Author: Lindis Taylor

Successful violin and viola duo reveal rare Mozart and well-known Halvorsen

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Carolyn van Leuven (violin) and Sharon Callaghan (viola)

Duos by Mozart and Halvorsen’s Passacaglia after Handel

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 8 March, 12:15 pm

The names of the two performers at this lunchtime concert should no doubt have been familiar to me, as they have been on the Wellington scene on and off for a long time; both had played in the NZSO. Both have lived and studied overseas and now work in other fields in Wellington, though music clearly remains an important part of their lives.

The programme note explained that Mozart wrote these two duos for violin and viola (K 423 and 424) in 1783 to help out his friend Michael Haydn (Joseph’s brother) in Salzburg, when illness prevented him finishing a commission for six duos for the Archbishop. So they were presumably composed quickly, but there’s no evidence of haste in the melodic warmth and their level of interest, in the attractive way in which the ideas developed and in the fairly complex contrapuntal writing for the two instruments.

As they began the G major duo I had the impression that Van Leuven was under some pressure as her runs seemed a bit perfunctory. I continued to sense from time to time that she had not given the music quite as much attention as she might have, and that perhaps the two players had not found themselves in a comfortable space together. Within a minute or so such impressions disappeared and it was quickly clear that their instincts and fundamental musicality were guiding them very well.

In abstract terms, one can wonder whether such a duo will inspire really satisfying music, but any such doubts soon vanished as the close relationship with a string trio or even a string quartet seemed to assert itself. The two created a warm and spirited sound that seemed well anchored to human emotions. And Mozart’s interesting counterpoint made me want to explore, in comparison, the four duos that Michael Haydn did compose.

While the first and last movements of the first duo were spirited and filled with geniality, the middle movement, Adagio, was calm, in delightful contrast, and with less technical challenge, I thoroughly enjoyed the sounds of the two instruments. The notes drew attention to the viola’s slightly larger size that increased its richness, and Callaghan’s playing really drew attention to itself in the Adagio.

The second duo, in B flat, opened with a slow, meditative introduction, unison chords that quickly enriched themselves. In the Allegro part, passages of double stopping really extended the richness of the music, almost creating the sense of playing by three or four instruments, and the players delivered it with great accomplishment.

The piece concluded with a fairly elaborate theme and variations, in a determined vein, but which changed radically in mood with each variation; the players captured them most vividly.

Johan Halvorsen was a Norwegian violinist and composer; his Passacaglia of 1894 was based on a theme in the last movement of Handel’s harpsichord suite No 7 in G minor.(HWV 432). I’ve heard it played by several pairs of players over the past few years, sometimes in an arrangement for violin and cello. It combines a serious-minded theme with wide-ranging variations that both reflect that character but also offer a variety of contrasting emotions. It also calls for considerable technical talents, while maintaining thematic clarity and listeners’ attention. It’s a well-made piece that these players had mastered very successfully, which was particularly demonstrated in the accelerating, virtuosic race to the finish.

 

The NZSO at seventy with an inspired programme for a full house

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hamish McKeich

Seventieth Anniversary Concert

Music by Dvořák, Prokofiev, Elgar, Gareth Farr, Stravinsky, Verdi, Sibelius, Ron Goodwin, Strauss

Michael Fowler Centre

Monday 6 March 2017, 7 pm

All three Middle C reviewers collaborated in reviewing this momentous concert. We paid attention in our first name alphabetic order. The first, fourth and seventh are Lindis’s, second, fifth and eighth, Peter’s, and the others, Rosemary’s.

Introduction (LT)

In keeping with the feisty critical tradition established by Beaglehole and Finlay at that first concert on 6 March 1947, let’s start with a little grizzle.

Wonderful for Wellington to be offered a free concert to mark the premiere of the then National Orchestra in the Wellington Town Hall (which, unlike the orchestra, has not been as determinedly looked after).

Wonderful to be offered free programmes.

And the MFC was booked out a week before.

But here was a chance to pull out all the stops.

For a wee bit more money the programme could have offered information about why each piece was chosen (that was, admittedly, covered by the introductions by orchestral members); but most importantly, to give a bit of the most interesting background to the founding of the orchestra and its fortunes in its first year. A great opportunity to educate the audience!

Go to the last section to read about the adventures of the orchestra’s establishment and first year or so

National Anthem and overture (LT)

First, one must acknowledge the resurrection of a disappeared tradition – the playing of the national anthem; here Oswald Cheesman’s arrangement of ‘God defend New Zealand’, instead of the British national anthem that was played in the 1940s and for many years after that too. It was, no doubt, to acknowledge the presence of the Governor General.  All stood and some even joined in singing in both languages.

The first work was the same as had opened the very first programme in 1947: Dvořák’s Carnival overture, and one tried to imagine what it might have sounded like then. This simply sounded like a performance by the best German and American orchestras combined: extraordinary subtlety and beauty from the full string body, elegant and throaty trombones, and exquisitely refined playing from oboes, bassoons, and all the woodwinds; it was a nice opportunity for the solo violin passage to be heard from Vesa-Matti Leppänen. The playing was all splendidly balanced, and it became, unostentatiously, an exhibition of orchestral fireworks that has ensured that it maintains its place among the showpiece works when an orchestra wants to display its virtuosity, power and refinement, all together.

At the end, violinist Greg Squire gave a general introduction to the concert, which set the pattern for spoken offerings before most of the pieces: no mayors, cabinet ministers, captains of industry or comedians; just those most intimately involved in making the music – the players themselves.

Prokofiev (PM)
Announcing the concert’s single soloist, Greg Squire made reference to the “special relationship” between the orchestra and Michael Houstoun, ever since the 1974 tour of Australia made by the orchestra with both the pianist and with Kiri te Kanawa, which was highly successful. Of course, of late Houstoun’s been more often associated with Orchestra Wellington, though one still remembers not-too-far-off occasions when the Houstoun/NZSO partnership  produced something vibrant and unique – a Rachmaninov Fourth Concerto with Vasily Petrenko conducting won’t be easily forgotten by those who heard it.

Houstoun has played and recorded the Prokofiev Third Concerto with James Judd conducting, for Trust Records, so there’s a certain “history” in this work with the pianist and the NZSO – Houstoun chose the slow movement of the work for the concert, a beautiful “Theme and-Variations” outpouring of bitter-sweet lyricism, punctuated by lively, spikier sequences. Here the opening “theme” was exquisitely coloured by the orchestra, and bluesily echoed by the piano, before a musical cat was, it seemed, set among the pigeons, creating flurries of motoric energy puctuated with cries of alarm and agitation, the piano suggesting changing to a jolly game of triplets for the third variation, which here came slightly adrift, the piano fractionally “out” with the orchestra until the fourth variation quietly and dreamily restored order.

Amends were made by all concerned with the fifth variation, energetic and constantly growing more and more insistent, until suddenly, amid the chatter of the figurations the original theme made a magical reappearance, the whole rounded off by a cadential passage which seemed to say, “And now you know the story of……….” before quietly and enigmatically disappearing into silence.

Elgar (RC)

The third work on the programme was Elgar’s Chanson de Nuit, Op.15 no.1, published in 1899, an orchestration of a work written about ten years earlier. In his introduction Donald Armstrong, long-serving Associate-Concertmaster of the orchestra, spoke of the various leaders/concertmasters (and some of their characteristics and wise-cracks), and of playing and recording Elgar works with Music Director Emeritus James Judd, in whose honour this piece was performed.

What was the delight of the audience to see former Concertmaster Wilma Smith step up from where she had been playing at fourth desk (after introducing the concert over the loudspeaker earlier) to lead the orchestra in this work, an orchestra much bigger at 100 players than the one that began things 70 years ago. This one included a number of ex-players like Wilma, and other extras.

The wistful, nostalgic character of this piece was beautifully rendered. It is a far cry from the imperial pomposity of Elgar’s marches. Not that the Chanson’s orchestration isn’t grand, but it has a catch in the throat and melodic phrases that express beauty and peace. It was superbly played.

The audience’s joy in having Wilma Smith lead it was demonstrated in tumultuous applause.

Gareth Farr – Great Sea Gongs (LT)

The choice of Gareth Farr’s From the Depths Sound the Great Sea Gongs was pretty appropriate. Very much Hamish McKeich’s territory, as a former NZSO player, it has become a popular orchestral piece. But it was violinist Anna van der Zee who introduced it. At this hearing, I came to feel that, even though only the first section was played, the musical inspiration isn’t altogether sustained throughout its course. The scoring for percussion is dynamic, much of it with distinct Polynesian flavour, and it was splendidly played by four percussionists. Nevertheless, the strings were as richly employed too and contributed dramatically to the imagined deep sea evocation.

Percussion took the soloists’ role here. From the stalls only their heads were visible and it struck me that they should have been arrayed across the front, and the various instruments identified. They make a much more dramatic spectacle than many of the conventional solo instruments.

Speaking of that, it puzzles me that no effort is usually made in programme booklets to identify the various, hugely different percussion instruments; generally they are merely referred to as ‘percussion’: maracas, marimbas, crotales, claves, castanets, tam-tams, tom-toms, snare drum, side drum… How about stopping referring to oboes, flutes, bassoons, the bass clarinet, the cor anglais, the various saxophones by name? – let’s just call them all ‘woodwinds’.

Stravinsky – The Firebird – Lullaby and Finale (PM)

For myself, the Stravinsky item was the concert’s great centrebeam, to which everything was connected, as much to do with the momentous occasion in the orchestra’s history this music represented, as with the magnificence of the sounds themselves. Bridget Douglas introduced this part of the programme, beginning by making a wish that she had been thirty years older and thus playing in the orchestra at the time when the composer himself visited this country (1961) and conducted the NZSO in this same music! She then recounted the story of another visiting conductor programming this same music in a subsequent concert with the orchestra and objecting to a change of phrasing that wasn’t marked in his score, asking the orchestra with some irritation who had gotten them to make that change – to which one of the double bass players supposedly replied, “It was a little bald-headed bloke called Igor!” But the occasion was undoubtedly a formative experience for the players of the time and one whose resonances have endured and gone into legend. John Hopkins, the orchestra’s then Resident Conductor of the day attested to Stravinsky’s “extraordinary magnetism” as a musician, and his ability to get musicians to “play above” themselves.

Perhaps mindful of the significance of that occasion, tonight’s players seemed also to “play above” themselves, Hamish McKeich encouraging the orchestra to beautifully “grow” the finale from the somewhat stricken Lullaby (Berceuse) which depicted the ravages of the evil enchanter Koschei, allowing the first glimmerings of hope to spread through the orchestral textures from the ravishingly-played horn solo, and bring about the radiance of the Firebird’s Apotheosis in resplendent style. I’m sure  that “the little bald-headed bloke” would have been thrilled with the performance.

The Force of Destiny  (RC)

In his introduction to the following Sibelius item, Vesa-Matti Leppänen, spoke of this item too, and how Juan Matteucci, conductor in the 1960s, introduced more operatic repertoire to the orchestra. He mentioned also Pietari Inkinen and the orchestra’s successful European tour.. He spoke warmly of the work of the orchestral management and staff, and finished by remarking on New Zealand’s affinity with Sibelius’s music.

There can surely be no overture more filled with the dramatic music, filled with dread omens, than this one.  The opera premiered in 1862, and has remained in the operatic repertoire. Like all of the composer’s operas, this one is filled with remarkable melodies, which were given their due by the musicians. There was wonderful woodwind, and heart-plucking harp. The piece gives opportunity for every orchestral section to shine, and the tutti passages were superb.

The playing was precise, spiky and portentous, though slower than I have sometimes heard it played. The solo passages from various members of the orchestra were exquisitely played, and the whole was a sumptuous performance, its drama fully revealed.

