Author: Lindis Taylor

Kent McIntosh, Bianca Andrew with Catherine Norton: German and Swedish songs and Janáček’s remarkable cycle

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Diary of One Who Disappeared by Janáček

Kent McIntosh (New Zealand tenor, resident in Australia), Bianca Andrew (mezzo), Catherine Norton (piano)

And songs by
Wolf: ‘Auf einer Wanderung’
Mahler: ‘Wer had dies Liedlein erdacht?’
Alfvén: ‘Skogen sover’
Sibelius: ‘Flickan kom ifran sin äisklings mote’ and ‘Var det en dröm?’
Kurt Weill: ’It never was you’

Adam Concert Room, New Zealand School of Music

Saturday 19 August, 7:30 pm

The first half of this recital – Lieder – was given to mezzo Bianca Andrew while the Janáček was sung (mainly) by Kent McIntosh.

To devote the song part to Lieder in German and Swedish (and an American-German) was to lend it very comforting variety, and filled the time to an hour. It might have been decided that Janáček could be accompanied by other Czech or Slavonic songs, which could have been interesting, but this programme was very nicely composed.

What was more of a problem was the atmosphere of the venue. There was a sadly small audience; it was a cold, wet evening; lighting was bright and unforgiving, and the combination of rather serious, though in some respects quirky and droll, songs, with the quite unique Diary, labelled a ‘song cycle’ made for an unfamiliar, though in the end, stimulating programme.

Bianca Andrew and pianist Catherine Norton performed the Lieder scrupulously, with great insight.  Hugo Wolf felt a special affinity with Möricke and set 53 of his poems. ‘Auf einer Wanderung’ is typical in its capricious mood shifts reflecting the changing thoughts and reactions of the young man in a new town. Her penetrating, appealing voice remained in perfect balance with the piano.

Mahler’s ‘Wer had dies Liedlein erdacht?’ comes from his collection of settings of the hundreds of folk songs published in the first decade of the 19th century by Arnim and Brentano, Des Knaben Wunderhorn. This one is typical of the sometimes bizarre and irrational little tales they tell. The piano begins with a peasantish dance introducing the first care-free moments, then cautious and finally a bit of nonsense, beautifully sung.

The other songs were in Swedish, the first by Hugo Alfvén, best known for his Midsommarvaka, his Swedish Rhapsody. ‘Skogen sover’ is a nocturnal song, clearly influenced by German Lieder, yet distinctive, with a piano part depicting night personifying the poet’s sleeping lover. And two Sibelius songs (almost all he composed were in Swedish, the language his family spoke). In the first, ‘Flickan kom ifran sin äisklings mote’, the piano was even more emotional, even ferocious than the voice which rose to a shrillness that yet remained within the bounds of taste. The line was more legato in ‘Var det en dröm?’over a rippling piano, again in a song that handled moods that shifted from unease to despair and finally ecstasy.

Bianca Andrew’s last song was from Kurt Weill’s Knickerbocker Holiday: ‘It never was you’, which she has made something of her own. It was a song that continued the theme common in her other songs: the theme of enigmatic love lost and found, doubted and fleetingly attained, and her singing of this elusive number showed why it’s become a signature for her.

Catherine remained at the piano and played an introductory note at which dark-suited Kent McIntosh emerged from behind the audience. Janáček’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared is described as having a dramatic character, and it is sometimes staged, costumed, in a simple way, though some directors have gone as far as to simulate sex: thankfully that temptation was resisted. The performance thus had little in the way of alleviating elements that might have shifted audience attention to the story and the narrator’s dilemma rather than demanding so much of the singers, whose every note, inflexion, gesture and movement was the sole focus.

Though McIntosh is essentially a chorus singer (with Opera Australia), he has given a number of song recitals over the years (though I don’t recall an earlier one in New Zealand).

His tackling of the Janáček cycle (it can be compared to Schubert’s two cycles in that it tells a story, but its individual sections are hardly songs in their own right) was a brave undertaking. McIntosh’s tenor voice has colour and intensity and he succeeds generally in the challenge of negotiating the terse language of the Czech poems (though of course, in translation), and musical line creating a credible predicament, the denouement of which, one senses, can only be tragic.

Here and there one felt a loss of narrative flow in the first eight poems, but it’s a welcome respite when the Gypsy girl (Bianca) enters and the story gains through the tension that this encounter injects. It is here where a certain amount of staging might have enlivened the presentation.

A very singular interlude is the Intermezzo, where the singers disappear and the piano alone suggests the impending outcome through music of awful desolation. Similarly, the interjection of three female singers in the balcony to the rear, was highly evocative.

As with so much else of Janáček, this is a singularly unusual work, hard to characterise; though quite short, it succeeds in creating a vivid psychological dilemma, exploring cross-cultural, class and family issues that might normally be the substance of a full opera. Much shorter than Winterreise of course, it traverses comparable emotional territory, though handling a tragic tale of far greater depth and complexity.

It was a brave and largely successful enterprise that deserved a bigger audience.

Beautiful Lieder recital from Maaike Christie-Beekmann, viola and piano

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s Lunchtime concerts

Maaike Beekman-Christie (mezzo soprano) with Rachel Thomson (piano) and Chris van der Zee (viola)

Brahms: Two songs for mezzo, viola and piano:Op 91: Gestillte Sehnsucht and Die Ihr schwebet or Geistliches Wiegenlied
Schumann: Frauen-liebe und -leben (the first six songs)
Wolf: three Mignon songs (not performed)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 16 August, 12:15 pm

I wondered whether it was quite appropriate to review this recital, because, before she began, mezzo Maaike Christie-Beekman had explained that a voice problem might not allow her to get very far through the published programme.

I think her tactics were sensible when she began with the two Brahms songs, rather than with Schumann’s eight-song cycle which she then approached. And she abandoned Wolf’s Mignon songs (from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister) altogether.

Brahms Zwei Gesänge, Opus 91
Here were two of Brahms most beautiful and spiritual (allowing that he was an agnostic) songs, which were composed with an obbligato viola part. The opening of the first song which might be translated ‘suppressed’ or ‘stilled longing’, began with the rather singular sound of viola and piano – the particularly gorgeous tone of Chris van der Zee’s instrument, and Rachel Thomson’s more familiar, insightful piano – that captured the somewhat sombre tone of the song in a very arresting way. Whether it was her being careful with her voice or her sensitive response to the nature of the poems and their settings, I don’t know.

The poems had quite different origins. ‘Gestillte Sehnsucht’ by Rückert who, for the musical, is best known for Mahler’s settings of a small group of poems; while ‘Geistliches Wiegenlied’ (its first line, ‘Die ihr schwebet’), was a paraphrase by Emanuel von Geibel of a poem by famous 16-17th century Spanish playwright and poet Lope de Vega (a contemporary of Shakespeare). Geibel was a lesser poet of the Romantic period, a bit younger than Heine and Möricke. That poem was later set by Hugo Wolf, in his Spanisches Liederbuch.

Brahms set them with viola obbligato for his violinist friend Joachim, who was particularly fond of the viola, to mark the birth of Joachim and his wife’s first child.  I found a different slant to the story about the pair of songs in programme notes for the Los Angeles Philharmonic (on the Internet of course):

In 1863 violinist Joseph Joachim married the distinguished mezzo-soprano Amalie Schneeweiss. Both were important musical partners for Brahms, as well as close personal friends. They later had a son, named Johannes in honor of Brahms. The composer wrote an enchanted cradle song (“Geistliches Wiegenlied,” Sacred Lullaby) for his namesake, which Amalie could sing with Joseph playing the viola, Brahms’ favorite string instrument.

