo pianists

Waikanae Memorial Hall,

Sunday 11th February, 2024

The enterprising Duo Piano pair of Dénes Várjon and Izabella Simon gave a moderately-sized but enthusiastic audience plenty of thrills in the opening programme of the 2024 Waikanae Music Society’s Concert Season, combining a first half of solo piano works with a most enticing novelty, a transcription for piano duet of Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony in an arrangement made by one of the composer’s most ardent disciples and greatest interpreters, Bruno Walter.

The music of the Symphony and its performance here were, both for people like myself familiar with the orchestral version, and for those coming to the work for the first time, a revelation, judging from the reaction at the concert’s end of those who sat all around where I was situated – shouts of approval and exhalations of amazement of all kinds abounded, which must have gratified the two by then well-nigh exhausted players who had given their all over the best part of the previous hour!

No less captivating in content and variety was the concert’s first half, in effect a mini-solo recital by Dénes Várjon which featured works by Beethoven, Liszt and Bartok. Spanning over a century of keyboard innovation and romantic expression, Dénes Várjon brought to each of the three pieces a powerhouse technique, a romantic sensibility and a neo-ethnic awareness of rediscovery which underlined both the music’s contemporary and on-going importance and significance.

Though Beethoven’s Op.13 “Pathetique” Sonata would have sounded even more revolutionary to both contemporary and present-day ears if played on an instrument of the composer’s time, Várjon’s delivery of the opening movement splendidly “threw down the gauntlet” to our sensibilities with that wonderfully black-browed opening C Minor chord and their successors – his playing reminded me of the impact I well remember of hearing my first-ever recording, over fifty years ago, of that music played by Paul Badura-Skoda, and being knocked sideways as a result!

I particularly enjoyed the player’s going right back to the music’s Grave opening with the exposition repeat, rather than merely reiterating the allegro, which I’d previously heard only New Zealand pianist Stephen de Pledge do in concert. Something else I thought particularly striking in Várjon’s performance was his “playing” of the silences during the Grave sequences a matter, I felt, of giving the pauses their full resonance, so that each new note was allowed to coalesce in the wake of the previous one. In all, the first movement was splendidly done.

I’m sure that even Frederic Chopin, who had little time for Beethoven’s music, would have been charmed by Várjon’s playing of the beautiful, nocturne-like Adagio cantabile which followed – the player’s touch, while having a finely-sculptured quality still evidenced plenty of variety and pliability, producing a living, breathing sense of line. Then, from the second subject’s wistfulness rose a passionately-wrought archway through which we were heart-stoppingly taken, and then returned to the Adagio, our trajectories a tad enlivened, but reclaiming a dream-like “dying fall’ at the end.

From strength and then sensibility, the music turned to whimsy and caprice in the final movement, with playfulness aplenty between the hands, punctuated by the occasional sforzando – a wonderful “splurge-like” clash of notes at the top of one upward run, all adding to the excitement! Towards the end Várjon’s playing brought the music’s energies almost to boiling-point, with everything suddenly tumbling over and downwards; but no bones were broken, as a quick inspection revealed before a final chortle brought the rumbustion to an end! – all thoroughly engaging and enjoyable!

Franz Liszt set three Sonnets by the Italian poet Francesco Petrarch  (Nos. 47, 104 and 123), firstly for voice and piano, and then as solo piano versions in the second suite of his Années de Pélérinage (Years of Pilgrimage) – his Deuxième année: Italie (Second year: Italy). More recent research into the poet’s life and output has renumbered those sonnets differently to that of Liszt’s original titles, with the latter’s “Petrarch Sonnett No.104 – Pace non trovo – appearing as No.134 in some editions that include other “ballades, songs and snatches” by the poet. Whatever the case, Liszt’s treatment of this Sonnet is a masterpiece, whether in, as here, solo piano form, or in other versions for voice and piano.

Whether the impulses were grand and tumultuous or tender and thoughtful, Várjon’s playing of this work vividly encapsulated the composer’s richly varied set of responses to the poet’s heartfelt words, from the impassioned opening – “I find no peace, but for war am not inclined…” -through the gamut of emotion – “Love has me in a prison which he neither opens nor shuts fast….” – to the ending’s eloquent resignation – “…to this state I am come, my lady, because of you….”, the pianist “placing” those exquisite high notes near the end as the work’s true climax, and the remainder being as mere echoings. After hearing this I should have liked to have had him play the whole of the Italian  Deuxième année Book……..