Karelia Suite (LT)

Sibelius’s Karelia Suite has a long history with the orchestra. Appropriately, it was introduced by Concertmaster Vesa-Matti Leppänen who recalled (not personally of course, it was before his time), New Zealand’s most famous connection with the music, in the company of which we flew ecstatically over the Southern Alps in the National Film Unit’s film for the Osaka Expo in 1970; many of us were moved to tears from the sheer emotion of the conjunction of mountains and music in that film.

The hushed strings were again a breath-taking element at the start, slowly rising from basses through cellos to violins; four immaculate horns, and other winds, contributed to the subdued but powerful spirituality of the music.

But hands up all those who longed for the following Ballade to arise from the ashes of the mere four minutes of the Intermezzo!

633 Squadron  (PM)

Timpanist Laurence Reese paid a special tribute to one of the “greats” of film and “light” music, British conductor Ron Goodwin. Larry remembered that, as a newly-appointed NZSO player, he “caught” the last of Goodwin’s country-wide tours with the NZSO, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Goodwin had been coming to New Zealand for a number of years, and, according to Larry’s reckoning,  had by that time clocked up over a hundred-and-fifty concerts with the orchestra. Goodwin’s Overture 633 Squadron readily evoked war-torn skies over Britain with British Spitfires and Hurricanes vying for dogfighting supremacy with German Messerschmitts, with the orchestra and conductor throwing themselves into the fray, and producing sounds of the utmost brilliance and excitement.

Strauss: Rosenkavalier  (RC)

The programme ended with Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier Suite, arranged by the conductor Artur Rodzinski from music in Strauss’s opera, some 30-plus years after the work’s premiere. It is lush music, calling for a large orchestra, including two harps.

Appropriately for this supreme composer for the French horn (he was the son of a leading horn player), Heather Thompson, a long-serving horn player in the orchestra, introduced the item. She spoke of former chief conductor Franz Paul Decker and his introduction of the music of Mahler, Bruckner and Strauss, and of the orchestra’s playing this work at the Expo in Seville in 1992 to a huge ovation.  She also mentioned the International Arts Festival production of the opera in Wellington in 2002.

There was wonderful horn playing in this work – as indeed throughout the concert. Strauss’s writing for the orchestra contrasts drama and subtlety; exclamation and intimacy; these themes and the thrill and varied moods in the opera were well conveyed through the beautiful scoring. There were minutes – maybe five or so – when nearly all the lights in the auditorium went down; I did wonder how the percussionists at the back of the stage managed to see their scores; the playing continued uninterrupted.

The combination in the Suite of brilliant waltz, almost bombastic brass and nostalgic elements seemed appropriate for a night of memories of the varied life of an orchestra, and a fitting conclusion to the concert, making at the same time a great start to the 2017 orchestral season. This was all very fine playing, but notably from the bassoon and the horns.

A standing ovation greeted the end of the work, and streamers rained down on the orchestra. The band played Brahms’s rousing Hungarian Dance no.5 as an encore with great panache. – something they had played as an encore at the Musikverein in Vienna seven years ago, Hamish McKeich told the audience.

The concert was interesting in containing no works by the ‘Great Masters’ of the symphonic repertoire – Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Tchaikovsky or Shostakovich, but for the amount of 20th century or near-twentieth century works, and their geographic spread: one New Zealand work, two English, one Czech, two Russian, one Finnish, one Italian and one German.

The history of the orchestra’s conception and birth (LT)

The usually much more elaborate and expensive programmes for regular concerts are probably bought by not much more than half the audience. Many of those who might just become a bit better informed remain in ignorance about what they’re hearing; they turn away when the programme seller mentions the price.

It was an occasion to honour the vision and determination of prime minister Peter Fraser and James Shelley, head of the New Zealand Broadcasting Service, who drove the orchestra’s founding, along with sympathetic allies including the legendary Joseph Heenan, permanent head of Internal Affairs.

There was the bitchiness, in certain circles, about conductor Anderson Tyrer, but he contributed enthusiasm and in his book about the orchestra’s first twenty years, Owen Jensen gives him generous credit. Other conductors were invited: distinguished New Zealand opera conductor Warwick Braithwaite, Eugene Goosens.

But the orchestra’s beginning was not merely a Wellington affair.

At once, its role was as the ‘National’ orchestra, and as well as preparing the Wellington programme, they prepared enough music for four different concerts, all of which would be broadcast from the local national radio station: four symphonies, four overtures and twelve miscellaneous pieces, to be played in the other three main cities..

The Wellington programme was:
Dvořák: Carnival Overture
Brahms: Symphony No 2
Butterworth: A Shropshire Lad
Enescu: Romanian Rhapsody No 1
Wagner: Prelude and Love-death from Tristan and Isolde
Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel

In addition, as recorded in Joy Tonks’s history of the orchestra, The First Forty Years, the orchestra played Johann Strauss’s Moto Perpetuo as an encore to ‘restore quiet’ after the Enescu and then at the end they played Grainger’s Handel in the Strand and the polka from Weinberger’s Schwanda the Bagpiper (which used to be a familiar dinner music piece on 2YC, but which I haven’t heard broadcast for years).

Within the month other concerts took place, including, remarkably two schools concerts one of which the National Film Unit filmed. (At one of those, probably in the fourth form, 1949, I had my first thrilling orchestral experience: I’m sure Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien was the highlight). The first tour, to the South Island took place in April. And in June they ventured north, to console Auckland in the days when Auckland was only 50 percent bigger than Wellington.

In the following year the National Broadcasting Service (NBS) decided that the orchestra should undertake a nationally toured production of Carmen (in English), which was only possible with orchestral participation. It was inspired by the centenary of Otago province, to be celebrated by a music festival. Tyrer conducted and it had 33 performances in the four main centres; it was a popular success but it met criticism from those more familiar with opera. It showed that New Zealand resources were capable of undertaking serious large-scale musical productions, a step towards national artistic self-confidence.

An Italian opera company toured Australia in 1949 and Peter Fraser made a New Zealand tour feasible by offering the orchestra to the company. That tour comprised eleven operas; there were 61 performances and audiences totalled 120,000.

The orchestra’s first performance of New Zealand music was under Warwick Braithwaite in the August of 1947: Lilburn’s Song of the Antipodes. (renamed now A Song of Islands).

By the way, the visiting Boyd Neel String Orchestra played Lilburn’s Diversions for String Orchestra on their 1947 tour: not clear whether before or after the Song of Islands performance. .

There are three seminal books detailing the history of the orchestra:

Owen Jensen: NZBC Symphony Orchestra, Reed, 1966
Joy Tonks: The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. The First Forty Years, Reed Methuen, 1986
Joy Tonks: Bravo! The NZSO at 50, Exile Publishing, 1996

Perhaps the orchestra’s 75th anniversary should prompt a further history.

Paekakariki’s Mulled Wine concert series opens in the rich classical heartland

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Mulled Wine Concert

Diedre Irons – piano, Vesa-Matti Leppänen – violin, Andrew Joyce – cello

Mozart: Violin Sonata in G, K 379
Beethoven: Cello sonata in A, Op 69
Brahms: Piano Trio in B, Op 8

Paekakariki Memorial Hall

Sunday 5 March 2017, 2:30 pm

I missed the first of Paekakriki’s Mulled Wine concerts in January, organised by Mary Gow, featuring ‘Ukes of Wellington’ along with wine and beer at the bar; all three I could well have enjoyed.

However, I caught the first serious engagement, involving three leading Wellington musicians none of whom were born in New Zealand but who one hopes will not change their minds in the light of political or other considerations such as ill-treatment of the arts.

Mozart: Violin Sonata, K 379
Mozart’s violin sonatas (any of his sonatas – for piano or violin – for that matter) are not much performed in recital; there are 16 childhood violin sonatas, but 20 or so mature sonatas, as well as 18 solo piano sonatas. It might be a symptom of the problem if I confess that while I’ve got about six LPs containing some dozen of the violin sonatas (sign of younger, polymath, omnivorous ambition), not all of which I’d be certain I’ve listened to, I have no CDs of the violin sonatas, pointing to the onset of resigned sense of reality in later years I suppose.

It’s one of the last works that Mozart wrote at Salzburg before going to Vienna. About the time of the opera Idomeneo, as a mature 25-year-old.

This was a slightly familiar piece to me, but not recently heard. It awakened me to the rich and original world of the violin sonata that Mozart created, many I believe for his own use, for he was a violinist with gifts comparable to those at the piano.

Most unusually, an Adagio section opens the first movement, starting impressively, with a warm, open theme, relaxed broken chords on the piano, all revealing a confidence and generosity of spirit. The performance, especially by the piano, might have exaggerated dynamic impulses somewhat beyond what the music might have suggested, and a I wondered whether a more genteel approach in the Allegro might have served the music as well.

Though most recordings and references show the Adagio and the following Allegro as two parts of one movement, they can, as in the programme note for this concert, be regarded as two. The Allegro, in G minor, follows without break. But the minor key has no implications for its mood which the players captured in a sanguine, even dramatic, spirit, far from sombre.

The last movement is a theme and variations, again in G major, apart from the fourth variation which shifts to the minor key. The first variation leaves the violin silent while in the penultimate variation Diedre Irons’ piano again had the scene to herself apart from subtle violin pizzicato; the discreet tempo and rhythm changes throughout the successive variations left a feeling of peace and contentment.

Beethoven’s Third Cello Sonata
I heard Beethoven’s A major, third, cello sonata, played only a month ago at the Nelson Chamber Music Festival, by Matthew Barley with Dénes Varjon at the piano. Barley was one of the dozen cellists involved in this year’s cello-rich festival where all Beethoven’s five sonatas were played, a different cellist for each; they were: Ashley Brown, Julian Smiles (of the Goldner Quartet), Barley, Rolf Gjelsten and Andrew Joyce.

I’d remarked in Nelson that one’s impression might be that Beethoven’s cello sonatas did not seem altogether to inhabit the composer’s heartland. I felt that Barley had given Op 69 a sort of raw individuality, so that it had a somewhat unBeethovenish flavour; engrossing nevertheless. The vivid contrasts between movements and within movements were interesting and stimulating, sometimes lyrical or rhapsodic, with constantly varied tempi.

Andrew Joyce here gave it a beautiful performance that had all the dramatic, strong-minded structural qualities that were very recognisably Beethoven. It might not be essential that a performance conforms completely with one’s own conception of a work, but this did. After the sumptuous solo cello introductory phrase, the big dramatic apostrophe really spoke. And the sequence of ever-changing moods, most beautifully painted in the gorgeous Adagio cantabile introduction to the last movement, that evolved with motoric drive and almost suggesting the scale of an orchestral finale made this an unostentatiously memorable performance.

Brahms, First Piano Trio
One was of course looking forward hugely to Brahms’s first piano trio, written in 1854 (though Brahms revised it in 1889, rewriting the last movement significantly). This too had been a highlight for me at Nelson, in the same evening concert as I heard the Beethoven. It was played there by guest pianist Dénes Varjon with NZSQ’s Helene Pohl and Rolf Gjelsten.

On the Paekakariki Parade, beside a fairly tumultuous sea, dramatically present through open windows, this vivid performance of a youthful work (Brahms aged about 20) that captured the sea’s varied moods almost too powerfully at times. In some circumstances the weighty phases of the score, are exhilarating, while in other situations the lively acoustic favours melodic beauty, gentleness, occasional will ’o’ the wisp fragility.

While in more turbulent or exclamatory episodes the piano tended to dominate unduly which the character of Paekakariki’s hall enhances, especially for the piano, in the Adagio (3rd movement), Diedre Irons drew subdued, exquisite tones from the piano. It was a perfect vehicle for the three players. And it was in the Adagio that some of Joyce’s most seductive and ethereal playing emerged, with Leppänen’s lithe violin close behind.

