Author: Lindis Taylor

Unusual but timely concert by Supertonic, dynamic mixture of the musical, the political, the sexual

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Supertonic conducted by Isaac Stone

‘Shakespeare’s Sister: celebrating the music of women who created art in the shadows of men’
Music by Hildegard, Clara Schumann, Alma Mahler, Fanny Mendelssohn, Amy Beach, Francesca Caccini and Lili Boulanger, and two New Zealanders: Dorothy Buchanan and Rosa Elliott (who, at age 20, was the ‘featured composer’)

Pipitea Marae, Thorndon Quay

Sunday 20 May 6:30 pm

Middle C has reviewed two previous concerts by Supertonic (both by Rosemary Collier), in 2015, and she was impressed (where have we been in the meantime?). They were in different venues, the Sacred Heart Cathedral and the New Zealand Portrait Gallery. This time they gave me my first experience in the Pipitea Marae, which I’m ashamed to confess I’d never been in; a building of normal construction, with impressive Maori mural and ceiling decoration.

The concert was very well organised, with enough people at the door to take tickets and give seat numbers and generally manage. The seating on either side of a centre aisle was turned to face inwards by about 15 degrees. A congenial feeling.

One of the first impressions as the music began, was the splendid acoustics of the large whare, allowing distinct parts of the choir on the one hand and the choir singing homogeneously on the other to be heard as a finely balanced ensemble. Enhanced I imagine by the high vaulted ceiling and walls which were probably plastered and so a bit more absorbent than concrete, stone or timber.

The singers were ranged in four rows at increasing heights; the piano to the left and to the rear left, the ‘Concert host’, Clarissa Dunn, and a microphone. After the choir had entered, a chant arose at the back and the nine women’s voices came slowly to the front singing Hildegard von Bingen’s ‘Quem ergo femina’. The fine ensemble augured well.

This is the moment to remark admiringly on the paper-work. A nicely printed programme on glossy paper, with a woman in profile who has just released a bird – a swallow, a symbol? Inside, notes on the choir, on host Clarissa Dunn and the ‘featured artist’, the 20-year-old Canterbury University student composer, Rosa Elliott. All the composers’ names and the titles of the pieces were listed and on a separate page, original words and translations of all the songs in foreign languages.

There was a distinct air of professionalism about the entire presentation, not least the evidence of excellent, thorough rehearsal by Isaac Stone, a gifted young conductor who has a very impressive and interesting record both as musician and leader in musical and social areas, especially in the Maori sphere.

One thing we could probably not reasonably expect was to encounter music that we knew – though I speak only for myself.

Clarissa Dunn’s introduction
An unexpected element, but one that was illuminating was Clarissa’s quoting an essay by Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, on the importance of a space for creative work; it related to Dorothy Buchanan’s cycle. The essay presents an “argument for both a literal and figurative space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by men” in the words of Wikipedia.

One hears often about the importance of having a private place in which to compose. Some such composing sanctuaries are famous, like Mahler’s two lake-side hideaways, at Steinberg-am-Attersee and Maianigg on the Wörthersee in Carinthia, or Ravel’s house in the country, Le Belvédère, at Montfort-l’Amaury. The same applies to women but it is harder for them to find such space.

Clara Schumann’s composing was not forbidden but after Robert died she composed no more and devoted herself to performance and the promotion of Robert’s music. The choir sang Drei gemischte Chöre (3 mixed choruses). They were sung with flawless ensemble, purity of tone and clarity of diction.

American composer Amy Beach’s music is heard more these days than a few years ago. She was, like Clara Schumann, both composer and pianist and her husband wanted her to concentrate on composing rather than performance. Again, the a cappella Three Choral Responses were accomplished works if not particularly original, showing little sign of absorbing composition trends of around the turn of the century.

Alma, Lili and Francesca
Then three singers from the choir sang songs by Alma Mahler, Lilli Boulanger and Francesca Caccini. Samantha Kelley sang the first, Die stille Stadt, with a very agreeable voice, and pianist Matthew Oliver, who was occasionally hesitant.

Lili Boulanger was the first woman to win the Prix de Rome at the Paris Conservatoire and though no barriers were put across her musical career, she died aged 24, 100 years ago. (She is one of this year’s important anniversaries; the others: Debussy’s death 100 years ago, Bernstein’s birth 100 years ago, Gounod’s birth 200 years ago, Rossini’s death 150 years ago*). Reflets, set to a poem of Maurice Maeterlinck, sounded an altogether more inspired composition, with an interesting, even adventurous piano accompaniment; Natalie Williams’s voice was well attuned to the music if occasionally insecure.

A duet from three centuries earlier, Aure Volanti by Francesca Caccini was sung by sopranos Natalie Moreno and Sophie Youngs; there were clear marks here of a fine composer, whose father was also a leading composer who composed one of the first operas in 1602. Women composers were not all that rare at the time; slightly later, Barbara Strozzi was famous and she has re-emerged. This performance handled the weaving voices and Isaac Stone’s piano accompaniment in a charming, authentic manner.

Fanny, Felix’s sister
Felix Mendelssohn’s sister Fanny (Hensel her married name) was also a gifted pianist and composer, whose musical inclinations and gifts were rather discouraged by Felix. Her settings of three of Eichendorff’s poems, Gartenlieder, appealed to me as much as anything in the concert; the writing was fluent and there was plenty of melodic charm and character, far from clichéd. I enjoyed the varied expressive qualities that were well conveyed in the choral performance.

The next group of pieces by Dorothy Buchanan was a curious composition: for flute (Liz Langam) and wordless women’s voices, a small cycle called Five Vignettes of Women. They were marked, Virginia (Woolf), Olivia (Spencer-Bower), Robin (Hyde), Fanny Buss and Katherine (Mansfield). The Virginia Woolf song was the link with the introductory reference to Woolf’s essay, A Room of One’s Own. The set was interestingly varied in style and mood and the different instruments produced some novel impressions. The whole struck me as very engaging work, admittedly with a not very important vocal element, but enough to justify its inclusion here.

Rosa Elliott’s Songs for Sisters
Featured artist was 20-year-old composer Rosa Elliott who set three of great 19th century novelist George Eliot’s (real name Mary Ann Evans) poems: Songs for Sisters.

Conductor Isaac Stone is quoted in a SOUNZ website saying that he fastened on her to compose for the choir because of her “incredible way with haunting melodies, matched perfectly with choral colours”. They involved violinist Vivian Stephens, pianist Matthew Oliver and Samantha Kelley using castanets. The first song, O Bird, coloured with hushed breathing, employed an undefined bird-call that later imitated a vocal motif from the choir. I lost track of the breaks between the three songs; however, the unusual combination of vocal effects, occasional distinct words, the melodic attractiveness, Stephens’ excellent violin contribution offered lively variety. The castanets marked the Spanish character of the third song, Ojala, in which the choir could be detected chanting the name. By the end I was won over by the unusual character of this trio of songs, their confident, surprisingly grounded feeling. I think they have a life.

The concert ended with a, for me, puzzling, enigmatic song: Quiet by (I suppose) a young woman called Milck. I confess to looking it up on Google. It’s a song protesting sexual violence in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandals, frankly bluesy in style, but more importantly, arresting in both its music and its message. She writes that it is part of “a massive movement of women and survivors speaking out against sexual assault, I find myself in awe and moved to my core”.  I caught words of intimate advice to vulnerable girls; it was, I guess, a timely insertion for the choir whose purpose here was to dramatise efforts to empower women and demand changed behaviour on the part of men, and sexual exploitation is as evil as depriving women of the wherewithall to create music.

