Author: Lindis Taylor

Waikanae’s chamber music year starts brilliantly with Amici Ensemble

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Amici Ensemble
(Waikanae Music Society)

Violins: Donald Armstrong and Malavika Gopal; violas: Julia Joyce and Andrew Thomson; cellos: Andrew Joyce and Ken Ichinose

Strauss: Prelude (Sextet) to Capriccio
Anthony Ritchie: Ants: Sextet for Strings, Op 185
Boccherini: Quintet in D, G 270 – Grave and Tempo di fandango
Brahms: Sextet No 2 in G, Op 36

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 21 February, 2:30 pm

It is the season for beginnings of the year for series of concerts from a variety of musical organisations. After St Andrew’s on The Terrace comes the first of Wellington’s four main chamber music bodies, the Waikanae Music Society, which presents the most concerts: nine this year.

The Amici Ensemble, comprising leading NZSO players, has been a regular and prominent contributor at Waikanae. Its composition changes according to the demands of the music; for this concert, it’s a string sextet, and all but one of the works was for those six instruments.

Capriccio was Strauss’s last opera, written early in World War II, and premiered in Munich in October 1942. The Sextet which serves as its prelude is actually the beginning of the action: the Countess Madeleine (the main figure in the opera) and her brother are listening to a sextet written in honour of her approaching birthday. The opera is greatly loved by Strauss aficionados (including the writer), a ‘conversation piece’ that debates the relative merits of words and music in opera, drawing on an 18th century play, Prima la musica, poi le parole which Salieri composed as an opera. The Countess’s two suitors are a composer and a poet, and the question remains at the end unresolved but, for the audience, it’s rather unfairly stacked in favour of the music, given the Countess’s long and rapturous soliloquy that brings the piece to an ostensibly inconclusive end. The role of Countess became one of Kiri’s greatest, and Renée Fleming has been its supreme interpreter for many years.

The sextet is simply beautiful, and these players left us in no doubt that they think so too. It was warm and generous in spirit, giving little hint of what later in the opera becomes a somewhat intense debate; its easy invention and exquisite scoring hardly suggest a composer approaching his 80th birthday. From where I was sitting the sound was opulent and beautifully projected.

With a commission from Christchurch music patron Christopher Marshall, the Amici offered here the first performance of Anthony Ritchie’s Ants, inspired by the request for a sextet (the ant is a six-legged insect, if it had escaped your notice). Its five sections considered aspects of ants’ lives and characteristics, and fate. Obviously, not a heavy-weight composition seeking to plumb emotional or intellectual complexities, nor to tax the listener with avant-garde structures and idioms, yet it did not belittle the audience’s cultivated taste. The use of varied instrumental techniques and rhythmic patterns applied to agreeable tunes conjured up impressions that reflected the titles of each section, such as ‘Anteater’ and ‘Self-impaling’, created a sense, perhaps, of danger or ingenuity. The performance fully explored all its individuality and badinage.

The Fandango from Boccherini’s String Quintet in D, commonly played in the composer’s arrangement for guitar and string quartet, has rather replaced in popularity the formerly ubiquitous ‘Boccherini Minuet’ from the Quintet in E, G 275. It’s the last movement of the string quintet in D, G 270. The quintet (momentarily retiring the ensemble’s second viola) captured most convincingly, with spiccato bowing and other Guitar effects, the character of the Andalusian dance. The performance was lively, even spectacular, particularly the virtuosic part for the first cello, flawlessly rendered by Andrew Joyce. A splendid end for the first half of the concert.

Brahms second string sextet occupied the second half. Its first movement is one of Brahms most rapturous creations, the second theme of which employs the letters of the name of the young woman, Agathe, he had spurned a few years before and which later caused him pain; it got a performance that would perhaps only have increased Agathe’s sadness over her failure to overcome Brahms complex relationship with women, that led to his never marrying. For me, it ranks alongside the gorgeous second movement of the Op 18 sextet. The rest of the Op 36 does not quite equal that first movement, with a second movement, Scherzo, in common time, that doesn’t take off till the triple time Trio section. The players found a suggestion of uncertainty in the third movement, Poco Adagio; again one wondered whether that too reflected Brahms’s regrets. The last movement somewhat recaptures the spirit of the first, as the players tossed themes from one to another in the concluding Coda.

A great start to what looks like a splendid concert series.