But if it was sometimes difficult for the pianist to gauge the effect of the space on her dynamics, it took little imagination to appreciate the true quality of the lively, heartfelt performance which could easily be discerned in spite of the sometimes acoustic-induced, unbalanced sound.

 

Hungarian pianist Dénes Varjon at Waikanae with enterprising programme, rich in Bartók

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Waikanae Music Society

Dénes Varjon – piano

Beethoven: Sonata in E minor, Op 90
Schumann: Fantasiestücke, Op 12
Liszt: Schlaflos! Frage und Antwort; Valse oubliée No 1; Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este
Bartók: Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Folk Songs, Sz 20; Three Hungarian Folk Songs from Csik, Sz 35a; Sonatina, Sz 55 1; Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs, Sz 71

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 19 February, 2:30 pm

The first concert in the nine-concert Waikanae chamber music series neatly filled a hole in my piano recital experiences that the same programme would have provided in Nelson if I’d been there the previous Sunday. Varjon was one of this year’s stars at the biennial Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson (see my review date-lined 11 February).

He was hot news there and even though I heard him in various accompanying and ensemble roles such as in Brahms’s Piano Trio in B and his wonderful Piano Quintet, I was very glad to be able to hear him today. The Waikanae programme was the same. It opened with one of Beethoven’s piano sonatas that seems to be seriously out of its chronological order (1815). Op 90 is short, just two movements, and uses material that could almost be mistaken for Schubert on a sunny day (it was sunny!).

The programme note quoted Viennese reviews of its 1815 premiere, using words like ‘melodious’, ‘expressive’, ‘intelligible’. It proceeds quietly for a while, just occasionally punctuated by brief emphatic chords and a descending scale that marked it as Beethoven, sure enough. Varjon made imaginative and engaging use of varied rhythms and colourful dynamics, lending them discreet emphasis, and he charged it with subtle drama and a certain secretiveness.

Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, Op 12 (I’d rather wished he had played more Schumann at Nelson – the only piece I heard was the not very remarkable, late Märchenbilder for viola and piano, though he’d played Schumann’s Drei Fantasiestücke for clarinet and piano, Op 73, before I got there). The collection consists of eight highly varied pieces, though their sharply contrasted character and tonality, and Varjon’s endlessly resourceful vision created a compulsively interesting sequence. The third piece Warum?, for example, ends unresolved while he teased us with a slightly prolonged wait for the following Grillen, which sort-of answered the question.  Aufschwung is quintessential Schumann and Varjon created an entertaining, rumbustious experience. And he made the seventh piece, Traumes Wirren into a truly fantastic high-wire experience. While the long – never too long – Ende vom Lied took the form of a minor ballade: stately, perhaps a bit weighty occasionally (and I had jotted a note wondering about the condition of the piano). But for me that splendid peroration is one of Schumann’s most poetic expressions – rather a conflation of the Eusebius and Florestan characters that Schumann created to characterise his moods.

The second half of the programme was devoted to Varjon’s homeland: Liszt and Bartók. He played three of Liszt’s late works, regarded by musicologists as precursors of the 20th century’s experiments with tonality and form. While the Valse oubliée and the Villa d’Éste fountains are familiar enough, and Varjon delivered performances that were poetic and restrained, the less known Sleepless! Question and answer (S 203), was a revelation of less familiar . The strange, agitated beginning expanded into a complex metaphysical question; while the answer was a plain, unaccompanied line in the right hand, soon modestly harmonised before returning to the plain enigmatic melody that ended on the dominant. It was music to still the persisting negative opinions of Liszt sceptics.

The four Bartók works too were a mixture of the known and the little known. Beginning with Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Folk Songs, which might have been unfamiliar to me, at once they banished the notion, obviously ameliorated over the years, that Bartok mostly enshrines a somewhat unforgiving style of barbaric folk music. These tunes were intrinsically engaging and sensitively turned into pieces for the recital hall.

The Three Hungarian Folk Songs from Csik, were distinctly lyrical, rhythmic, and I jotted down, ‘very singable by anyone who’d heard Varjon playing them’. Each very short, perfectly, pithily arranged. The Sonatina too is an attractive piece in three movements: Dudások (bagpipes), Medvetanc (Bear Dance) and Finale, while the recital ended with seven of the Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs (alternative title: ‘Old Hungarian Dance Tunes’). Bartok does not necessarily consign these tunes to civilising treatment by the piano, and as I listened, the sounds of peasant instruments like the cimbalom came into my head.

Varjon’s programme had proved, for me at least, quite a revelation, putting a fairly wide, representative collection of Bartók’s Hungarian folk-derived music into our ears; they truly benefitted through being played in a chronological sequence (assuming the András Szőllősy – Sz – catalogue follows a chronological order).

There was a bigger than normal crowd in the hall, between 400 and 500 I’d guess; far more than the chamber music societies in Wellington or the Hutt Valley attract. Ticket price obviously has something to do with it, influenced by the cheaper Waikanae venue, though one might have thought Wellington, now using the cheaper St Andrew’s on The Terrace in the absence of the Ilott Theatre, would have been able to reduce their prices.

 

Days Bay Opera’s twelfth production handles Eugene Onegin with youthful energy and perceptivity

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky

Conducted by Howard Moody; produced and directed by Rhona Fraser
Principal singers: Katherine McIndoe, Daniel O’Connor, Filipe Manu, Elisabeth Harris, Christie Cook, Annabelle Cheetham, Tavis Gravatt
In English translation by David Lloyd-Jones
Twelve-piece orchestra

Opera in a Days Bay Garden

Canna House, Days Bay, Wellington

Wednesday 15 February 7: 15 pm

Days Bay Opera continues its eclectic repertory policies, that have ranged from the mid 16th century to the 20th. For this, it was back to the garden, after the indoors performance of Theodora, on a fine but somewhat cool evening.

What may well have been a worry was a summer that is hardly worthy of the name, and further performances of both pieces on the following days may not have been so fortunate.

This was the first time this precious Wellington opera enterprise has packaged two productions at the same time. A big challenge, but one that seemed not to have caused any loss of energy or diminished musical standard. It permitted the use of several voices in both productions which may have been an economy in some respects. Both productions forwent the engagement of a professional director, but if that simply meant there was no impulse to impose a ‘reading’ or ‘concept’ on either work, for me, there’s no real loss. Fraser handled movement and attention to meaningful interaction between characters with all the experience that a seasoned performer gains instinctively.

These were the eleventh and twelfth productions by Days Bay Opera.

While the acoustic of the hill-side amphitheatre is very good, most of the voices emerged with excellently clear diction so that the English translation was very comprehensible. It was sung in the very attractive translation by David Lloyd Jones, to be found in the English National Opera/Royal Opera Opera Guide 38.

First voices heard are from Madam Larina and the family nurse, Filippyevna, both clear and understandable, exchanging nostalgic childhood memories, almost as if social equals. Elisabeth Harris as Madame Larina might have looked no older than her daughters, but that was an inconsequential detail alongside the unusual liveliness of her total performance. Annabelle Cheetham acted splendidly as Filippyevna, the arthritic, old family retainer, full of peasant simplicity and common sense and in a voice of mature warmth and naturalness.

Both the men were convincing: Filipe Manu was a serious-demeanoured Lensky whose fine voice enabled him to express the sincerity of his feelings for the flighty, self-obsessed Olga, whose role was sung with real conviction and psychological accuracy by mezzo Christie Cook.

Lensky’s impassioned ‘Ya lyublyu vas’ (I love you’) is the first notable aria and it distinguished Manu at once. It stood in contrast to Olga’s perfunctory remark as his aria finishes that their parents watched them grow up and knew they would marry. It was just one of the many perceptive, poetic touches in this exceptionally fine libretto.

Manu skilfully captured Lensky’s increasing dismay and eventual uncontrollable anger during the Larin party after Onegin deliberately provokes him by flirting with Olga – and ignoring Tatyana; and his voice and acting made a deep impression. Nothing in the opera, however, is as moving as the opportunities for self- examination offered as the two men prepare for the duel, where Lensky delivers his great lament for his past happiness, in ‘Kuda, kuda…’ (literally ‘Where, where?’).

Daniel O’Connor presented an Onegin who was not only unusually young-looking – most I’ve seen live or on video have looked rather older than the character whom Pushkin imagines aged around 25 in Act I – but who also succeeded in displaying a reasonable degree of sensitivity alongside a superciliousness (which is more credible in a 25-year-old than at 40), and even in his response to Tatyana’s naïve, impassioned letter, his performance was fundamentally gentle, not overdoing the condescension. His was a fine performance. And though his behaviour at the Larin party can still seem to be at odds with his real nature, he acted like a man suddenly possessed by an irrational seizure.

The opera perhaps doesn’t explain satisfactorily why Onegin is bored and irritated by the name-day party. Pushkin had Lensky inviting him ‘mischievously’, not explaining that it would be a boisterous peasant affair, far removed from the gentilities of a St Petersburg social event, and therefore likely to bore him.

Later, preparing for the duel, O’Connor displayed an affecting self-perception as he prepares himself for the duel. As they ready to fire, both men sing the same helpless words, and the audience is allowed a moment of hope that the action will abandon the libretto and score and call the whole thing off.

So one even felt a degree of compassion for him at the end when it is Tatyana who – heart-breakingly – rejects his pathetic imploring that she abandon her marriage to elope with him.

Katherine McIndoe’s Tatyana’s was similarly a thoughtful, complex performance with vocal and acting characteristics that illustrated her inexperience, influenced by romantic novels (like Emma Bovary?). The crushing of her romantic dreams when Onegin responds to her had considerable impact on the audience; she is shy, with more quiet, cultivated interests than her sister; integral in her characterisation was her evident embarrassment at being the focus of attention at her name-day party as Monsieur Triquet (a perfectly French-accented Luka Venter) sings couplets that he has composed in her honour.

In Act III there is the important role of Prince Gremin, the host of the high society St Petersburg ball, and now Tatyana’s husband. Tavis Gravatt’s bass baritone voice was splendidly fitted to the task, and though not so physically imposing, presented himself and his voice with great aplomb in one of the great bass arias in the opera repertory: ‘Lyubvi vse vosrasty pokornu’ (The gift of love is rightly treasured).

There was a well-schooled chorus, some of whose members doubled as minor characters like Monsieur Triquet (Luka Venter) and an army captain in crimson uniform (William McElwee) – both of whom had been heard in Theodora a few days before.

They too were sensibly disposed, showing the sensitivity of the direction – this time by Rhona Fraser herself (as with Theodora).  I was intrigued to read in the programme that costumes were from a Moscow supplier, for they had the simplicity of a modestly affluent Russian country estate in Acts I and II and something more elaborate, but credibly Tsarist-era, in the third act.

Then the orchestra, twelve-piece, comprising five strings, five winds, harp and timpani, from the NZSO and other orchestras. One of the first things to notice, at least from where I was sitting on the left of the lawn in front of the house, was an occasionally unbalanced sound, even to the point of hearing some kind of phantom ensemble-disjunction. But this was probably an acoustic eccentricity resulting from the placement of the orchestra inside the house and the varying sound reflections resulting from the position and character of various instruments, and my particular seat.

The obvious shortcomings of the ‘stage’ – spread across almost the width of the house so that audience at the sides lost a bit of the sound at times – were a small price to pay for the simple delight of the forested-hillside setting, the audience close to such accomplished singers.

Tchaikovsky’s rich orchestral sound was never an expectation and there were, naturally, moments when one rather hoped for more, but most of the time the accompaniment was very adequate; for example, the waltz in Act II was surprisingly effective, perhaps in keeping with the players at a country dance (no, better than that of course).