An interesting and poignant way to end the concert which had virtues and strengths at many levels, social and musical.

*Composer Anniversaries
This sort of thing interests me. I was half aware of several other composers who were born or died in these or similar years. There’s Arrigo Boito (Verdi’s librettist for Otello and Falstaff and also the composer of Mephistophele), and Hubert Parry both of whom died in 1918. Then I came upon a contribution to the topic from a kindred spirit who writes a column in the French Opéra Magazine, Renaud Machart. He wrote about Lili Boulanger, naturally, and he also noted the successor and in some ways Offenbach’s rival in the post Franco-Prussian war period (1870 – 1880): Charles Lecocq (1832-1918). His best known pieces were La fille de Madame Angot and Le petit Duc. And very tongue-in-cheek, Machart  also pointed to one Procida Bucalossi (1832-1918), a British/Italian composer of light music; with that background, he naturally wrote a successful operetta for London in neither language, entitled Les Manteaux Noirs (The Black Cloaks).

Looking back to 1868, as well as Rossini’s death, Swedish composer Berwald died. And François Couperin was born in 1768, 250 years ago.

Admirable, stimulating programme of piano trios from Te Koki Trio

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Te Koki Trio: Martin Riseley (violin), Inbal Megiddo (cello), Jian Liu (piano) – senior lecturers in Victoria University School of Music
(Wellington Chamber Music)

Brahms: Piano Trio in C minor Op. 101
Avner Dorman: Piano Trio No. 2
Shostakovich: Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 67

St. Andrews on The Terrace

Sunday 20 May 3 pm

Gale-force winds outside might have been an appropriate accompaniment to Shostakovich’s frightful war-time masterpiece. But it was not necessarily a fitting way to characterise Brahms’s third piano trio. In spite of the remarks in the programme notes (in general, illuminating), and even though it’s in a minor key, I have never found the opening pages devoid of melody, or revealing an ‘unsettled nature’; though later movements might be so characterised.

However, Jian Liu’s reading of the opening chords might for a moment have supported the sense of the programme note. His first chords were so heavy that they dominated the violin and cello and I rather wished the lid had been down, as well perhaps as having the piano on a carpet. But the music soon shifts to the much more sustained, warm and heart-felt second subject that in fact seemed to characterise most of the movement, in spite of momentary returns of the more emphatic first theme. The imbalance between piano and strings didn’t recur.

The notes might have somewhat exaggerated the restless and haunted nature of the second movement which is considered the Scherzo, though not marked so. The minor key colours the entire work and even this ‘scherzo’ movement hardly produces a feeling of ecstasy or contentment. Much of it is staccato in character, permitting neither buoyancy nor delight. The singular feature of the work as a whole is the shortness of each movement – the second movement lasts only about four minutes. And the first was only about twice as long.

The Brahms we’ve waited for arrives in the third movement, and here Martin Riseley’s violin and Inbal Megiddo’s cello play alone for half a minute and they do so again after the piano had a brief contribution. The movement seemed all too short, as I couldn’t help feeling that the players longed for its prolonging and I even wondered whether there was actually a repeat that they were ignoring. There is not of course. Here was the quintessential Brahms writing the most expressive and alluring music, and the programme note’s ‘unsettled material’ and ‘irregular phrases’ were not very audible to me.

Even though the last movement remains in the minor key and there’s a seriousness of mind which the players showed their full awareness of, there’s no lack of melody, even if the tunes are sometimes stretched over a wide range, and the occasional staccato irruptions hardly encouraged the listener to drift into a feeling of contentment. The gentle rising and falling theme which becomes the heart of the movement was all too short.

Avner Dorman
The novelty of the concert was a 2002 trio by Jewish-American composer Avner Dorman. When I looked at YouTube, I was surprised to find scores of performances of a great variety of music by Dorman, though none of this piano trio. He has clearly attracted a large following for music that is distinctive and genuinely imaginative. His music seems often to begin in a comfortable, familiar manner, sometimes, like the present trio, with the utmost simplicity. It began with a simple four-note chorale-like motif, repeated in subtly changing ways, creating at least the impression of each instrument playing distinct phrases in different keys, while one became aware of the original motif continuing repetitiously below the evolving sounds above.

Dissonances slowly became more and more arresting and complex, curiously, not in a way that aroused frustration or irritation. Perhaps no dissonance can today really sound barbarous or outrageous because profligate use of it has diminished its impact, its capacity to offend. Just as swearing in public, on television and film no longer has the power to shock though I suppose there are still some who find it offensive just as some still find gross dissonance offensive. To me these passages were simply counterpoints or foils to the more conventional. The players gave every sign of commitment, persuaded that here was music that had something to say, music that was not imitative but which did not seek to be ‘original’ just to win academic brownie-points.

These situations are always interesting as some in the audience reacted with at least a little reserve, even disapproval. The second movement was faster, no less free with unorthodox harmony and darting, reckless rhythms. Sudden passages of meditative music, violin and cello bowing their way in adagio sequences; then rushing torrents, from high to low registers. One always searches for influences and these were hard to perceive; perhaps certain hints of Vasks or Pelecis came to mind, absurdly perhaps.

Shostakovich’s Piano Trio Op 67
Few pieces of chamber music in the 20th century pack the punch that Shostakovich’s 1944 piano trio does (unless it’s his Eighth String Quartet). I first came to know it through performances by the Turnovsky Trio (Sam Konise, Christopher Kane and Eugene Albulescu) in the 90s. The famous opening, starting with uncanny, false (or artificial) harmonics by using (with the cello) the thumb to shorten the length of sounding string, presaged an extraordinarily sensitive and expressive performance. One could dwell on the range of ‘effects’ employed by the piece, but it is better to consider the plain emotional impact of the music – a matter that should always come before academic consideration of the means by which it’s achieved.

Traditional descriptive musical language, Allegro con brio, hardly captures the real nature of the music, any more than the neutral moderato and poco piu mosso does of the first movement. Its brio isn’t altogether a mistake, but there’s a manic quality here, and with all the bite and energy these players adopt makes you sit bolt upright. It’s the third movement in which Shostakovich expresses the grief that war has plunged his country into, a sustained threnody which fades with dying piano notes to the piano’s grief-stricken staccato start of the last movement.

Though written presumably after the Siege of Leningrad had been lifted (January 1944; the composer had been evacuated from the city in October 1941) this movement remains one of the most graphic, emotional descriptions of war imaginable. And the playing varied from despairing to terrifying, to repetitive, violent passages interspersed with sudden pauses to reflect and regain one’s balance and equilibrium.

I found the whole programme, the choice of works and their committed and accomplished performance by these three senior lecturers in the School of Music totally engrossing. As I seem to say often, it deserved a far bigger audience; a few short years ago these concerts in the Ilott Theatre in the “How long must we wait?’ Town Hall used to attract a couple of hundred people, even in blizzard conditions.

 

Diverting Debussy-inspired trio charm a responsive audience at Lower Hutt

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Toru Trio: Karen Batten (flute), Sophia Acheson (viola), Ingrid Bauer (harp)
(Chamber Music Hutt Valley)

Debussy: Sonate pour flûte, alto et harpe (1915)
Bax: Fantasy Sonata (viola and harp, 1927)
Tabea Squire: Impressions (2018)
Wendelin Bitzan: Zoologischer Garten for flute and viola (2011)
William Mathias: Zodiac Trio (1976)

Lower Hut Little Theatre

Wednesday 16 May, 7:30 pm

Te reo Maori for the numeral 3 is toru; thus ‘Toru Trio’ is a redundancy. This instrumental trio comprises harp, viola and flute, modelled on Debussy’s war-time piece; all are players in Orchestra Wellington. All the pieces were composed in the last 100 years (though the Debussy himself was a couple of years outside that frame).