But the marriage became troubled by Joachim’s paranoid delusions about an affair he imagined Amalie had with Fritz August Simrock, Brahms’ publisher. Hoping to bring them together, Brahms reworked the lullaby and wrote a new song, “Gestillte Sehnsucht” (Stilled Longing). Blissfully domestic as the song was, it failed to repair the rift, and when Brahms testified on Amalie’s side in the subsequent divorce proceedings brought by Joseph, the violinist extended the broken relationship to include Brahms as well.

The second song began in a similar vein, reaching somewhat higher, it seemed, and here and there with a little more intensity. I think Brahms songs (all songs really) bloom with singing that pays more attention to simple modesty and unpretentiousness, and where the singer succeeds in telling the listener that (s)he finds sheer delight in their performance. That rather rare quality probably explains why I tend not to feel the sort of affection and delight in Brahms that I do in Schubert and Schumann. These quite overturned that feeling.

Frauenliebe und -leben
Then the Schumann cycle: among my dozen desert island discs. I was enraptured by them very early – say my late teens, as a result of one of the rather few rich and happy experiences at secondary school. Both my German masters for the compressed courses in the sixth and upper sixth forms loved music and used songs to embed the sounds of the language in our heads. Though I didn’t hear these particular songs at college the passion I’d developed for both German Romantic poetry and Lieder, led to a lot of eager exploration in my university years, where I continued with German (though without a lecturer with much interest in music). So I encountered poems by all the main poets, including Rückert and Chamisso (the poet of the Schumann cycle), and of course, Goethe and Schiller, Hölderlin, Tieck and Novalis, Uhland, Eichendorf, Müller (of Die schöne Müllerin and Die Winterreise), the two who collected the folk song collection, Des Knaben Wunderhorn (Arnim and Brentano), Möricke, Heine, and Geibel (of the second Brahms song).

I remember it struck me then that Germany had far more poets of the Romantic era that one knew about, than Britain, though I surmised there might be some difference in intellectual and literary quality at the less remarkable end of the German school.

Here endeth lesson in German Romantic poetry.

Schumann’s cycle has been subject to strange, perverse comments (hardly to be called ‘criticism’): a male purporting to write from the female perspective has to be either dishonest or sentimental since the feminine psyche hardly warrants serious study, or something of that kind… Such can be the charges against both poet and composer. In other words, only a female can hope to have the slightest understanding of the emotions depicted in poems about a woman’s life and love. I’ve always considered that nonsense; though I confess I’d have trouble hearing a male sing them (there are some or record).

So of the eight songs in the cycle, Maaike Christie-Beekman managed six. ‘Seit ich ihn gesehen’ quickly had me feeling quite weepy: the combination of the sentiments in the song and sudden impact of hearing the hushed sincerity that this gifted singer brought to it, and to the later ones. The sort of emotion that Janet Baker creates, not over-precisely articulated, merely expressing with genuine sensitivity and emotion what the words are saying.

‘Er, der Herrlichste von allen’ more open and confident, even ardent, and again the fact that she was guarding her voice enhanced the otherness of the song. A jumpy, hesitant feeling came with ‘Ich kann’s nicht fassen’: her disbelief that he can really love her so!

And then the one that took root first for me, and probably others: ‘Du Ring am meinem Finger’ where she’s married, and there’s a trace of disbelief amid her ecstasy and wonderment. And all these emotions seemed so genuinely present in her voice.

‘Helft mir, ihr Schwestern’ describes the preparations for the wedding, excitement, trepidation, over rolling piano chards. And as with so many Schumann songs there’s an enchanting postlude, a sort of commentary by the piano on what the singer is really trying to say!

‘Süsser Freund’, with its confusion between her beloved’s face and that of a hoped-for baby; the sort of song that would probably have seemed quite beyond the pale in 19th century Britain!.

And there she stopped, clearly aware of the greater demands of intensity demanded from the next two songs, particularly ‘An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust’, describing the ecstasy at her first baby, and the heart-wrenching last song describing her grief at her husband’s death. There’s much in the last three poems, at least, that probably struck stiff-upper lip English readers and critics as excessively mawkish and sentimental. I simply think they’re moving and beautiful poems and their settings incomparable.

Perhaps it was as well to go out on a happier note. Even abbreviated, it was a wonderful little recital, and I long for the whole thing from Christie-Beekman. And the Wolf and lots more….

 

Bruch’s violin concerto and Beethoven’s Seventh survive another (splendid) exposure as great works

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Edo de Waart with Karen Gomyo – violin

John Adams: Short Ride on a Fast Machine
Bruch: Violin Concerto No 1 in G minor
Beethoven: Symphony No 7 in A

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 12 August, 7:30 pm

It’s unusual for the NZSO to stage two concerts on consecutive evenings in the same town, though often enough they travel to different towns for concerts on consecutive nights. This time it was presumably to make full use of Karen Gomyo’s short visit to New Zealand with concerts only in Wellington and Auckland.

In the past I have remarked on the boring CVs about guest soloists that get printed in the NZSO’s, and other concert promoters’ programmes. Their unvarying pattern, moving through lists of festivals, orchestras, conductors, glamorous venues, highlights of the current year, and major premieres. Almost never mention of early years, education, musical studies. Very rarely do they mention earlier visits to New Zealand, unless the NZSO happens to be accorded distinguished orchestra ranking in the artist agent’s hand-out.

In this case, there is no mention in the programme of Gomyo’s earlier visit to New Zealand, in June 2015, to replace Hilary Hahn at the farewell concert for Pietari Inkinen, playing the Beethoven violin concerto. Though the press publicity beforehand mentioned it.

Here, with Bruch’s first violin concerto, her characteristic playing that impressed two years ago, her scrupulous and refined bowing, and dynamic subtlety, found fertile ground and had more scope in the Romantic heartland in which Bruch lived. Beginning with slow, secretive strokes on timpani, that expressed tension as much as magic; the flutes, clarinets and prominent bassoons made way gently for her entry: an auspicious beginning that seemed never to falter thereafter. Her playing seems characteristically quiet and it can lead one to feel that the orchestra is sometimes too loud; I heard one or two comments about her quiet playing, suggesting that she allowed herself to be covered by the orchestra, but the work is pretty carefully written so that the orchestra and soloist are rarely competing for space; the relationship between orchestra and soloist seemed meticulously judged. The violin doesn’t have to be dominant throughout and the pleasure lay then in the music’s sustained melodic beauty, and Gomyo’s delicacy and unostentatious approach didn’t fundamentally change as the movement’s more dramatic phase took hold.

Her brief cadenza towards the end of the first movement was fervent rather than showily spectacular and the rest of the movement is simply a fading away to the start of the Adagio, which though in a gentle triple time sustains much the same mood. It is of course a ravishingly beautiful movement (making you astonished, and sad, every time, that Bruch didn’t find comparable ideas to weave into more of his music).

The Finale is in the conventional pattern and has further memorable melodies that those of us who don’t allow conventional prejudices to colour our views of Bruch, hardly tire of. Her sound was simply discreet and gorgeous, overflowing with soulfulness, even when some fairly spectacular playing was taking place.

The concert had opened with John Adams’s perhaps most famous piece, Short Ride on a Fast Machine. It’s certainly a winner with audiences and De Waart employed no undue restraint in driving as if on a Grand Prix track, maintaining a thrilling pulse for its five minutes. Incidentally, poking about the Internet I came across a book by Magnus McGrandle with the same title and the blurb characterises it: ‘Short Ride on A Fast Machine is a quirky and engaging caper, the story of a young cycle courier from London who goes on an improbable journey to Norway, to pick up a stuffed owl for a mysterious client.’ Reportedly just published; is he paying Adams royalties?