English conductor Howard Moody, who has conducted several of Days Bays’ recent productions, was again in charge and the results were always lively and in a comfortable relationship with the singers. Moody’s CV (http://www.howardmoody.net/biography.html) reveals an extraordinary range of activities world-wide, (all over Britain and many parts of Europe – including Romania, Netherlands, Poland, Norway, Iceland, Bangladesh… and New Zealand), including reference to a composition entitled And my heart goes swimming, for Days Bay Opera, no less.

So I was delighted to have another live experience of this, one of my half dozen best loved operas, in a youthful and memorable production.

Appendix

For the record, my archive of opera productions in New Zealand shows three earlier performances of Eugene Onegin;

Wellington City Opera           1997

Canterbury Opera                   1998

New Zealand Opera               2009

It was not in the repertoire of any of the scores of touring companies that circulated through New Zealand from the 1860s till 1949.

 

Nelson Chamber Music festival again New Zealand’s biennial musical highlight

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Adam International Chamber Music Festival (Thursday 2 to Saturday 11 February 2017)

Theatre Royal, Nelson and Nelson Cathedral

These reviews cover concerts from Tuesday 7 to Friday 10 February 2017

My visit this year to the Nelson Chamber Music Festival was shorter than in previous years, arriving late afternoon on the Tuesday and departing midday Saturday.

The highlights from abroad were the presence of Hungarian pianist Dénes Varjon, the Australian tenor, Andrew Goodwin (singing Schumann’s Dichterliebe), the Goldner Quartet and cellist Matthew Barley.

The essence of the festival rests with the New Zealand String Quartet, which founded and sustained the festival from its beginning in 1992: for many years, artistic directors Helene Pohl and Gillian Ansell. The quartet whose membership remained fixed for over 20 years, saw the retirement last year of second violinist, Doug Beilman and his replacement by Australian violinist Monique Lapins, who at this festival enjoyed solo exposure, notably in Bach’s Violin Concerto in A minor.

Frequent visitors over the years have been the New Zealand Piano Trio (NZTrio) which played as a group and also played individually with a variety of other players. And the Goldner Quartet from Australia which has visited a couple of times in the past.

An old friend, clarinettist James Campbell, returned, to join in music by Brahms, Gao Ping, Schumann, Jean Françaix…    as well as several New Zealand and other contemporary pieces. Plus marimba player Ian Rosenbaum.

A central element of this festival was ‘The Cello’, involving the performance of all five of Beethoven’s cello sonatas, from five different cellists, who were joined by eight others for the cello jamboree in two concerts on Friday the 10th.

Waitangi Day has always fallen within the festival and has offered an opportunity to feature New Zealand works. This time Gillian Whitehead was present for the New Zealand premiere of her new one-voice opera Iris Dreaming.

Naturally, I was there for only some of these, from the Tuesday evening.

My first concert on Tuesday 7 February, 7:30 pm, was entitled ‘Cadenzas’. It began with the third Beethoven cello sonata (Op 69), this one from Matthew Barley accompanied by Dénes Varjon. (the Op 5 sonatas had already been played). I have never felt that the cello sonatas were among Beethoven’s real masterpieces, but Barley gave this one a sort of raw individuality that, while not speaking in unmistakably Beethovenish tones, was a study in vivid contrasts between movements and within movements, lyrical or tough-minded, rhapsodic or strictly formulated.

Pre-eminent Canadian clarinettist James Campbell has been at Nelson, perhaps twice before, and is clearly a good friend to both the New Zealand String Quartet and the festival itself. While I truly lamented missing his playing in the Brahms clarinet quintet in the final Gala performance, it was a pleasure to hear him with marimba player Ian Rosenbaum in Canadian composer Alexina Louie’s Cadenza II.

Louie is of mixed Chinese-Canadian descent and this improvisatory piece drew on those contrasting influences. Rosenbaum’s virtuosity may visually have somewhat outshone the less flamboyant character of a clarinet player, and the mingling of sounds did not especially persuade me of their natural affinity, but the vitality and exotic character of the music provided an excellent punctuation mark between two pillars at either end of the 19th century.

Brahms first piano trio, essentially a youthful piece (aged 20), is a favourite of most chamber music fans, such as me. And its performance by Varjon with New Zealand String Quartet’s Helene Pohl and Rolf Gjelsten was a huge success, rich and romantic, refined and compelling.

Wednesday the 8th began with a meet-the-artists with the Goldner Quartet in the morning – most entertaining and interesting according to those who attended.

The 2pm, hour-long Theatre Royal concert, entitled Fire in the Belly, focused on the last piece, of that name by Jack Body commissioned by the New Zealand Trio in 2008 and played by the trio here. It might be something of departure from much of Body’s music that shows the influence of the indigenous music from many parts of the world. It was perhaps a reassurance for those who might wonder whether he also succeeded in writing music in a fairly traditional form, for traditional western instruments, in an idiom that was original yet accessible; it held my attention firmly, and is worthy of its place in the piano trio literature.

The concert began however with the fourth of Beethoven’s cello sonatas (Op 102 No 1) which Rolf Gjelsten played beautifully; though in his introduction he spoke, uncharacteristically, a bit too long. His pianist was Dénes Varjon who’d accompanied the Op 69 sonata on Tuesday and the accord was again heart-warming.

It was followed by Kakakurenai, by Japanese composer Andy Akiho, for marimba, vibraphone and glockenspiel, originally for ‘prepared steel pan’, having an effect rather like Caribbean steel drums; that quality could be heard through the two keyed percussion instruments. It started interestingly but became repetitive in its rhythmic and melodic ideas, though it came comfortably to an end at the right time.

Then a piece for viola and piano, Märchenbilder (Fairytale pictures), Op 113, by Schumann; one of his last works. Though played by affectionately and persuasively by Gillian Ansell and Dénes Varjon, it rather lacked much energy and its melodic interest was routine in comparison with the enchanting inspirations of his earlier piano music and Lieder.

On Wednesday evening at 7.30pm came one of the festival’s centre-pieces – ‘Bach by Candlelight’, inevitably, in the Cathedral, with the evening sun setting through the western stained glass. The pattern has been established over the years: a mixture of arias from cantatas and some instrumental works. As usual it involved most of the string players at the festival, from the NZTrio, the New Zealand String Quartet, the Goldner Quartet and the young Nelson ‘Troubadours’, as well as Matthew Barley, NZSO bassist Joan Perarnau Garriga, Ian Rosenbaum, Douglas Mews – harpsichord and organ, and Australian tenor Andrew Goodwin.

The two orchestral works this time were the lovely violin concerto in A minor, solo by the New Zealand String Quartet’s second violinist, Monique Lapins. At the end, Brandenburg Concerto No 6 which is unusual as it uses no violins: just violas and a cello and a bass, producing a gorgeous warm sound that I really love. So that was a delight.

The four arias were sung by Australian tenor Andrew Goodwin, a smooth, beautifully nuanced voice, strong and full of character. In some previous years I have found some cantata excerpts s a bit tedious, but these four, as sung by him, were just wonderful, simply creating music that may have been religious in intent but were typically rich in musical substance, easily sustaining the rapt attention of the capacity audience in the cathedral.

The one oddball element in the concert was Bach’s fifth cello suite, C minor, arranged for marimba. Ian Rosenbaum performed it from memory, with astonishing energy and musicality, but the sound, for me, was simply not right. It performance on a stringed instrument is so embedded in my head that playing the notes on a percussion instrument, even one capable, as is the marimba, of very subtle dynamic variety, was too hard to accommodate. Furthermore, the ability to strike four keys at once created more harmonic opportunities and that too altered its character, to the point where I would have wondered, hearing it for the first time, who the composer might have been.

In the 2pm Thursday concert in the Cathedral Matthew Barley began with Bach’s first cello suite. His playing revealed a rhythmic freedom, with the tempo in the Prelude far from the strict, steady rhythms that are sometimes imposed on Bach’s music. The Allemande was painted with a soft brush while in the Courante the bow skipped lightly, never biting into the strings. But it was the Sarabande where the greatest rhythmic freedom appeared, with a surprising silence before the final note. The whole performance was infused with an appealing, organic sense that prepared the ground for the following very recent compositions.

Tavener’s Threnos for solo cello is somehow a seminal late 20th century work that uses the simplest material with utter sincerity. There are three phases that move from the deepest spiritual level through lighter realms in higher registers before returning to the first phase; beautifully played as it was, I wondered whether Barley had quite discovered its essential profundity.

Appalachia Waltz by Mark O’Connor explored another spiritual region; its waltz character is unimportant but its roots half way between the classical and folk music realms as well as its beautiful unpretentiousness have made it famous. Barley’s lovely playing of its strange, haunting quality stilled the audience.

Italian cellist and composer Giovanni Sollima’s name might not be familiar to classical audiences (though one is shamed to see the long list of compositions in his Wikipedia listing). He too spans the fields of popular and classical music and his Lamentatio is easily associated with the two earlier pieces on this programme. The ‘lamentation’ was given extra impact through the cellist’s vocalisations at certain points, and while it began in the spirit that its title suggested, it soon became a frenetic double-stopping farrago, eventually ending with racing, descending staccato arpeggios, spiced by hard spiccato bowing below the bridge.

Improvisation was a major element in Barley’s performance of the last three works. However, there were no formal markers indicating where the composed music ended and improvisation began, and it was rather a matter of guesswork for me, since I had not heard either the O’Connor or the Sollima before. Sometimes I felt a change of tone and direction; sometimes the improvisatory music seemed completely fused with what the composer had written.

The concert was both an illuminating demonstration of the art of improvisation, and a fascinating awakening to some music that proved very much worth knowing and which I have enjoyed hearing again on YouTube clips since getting home.

(As a quite irrelevant aside, after looking on the Internet after getting home, I found one of Sollima’s performance colleagues has been poet and musician Petti Smith; both have been associated with Yo-Yo-Ma’s Silk Road Project – and both O’Connor and Sollima have been associated with it. At Nelson’s interesting new boutique bookshop Volume (on Church Street) I picked up Smith’s recent autobiographical M Train).

The concert on Thursday evening, 9 February, in the Theatre Royal was one of the true high points for me: both Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Brahms’s Piano quintet, Op 34 are right at the top of my musical loves.

But the concert, entitled ‘Love Triangle’, naturally included Clara Schumann: Helene Pohl and Dénes Farjon played her Three Romance for violin and piano, Op 22. Dedicated to violinist Joseph Joachim, it consisted of three contrasted pieces that showed real compositional talent, if not truly memorable music such as her husband or Brahms created. The first, Andante molto, was a dreamy, meandering melody, and a more vigorous middle section formed by wide-spaced intervals.  that was carefully constructed and agreeable; followed by an Allegretto built around a pensive melody, with a more lively middle section. I wrote during the performance: ‘Charming little morceaux’, or I might have said ‘Bagatelles’.

I can’t resist quoting a comment in a Wikipedia reference: “Joachim continued to play the pieces on his own tours. He reported, in a letter to Clara, from the court in Hanover that the king was in ‘ecstasy’ over the Romances and could ‘hardly wait’ to enjoy such ‘marvellous, heavenly pleasure again.’ They are lovely, private pieces, conceived in one of music history’s richest households.” (Tim Summers, violinist).

Dichterliebe is a song cycle that is commonly rated alongside Schubert’s two great cycles. We’d heard Australian tenor Andrew Goodwin in the four arias from Bach cantatas on Wednesday evening and while not detracting from the rare enjoyment of those, his singing of Schumann might have been a more significant endorsement of his musical scholarship and vocal sensibility. Apart from the singing, the piano parts are even more intrinsic to Schumann’s songs than to Schubert’s. And the spirit of many of them is foreshadowed in a longish piano introduction and in a postlude that sometimes offers a commentary that elaborates or lays to rest troubled emotions in the words.