 

 

 

Accomplished duo play Brahms at St Andrew’s lunchtime concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Catherine Norton (piano) and Carolyn van Leuven (violin)

Brahms: Violin Sonata No 1 in G minor, Op 78
Scherzo from the F.A.E. Sonata (1853)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 17 February, 12:15 pm

The lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s started last Wednesday; Middle C neglected it.

But I was delighted to be at this one, starting the year so splendidly with Brahms. Catherine Norton’s name is reasonably familiar in Wellington, and I realized that Carolyn van Leuven’s ought to have been, too, as her short biography revealed, though her origins are in Canterbury, with studies and work in Europe and America, that she has played with the NZSO. She is now working in Wellington.

It was clear from the start that this was a seriously rehearsed performance, with care over balance, each taking pains to offer space and attention to the other; the piano, even with the lid on the long stick, remained a perfect partner. Brahms offers plenty of warmth and lyricism in his violin sonatas: the warmth of the violin and discretion of the piano part. They handle bits of melodies from two of his songs, ‘Regenlied’ and ‘Nachklang’, which offer a sort of emotional basis to the music. Though it is hardly fair to expect listeners today to pick up themes from a quotation from a song in another language, the symbolism of rain and then of sun shine, the alternating feeling of sadness and peace were there; in the second poem rain mingles with tears and they are audible in the semi-quavers in the last movement.

But Brahms is always careful to avoid emotional references that are too bold and precise or too obvious. The rather secretive opening of the Adagio led perhaps to a slightly too emphatic piano passage: perhaps understanding the poetic reference would have helped the listener, but that is inadmissible. The finale, Allegro, however was both calmly paced and even, though quite assertive, clearly followed the detailed dynamic markings, bringing to an end what was a singularly polished and satisfying performance.

To play the Sonata before Brahms’s Scherzo contribution to the ‘FAE’ collaboration with Schumann and his pupil Dietrich – a gift to their violinist friend Joseph Joachim – tends to draw attention to the Scherzo’s surprising maturity, written 25 years earlier, when Brahms was 20. The confidence of the brisk opening phase with its clean staccato piano chords, followed by a broad, meditative section were splendidly captured by the players, as if Brahms was referring to the character of the other movements of the sonata for which he was not responsible. Yet the feeling almost of grandeur towards the end could have been felt as the conclusion of the work rather than just the third movement (Schumann was assigned to both the second and last movements). It’s strange that the entire sonata is not played much.

This was a recital that dramatically illustrated the value of, the gratitude we should feel for, the year-long series of Wednesday lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s on The Terrace. For me at least, if I may for a moment reflect on my own relationship with them. In the mid 80s, I went regularly to the St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts, and pinned on various departmental notice boards details of forthcoming concerts, encouraging awareness of all the delights to be found there. They were probably a catalyst that led to my taking early retirement from the Public Service and devoting myself to both nature conservation and the preservation of historic buildings in Wellington, as well as to writing about music.

St Andrew’s, led by its minister, John Murray, was also important in dramatizing various civic issues such as the preservation of Wellington’s historic buildings. This was the time of building frenzy when council and developers were allies in the widespread destruction of scores of buildings that should simply have been valued and restored. The building boom culminated in the collapse of 1988; the bitter irony followed with many of them, many head offices, being vacated soon after by the companies that had built them, abandoning Wellington for Auckland and elsewhere.

One minor but precious one was 22 The Terrace, a very early building and near neighbour of the church, which survives thanks to the efforts of John Murray and others including the feisty ‘Save our City’ campaign.

The mid 80s (1986) also marked the first New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, with its important three-week-long series of lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s. Those concerts drew together a great many leading New Zealand musicians, as well as a few from abroad, who were not the main focus of the big festival events. The lunchtime concerts, and for a couple of festivals, daily early evening concerts as well, continued to enrich the festival till, in the post-Chris Doig era, through the later 90s, its artistic standards declined, turning away from a focus on acknowledged classics in the performing arts.

With the devoted enterprise of Marjan van Waardenberg and the generous support of the church itself, St Andrew’s helps preserve much of Wellington’s important musical character.