The second half was Beethoven’s equivalent of the Fast Ride, the seventh symphony which, mythically, inspired Weber to write that it was ‘evidence that its composer had lost his mind’, and, Friedrich Wieck (father of Clara Schumann) maintained that ‘the music could only have been written by someone who was seriously intoxicated’. But see below…

The orchestra is taking its period authenticity commitments seriously: here with 18th century style timpani, or kettledrums as they used to be called; a bit sharper in impact and not as opulent. Otherwise normal, double winds, though four horns, two trumpets and no trombones.

The orchestra size and De Waart’s speed intensified rather than reduced its keen-edged impact, that heightens the sense of being slightly unhinged; perhaps Weber could be forgiven if he’d heard a really fast driven performance. I imagine that we don’t know details of the speeds at which Salieri took its first performance in December 1813.

There are many quotable comments on this symphony, perhaps the most famous, Wagner’s who called it ‘the apotheosis of the dance’. But there were a few deaf critics; it was of the first movement that Weber is alleged to have written. But the authority Wikipedia dismisses it. It’s worth quoting:

‘The oft-repeated claim that Weber considered the chromatic bass line in the coda of the first movement evidence that Beethoven was “ripe for the madhouse”, seems to have been the invention of Beethoven’s first biographer, Anton Schindler. His possessive adulation of Beethoven is well-known, and he was criticised by his contemporaries for his obsessive attacks on Weber. According to John Warrack, Weber’s biographer, Schindler was characteristically evasive when defending Beethoven, and there is “no shred of concrete evidence” that Weber ever made the remark.’

It was in the second movement , a mere Allegretto, where there was a pause to catch breath. It was somewhat secretive, emerging into the light of day slowly. The third movement is not actually named Scherzo: merely Presto, with sharply contrasted moods in not closely related keys between the Scherzo A section, and Trio, B section; and there’s the quirky, teasing feeling in the unusual second and almost a third reappearance of the Trio. It came off brilliantly.

As did the last movement, with its sense of cosmic power and urgency, of ‘Bacchic fury’ (Donald Tovey), with its reputation as one of the most extraordinary compositions of all time. De Waart’s dynamic gestures were not the least exaggerated, the fierce down-beats, the writhing basses and cellos and the steadily rising crescendo as it wound its way through a seeming (but not actual, I’m sure) accelerando, to a finish that generated shouts and prolonged clapping.

One often wonders, presented with another performance of a Beethoven symphony, whether over-exposure will diminish its impact at one’s 37th hearing. But it didn’t this time, at least.

Eternity opera’s triumph with The Marriage of Figaro – with the second cast

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Eternity Opera Company
The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart
Conducted by Simon Romanos and directed by Alex Galvin
‘Second cast’

Cast in order of appearance
Figaro – William McElwee
Susanna – Pasquale Orchard
Marcellina – Laura Loach
Dr Bartolo – Richard Dean
Cherubino – Olivia Sheat
Count – William King
Don Basilio – Peter King
Countess – Hannah Catrin Jones
Antonio – Minto Fung
Barbarina – Alexandra Woodhouse

Set designer =- Darryl Ng
Costume designer – Sally Gray
Choreographer – India Loveday
Lighting designer – Haami Hawkins

Hannah Playhouse

Sunday 6 August, 6 pm

The production was performed seven times over a week, with only one dark evening, on Monday the 7th. There were two casts, but that did not mean each had a quiet time every other day, for each acted as the chorus for the other on alternate evenings. It was a busy week for everyone.

Last year’s Don Giovanni had been scheduled in the same way which was presumably considered successful. Because I was to review Orchestra Wellington’s Daphnis et Chloé concert on the opera’s first night (Saturday 5 August) I opted to review the second cast, on the Sunday.

Delight with the second cast
I was so delighted by that performance that I was inspired to write a quick little review on the Sunday evening, enthusing about it so that it might influence attendance over the rest of the week.

But when Peter Mechen’s review of the Saturday performance appeared promptly, I decided there was no need for what would have been little more than a plug for the production. (I knew it would be a few days before I could finish a fuller review, as I had the Daphnis et Chloé review to write, a dense book to finish before my book discussion group on Tuesday and preparations for a U3A opera presentation two days later).

I came away from the performance by the ‘second cast’ happy that this small company had again succeeded so well. If this was the ‘second’, usually not quite as strong as the first, the latter was presumably impressive indeed, even though I had it from Director Alex Galvin that the two were well balanced. Now, having also heard the ‘first cast’ on Thursday evening, I have to agree that there were rather more very good performances in the latter cast, with several strong singers who either had the character of the opera in their blood or were well directed by a conductor and director, more likely, both. In contrast with last year’s production, there had been more rehearsal for Figaro, both for singers and instrumentalists.

There was musical sparkle and energy, in performances of such confidence that the story came to life as I’ve rarely experienced it even in professional productions. If there were certain shortcomings in last year’s Don Giovanni, they have largely vanished in the face of a production where the orchestra sounded more secure and the standard of singing even better.

It’s in English, and although singing, especially by higher voices, is often hard to follow without surtitles, there was greater verbal clarity than usual.

The set was fairly simple, hinting at Art Deco or perhaps Spanish Mission; three adjacent walls set at obtuse angles and capable of being easily transformed, with doors and windows, and subtle changes to curtains. Some costumes worked better than others, and I guessed were guided by what might have existed or been available rather than by a costume designer’s over-all concept based in a particular period.

The best singers were quite splendid, vocally and histrionically, and the rest (varying between excellent and merely very good) had clearly been so well guided that all the wit and hilarious confusion, becomes clear. One’s impression of singers tends to change during the course of a performance, and here the changes were all in a positive direction.

Lovers Susanna and Figaro
The Susanna of Pasquale Orchard stood out from the first scene with her intelligence and alertness to the Count’s lecherous aspirations, while her lover, Figaro, William McElwee, initially appeared somewhat bland, but gained confidence over the course of the evening. In the first scene the sharp-witted Susanna castigates Figaro for not realising the Count’s lascivious intention in granting the about-to-be-married couple a bedroom adjacent to his own. Cut however was a chunk from that scene: Figaro’s amusing ‘ding, ding’ and ‘dong, dong’ episode revealing his naivete in not perceiving an arrangement that greatly suited the Count’s ambitions.

If in the first two acts Figaro’s voice lacked interesting variety and grit, it opened out and he became virtually the main focus in the later scenes (in spite of the occasional difficulty of catching words), more vivid and easy to follow than usual, particularly in the turbulent Act IV, in the garden. However, I felt that the way in which he wore his costume did him no favours: he needs to appear essentially a city man, stylishly self-confident rather than slightly casual about his appearance.

The scene between Susanna and wittily over-dressed Marcellina (Laura Loach) in Act I is occasionally dropped and perhaps it’s dramatically a bit irrelevant, but it was funny and feisty; anyway, we get the measure of the rank-conscious Marcellina. I think there were other cuts, for example in the Act III scene involving the Count’s adjudicating the case between Figaro and Marcellina.

The trouser role, Cherubino, usually taken by a fairly young female singer, was Olivia Sheat, whose height and presence afforded her performance the look and mannerisms of a not-very-shy teenage boy, though it made her concealment behind the famous chair problematic! She sang strongly, the ardent ‘Non so piu’ and later in the Countess’s room, ‘Voi che sapete’, conveying an easeful touch of adolescent turmoil.