Pianist Isabella Simon, Dénes Varjon’s wife, with whom she often plays duets, has accompanied many singers in Lieder and other art song; she was here for Schumann. Her introduction to the very first song, ‘Im wunderschönen Monat Mai’, her personal, idiomatic approach was evident; there was often a studied waywardness, evident from the start, and which matched Goodwin’s discreet and careful handling of Heine’s words (all the poems were drawn from his highly successful collection, Buch der Lieder of 1827). Even for those not understanding the German, there was a distinction between the purely lyrical and the more narrative songs, such as ‘Aus meinen Tränen…’, or ‘Ein Jungling liebt ein Mädchen’. There were often quite long pauses to allow the impact of an emotion to be ingested by the listener, and the vivid expressive qualities of Schumann’s settings would have told almost as much as fully understanding the words about the poems’ meaning.

One of the great strengths of the cycle is the pithiness of the poems, no word wasted, no emotion tediously prolonged. Schumann plunges straight into some, like ‘Wenn ich in deine Augen’ while in others there’s a long preamble or a long postlude, such as that following ‘Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome’ or ‘Ein Jungling’, or the extraordinary piano mediation in ‘Hör’ ich das Liedchen klingen’. Yet there are songs where the voice starts alone, like ‘Ich hab’ ein Traum geweinet’, with breathless angst, and its ending too, a pained dialogue between voice and piano, with frozen, wide-spaced piano chords, was magically paced. In all these, voice and piano found instinctive rapport.

And the stark contrasts between ‘Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube’ – passionate, impulsive – and sombre songs like ‘Im Rhein’ (above), created a singular dramatic antithesis.

Naturally one waited in high anticipation for ‘Ich grolle nicht’, but the start shocked me – it was so calm, so restrained, compared with the typical performance where a proud disdain for self-pity is often cried out, declaimed fortissimo; Goodwin maintained a calm tension right up to the last lines when he let go, with full voice with a far greater impact.

It was the one of Schumann’s songs that first impacted me through a music-loving German master at secondary school; that class room, east wing, lower floor, in the morning sun, remains vivid in my memory.

The rare experience of hearing the full cycle from these two fine artists was one of the true highlights of the festival.

Brahms Piano Quintet
As if that wasn’t treasure enough, in the second part of the recital, Dénes Varjon and the New Zealand String Quartet played Brahms’s wonderful piano quintet, Op 34. The magic impacts at once with that strange, exploratory opening which quickly becomes such a gorgeous whole-hearted, melodious movement, though an underlying sobriety is never far below the surface. Again, Varjon showed his gift for embracing at once the musical personalities of his fellow players, as indeed the quartet reciprocated, and there was simply no moment where one could sense disparate musical tastes or sensibilities.

It’s a long work and I have to confess that I’ve sometimes felt that the first movement seems paralysed in its aversion to quitting that stage, but whether that feeling arises is totally dependent on the performance. Here the thought never entered my mind; in fact I dreaded its ending, even after its full quarter hour. All other movements had the same effect, and it had me composing a petition to the NZSQ to make a habit of offering at least one concert a year with Varjon or another comparably collegial pianist to fully explore the piano quintet repertoire (the known masterpieces few, but there’s really a lot worth exploring).

Friday the 10th of February brought my stay to an end. The day of the cello.
The 2pm concert in the Cathedral was ‘Cellissimo’: a dozen cellists, probably the cream of resident New Zealand cellists, from the three ensembles present, from orchestras and university music schools around the country, along with three of the visitors.
Bach’s Air (‘on the G string’, if you like) from the third orchestral suite, BWV 1068, opened to such opulent beauty that I wondered whether one could any longer justify its performance on the (violin) G string. Would it be hard for any of those present to tolerate any other version? Four cellists played: Megiddo, Barley, Joyce and Edith Salzmann. Presumably it was an arrangement of the ‘arrangement’ (which was transposed from Bach’s D to C major) and not derived directly from the original air.

A different group played a Bach Toccata (Gjelsten, Eliah Sakakushev von Bismarck, Ken Ichinose and Ashley Brown); not the famous Toccata from the organ toccata and fugue in D minor, but one from an unidentified source by Alan Shulman.

And a different mix of players performed an arrangement of Bach’s Viola da gamba sonata No 1, BWV 1027. This had a particularly authentic feel, as the viola da gamba is a close relation of the modern cello.

Five cellists then played an attractive piece by Dvořák, Silent Woods, originally No 5 of a set of pieces for piano-four-hands (Op 68), which Dvořák arranged for cello and piano. Its singling out, here for five cellos, could be explained by its warm, opulent melody, which offered Eliah Sakakushev and then Julian Smiles (of the Goldner Quartet) the limelight.

Bartók’s Romanian Dances (six of them) also began life as piano pieces and were arranged for orchestra by the composer. Rolf Gjelsten duetted with Inbal Megiddo, alternating lyrical affection, with rhythmic energy, building to barbaric excitement in the last.

And the concert ended with five players. including Matthew Barley, in yet another arrangement of Rachmaninov’s Vocalise.

The Friday evening concert, entitled ‘Cellos by Candlelight’, again in the Cathedral, included varied cellists, ending with all present – I counted thirteen for the last two pieces by Piazzolla and Julius Klengel.

It consisted of mainly short  well-known pieces, but the whole was presented by ever-changing groups of players. Starting with the quintessentially enrapturing Canon by Pachelbel, and then the opening of the William Tell Overture, which I supposes everyone expected to continue for its full 12 minutes or so, but when the opening cello melody ended, that was it.

We heard two of Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasilleiras: No 1, actually written for an orchestra of cellos, it engaged eight players (if I’m not mistaken: Eliah Sakakushev, Megiddo, Tennant, Du Plessis, Brown, Salzmann, Ichinose, and the cellist from the young Troubadours quartet, Anna-Marie Alloway).

Later Jenny Wollerman sang the beautiful soprano part in Bachianas Brasileiras No 5 with a different cello assemblage, with a singular ethereal quality, the sort-of-wordless vocal line seeming to emerge from far up in the cathedral vault.

There were also two pieces by Pablo Casals, the Song of the Birds and Sardana, which the composer famously conducted with 100 cellists in New York in 1970. These provided a few minutes of variety, music that was probably as unfamiliar to most of the audience as it was to me.

Continuing to honour Casals perhaps, other cellist combinations played more Latin music: the six pieces that comprise Manuel de Falla’s Suite populaire espagnole, which had been arranged from the composer’s original Siete canciones populares españolas (Seven Spanish Popular Songs). Variously, they provided solo opportunities for lovely playing by several of the cellists. The surprising thing about these pieces, and indeed the whole cello-dominated concert, was the remarkable variety of tone and dramatic character to be found in this most human of the string instrument family.

And the concert, and for me, the festival itself, ended, with Piazzolla’s seductive Oblivion and Tango, and another rather obscure piece that proved emotionally attractive, a Hymnus for 12 cellos (Op 57) by Julius Klengel, a German cellist and prolific composer, mainly for the cello, whose life spread across the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Friday was very much a celebration of the cello, of massed cellos, which only becomes a possibility in a festival setting; it is one of the most important features of a festival, the opportunity to create musical ensembles that can make music that is rarely possible in the ordinary course of concert-giving.

Let’s list those involved in the Klengel piece, just for fun, as it was the total of the cello phalange at the festival: Anna-Marie Alloway, Matthew Barley, Ashley Brown, Rolf Gjelsten, Ken Ichinose, Andrew Joyce, Inbal Megiddo, Brigid O’Meeghan, Heleen du Plessis, Eliah Sakakushev von Bismark, Edith Salzmann, Julian Smiles, James Tennant.

Coda
Stage management was a most particular undertaking which had been noticed at earlier concerts but which reached a climax of complexity and precision at the Friday concerts, since they involved so many cellists. Each clearly had his or her own seating preference and as the players changed places for each piece, manoeuvres with chairs, as well as with music stands equipped for sheet music or tablets, took place with military precision and efficacy. Detailed maps had obviously been drawn up and memorised so that the stage managers could prepare fresh seat dispositions for each piece. In charge was stage manager Brendyn Montgomery and his assistant, Janje Heatherfield.

One must also acknowledge other management of the festival, a body of musical passionnées whose devotion to the cause goes way beyond whatever they are paid.

There’s the festival trust, chaired by Colleen Marshall who introduced many of the concerts and artists; Bob Bickerton, manager, and droll anecdoteur as he shared the introductor-assignment, in addition to being the multi-instrumentalist and entertainer of children.
The fundamental task of artistic planning and management remained the role of two members of the New Zealand String quartet: Helene Pohl and Gillian Ansell. Success of the festival rests essentially on them, for the music chosen and the musicians who play it.

To end, I should add that one of the little curiosities of this festival was a series of little addenda at the end of each set of programme notes, entitled ‘Conversation Piece’.
An example from this last concert read:
“How can one work of art or music exist successfully in many contexts? Does the emotional affect of a work change depending on its context, or do these works succeed because of the strength of the original content?”
(and note the carefully distinguished use of the word ‘affect’, commonly confused with ‘effect’).

 

Melbourne’s Ring cycle revival a spectacular triumph

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Der Ring des Nibelungen by Wagner

Opera Australia

Musical Director: Pietari Inkinen; Stage director: Neil Armfield; set designer: Robert Cousins; costume designer: Alice Babidge

The cast members are named in the course of the text

State Theatre, Melbourne

Friday 9 to Friday 16 December 2016

Introduction
I went to the third run of the Ring in Melbourne, in December. At its first incarnation in 2013, I had rather set it aside, partly because the ticket prices were pretty steep – well over $1000 for the four – and something in me said that, as I have seen the entire cycle five times over the years, in various places including Bayreuth, I doubted whether Opera Australia would offer me any really new insights beyond what one can get a lot cheaper in most parts of Germany.

But when I started getting reports from people who’d been and had their lives changed, I regretted not going. I doubted that it would be revived. After all, the Adelaide Ring of 2004 had been stored in the hope that Opera of South Australia or another Australian company would revive it. But that never happened and the $20 million worth of staging, costumes, sets were sold off for peanuts.

About the end of October I decided to go, reinforced by the chance to see Handel’s Theodora being staged by Pinchgut Opera in Sydney about the same time: I could see all in the space of about 12 days.

I did not plan to write a comprehensive review of all four music dramas; and as I hadn’t asked for press tickets I was under no obligation. Anyway, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be burdened with the inevitable note-taking in the dark that I always rely on to support my erratic memory. In the event I just enjoyed it untroubled by the search for words, but I kept a sort of diary through emails home. Some weeks later, and after writing about Theodora, I decided to bestir myself and pieced together these impressions, to describe the elements that I found especially interesting and which I could remember in sufficient detail. What follows is about five times the size of what I’d planned to write: it kept growing and is still, of course, far from comprehensive and probably not well balanced.

Production
The production was by leading Australian theatre and opera director Neil Armfield with set designs by Robert Cousins and costumes by Alice Babidge. Their approach varied widely from scene to scene – it was at times spectacular and surprising, at other times bare, black and minimalist, so the drama relied largely on the acting and singing. What really sustained it and often held my attention during episodes that I have sometimes found a bit protracted and tedious, was the commitment of the whole production, the portrayal of emotional interaction through acting and singing; above all, and in contrast to many such enterprises, Neil Armfield was largely successful in placing it firmly in the present day.

There are many excellent reviews available on line, most with a selection of photos of representative scenes which you will find interesting and evocative. A good way in is through the Richard Wagner Society (Victoria) which contains links to most of the reviews (http://wagnermelb.org.au/wp/reviews-of-the-melbourne-2016-ring/.

