Author: Jennifer Shennan

A girdle of dance about the earth – Scottish Ballet meets Royal New Zealand Ballet in Wellington

Posted on by Jennifer Shennan

 

 

Above, Soloist Katherine Minor and Principals Joshua Guillemot- Rodgerson, Kihuro Kusukami and Ana Gallardo Lobaina in Limerence

Royal New Zealand Ballet & Scottish Ballet
St.James Theatre, Wellington
14 March 2025

Scottish Ballet are visiting New Zealand primarily to perform in Auckland Arts Festival, the full-length work A Streetcar Named Desire, choreographed by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, to music by Peter Salem. (We saw Ochoa’s Requiem for a Rose here from RNZB a few seasons back and I remember liking it a lot, finding her choice of Schubert inspired).

A flying visit of Scottish Ballet to Wellington has enabled them to share with RoyalNew Zealand Ballet this short season of four works, two from each company. It’s acolourful programme of contrasts, quirky then charismatic, tight-tuned tension then riff & romp. Luckily it’s not a competition…

Scottish Ballet first visited here in 1979, when under the direction of Peter Darrell, who choreographed a number of works that gained international recognition. Touring with the company (known by variations of its title over the decades) were Margot Fonteyn, Ivan Nagy, and leading dancer ex-pat Patricia Rianne, who impressed in solo roles – Sonate à Trois, La Sylphide, La Ventana among others.(The story is remembered of an exhausted company finishing their tour in Dunedin, being piped across the tarmac by a local Scottish Pipe Band, moving the dancers to smiles and to tears. The ties that bind).

Another strong connection is that Scottish Ballet’s current artistic director, Christopher Hampson, was commissioned by RNZB’s Artistic Director Gary Harris to create two full-length works to Prokofiev scores — Romeo  & Juliet, 2003, a filmic drama in a setting that combined traditional and contemporary elements to extraordinary effect, and Cinderella, 2007, with a finely nuanced reading of character into the main roles. Both are remembered as masterworks in our Company’s repertoire.

SB’s opening work on the current programme is Schachmatt ( derived from Persian shah mat – the king is dead, Checkmate), choreographed by Cayetano Soto. The floor cloth is a giant chequer board but that image is unfortunately lost to all those sitting in the stalls. From above that may have added a shaping dimension of meaning to the swift lines, entries and exits of uniform groups in a myriad of movements, to a cluster of many pieces of music, from Michael Le Grand to Maria Teresa Lora. Jockeys’ hats were worn throughout, with cheeky wit and quirky twerks all part of the race.

RNZB followed with Shaun James Kelly’s Prismatic, a contemporary tribute to the talisman work from our company’s first decade, Prismatic Variations, co-choreographed by Russell Kerr and Poul Gnatt, with fabulous set design (then and still) by Raymond Boyce. This choreographic treatment gives opportunities to the dancers to convey enthusiasm through every move, and none of those are wasted. They are clearly inspired, as were the original dancers, by the music ( Brahms — Variations on a Theme by Haydn). Every dancer is outstanding but Kihiro Kusukami is a particular comet. Kelly takes every chance to lift the dancers clear of gravity, which in turn takes us with them. It’s an infectious joy of architectural choreography.

Limerence was seen in the recent RNZB Tutus on Tour programme. Here in the larger venue it rises to an even greater level of dramatic tension as it delves into the psychological challenge of the central character who is haunted, even undone, by memories of early or other relationships. It is moving to watch that breakdown, portrayed in a phenomenal performance by Joshua Guillemot-Rodgerson. The anxious and perplexed group of those who would help if only they knew how, is equally poignant, with committed performances by Ana Gallardo Lobaina, Katherine Minor and Kihiro Kusukami. There is a hint of hope in the final moments when Lobaina is lifted aloft to walk forward into the future’s airy shadows. We must go on. Every move meets the Schubert piano composition phrase for phrase. I could watch this work every month for the rest of my life.

The final work Dextera, by Sophie Laplane, is to 10 excerpts of different Mozart’s compositions, so the intention is not to follow where that thread leads but is instead a cryptic and comic play of male v female, power & control, fashion & fancy. It toys with the theme of a created being (Coppélia maybe) that takes on a life of its own and learns to fight back on its own terms. The red glove, no wait there’s a pair, no, wait, there’s 20 pairs, become symbol of that coercion which then wittily subverts the tired old order.

