Author: Lindis Taylor

Wilma Smith and Friends play fine programme for Wellington Chamber Music

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wilma Smith (violin), Caroline Henbest (viola), Alexandra Partridge (cello), Andrew Leathwick (piano)

Piano quartets: William Walton’s in D minor; Andrew Leathwick’s No 1 and Brahms’s No 3 in C minor, Op 60

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 15 October, 3 pm

We reviewed Wilma Smith and Friends at their Waikanae concert on 24 September. There they had played Beethoven’s not-much-played Op 16 piano quartet, Dvořák’s greatly loved Op 87 as well as the piano quartet by the group’s pianist, Leathwick.  I suppose I can wait till next August when I see that Wellington Chamber Music’s just announced 2018 Sunday series will hear the Dvořák played by the Leppänen, Thomson, Joyce, Irons quartet.

Wilma’s three colleagues, two of whom are New Zealanders, all have an association with the Australian National Academy of Music, in Canberra, while Wilma herself teaches at the two principal Melbourne universities.

This Wellington programme avoided playing anything too well-known: Brahms’s 3rd piano quartet is the least familiar of the three. Played here with such finesse and musicality that its relative neglect became hard to understand.

Walton’s 16-year-old creation
However, the concert began with a, to me, totally unknown quartet, by a 16-year-old William Walton. Though it might not display the brilliance and musical delights that Mendelssohn or Mozart were producing at that age, this was a very impressive achievement, even allowing for its getting revised much later in the composer’s life (when he was 72).

It was written in the last year of WWI and so might have reflected the Englishness of Bax or Ireland or Vaughan Williams, even Elgar. All I could say is that the music had a generalised English, as distinct from a Continental feel, and Herbert Howells’s own piano quartet has been offered as a possible influence. Would Walton have heard Bartók in 1918? something at the start of the last movement suggested it. It was too soon for the iconoclastic Walton of the Bloomsbury years to be audible anywhere, but there could have been touches of Ravel, for there was much in it of a surprising sophistication.

It began with a clear conception of certain melodic ideas that seemed authentic rather than arbitrary, and an understanding of the art of building music in a formal shape. It was indeed formal in having four movements –  a bright, positive opening, a scherzo that seemed singularly assured, then a calm Adagio in a nocturnal mood, with muted strings, and finally an energetic Allegro that might have attempted to emulate the radical composers of the Continent, even certain rhythmic elements from Eastern Europe (do I mean Bartók?though what was known of him in England in the First World War?).

Writing for the quartet as a whole was quite mature, and it was clear that the young composer had a refined appreciation of the characteristics of each instrument – a solo viola passage caught the ear. Music from the first movement returned in a natural-sounding was to bring it to an end.

Andrew Leathwick’s quartet
A quartet by the group’s pianist Andrew Leathwick, followed. He introduced it, but in rather too casual a way, without sufficient care for enunciation and for the rhythms of his speech to be easily followed. The music largely explained itself – an opening that was almost secretive, improvisatory, slowly awakening with long phrases carried high on the violin strings. The second movement, entitled ‘Freely’, began with muted violin and cautious piano notes and signs that the composer became aware of the need to retain the listener’s attention with an almost Dvořákian melody. The composer seemed sensitive to the particular character of each instrument, subtly varying colours and dynamics; the viola carried a vaguely familiar elegiac tune which I couldn’t attribute. The composer recorded that ‘the great Romantic composers’ had inspired the last movement – Con moto. Those influences were clear enough. The whole piece, written in an idiom (idioms?) of earlier music made me aware of the styles of music that music students now feel free to write, far removed from the strenuously avant-garde, ‘original-at-all-costs’, audience-alienating music that I used to subject myself to in my early years reviewing for The Evening Post in the late 80s and 90s.

The style adopted in this piece is now accepted in a more open and tolerant musical environment in music schools, though one naturally hopes that it will not discourage a freedom to explore more adventurous approaches that make judicious use of influences from the music of the recent past.

Rosemary Collier’s review of this piece will be found in the review of 24 September.

Brahms’s Piano Quartet No 3
The last piece was Brahms’s Piano Quartet No 3, Op 60.  As I noted above it’s not as well-known as the Op 25 quartet, or perhaps even as the second one. But here was a performance that did it credit. It launches itself in a distinctly C minor manner, commanding, weighty and serious minded, rather than seductive, first in the Adagio opening and then the Allegro non troppo main part. But it’s exactly what a paid-up Brahms-lover looks for; not what the censorious Schoenberg who orchestrated the Op 25 piece because he thought it too dense for chamber music, would have enjoyed at all.

For it is indeed almost symphonic in its textures although the quartet produced all the clarity that I needed. Though the second movement is more animated, it dwells in a similar  sound world, darkly impassioned, with energetic piano writing that Leathwick handled, though the piano lid was on the long stick, in excellent accord with the strings.

The third movement, Andante, opens with a soulful, though sanguine duet between piano and cello which offered Alexandra Partridge (and again the pianist) an admirable opportunity to be enjoyed. And the finale too confirmed that impression left from all that had gone before of a carefully studied approach in which the essence of Brahms had become thoroughly embedded. Rapport between strings and piano was always perfectly integrated in terms of balance and interpretive view.

It ended a very satisfying chamber music recital, offering a sound reason to take comfort in a cultural relationship with Australia.

 

 

To err is human, to forgive (the job of the critic): four student pianists with seriously worthwhile music

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

NZSM piano students
Helen Chiu, Jungyeon Lee, Gabriel Khor, William Swan

Music by Debussy, Mozart, Ravel, Chopin

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 27 September, 12:15 pm

The lunchtime concert market has been somewhat crowded over recent weeks and both St Andrew’s and Old Saint Paul’s have provided nice venues and good audiences for end-of-year recitals. While we’ve covered most of the recent lunchtime concerts in Wellington we have been unable this year to get to the series running at St Mark’s Lower Hutt, which have been equally worthwhile.

Four pianists played today at St Andrew’s. They were first to third year students, a fact which is sometimes hard to believe, and one is almost relieved to discover evidence of the real world when an occasional finger-fault happens. Helen Chiu played two pieces from Debussy’s first book of Images for piano (there are two books containing three pieces each, apart from the Images for Orchestra – Gigues, Ibéria and Rondes de printemps – that had in fact begun life as a second book for the piano). Reflets dans l’eau is the quintessentially impressionistic piano piece inspired by the play of light on water, and this was a singularly sensitive and evocative performance, that was fluent, limpid, becoming more and more disturbed as, one imagines, wind ruffles the surface.