 

Das Rheingold

There’s no other theatrical experience that takes hold of you as powerfully and as filled with excited expectation as the opening of Das Rheingold. It immediately banishes any residual feelings that it might be diminished through knowing the music and the story pretty intimately. In the dark theatre, the below-the-stave E flat arpeggios slow emergence from silence is an almost overwhelming experience.

I wondered whether the many in the audience who saw this production three years ago had misgivings – would it work again?

The first impression as the curtain rose was of a vivid scene with the three Rhine Maidens (Lorina Gore, Jane Ede, and Dominica Matthews), scantily clad in shimmering white cabaret array, emerging from a writhing mass of bathers; they were said to represent the currents of the river, though no attempt was made to represent water. Fortunately, all three singers were so physically endowed as to profit from such exposure. (I can’t resist quoting The Guardian’s review here: “…with the Rhinemaidens in seafoam sparkles, like Tivoli Lovelies en route from a beachfront spectacular…”).

It set the scene for an updating to the present, which convinced through its sheer unapologetic openness; challenging us with, “well, isn’t this how Wagner conceived it?”, even though obviously, he didn’t. And we took it in our stride.

Alberich – Warwick Fyfe – well known in New Zealand, was hardly the repulsive predator sometime portrayed, and his seduction attempts failed amusingly; provoked to revenge, he steals the gold. He sang and acted with gusto and total conviction, and was critically judged one of the chief ornaments of the entire cycle.

In the second scene, we meet Wotan, wife Fricka, daughter Freia; James Johnson’s Wotan, a beautiful if somewhat underpowered voice, Jacqueline Dark, Fricka, the voice of moral responsibility and financial rectitude, alarmed at Wotan’s reckless deal with the giants to build his new castle, Valhalla; and Hyeseoung Kwon in the small but engaging role as Freia, the provider to the gods of the apples of eternal youth. She’s taken hostage by the giants as guarantee of payment for their construction work on Wotan’s unaffordable new palace, Valhalla.

Here, as throughout the cycle, the implications and details of the story were presented with unusual clarity even though some physical elements were passed over. No effort is made to put the two suited giants on stilts or otherwise to simulate giantness: New Zealand bass Jud Arthur and Australian Daniel Sumegi took the roles of Fafner and Fasolt splendidly.

Some reviews, naturally, felt suits diminished the impact of the myth’s universality and meaning, and at certain moments, so did I, though the conviction of the acting and generally superb singing usually overcame that.

Challenged by Fricka to deal with the debt predicament, Wotan and Loge set off to rob the gold that Alberich had stolen from the river, in an underworld whose subterranean horrors had to be created in the mind. No attempt specifically to portray Alberich’s transformations with the power of the tarnhelm though.

In the last scene the giants are paid off with the stolen gold and Freia is released in a curious mix of mythical tale and modern matter-of-factness. The deal, for the giants, includes both the magic tarnhelm and the ring but Wotan at first refuses to give up the ring until convinced by Erda, the earth mother, that he must surrender it. She acts somewhat like Cassandra in the Iliad and Berlioz’s Les Troyens: knowing the past as well as the future but, as with Cassandra, she is ignored: she warns that possession of the ring will bring the reign of the gods to an end. Liane Keegan projected it with impressive power and conviction.

Erda later reappears in Siegfried, forewarning that it will bring about the end of the gods, for Alberich, furious when the ring was taken from him, had placed a curse on it forever. Apart from the gorgeous reappearance of ‘Rainbow girls’, to accompany the gods taking possession of their new home, the music contributed more to the empty grandeur of the gods crossing the rainbow bridge to Valhalla to bring Rheingold to its splendid end.

 

Die Walküre

Right at the start of Walküre there were a few things that didn’t seem to work or at least didn’t fit the story, especially in Act I. Though the hut that served as Sieglinde and Hunding’s home in the forest didn’t need to be a pretentious, columned-portico affair, this was more like a tiny hut in the Tararuas, with scarcely room for one bed and a table. Siegmund couldn’t even enter from the storm and sat outside, while the text makes it clear that he’s stumbled inside. Nor was the great World Ashtree supplied, in which the powerful sword is lodged; when the time came, Siegmund simply pulled it from the floor.

However, Siegmund and Sieglinde (Bradley Daley and Amber Wagner), both performed with strong, elegant and perfectly well-placed voices (but see below) completely in tune with their characters. Their appearance, as twins, was happily reinforced by their singular likeness, but for me their attire didn’t fit one’s preconceptions (though I read no other misgivings on that account). Sieglinde’s violent husband, Hunding, was Jud Arthur who succeeded in exploiting a reversal of his real self in a Jekyll and Hyde manner, cruel and unbending, actually a somewhat more interesting creation than his Fafner in Rheingold.

Nevertheless, with Daley’s  superb “Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond”, the first act came off magnificently with its rapid build-up of energy and excitement, through “Siegmund heiss ich, Siegmund bin ich”, taking the sword, brother and sister race out together.

At the start of Act II there was an announcement that Daley (Siegmund) had a voice problem and would be replaced in the wings by an understudy, Dean Bassett, while the silent one did the acting. I was lucky to be well back in the theatre so the problem of misplaced voice wasn’t too conspicuous. Bassett’s voice was an excellent fit for the task, seeming conscious of the fate that Fricka will demand for him and which becomes clearly inevitable.

Brünnhilde (Lise Lindstrom) appears for the first time, in Act II. At first Wotan tells her to help save Siegmund in the forthcoming fight with Hunding; but then Fricka (Jacqueline Dark) arrives to challenge Wotan, to demand he punish this affront to morality, and the ground shifts.

The stage was dominated by a huge, rotating, spiral ramp on which most of the action took place. In sharp contrast to nil stage sets in other scenes, it was spectacular and visually interesting but hardly in line with one’s picture of the abode of the King of the Teutonic gods (Wotan – James Johnson) and his lady-wife (Fricka). But these things soon diminish in significance.

The beginning of the end of Wotan’s hegemony
The shocking combination of adultery and incest between brother and sister is too much for Fricka. Now, far more than the ritual, carping wife, Jacqueline Dark is assured, clear-sighted, though guided by convention, taking the high moral ground; her voice captured all that confidence and authority. She laid her cards on the table with great skill and Wotan could be seen visibly retreating from his authoritarian position. This further sign of his inevitably crippling loss of power was vividly exposed. Oddly, coincidentally, Wotan’s voice began to show signs of wear during his long Act II monologue, though it was arresting nevertheless.

Eventually Hunding, again violently impressive, strong-voicedly, comes to wreck vengeance on Siegmund; in the fight, Wotan intervenes to break Siegmund’s sword so Hunding can kill him; and then Wotan contemptuously despatches Hunding.

Here Brünnhilde (Lise Lindstrom) intervenes, determined to rescue Sieglinde who, she knows, is carrying the child destined to save Wotan’s godly kingdom (Siegfried). Lindstrom soon emerged the star of the show and got the biggest applause at the end. Slim, pretty, fair, with a splendid but not stentorian voice, that was far from being the archetypal horned-helmeted Valkyrie, but evinced a touch of vulnerability, yet resolute in her essential humanity.

A photo reproduced in the critical website, Man in Chair, review shows Johnson and Lindstrom in Act II about to embrace ecstatically on the spiral ramp with the array of stuffed animals behind them (meaning, a matter of debate). Worth looking at: (https://simonparrismaninchair.com/2016/11/24/opera-australia-die-walkure-review-melbourne-ring-cycle-2016/).

The famous opening of Act III was generally celebrated by critics; typically, David Larkin of Man in Chair wrote graphically:

“Apart from their wonderful singing and stirring acting, the nine women playing the Valkyries deserve bravery medals for their incredible entrances. Flying in from the heavens on swings as they sing the famous war cry, the woman promptly unhook their harnesses and leap into action on the stage. The natural hair and costuming mean that each of these invaluable women can be very clearly identified.” And he proceeded to describe each…

The action was “jaw-dropping, descending from the heavens with voices powerful enough to resurrect the dead”, wrote Tim Byrne in Time Out.

Don’t think I’ve ever seen a production in which the dilemma of the gods and the options available to them have been more vividly explored. The very long dialogue between Wotan and Brünnhilde in Act III can sometimes seem too much, but every statement and counter-statement here had such credibility as a deeply felt confrontation between loving father and daughter that it is worth every long five minutes for the power if its wonderful music.

This long, intensely moving scene in which Wotan relents and agrees to protect his daughter with the fire, is an emotional high point, perhaps THE emotional high point of the entire tetralogy.

There are so many nuances that can be perceived in this denouement, and in the tetralogy as a whole; and as Time Out wrote: “All to the most immersive, often overwhelmingly and intensely beautiful, music written for the stage”.

 

Siegfried

I admit I often find the scene with Mime (Graeme Macfarlane) and Siegfried (Stefan Vinke) trying; their mutual hatred and childishness just wearies me, and I don’t suppose there’s much a director or the singers can do to alter its essential character. This is Siegfried’s first appearance in the cycle, brought up by Mime in a cramped house; the drawings on the wall behind Siegfried’s top bunk speak of a stunted childhood, but also of his already great interest in animals and nature.

(Wagner apparently saw Siegfried as the comedy part of his tetralogy! Equivalent to the Scherzo in a symphony, did he really think all this was amusing?).

Suspension of disbelief is needed too, for Siegfried’s re-forging of Siegmund’s sword which had been shattered by Wotan so that Hunding could kill him (Siegmund). The conflict between realism and symbolism is never convincingly resolved, for the score calls for the hammering to be part of the music.

Things become more interesting in Act II. It reintroduces Alberich and Wotan, aka The Wanderer to do some scene setting. Mime’s long-term plan to get the Ring is revealed; after Siegfried has killed the dragon, Fafner – Jud Arthur – and got the ring, Mime will kill Siegfried and take the ring.

Though I can do without dragons, here I was spared it, as the dragon was invisible behind a screen with a black hole in its centre; we see just a huge projection of his horrible face, snarling and grimacing, with his hollow voice booming and Siegfried seizes the chance to stab Fafner, still unseen, apart from blood that spurts in the form of red ribbons. Then suddenly a stark naked Jud Arthur appears in full view to utter his final words. A coup de théâtre for sure!

Siegfried was infected with a drop of Fafner’s blood which suddenly enables him to understand Mime’s plotting his death, as well as to understand the song of the Woodbird (Julie Lee Goodwin) who is often hardly seen, but here quite visible, and most enchantingly portrayed.

Meantime, Siegfried fully realises Mime’s intentions and kills him. The Woodbird then offers to lead Siegfried to a new companion – behold! Brünnhilde!

Siegfried awakens Brünnhilde
The third act starts with Wotan/Wanderer calling on Erde to advise him, but the sins of men have clouded her mind and the Wanderer finally realises that the end of his world is nigh.

Then there’s his confrontation with the (still) obnoxious Siegfried, ignorant that he’s talking to his grandfather, and he breaks The Wanderer’s spear (which carries the ‘treaties’ by which the gods rule the world). No more is seen of Wotan.

Siegfried is then guided to Brünnhilde by the Woodbird, safely penetrates the fire and wins her. The love scene evolves in which the brilliantly cast Brünnhilde effects the sudden maturing of Siegfried, making him a nearly credible lover, reviving something of the atmosphere of the opening of Walküre; and Siegfried becomes more adult and tolerable.

David Barmby wrote in Performing Arts Hub that Stefan Vinke as Siegfried was the outstanding voice and character of the night, considering him a highly gifted actor and singer and great interpreter of the Wagnerian heroic tenor roles.  He felt that Vinke both looked the part and was “a fully formed character, embracing boredom, loneliness, impetuousness, naivety, heroism and love”.

Reviews varied about the success of the love scene that soon takes hold. One wrote: “Thereafter follows one of the most impassioned duets in the Cycle, wonderfully realised by Lise Lindstrom and Stefan Vinke, finishing the opera with thrilling elation on a unison high C”.