A treat of a different order, however, was in store, with the first of Bartok’s Op.8a Roumanian Dances for solo piano, written (1910) at around the time he was extensively exploring Eastern Europe compiling collections of folk music. This rhapsodic music used native rhythms (a “galumphing’ opening) and themes (bagpipe-like snippets of melody) to launch and establish the piece, with Várjon bringing beautifully into being a central, grandly resonating lyrical section with a wistful epilogue. The dance’s opening returned, this time accelerating to a wilder, more percussive climax with plenty of foot-stamping before a grand peroration presented the main theme once again  – the music then “plays” with the melodic snippets as if someone might be swatting at a buzzing fly which cheekily evades its fate and has the last word! Hugely entertaining!

The Mahler Symphony was of an entirely different order, its many moods and evocations giving tongue to the composer’s famous statement regarding the nature of a symphony – “It is like the world!” he once declared to fellow-composer Jean Sibelius – “It must contain everything!”. Had one little or no idea of the programme of this work one still had sufficient variety of impulse, colour and texture to readily imagine a narrative or grand design over the work’s four movements, themselves further dissected into contrasting sequences which added unceasing interest to the discourse. Várjon and his duo-partner-wife Izabella Simon took us right inside the music’s fantastical world from the very beginning, the opening movement a kind of evocation of nature’s awakening, and (by use of themes used in a previous song-cycle, “Songs of A Wayfarer”) a traveller’s experience of passing through the natural world’s manifold beauties and energetic irruptions, to a joyful and vigorous climax.

Each of the three remaining movements had a very specific character – the second movement’s country-dance atmosphere (known as a “Ländler”) was vigorously portrayed, and further contrasted by a more lyrical Trio, most evocatively realised by the duo pair, while the spookily atmospheric third movement Funeral March (with its minor-key use of the famous “Frere Jacques” theme) here gave me the utmost pleasure, Izabella Simon as the “primo” player beautifully and piquantly bringing out the melodies, their  essences underpinned by her partner’s “secondo” portrayal of the somewhat macabre funeral cortege rhythms. I particularly enjoyed the pair’s bringing out of the bitter-sweetness in this movement’s Trio, with its quotation of a song from Lieder Eines fahrenden Gesellen, “Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz” (“The Two Blue Eyes of My Beloved”).

Perhaps the most challenging of the work’s movements was the Finale, which the programme-note-writer called “the longest and most dramatic”.  Mahler was to replicate the “bolt of lightning” opening of this movement in his Second Symphony’s finale as well, but in none of the other symphonies do the finales begin so cataclysmically. Here, Simon and Várjon threw themselves almost bodily into the fray, and wrestled their way to a mid-movement climax of sorts, only to have the music suddenly lose its nerve and change key, modulating upwards and into a kind of “no-person’s land!” Undaunted, the pair bent their backs to the struggle once again (the effort was excitingly palpable for all of us, throughout!) and flung the fanfare figures upwards and outwards once again – and were rewarded when the music’s goal of a triumphal D major was sighted, prepared, driven towards – and sustained! As I wrote at the outset of this review, the achievement was greeted with all due acclaim, the kind of thing which sustains a memory for a long while to come. Bravo, indeed!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A brave challenge – Schumann’s “Scenes from Goethe’s Faust” from Orchestra Wellington and the Orpheus Choir

Posted on by Steven Sedley

(This review was written by Steven Sedley in conjunction with other Middle C reviewers)

Orchestra Wellington’s Faust

Robert Schumann – Scenes from Goethe’s Faust

Soloists: Emma Pearson, Wade Kernot, Christian Thurston, Jared Holt, Michaela Cadwgan, Maike Christie-Beekman, Barbara  Paterson, Margaret Medlyn, Jamie Young
Marc Taddei (conductor)
Orchestra Wellington
Orpheus Choir
St Mark’s Schola Cantorum

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 3 December 2022

The first performance in New Zealand of this colossal work by Schumann,  was a fitting end for a season with its focus on this composer. It required vast resources, two large choirs, nine soloists, a large orchestra, and it is difficult, complex music, not immediately approachable.

Goethe’s Faust is the overpowering masterpiece of the German literature, and a number of composers tried to find musical expression of it, Berlioz in Schumann’s own time, Gounod, Boito, Mahler, Busoni  and a number of others in later generations.