The second piece is Hommage à Rameau , a composer who, along with Couperin, for ardent Frenchman Debussy, was the equivalent of Bach. Rameau was born just a couple of years before Bach, and left a great deal of keyboard music, though opera came to dominate his career from 1733 when he was 50! But one could be forgiven for not finding immediate baroque sounds and shapes in this sophisticated music; its sounds are, naturally, closer to Debussy’s other piano music than to Rameau’s Pièces de clavecin. Yet there’s more formality hovering around it than in the first piece, and Helen gave it a very illuminating and idiomatic performance.

Jungyeong Lee played Mozart’s sonata in F, K 332, one of three that he wrote about 1783, shortly after moving to Vienna; it is ranked among the favourites. The first movement with sharp contrasts between serenity and an almost contrasting middle, with tempi splendidly judged; the slow movement discreetly lovely with carefully handle ornaments and a last movement encompassing a wide expressive range, now energetic, now slightly humorous, demanding elaborate episodes and constant technical challenges that put it among Mozart’s most difficult. One doesn’t often hear live performances of Mozart’s sonatas and this was a valued opportunity.

Gabriel Khor played the first two movements of Ravel’s Sonatine, a word that conveys none of its meaning around 1800 when it suggested a sorter and probably easier piece that a proper sonata. It’s not another Gaspard de la nuit, but it’s no nursery piece either; one can understand his not playing the last movement as Ravel himself refrained from playing it because of its difficulty. Khor played it carefully, sensitively, the odd slip was inevitable, but he managed to maintain its momentum and a degree of melodic warmth. The Mouvement de menuet is quieter and sounds superficially easier, and it began with a feeling of caution or timidity, but a sense of calm confidence grew.

Chopin brought the recital to an end, as Williams Swan played first the Waltz in D flat, Op 64/1 and then the Polonaise in A flat, Op 53. The waltz performance was a study in caution, laced with bursts of flashing speed, with the contrasting slower episode well related to the outer phases. The Polonaise set off very dynamically, with first notes in the bar given particularly marked emphasis; and he paid good attention to the sharp dynamic contrasts, with handfuls of fast dense chords, and I don’t just mean the hammering left hand in the central section, interspersed with those reckless scales, where occasional stray notes appeared and splendid, reckless arpeggios.

 

Another end-of-year student recital: woodwinds in calm weather

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Old Saint Paul’s lunchtime concert

New Zealand School of Music wind players
Annabel Lovatt, Harim Oh, Samantha McSweeney, Breanna Abbott, Darcy Snell, Leah Thomas

Music by Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Hindemith, Weber, Britten

Old Saint Paul’s

Tuesday 26 September, 12:15 pm

End of year public recitals by New Zealand School of Music students continued, today with woodwind players. If I had been uninterested in hearing the NZSO and Freddy Kempf last Saturday playing single movements of major piano concertos (though I gather it was well-patronised), this was different. Because one was not laying out a substantial ticket price for the rather frustrating experience of being left in mid-air in Mozart and Rachmaninov, or coming in for the dessert after missing the substantial and wonderful first and second courses (in the case of the Mendelssohn).

But the Mozart oboe quartet had other very strong associations for me, for back in 1977 I’d taken long-service leave from my Public Service career and we criss-crossed France by car in the company of a few cassettes, one of which contained Mozart’s clarinet quintet and oboe quartet. The associations remain vivid, and they support powerfully excessive passions for both that music and France. And I have to say that Annabel Lovatt’s paying of its first movement, recreated the delights that I’d experienced 40 years ago. It was on the quick side, but her handling of the entrancing melody was beautiful, and the undulations of breathings and tempi were charming. (and yes, I’d have loved to have heard her play the other movements!).

Harim Oh played an arrangement of the March from Act I of the Nutcracker, a rather transformational shift from exultant brass to clarinet, with melodic modifications. But in its own right, this was an entertaining version, and Oh played it with vivacity and sensitivity, along with Hugh McMillan’s piano standing in splendidly for the rest of the orchestra.

Next, the flute, and this time a piece I was not familiar with: Hindmith’s sonata, the first movement. It was written in 1936, just before the composer decided that he had to quit Nazi Germany for the United States; it was the first, I think, of a total of 26 sonatas for piano and almost any instrument you can name. In a blind-fold test, I’m not sure Hindemith would have been my first guess, though I’d have got the era right! But of course, it emerged typically Hindemith: spirited, matter-of-fact, melodically clear but never sentimental. And Samantha McSweeney coped with its quite demanding challenges with a technique that was pretty well up to it and with a good feeling for its essential musicality.

We heard movements from two of Weber’s several concertos; the bassoon one is certainly less familiar than the clarinet concertino and the first clarinet concerto that we heard at the end. Breanna Abbott gave us a very pithy summary of its place in music history: it was 206 years old, she said. In spite of a wee stumble, she played it interestingly, and bravely, for Weber was always concerned to provide music both for his own piano performance and for other instruments that was strong on virtuosic display.

Darcy Snell played a solo oboe piece, Pan, from Benjamin Britten’s Six Metamorphoses after Ovid, offering a quick run-down on classical literature – Ovid’s Metamorphoses has been the source of a huge quantity of classically-inspired literature from the Middle Ages to the present. (A perfectly senseless aside: Ovid was sent into exile by the Emperor Augustus, for unknown reasons, and died at Constanța on the Black Sea coast, now Romania; it has a theatre called Teatrul Ovidiu – have long hankered to go there).

Anyway, this solo oboe piece emerged as meditative, somewhat shy, even hesitant, though one is hard-pressed to divine anything ‘classical’ about it. Darcy played it in a nicely considered manner, and it ended in a typically Brittenish, droll and unusual way with a sort of unresolved trill.

Finally Weber’s first clarinet concerto, second movement. Leah Thomas played it with Hugh McMillan, who’d been the able and supportive associate pianist throughout. The slow movement, in F minor, is of a meditative, perhaps sad character, suggestive of an operatic aria style, with a livelier middle section featuring a lot of showy arpeggios.

One always hopes that performances like these, that give such very enticing tastes of great pieces of music, will inspire the devoted audiences, if they don’t known them, to hunt the music down and listen to the whole works – and be surprised that all the other movements are just as beautiful.

It was the last of the Old Saint Paul’s 2017 lunchtime series.