David Larkin in Bachrtrack wrote: “Even the love duet between Siegfried and Brünnhilde at the end of the opera is far inferior to the fervent exchanges between Siegmund and Sieglinde in Die Walküre.” But then he confesses that he found Siegfried the most uniformly enjoyable part of the Melbourne Ring so far: testimony to the production, singers and musicians. But one called that love music that ends Act III “one of the most impassioned duets in the whole cycle”.

 

Götterdämmerung

Here I will reproduce, more or less as I wrote it, my email home describing what I felt the overwhelming impact of Götterdämmerung; it was truly marvellous.

Part of my more than ever delight was the excellent surtitles (English Wagner scholar, Barry Millington) that were bright and clear, didn’t switch off before a relatively slow reader could read and to take in what they meant. There were little things whose relevance I better understood this time: some of the foretelling by the Rhinemaidens at the beginning; Waltraute (Sian Pendry)’s dramatic and movingly sincere plea to Brünnhilde to give the ring back to the river, which struck me more powerfully than ever before.

I’ve never seen the scenes in the Gibichung palace so clearly portrayed, both through design and histrionically – and I don’t mean simply the palace itself: rather, the handling of the potion that makes Siegfried forget Brünnhilde; the awareness/unawareness of the action; and its implications for the roles of Gunter and Gutrune.

The wedding was the most stunning scene of all as Hagen (Daniel Sumegi) seems utterly convinced that Brünnhilde will just accept the inevitable, marriage to Gunther (Luke Gabbedy); however, her reaction on seeing Siegfried about to marry Gutrune (Taryn Fiebig) was tumultuous, her total dismay and fury was hair-raising. Gunther can sometimes be portrayed as a weak-willed inconsequential figure, but here he stood his ground respectably with Siegfried in their particularly graphic and gory blood-brotherhood ceremony. Yet his apparent obliviousness to what had happened and what he was involved in was more bewildering and stupefying than it is sometimes.

The wedding was the conventional middle class affair of a generation ago perhaps: long tables laden with goodies. It was an astonishing scene as the guests remained oblivious to what had happened and blind to the realities until Brünnhilde really spelled it out. Then there was the hunt, proposed by Hagen so that he can kill Siegfried (to get the ring, inter alia); the killing (by revolver) is nakedly perfunctory and the more shocking for it.

It was formal attire all round with both Hagen and Gunter in modern naval uniforms with the correct numbers of bands on the sleeves for naval commander and captain.

The palace however was a bare gabled framework of posts, all on a revolve which was often used but not excessively. And the burning of Valhalla for which the same edifice served, was lines of gas burners the full length of the posts and beams. Perhaps not such a chaotic conflagration, end-of-the-world feeling that I’ve seen in other productions; there was a bit much light, but the tumultuous orchestra and Brünnhilde’s penetrating voice filled out the visual elements. They used a huge chorus, both men and women, though its scored just for men, but they were a prominent part of the Gibichung court and were very present during the last scene.

I’d like to end with a quote from one of the excellent Australian reviews, from Tim Byrne in Time Out: “The rest of the opera is taken up with Brünnhilde’s final act, her self-immolation on the funeral pyre of her husband and other self. It is a purification by fire that seems to take in all the sacraments: a baptism, a confirmation, a wedding and a last rite. Lindstrom is quite simply phenomenal; her voice penetrates to the heart of every note, glorious in the quiet moments and devastating in the throes of passion.”

The stage for the curtain calls was crammed with singers and extras, and then Inkinen called the entire 130-or-so orchestra to come up on stage too. I’ve never seen that before. And the clapping went on and on. Perhaps this especially spectacular curtain call was to mark the last of a total of twelve performances.

Pietari Inkinen and the orchestra
Before finishing, I must refer to the music; orchestra, chorus (in Götterdämmerung), soloists, all conducted by Pietari Inkinen, late of the NZSO. I might be prejudiced in his favour but here are some of the comments:  (To balance the Trans-Tasman tensions, I did see and delight in the Hamburg Ring a few years ago under Simone Young).

“Conductor Pietari Inkinen was masterly, unfailingly sensitive to the singers and to the musical flow, while the 100-strong [about 130 actually] Melbourne Ring Orchestra was superb.” (The Age)

“Pietari Inkinen directing the Melbourne Ring Orchestra brought a new vigour and enthusiasm to the work with particular mention to be made not only for the famous orchestral passages, particularly in Act 3, but also for the extended, sensuous and lingering chromatic sections at the realisation of love in Act 1, complete with some excellent solos from within the ensemble. The exquisitely delicate suspensions as Wotan leads Brünnhilde to her rock were profound and memorable.” (David Barmby, Performing Arts Hub)

“Together, Inkinen and Armfield have created an inward-looking Ring, low on gimmicks and as darkly still as Neidhardt’s was brightly energetic. Armfield’s premise is to tell the Ring as a tale of the human race today, steadily destroying its own environment while failing tragically at the business of love. Wagner’s magic is translated as show-business sleight of hand.” (Shirley Apthorpe in The Financial Times)

“…the orchestra once again turned in a sterling performance … One of the only places where Inkinen let the orchestra dominate was the culmination of Mime’s hallucinations, where the fiery music drowned Macfarlane’s cries of ‘Fafner’, but this was not dramatically unwarranted. The open pit may throw up challenges in terms of balance, but it has also allowed the perception of fine details of Wagner’s colouristic orchestration: particularly gorgeous was the delicate sound beginning the “Ewig war ich” section of the duet, the tune famously repurposed for the Siegfried Idyll.” (David Larkin in Bachtrack)

“Under Inkinen’s watch, the Melbourne Ring Orchestra is in superb form, in particular the lower brass that is the Ring’s thrilling engine (and shout out once more to the Ring feature that so delighted me back in 2013, the “anvil orchestra”: an offstage room full of, well, playable “anvils” that soundtrack Das Rheingold’s descent into Nibelheim).” (The Guardian, London)

“With Pietari Inkinen’s sublime conducting, and the orchestra’s intense and supple playing, the effect is almost uncanny.” (Tim Byrne in Time Out Melbourne).

“Maestro Pietari Inkinen presides over a massive orchestra of players sourced not only from Orchestra Victoria and the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, but also from ten other national and international orchestras. The effect of the glorious music emanating from the voluminous pit from so many players is difficult to describe. Most striking is the sense that various strains of music are originating from distinct sections of the pit; this effect is usual enough in opera orchestras, but is significantly magnified on this scale. With a profound knowledge of the music, and gentle air of assured confidence, Inkinen capably caters to musicians and singers alike.” …
… and elsewhere: “As the Cycle progresses, the supreme capability of maestro Pietari Inkinen becomes ever clearer. Adroitly managing subtle underscoring and dramatic climaxes alike, Inkinen maintains manageably brisk tempi and supportive accompaniment. Inkinen’s expertly judged conducting shows the incredible musicians at their best without ever drawing undue attention.”  (Simon Parris in Man in Chair).

Even though this revival didn’t attract the nationwide excitement and attention that the earlier 2013 one did, by its end the three cycles had created the sort of communal emotional impact that a football world cup might generate in those who derive their spiritual sustenance from that sort of thing. It’s one of the most wonderful music experiences I’ve had (that is, since my last Ring).

 

Sydney’s Pinchgut Opera triumphs in Handel’s Theodora

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Theodora: dramatic oratorio by Handel

Produced by Pinchgut Opera
Artistic director and conductor: Erin Helyard; director: Lindy Hume; designer: Dan Potra
The Orchestra of the Antipodes
Chorus: Cantillation (music director: Antony Walker)
Cast: Valda Wilson, Caitlin Hulcup, Christopher Lowrey, Ed Lyon, Andrew Collis, Andrei Laptev

City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Sydney

Tuesday 6 December, 2016, 7 pm

I’m glad that last year I broke the ice with Sydney’s Pinchgut Opera, for my delightful experience with Grétry’s L’amant jaloux made me more than ready for another.

The title Theodora did rang a bell: my first reaction was that it was an oratorio, as I was fairly sure that I’d recognise the names at least of most of Handel’s operas that have been much performed. Furthermore, it was in English and I knew that Semele was Handel’s only English opera (if you don’t count Acis and Galatea).

But nowhere in the publicity did the word ‘oratorio’ appear, not even in the programme itself – apart from an interview with one of the singers where the word ‘oratorio’ slipped past. But a quick check in my reference books confirmed it: his second to last. I’ve no doubt that the company had guessed, probably rightly, that the Or… word might have deterred prospective opera customers, knowing that oratorios are usually on religious subjects and are basically undramatic (not necessarily so). I’m sure that, generally speaking audiences for opera and oratorio are fairly different.

However, the piece is far from unknown today, as it has emerged suddenly as one of Handel’s great masterpieces: there have been various performances of it in recent years. Best known in the Anglo-Saxon world would be that by the Glyndebourne Festival in 1996, under William Christie, directed by Peter Sellars, with the unforgettable, late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson as Irene, Dawn Upshaw as Theodora and David Daniels as the male soprano Didymus. Among others: in Vienna from the late Nikolaus Harnoncourt in 2004; the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris in 2006 with Christie’s Les Arts Florissants; the Göttingen Handel Festival in 2015.

So far, all my Handel experiences have been good, and anyway, I was confident that Pinchgut would turn even the most unpromising sow’s ear into a rewarding and entertaining silk event.

From both musical and, with slight reservations, the story point of view, it is little short (perhaps not-at-all short) of a masterpiece. And the singing, of principals and chorus, and the orchestra, were world class. Only aspects of the production didn’t quite equal that.

Even though I confess that I didn’t specifically recognise much of the music, it proved great Handel, dynamic, dramatic and often very beautiful and moving. There were moments when it sounded like Bach, especially in the more conspicuously religious passages.

And before I go any further I must remind you that Days Bay Opera are presenting Theodora alongside their Eugene Onegin, with three performances from 11 February.

The story
The story is straight-forward enough and, being an oratorio, it is in English.

It tells the story of the love and eventual martyrdom of Theodora, a young Christian woman, and her lover, Didymus, a Roman soldier, in the city of Antioch.

The Roman governor announces that those who refuse to make sacrifice to Jupiter on his name day will be tortured and killed, the two lovers who are secretly Christians are each determined to sacrifice their own lives to save the other. They cannot bring themselves to comply with the city’s ordinance and eventually die. Interest lies in the portrayal of the chorus of the Roman militia, initially baying for blood, as becoming deeply affected by the quiet courage of the Christian lovers and their friends.

Opera seria in mid 18th century, even handling the most awful crisis, usually turned up a last minute rescue or change of heart by the villain so there was no blood on the floor. Death at the end of tragic opera became OK later in the century and has become the basic stuff of most opera ever since. So for the baddies to win should be no problem for audiences today.

The puff offered by the Royal Northern College of Music for their planned March-April 2017 staging of the work characterises it like this:

“The plot of Theodora resonates to this day as conflicts continue to erupt around the globe. Innocence, love, faith and courage bloom strong and full of promise, only to be struck down by the thirst for power and blind hatred.”

The theme was certainly heavily Christian and the two leads die rejoicing that they’ll be happy in heaven for ever after. I did find the story a bit laborious and piously religious in spite of its moving to modern times. Perhaps that explained why one local review remarked that the portrayal of the Christians failed to suggest the fundamental arrogance, fanaticism, even treachery, that undoubtedly coloured early Christian behaviour and would have aroused more than mild irritation in the authorities.

How it looked and sounded
The job of creating a credible environment for a late Roman story of authority against subversion, becomes almost impossible in sets and costumes of the present day; not that I’m suggesting it should have looked like a traditional production of La clemenza di Tito (set in the first century AD).