Goethe died a mere decade before Schumann embarked on this work and part two of his play had not been published till some years later. This explains why Schumann, who started working on Scenes from Goethe’s Faust in 1844,  didn’t complete the last part until shortly before his death fourteen years later, Consequently he never heard the whole work performed.

Did the subject appeal to Schumann because he identified with Faust, the brilliant thinker, who was taken by Mephistopheles, the Devil, to be ultimately redeemed by the love of his life, Gretchen / Clara?  Or did he relish the challenge of writing a major work for choir and orchestra, an oratorio, to prove that he was a significant composer with a weighty large scale work to his name?  Perhaps it was a bit of both. As well, did he see his long term tertiary syphilis and his decline as parallels with Faust’s love of Gretchen and his love of Clara?

At any rate, it was a brave challenge for Orchestra Wellington, the Orpheus Choir and the Children’s Choir of St Marks, the soloists and perhaps above all, for the conductor, Mark Taddei, who having prepared this work, is unlikely to have the opportunity to perform it again any time soon.

The orchestra played at times with a beautiful lush sound, but the rhythmic precision and occasionally, intonation, was not impeccable. It is, after all, a very good part-time orchestra and can’t be compared with the great orchestras of the world available to all on YouTube or recordings.

The nine soloists acquitted themselves pretty well, all displaying a good understanding of their texts,  though it wasn’t made easy for them. A raised platform in the midst of the orchestra behind the strings but ahead of the winds was not an ideal placement, even if,  acoustically,  one would be hard put to it to think of a better one. All had to work hard to achieve parity with the densely orchestrated instrumental sound and none really succeeded in taking command. Emma Pearson’s  lyric soprano was ideal for the role of the innocent Gretchen, tenor Jared Holt was an assertive Arial and Wade Kernot’s firm, sombre tone was fine for Mephistopheles and the Evil Spirit in the Cathedral scene if not perhaps providing the last word in threatening malice. The most demanding parts were those of Faust himself and, after his death, Dr Marianus. Baritone Christian Thurston sang stylishly and well, but the interminable lines of Faust’s monologues lay rather low in his range when in contention with an orchestra that took no prisoners. The smaller parts were all taken well.

The Orpheus Choir was in fine form, as usual, especially in the Dies Irae and the young singers of the St Mark’s Schola Cantorum were bright and lively.

In the grand final section, Faust’s Transfiguration, written some years after the first two Parts, you could hear not only Goethe, but also Beethoven breathing down Schumann’s back with passages clearly recalling  the earlier composer’s Choral Symphony.

Unfortunately the performance was marred by surtitles of startling ineptitude, mis-translated, misspelt, banal, ungrammatical, and in places incoherent. It would have been worse still for any audience members familiar with Goethe’s text –  the Great Man must have been turning in his vault.

Still, with all its imperfections, this was a memorable performance, and, for people in Wellington an opportunity of a lifetime to hear this great work. We must be grateful to Marc Taddei and his team for daring to “think big” and bring to life one of the great masterpieces of the romantic choral repertoire.

The long way to Bohemia

Posted on by Anne French

Wellington Chamber Music Sunday Concerts series  presents:
Czech Mates

Martinů – Piano Trio No 2 in D minor
Janáček – Violin Sonata
Bowater – Fekete Folyó (Black River)|
Dvořák – Piano Trio No 3 in F minor (Op. 65)

New Zealand Chamber Soloists
Lara Hall (violin), James Tennant (‘cello), Katherine Austin (piano)

St Andrew’s on the Terrace

Sunday 19 June 2022

A cold grey afternoon in the middle of winter. But the programme looked interesting: a Czech club sandwich with a slice of Bowater. The New Zealand Chamber Soloists have a history of commissioning new works. The work by Helen Bowater was commissioned in 2020 as part of their ‘Seven by Seven’ project: seven works by seven New Zealand women composers, lasting seven minutes, with support from Creative New Zealand. But how would the Bowater fare, I wondered, surrounded by works written by three of the great Czech composers of the past 150 years?

The programme notes were succinct, but the performers provided excellent introductions to each work.  Cellist James Tennant told us that Martinů grew up in a bell-tower (the tower of St Jakub Church in the small town of Polička), where his father was both a bell-ringer and fire watcher. We should expect lots of bell sounds in this energetic work, especially in the piano part, he said. ‘Bong! Bing! Bang!’