Bartolo, like almost all the roles, has much comic potential, but though Richard Dean’s voice was in character, and his patterish Vengence aria was fine, he struggled to convey the wit inherent in the pompous doctor’s thwarted scheming (Roger Wilson, in the first cast was, inevitably, more snake-like and hilarious).

The Count v. the rest
I meant not to make comparisons between the two casts, however… In the case of the Count, the scope to carry off self-inflicted humiliations and mortification is plentiful, but neither Orene Tiai (in the first cast) nor William King in the second captured them perfectly, for different reasons, mainly not quite succeeding in investing the role with a persuasive, aristocratic hauteur. Nevertheless, the Act I scene with the chair was magnificently calculated and timed. And in Act III his ‘Hai gia vinta la causa’, filled with the Count’s fury on overhearing Susanna’s victorious whisper to Figaro as she goes out, both called for and had strong conviction.

Peter King sang the role of other malicious male, Basilio, spy and trouble-maker, who deliciously compounds the confusion of the ‘chair scene’; I couldn’t put my finger on why he was fractionally less than riveting, though his interventions were always telling.

The Countess, sung by Hannah Catrin Jones, was a creation of touching poignancy, right from her beautiful, if slightly heavily vibrated, ‘Porgi amor’ at the beginning of Act II; her words were not very distinct but her demeanour most expressive, and even more so in the lamenting ‘Dove sono’ in Act III.

The role of the gardener, Antonio, has a couple of moments of considerable force, and Minto Fung managed to inject a serious crisis into Figaro’s and Cherubino’s battle of wits with the Count. The scene was excellent. So were the appearances, in Acts III and IV, of his sexually precocious daughter, Barbarina, nicely carried by Alexandra Woodhouse; the pin escapade was both funny and of momentary dramatic import.

The dozen-strong orchestra, under Simon Romanos, was impressively accomplished, generally just one player for each instrument; led by Douglas Beilman, former second violin in the New Zealand String Quartet, individual instruments had interesting clarity, and singers were never disadvantaged either by unrestrained dynamics or ensemble mishaps. It handled the space nicely, tucked into the right side of the stage. Instead of a fortepiano or harpsichord, Christopher Hill played a guitar, I think without amplification; an interesting departure, but by nature it had a rather less refined voice than a harpsichord.

Lessons to be learned
Though one allows oneself to hope, every time a small, enthusiastic opera group arises, that here might be the start of a real Wellington-based company that will attract Arts Council, City Council, corporate and other financial support, the tendency is to wait till a company really proves itself.

It is not irrelevant that in the 1980s highly motivated singers in Wellington, as well as other centres, established small opera companies during a period of relative opera deprivation, and that in Wellington it led to Wellington City Opera which typically presented three productions a year till 1999 when the unfortunate amalgamation with Auckland’s comparable company formed New Zealand Opera. Opera flourishes best when its roots are strongly local; but money is the main problem.

But by that time the leaders and out-of-their-own-pocket funders have exhausted themselves and their resources, and an enterprise that deserves immediate backing is left to bleed to death.

New companies are often driven by dreams of bringing enlightenment to imagined audiences by staging obscure or modernist pieces that fail to attract audience support. So a company like Eternity, which displays common sense, excellent artistic judgement as well as dynamic musical and production abilities is treated no better than groups that fail though their own misdirected ambitions.

Eternity Opera and its principals Alex Galvin and Simon Romanos scored a considerable success, a step or so above last year’s achievement, for both its casts, even though in competition with the Film Festival, and facing an unusual quantity of live classical music and theatre of various kinds during the mid-winter period. The audiences were responsive throughout and after both performances there was a palpable spirit of delight in the house with what had been seen and heard.

I rather hope that it was named in the hope that Eternity would become a realistic goal; for the company’s achievement marks it now as worthy of serious support, particularly since the enterprise of Galvin and Romanos has now been proved in two striking successes with two of the greatest operatic masterpieces.

It is also important to give it credit for engaging large numbers of talented, well-schooled musicians – singers and instrumentalists – in Wellington, and from around the country, who have offered musical entertainment at a high level, helping validate Wellington’s generally fatuous claim to be ‘the cultural capital’.

 

The NZCT Chamber Music Contest results

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Michael Fowler Centre

Sunday 6 August

Though Middle C did not manage to get to the final stages of this year’s concert in Wellington, we have copied the results from the website of Chamber Music New Zealand listing of the finalists and award winners

OVERALL WINNERS

Druz’ya Quartet (Wellington) – Shostakovich | String Quartet No. 8, op. 110, mvts 1, 2 and 3

KBB MUSIC NATIONAL AWARD WINNERS

Buda and the Pests (Canterbury) – Bartók | Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, mvts. 2 and 3

PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD WINNERS

Mahuta Trio (Auckland) – Ben Hoadley | Oboe Trio

NATIONAL BEST PERFORMANCE OF A NEW ZEALAND WORK

Mahuta Trio (Auckland) – Ben Hoadley | Oboe Trio

 

NATIONAL FINALISTS

(in performance order)

Buda and the Pests (Canterbury) – Bartók | Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, mvts. 2 and 3
Raysken Trio (Waikato) – Shostakovich | Piano Trio No. 2 in E Minor, op. 67, mvts. 2 and 4
Amadeus (Canterbury) – Mozart | String Quintet No.4 in G Minor, K. 516, mvt. 1
Mahuta Trio (Auckland) – Ben Hoadley | Oboe Trio

INTERVAL

Trio Astor (Auckland) – Astor Piazzolla | Four Seasons Trio, Spring and Autumn
Druz’ya Quartet (Wellington) – Shostakovich | String Quartet No. 8, op. 110, mvts 1, 2 and 3

National Semi-finalists

(in performance order)

Amadeus (Canterbury) – Mozart | String Quintet No.4 in G Minor, K. 516, mvt. 1
Korngold Quartet (Canterbury) – Korngold | Suite op. 23, mvt. 5
Konec Trio (Auckland) – Gideon Klein | Trio for Violin, Viola and Cello (Terezin 1944)
M + M’s (Northland) – William Grant Still | Danzas de Panama
Mahuta Trio (Auckland) – Ben Hoadley | Oboe Trio
Bedřiška Trio (Wellington) – Smetana | Piano Trio in G Minor, op. 15, mvt. 3
Buda and the Pests (Canterbury) – Bartók | Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, mvts. 2 and 3
Zest (Canterbury) – Mark Walton | Selwyn Quartet
Raysken Trio (Waikato) – Shostakovich | Piano Trio No. 2 in E Minor, op. 67, mvts. 2 and 4
The French Connection (Canterbury) – Milhaud | Sonata for Two Violins and Piano, op. 15, mvts. 1 and 3
Druz’ya Quartet (Wellington) – Shostakovich | String Quartet No. 8, op. 110, mvts 1, 2 and 3
TrioAstor (Auckland) – Astor Piazzolla | Four Seasons Trio, Spring and Autumn

 

NATIONAL ORIGINAL COMPOSITION AWARD WINNERS 

Presented in association with SOUNZ and CANZ

SENIOR WINNER
Benjamin Sneyd-Utting – Tawa College, Wellington
Toroa Rising / Piwakawaka Dancing (for string quintet)

Highly Commended
Samba Zhou – Rangitoto College, Auckland
Dream of a Home (for piano quintet)

JUNIOR WINNER
Stefenie Pickston – Lynfield College, Auckland
Bolero: A Short Piece for String Quartet

Highly Commended
Michelle Tiang – Waikato Diocesan School for Girls, Hamilton
Earth Collapse (for string quartet)

 