 

Entertaining concert, mixing symphony with jazz and a witty film score from Wellington Chamber Orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Chamber Orchestra conducted by Justin Pearce

Mozart: Symphony No 25 in G minor, K 183
Mussorgsky: Songs from The Nursery ( with soloists; Janey MacKenzie and Luka Venter
Jazz standards: Chatanooga Choo-choo and Nature Boy, sung by Cole Hampton
Prokofiev: Lieutenant Kije Suite

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 24 September, 2:30 pm

One might have considered this an unorthodox programme, starting with a well-known Mozart symphony, ending with Prokofiev’s delightful Lieutenent Kije Suite and in between, songs by Mussorgsky and two jazz standards.

The Mozart symphony is known as the ‘Little G minor’ Symphony to distinguish it from the big one, No 40. But it became easier to distinguish after its arresting opening was used as the introduction to the fictitious, misleading film on Mozart and Salieri, Amadeus (based on Shaffer’s play). It’s unusual in being scored for four horns, as well as the usual strings and pairs of oboes and bassoons. The four horns proved something of a burden, as I had to assume, charitably, that there’d been inadequate time to rehearse. I even came to think that it might have been better to strip the horns back to two or to replace them with clarinets, or other instruments. However, some of the problem could well have been the unforgiving St Andrew’s acoustics.

Their fanfare-type opening was not a happy affair, and the accompanying strings were asked to play with excessive force, no doubt to balance the horns. Most of the later passages for horns were somewhat more restrained, but still problematic. Those elements apart, subsequent playing by strings and woodwinds was very nice and in all other respects the orchestra handled the score with considerable finesse; the subsequent movements, especially the Andante second movement, were very well played, with a charming, placid feeling.

Chattanooga Choo Choo
A set of songs followed, all arranged by conductor Justin Pearce: Chattanooga Choo Choo, made famous by the Glen Miller Band during the Second World War. Then five of Mussorgsky’s songs from The Nursery and finally a song new to me, Nature Boy which has a rather curious provenance.

The railway theme remains significant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a half million population city on the Georgia border. In keeping with the fame that the city derives from the song, there’s the fine Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum and a well preserved Terminal Station, now a hotel, though like most of the United States, there are no trains either in the city or intercity connections – how miserable for the visitor – even worse than New Zealand!

A big band was assembled for the occasion, the winds somewhat reflecting Glen Miller, though with only one saxophone. But we had strings, as well as trumpets, trombones, the four horns (now happy enough), plus a tuba. The amplified singer, Cole Hampton, was somewhat outclassed by the band, though I doubt whether it would have helped simply to turn up the volume. So the words, charming to any train buff, narrated a young man’s journey from Philadelphia through Baltimore and (North) Carolina, to meet his life’s partner at Chattanooga (at which one of the city’s several terminals?), were rather lost.  Pressed all my buttons: I enjoyed it.

The Mussorgsky of Boris Godunov doesn’t at once prompt thoughts of nursery songs, but these are a delightful, beguiling set that evokes childhood, demonstrating the composer’s multi-facetted genius. They were shared between soprano Janey MacKenzie and tenor Luka Venter; at once they created an intimate, slightly droll atmosphere, viewed through the eyes and ears of particular children. For some of the songs the orchestra proved rather too weighty though it might have been justified in the encounter with the beetle. Both singers involved themselves happily in the little tales.

The last song, again from the jazz world, was unfamiliar to me. Nature Boy was composed by one George McGrew who adopted the name eden ahbez, all lower case, e e cummings-style. Nat King Cole made it famous in 1948. I felt that, again, the orchestration was out of keeping with the subtle and atmospheric character of the song and my impression was rather supported when I read, in the usual source of information, that the arranger for Nat King Cole’s recording for Capital Records used flute and strings. In the context of jazz or pop music of the time it was unusual and an interesting discovery, for me.

Lieutenant Kije
To perform Prokofiev’s delightful Lieutenant Kije suite (drawn from the music for the eponymous 1934 Soviet film) was great idea. I doubt that I’ve heard it performed live before. My first hearing was as background music to a 1958 film, The Horse’s Mouth, based on the Joyce Cary novel, directed by Ronald Neame and featuring Alec Guinness. I’d have seen it shortly after its release and it immediately grabbed me of course, both on account of that characteristic British post-war, comedy film era, as well as its subject – a zany story of an eccentric artist; and the music.

I can’t help reproducing a quote from a website that I found, seeking to check my memory.

It’s by Ian Christie, Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College: “… [The Horse’s Mouth] sparkles with conviction and eccentricity—at least that’s how it struck this avid young provincial filmgoer, who had never been inside a pub, let alone heard any of Prokofiev’s music, in 1959. It stayed in my memory, but only later did I come to realize why the qualities that distinguish it are the very reasons that the film remains neglected by British film historians.” And later in the essay he describes the film : “…as part of an English tradition of revolt against cozy middle-class philistinism.”

Lieutenant Kije has, of course, also been used in many later films, but one’s first experience is usually the most memorable. By the way, its spelling doesn’t comply with normal transliteration from the Russian, Киже which would be ‘Kizhe’ – sounding as in ‘measure’; The ‘j’ is the letter used in French transliteration of the sound, as it had been first published in France.

The performance was surprisingly polished and re-created the character of the delicious music much more successfully than I’d thought likely from an essentially amateur orchestra. Right from the start, with a solo trumpet (Neil Dodgson I suppose) sounding from behind the scenes, I was aware of something special. The very particular orchestration was captured, and I have to express delight at the horn playing: it was as if the music’s eccentricity had inspired skills and a singular affinity. Double basses held the limelight for a few bars; the tenor sax struck the right tone and there were nifty remarks from the xylophone. Most striking of course is the sleigh ride – Troika – a term sadly, forever blackened by the harshness of the intransigent trio of torturers working their financial austerity, from the IMF, ECB and EU Commission of recent years. But the real thing transcends that unfortunate borrowing.

The performance was a small triumph for the orchestra and conductor, and a delight for the audience.

 

NZSM voice students in admirable and highly varied recital at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

NZSM Classical voice students
Emma Cronshaw Hunt, Nino Raphael, Eleanor McGechie, Garth Norman, Pasquale Orchard, Joe Haddow
Piano accompanist: Mark Dorrell

Songs and arias by Debussy, Fauré, Bellini, Schumann, Franchi, Dring, Mozart, Britten, Berlioz, Rachmaninov, Loewe, Lloyd Webber

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 20 September, 12:15 pm

We are at that time of the year, when music students are welcomed at St Andrew’s to given them some public exposure in connection with their end-of-year assessments. Here we heard six students at varying stages of their studies. Most of them had been seen in the past year or so in the school’s and other opera productions, particularly in the recent Cunning Little Vixen which had such a large cast of curious, minor characters.

