Author: Alan Wells

Frances Moore (voice), Anna McGregor (clarinet), Ben Hoadley (bassoon), Pia Palme (contrabass recorder), Dylan Lardelli (guitar), Nell Thomas (accordion), Takumi Motokawa (percussion), Charlotte Fetherston (viola), King Pan Ng (erhu).
CAROL MICALLEF: “Cigarettes for Ping Pong”;
HERMIONE JOHNSON: “The Deep Blue Sky”;
ALEXANDRA HAY: “Moon Song”;
KING PAN NG: “ExtremeLand”.

Massey University Theatrette, 21-22 August 2009

“Extreme Lands” was an event incorporating sound (live and recorded), words, and images, imaginatively curated by Wellington composer Alexandra Hay.

There were four items on the programme, beginning with “Cigarettes for Ping Pong” by experimental singer-songwriter Carol Micallef, which she sang in her attractive voice, accompanying herself on a tiny retro synth, with the aid of erstwhile guitarist Dylan Lardelli on viola.

Alexandra Hay’s own work, “Moon Song”, utilized a text by Branwen Millar, ingeniously presented as an interplay between words projected onto a screen, and words vocalized by Frances Moore. Each section was associated with a different aspect of water, for instance The Harbour, Ice, Tap, and Open Bodies. Hay’s use of electroacoustic sound files, such as the warm enveloping introduction, and the undulating filtered white noise underlying the voice in “The Harbour”, were reminiscent of the use of electronics in her atmospheric “White Rain” for amplified flute (which won the Victoria University composition competition in 2006). On the other hand, the exploitation of extended techniques on the live instruments (down to transferring the conventional western violin tremolando onto Ng’s traditional Chinese erhu), reminded me of her daring demands on the NZSO in the quietly powerful “Bellum Nocturnis” (winner of the 2008 NZSO/Todd Corporation Award).

Hay’s fellow graduate from the Victoria University NZ School of Music, Hermione Johnson, has been interested in very low sounds, and very high sounds. In “The Deep Blue Sky”, she joined Hay in exploring very soft sounds, and non-standard ways of playing instruments. Intense concentration on the barely audible world of the bellows-breath of Nell Thomas’s accordion, the bowed bridge of Dylan Lardelli’s guitar, and the key clicks of Ben Hoadley’s bassoon, drew the listener in, until the first tentative notes of definite pitch began to emerge towards the end of the piece.

King Pan Ng’s “ExtremeLand” relied mainly on projected images and recorded sound files to carry its message (encompassing the ends of a geographic spectrum, from Burmese refugees to icy landscapes). The performers seemed to have little to play: for them, it might have been “avant karaoke”. The images, however, stayed on in the mind, particularly those of the victims of the Myanmar junta.

ENSEMBLE SELISIH

Elizabeth Farrell (flute), Mathias Trapp (piano), Daniela Wahler and Markus Rombach (saxophones)
DIETER MACK: “Selisih”, “Trio III”;
CHANG-SOON RYU: “Quartett”;
DYLAN LARDELLI: “Two Bells”;
ROBIN TOAN: “Twitter”;
MICHAEL NORRIS: “BADB”;
GILLIAN WHITEHEAD: “Taurangi”.

NZ School of Music Adam Concert Room, 12 August 2009

“Selisih”, an Indonesian word meaning “argumentative discussion”, was the name given by German composer Dieter Mack to his duo for alto and baritone saxophones. Mack, now on his third visit to New Zealand in a professional capacity, has lived in Indonesia studying gamelan performance practice, and (partly inspired by this) has made the interactions between players, one of the fundamental principles of his music. The name was subsequently adopted by this ensemble of four individualists – two saxophonists, a flautist and a pianist.

Mack’s 2003 composition “Selisih” itself formed part of the programme. The duo began with Wahler’s querulous alto sax answered by Rombach’s staid baritone, which in turn was to respond with increased nervous energy. The conversation turned to treat a serious topic with mysterious multiphonics, before they joined together in rapid unisono figures and a perfectly united vibrato.

The 2005 “Trio III” reflected Mack’s more recent concern with creating new timbres using multiphonics, incidental microtones and, especially, by blending together instrumental sounds (analogous to an organ’s mixture stop, and sharing some similar concerns with the French Spectralists). Flute (and sometimes piccolo) melded with alto sax to produce unison lines in novel, Messiaen-like colours, while the discreetly prepared piano added a quietly dark commentary.

Korean-born Chang-soon Ryu has studied with Dieter Mack in Lubeck. His 2007 “Quartett” for the Ensemble Selisih showed some of Mack’s interest in timbre-building, and also a feeling of stasis that those of us who have grown up with the thematic development, metrical pulse and harmonic motion of the western tradition, tend to associate with East Asian music.

Wellingtonian Dylan Lardelli’s 2009 “Two Bells” displayed a similar sense of static time, and for good reason: it was inspired in part by the stately unfolding of classical Japanese Noh drama. As with his 2008 “four scenes” for Stroma, and more successfully than in his earlier “Sent into Silence” at the 2007 Asia Pacific Festival, Lardelli here suspended any need for forward direction or climax. The poised, spare texture incorporated judicious special effects: muffled prepared-piano notes illumined by a halo of resonance; throbbing close-interval sustains; slap-tonguing and key clicks on the baritone sax.