An improvised finale has all the dancers from both companies filling the stage in a party dance that assures us they’ve all had a ball. Our dancers don’t get to travel to meet other companies, so this would have been a tonic for them. Meantime a red lunar eclipse has moved across the Wellington sky, a celestial choreography if ever there was one, a very hard act to follow, but luckily it’s  not a competition…

Tutus on Tour – a “symbiosis of two arts”

Posted on by Jennifer Shennan

Tutus on Tour –
The Royal New Zealand Ballet presents Tutus On Tour 2025.
Photo credits: Stephen A’Court.


Limerence   (Anneliese Macdonald) – Above, Principal Joshua Guillemot-Rodgerson and Soloist Katherine Minor

Grand Pas Classique – chor. Gsovsky, music Auber
Limerence – Anneliese Macdonald, music Schubert piano trios
Coppelia – Saint-Léon,  music Delibes
The Way Alone – Stephen Baynes, music Tchaikovsky piano & chamber works
Royal New Zealand Ballet
Te Raukura, Kapiti
21 February 2025

If you live in Denmark and want to see ballet you go to Copenhagen, the company does not come to you. It’s the same in most countries but Tutus on Tour sees Royal New Zealand Ballet, reputedly the most ready-to-tour of all world ballet companies, taking a programme of shorter works to many smaller centres around the country. In that, they are retracing part of the original itineraries in 1950s, when the founding director Poul Gnatt took his dancers out on the highways and byways, picked up hitch-hikers, chatted with the locals, employed dancers who doubled as truck drivers, lighting riggers, wardrobe and stage hands, so they could show the country that ballet is not an esoteric art that fell out of the courts of Europe, but a loved art form that found and kept its place in the hearts of many New Zealanders. Ballet belongs here as much as anywhere — it inspires, amuses and consoles, as dancers use their exquisitely trained bodies to move to music, so that we in turn might be moved. As indeed we were.

The venue Te Raukura, in Kapiti College grounds, is in itself impressive — drama facilities for students by day, and a fine and accessible theatre by night, with a smaller box theatre in the complex named for Jon Trimmer, so it feels like family already.

Nga mihi to a refreshing new tone in the programme notes, connecting present with past, and details of the music recordings are appreciated. We sense a mindful quality emanating from the overall performance – the opposite of the old bravura and virtuosity for its own sake, that  interrupts with applause and cheers from audience as they go. Not so with Ty King-Wall I think, the company’s new artistic director who is bringing a sense of measure and proportion to the programme. In four works there is contrast of old and new, but each of them offers a mood we recognise, from celebratory to introspective to serene. The dancers are not performing at us, but dancing for us, with us.

The opening Grand Pas Classique, to music by Daniel-Francois Auber, is a pas de deux that sparkles with Parisian glamour, (and it’s a captivating image to read that Poul Gnatt might have watched this work from the wings when it was premiered in 1949 by Ballets des Champs Elysées where he was a dancer at the time).

Elegantly danced by Jemma Scott and Zacharie Dunn, their technique is clean and grows in assurance, unfolding like unwrapping a gift, and then, six minutes in, the music dies. It’s a moment of held breath for everyone. Will the curtain come down, will the plane pull up and abort the landing, who’s in charge, pilot or control tower?  The dancers dance on in the silence, like good nurses they know not to panic, they have the rhythm and tempi by heart anyway, but this is like having to drive blind, in the sudden dissection of cause and effect between dance and music. The pair arrive at a silent cadence then exit the stage, as though they were always meant to do so.  Stage Manager checks in and assures us the glitch will soon be fixed, which it is … the performance continues, and then, pull up, pull up, it all happens again. That the dancers continue to keep their calm, holding balances while masking any uncertainty, is testament to the tight team that is running this show.  It’s not when things go wrong but what you do next that counts, and of course planes will land safely in Wellington. Again the couple continues, more defiantly now, to a triumphant finish. They are in the palm of our hands and the applause lets them know that.