Handel’s early Agrippina in brilliant Days Bay production

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Agrippina by Handel
Opera in a Days Bay Garden

Producer: Rhona Fraser Musical director: Howard Moody; stage director: Sara Brodie
Joel Amosa, Rhona Fraser, Rowena Simpson, Stephen Diaz, Rebecca Ryan, Daniel O’Connor, Julian Chote, Dan Sun, Barbara Patterson

Sixteen-piece orchestra led by Howard Moody

Canna House, Days Bay

Sunday 14 February, 6pm

Wellington’s boutique opera company that presents most of its productions in the beech forest-surrounded garden of the company’s producer, Rhona Fraser, staged its ninth opera at the height of an unusually warm summer. We regretted not making time before the performance to join the thousands on the beach, for a swim, with the temperature hovering around 27 degrees.

This was the company’s second Handel opera, after Alcina in 2012. Other unfamiliar pieces have been Mozart’s L’Oca del Cairo, Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims and La Calisto by Cavalli.

(For the record, the company’s other productions have been of The Marriage of Figaro, Maria Stuarda, Così fan tutte and Der Rosenkavalier).

It’s one of Handel’s early works, written in Italy while he was absorbing the traditions of Italian opera, dominated by Alessandro Scarlatti, and Cesti and Stradella and others. Agrippina was written for Venice when he was 24. Nevertheless, it is regarded as one of his most successful pieces both on account of the vitality of the music and an unusually well-contrived libretto. So it’s not one of those operas where by the middle of the second act, you get impatient that no one asks the obvious question that would put an end to the troubles and truncate the opera.

The performance, the second, on 14 February, on the terrace before the house succeeded well with no sets and few props. Instead, the cast is expected to perform athletically, extravagantly, with the focus on themselves, their voices and acting. The performance was in front of the orchestra which was in the recessed entrance way on the right for the first act, but from Act II moved to the left side, straddling the wide sliding doorway of the large living room, half in, half out. The orchestra was the usual ensemble, 16-strong, drawn mainly from splendid NZSO players, with outstanding oboists, and led from harpsichord by Howard Moody.

At the start, facing west and singing into the blazing sun, with nowhere to hide, nerves and intonation weaknesses showed. But in all cases, each quickly came to life, gaining confidence and relishing the risqué nonsense.

Rhona Fraser herself sang Agrippina (Emperor Claudius’s wife), sometimes struggling to portray her duplicitous character, but singing and acting with conviction, with very overt asides in the form of smiles and grimaces and other signs of cynical self-interest. Next to her role as the Marschallin in the Strauss opera, this might well be her biggest role in her Days Bay enterprise.

The opera opens with the news that Emperor Claudius has died at sea leading his wife Agrippina to launch her campaign to persuade the Senate to accept her son Nero as successor. However, Claudius’s general, Ottone, appears with the news that he rescued Claudius and the rest of the opera is essentially a complex series of plots (and their frustration) aimed at achieving Agrippina’s ruthless ambitions.

In spite of his first appearance as Emperor in most un-imperial costume, Joel Amosa, soon took command of his role as Claudius in more appropriate purple toga, displaying not only grandeur and authority but an intelligent sense of humour. Though Ottone, counter tenor Stephen Diaz, who has performed in previous productions at Days Bay, first also appears in singularly unmilitary dress, he emerges as a general of unusual charisma, with commanding presence and voice.

Claudius resumes his flagrant pursuit of Poppea under the nose of his wife who continues to attempt to get rid of both Claudius and Ottone.

Accomplished Handelian Rebecca Ryan, overcame her unflattering costume, to portray Poppea boldly and vocally buoyant if not quite managing the flagrant, seductive bit.

As in Monteverdi’s masterpiece, La coronazione di Poppea, Nerone is a trouser role and Rowena Simpson, in tight-fitting black costume, creates a lively, youthful character, not the legendary monster who later succeeded Claudius and might have murdered his mother Agrippina (some accounts have her murdering Claudius, so Nero’s effort might not seem so bad). And you’ll recall that in the Monteverdi opera, Poppea sets her sights on Emperor Nero who banishes his wife Ottavia so that he can ‘marry’ Poppea.

The two brilliant counter tenors Stephen Diaz and Julian Chote, in their respective roles as Ottone and Narciso, were both accomplished and larger-than-life. Narciso and Pallante (Daniel O’Connor), are defined as ‘freedmen’ (libertus) – that is, former slaves who have been freed and accorded full citizenship, here probably on account of their talents and education. Peripheral figures perhaps, they gained attention through their entertaining flamboyance and impressive singing. They become useful in the last act as Agrippina’s tools in her persistent scheming to get Nero confirmed as Claudius’s successor, in the event of Claudius meeting with an accident.