Having been expelled from the Prague Conservatory at the age of 20 for ‘incorrigible negligence’, Martinů managed to get himself to Paris in 1923, where he studied with Roussel and listened to jazz. Back in Prague, Martinů had been keen on the French Impressionists. Now he was living amongst them. But in the late 1930s, he was forced to leave Paris. He had written a work celebrating the Czech resistance and was wanted by the Nazis. He made it to the US by 1941. This Piano Trio was written during a very productive period, 1948-56, when Martinů taught at the Mannes College of Music in New York. (Burt Bacharach was one of his students.)

The Piano Trio, written in just a few weeks in 1950, has all the emotional complexity of the position in which Martinů found himself. On the one hand, he was productive and happy. His symphonies were being performed by the big American orchestras. On the other, his marriage was in difficulties. His wife wanted to return to France; he wanted to go home to Bohemia. But after the coup of 1948, when the Communists came to power, he couldn’t go back to Czechoslovakia.

The trio expresses all of this. There is delight and even fun (James Tennant imagined the young Martinů hopping down the steps of the bell-tower), with sprightly string rhythms and glittering flows of notes from the piano, and a fast scramble to the end of the first movement. But the second movement opens with sombre chords from the violin. The piano is sympathetic, but positive; the cello is supportive and understanding. Where? Why? Eventually all three voices reach a kind of agreement. The third movement starts with a terrifying energy (like Schubert’s Erlkönig) that morphs quickly into energy minus terror. The piano part is busy, lyrical, and positive, but it becomes drawn in by the violin’s insistent rhythms. The bell sounds in the piano part are not soothing. The violin is agitated; the cello supportive. There is much more agitation before the final chords come down.

This is an interesting work, not often performed. I was struck by the expressive beauty of the piano writing, and by Katherine Austin’s gorgeous technique. The voices are pretty evenly balanced, but it is the violin that seems to speak for the composer, directly and frankly, from the heart.

Next was the Janáček Violin Sonata. Katherine Austin explained that, while other Czech composers assiduously researched Czech folk music traditions, Janáček sat in cafés listening to conversations, and notated Czech speech rhythms.  He tried to write a violin sonata when he was a student, studying in Leipzig, and again in Vienna, but his early sonatas have been lost. This work was written in 1914, when he was 60. Janáček said that, in this sonata, ‘I could just about hear the sound of steel clashing in my troubled head.’ The sonata was premièred in Brno in 1922, and the following year it was performed in Frankfurt, with Paul Hindemith playing the violin.

The con moto first movement ‘sounds like a row, really’, as Katherine Austin put it, with the voices continually interrupting and contradicting each other. It opens with a big statement by the violin, with the piano strumming broken chords. The piano part is fast and ranges all over the keyboard, the violin interjects, or comments, and finally has the last word. The second movement, Ballada, Katherine Austin described as being like a lullaby, with ‘quiet breathing’. It opens with a lyrical tune from the violin and a restless piano part underneath. Anxiety turns into a sad but resigned song, full of dark energy, with a rippling motif from the piano. The third movement began with a nursery tune in the piano and ‘something flying overhead’. The fourth movement was pastoral, lyrical, ‘like watching dawn break’, with brusque interruptions from the violin.

And next, the Helen Bowater piece, Fekete Folyó. The Danube is the ‘Black River’ of the title, and the work recalls terrible events happening to the Jewish Hungarian and Romanyi people of Budapest. The cello is given a solo that tells of heartbreak and tragedy, and the violin sings a melancholic song. But its seven minutes also capture the wild rhythms of gypsy music, with plenty of pizzicato and strumming, and some Jewish harmonies. It finishes with a kind of threnody for the violin and cello together, then just the violin. And then silence.

This is an interesting and affecting work that sounded well alongside the Czech composers. It was evocative and sympathetic, with plenty to tell us.

And finally, the Dvořák Piano Trio No 3, written in 1883, the earliest work on the programme. This trio is not as famous as his fourth, the Dumky (1891), and it is not written in his cheerful Slavonic style. It is a big work, nearly 40 minutes long, with a lengthy first movement that Lara Hall described as ‘a great journey, long and deep’. At the time of writing, Dvořák was facing a tricky problem. He had been approached to write a second opera, but on a German subject and with a German libretto. Dvořák longed for recognition as an operatic composer, but he wanted it on his own terms. (He had already suffered from anti-Czech prejudice.) And his mother had just died…

From the first bars, we are back in Bohemia, as though the concert has been a long journey home. After the trio’s first performance, in which Dvořák played the piano part, the contemporary critic Edward Hanslick wrote that ‘the composer finds himself at the pinnacle of his career’. (He was not to know that the best was yet to come.)