Limerence, a new word for me, meaning a strong attraction to someone yet with haunting thoughts of another from the past, proves the perfect title for this striking choreography by Anneliese Macdonald. To Schubert piano trios, it’s an enigmatic but compelling piece in which the magnetic central role is danced by Joshua Guillemot-Rodgerson. The woman he is with is aware of the distractions, though there’s no specific narrative that cuts into the drama of a man and his thoughts, his present and his past, memories, ghosts. “Let it go” she would say if asked, but she isn’t asked. There’s a cast of four on stage but with a layering that hints they are perhaps not all in the same place at the same time. Jackets on, jackets off — what’s public, what’s private, what’s a dream, what’s for real? The two women — Ana Gallardo Lobaina and Katherine Minor are not identical in offstage appearance, yet by some curious alchemy and inspired lighting they seem to slowly become each other as the work unfolds.  It is focused, introspective, melancholic — beyond words maybe, but with imagery that shows us what’s inside a head and heart. It’s a tight and striking little masterwork from a gifted choreographer, and one imagines it would also translate into a fine cameo film.

The Wedding pas de deux from Coppélia, to Delibes. A happy bridal couple are very well cast –  Catarina Estèvez-Collins is splendidly secure in the very considerable technical demands, and Dane Hood dances with unbounded joy. They share real rapport and invest their dance with enthusiasm and sassy style. You can believe the father of the bride spent $10,000 on the best champagne for these wedding festivities.

After the interval, a longer and larger group work –  The Way Alone, choreographed by Stephen Baynes, originally for Hong  Kong Ballet in 2008, is here developed for Royal New Zealand Ballet, and will be seen again in a further season soon.

The Way Alone – Stephen Baynes

Tchaikovsky is probably the best known composer for full length and large scale ballets in the world repertoire, but here Baynes has chosen from his lesser known choral and chamber works with sacred or spiritual connotations.  Each section segues from lyrical to meditative, and serene atmospheres. There are solo moments, as well as small and larger group passages well designed for the theme that everyone is essentially alone while still a member within a group or community.   Rose Xu moves with a beautifully serene quality, and Katherine Minor is notable for the way her torso seems to cause the sequential movement of limbs. An aura of poem or prayer emerges from this beautiful group work which meets the music throughout.

I went by myself to the performance but made new friends. You just have to point out someone’s missed the programmes available in the foyer and fetch one for them … you do that again, and again — for a couple from England who visit family each year and always time that to coincide with an RNZB season, for a local businessman who’s never been to the ballet before, for a little old lady steadying herself in the aisle afterwards  “Well that was a lyrical endpiece” I say to her – to which she replies, punching the air,  “Nah – I’m really into the contemporary work — that Limerence got to me … so layered and interesting…oo I loved it.”  I’m with you, Ma’am.

… so I made five new friends — whose names I don’t know and we’ll never meet again, but we won’t forget our night at the ballet… and they now have programmes to check details of all the music they heard – in the symbiosis of two arts.

 

 

History and Geography in Music: Pipa player Wu Man and the NZSQ

Posted on by Jennifer Shennan

Wu Man (pipa) and the New Zealand String Quartet
Music by Tan Dun, Zhao Jiping and Zhao Lin, Tabea Squire and arrangements

St. Mary of the Angels

Thursday 28 September  2017, 7:30 pm

If you didn’t hear Kim Hill on RNZ Saturday on 23 September, go and listen to the online archive now. A poignant interview with Douglas Wright, New Zealand’s most compelling dancer / choreographer, is to be found there … as humane and considered a conversation about art as practised and life as lived that you could hope to find.

Alongside it sits Hill’s interview with Wu Man, the world’s leading player of pipa, traditional Chinese lute, and the inspiration for many contemporary composers who have contributed to the revival in popularity of the instrument. The petite and spirited Wu Man  featured in Yo Yo Ma’s film and project, The Music of Strangers, and she shares with him a sense of urgency about the need for communication between peoples in different parts of the world who see music as a way, possibly the best way, to explore what is different and distinct, and what his identical and shared, among us.

An insightful spoken introduction by Luo Hui recounted the planning and managing needed for a visit such as this, which has also included a workshop and masterclass lecture. The Confucius Institute and the New Zealand School of Music have done the yards, and Kim Hill’s interview will have lit the candle to result in a capacity audience.

From the programme note by Sally Jane Norman, NZSM’s director: “In addition to her legendary musicianship, Wu Man’s commitment to cross-cultural communication resonates with the vibrant legacy established by Jack Body, central to our Asia Pacific identity”. It seemed only logical to pass to Wu Man a copy of the book Jack! celebrating composer Jack Body that Steele Roberts generously published, just before we lost our dear friend and colleague in 2015. (That ‘and’ is problematic when talking about Jack. If you were his colleague you were his friend. If you were his friend you were his colleague…perhaps ‘and’ should be ‘equals’).