Their arrival on stage made a striking impression: Karen Batten in a dramatic gold dress, Ingrid Bauer a dress of more coppery gold, and Sophia Acheson wore a near luminous, black dress. And while the Little Theatre is an intimate space with a dry acoustic that leaves performances quite exposed, a distinct compensation is the players closeness. That means the audience could be diverted by three attractive, personable and versatile musicians who use their instruments to produce often unfamiliar sounds and visual experiences; in particular, the harpist’s manipulations of hands and feet on her formidable instrument were always intriguing.

Three of the five pieces engaged all three players while the Bax and Bitzen were scored for only two of them. The way the cards fell resulted in the omnipresence of Sophia Acheson’s viola in all five works.

The concert presented several unusual aspects: the uncommon instrumental combination, that only one piece was by a composer whose name would have been familiar to all the audience, that the trio had invited a young New Zealand composer to compose a piece for them, and that they were in the middle of a Chamber Music New Zealand tour to eight smaller towns and cities from Warkworth via Gisborne, Motueka, etc to Gore in the south.

Debussy creates a new musical form
Debussy started it all. At the beginning of the First World War, Debussy decided to write six sonatas, for different combinations of instruments referencing eighteenth century French musical traditions. Just as Ravel had done with his Tombeau de Couperin, Debussy wanted to make a patriotic French gesture in support of French soldiers facing the horrors of the war. He wrote only three of the six – for cello and piano, this one, and one for violin and piano: he died too soon. The other three were planned: Debussy had written in the manuscript of his violin sonata that the fourth sonata should be written for oboe, horn and harpsichord, the fifth for trumpet, clarinet, bassoon and piano, and the sixth for all the preceding instrument plus others.

For the sixth and final sonata, Debussy envisaged: “a concerto where the sonorites of the ‘various instruments’ combine, with the gracious assistance of the double bass”, making the instrumentation: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, harp, piano, harpsichord, violin, viola, cello, double bass; it would have been a masterpiece. Debussy’s three non-existent works would, like this trio, have inspired scores of works for those new combinations.

In some ways it’s a risky business to combine three such disparate instruments, and to play in such an exposed acoustic as the Lower Hutt Little Theatre, poses an even greater challenge; it’s one thing to be able to hear with such clarity the distinct sounds of each instrument, but it’s something else to deal with the challenge of achieving real blending; and that might be a minor criticism of their playing. Debussy makes a feature of their utterly different sounds by asking each player to introduce her part in its characteristic way, exploiting quite interestingly the differences in compass and tone.

It creates striking effects, viola and flute pursuing very different ranges; early on the harp plays very high while the viola plays repeatedly a very low note. The sonorities are most curious at times; we are not very used, for example, to the viola playing alone over such long passages. The programme note usefully described each theme and their instrumental treatment, and drew attention to their repetition in a different order.

The minuet second movement, primarily in triple, minuet time imperceptibly changes to common time, at times misleading the listener, while the Finale returns to 4/4, and employ the harp at the start in a low register, rather murmuring. For the most part the playing was so sensitive and each player clearly paid such attention to what others were doing that the music began to sound inevitable. While I am familiar enough with it, I remember many years ago finding it elusive and tonally rather disparate. It’s one of those pieces – many of Debussy’s are – that slowly, deeply takes root, more in the instinctive mind than the intellect.

A Bax Fantasy
The Bax piece, for viola and harp, called a Fantasy Sonata, which had become a fashion after English musicologist and a notable compiler of a great encyclopaedia of chamber music, W W Cobbett (it’s near my desk), established a competition that seeking to revive the 16th century English musical form. Numbers of works were produced (Armstrong Gibbs, Bridge, Howells, Ireland, Britten).

Bax’s was perhaps more straight-forward melodically than Debussy’s trio; I didn’t know it, but it’s an attractive piece, and presenting less of an instrumental challenge. And again the players revealed a happy rapport handling dynamics sympathetically, idiomatically.

Tabea Squire is a young Wellington composer whose composing gifts have led to several commissions. This piece, for all three instruments, was not on a large scale and the task was to simulate sounds in nature: the contrasting colours of the kowhai, the image of children dancing in the rain, and a fantail fluttering among trees in the sunlight. While this kind of inspiration for music generally usually doesn’t seem very fruitful (to me); in fact I think it’s more likely to succeed as music without visual or literary or some intellectual construct. Its variety and the handling of parts for each instrument, individually or in ensemble, and the evidence of plain musical invention are enough.

Flute and viola then played a piece by a young (at my age, ‘young’ seems to refer more and more to anyone under 40) German composer, Wendelin Bitzan. This time, zoo animals in curious situations, but stimulating the composer to devise often amusing sonic imagery. Occasionally, the sounds were evocative enough, not to create pictures of the creatures named, but to be engaging nevertheless; moments that were amusing, even bizarre, both in concept and actualisation.

Astrology in music
Then a third piece that had an extra-musical origin: William Mathias’s Zodiac Trio which again presented a scenario that seemed to demand a lot from the imagination, if one sought useful characterisations from Mathias’s impressions of that nature of Pisces, Aries and Taurus. One of the players (I think, violist Sophia Acheson) claimed a Zodiac association with one of the three signs employed by Mathias; I can claim none, so I was able to listen without prejudice to the musical interpretations of these forces.

These three pieces might have been obscure astrologically, but as I wrote above, that was irrelevant; they were attractive musical creations, sometimes beguiling, occasionally droll and often musically inventive. Taurus did indeed suggest the force, energy and danger of a loose bull, as there were moments where these very disparate instruments truly came together in an integrated way.

Debussy’s trio has given rise to an impressive body of musical descendants and to as many threesomes devoted to their performance (look in Wikipedia). There is a rich and every-so-often very rewarding field for Toru to cultivate.

Given that this Hutt Valley concert was Toru’s only appearance in the Wellington region in the course of an eight-concert tour, its excellence deserved a bigger audience.

Spectacular centenary concert for Leonard Bernstein from the NZSO

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Brett Mitchell with Morgan James – vocalist
Bernstein at 100

Three Dance Episodes from On the Town and two songs
Peter Pan: ‘Dream with me’,
On the Waterfront: symphonic suite
Candide Overture and ‘It must be so’, and ‘Glitter and be gay’
West Side Story: The Balcony Scene (‘Tonight’) and Symphonic Dances

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 11 May 2018, 6:30 pm

Faced with an auditorium less than half full for a concert to celebrate a hundred years of one of the most famous (I carefully refrain from using ‘greatest’) composers and conductors of the 20th century, raised interesting thoughts. One was that I had expected about this sized audience; that, before I’d seen the NZSO offer of big ticket discounts.

I’ve no doubt that everyone interested in classical music and broadly defined popular music recognises the name Bernstein, and would agree that he was a famous and important figure. Name his best known music! Well, of course West Side Story, and, mmm… and some might add Candide, the two Broadway musicals and the ballet Fancy Free, and a few would have heard Chichester Psalms (Orpheus Choir about a year ago), or Mass, and there are three symphonies, aren’t there??? Who’s heard them? And the attentive might recall Orchestra Wellington playing a couple of pieces in 2013 (the Serenade after Plato’s Symposium and Fancy Free), and a brave concert performance in 2012 of Candide from Orchestra Wellington and the Orpheus Choir.