It was in modern dress, and one did note the inconsistency with rituals and behaviour that couldn’t be anywhere but in the late Roman Empire. Nothing unusual there. But the bulky and inconvenient furniture on a fairly small stage and the look and behaviour of the characters detracted from an evocation of the period and from the nature of the conflict as portrayed by the words.

The overall concept was the work of Lindy Hume while the design was by Dan Potra, who desgned for Wellington City Opera in the 90s – The Barber of Seville and Rigoletto.

And it struck me as perhaps resonating with what is happening now in a city not far away, Aleppo. Echoes of ISIS might have arisen as the Roman militia and populace in Antioch were harangued by the governor or pro-consul who insisted that any Christian refusing to pay obeisance to Jupiter would be killed or be persecuted. I wondered whether we were supposed to see the Roman rulers as Islamic State and the Christians as, well, Christians, or one of the many mutually antagonistic, anti-Assad factions in Syria. But that didn’t really stack up.

Perhaps a more serious issue was the fact, which I confess only dawned on me as I explored the libretto more carefully later, searching in the libretto printed in the programme book for arias and a duet that I caught in certain You Tube offerings, that it had been cut here and there. I felt that they could well have found room if certain of the over-long da capo arias had been abbreviated.

Singers
The singers, two non-Australian, were just wonderful. Australian soprano Valda Wilson sang the role of Theodora, a beautiful voice that soars above the orchestra.

A superb American counter-tenor, Christopher Lowrey, was magnificent in the role of Didymus, a Roman soldier, a Christian secretly in love with Theodora.

His army colleague Septimus was sung by English tenor Ed Lyon, who has extensive European experience in baroque opera, and he too was excellently cast vocally; he finally fails to rescue the couple.

Mezzo soprano Caitlin Hulcup sang the hardly less important role of Theodora’s friend Irene, with equal intensity and vividness.

The Roman Governor Valens was sung with excessive fury, practically unhinged, by Andrew Collis who’s familiar here as Don Magnifico in the 2015 Cenerentola and as Kissinger in the Auckland Festival’s Nixon in China last year. Uncontrolled histrionically, it didn’t really come off.

Individual arias and duets, especially between Theodora and Didymus, were just breathtakingly beautiful; pity we didn’t hear more of them.

Chorus and orchestra
And the wonderful chorus was, like last year in the Grétry opera, the famous Sydney ensemble, Cantillation, strong and entrancingly nuanced made one overlook any of the other minor shortcomings.

The whole assemblage was conducted by the same conductor as last year, Eric Helyard who taught at Vic for a few years (I wonder why he never seemed to do in Wellington what he’s so accomplished at in Sydney. Perhaps he did and I never noticed).

His baroque orchestra – the same as last year, The Orchestra of the Antipodes – an ever-present force: gutsy, elegant, often rhythmically thrilling and in balance with singers and chorus, with an unerring instinct for Handel’s detailed and effective orchestra. They specialised in really rich, throbbing basses – well, two double bass, three cellos and two bassoons, and timpani – as well as gorgeous natural horns and woodwinds: they made marvellous sounds.

Perhaps I’ll end by borrowing some fine words from Sydney reviews: ‘Christopher Lowrey animates a natural sense of line with elegantly stylish ornamentation, energised at times with sinewy agility without losing smoothness.’; ‘wonderful rose colours and freshness in her sound’ (about Valda Wilson); ‘rounded firmness, fluid mellifluousness and natural attractiveness’ (Caitlin Hulcup);  Cantillation in a ‘tapestry of refinement’; Erin Helyard’s magic with the orchestra where ‘in some of the cadenzas time suspended itself for a moment so that truth and beauty could merge’.

If there were the negatives, the positive elements of the work, its production and performance, far outweighed them. Yes, a triumph at virtually every level and from every angle. It was a memorable evening and my journey was magnificently rewarded.

 

Flute and piano duo feature composers languishing in the shadows of the greats

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime recital

Christy and Nick Hunter – flute and piano

Johann Joachim Quantz: a flute concerto in G
Rachmaninov: Prelude in E flat, Op 23/6
Nick Hunter: …and the mountain looms in the falling light
Jules Mouquet: La flute de Pan

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 30 November, 12:15 pm

Here were two names that were slightly familiar to me but which I couldn’t really offer biographical information about. Both studied in Wellington: Nick at the Conservatorium of Music at Massey University, Christy at Victoria University. Palmerston North has featured in the lives of both, but the birth-place of neither was disclosed. They are married and have quite a range of performance history both together and separately.

It was a varied programme with nothing that was there to arrest or challenge the audience. Both the first and the last were composers who hovered in the shadows of much more famous figures: J S Bach and the Debussy-Ravel impressionist scene.

Johann Quantz’s claim to fame tends to be through his working around J S Bach and his son C P E; for Quantz was a favrouite musician in the court of Frederick the Great in the mid 18th century where C P E became court chamber musician. When, late in life, Bach went to Berlin through his son’s intermediation, it was clear that the King suffered J S with some indifference if not discourtesy (yet Bach responded by composing the Musical Offering for Frederick, based on the inhospitable tune that he was offered on which to improvise fugally). C P E Bach felt in the shadow of Quantz whose advantage was as a fine player of the king’s favourite instrument; he became court composer, ahead of Bach.

You don’t hear much of his music these days, unless you’re a flutist or flute groupie. Here, however was a nice chance. This, one of around 300 flute concertos, began with a chirpy tune on the piano (and you could sense its better fit with the harpsichord); the flute part was much embellished, light in spirit and enjoyed a cadenza towards the end. The same spirit really ruled the calmer middle movement where one became aware of Quantz’s pleasure in using widely spaced pitches in his tunes. The final movement, Allegro Vivace, certainly afforded Christy Hunter excellent opportunity to demonstrate her prowess and dexterity; here a melodic kinship with Handel rather than Bach struck me.

Nick then played one of Rachmaninov’s Preludes, from the first set, Op 23; though the programme note described it as almost contrapuntal, it’s character as essentially a set of variations was perhaps more evident. It was a polished and idiomatic performance.

Then he played his own solo piano piece inspired by twilight on Mount Ruapehu. It put me in mind of the famous passage in Lilburn’s essay A Search for Tradition (or was it the Search for a Language?) where he describes the experience of looking at the mountain as the night express from Wellington to Auckland passed in the moonlight (I have deep, nostalgic memories of that and many other evocative train journeys, now all gone, in our impoverished country), and he was awakened to the awareness of the remoteness of the European cultural world from New Zealand, and the need to create our own (though I have long felt the concern with cultural nationalism to be unhelpful).

However this was a most effective, impressionistic piece, suggesting not merely the jagged mountain peak but possibly an eruption.

Finally the two players returned to play one of those pieces that define the ‘one-hit-wonder’ composer: Jules Mouquet’s La flute de Pan. Born about half way between Debussy and Ravel he was winner of the Prix de Rome a couple of years after Debussy. Mouquet’s music is cast in a language in which those sounds are pretty inescapable, but it doesn’t diminish the effectiveness and originality of this three movement piece – a mini flute concerto. The refinement and colour of the playing by both flute and piano placed it clearly in the warm and luxuriant turn of the century era, unsullied as yet by Schoenbergian disturbances or world war a decade later. Both instruments exploited interesting ideas, moving about each other, always in balance and affording space for every detail be heard.

It was not a big audience but an appreciative one, and I hope the pair will accept another invitation to play in this splendid series.

Politically coloured vocal contest settles the score between baritones and bass-baritones

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concert
The First Annual Battle for the Barithrone, presented by S-Crew

Contestants: James Henare and Joe Haddow (bass-baritones) and Will King and William McElwee (baritones)
Heather Easting (piano)

Songs and arias by: Jerome Kern, trad., Sullivan, Sondheim, Cilea, Verdi and Mozart

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 16 November, 12:15 pm

Both Rosemary Collier and I found ourselves at what turned out to be an unexpectedly amusing recital. We were both held up by late trains and non-functioning lifts and so missed whatever introductory remarks might have illuminated the nature of the ‘contest’. So disadvantaged, we decided to pool our impressions in the hope of making some sense of the unusual scenario that was being enacted.

However, the four biographical notes gave some clues about the issues dominating it.

Former tenor William McElwee was attempting to defeat ruling baritone title-holder Will King while bass-baritones Jamie Henare and Joe Haddow were competing as master and pupil.

An uncredited Simon Christie (disguised as ‘S-Crew’) acted as commentator and, on occasion, referee and conciliator in the vicious struggles for ascendancy.

The only candidate properly dressed for the occasion was McElwee – black tie in the noon-day sun (and rain). Others trusted to their talents, best described as ‘barihunkishness’.

There were four rounds: Spirituals, Alliances, Comic Duets and Arias

Will and William sang, competitively, though equally committed, ‘Old man river’, demonstrating the challenging nature of McElwee’s elevation (or descent) from tenor to baritone.

Another river ruled the two bass-baritones, as Joe Haddow and Jamie Henare dreamed of freedom across the ‘Deep River’; the latter singer displayed some evidence of miscasting – is he in fact a bass?

Three of the contestants entered into an obscure G&S triple-alliance, ‘With wily brain’, for the two baritones and a solitary bass-baritone – Haddow. The words might have been a travesty of the text in Utopia Limited: the penultimate collaboration between increasingly antagonistic librettist and composer. It’s a pretty odd subject for an opera of any kind – a satire on the recent enactment of a law creating the limited liability company – the triumph of free-market capitalism and laissez-faire.

Sullivan featured again in the Comic Duets class, with ‘Kind Captain’ from HMS Pinafore engaging the two bass-baritones. It might have been a role for the confused by-stander to award the laurel.

Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods provided the arena for the contest between baritones William and Will in ‘Agony reprise’; the voices blended excellently well, not, presumably, what the venomous contestants intended.

In the Arias round William McElwee explored obscure opera again with an aria from Cilea’s ‘other opera’, not Adriana Lecouvreur, but L’arlesiana’ (the opera version of the Daudet play that Bizet wrote wonderful music for). The black tie was clearly designed to sway the judges, though his fine voice might have been enough, in spite of its tenorial traces. Was his rendition perhaps a little too loud for the fine acoustic of St Andrew’s? However, his high notes and phrasing were exemplary.

Jamie Henare remained with Italian in ‘Il lacerate spirto’ from Simon Boccanegra, the great opera that the Festival bravely mounted in 2000, with a splendid Vladimir Vaneev singing Henare’s vengeful role of Fiesco. A promising Verdian here, especially with an attractive voice of such natural bass character. His words were well articulated and he brought emotional colour to his voice; his deeper notes were thrilling.

Baritone Will King, now vying for the crown as King Will, accepted here the lesser nobility of Mozart’s Count, determined to beat Figaro in a final round to get the first go, as it were, at Susanna. Will’s voice carried the steel though his demeanour could have expressed greater determination. His singing and his Italian were outstanding, especially considering the fast tempo.

And then Joe Haddow, again in Mozart, with a great robust voice, leafs through Leporello’s Catalogue, allowing his voice to dim slightly, with fine natural acting. He used his resonant voice dramatically in an accomplished manner with plenty of light and shade; a fine Leporello!

Unscheduled, all then sang the ‘Song of the Volga Boatmen’, in Russian, heavy in Jamie’s splendid bass solo but with lighter colours from the higher baritone registers of Will and William.

But remember, this is a contest, like the one across the Pacific a week ago. Referee Christie was on the phone to the invisible judges and announced the election (er… singing contest) result, generally approved, but a few seconds later another call came in, overturning the popular vote and confirming a shocking upset result from the Singing Electoral College: William McElwee the winner, Jamie second, and Joe and Will 3rd equal: Chaos!!!

Regardless of result, we were delighted hear four fine voices, all different. Heather Easting’s accompaniments were classy and conspicuously supportive.