Emma Cronshaw Hunt opened the recital with songs by Debussy and Fauré; her voice is attractive and seems produced with ease, though the ease tended towards some gentle scoops that detracted slightly, but they were certainly within acceptable bounds. In some quarters scoops, or portamenti, are anathema, but the technique has its place, when used tastefully. Her two songs were Debussy’s ‘Aimons-nous et dormons’ (modesty constrains a translation) and ‘Adieu’, which she sang in comfortable French, alive to the songs’ mood and meaning. In Fauré’s ‘Adieu’ there was a touch of sadness.

Nino Raphael sang one of Bellini’s gorgeous arias, ‘Vi ravviso’, from La sonnambula. He’d recently honed his opera skills as the Priest and the Badger in the Vixen. And last year he sang Leporello in Eternity Opera’s Don Giovanni. While I’d enjoyed those performances, here I detected slightly shakey intonation here and there. He followed with four short songs from Schumann’s Dichterliebe; though he caught much of the pithy characterisation and emotion, they were not, understandably,  invested with quite the intimacy and depth of feeling that the songs of the wonderful Dichterliebe cycle delineate. But that calls for considerable maturity.

Eleanor McGechie sang three songs in English: the first by New Zealand composer Dorothea Franchi – Treefall and then two by mid-century English composer Madeleine Dring whom I’d come across only last year in a St Andrew’s lunchtime concert. All three were approachable, written with a clear aim to entertain an audience, and McGechie knew how to present them in a lively and colourful way.

Garth Norman sang Figaro’s ‘Se vuol ballare’ in which he gained in confidence as it went, and then Britten’s ‘Seascape’ from From this Island. Britten can be given to accompaniments that are excessively detailed and harmonically clever and here was a case, where Mark Dorrell’s piano overwhelmed rather. But this was an attractive rendition nevertheless.

Pasquale Orchard has caught my ear several times, as Susanna in Eternity Opera’s Figaro recently, and most strikingly as the Vixen in the school of music’s Janáček production in July. ‘Le spectre de la rose’ from Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été, is a gorgeous song and I’d been very predisposed to enjoy it: I did for the most part, but Orchard’s voice in inclined to lose dynamic control towards the top and it interfered slightly with the dominant ‘spectral’ spirit of the music. However she navigated its sense and tone with great sensitivity. Her second song was early Rachmaninov: ‘O never sing to me again’ from Op 4. It was a little too loud at the start, and I wasn’t sure for some time what language she was singing it in, until certain distinctive syllables identified it as Russian. I sense that I’d have perceived that at once if the intensity of her voice had been modified a little.

Joe Haddow sang another Rachmaninov song: ‘When yesterday we met’, from Romances Op 26. His words were very distinct and even though my Russian is a bit rusty, the emotions were clear enough, and sensitively expressed. His control of tone and dynamics right across the range, are excellent.

I’m not very familiar with Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot. Haddow sang ‘If ever I would leave you’ which surprised me by starting in French (it’s from Lancelot, and showed how rusty my knowledge of the Arthurian legends is, too), but continues in another language and a familiar tune. Haddow performed it in authentic style.

Haddow stayed there and Pasquale Orchard then joined him to sing a duet: another ‘musical’ number, this one a French story but in English: ‘All I ask of you’ from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera. The two engaging young voices were vividly contrasted, but in a convincing manner.

The concert was an interesting way to get a different impression of promising young singers who have been more familiar recently in staged situations.

 

Diverting three-quarter hour of flute-flavoured song: Barbara Graham, Rebecca Steel, Fiona McCabe

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Songs at Old Saint Paul’s
Barbara Graham – soprano; Fiona McCabe – piano; Rebecca Steel – flute

Pieces by Handel, Saint-Saëns, Caplet, Mozart, Massenet and Ravel; John Dankworth arrangements of songs of Canteloube, Sondheim and himself

Old Saint Paul’s

Tuesday 19 September, 12:15 pm

For a somewhat bigger-than-average audience including, I gather, a contingent from a retirement village, all three performers contributed commentary mixing erudition with light-heartedness. So we began with references to Handel’s ode, or oratorio, L’Allegro, Il Penseroso ed il Moderato, sung by Barbara Graham. The oratorio was based on Milton’s poem of a century earlier, entitled ‘L’Allegro-Il Penseroso’, which was enlarged at the prompting of Handel’s friends, with a portrait of the ‘moderate’, shall we say, sanguine man: someone at the centre, more rational, less ideological perhaps, in keeping with the ‘Enlightenment’ of the 18th century.

Handel’s colleague and librettist Charles Jennens, who compiled/wrote several other oratorio texts, including Messiah), decided that, in addition to introducing a ‘moderate’ figure, Milton’s poem would become a dialogue, mixing lines from each of the two parts to create a more dramatic scenario.

The air ‘Sweet bird’ which Barbara sang is in Part I (‘L’Allegro’) of Handel’s work, but it is found at line 60 of ‘Il Penseroso’, the second part of Milton’s pair of poems. It is followed in the oratorio by ‘If I give thee honour due’, given to a bass singer, and that is from Milton’s ‘L’Allegro’. (Once upon a time this stuff was familiar in secondary schools; and the entire Milton poem is in A Pageant of English Verse which was a set book in my 6th form English class: I’ve still got the volume; something sad seems to have happened to secondary school syllabuses in the meantime).

Her singing was splendid: strong, well characterised, with perfectly judged vibrato and no sign of strain as she rose higher, expressing a touch of melancholy (bearing in mind that the lines are from ‘Il Penseroso’). Rebecca Steel’s flute wove charmingly around the voice; when the line rose, there was no strain; and pianist Fiona McCabe contributed a thoroughly supportive accompaniment.

Two French songs followed, with the flute as the subject; first a late song by Saint-Saëns, ‘Une flûte invisible’, with a lovely vocal melody which is echoed or supported by the piano and flute, sometimes reaching high, decoratively, yearningly.