But he doesn’t conform easily to the usual characterisation of a classical composer. Where are the piano sonatas, the other operas, the chamber or choral music? And for that matter, why aren’t his Broadway musicals or his orchestral music, other than what was on this evening’s programme, familiar?

The Symphonic Dances from West Side Story hasn’t been absent from the Wellington concert halls. The NZSO under Miguel Harth-Bedoya played them in October 2012.

On the Town
The pieces from the Broadway musical On the Town of 1944 (a search in the Middle C archive shows the dance episodes were performed by the then ‘Vector Wellington Orchestra’ in July 2009) comprised the three dance episodes and two songs. They opened the concert and brought soprano Morgan James to the stage to sing ‘I can cook too’ and ‘Some other Time’. American conductor Brett Mitchell who I’d heard in a lively, Broadway-style interview on Upbeat at midday, entered and immediately launched into a startling performance of Dance of the Great Lover, the first of the three dances from On the Town which rather astonished me for the super-raunchy, trumpet-attacks from nowhere, then throaty trombones, cutting clarinets (two guest clarinets, David McGregor and John Robinson, in the lead positions I noticed). There was nothing symphonically genteel about it and Mitchell exclaimed at its end, “the NZSO can swing!” I have sometimes dismissed remarks from conductors tackling this genre of American music, that the orchestra has a great feeling for its brazen energy, the rhythms and attack, as if the entire band had served its musical apprenticeship on Broadway. Here such praise seemed totally justified.

Then Morgan James arrived, in the first of four different costumes, each capturing the spirit of the songs she sang. She sang two from On the Town: ‘I can cook too’ and ’Some Other Time’. Of course, she was amplified (I doubt that the 1944 performances were? – miked voices on Broadway only became common in the 1950s. She is a Juilliard graduate and had of course learned how to enrich and project her voice properly. Though she has clearly learned how to use the microphone to advantage, why not let us hear the excellent, unmanipulated voice? Why all the pains to reproduce what Bernstein actually wrote in his score for the orchestra but falsify the voice?).

James’s vocal colours and command of dynamic variety were indeed spectacular and the combination of authentic orchestral sound and a voice that has roots deep in the worlds of Broadway, jazz, most areas of popular music, as well as the traditions and techniques of classical music, was both arresting and flashy. The contrast between her two songs was vivid: the self-confident attack of the Broadway ‘belting’ style of her first song, and her ‘Some Other Time’ that expressed a casual acceptance of the impermanence of a fleeting, shallow romance. And her tour de force, ‘Glitter and be gay’ from Candide, was her parting number; though it was touchingly followed by her encore: ‘There’s a place for us’ from West Side Story.

Likewise, the orchestra created entirely different moods with the other two dances from On the Town: muted trumpets, more prominent oboes and cor anglais, alto saxophone and a great variety of highly polished percussion.

On the Waterfront
The much-played symphonic suite from On the Waterfront employed most of the same characteristics as On the Town with occasional striking solos – from principal horn, from timpani, from tom toms, vibraphone and xylophone, and frequent opulent chorale-like passages from trombones and tuba. Again, there were all the hallmarks of a fine classical composer, a brilliant orchestrator, and above all an orchestra and conductor with all the swing and swagger of popular Broadway.

The overture to Candide has become one of Bernstein’s best known pieces, a compounding of Offenbach and the Chabrier of L’étoile, not to mention Broadway itself. And rather unlike the low-powered performance of Berlioz’s Carnaval romain overture the next evening, the utterly quintessential comedy overture.

Between ‘It must be so’ from Candide and ‘Tonight’ from West Side Story Morgan James spoke interestingly about her musical values, and ended with an almost disembodied top last note.

West Side Story
The Symphonic Dances from West Side Story is a more standard concert work that captures the vitality, violence, anger and occasional calm lyricism (‘Somewhere’ and the Finale) of the score and the orchestra’s playing exhibited all those characteristics with tremendous energy and unflagging precision. Finger-clicking, a shrill whistle… Nowhere more vividly than in the riotous ‘Mambo’ where the only missing element was the dancers.  And then the calm after the long, grieving flute solo brought the suite to a lovely conclusion.

The clamorous applause belied the impression of a small audience.

Behn String Quartet opens Wellington Chamber Music’s 2018 season – brilliantly

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Behn Quartet
Kate Oswin (Christchurch-born, violin), Alicia Berendse (violin, Netherlands), Lydia Abell (viola, Wales), Ghislaine McMullin (cello, England)
(Wellington Chamber Music)

Debussy: String Quartet in G Minor
Jack Body: Three Transcriptions
Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 3 in F major, op. 73

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 22 April, 3 pm

Wellington Chamber Music Inc opened its 2018 season of seven concerts with a multi-national string quartet (naturally, one cannot use the word -ethnic when speaking of members of several nations inhabited by one ethnic group, European peoples), led by a New Zealander.

It’s probably unusual for a musical group to adopt a literary name. Aphra Behn was a late 17th century English woman playwright and novelist. She’s always interested me: go to the end of this review to read a bit more about her.

Debussy String Quartet
An excellent programme began with Debussy’s only string quartet. It caught my attention at once with the gorgeous warmth and homogeneity of sounds produced by the four women, and it prompted some inadmissible thoughts that might be sexually discriminatory towards male string players. It struck me that, unlike some male players, here there was absolutely no sense that any player was in the least concerned about being distinguished individually.

I have never felt that Debussy’s writing for quartet led particularly to sounds that were so closely knit, not just in their ensemble, but more strikingly in their unified tone. Furthermore I was enraptured by their subtly elastic rhythms and pacing, and that was even more evident in the second movement, Assez vif et bien rythmé. Where they could play up the hesitancy that seems inherent in the music, and to permit the varied musical personalities of the players to be heard. Here for the first, but not the last time, the viola of Lydia Abell which opens so vividly over pizzicato from the others, made the kind of sound that really justifies the distinct role of the viola in a string quartet. But her sound was never at the expense of the ensemble which remained so happily at one.

The second violin of Alicia Berentse opens the third movement (Andantino, doucement), but the viola soon takes up its plaintive song and I began to wonder whether I was becoming rather unhealthily obsessed with it; but I realised that it was actually the violist alone whom I could see properly, and so tended focus unduly on her playing, from a position a bit too far back to see the other players (sight lines are a bit of a problem when players remain at floor level). But the cello of Ghislaine McMullin took its turn with the ultra douce melody, with equally rapturous playing, and the viola enjoys a particularly striking episode later in the third movement. The remarkable pause in the middle of the third movement never ceases to surprise me.

However, the cellist too has rewarding episodes, particularly in the last movement where she opened secretively with her winding theme which suddenly springs to life. And while the two violins play distinctive, energetic roles, it was again the interesting contributions by viola and cello that mostly impressed me.

Jack Body’s Three Transcriptions has become a fairly popular piece, and a unique piece it is. Being based on three very different folk pieces for exotic instruments, the translations to string quartet do strike one from time to time as eccentric, somehow eviscerated and without the authentic character which would, I’m sure, have been uniquely arresting and enlivening. But they are what they are, and these performances, different of course from what I’ve heard from the New Zealand String Quartet, stood their ground. They captured the essence of the Chinese Long-ge, jew’s harp as well as simulating the jagged rhythms of the Ramandriana from Madagascar. But they couldn’t really replicate the excitement of a great deal of Balkan musical traditions (I’m much more familiar with Greek and Serbian folk/popular music). Yet they were fired with the music’s energy and handled capably the exotic playing techniques that Body demanded, with an occasional shout simulating the ecstatic response of the dancers.