In the third movement, the violin introduces the ‘dead mother’ theme, with sympathetic support from cello and piano. It is all so sad. But the piano is more optimistic – perhaps there is a way through. The violin repeats the theme, but higher and sweeter. Perhaps there is.

The fourth movement (allegro con brio) features a furiant, that Bohemian dance in alternating 2/4 and 3/4 time with strong accents. Dvořák used it memorably in the eighth Slavonic Dance. Finally, all tensions resolved, they dance off, presto, to a joyful resolution.

This trio brought out the very best from the players. The NZ Soloists have been playing together since 2006, and it shows. They are well balanced and make a beautiful sound.  James Tennant’s cello was especially warm and beautiful, supported by Lara Hall’s lyrical violin playing and Katherine Austin’s gorgeous support from the piano. The whole concert was conceived as a complete experience, with its moments of emotional intensity and resolution well placed.

Roger Hall’s “terrific couple” at last back on stage in Wellington – “Winding Up” at Circa Theatre

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Circa Theatre presents:
Winding Up , written by Sir Roger Hall
and directed by Susan Wilson

Featuring Ginette McDonald (Gen) and  Peter Hayden (Barry)

Set and AV Design – Lisa Maule
Lighting – Marcus McShane
Costumes – Sheila Horton
Music and Soundscape – Michael Nicholas Williams
Technical Operator – Niamh Campbell-Ward
Stage/Production Manager – Deb McGuire

Circa Theatre, Wellington

Sunday, 1st June, 2021 (until 28th August)

Sir Roger Hall’s “Winding Up”, an exploration of love weathering age and untoward circumstance, has finally made the stage at Circa Theatre, over a year after being first scheduled and then waylaid by Covid-19 and Lockdown. This afternoon its performance by Ginette McDonald and Peter Hayden as the play’s two characters, Gen and Barry, flickered all about to begin with, gradually warmed, then connected with, and finished up conflagrating an appreciative audience.

Its unfolding all somehow reminded me of pianist Artur Rubinstein’s account of first going to hear Russian classical superstar Sviatoslav Richter play  – “I thought at first the playing was nothing special – then I realised that tears were actually rolling down my cheeks….”Similarly, Hall’s window-view of “us” gradually penetrated our reserve, awoke our recognitions, tickled our fancies, engaged our sympathies and touched our hearts, giving us more and more “moments per minute” as we delved deeper and deeper into what were, either by direct experience or dint of association, our own lives.

For this reason, it’s very much a play one would ideally share with someone rather than view alone – I was grateful to go with a long-standing friend with whom, by dint of shared sideways glances, wry gesturings and occasional in-tandem chortles and spontaneous comments, I could relish the shared recognitions and empathies generated by the action’s plethora of impulses and nuances via word and gesture. And if not quite “tears rolling down my cheeks” I certainly registered, towards the end, some lump-in-throat moments, making the recognitions and empathies apparent. The playwright’s own attitude to his characters was summed up during a 2019 radio interview as “a terrific couple”, Hall adding that “Anybody in a long-term relationship recognises them and what they talk and argue about”.

Gen and Barry are two retirees, septuagenerians very much in “what’s next?” mode, and equally as much dealing with the “life is what happens when you’re planning something else” phenomenon that happens in the best families – and which certainly brings the same dynamic to bear on the action throughout the evening. The genesis of these two characters sprang from an earlier Hall play, Conjugal Rites, which featured the same Gen and Barry thirty years before, on the point of celebrating their 21st wedding anniversary, and about to examine their marriage, their children and their respective occupations, dealing with both a balance of power change in the relationship (Gen becoming a practising solicitor) and infidelities on both sides (Barry with one of his dental patients, and Jen with a fellow-solicitor), issues that the present play revisit, albeit with passage-of-time mitigating philosophical perspectives.