André Caplet was a friend of Debussy and orchestrated several of Debussy’s works. His ‘Viens! … Une flûte invisible’, by Victor Hugo, was not so bird-like, or perhaps this was a sadder bird, more enigmatic in mood. It’s an enchanting song, not far removed from Debussy in character, again with its indispensable flute embellishment, all enveloped by the subtle piano. I confess to making use of YouTube to gain more familiarity with music I haven’t run into before. This delicious little song is sung by that remarkably feminine French counter-tenor Philippe Jaroussky. Though the real feminine voice of Barbara Graham was almost his equal; and there’s nothing like a live performance.

Then came an aria from Mozart’s little-known opera Un re pastore, ‘L’amorò, caro costante’. Again, in an arrangement that allowed the flute prominence, it offered Graham the chance to display dramatic powers, even though the ‘opera seria’ idiom sounds conventional to our ears. But not bad for a 19-year-old.

More French song followed: Massenet’s Élégie, for cello and orchestra, from his incidental music to Leconte de Lisle’s verse drama, ‘Les Érinnyes’ (also spelled Les Érinyes). Treating a facet of the story of the Mycenian family of Agamemnon and Menelaus, Klytemnestra, Elektra, Iphigenia, Orestes and the rest, caught up in the aftermath of the Trojan war. It’s a lovely melody that I first encountered as an easy enough cello piece; Massenet later added words which is what we heard: a little search suggests it was probably ‘Ô doux printemps d’autrefois’.

That was followed by Ravel’s ‘La flûte enchantée’ from his Shéhérazade (note, the French do not adhere to the German way of representing the ‘sh’ sound – ‘sch’ – which English for some reason has slavishly followed in this name. Though normal French spelling for that sound would be ‘ch’). Ravel was in part inspired by Rimsky-Korsakov’s brilliant four-part suite; the words are by Tristan Klingsor. It’s an exquisite melody, in which the flute proved an important contributor, much in its warm lower register, and again, Ravel’s piano part, in Fiona McCabe’s fluent hands, was very much worth attending to.

Then came three songs, arranged or composed by John Dankworth for his wife Cleo Laine; the best-known (thanks in part to Kiri), Baïlèro, from Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne. I’m afraid I was not especially taken with the Dankworth version which seemed to me to have quite abandoned, apart from the flute accompaniment, the shining luminosity of the Auvergne region.

The song from Sondheim’s Anyone Can Whistle, was more akin to the Dankworth jazz idiom; both flute and piano had attractive parts, creating a thoughtful, slightly despairing spirit. Dankworth’s own ‘Play it again Sam’, had integrity, in its conception and style, and Barbara Graham’s voice and facial and other gestures created a delightful impression. That’s what a little 5-year-old thought too, standing on the pew a couple of rows in front of me, and facing back towards me, her head and hands moving in lively and engaging response to the rhythm and spirit of the song.

The three musicians had delivered a charming ¾ of an hour of music.

NZSM students give insightful performances of New Zealand music and pieces by Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms and Barber

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Lunchtime concert at Old St Paul’s

Piano students and a violinist from the New Zealand School of Music
Amanda Bunting, Matthew Oliver, Claudia Tarrant-Matthews (also, violin) and Sophie Tarrant-Matthews

Music by Beethoven, Barber, Psathas, Haydn, Brahms, Lilburn

Old St Paul’s

Tuesday 12 September 12:15 pm

We’ve been neglecting Old St Paul’s lunchtime concerts this year, and so I was glad to find a good audience for this varied exhibition of NZSM piano talent.

It began with Amanda Bunting who played two pieces: the first movement of Beethoven’s Tempest sonata (Op 31 No 2) and Samuel Barber’s Excursions, first movement. Though the Tempest is obviously still a work in progress, with quite a lot of slips, there remained an underlying understanding of its vigorous, shall we say, masculine character, both in its expostulatory and its equally masculine quality of sensitivity.

Then her playing of the first movement, Un poco allegro, of Samuel Barber’s Excursions, one of his best known piano pieces. It’s in four movements and might well be called a suite or even a sonata. Here was a better prepared and executed performance, dealing carefully with the sharp dynamic shifts and capturing the mid-century mood and moderate modernism of composers who had not succumbed to the pressures of serialism.  Its character reminds me, curiously, of one of John Psathas’s early pieces, Waiting for the Aeroplane which of course is quite irrelevant to one’s impressions of this performance.

The next pianist was Matthew Oliver who did, in fact play a couple of pieces by Psathas; the first and third movements from his Songs for Simon for piano and tape. There were problems with the tape, with both the apparent source and quality of the sound, and its intended relationship with the piano. I could detect little connection between what the piano was doing and what seemed to be unrelated sounds from the tape. The tape was hardly audible in the first section, His Second Time; but it was clearly intended to be more dominant in Demonic Thesis. Right at its beginning, the tape problem was again obvious and simply became a distraction; Oliver might better have settled for the piano part alone which was attractive, energetic and repetitive, in a jazz-influenced sense; and he played with energy, intelligence and insight.

While its accompaniment occasionally gave hints of what Psathas had intended, a process of mentally isolating of the piano part yielded music that was inventive and enjoyable. As one does these days, I listened to a YouTube recording by Donald Nicolson in order to get a proper impression of the piece that I regret that I hadn’t heard before: particularly the way the taped percussion sounds were integrated as intended with the piano. It deserves to be better known, and I look forward to a more technically successful performance.

Two sisters, Claudia and Sophie Tarrant-Matthews completed the recital. Claudia played first, the Presto, first movement of Haydn’s Sonata in E minor, Hob XVI/34. Her handling of the sonata was most accomplished, its tempo swift and fluent, the dynamic variety and subtleties understood and vividly expressed; the quiet wit that lies within most of Haydn’s music was conspicuous.

Then she played the first two of Brahms’s four Ballades Op 10. I have always found these strangely enigmatic in terms of their rhythmic and melodic intentions, and it’s never a good idea to attempt to give such characteristics certainty; she didn’t, and it was a satisfying performance. The second Ballade is more sunny and limpid in tone, and the performance again suggested that Claudia wasn’t seeking to solve its problems, to produce a definitive performance; as with so much Brahms, this is the way his music makes its impact and holds the attention. Technically, her playing was highly competent.

Lilburn’s third sonata for violin and piano
I have followed the careers of the two sisters with interest over the years: both have achieved distinction in both piano and violin. Sophie Tarrant-Matthews then introduced Lilburn’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in B minor, composed in 1950. I was sitting a few rows back and could not hear much of what she said, which might have included some of the following background.