Shostakovich’s Third String Quartet, written at the end of the war, in 1945, begins in a surprisingly cheerful way, making no reference to the horrors just ended, but soon an unease arises over what Stalin now had in store for his people now that the Communist Party could get back to its main purposes. It’s in five movements, though the programme note could have been misleading, showing the fourth movement as Adagio – Moderato; Moderato in fact describes the fifth movement.

The second movement calls up a somewhat funereal quality with a slow, rising, minor triad on the viola; the notes call it a sardonic waltz; how would Andrei Zhdanov (who led the 1947 attacks on ‘formalist’ music that devastated Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Khachaturian) have interpreted this uneasy music? For there is little scope to misinterpret the heavy opening strokes by all four players in the third movement, and they employed just the right weight to the compelling rhythms that shift, rather imperceptibly from a 2/4 to ¾ beat. The ending, abrupt like the suddenness of an execution, and shocking in its calm acceptance, brings art and politics into immediate and inseparable proximity.

A similar air dominates the fourth movement, with meandering, uneasy motifs, the most telling parts with viola and cello, though the atmosphere lightens when violins do join, and there’s no mistaking the very temporary lifting of the pervasive tone of apprehension here with the slow disappearance of hope as violas and cellos are alone over the last minute or so. And though the last movement is a little quicker, in what sounds like triplets in duple time (actually 6/8 rhythm), the fifth movement does little more in terms of painting a picture of political life in Soviet past-war period, than suggest a low profile and the best one can do to maintain a happy face.

Being a deeply political person I find this, and much of Shostakovich, engrossing and disturbing, particularly as it is once again becoming relevant in the second decade of the 21st century. The Behn Quartet, whose name suggests acknowledgement of a comparable affinity between the temper of the political world and that of the arts, also played as if they thoroughly understood what Shostakovich was saying in this powerful and eloquent work.

 

About Aphra Behn
I confess I didn’t have to Google the name ‘Behn’ as I was familiar with it both through my father’s knowledge (he was chief librarian of the Turnbull Library for nearly 30 years, and his discourses at home shaped me. Milton and 17th century literature (and music) are among the library’s international strengths) and my own English literature studies at university. I knew her place in Restoration England (the reigns of Charles II and James II, and later), in theatre and writing in general. Though details of her life, including the way she rose from very modest origins to literary distinction are a bit sketchy, she was successful in both fiction and drama; and she was a rare, feisty, liberated woman writer who at one point had acted as a kind of double agent for the English Crown in the Netherlands.

She was noted as a writer of some fairly bawdy tales, dealing frankly with Lesbians, and being remarked at the time as writing in a vein that was more likely from a male than a female pen (the Restoration was a famously licentious period in literature and the arts).

She lived from 1640 to 1689, and her musical contemporaries were Purcell and John Blow; and on the Continent, Lully and Corelli.

Her other contemporaries were Dryden, Newton, Boyle, Pepys, Bunyan, Nahum Tate (famous as the librettist of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas), Christopher Wren, and Milton was in his last years; philosophers: John Lock, Spinoza and Leibnitz.

I heard the distinguished 17th century scholar speak at the recent Festival: A C Grayling, an inspiring, strong minded figure with admirably sane political and religious views.  Read his The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind.

 

Sasha Cooke’s entrancing Berlioz songs, a bewitching premiere and masterpieces of Debussy and Ravel: thanks to De Waart and the NZSO

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edo de Waart with mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke

Salina Fisher: Tupaia (premiere)
Berlioz: Les nuits d’été, Op. 7
Debussy: La mer
Ravel: Boléro

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 21 April 2018, 7:30 pm

Though this turned out a great concert with an enthusiastic reception of Ravel’s Boléro at the end, I had heard a number of less than excited reactions to the programme beforehand. There’s an ‘attitude’ surrounding Boléro, and not the whole world loves Debussy as much as the music historians generally do. That left Les nuits d’ été, but then there are still a sad few who have inherited an earlier, unregenerate attitude towards Berlioz.

Sasha Cooke will be remembered for her April 2012 concert with the NZSO, singing Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. Which I reviewed with very happily, and later that month she sang Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer, in a concert that also included La mer (does Sasha have a psychic connection with the sea?).

Tupaia 
But the programme had begun with a new commission from Salina Fisher, getting in early to celebrate next year’s 250th anniversary of Cook’s first voyage to New Zealand. Tupaia was the Tahitian with an extraordinary knowledge of Pacific navigation who was persuaded by Joseph Banks to join Cook’s expedition seeking ‘the great southern continent’, and reaching New Zealand (a bit of a let-down).

The composer wrote that her work drew “inspiration from the idea of celestial navigation: the constant and gradual shift in perspective necessary to perceive the ‘rise and fall’ of stars and ultimately to move forward”. It began with that low almost inaudible sound that opens Also sprach Zarathustra, expectant, mysterious, mostly from strings but then with chimes from the high register of the marimba, drums and eventually brass and other instruments. The arrival of alto flute lent a touch of clarity to the sound suggesting clear skies in a starry night.

Though she didn’t succumb to any obvious or hackneyed sea-depicting devices, Fisher’s music rose and fell over its eight minute duration, evoking generally subdued imagery, undefined, unpretentious, though undoubtedly inducing a sense of isolation in an empty ocean.

Les nuits d’ été  
Berlioz’s great cycle of six songs by Théophile Gautier was for me the main and most engrossing work on the programme. Berlioz is my favourite French composer, and I’m not given to ranking people; but aware of the long years when so many critics and music historians determined not to recognise his genius, when I had fallen in love with the Symphonie fantastique at an early age, has made me a rather fervent proselyte. And it has helped feed a consuming francophilia in general.

If I’d found Sasha Cooke’s Mahler songs so enrapturing six years ago, I found each of these melodies, in turn, beautifully articulated, restrained, illuminating so perfectly both the melodies and Berlioz’s subtle and sympathetic orchestrations. Le spectre de la rose ranks as one of the most inspired and moving creations, right up with the most lovely of Schubert and Schumann Lieder (and Berlioz composed his cycle in 1840, Schumann’s year of Lieder: something in the air?). Her modest and undemonstrative singing through its long lines captured the magical sense of Gautier’s poems without artifice or unnecessary emphasis, even in the second, more intense stanza.

And in Sur les lagunes her warm and rich mezzo voice found beautiful engagement, hovering as it does around the lower register, yet rising in passion to match the words of the last lines.

After both Le spectre and Lagunes there was clapping, hesitant perhaps but driven, I felt, not through unawareness of the conventions, but by an overwhelming compulsion; I felt the same.

There’s a kind of recitative element in Absence, immaculate, poignant, this one reveals the lost love that is perhaps at the heart of the entire cycle; Cooke’s slow, aching interpretation with its long pauses was so breath-taking that even the impulse to clap its exquisite performance was stilled.

Au cimitière, rather than a funereal utterance such as one might expect, expresses more complex, varied emotions and here her voice found a more overt spirit; each stanza in turn so individual, interpreting so acutely the sense of the lines. Finally, L’île inconnue, ends the cycle with the most up-beat song, yet again it’s discreet, a model of sympathetic orchestration, characteristic of French orchestral clarity and consideration for the singer, and with keen attention to the audibility of every syllable. Whatever the great strengths of the music of the second half, this music and this singer left Les nuitsd’été for me the best thing of the evening.

La mer is probably, after L’après-midi d’un faune, the most played of Debussy’s orchestral works; and I wonder why we don’t hear all or even parts of Images more often, or Nocturnes.