CENTRAL REGIONAL FINALS

WINNING GROUP
Druz’ya Quartet (Wellington)
Shostakovich | String Quartet No. 8, mvts 1, 2 & 3
Lucas Baker, violin, Home Educated
Andy Yu, violin, Wellington College
Lauren Jack, viola, Wellington High School
Milo Benn, cello, Scots College

CENTRAL REGIONAL FINALISTS
(in performance order)

Ritchie Trio (Hawke’s Bay) – Anthony Ritchie | Song, He Moemoea
No Frets (Manawatu) – Glinka | Trio pathétique, mvts 1, 2 and 4
The Atmospherics (Wellington) – Eric Ewazen | Dance for Flute, Horn and Piano
Trio Felsen (Whanganui) – Schubert | Shepherd on the Rock (Dir Hert auf Dem Felsen)
Hail Cesar (Manawatu) – Cesar Cui | Cinq petit duos
Druz’ya Quartet (Wellington) – Shostakovich | String Quartet No. 8, op. 110, mvts 1, 2 and 3
Les Trois Amies (Wellington) – Benjamin Godard | Sechs Duette
The Naughty Nortons (Hawke’s Bay) – Christopher Norton | Regrets, Free ‘n’ Easy, strengths of Feeling
FIRE (Wellington) – Gareth Farr | Ahi Trio
Leipzig Connection (Whanganui) – Mendelssohn | Piano Trio in D Minor, op. 49, mvt 1
Fauntastic (East Coast) – Debussy | Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
Bedřiška Trio (Wellington) – Smetana | Piano Trio in G Minor, op. 15, mvt 3

 

 

Astonishing performance of complete Daphnis et Chloé ballet music, plus a Schumann allusion

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Orchestra Wellington and the Orpheus Choir conducted by Marc Taddei with Stephen de Pledge (piano)

Schumann: Carnaval (four scenes arranged by Ravel)
Schumann: Piano Concerto in A minor Op 54
Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé – complete ballet score

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 5 August, 7:30 pm

Orchestra Wellington continued its 2017 series theme that focuses on the great impresario Sergei Diaghilev, the genius behind the Ballets Russes which changed the face of ballet before the First World War, and also impacted on most of the other arts. For he employed the most gifted choreographers, composers, dancers and designers, of the age, and inspired them to produce work that would radically enrich and rejuvenate, even revolutionise the arts generally. One of the greatest ballets inspired by Diaghilev was Daphnis et Chloé; and the orchestra must have faced the necessity of performing it with trepidation.

But we began with an arrangement of Schumann’s Carnaval. What’s the link with Diaghilev?

Carnaval is a bit of an oddity, for it was first used, at Fokine’s initiative, in a collaborative orchestration by Glazunov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Arensky, Lyadov, and Tcherepnin for the Ballets Russes in 1910. So it is curious that in 1914 Nijinsky asked Ravel to do another arrangement of Carnaval, this time for a London season; a Ravel arrangement was inspired no doubt by the success of Daphnis et Chloé in 1912, the year before Stravinsky’s Sacre du printemps.  Most of Ravel’s score is lost and only four parts are extant: Preamble – German waltz – Paganini – March of the ‘Davidsbündler’ against the Philistines. So it was a minor work in the Ballets Russes story, but it acted as a sort of overture to this concert.

It is hard for me to adopt an objective feeling towards an orchestration of music that seems so utterly, quintessentially for the piano and which I’ve loved in that form for hundreds of years. Clearly, the orchestra decided to include it, as Marc Taddei explained, because Schumann’s piano concerto was scheduled in the first half, and the idea of some kind of link was attractive.

So, it’s essentially a scrap, a remnant in which there is not enough time to become much engaged by the sort of delightful, eccentric magic that a performance of the entire 20 pieces of the original creates, making emotional and artistic sense of the complete score.

I couldn’t avoid the feeling that it presented the orchestra with an insuperable task, to ingest the music, firstly to overcome resistance to sounds not from a piano, and to be persuaded that Ravel himself was convinced by it. Though whimsy, children’s make-believe, a chimerical world, the exotic, are common to both Schumann and Ravel, I have the feeling that they imagined them in quite different ways.

So I was not surprised to find in the scoring little that I’d have ascribed to Ravel in a blind-fold test.

Schumann Piano Concerto
The Piano Concerto was an entirely different matter: it was among my first LP purchases as a Schumann-enraptured teenager; but it’s a long time since I’ve heard a live performance. Adding the visual element to the music, I found myself noting aspects of the score that spoke of a composer not as much at ease with an orchestra as with his piano (a very familiar view which I decided was unhelpful). My attention nevertheless, was largely on the beautifully lyrical piano writing and the sympathetic, unostentatious playing by Stephen de Pledge which (in spite of blemishes here and there) soon took my attention away from the rather traditional orchestral score. Though very different in character, the reputation of Schumann’s concerto a little like that of Chopin’s two concertos: one disparages the orchestration. However, De Pledge’s playing, and particularly his cadenza that was musical rather than flashy, were enough to draw applause at the end of the first movement; that might also have indicated large numbers of the audience fairly new to classical music – one of the positive achievements of Orchestra Wellington’s policies.

The little encore was, appropriately, from Carnaval – Chiarina, a portrait of Schumann’s fiancée and future wife, Clara Wieck.

Daphnis et Chloé
The main purpose of the evening was the rare performance of, not the more familiar suites that Ravel himself took from the work, but the whole nearly hour-long ballet, Daphnis et Chloé, complete with chorus.

The huge array of instrumentalists (over 80) and the 100-strong Orpheus Choir could not been a more striking contrast to the music before the interval. These 70 years had led to music that was as different as Matisse and Braque are from Ingres and Delacroix.

Though it is in three parts or Tableaux – not, formally speaking or conspicuously in ‘Acts’, one does not notice the sort of contrasted movements that characterise traditional classical music.  The overwhelming impression is of organic growth, through a series of evolutionary mood changes and a story that moves to and fro, in and out of focus. Thus there is no point in trying to point to particular episodes as ‘effective’ or ‘unfocused’ or ‘particularly arresting’, in the way a critic often feels obliged to do. What do tend to stand out, to sound familiar, are naturally enough the parts that form the two suites that Ravel compiled, which include the Nocturne, Interlude and Danse-guerrière; and Lever de jour, Pantomime, and Danse générale, mostly from Tableau III.

Even though the impact on the listener is so overwhelming that there’s little chance to attend to details of thematic evolution, of the use and significance of contrasting keys, one has to take as read the fact that its success in maintaining rapt attention, and perhaps a longing for it to continue for another half hour, is due to those inconspicuous compositional secrets.

Though there’s no question about the singular brilliance and emotional power of the ballet, as music, there is an old-fashioned idea that the best test of the real depth of music’s originality and genius, lies in its likely impact if it could be heard without the trappings, regalia, colours and jewellery that adorns it. Would the music, stripped of its gaudy, overwhelming orchestration, reveal weakness in invention, in structure, in the unfolding of a musical narrative; would it remain engrossing if reduced to a piano score? Might it emerge featureless and drab? Who knows?

Of course, that’s as nonsensical as looking at a Turner or a Monet and asking that it be judged in a black and white reproduction. So the flamboyant and luxurious orchestration was an essential element, a major attraction, achieved through an orchestra of Mahlerian or Straussian size, and a great choir. And to think that a merely part-time orchestra, though overflowing with experienced professional musicians, both permanent and as frequent guests, had the temerity to take on one of the most famous, most challenging, sometimes acknowledged as the greatest, orchestral masterpieces of the 20th century. Not only were the wind sections enhanced with relatively infrequent instruments like bass clarinet, E flat clarinet, alto flute, but there were two harps and nine players lined up behind timpani and percussion, more than I can recall at any previous concert. Just for the record, percussion (taken from details in Wikipedia) were snare drum, bass drum, field drum, tambourine, castanets, crotales, cymbals, celesta, glockenspiel, xylophone, wind machine, tam-tam and triangle.