This Lilburn violin sonata in B minor was actually his third, and so should be listed either as No 3, or defined by its key. Though the two sonatas, in E flat and C, of 1943 are relatively youthful works (well, he was 27 or 28), they are not insignificant; in fact, they are both around ten minutes longer than the B minor one. The ‘date’ test doesn’t consign to ‘insignificance’, other much played pieces such as the Drysdale, Aotearoa and Festival overtures, Landfall in Unknown Seas and the Canzonetta for violin and viola, all written before 1943.

There have been many recordings of the B minor sonata, perhaps most recently, together with the two 1943 sonatas, by Justine Cormack and Michael Houstoun. (see the list of earlier recordings in Peter Mechen’s review of 14 September 2011, of the recording by Elizabeth Holowell and Dean Sky-Lucas). The 1943 sonatas were first performed, respectively, by, Vivien Dixon (violin) and Anthea Harley Slack (piano), and Maurice Clare (violin) and Noel Newson (piano). The B minor sonata was written in 1950 for Frederick Page (pianist and head of the music department of Victoria University College) and violinist Ruth Pearl, after Lilburn had become a lecturer at the university; they premiered it at the university and then played it again three months later in Wigmore Hall in London.

As Sophie spoke, Claudia dispensed with her piano hands and reached for her violin, and her sister sat at the piano, which of course contributes much more than mere accompaniment to the work. To hear playing of such a finely integrated work by two sisters with years of experience playing together, was very interesting. The affinity between two who obviously enjoy a close musical rapport has developed over many years, to the point where they almost think and feel as one: with an intimately shared view of the character and shape of the music, and grasp of its melodic characteristics.

It’s in one movement, consisting of several contrasting phases, which are not distinct enough to be considered ‘movements’. For the record, the sections are marked: Molto moderato; Allegro; Tempo primo, largamente; Allegro; Allargando and Tempo I, tranquillamente; which returns the music to the home key of B minor.  The parts are conspicuous enough on the page, but the shifts in both tempo and tonality are so organically natural, and handled with such finesse that they clearly form parts of a carefully composed whole. Not only were the slow parts invested with a mature contemplative quality, but the Allegro sections were executed with strength and real conviction. The typical Lilburn spirit lies in the way the energetic B flat Allegro section subsides towards the end to return to the calm of the opening Molto moderato.

 

Orchestra Wellington with scintillating programme: Grieg piano concerto midst spectacular orchestral waltzes

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Orchestra Wellington conducted by Marc Taddei
Pianist: Jian Liu

Ravel: Valses nobles et sentimentales
Grieg: Piano Concerto in A minor
Weber: Invitation to the Dance (orchestrated by Berlioz)
Ravel: La valse

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 9 September, 7:30 pm

Orchestra Wellington’s 2017 series has followed the theme of music inspired or commissioned by the great impresario Serge Diaghilev. The two pieces with Diaghilev connections at this concert were Weber’s Invitation to the Dance and Ravel’s La valse, though there was also a ballet connection with the first Ravel music in the programme which was originally a set of waltzes for piano which Ravel orchestrated at the request, not of Diaghilev, but of ballerina Natasha Trouhanova.

Ravel based his set of eight waltzes on the many that Schubert had written for the piano: a set of 34 dances entitled Valses sentimentales, in 1823 and a set of 12 entitled Valses nobles, in 1826. Ravel originally called his orchestrated waltzes Adélaïde, ou le langage des fleurs.

A programme note by pianist Richard Dowling describes the original ballet performance: “It was orchestrated in two weeks in March 1912 and the ballet was performed in April 22, 1912 at the Théatre du Chatelet with Ravel conducting the Lamoreux Orchestra. Mme. Trouhanova danced the part of Adelaide. The premiere was an outstanding event, as four ballets were conducted by their respective composers, Vincent d’Indy, Florent Schmitt, Paul Dukas, and Ravel.”

Ravel composed, not just a set of individual dances, but a sensitively composed, unified work. That’s not to say it has a formal structure like a sonata movement, but a sequence that finds unity in melodic, rhythmic, emotional contrast in a way similar to the pattern of a suite or set of character pieces such as Schumann composed for the piano. The variety ensures that the listener is constantly stimulated by something fresh, but a creatively composed suite also creates a coherent, integrated group, each supporting or offering a connection with the next.

The problem with music that has been first conceived for a certain instrument or instruments, and later arranged for others, is the feeling, hard to dislodge, that the second version is something of a compromise or trade-off with the original. Here the big orchestra dramatized the waltzes, perhaps burdening the piano score with unnecessary colour and tonal variety; Taddei was careful to invest them with appropriate charm, energy, calm, delicacy, a touch of mystery or melancholy, the unexpected or enigmatic.

Grieg’s piano concerto is allegedly one of the most popular, but I’m mystified as to how it gains familiarity these days when there are so few live performances (that I have recent memory of); nor does it get played by RNZ Concert (which is surprising in light of their obsession with certain categories of the very popular classics). So what emerged as a lovely performance of a, to me, thoroughly familiar and well-loved concerto might not have been that for many of the audience. In addition, it used commonly to be belittled as a youthful, immature work, and evidence that Grieg was merely a miniaturist and couldn’t handle big forms. I’ve never agreed at all.

I used to love the Schumann concerto (which we heard played by Stephen de Pledge a month ago) more than Grieg’s, but the effect of this performance re-awoke my affection for Grieg, with Jian Liu’s luminous, calm, deeply felt performance and demeanour, and with very similar characteristics emerging from the orchestra.

New-comers to it could scarcely have had a more persuasive introduction. All its important features were in place: the big opening timpani statement preceding the arresting piano double octaves that at once subsides as the orchestra quietly runs through the opening themes long before the piano re-enters to elaborate on what we’ve heard. Jian Liu at once established his tone of poetic graciousness that really characterised the whole piece, even in the more flamboyant parts of the last movement, though I note that it’s marked ‘Allegro moderato molto e marcato’ rather that ‘molto vivace’ or ‘presto’, or ‘con fuoco’, etc. Though the long cadenza is a poetic rather than a virtuoso exercise, which Liu made no attempt to impose, all the brilliance necessary was there, and he seemed always driven by the view of the cadenza as an integral part of movement. Each phrase was given charming breathing space, and such things as slightly prolonged gaps between certain big chords at its climax were beautifully judged.