I had the strange, fleeting impression of a connection between the opening bars of La mer and Salina Fisher’s piece. Even though here were harp and timpani and cellos… capturing dawn over a calm sea; but Debussy employs more overt visual impressions, though I have rarely found it useful or even interesting to seek extra-musical notions to embellish music or assist appreciation of it. Fortunately, this music, and its superbly careful and balanced playing under De Waart needs no props. While not in any way denigrating the orchestral virtuosity of Debussy’s foreign contemporaries, schooled in other musical environments, the traditions passed down through the Paris Conservatoire from Berlioz (not that he taught there), lived through Franck and Lalo, Saint-Saëns and Bizet, D’Indy, Chausson, Fauré…. to Debussy and Ravel.

Clapping again broke out at the end of De l’aube à midi sur la mer: deserved for sure, but did they think at about eight minutes, it was all over?

The performance was beautifully balanced, again orchestral parts integrated so that brass, under perfect control, can be heard so consummately judged in the space, without the engineering that gives a rather dishonest impression of the sound to the record listener.

Finally Boléro. No matter how often one might have heard it – and live performances are not that common – there is something truly hypnotic about its sheer repetitiveness and I have never failed to feel its unique force in a live performance in the concert hall (on record, it’s a quite different matter). Ravel himself remarked that though there was no music in it, “it was a masterpiece”.

Except that there is music in it. It simply takes the most fundamental device in most music – the repetition of a theme, usually several themes, over and over, and generally varied in many ways (ever counted the number of times principal themes in many of Schubert’s works are played, with little change?). With Boléro his tune is varied at every reiteration – through its instrumentation: where is the compositional law forbidding that?

This was paced with perfect discretion, deriving through a steady if imperceptible crescendo along with the bewitching instrumental additions, a riveting performance. There was no doubt, noting the stentorian applause and shouting, that it had again worked its ‘illegitimate’ magic on most of us.

Kapiti and Palmerston North choirs in rewarding performance of Dvořák’s Stabat Mater

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Kapiti Chamber Choir and Renaissance Singers, Palmerston North, with orchestra, conducted by Eric Sidoti
Soloists: Barbara Paterson (soprano), Ellen Barrett (contralto0, Jamie Young (tenor), Simon Christie (bass)

Dvořák: Stabat Mater

St Paul’s Church, Paraparaumu

Sunday 15 April, 2:30 pm

This seems to be the Dvořák year in Wellington, as two days earlier I had heard players from Orchestra Wellington perform two of his chamber works – the String Quintet No 2 and the Serenade for wind instruments, cello and bass. Orchestra Wellington is featuring five of Dvořák’s symphonies in their 2018 season; and RNZ Concert are playing them all this week! Most welcome as we tend to hear little other than the New World Symphony (No 9) and the cello concerto from our orchestras; and from chamber music groups only the familiar American string quartet and the (admittedly gorgeous) mature (No 2 in each case) piano quartet and piano quintet.

The combination of a good local choir and visitors from Palmerston North ensured at least one thing, that the volume of sound was appropriate to the demands of the music. Dvořák’s Stabat Mater is a major choral work, written in the era of great popularity of large choirs and large-scale choral music, a period when over-blown compositions, sometimes inspired more by religious compulsion than musical inspiration, were produced in response to popular demand. This piece cannot be classed with such works, as Dvořák matches his religious convictions with committed, deeply felt music.

Inevitably, amateur choral skills are usually greater than amateur orchestral abilities, and that might have been evident in the orchestral introduction, but it was a small price to pay for the plain advantage of having an orchestra instead of a piano or organ to support a major choral work composed for choir and orchestra. Yet the opening choral passage led by strings, caught the grieving tone sensitively with its descending phrases; though later on balances between strings, woodwinds and brass proved more difficult.

The soloists generally managed their parts well, though in the early stages tenor Jamie Young sounded somewhat stretched; and while soprano Barbara Paterson settled well into some of her later more extended singing, her first entry lacked a certain warmth in its higher register. But she had happier experiences in both vii, ‘Virgo virginium’ and viii, ‘Fac, ut portem Christi mortem’. Bass Simon Christie sounded comfortable right from the start and his contributions always sounded particularly appropriate. Contralto Ellen Barrett, who emerged in part ii, where soloists sang without the choir, sounded as if she believed in her texts and her voice blended warmly with the other soloists.

In ii, for the four soloists (and in later sections that entailed soloists without choir) they grew into their distinct roles, generally supported by well-modulated orchestral accompaniment; these were certainly among the more persuasive, satisfying sections.

The choir returned for iii, the ‘Eia, Mater, fons amoris…’ with its hypnotic repetition of one of the music’s moving, dotted motifs, and it was good to hear Christie again, now with the choir in ‘Fac, ut ardeat cor meum’ (iv).

The tone of the piece changes at section v, as the choir sings a less grieving, consolatory episode in swaying triple time; but I was surprised at the rather excessive sforzando ‘poenas’. Nevertheless, it emerged as a moment of respite from the pervasive sorrowful tone till that point.

The tenor alone sings the steady-paced vi, ‘Fac me vere’ (repeated with choir a great many times) showing more comfortable control of the carefully distinct words in those verses. The choir on its own produced effective, emphatic phrases, with which Young joined.

The choir, again on its own, delivered a restrained and rather charming ‘Virgo virginum’, with bare strings supporting the slow, wide-spaced melody. Then in the only section for duet, Paterson and Young wove their lines together, thoroughly integrated now (in spite of the soprano having to utter lots of multi-syllables). Barnett got her solo turn in the penultimate section, now with sensitive orchestral support, though the composer needn’t have burdened her with such heavy brass; I enjoyed the second verse of this section particularly: ‘Fac me plagis’ with its supportive oboe and other winds.

The last section is in the nature of a lamenting funeral march, with choir shifting abruptly from mf to ff, and finally the familiar theme from the first section returns to bring a more peaceful, even enlivening, mood to its conclusion. So in spite of the hard to deny shortcomings intrinsic to an amateur choir and orchestra, this was a persuasive and satisfying performance that’s a credit to conductor Sidoti and his soloists and of course all the singers and instrumentalists.

Returning to Dvořák performance again; there are so many of his works that ought to be better known, apart from the last two or three symphonies; there are violin and piano concertos, unjustly neglected; there’s the lovely string Serenade; all 16 Slavonic Dances and the Slavonic Rhapsodies, the sparkling Scherzo Capriccioso and bagatelles that include a harmonium part and a variety of other chamber music; five symphonic poems; a Requiem and a Te Deum, and so on….

Admirable, enterprising concert of Dvořák from Orchestra Wellington players

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Players from Orchestra Wellington

Dvořák; Serenade for winds, cello and double bass in D minor, Op 44 (B 77)
Merran Cooke and Louise Cox – oboes, Mark Cookson and Chris Turner – clarinets, Leni Maeckle and Penny Miles – bassoons, Shadley van Wyk, Dominic Groom and Vivian Reid – horns, Brenton Veitch – cello, Paul Altomari – double bass

Dvořák: String Quintet No 2 in G, Op 77 (B 49)
Monique Lapins and Konstanze Artmann – violins, Sophia Acheson – viola, Brenton Veitch – cello, Paul Altomari – double bass

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Friday 13 April, 12:15 pm

Dvořák wrote two serenades: the first, for strings in 1875 and the second, for winds plus cello and bass, in 1878. We heard the latter.

His two serenades occupy a rather special place in music of the Romantic era, the wind one especially, as there had not been a work of comparable charm since Mozart’s 80 years before, and none quite as fine later. Though perhaps not influenced by Dvořák, there were two comparable works within a decade of his Serenade: Gounod’s charming Petite Symphonie approaches it, and Richard Strauss’s Op 7, a prodigious 18-year-old’s remarkable work which really stands on its own feet!