There are other minor characters: Lesbo, the Emperor’s servant, was sung vividly by Dun Sun and at the end the goddess Juno appears to bless the eventual happy ending that statesmanlike intercession by Claudius had brought about. Barbara Patterson acts and sings the goddess with glittering splendor.

The success of the staging was again the work of Sara Brodie, master of imaginative histrionics, explicit dissembling, clever exploitation of the physical shape of the terrace and house. Much credit goes to the witty and at times very colloquial translation by Amanda Holden, which was first used by director David McVicar for the English National Opera production that was seen in Brussels and Frankfurt before reaching London in 2007. Most of the singers succeeded well in projecting the words with clarity.

Sure, it’s a complicated story, not easily grasped merely by reading a synopsis. Rather, it made sense through the vivid performance itself, especially in a production that illuminated character and motivation as well as this entertaining hill-side staging did.

Modern revivals of Agrippina began in the middle of World War II, at Halle, Handel’s birthplace; reportedly a travesty, from today’s point of view. Next came a live radio broadcast by Italian Radio in 1953. There were several more stagings in Germany before the first in England, at Abingdon in 1963. There was a concert performance in Philadelphia in 1972 and the first staged production in Fort Worth in 1985. It returned to Venice in 1983. All of these apparently neglected a concern for historical practice, and the first to seek historical performance accuracy were at Schwetzingen in 1981 and Göttingen in 1991.

In the 21st century, productions have become fairly common, as interest in early opera, especially Handel, has become very widespread.

The Tudor Consort 30th anniversary with founder Simon Ravens

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Thirtieth Anniversary concert
The Tudor Consort directed by Simon Ravens; Douglas Mews (organ)

John Taverner: Missa Gloria tibi trinitas
John Sheppard: Adesto Sancta I and II and Libera Nos I and II
Robert Johnson: In Nomine (organ)
Simon Ravens: Outwitted I and II

Cathedral of Saint Paul, Wellington

Saturday 13 February, 7:30pm

Simon Ravens was an English choral musician who, while an undergraduate, had become the conductor of an early music choir at the University of Wales; he came to Wellington in 1985 where he sang with the choir of Saint Paul’s Cathedral. He was soon taken with the idea of forming his own choir that would specialise in Renaissance music. It was named The Tudor Consort, modelled to some extent on famous ensembles such as The Tallis Scholars, and almost immediately, through Ravens’ knowledge and enthusiasm, won itself a rather special place in the New Zealand choral scene. In fact, it probably played a rather important role in the remarkable flourishing of choral music, and particularly Medieval and Renaissance music, that occurred in Wellington in the following 20 years or so.

Concerts by The Tudor Consort commonly filled the Anglican Cathedral, and other spaces, coming to specialize in performances that attempted a liturgical reconstruction of sacred music, to recreate the atmosphere and character of the music’s original context. They included memorable performances in the beautiful Erskine chapel in Island Bay, and an enactment of the French medieval Play of Daniel.

After Ravens returned to England in 1990, the choir determined to continue and with a succession of local choral specialists has managed to do just that over the following 25 years. In 2006, the choir staged a three concert festival to celebrate its 25th birthday in St Mary of the Angels and in the great hall of the former National Museum, one of them conducted again by Simon Ravens.

Ravens returns to celebrate 30 years’ survival, in fact triumph, if we are to accept Ravens’ flattering comment in his pre-concert talk, that the choir is even better than he left it 25 years before. This time, no liturgical reconstruction, no particular attention to atmospheric lighting (though it was convenient to be able to read the texts in the programme, even though the Latin was pretty-much muddied in the acoustic).

The concert was underpinned by Taverner’s masterpiece, Missa Gloria tibi trinitas. Taverner is perhaps the earliest of the Tudor composers whose names are reasonably familiar. Born about 1490, his adult life fell within the reign of Henry VIII. The mass has four parts – Gloria, Credo, Sanctus (and Benedictus) and Agnus Dei – there is no Kyrie, as it was not regarded as part of the ordinary of the Mass before the Reformation. The performance was punctuated with the original plainsong Gloria tibi Trinitas, and two settings of the motet Adesto Sancta Trinitas by John Sheppard who was some 20 years Taverner’s junior, as well as Sheppard’s Libera nos; and very interestingly, Ravens’s own settings of an epigram by American poet Edwin Markham, Outwitted.