The second movement expresses a gentle calm that Liu approached almost diffidently, though the deft keyboard flutterings, at one point duetting with Ed Allen’s perfectly sympathetic solo horn and with Mark Cookson’s clarinet also distinctive. But the charms of the slow-movement don’t end, as the last movement too, passes through contrasting meditative and calm episodes between its excitable and challenging bravura passages.

Weber’s Invitation
I was ready to consider the Grieg the concert’s highlight (and really, it was), but to get a rare live hearing of Berlioz’s sensitive and felicitous orchestration of Weber’s Invitation to the Dance was a treat, and attention was rightly focused on Brenton Veitch’s beautiful cello ‘invitation’ and courteous ‘escorting of his partner back to her seat’ after the waltz ends. Marc Taddei’s own introduction, discreetly reminding those unfamiliar with it not to clap at the end of the waltz itself, did the trick. It was a lovely way to awaken those who had not already discovered it, to Berlioz’s genius in finding extraordinarily sensitive orchestral interpretations of tales, moods and visual scenes.

La valse
If I’d felt that the Ravellian orchestra weighed a bit heavily on the Valses nobles…,  La valse itself was rather different, conceived and designed by Ravel as an orchestral tour-de-force. This performance, employing very large wind and percussion sections, and two harps, emphasised the traditional character of ‘the waltz’ and for about two-thirds of its length it may have been formally modelled on the concert waltzes of Johann or Richard Strauss. But it becomes increasingly clear that the composer wanted to dramatise the potentially frenzied and chaotic characteristics that he felt impacted 19th century society, and the orchestra successfully navigated its path to the almost stupefying climax with increasing intensity, yet there was little loss of detail in the performance that was truly a credit to Taddei and the orchestra.

 

St Andrew’s captures fascinating sample from the 44th International Viola Congress in Wellington

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Recital by leading Polish violist Marcin Murawski and pianist Gabriela Glapska

Music by Grażyna Bacewicz, Michael Kimber, Paweł Michałowski, Henryk Wieniawski, Władysław Żeleński, Fryderyk Chopin

St  Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 6 September, 12:15 pm

St Andrew’s managed to attract one of the visitors to the 44th International Viola Congress that was held in Wellington over the weekend. Polish violist Marcin Murawski together with pianist Gabriela Glapska (Polish doctoral student at Victoria University’s School of Music) played an interesting 45 minutes of Polish music. Apart from a couple of pieces by contemporary composers, most was by 19th century composers, and it was little surprise to find that two of Chopin’s Nocturnes ended the recital and that another was by one of the most brilliant composer/violinists of the 19th century, Henryk Wieniawski.

It was a programme that confirmed the impression that most would have, that the viola is an unostentatious instrument whose forte is meditative, calm, elegiac music, rather in line with at least some of the music that was played in the NZSO concert on Monday when three violists from the congress played evocative, pictorial, striking works written or arranged for the viola.

This concert consisted of pieces that were apparently composed for the viola, though the two Chopin Nocturnes were obviously and very successfully given a viola line.

The first piece, Polish Caprice, for solo viola, was written in 1949 by Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969) who, the Internet tells me, Paderewski enabled to attend an academy in Paris where she studied with Nadia Boulanger. She is regarded as the most outstanding 20th century Polish female composer. It presented the viola in its quintessential character, thoughtful, very quiet and slow, hovering around the bottom, C string. But it soon evolved into a short, brisk dance-like phase, individual in character and somewhat angular. It ended all of a sudden.

United States composer and violist Michael Kimber wrote Murovisation. He is clearly a close friend and colleague of Murawski who has released six CDs of Kimber’s music played by Murawski’s viola quartet; Murovisation, again for viola alone, is on the first of those discs, its title clearly acknowledging the relationship between composer and violist. It is one of those pieces that opens so tentatively that I thought for a moment he was just tuning up. It became a series of slow, rising, widely spaced notes, a sort of arpeggio, endlessly, slowly, modifying as if exploring for the listener’s sake, the secrets of the viola’s beauty with a sense of mystery. It gradually accelerated, tumultuously and then returned, slowing to the sounds with which it started.

Paweł Michałowski was born in Wrocław in 1982 and appears to be primarily a bass guitar player, but with many other musical and scholarly sidelines, including a PhD that sought to reconstruct John Lock’s philosophy of language. I found a reference to his Lullaby Passacaglia (Passacaglia kołysanka, if you’d like the Polish) on a CD of passacaglias by several composers from Biber onward, played by a quartet of two violas, violin and piano, one of the violas being Murawski, though he played it here as a solo viola piece. It was a lullaby in the sense of being slowly rhythmic, quiet, such as to send a child to sleep; not the least dissonant, but subject to a slowly increasing intensity of expression. It demanded considerable technical feats that did not aim to be flamboyant or virtuosic.

Then came composer and great violinist Wieniawski and, for the first time, pianist Gabriela Glapski. Wieniawski’s Reverie offered alternating piano and viola solo passages at the beginning, so we become aware that Murawski had a highly talented partner. The music matched its title, creating a mood suggesting the two reminiscing, and when they came together the reflective mood remained though each became more distinct.

Throughout the concert, Murawski’s instrument and his playing captured what I have always felt to be the essence of the viola’s character. What Wieniawski we usually hear are the violin concertos – splendid pieces – and so it was interesting to hear something different that confirmed his place as a real composer rather than one confined to the player’s own instrument.

Władysław Żeleński was a contemporary of Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, Grieg,… and his Lullaby (kołysanka again) sounded of that period. His melodies betrayed a distinct Romantic strain, which viola and piano captured in a subdued, rocking rhythm.

Two of Chopin’s Nocturnes (No 18 in E, Op 62/2 and No 13 in C minor, Op 48/1) were obvious candidates to continue the theme, with the addition of a viola line that seemed a perfectly integral part of the music and did not detract from the spirit of Chopin’s creations. Naturally, neither called for pyrotechnics, and the players’ approach was a combination of conviction and an unaffected aim to be faithful to the original; in fact Chopin’s long melodic lines almost suggested that it might have been Chopin who had reduced the score for viola and piano to piano alone.

So, though I was delighted to be at the Viola Congress’s concert with the NZSO on Monday, I rather regretted not getting to any of the events during the weekend (as I had at the 2001 congress that was similarly hosted by Donald Maurice and Massey University’s then Conservatorium of Music) and so I was very happy to hear this visitor’s playing, first of music of, for me, unknown Polish composers, and second, such quintessentially evocative and beautiful viola music.