“Two Bells” was commissioned by Selisih (with Creative NZ) to increase the repertoire for this unconventional ensemble. So too was Aucklander Robin Toan’s 2009 “Twitter”, a set of three short character-pieces “about” birds (not micro-blogging). The first – perky, cheeky, syncopated – was reminiscent of the “Aquarium” and “Puppets” movements from her 2005 “Barcelona Postcards”. The second was pensive, with a plangent melody on the soprano sax, some contrapuntal complexity and cadenza passages. The third was motoric (rather than syncopated like the first), featuring rapid ostinati on the baritone sax and chirping runs and trills on the piccolo, building up to an sudden end.

Michael Norris’ “BADB” was named after a shape-shifting Celtic goddess. It opened with Farrell singing into her flute, with crystalline high piano runs from Trapp. However, the goddess’s fearsome side was soon made evident with fortissimo crow-calls.

Gillian Whitehead’s “Taurangi” was premiered by Bridget Douglas and Rachel Thomson during the 2000 International Festival of the Arts. It made my list of highlights in the retrospective of that year that I wrote for the “NZ Listener”. This was a most elegant rendition from New Zealand-born flautist Elizabeth Farrell and pianist Mathias Trapp: the flute’s subtle pitch-bends and the closing, barely audible inside-piano glissandi still had the magic to send tingles up the spine.

PESTOVA/MEYER PIANO DUO
Xenia Pestova, piano; Pascal Meyer, piano
STRAVINSKY: “The Rite of Spring”;
DUGAL MCKINNON: “Diktat, Ditty Half-Life”;
CHRIS WATSON: “Coffee Table Book”.

**STOCKHAUSEN: “Mantra”

NZ School of Music Adam Concert Room, 17 July 2009

**VUW Hunter Council Chamber, 19 July 2009

Is ballet music programme music when performed without the ballet? If it is, then is it “about” the dance action onstage, or is it, instead, more “about” the story and images that inspired the ballet’s  scenario in the first place? If so, then Stravinsky (famous for the dictum that music expresses only itself) may, paradoxically, have written one of the greatest tone poems of the twentieth century.

These were some of the thoughts going through my mind as I listened to duo pianists Xenia Pestova and Pascal Meyer playing “The Rite of Spring”. Their two-piano version provided more resonance and weight than the composer’s own arrangement for one-piano-four-hands, edging just a little closer to the power of the orchestra. At times Pestova and Meyer evoked familiar instrumental timbres (the opening bassoon, the dialogues of muted trumpets): at others they created something fresh and new – from washes of piano arpeggios, to sinister stalking rhythms.

Unexpectedly, rhythm also emerged as a crucial element in Stockhausen’s “Mantra”. Perhaps I should not have been so surprised: after all, “Piano Piece IX” began with a premonitory dose of pre-minimalist minimalism. However, in the 1956/61 piece, the regularly repeated chords were readily deconstructed into irregular flourishes at the extremes of the keyboard. In the 1969/70 “Mantra”, by contrast, a measured pulse recurred many times during the work – at one point with acerbic wit, as when Pestova’s peremptorily iterated high pitch “corrected” a “wrong” note written for Meyer’s part.

Pestova and Meyer’s intimate engagement with the piece enabled them to highlight episodes of lush romanticism and snatches of melody. Despite these, and the extended periods of metre, the 70-minute “Mantra” proved an epic marathon demanding concentration, commitment and stamina – and that was just for the listeners. The duo pianists themselves needed all these, plus exquisite coordination – especially in such instances as when Pestova’s microsecond woodblock had to coincide with Meyer’s attack. For the performers not only had the pianos, but also an array of small percussion instruments (woodblocks, tuned crotales), as well as dials to initiate ring-modulation (an electronic effect equivalent to Cage’s prepared piano, bringing the tone colour closer to that of the crotales).

Expertly controlled by sound projectionist Philip Brownlee, the ring modulation also offered an escape from the prison of twelve-equal temperament, notably in the form of arresting (all the more so for being sparingly deployed) sliding portamenti on piano sustains. With “Mantra”, Stockhausen had returned to more rigorously formulated composition after a period of experimentation with improvisation and chance: had he followed the precedent set by Markevitch, Ives and Wyschnegradsky and tuned one of the pianos a quarter-tone apart, he would have had even more scope for his procedure of expanding and contracting his intervallic material (a process pioneered in the 1920s by Mexican microtonalist Julian Carrillo).

After having been percussionists and vocalizing actors, Pestova and Meyer further heightened the excitement towards the end with a tour-de-force of rushing fugato passages.

Echoes of Stockhausen’s uncompromising modernism were present in Chris Watson’s “Coffee Table Book” in the earlier recital. Intended as the musical analogue of a pictorial volume (as opposed to the structured narrative of literary fiction), the piece was duly episodic, but retained Watson’s characteristic control of the flow of tension.

Xenia Pestova, a graduate of the Victoria University School of Music and pupil of Judith Clark, has always shown a commitment to contemporary (and New Zealand) music. With Luxembourg pianist Pascal Meyer, this seems set to continue with compositions for two pianos. Dugal McKinnon’s “Diktat, Ditty Half-Life”, with its neatly encapsulating concluding gesture, was the first of a series of miniatures for the duo. I look forward to hearing more.