The other interesting contribution was the organ interludes – two settings of In Nomine – played by Douglas Mews.

At this point I might comment that while the programme gave texts in both Latin and English, it offered little background about the pieces apart from the oblique remarks in Ravens’ overview of the music which dwelt mainly on the problem of performing and hearing music written in a very different era from our own. So there is much to be gained from pulling out reference books and exploring websites to gain better appreciation of what one had heard.

Outwitted opened the concert. It embodied a pithy, humane lesson: “He drew a circle that shut me out / Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. / But love and I had the wit to win / We drew a circle and took him in.” Advice perhaps for dealing with forms of fanaticism and cruelty today… Though its message is probably clear and pungent enough, the quasi-polyphonic setting, with voices used in striking combinations, demonstrated the rich possibilities of a centuries-old form to enhance a message for today.

The plainchant antiphon followed, nicely preparing us for the far more complex sounds of the Taverner mass. It is interesting that this wonderful mass by Taverner, so complex and musically elaborate, was written before the great works of Tallis and Byrd and all the better known English composers of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. Written for six voices – treble, alto (called ‘mean’ in the literature), two countertenors, tenor and bass – it is a work that offers challenges of all kinds to a conductor and singers; the mastery of balances between the parts and the sheer virtuosity demanded. Though the six voices (the choir consisted of 20 singers) weaved around the chant with wonderful skill, creating transcendent harmonies, each remained splendidly distinct.

One of the recurring delights, if not sources of wonderment, was the sustained high register demanded from the counter-tenors, with two voices in particular emerging as striking soloists – Richard Taylor and Phillip Collins – as well as from the trebles who are also required to maintain long, brilliant and very high passages. Soloists from the trebles and altos were also vividly conspicuous, though never detracting from a seemly liturgical spirit – Jane McKinlay, Anna Sedcole and Andrea Cochrane. There seemed to be something very modern in Taverner’s ability to create music that was not just technically impressive but also generated through long spans of polyphonic inspiration, an emotionally exciting response in the audience (if I may suggest that others responded as I did).

After the Gloria, Mews played Taverner’s In nomine and in the second half, after the Sanctus of the Mass, a second In Nomine by Robert Johnson. Though arguably not an instrument well adapted to music conceived for a Renaissance organ, he chose stops that were clear and sharply varied, and avoided generating anything resembling the tumult of a great Romantic organ.

The In nomine is curious. I read in Peter Phillips’s notes accompanying the Tallis Scholars’ recording of Taverner’s music, the following: “Originally in a spirit of wanting to flatter Taverner by copying him, composers of every generation up to that of Purcell, and including Purcell himself, tested their contrapuntal techniques by basing music on the ‘In nomine’ section of the Benedictus of Taverner’s Missa Gloria Tibi Trinitas (‘Benedictus qui venit IN NOMINE Domini’)”.

John Sheppard’s two settings of Adesto Sancta were sung between parts of the Mass, comprising verses alternately in plain chant by men’s voices and polyphony: not as elaborate as Taverner though the polyphonic verses were delivered with great brilliance. His two settings for six voices of the Libera Nos, in which Ravens’ beat marked the slow minims of the music reflecting the plaintive nature of the words, concluded each half of the concert.

Though the Tudor Consort has enlightened and entertained Wellington audiences with revelations of early music (as well as music of other periods) for thirty years, for this special anniversary concert Simon Ravens chose works, most notably the great Taverner mass, which are important and mark a return to the heartland of the choir’s origins: perfectly appropriate for such an occasion. These memorable and moving performances fulfilled the hopes and intentions of the choir and its inspiring founding director and will undoubtedly rate as one of 2016’s musical highlights.

 

A few days in Sydney for opera and symphony

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Pinchgut Opera: L’amant jaloux by André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry
Musical director: Erin Helyard; stage director: Chas Rader-Shieber
City Recital Hall, Sydney
Thursday 3 December 2015

Sydney Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Edo de Waart  – two concerts
Preludes to acts I and III of Lohengrin; Sinfonia concertante for organ and orchestra by Joseph Jongen; Also sprach Zarathustra (Strauss)

Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
Friday 27 November, 8pm

Edwards: The White Ghost; Mozart: Piano Concerto  No 24 in C minor, K 491; Elgar: Symphony No 1 in A flat, Op 55

Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House

Friday 4 December, 8pm

Readers with sharp eyes will have noticed my absence from the pages of Middle C over the past month. It is partly to be explained by my little trip to Sydney to fulfil a long-standing ambition to see the work of a small Sydney opera company, Pinchgut Opera, which specializes in early opera, of the 17th and 18th centuries. When I edited New Zealand Opera News (till 2006), I conscientiously announced their forthcoming productions, and hoped to get myself there. But their once-a-year projects were typically in the first week of December and there were still too many musical and other distractions in Wellington.