Then there’s the wordless choral element, present throughout most of its length: music that to some extent, is rather like what I described above: dense in complex harmony but sonically uniform. Learning the choral parts was probably more challenging than it would have been with conventional word setting where memory of words and music are inter-dependent and mutually supportive; and the choir’s performance sounded as near faultless as I imagine it gets (particularly conspicuous in the impressive passage without accompaniment). If diction was never an issue, the sheer energy and incisiveness of the singing, and the incessant demands on singers spoke of thorough rehearsal and dedication under their conductor, Brent Stewart (who was not named in the programme but singled out at the end).

This was the most courageous and momentous enterprise of Orchestra Wellington’s entire 2017 season, and perhaps one of the orchestra’s all time finest hours; it was mainly a tribute to conductor Marc Taddei, for its conception, inspiration and leadership that carried it through to a performance of astonishing dramatic and musical subtlety, insight and sheer splendour.

 

Digestible lunchtime concerts: whole and parts of lovely music from Aroha String Quartet

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

International Music Academy 2017 Tutors’ Concert
Members of the Aroha Quartet (Haihong Liu – violin, Zhongxian Jin – viola, Robert Ibell – cello) and guest tutors Diedre Irons (piano), Joan Perarnau Garriga (double bass)

Rossini: String Sonata No 1 in G;
Beethoven: String Trio No 3 in G, Op 9 No 1, 1st movement
Schubert: Piano Quintet in A, Op 114, D 667, ‘The Trout’, 1st movement
Brahms: Piano Quartet No 1 in G minor Op 25 4th movement

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 2 August 2017, 12:15 pm

This week, from 1 to 6 August, the Aroha String Quartet International Music Academy, supported by Trinity College in London, is being held at St Andrew’s. This concert was a sampler employing just five of the tutors at the Academy. The others, not involved with today’s concert, are Ursula Evans – second violin in the Quartet; Donald Armstrong – violin and string ensemble director, Ken Ichinose – cello), Robin Perks, Michael Cuncannon and Manshan Yang (chamber music).

The occasion offered the chance, with a pianist and double bass player on hand, to hear a couple of chamber pieces that are less often played, though one is of course very well-known.

Rossini wrote six ‘sonatas’ for two violins, a cello and a double bass, at the age of twelve. And remarks about them and their performances by him and his friends reflect what we know of the attractive and witty Rossini who lived on for a further 55 or so years. They’ve been recorded several times but I’ve never heard them in live performance. The first one takes ten to twelve minutes and so was an ideal item for a ¾ hour lunchtime concert.

Naturally, the presence of double bass makes an immediate difference to the character of the music. As one who relishes the lower pitched instruments, it’s surprising that the pattern of the Haydn string quartet has remained the almost exclusive form for small string ensembles. If its contribution was not too overtly humorous, in the way the bassoon’s sounds are often exploited. In the second movement it relished some droll, pensive rhythms.

In addition to the bass, the cello enjoyed some long, rich, melodic lines, always seeming to verge on a smile if not laughter. At the beginning, not being able to see very clearly, I imagined that the second violin (Rossini’s instrument in the first performances) was a viola, since it was played by the Aroha’s violist, Zhongxian Jin, but my ears soon corrected the mistake; it was by no means relegated to a subservient place, and it enjoyed some passages that were as showy as that of the splendid first violin.

Already, the gift for delightful melody was conspicuous: Rossini’s genius in the realm of comic opera was already clear. Let’s hope that Marjan van Waardenberg can persuade these players to programme them one by one over the next year.

Beethoven’s string trios are even less familiar I would guess, though I have heard them played in Wellington (by whom I cannot remember). They were written about five or six years before Rossini’s, and when Beethoven was twice Rossini’s age, and they inhabit a similar spirited space. The first of the three begins in a strangely hesitant manner, as if to presage something of more than passing significance. And the main body of the movement leaves no doubt that Beethoven took these pieces seriously, resolute arpeggios and a main theme of wide-ranging pitches, fairly distributed among all three instruments. An excellent taster, that any string quartet, or a piano quartet whose pianist wanted a rest, should look at to lend variety to a recital.

The role of the first movement of Schubert’s Trout Quintet was obviously different here: to employ Joan Perarnau Garriga’s double bass. If lack of familiarity with the Beethoven would have caused little sense of unfulfillment, that was a slight problem with Schubert’s wonderful piece. The first movement was graceful and steady, with all five instruments in perfect accord, including the piano, which can be hard, surrounded by the reflective surfaces of St Andrew’s, to keep in balance: Diedre Irons contribution was limpid and beautiful. Again, the double bass contributed a subtly humorous flavour, on its lower strings. And yes, it did seem a bit mean to leave us hanging at the end, with the next movement in our mind…

Then came the last movement of Brahms first piano quartet, the well-known Gypsy Rondo. Again, even with the piano lid on its long stick and the floor which remained hard, the ensemble was superb, especially in the grandiose middle section; the character of the music changes constantly, reflecting what Brahms knew about Gypsy music – its aim of giving delight: a gently swaying section, flamboyant exclamations, a Lento, a playful  episode before returning to the ferocious Molto Presto.

I wouldn’t want to endorse too unconditionally the habit, rather excessively followed by RadioNZ Concert, of playing only one movement of major works, but this was a delightful recital: how did it go with the week’s political events?

(The ASQ Academy 2017 Final Concert, supported by Trinity College London, at St is at Andrew’s on Sunday 6 August, 4 pm; see our Coming Events).

Exuberant and popular performances by Wellington Youth Orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Youth Orchestra
Conducted by Andrew Joyce with Ludwig Treviranus (piano)

Glinka: Ruslan and Lyudmila Overture
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No 3 in C minor, Op 37
Dvořák: Symphony No 9 in E minor, Op 95 (‘New World’)

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Hill Street

Monday 31 July, 7:30 pm

Concerts from the Wellington Youth Orchestra used to be held in the Town Hall, which was the right space in terms of acoustics and the orchestral tradition. But the sometimes rather small audiences did look rather … small; comparable to the size of the orchestra – around 60. On Monday there were many more that that facing the orchestra.

Either St Andrew’s or the Catholic Basilica offer a more intimate space in which a 150 or so don’t look too bad, but the acoustic is often rather uncomfortable in its response to timpani and brass.

But that was a small price to pay when the orchestra delivered such a dynamic performance of Glinka’s famous overture. It’s a piece that taxes any orchestra, is as fine a composition as most of the music of the period. I have often wondered about the standards of music in Russia when the opera was written – the 1840s, when the names of no other Russian composers are familiar and we don’t really know much about orchestral or operatic standards, apart from the fact that a lot of western European musicians and composers visited and worked in Russia, from the late 18th century.

There was impressive accuracy, at the speed that is normally heard; strings clean and brass under good control apart from the occasional unruly fanfares.

Ludwig Treviranus spoke briefly and genially before the beginning of Beethoven’s third concerto: no condescension, pitched at the right level for a non-specialist audience. After the longish introduction, that gave time enough to appreciate excellent preparation, with all the spirit and gusto that comes from a youthful orchestra, the piano arrived with a feeling of ease and confidence, handling the ornaments fluently and idiomatically. Rapport between orchestra and pianist was a delight even though, at one point, in dialogue between piano and orchestra I felt that Treviranus was tempted by more speed.  The cadenza was a model of restraint and individuality, with more attention to the music itself than to his own impressive virtuosity; its closing bars were particularly sensitive.