Are the preoccupations, idiosyncrasies, quips, jokes and life-issues showing signs of wearing thin after thirty years? It’s almost as though Hall has written a kind of “laundered” quality into the first exchanges, something of an implicit “how many times have we heard that one” feeling, which is as much about style as content – like having to gradually get on someone’s “wavelength” so as to fully appreciate what is said (and “how”, as well, incidentally). Ginette McDonald as Gen conveys this nonchalance in her exchanges with Peter Hayden’s well-practised (and nicely “in-character theatrical”) delivery as Barry with a casual brilliance that leaves one open-mouthed with admiration. Opposite her, Peter Hayden’s Barry is something of a “performer”, with a certain command (perhaps historically occupational?) of repartee – “You’ll have to speak up – I’ve got my hearing aids in!” he quips to his daughter during a ‘phone call. Their differences reinforce an “opposites attract” quality that manifests itself elsewhere in their exchanges, more of which below.

As the business of ageing crowds in over the course of the play one realises just how “in tune” the couple are despite their differences – McDonald’s characteristic no-nonsense style as Gen complements Hayden’s ostensible heart-on-sleeve manner for Barry, revealing a “vive la difference” quality of being and doing in an arrangement that has worked long-term, despite the speed-bumps and the debilitating temporary detours along the way. Neither has been diminished by the other in the long haul – perhaps for some people a cloud-cuckoo-land scenario that falls apart in the face of harsher realities, but (on the basis of art suggesting an example for, rather than merely imitating, life) it’s a depiction that’s life-enhancing, and therefore a worthwhile, “act of theatre” to take in and ponder.

The issues are classic and resonantly recognisable, some even from a distance! – they range from individual attitudes to possessions (Barry is a “hoarder” whose responses to enjoiners from Gen to “downsize” regarding clothes and books are priceless! – “My ideal life-style is a mess!” he expostulates at one point!), to sex (a spontaneous “making-out on the shag pile” episode elicits “last of the Mohicans/end of the drought?/in the bed or out here?” comments from both of them as the embers are raked over to risibly indeterminate but still touching effect!) and to dancing to “their” music (“The first time I ever saw your face” to which Gen and Barry dance so touchingly and tenderly – and I think here of my own parents dancing foxtrots and twosteps to Mills Brothers’ tunes) – the music might be dated, but the shared enjoyment is timeless…)

The play’s “elephant in the room” isn’t one really, but it’s all-pervading enough to both “figure” and be “disregarded”, taking cues from the couple’s laudably ornery attitude to the news at the action’s beginning that Barry has been tentatively diagnosed with leukemia. The couple’s plans for a longed-for visit to see distant grandchildren are put under stress and jeopardy – though the outcomes at least didn’t at that time have to deal with Covid-19 as a factor. Funeral plans come into reckoning, then, the situation further pushed near the bone when news of Gen’s brother-in-law’s unexpected death arrives, necessitating the couple’s attendance at a funeral, and inevitable post-funeral talk – not here, but much later, Barry confesses to Gen that, were there “menus” for methods of dying, his preferred choice would be “to wake up dead!”

So, there’s much, and more, to take in from this script which, as I’ve already indicated, felt to me as if it moved from superficial exchange at the beginning to almost Faustian transcendence at the end, where one is confronted with a strangely dream-like set of scenarios in which time, matter and energy are redeployed. Hall here brings his play’s characters to their apotheosis in unforgettably iconic “Goodnight Kiwi” fashion, ensuring their immortality, while keeping us suspended in conjecture as to “what was happening”, as great art is wont to do…….

Credit needs to be articulated in many directions for all of this, firstly to director Susan Wilson for settings and dynamics that had here an inevitability of perspective, seeming to know what to bind and what to loosen, where to space out and where to hone in, and what to specify and what to leave to us to “figure”. Hand-in-glove with all of this was Lisa Maule’s set whose centrepiece was the painting with the “iconic” Wellington Harbour view, complete with Matiu/Soames Island and the resplendent Rimutaka Ranges in the background. Marcus McShane’s on-the-button lighting caught every atmospheric and dynamic nuance, while Sheila Horton’s costumes were everything one might expect from people of this couple’s socio-economic status. And I loved the music, particularly the dance  sequence of “The First Time I ever saw your Face”, which, as Noel Coward might have observed, “took” us, along with the others with surprising potency backwards to times and places, demonstrating the sure touch of Music and Soundscape designer Michael Nicholas Williams.

There’s been a suggestion that this work might be Sir Roger Hall’s swansong as a dramatist – if so we in New Zealand will be the poorer in no longer having “updated” portraits and scenarios from his perceptive sensibilities of people and things we know but perhaps can’t find the words to express for ourselves, or in such a recognisable way. We owe him a great debt of thanks.