 

Momentous performances of Beethoven violin sonatas: the third and fourth recitals

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Michael Houstoun (piano) and Bella Hristova (violin)
Chamber Music New Zealand

Beethoven’s Violin Sonatas: Concerts 3 and 4

Violin Sonata No 8 in G, Op 30 No 3 and No 9 in A, Op 47 (‘Kreutzer’)
Violin Sonata No 3 in E flat, Op 12 No 3 and No 10 in G, Op 96

Renouf Foyer, Michael Fowler Centre

Wednesday 30 August and Thursday 31 August 2017, noon

My only knowledge of an earlier full cycle of Beethoven’s violin sonatas is at the first New Zealand International Festival of the Arts in 1986. They were played by Maurice Hasson and Maurice Till, in three recitals: two in the old Concert Chamber of the Town Hall and the third, which included the Kreutzer, in the main auditorium of the Town Hall. The old concert chamber, for those whose memories are not so long, seated many more than its replacement the Ilott did; it was upstairs, where the mayoral chambers were located after the 1990s refurbishment of the building (just incidentally, why was that major restoration not sufficient to meet earthquake standards only two decades later?).

It was the beginning of a truly optimistic era when Wellington’s claimed cultural pre-eminence was fairly undisputed; that ritual claim is now a joke. The music-rich festival was possible as a result of sponsorship by most of the major New Zealand state and private corporations, most of which abandoned Wellington as an indirect result of the neo-liberal devastation of the late 80s and early 90s. At that first, 1986, festival there were about 36 concerts of real classical music, which I’ll write about in an ‘extra’ article shortly.

This time we heard at the piano the most distinguished of Maurice Till’s pupils. Houstoun and the 2007 winner of the Michael Hill International Violin Competition spread them over five hour-long lunchtime recitals, in the Renouf Foyer where they were positioned backing the long south wall , between the two bars.

The sonatas were paired interestingly, the first and the second of each set of three, together; Opp 12 and 30; the Op 23 and 24 pair (which had probably been intended to be published under the same opus number) were played together on Tuesday; while the last two, Opp 47 and 96, had the third of the Opp 12 and 30 sets as mates.

Op 30 No 3, in G, opened calmly and swiftly (relative to some), both instruments in admirable accord in terms of dynamics and expressive detail, allowing a quite subtle increase in volume as the theme was repeated. The piano seems to make the running for some time, while the violin is involved in more decorative effects, perhaps reflecting sympathetically on what the piano is saying. The atmosphere hardly changes from a congenial and sunny character apart from the few moments when the violin delivers rapid tremolo phrases.

There was a charming touch of hesitancy in the Minuet, second movement which is largely a study in triplets – triplet quavers inside the minuet rhythm, yet in many ways it seemed to be the thoughtful, meditative heart of the sonata. And the last movement, though fast, never sacrificed its basic elegance which was shared gracefully between the two instruments.

The ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata
Then the Kreutzer. Unlike all the earlier sonatas, its inspiration lay in intended performance by a star violinist, and its quasi-symphonic character confers a reputation that tends to put it in a privileged class. A provenance similar to that of Op 96 which was in Thursday’s concert, and which for me is at least as interesting. However, the Kreutzer is a big drama and the two met it on those terms. The singular, tentative opening by the violin set the scene which was reflected in different colours by the piano. It seemed to me that the shifting moods and meanings of the body of the first movement were superbly balanced as each instrument found its own voice, the one never impeding the other, even through the increasingly tumultuous episodes.

The ‘theme and variations’ second movement opens undemonstratively, but goes through the typical range of sharply contrasted variations, the first two offering a dominant role, inviting attentiveness first to one, then to the other was like a display of mutual admiration and respect. Later came the time for virtuosic, meditative, more purely decorative episodes but ending in pensive tones. The Presto movement suggests a tarantella, and the players again dealt impressively with the successive, abrupt mood changes: calm, then agitated and brilliant. They were admirably balanced and cohesive, and given their contrasting musical backgrounds, displaying a oneness of vision that filled the space.

Thursday: Opus 12 No 3
The Thursday concert included the other stand-alone sonata, Op 96 – the tenth, premiered in 1813, nearly a decade after the ‘Kreutzer’. It might have been interesting to have heard the two successively.

But first came the third of the Opus 12 sonatas, in E flat, and it was here that I felt, for the only time, that the piano was out of step with the violin. The piano was in charge right from the start; not merely in charge, but somewhat unmindful of the complementary role of the violin. It was an impression that I was initially ready to attribute to my position, on the right side of the players, that is, the Town Hall side (on Wednesday I’d been on the left of the players). It was so unexpected that I imagined for a while that I was imagining the effect, and that I must try to rid my head of prejudice, if that was the problem. But even when piano and violin seemed equal partners in terms of the music’s spirit and interest, I couldn’t avoid the feeling that the piano was careless of its impact on the balance; and I couldn’t persuade myself that it was somehow the violin which was not measuring up.

The second movement brought better balance however, even where the violin’s role was to express the calm and dreaminess of the Adagio, and so this was the most successful part of the E flat sonata. However, in the third movement the same sort of imbalance recurred. While I didn’t conduct a statistically flawless survey, the odd comment from acquaintances, unprompted, rather confirmed my own impressions.

Opus 96
The Opus 96, G major sonata (the second of the ten in that key), returned to the flawless performances of the two sonatas on Wednesday, where there existed a courteous and discreet balance between the two parties; a congenial conversation between them, reasoned and thoughtful. Between its expressive thematic clauses, decorative passagework was shared beautifully between the two. The character of the Adagio espressivo, and much else in the piece, which the programme notes attributed to the known talents of the violinist for whom it was written, was particularly rapturous: meditative in the best Beethovenian sense, unobtrusive and wistful. It responded magically to the sensitivity and supremely unhurried pace at which Hristova and Houstoun stepped through it.

I will now risk confessing that I had forgotten that the music that emerged in the fourth movement and which I seemed to know much better than the earlier movements, belonged to this sonata. As a finale, it seems unusual, not at all a compulsive race to the finish, but a series of superficially distinct episodes, in turn animated, brusque, meditative, meandering, in lively conversations that dart suddenly this way and that. As you think the real coda has at last arrived, comes yet another change of mood and a sort of secretive exchange emerges till the first theme reappears, only to be interrupted as the listener is tricked again and again, Haydn-like, by unfulfilled expectations. I may well have decided that this was my favourite of the ten sonatas, though with players of the calibre and sensitivity of these two it tended to be the response to nearly every one of them.