In the slow movement, both pianist and orchestra displayed all the maturity and insight of a real professional ensemble, even at moments where the rhythms risk losing togetherness. A lovely flute solo caught my ear, played with a pure, vibratoless tone that sounded so polished. Given that the Largo contained no music that didn’t fit the space, this was probably the high point for me, but the spirited Finale often vied for that place. In spite of moments where timpani might well have been less exuberant, this was a totally admirable performance, strings so buoyant and winds well balanced and polished. A triumphant collaboration between pianist, conductor and orchestra.

The New World symphony was a more formidable challenge, but it was not till the later stages, in the Scherzo and Finale, that there were many signs of the players’ essential youthfulness and natural lack of professional experience (and perhaps not quite enough rehearsal time?). The opening pages were scrupulous and beautifully paced; conductor Joyce ensured breathing space between phrases, putting the audience at ease before that Allegro really takes off. And certainly in the less rowdy ensembles the brass choir was excellent, in easy sympathy with the rest of the orchestra.

The famous Largo might be easy enough in terms of hitting the right notes, but its familiarity demands far more in emotional subtlety, yet avoiding sentimentality, an ever-present danger, so it might be odd to say I found the long cor anglais solo, carefully played, but not quite soulful enough. Otherwise, strings and winds were in beautiful accord.

The third and fourth movements revealed occasional blemishes; in the Scherzo some trills on strings, and woodwind decorations, and at the opening of the fourth movement, such a massively imposing declamation had the weight and energy but not perfect finesse.

However, the broad shapes and contrasting sections that conceal, excitingly, the way the work will end (for those who come to it for the first time) were generated as much through youthful energy and exuberance as through mature familiarity and intellectual understanding.

No matter how often one has heard the work, it remains fresh and surprising, especially when played by a young orchestra of talented and reasonably skilled players, such as are to be found in this orchestra, and in the hands of a conductor able to communicate his own enthusiasm as effectively as Andrew Joyce has done here.

 

Adventurous, revelatory concert by Troubadour String Quartet in Lower Hutt

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Troubadour String Quartet (Arna Morton and Rebecca Wang – violins, Elyse Dalabakis – viola, Anna-Marie Alloway – cello)

Haydn: String Quartet in G, Op 77 No 1
Alfred Hill: String Quartet No 3 in A minor (The Carnival)
Britten: String Quartet No 2 in C, Op 36

Little Theatre, Lower Hutt

Monday 24 July, 7:30 pm

At the Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson this year, the Troubadour Quartet gave two free concerts, one giving the same Britten quartet that they played here, the second, Schubert’s A minor quartet (Rosamunde). I was there for a few days and really regret not hearing them.

Haydn
For it took only a few bars of the Haydn quartet (one of his very last) to show me that these were players of real talent and insight. Its first movement came as a revelation of care, sensitivity, delicately springing rhythms, subtle humour; an interesting range of instrumental colour, in part at least through the contrast between the bright first violin and the warmer, almost viola-like second. In particular, I delighted in the quartet’s agility, tossing the parts from one to another.

In the second movement, cellist Alloway had a few bars of prominence, enriching its meditative character, and she also supplied a throbbing undercurrent. After about three minutes all movement seems to cease and the players held us breathlessly awaiting the return of the main theme and its slow pulse.

There was a seriousness and emotional depth in the Adagio that reminded me that it was written, 1799, around the time of Haydn’s last, beautiful masses; no more symphonies, concertos, operas or piano trios. And after this came just two more string quartets, one unfinished.

The Menuetto took us back to the more familiar Haydn, energetic, overflowing melody and rhythm; and then the rather astonishing trio section, hard down-bowing, no longer any semblance of aristocratic minuet; as the programme remarks, it approaches the Beethovenish Scherzo which replaced the minuet and trio of the earlier, Classical period. Then in the last movement, Haydn reminds us that he was to become most famous for his 104 symphonies, as both in the denser scoring, playfulness and rhythmic energy; it sounds like a symphony trying to break out. It all emerged in a performance that was clearly thoroughly rehearsed and thought out. The applause rather suggested that the audience was pretty surprised at such an accomplished and committed performance.

Alfred Hill
The quartet by Alfred Hill probably aroused more uncertainty in many listeners, as till very recently, it has been fashionable to dismiss him as an inconsequential imitator who was unable to measure up to the great figures of his generation (born 1869, close to Sibelius, Reger, Busoni, Roussel, Vaughan Williams, Scriabin, Rachmaninov… and Schoenberg!).

The Wellington-based Dominion String Quartet has recorded all 17 of Hill’s quartets and have been sturdy advocates for his music; however, some of his 13 symphonies, mostly derived by Hill from his quartets, have been championed by Australia (recorded by the Melbourne and Queensland symphony orchestras). Australia likes to claim him as one of theirs as he was born in Melbourne, but his family came to New Zealand two years later and Hill spent most of his first 30 years in New Zealand, in Wellington, with a period at the Leipzig Conservatorium. He spent most of his latter 60 years in Australia because he was offered better opportunities, being co-founder of the NSW Conservatorium and was an important figure in Australian music. His 90th birthday was celebrated by a special concert of his music played by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by Henry Krips.

No comparable attention has been paid to him here, and as far as I know none of his symphonies have been played by a New Zealand orchestra.

Listening to this quartet is to feel its place in the Hill’s era, if in the company of the rather less famous and ground-breaking. The first movement intrigued me with a feeling of its rhythmic uncertainty, as if there were permitted alternative ways of handling the metre. Unadventurous perhaps, but not to be dismissed. The dreamy Andantino, second movement verged on the sentimental until a modulation made me pay attention, and indeed, it became more interesting, with a genuine emotional feeling. And Dalabakis’s viola became prominent in its last phase. The third movement was marked with a distinctive character, even if not radical or especially original; yet the players exploited its individuality with commitment.

The last movement was another matter: was there a certain Maori quality in its rhythm and melodic feel? Or was it more akin to Balkan, Gypsyish sounds; and still looking for resonances, there seemed melodic hints of Viennese operetta. There was even an episode in which stamping called up eastern European folk dance, even though the notes drew attention to the piece’s original title The Carnival or The Student in Italy. It was a very lively and committed performance of a piece that should encourage more exploration and performance of Hill’s music.

Benjamin Britten wrote three string quartets; this one was written to mark the 250th anniversary in 1945, of Purcell’s death. And it was the third movement, a chaconne, that offered references, though probably not especially conspicuous for most listeners, to the earlier composer.

The performance opened dramatically, not simply in the somewhat mysterious, even anguished, wide-spaced themes that introduce it, but with leader, Arna Morton, breaking a string. A repeat of the opening measures was rewarding, as it had been so immediately arresting, and the emotional impact was simply duplicated; and after a little while it gathers both speed and emotional force.

Even though written in a tonic vocabulary, it sounds of its time, the end of World War II, through its generally sombre feeling rather than any particular lamenting. As for its context, Morton, who has studied Britten for her PhD, drew attention to his feeling of isolation, as a homosexual, a pacifist, a committed left-winger (did she also say, his aversion to the prevailing ‘pastoral’ character of English music of the period?), all of which might account for the mood of the music.

Without a score it’s not easy to describe the structure of the first movement, and I’m limited to remarking the episodes (‘variations’ in essence) of markedly different speed, motifs that are chased, canon-like by each player in turn, the throbbing beat of four-note quavers, the biting commentary by the cello here and there. There are surprises such as the series of glissandi around the middle, and a meditative, viola-led diminuendo as the end approaches.