The Wind Serenade
The first impression of the playing was of a bold sound when my feeling of the music is for a somewhat neutral beginning, reflected in its minor key; it’s Moderato, quasi marcia. I wondered whether it would compromise the scope later, for dynamic variety, but that feeling soon evaporated. But what I did miss a little was a warm, easy flowing momentum which the minor mode also seems to suggest. There was a good deal of excellent playing, and early on oboe and bassoon caught my ear particularly.

The second movement is a minuet (the single sheet programme didn’t indicate movements), and I actually spent a little time wondering whether it was a minuet, with its interesting duple time running alongside the minuet rhythm. But there was no alternative of course, and there was, properly, a contrasting trio, much more sprightly, in the middle which might indeed have been in some other dance style. The alternating oboe and clarinet phrases were a delight. This movement had the happy effect of demonstrating the composer’s quite beguiling use of wind instruments,

It was only in the slow movement (Andante con moto) that the absence of flutes struck me, following the instrumentation of the great Mozart Serenade for 13 wind instruments (but not for Strauss who does use flutes); only reeds allowed! But there were some lovely horn ensembles and time to rejoice in the composer’s intuitive handling of all his instruments in turn, even the cello and bass. It’s my favourite movement (when I was young I liked the fast movements best), but I had to admit that when the finale – allegro molto – began, it carried me along in its intended joyful spirit.

Because I did continue to feel a little overwhelmed by the volume of sound produced (I was in the fourth row; a friend seated at the back told me that he had no such experience), I was looking forward to the string quintet, since I usually find strings better adapted to the church acoustic.

String Quintet Op 77
The numbering of Dvořák’s works is confusing as he adopted a very cavalier approach to the matter so that musicologists would be able to justify their time spent in the hilarious task of working out just when and how his compositions were written. He bestowed Op 77 on his second string quintet, though it was a relatively early work, originally with an earlier opus number 18, written in 1875 when he was 34. It is unique in being scored for string quartet plus double bass; the first string quintet (for orthodox instruments) had been his second work, in 1861, aged 19; he gave that Op 1. A third quintet, in E flat, Op 97 was written after the string quartet in F, Op 96, ‘American’, when he was in the United States in 1893.

It’s a lively, imaginative, though underplayed work. Why, when musicians think of Dvořák chamber music, is it always the ‘American’ (used to be called the ‘Nigger’) quartet or the wonderful piano quintet?

I last heard it played by the New Zealand String Quartet and the virtuoso NZSO bassist, Hiroshi Ikematsu, in 2011 at St Mary of the Angels.  It is a delight; it starts from the bottom, bass and cello intoning secretively, then engaging the higher instruments one by one, up to the bright-toned violin of Monique Lapins; ready for the first big theme, naturally bass heavy, to burst out fully formed. It’s entitled Allegro con fuoco.

The performance was full of energy. One normally hears these players, generally briefly, within the symphonic sound mass of Orchestra Wellington, and it was both a revelation and pleasure to hear them as polished chamber musicians too. After the first elaboration of the main theme, Brenton Veitch delivered his energetic yet lyrical account of it before they all took over. In fact, throughout the first movement Veitch’s part was particularly distinctive.

The same thrusting energy appears in the second movement which, though in triple time, is not a minuet but Scherzo, allegro vivace. There’s a distinct change of tempo and tone in the middle, slower and more lyrical and the quintet demonstrated a more meditative quality.

The slow movement is marked Poco andante and its wistful opening theme was not only musically related to its predecessors, but was the first opportunity to hear the quintet’s more legato, lyrical playing. It’s not especially Slavonic in spirit, as I think Dvořák wanted to establish his reputation in conventional western European, let’s say, Germanic, music. His nationalistic music was largely expressed in the Moravian Duets, the Czech Suite, Slavonic Dances, the first set of which, Op 46, were written in the same year as the Quintet; and so on. And the last movement, conventionally Allegro assai, is very driven and full of energy. It can probably be played with even more passion and brio than these players produced.

Coda
This was a performance that achieved two things. The unearthing of some chamber music (if we can stretch the term a bit for the Serenade) that doesn’t get much attention in a string quartet dominated world, and there’s a great deal more of it – quintets, sextets, septets, nonets and so on by many of the great composers (Mozart’s wind serenades of course) and some not so great – just two: Spohr’s Nonet, Berwald’s Septet (we do get plenty of octets by Schubert and Mendelssohn).

And secondly, I am delighted that Orchestra Wellington is moving in this enterprising direction, filling the musical gap I mention, as well as putting themselves before the public more often, letting people know that excellent musicians also inhabit Orchestra Wellington. It’s an initiative that presents worthwhile music instead of (or in addition to) being drawn in the direction of pop, film music and other kinds of cross-over material which I have serious misgivings about.

And it needs to be noted that this concert, very modestly priced, drew the biggest crowd at St Andrew’s that I’ve seen for such a concert for a long time.

 

 

 

 

Engaging recital of obscure, quirky music on saxophone and harp at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Duo Eolienne: Genevieve Davidson (saxophone) and Michelle Velvin (harp)

Music by Debussy, Yusef Lateef, Britten, Bernard Andres, Satie, William Alwyn

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 11 April 12:15 pm

Here was a recital that seemed to fit the space acoustically and offered a range of mostly unfamiliar music that was yet approachable; many of the audience might well be happy to hear these pieces again.

The first piece was by a sixteen-year-old Debussy: Beau soir (beautiful evening). The words of the poem by Paul Bourget were printed and we were left to assume that the score, presumably voice and piano, had been arranged for saxophone and harp. In a shy, gentle triple rhythm it produced a peaceful mood as the poet employs the image of a stream flowing to the sea suggesting life ending in the grave. It worked well for and was played charmingly by both instruments.

Yusef Lateef’s piece, Romance for soprano saxophone and harp, was actually written for these instruments. It was a longer piece, featuring quirky solos: I was able to tell it had finished only when the next piece, Britten’s Six Metamorphoses after Ovid, for solo oboe (saxophone) began. Its moods varied: evocative, fanciful, imaginative.

Two of Britten’s Six Metamorphoses dealt with Pan and Phaeton. Obviously, the saxophone was well suited to Pan, and the impression of Phaeton who came to grief by riding on the sun’s chariot may well have been an accurate picture of that interesting bit of Greek mythology; they were slight though beautifully crafted pieces.

French composer and harpist Bernard Andrès obviously pursues the classical music rather than popular or jazz tradition. I have the impression that he is a major figure in the contemporary harp fraternity; he wrote a large number of solo harp Preludes and judging by the two he played (nos 12 and 14) owes much to the traditions of Chopin and Debussy. The harp in these Preludes suggested a piano influence, their feet firmly planted on the ground, in music of a formal spirit and shape. The second piece was much livelier than the first.

Satie’s Gnossiennes, Nos 1, 2 and 3, were originally piano pieces but their scoring for saxophone and harp came very close to whatever their classical source was, and these players offered a very convincing case for hearing them in this guise. Though less popular than the Gymnopédies, the Gnossiennes evoke a classical world rather well. There is more variety of melody and texture, and they suggest greater kinship with traditional classical compositional styles and spirits. Satie’s reputation has suffered through being seen, lazily, as little more than an odd-ball, eccentric who was mainly interested in mocking and satirising his contemporaries and the classical tradition. I have long felt that he is a much more important and interesting a composer than that. The plaintive character of the soprano saxophone suited this music; its nuances were a great contribution to the interpretation.