The company’s name, by the way, derives from an island of that name in Sydney Harbour, which was used as a prison in the early years, and the prodigality of the rations led to the name which has persisted.

The timing of this year’s second production was especially tempting as it coincided with a couple of concerts by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under Edo de Waart.

André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry
The opera was L’amant Jaloux by André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry who lived from 1741 to 1813. He was born in Liège and studied in Rome but settled in Paris to become a successful composer of mainly comic opera. He helps to breathe life into seeming opera drought between the death of Rameau till the emergence of the post-Napoleonic composers like Auber, Boieldieu, Hérold, Adam and of course Berlioz (though one should not ignore foreigners like Gluck, Cherubini, Piccinni, Spontini and Rossini).

There is a ballet suite drawn by Thomas Beecham from Grétry’s Richard Coeur-de-Lion that gets an occasional airing on radio. When I was in Liège many years ago to catch a performance of Rossini’s William Tell, I was surprised to find in front of the Opera, a statue, not of César Franck who was also born in Liège, but of Grétry. In fact I could find no memorial, plaque on a birthplace or a street named for Franck!

L’amant Jaloux
L’amant Jaloux, ou les fausses apparences which premiered in 1778, is based on a very popular 18th century English play, The Wonder: a Woman keeps her Secret by Susannah Centlivre.

An entry on it is to be found in the Penguin Opera Guide, even if not in many other opera dictionaries. The Penguin remarks that “Beaumarchais-Da Ponte-Mozart” borrowed from it (possible as The Marriage of Figaro was composed in 1784).

In an admirable programme essay, musical director Erin Helyard (who till recently was well-known here as lecturer in historical performance practice at the New Zealand School of Music at Victoria University) wrote that “it was Grétry who, more than any other operatic composer, really managed to unite Italianate vocality with French word-smithery”, which was the result of the impact of Pergolesi’s La serva padrona which had finally reached France in the early 1750s, instigating what was called the Querelle des bouffons, the battle between French and Italian operatic styles which soon became politicized in France as between conservatives and liberals.

This piece shows Grétry as having succeeded in merging the French and Italian styles, resulting in sounds that come close to Mozart and the story not too remote from Figaro and Così fan tutte.

The story: Spanish merchant Don Lopez, for financial reasons, needs to stop his widowed daughter Léonore (only 20 years old) from remarrying. The object of her affections is the ridiculously jealous Don Alonze; his first suspect turns out to be his own sister Isabelle, a friend of Léonore, who is protecting her from her guardian who want to marry her by force. There’s a dashing French officer and a clever maid who confuses the names of the two young women which reignites Alonze’s jealousy as he hears the French officer serenading the wrong girl. In the nick of time Alonze comes into a big inheritance thus removing Lopez’s objections to his daughter’s marriage, and the identities of the young ladies are clarified, leaving no impediments to the two couples marrying.

Never mind: it’s fast-moving; the acting was very animated and, as far as possible in a farce, the piece expresses a basic sincerity and humanity that emerged clearly enough through the surface nonsense. The spoken dialogue was in pretty clear English, sung parts in French with witty surtitles;

The staging was droll and clever with simple sets, dominated by a long diagonal wall studded with trapdoors that supply bizarre exits and entrances for those being hidden or making untoward entrances.

The singers
The six principals were splendidly voiced, mostly Australian singers with respectable international careers: David Greco, eight years with important ensembles in Europe, made an immediate impact as the domineering father, Don Lopez, an imposing voice and presence; Jacinte the Maid was sung by Jessica Aszodi, a perfect fit in the soubrette mould, shrewd, quick-witted. The main female role of Léonore was sung by Celeste Lazarenko who’s amassed an impressive range of roles in Britain and France as well as Australia: a vivid presence with a brilliant soprano voice. Ed Lyon (Don Alonze) has sung extensively with William Christie’s Les Arts Florissants as well as interesting roles at Glyndebourne and Covent Garden and with several Continental companies. Alonze’s sister and Léonore’s friend Isabelle was sung by Alexandra Oomens whose career has so far been limited to Australia, though her performance was hardly less striking than her more experienced colleagues: the three women, as a trio, offered some of the most delightful episodes of the evening. Andrew Goodwin was well cast as Florival, who is the imagined rival of Alonze, but eventually gets the right girl (Alonze’s sister); his career has ranged from Madrid to Moscow, including The Rake’s Progress with the Auckland Philharmonia.