The programme opened with two solos, traditional pieces for pipa, Flute and Drum Music at Sunset, exquisitely and accurately titled as the percussive effects of this instrument were shown to equal the melodic. White Snow in Spring is a Chinese echo to Le Sacre du Printemps that combined the promise of new season with wild storms demanding sacrifice. Butterfly Love, for pipa and string quartet, used the folk and opera musics from Wu Man’s hometown, Hangzhou. Such practice appealed very much to Chinese composers in 1960 – 1980, and here it was shaped into concerto form. It is by now clear from Wu Man’s playing that the pipa demands virtuosity of the highest order yet can also whisper the quietest secrets.

A movement from Chimaera for violin and pipa, was a lively and adventurous work by Wellington composer Tabea Squire. It was given a spirited introduction and then spunky performance by Monique Lapins together with Wu Man who keeps clarity within a shimmering dexterity. (I’d have been glad to see composition dates included on the otherwise excellent printed programme).

Red Lantern for Pipa and String Quartet was derived from the original score for the film Raise the Red Lantern by composer Zhao Jiping, here adapted by him and his composer-son, Zhao Lin. There were  narrative-cum-poetic moods in its five sections – Prelude moonlight, Wandering, Love, Death, Epilogue. About all there is really.

The second half of the concert opened with the string quartet Eight Colours by Tan Dun, from 1986, which he describes as “almost like a set of brush paintings … with timbre and actual string techniques developed from the Peking Opera… finding in it a way to mingle old materials from my culture with the new …”.

The final work, Concerto for String Quartet and Pipa, again  by Tan Dun,  makes demands of many sorts –  percussive, lyrical, and vocal – of the performers and they rise to and relish that fully. A great deal of rhythmic movement and expressive gesture is delivered so you might say that these musicians are dancing… but they are now seasoned performers sharing the stage with Royal New Zealand ballet dancers, so why not?

In the restored and beautiful St. Mary of the Angels church, the capacity audience gave a standing ovation for a programme of exquisite music from long ago, far away, as well as right now, right here. Radio New Zealand was recording, bless them. Tell me I’m breathless and using too many superlatives. Who cares? It’s the truth.

As I wrote this review Kim Hill was interviewing an inspirational school teacher (I think he later became Dean of Arts at University of Auckland) but basically History and Geography were his classroom subjects.  He’d have loved this concert because those subjects were effectively its theme.

Two pianists: rapport, stamina, poetry at NZSM Adam Concert Room

Posted on by Jennifer Shennan

Lunchtime recital, piano four hands – Jian Liu and Hamish Robb

Te Koki: New Zealand School of Music, in Adam Concert Room at Victoria University

Friday 22 September 2017, lunchtime

Lucky we were to attend this lunchtime concert at New Zealand School of Music. It was luminous in several respects.

Firstly the choice of programme – three works, by Schubert, Hindemith and Debussy.

… with pithy and pertinent verbal introductions by Hamish Robb before each piece. Not every musician has this gift of communication, to wear his learning lightly in talking about composition in a way that makes audience feel drawn in to the work, as active participants in its performance. Two pianists, four hands, many ears.

These two men play with such rapport, stamina, clarity and poetry that we are taken on a journey out and about, round and back to ourselves… then left simply to roar our gratitude. How else can an audience communicate a transcendent experience? Actually there were plenty of smiling and talking audience members lingering for ages afterwards to confirm that it was indeed a shared experience, and that I am not making this up.

Schubert’s  Fantasie in f minor, D940 opens with an allegro molto moderato of clear strength in half the world, with a wistful motif that will return to haunt us.  The largo is next, bringing a gentle sadness … the other half of the world. Well, there is life and there is death, and stuff in between, this we all know. The scherzo, action-station, journeys out to do what has to be done. The finale confirms that although these movements are distinct in contrasting moods, and were set in 1828,  they are also tightly bound together so that the nigh-20 minute composition plays out as one, today. It seemed a kind of testament, albeit almost 200 years later, to what’s still out there. ( I had spent two days and nights of agonized waiting for news of family in Mexico. This music was a dreamed report from the field).

Then the Hindemith Sonata for four hands. What is consonant, what is dissonant? It’s Germany 1938.  I had really only known Hindemith as composer of Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadisches Ballett, and that remains a striking piece  of 20th century dance history if ever there was one… oh, and the memory that our daughter who as a college student had played the Eight Pieces for flute in an exam – scoring honours for that (but failing in the Scales section as she didn’t realize — read, couldn’t believe — that you also had to play scales). I remember a crispness, an unpredictability, a weightlessness to that music.  Something distilled.