The recital ended with William Alwyn’s Little Suite for Oboe and Harp, obviously an excellent candidate for the switch to soprano sax. Alwyn was, as the programme note said, a rather neglected composer, perhaps because of his fecundity and the multiplicity of genres and styles he adopted. In large part his neglect is that of many composers who chose to remain in the main-stream classical tradition rather than adopt the doctrines of the avant-garde, and who devote themselves to writing for each other and for academic approval rather than for real music lovers.

The three dances were firstly, a Minuet of gentle charm, then a quicker Valse, strongly melodic with a surprise ending, and finally, a fast Jig, with a slower section in the middle and another surprise ending.

This piece in not of Mahlerian scale or moral depth or Boulezian complexity and intellectual bite, but it’s attractive and was played with levity and skill; it suggests that there’s other Alwyn music worth exploring.

So it was an enjoyable, stimulating little recital delivered by two excellent musicians.

De Waart and NZSO: Brilliant Mozart two piano concerto and epic Mahler performance

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edo de Waart
Piano duo: Christina and Michelle Naughton

Mozart: Concerto for Two Pianos in E flat, K.365
Mahler: Symphony No. 5

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 6 Apr, 6:30 pm

For me, two of Mozart’s most beguiling works have adjacent numbers in the Köchel catalogue: the Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola (K 364) and the Concerto for two pianos (K 365), meaning that scholars believed they were written about the same time, 1779. Certainly, they have both been deeply embedded in my affections, perhaps through the performances I first heard.

This was a little before Mozart’s leaving Salzburg for Vienna (around the same time as he wrote the flute concertos, the Coronation Mass, the Posthorn Serenade, Symphony No 33, the Solemn Vespers). It was the last piano concerto, numbered 10, written in Salzburg; next came the first three in Vienna, Nos 11, 12 and 13, in 1782, the first of the 17 truly mature and immortal piano concertos.

Mozart’s instrumentation varied. What we heard from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra under  their music director Edo de Waart, was Mozart’s original score which he played with his sister, Nannerl; it involved, as well as usual strings, only pairs of oboes, bassoons and horns. Mozart revised it later when he played it with a pupil, adding pairs of clarinets and trumpets. The string numbers were interesting too: instead of the usual declining numbers through violins to basses, De Waart employed eight each of first and second violins, and violas; I couldn’t see all the cellos but suspect there were 6, and probably 2 basses. I wondered whether De Waart had employed these numbers to create a fuller sound in the middle range, to balance with the weight of two pianos.

The orchestral introduction was elegant and deeply felt, with flowing rhythms; its character was complementary to the pianos which entered boldly, but quickly subsided to a delicate, rather affecting mood. Rather than pitting them against each other, the main feature of their playing is an almost uncanny interweaving of lines, sharing the music with beguiling charm, often taking over from each other mid-phrase, and ensuring that it was never possible to feel that one was the ‘primo’, the other ‘secondo’, as is usual with duets.

The major attraction was of course, the piano duo, Christina and Michelle Naughton: twin sisters, aged 28, born in Princeton, New Jersey of European/Chinese ancestry. They grew up in Madison, Wisconsin and their musical education was at the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute. They occupy the sort of place among duo pianists enjoyed for several decades by the Labèque sisters. They lack nothing in musicianship, technical skill and interpretive insight.

The second movement, Andante, prolonged the sense of elegance, the pianos often elaborately decorating and echoing the orchestral lines through the long melodies. Till the pianos eventually came to dominate in an extended cadenza-like episode in which the orchestra re-joins just before the end. It seemed like a magical introduction to the spirited, optimistic mood of the Rondo with its long curving lines that the two pianists adorned with tasteful ornaments. They led the confident fugal passage in a playfully rhetorical fashion, that seemed to mock the expectation of a portentous finale.

The whole was far more than the sum of its parts however, as it was obvious throughout that we were hearing a couple of immaculate pianists who performed, as was repeated in promotional material, as if one, each seeming to process her part through the same mind and hands, neither seeking pre-eminence, and creating the feeling that each felt as if merely a half of a single instrument.

Their encore was something of a curiosity and a surprise. No doubt encore pieces for piano duo are thin on the ground: this was Variations on a Theme by Paganini for two pianos – based Paganini’s 24th Caprice, by Lutosławski. The other pianist when it was written in 1941 was composer Panufnik who had also remained in Warsaw during the war and they played it in the city under horrendous German occupation (read Panufnik’s gripping autobiography, Composing Myself). They survived the terrible months in late 1944 when Soviet forces remained passively on the east bank of the Vistula, making no move to defend Warsaw while the German forces destroyed the city; it suited Soviet anti-Polish policies.
One YouTube listener to a performance of the piece by Argerich and Kissin remarked “époustouflant!” The Naughton sisters played it from memory; “époustouflant!” indeed!

I was surprised to see a few empty seats after the interval (it had looked a very full house before), as the Mahler approached. Fancy forgoing the chance to hear, not just an ordinary performance but what emerged after 70 minutes as a superb, emotionally elaborate and intellectually sophisticated creation.

There are trumpet fanfares and trumpet fanfares, and this was the latter, if you see what I mean. Michael Kirgan was flawless: flamboyant perhaps, but arresting, heroic, while at the same time relaxed. The fanfare foreshadowed the spirit and narrative of this, perhaps most familiar of all the symphonies. Then the grand yet melancholy tone of the strings prompted anticipation of the momentous epic that was to follow.

Mahler linked the first two movements as Part I, and he treated the last two similarly, as Part III. Apart from the thematic connections between movements that might have been fairly uncommon before his time, there seems little reason today to think of the work as other than in five movements.

The second movement is marked Sturmische bewegt, mit grosser Vehemenz; De Waart opened with ferocity and vehemence as instructed, while later his orchestra depicted an extraordinary calm, with feathery emotions dominated by beautiful woodwinds, alternating with passages from strings expressing a returning disquiet, and turbulent passages that probably taxed the brass but emerge flawless.

The middle movement, Scherzo: Kräftig, nicht zu schnell (Strong, not too fast) hardly complied with the instruction to express strength; its scherzo character, its luminosity seemed to predominate, and there are charming dance-like episodes of string pizzicato, dreamy horns and woodwinds. Its triple time certainly lends itself to suggestions of the Ländler and the Waltz: whether that it amounts to ‘social commentary on excess’, as the programme notes suggest, bears consideration…

The audience seemed to sigh at its recognition of the arrival of the beautiful Adagietto; and its mood was indeed one of inconsolable sadness, while never losing itself in weakness or lacking in a feeling of profound humanity. Scored for only strings and harp, there were many beautiful passages for those instruments to express poignancy and reflectiveness.

The last movement, Rondo, follows the course prescribed by Mahler: Allegro-Allegro giocoso. Frisch (lively); and there is much delicate, pastoral scoring, initially for strings, gently becoming ‘giocoso’ with horns, oboes, trumpets and the rest, all immaculately played. And a longish fugal section that is the vehicle for dancing and gaiety rather than for musical seriousness.

Not only was this a wonderful performance that would have converted any Mahler sceptic (and the slight thinning of the audience suggests they still exist), but would have left even the most confirmed or blasé listener with a renewed feeling of wonderment and optimism, overcoming for the moment, disquiet at all the world’s increasing turbulence and horrors. Mahler might have lived during a period of relative international peace and temporary personal happiness, yet there was, nevertheless, in this most sanguine, as well as tumultuous of symphonies, material for listeners to this magnificent performance a century or more later to experience a huge range of external and personal emotions, both grieving and ecstatic.