Music director Erin Helyard was focus of all eyes (and known to a Wellingtonian as lecturer till recently in historical performance practice at the New Zealand School of Music), a small, vital, energetic man who stood at a harpsichord and hammered away at the ‘continuo’ part supporting the Orchestra of the Antipodes which contributed equally to the production’s success, with beautiful authentic instruments (the programme book drew attention to their using baroque pitch, A=430kh). The orchestra’s sound, at close quarters (in the front row) was splendid and the ensemble of voices wonderfully integrated.

I just loved every minute.

Sydney Symphony Orchestra
While I might be tempted to say this opera production eclipsed the two Sydney Symphony Orchestra concerts I heard, that wouldn’t be true. An opera performance is usually more engrossing than a normal concert by an orchestra or chamber group, if only because it involves more senses, but these two concerts, conducted by Edo de Waart, were splendid; anyway: a different orchestra and different town.

I had missed a solo recital in the Concert Hall by organist Olivier Latry the day before my first symphony concert, but he played the organ part Jongen’s Sinfonia Concertante as well as in Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. It allowed me to reflect with some bitterness, about the feeble, irresolute behavior of the Wellington City Council which has removed the great organ from the Town Hall and is incapable of resolving to carry out the necessary strengthening of the building so that Wellington is able to hear a concert organ, important in many orchestral and choral works, not to mention concerts in one of the world’s finest traditional concert halls.

One of the curiosities of my trip was to encounter two rather obscure composers both of whom were born in Liège: Grétry, above, and now the composer of the big organ work played by the SSO and organist Olivier Latry, Joseph Jongen.

It’s curious that a piece that is probably not typical of most of Joseph Jongen’s output has probably become his best known work. It was commissioned to inaugurate the restoration of the huge organ in the Wanamaker department store in Philadelphia in 1928. This was a performance that showed vividly how important the existence of a real pipe organ of concert dimensions and capacities is for a city with any pretentions to being of musical consequence. The space afforded the music a fullness, clarity and excitement that cannot be expected in many churches, even one with as fine and versatile an organ as that in the Anglican cathedral in Wellington.

In the second half, Edo de Waart demonstrated his special affinity with the Strauss tone poem, thrillingly expansive in the famous opening, as well as, in turns, warmly human and ethereally mystical elsewhere in the great work.

The concert was curiously designed, starting with the Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin and ending with the Prelude to Act III. Their sharply contrasting characters fitted their roles most effectively; that they hardly raised any expectations of the music drama that follows each prelude was probably just as well; both work perfectly well as stand-alone concert pieces.

Edwards, Elgar and Mozart
The second concert, a week later, was for me rather less rewarding, dominated as it was by Elgar’s First Symphony. Though De Waart achieved a warm and beautiful performance, the cloying, grandiose, imperialist atmosphere that lies behind at least its first and last movements, I find hard to stomach. Happily, the conductor’s Dutch pianist colleague Ronald Brautigam occupied most of the first half with Mozart’s piano concert No 24 in C Minor. Both conductor and pianist approached it in a calm, rapturous spirit which I found deeply satisfying.

The concert had opened with an Australian piece I didn’t know by a composer with whom I was quite familiar – one of the country’s best-known and most popular contemporary composers, Ross Edwards. I came across his violin concerto, entitled Maninya, many years ago. It is actually one of five pieces written in what Edwards calls his ‘maninya’ style: the word means ‘dance’ or ‘chant’, and the work played here was White Ghost Dancing. The aboriginal people described the early European settlers as ‘white ghosts’ and Edwards wrote that “the concept of a white ghost came to symbolize non-indigenous Australia’s innate aboriginality – its capacity to transform and heal itself through spiritual connectedness with the earth”.

His music is immediately engaging, both through its infectious rhythmic character and tunefulness and a certain instrumental colour that recurs from time to time like a friendly gesture.