Debussy’s Petite Suite – in four movements that again scope the options of the ways we are in the world. En bateau – no-one composes the sea like Debussy. Cortège, a progressing, then Menuet : moderato. I’ve never known a menuet like it … calm and courteous, as any menuet would be, a friendship between two people … then whacko, a post-modern middle bit that goes awol, cats are dancing, this ain’t no menuet any more, lawks however will this end? Eventually they move back to the danse-a-deux, and safely home from a risky encounter. Then to the final movement, Ballet : Allegro giusto – and what a waltz, the world whirling in triple time, heartbeat rhythm, so it’s “yes to everything” though nothing mindless in saying / playing that.

I was aware that Debussy  knew a great deal about dance, and intuited even more …   (Nijinksy knew that too, so his Après Midi d’un Faune , to Debussy, remains one of the finest entwinings of the two-arts-into-one that we have, and the only surviving work of that output of choreographic genius we have let slip away, to our eternal loss).

This was a free lunch-time concert, all praise to Te Koki – New Zealand School of Music. Furthermore it was demonstration of civilized co-operation between two gun pianists who, in other times and places, might behave as rival colleagues — here instead they share a keyboard. Politicians should have been there.

The day before, I had attended, because a grandmother would, a school concert to hear a granddaughter play her small cello in the little orchestra. Afterwards the Principal of the school spoke to performers and audience alike, reminding us that the two things that matter most in the world are Music and Family – ( then he added Dance, since a row of keen kids had performed the cancan to one of their schoolmates’ items. Phew, that was lucky, I thought). All told and on balance, I had a very good week.

It is such an infectious affair to hear musicians performing so absolutely at the top of their game, and communicating their own immense pleasure in doing so.  It transfers to a mood of hope that people can help people, that elections within a democracy can work, more or less, that there are worthwhile things to say to children, and that daylight saving means there’s not one hour to waste in whatever we consider important. Do it.

The recital could well be repeated but by the time this review is published both pianists will have played half a dozen more programmes — they were at The Third Eye that same night …  soon leaving for China … allegro ma non troppo,  vivace, con brio. Godspeed. Safe travel. Happy returns. And I am grateful that there’s a website to whom I can offer a retrospective review.

Inspirare vocal ensemble carves unique niche with music of very contemporary resonance: a full house for peace

Posted on by Jennifer Shennan

Symmetry – Conflict and Resolution

Inspirare choir, with Wellington College Chorale.   Director, Mark Stamper

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 13 August 2017, 6:30 pm

On the programme cover for this unusual concert, there’s an image of a white dove struggling to take off in flight, in search of peace. It’s not soaring yet, still having trouble with its wings, in a telling metaphor for the concert’s theme of conflict & resolution, war & peace.  A commentary, delivered by David Morriss,  links each of the 17 songs to aspects of the endless cycle in history of recurring conflicts leading to inevitable wars. His reference to the insanely dangerous sabre-rattling between leaders of USA and North Korea presented daily to us, sharpened that theme. Would that the politicians in question had been at the concert.

Some of the city’s finest singers are in this choir – smallish in number (27 singers) but strong in voice, all with an obvious commitment to the vision of its director, Mark Stamper. It has been his practice to invite ensembles of young musicians with whom  he also works, to join Inspirare in concert – this time, it was Wellington College Chorale, and there are also guest accompanists, aside from the principal accompanist, Rachel Thomson.

It is a considerable achievement to assemble a range of songs from quite disparate sources and to sequence them so they belong together. Some songs we know well, others not at all – That which remains, by Andrea Ramsay to a text by Helen Keller;  Yo le Canto, by David Brunner, with flamenco-like clapping rhythms delivered with admirable skill by the Wellington College Chorale.

Elgar’s Lux Aeterna was soaring and soft by turns; Soldier Boy, set by John Milne to the poem by Siegfried Sassoon, featured a poignant solo by Richard Taylor. A haunting setting by Mark Hayes of Danny Boy had a soft swell of flute accompaniment by Rebecca Steel; the spirited Invocation and Dance used lively percussion from Jacob Randall and James Fuller.  Homeland, after Holst, arranged by Randall Stroope, featured trumpet evocatively played by Michael Taylor from the choir loft, and carried some stunning vocal cadences, as also did the following For the Fallen by Mike Stammes.