Nothing was more striking, perhaps chilling, than the slow subsidence to a high, lonely, ppp note from Morton’s violin, followed by a motivic scrap from the central section, on the cello. One anonymous remark from the Internet: “Britten’s number 2 is an isolated masterpiece of a genius. This is as powerful, astonishing and emotionally draining as any work for the genre ever written.” I admire such definitive, risky assertions like this, instead of the more usual cautious, ambivalent judgements that most of us shelter behind.

The second movement, Scherzo, seems to be a reworking of the more spirited parts of the first – on the cello, much more agitated, with ferocious down-bowings, driven by fast triplet quavers, referred to in the programme note as a ‘Danse macabre’: to me, not really….

The third movement, Chacony: Sostenuto, honouring Purcell, quarter-hour long, seems an extraordinary creation by a youngster of 32. The first section is a chorale-like lament with almost incessant dotted semi-quavers: calm, edgy, verging dissonance, in which all contribute till Alloway’s cello plays a long, plaintive meditation leading to an agitated section that becomes increasingly impatient.  If a set of variations in the slow triple time that’s characteristic of the chaconne is what you expect, it wasn’t the main focus for this listener, even after the pulse rate drops in the meandering, polyphonic writing around the middle of the movement.

Rebecca Wang’s second violin had a long, grieving solo passage, soon passed to others, importantly the cello again, then viola. Some parts – variations, though the individual sections are profoundly evocative, yet elusive – might seem rhapsodic, though the sense of its imposing structure was always clearly felt, and impressively so in this performance that seemed so thoroughly studied, ingested and technically mastered.

In spite of hints of a wide range of musical eras and genres, try as I might to spot influences, I couldn’t mistake such prevailing unity of mood and sense that left no one but Britten as a candidate composer. In all, it was a concert that emerged with far greater variety and richness than I’d expected: revelatory, fascinating and compelling.

 

Refined, period sensibilities from Kuijken Quartet in Haydn and Mozart

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Kuijken Quartet with members of La petite bande (Sigiswald Kuijken and Sara Kuijken – violins, Marleen Thiers – viola, Michel Boulanger – cello)
(Chamber Music New Zealand)

Mozart: String Quartet No 18 in A, K 464 and String Quartet No 21 in D, K 575
Haydn: String Quartet No 30 in E flat, Op 33 No 2, Hob III 38

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 15 July, 7:30 pm

The Kuijken Quartet is very much a family affair: second violin Sara is Sigiswald’s daughter and violist Marleen Thiers, his wife. They have devoted themselves to playing music in the ‘historically informed’ manner. While that has tended to refer mainly to music of the earlier, Baroque era, it applies also to the Galant and Classical periods, and in theory to all later periods, up to yesterday, if you insist.

It applies to two aspects of performance – the physical characteristics of the instruments, and the way they are believed to have been played in the relevant period. There is also a third aspect however, and that is the character of the performance space. Instruments using gut strings, pianos with shorter keyboards and wooden frames with less tension on the strings, were fine for more intimate venues, but larger concert halls were built as instruments were developed with bigger sounds (or perhaps it was the other way round), and the new environment encouraged composers to write larger-scale, more dramatic, louder music.

Baroque and Classical music, written mainly for small forces in small venues, was generally adapted successfully (in the ears of that audience) for the changed environment; and for more than a century, as ‘early music’ was steadily unearthed and played, sometimes in arrangements, everyone was happy. Until music historians started to adopt relativist attitudes, according virtue, even compulsion, to performance that was strictly in keeping with the playing conditions and customs, and listener expectations of the age in which music was written.

The major problem is that you can’t put the genie back in the bottle, and our acceptance and expectations are deeply affected by what we’ve heard, especially in our early years when the mind is so absorbent and open to everything. We are all aware of the profound impact that certain childhood performance experiences had on our response to later, different performances.

To the point.
The opening phrases of Mozart’s K 464 were extremely quiet and refined, small enough not to be able to fill the large MFC space and so was not at all the sound that an audience in the 1780s would have heard. Thus bows moved very lightly on the strings as they created a range of quiet, subtly varied dynamics rather than the very marked contrast, pp and ff, between phrases that is usual; nothing rich or opulent and suggested, in the language of piano playing perhaps, playing with no pedaling.

The Menuetto and Trio was treated in the same genteel way, though in the Trio section, there was some emphasis on the first note in the bar, and I noticed a limited amount of vibrato, mainly from the cello. The Andante crept into one’s awareness almost secretively, though in my head I could hear, memory-driven, the rather more bold performances that most of us might have been used to. But it was good to have the false feeling that I hadn’t ever heard it before, as it is a great and marvellously sophisticated variations movement which was still evident in this restrained performance, though the cello’s dancing, spiccato offering couldn’t help breaking out of the mould.

The last movement is also formidable and the players did allow themselves to become involved with the sliding, descending chromatic sequences, and as with the whole six ‘Haydn’ quartets, one was spellbound by Mozart’s mastery and the seeming endless variety that was played out and I eventually became reconciled to the hypnotic quietude that nevertheless created a spell-binding impression. Haydn’s famous remark to Mozart’s father was certainly an unavoidable response from a comparably gifted composer.

So it was wonderful to hear one of Haydn’s more quirky and entertaining quartets from his 1781 set that had inspired Mozart to write his great set of six.

It began with more of a feel of full-blooded music than the Mozart, though it’s light in spirit, often fragile and delicate. As I think was the case with the Mozart, the players took no repeats. As with Mozart’s K 464, the Scherzo movement was second, happy, indulging in subtle glissandi (more subtle than some), and every-so-slight emphases on the first-notes-in-the-bar of the first theme.

The viola and cello start the Largo movement very slowly, and the violins waited for the phrase end before joining. It’s a movement that signals Haydn’s awareness of his own genius, though there’s nothing in the other more jocular movements to suggest that he’s offering anything less than truly inspired music. And they chose that Largo to repeat as an encore at the end of the concert.

The last movement builds to the famous ‘Joke’ right from the start – you only need to have heard the piece once before for the singular little theme to take root and the subsequent games are laid out before you. They played in a sprightly manner, fast 3/8 time, and then came the several blind gags, none of which fooled this sophisticated audience into premature clapping.

For Mozart, we had the weightier quartet at the beginning, for he was writing for the Viennese sophisticates, where in the three Prussian quartets he was writing, as Bach had done forty years before as a sort of job application, and providing a cello part suitable for King Friedrich Wilhelm II himself to play. Here, I have to confess that for all my self-persuasion, I just wanted a bit more warmth and energy, more oxygen, than the Kuijkens allowed themselves. In the Andante, the cello is allowed a couple of near-solo episodes, for the king, but Menuetto and Trio offers the royal cellist more. The Andante was a movement that felt sympathetically handled by these players, as it’s intrinsically subdued, its beauties of an exquisite kind.

The Menuetto is a thoughtful piece, not lending itself to dancing, but in their handling, rather subtle and restrained which felt perfectly appropriate. It was the Trio where the king would have enjoyed a moment of melodic charm, until violin and viola take over. The cello actually leads the way in the last movement, and there’s much else that would have allowed the gathered eminences to make admiring remarks. But compared with the complex fabric of K 464, this is a more conventional piece, no less charming; but Sigiswald never allowed himself to become too animated, leading with such a small, almost hesitant tone and limiting the weight of his bow almost to the point of inaudibility. The artistry and refined musicality of these players was a constant revelation.