Across the Bridge of Hope, by Jan Sandström, had an exquisite solo sung by Rowena Simpson, highlighting the grief for a 12 year old boy killed in the Armagh bombing. ”Orange and green does not matter now…”   Indeed. Don’t even think about the songs we’ll be singing if nuclear war ever erupts. None I should think.

All Works of Love set a poem by Mother Teresa; a Quaker prayer became The Tree of Peace – with flute and trumpet, brother and sister, whispering and listening.  The final song, We shall Walk through the Valley in Peace, ended a sensitively crafted concert from a choir that produces beautiful sounds within an impressive dynamic range.  It is carving a unique niche for itself in Wellington. The full audience was clearly engaged, and will no doubt be looking to the next concert by Inspirare, on 5 November, The Cycle of Life, with guests BlueNotes from Tawa College.

 

 

Kindred Spirits indeed – Nota Bene and Guests at Sacred Heart Cathedral

Posted on by Jennifer Shennan

Kindred Spirits: Nota Bene Chamber Choir and guests
Peter Walls (conductor)

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Sunday 7 May, 2017

The choral concert, ‘Kindred Spirits’, by Nota Bene Chamber Choir and guests, was a luminous and lovely affair. The themed programme juxtaposed compositions of Benjamin Britten and Jack Body, offering more substance than a ‘regular’ concert might, the sum more than its parts. The acoustic in this light-filled space is clear and clean, and enterprising use was made of different areas in the church. Good sightlines make it a most attractive and comfortable concert venue and the capacity audience could tell they were in for a good time.

Peter Walls in an interview with Eva Radich on Upbeat (worth listening to on RNZ archive) gave background to his idea that these two composers could indeed be seen as kindred spirits, sharing musical sensibilities, as well as similar concerns … including pacifism, an appreciation of the music in other cultures especially Indonesia, and an empathy for those struggling in different times and places for their society’s acceptance of homosexuality.

The opening work, a traditional Macapat sung by Budi Putra, director of the Gamelan Padhang Moncar of VUW, was delivered in the rich and astonishingly resonant voice that Putra has long been recognized for. The violin of Tristan Carter danced a bridge between music worlds.

Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin, with its ascetic clarity, was followed by Body’s Carol to St.Stephen. The voice of the itinerant soprano seems to arrive through stained glass windows around the church, and Jeltsje Keizer delivered that beautifully. (Some of us remember Marilyn Waring in the premiere of this work 1976, in St. Peters Church in Willis St. There is much in Wellington’s music history to hold dear).

Lesley Graham sang ‘S’un casto amor, s’una pieta superna’ an excerpt from Body’s Love Sonnets of Michelangelo ( from the 1976 season Between Two Fires, choreographed by Michael Parmenter, another work that has remained etched in the memory). This was followed by Britten’s setting of the same poetic text. Both composers had also written a Hymn to St. Cecilia – and in the Body work, Daisy Venables, newcomer to the choir, revealed a voice of heavenly quality.

During the interval many expressed regret at the absence of recording microphones from such an engaging concert which could surely have been broadcast to an appreciative national audience? Lucky we were to be there in person.

Wellington Young Voices, over 30 young singers directed by Christine Argyle (founding director of Nota Bene) sang Britten’s Psalm 150 with spirited and sweet sounds, and later This little babe from his A Ceremony of Carols. This choir is brimming with talent and enthusiasm to give us much to look forward to.

Gamelan Padhang Moncar played Jack Body’s So Short the life – a lively, lovely, poignant piece, being played close to the second anniversary of the death of this much loved composer. ‘Vita brevis’ indeed, but ‘ars longa’. The gamelan instruments produce familiar sounds yet are played without the intensity of interlocking patterns of the traditional gamelan music we are accustomed to hearing – as though voices from the past join the players, and a microphone involved as a musical instrument helps carry the sound towards the future. A remarkable composition.

Finally Jack Body’s People Look East, based on the ecstatic poem and melody by Eleanor Farjeon, sent out a joyful clarion that made fitting finale to an inspired and inspiring concert.

Peter Walls had had a good idea, followed it through, and all the performers did the occasion proud. The chance we had to contemplate echoes, contrasts and parallels in works from two stunning composers is one that will not easily be forgotten.