I was interested to hear Eva Radich’s interview with De Waart after I got home, in which he commented on his programming device of placing any ‘difficult’ work in the first half and the popular symphony or concerto in the second, to prevent those afraid of the unfamiliar from leaving at the interval.

De Waart has been a major presence in the orchestral world for a long time, with a large and impressive discography. I look forward to his tenure with the NZSO.

War’s impact on the women: Nota Bene sings, Gaylene Preston reads memories

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Mothers, Daughters, Wives

Nota Bene, chamber choir, conducted by Peter Walls Readings by Gaylene Preston
Bruce Cash – organ and piano; Oscar Bullock – violin

Hall of Memories, National War Memorial (The Carillon)

Saturday 14 November 7:30 pm

I’m wondering if others have noticed that quite a lot of musical and other attention is being paid to a war that took place a hundred years ago on the other side of the world; perhaps not: I’m just unusually perceptive.

It was a sad mess, an indictment on all the states that became involved, because based on nationalist bigotry, pride and bluster, and in our own case on empty jingoism. But our own losses, large per capita, were confined to military personnel and small in comparison with horrendous killings of both soldiers and civilians, particularly in central and east Europe.

In the words of the Bach chorale: ‘Ich habe genug’.

This event inspired by Nota Bene looked a bit different though. To begin, the choice of music, mainly liturgical, dealing with the most anguished aspects of Christian belief and myth, complemented the suffering of the women who were bereft by the deaths and terrible impairment, mental and physical, of sons, husbands and brothers.

The concert took place in the Hall of Memories at the foot of the Carillon, also known as the National War Memorial which I didn’t even know existed till about thirty years ago, even though born and bred in Wellington. This surprising, exquisite space is used mainly for religious services associated with war commemoration, but it’s also been used occasionally for other events. The Tudor Consort gave concerts here in earlier years.

Gaylene Preston read a number of extracts from written reminiscences of women, starting with poems Armistice Day and Ellen’s Vigil by Canterbury poet Lorna Staveley Anker. Preston’s delivery was perfectly judged, with simplicity and integrity in a soft, educated, New Zealand accent; long-gone are the affected, elocuted and dehumanized offerings that were once standard.

The following memories avoided histrionics, yet the expression of grief and hopelessness was the more real. A common theme as soldiers were farewelled on troop ships, was the belief that all would be well.

Pamela Quill followed her husband to England when he joined the air force; she described receipt of the telegram which simply reported ‘missing’. Joy’s memories included the plague of nightmares that afflicted her after the telegram about her brother.

Our approaching maturity was perhaps best revealed by Rita’s description of her husband’s imprisonment as a conscientious objector in the second world war; his work colleagues at the Auckland Savings Bank took up a collection which helped sustain Rita through the years of the war (I suspect there would have been a less sympathetic response in WW1).

A particularly poignant experience was told through the eyes of Tui’s child, born after the father’s departure, who had problems at his return, as indeed did Tui herself; by then she hardly knew him.

In the last piece, the writer reflected at the VJ Day celebration in 1945 overshadowed for Ali by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – ‘a world changed forever’.

In many ways the readings packed the greatest punch, though the religious motets and the songs that emerged during the wars were beautifully sung. They began with the Gregorian chant, Dies Irae, with the men walking slowly up the left aisle and the women up the right; then came Peter Philips’s Mulieres sedentes, composed during James I’s reign, harmonically sophisticated (you’ll find it on the highly praised 2001 Naxos CD that Peter Walls recorded with the Tudor Consort).

Bruckner’s Ave Maria was subject to an ecstatic performance, women’s voices perhaps a bit overwhelming. Those expecting Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater night have been disappointed to get Palestrina’s, but here of course the double choir is unaccompanied and the part singing was very fine.

In the second half, as well as an organ solo by Thomas Tomkins played by Bruce Cash, the choir sang more recent liturgical pieces: an elaborate, little Crucifixus by baroque composer Antonio Lotti; the a cappella version of Barber’s Adagio, to the Agnus Dei, with soprano soloist Inese Berzina very prominent; young New Zealand composer Sam Piper’s impressive Kyrie; Grieg’s Ave maris stella; Tavener’s Song for Athene and the In paradisum from Fauré’s Requiem. All admirably and beautifully sung.

The non-classical songs were more of a mixed bag, one or two with slight blemishes, but they served to illustrate the strong optimism and sympathy that pervaded the general population throughout the years of war. An intelligence and awareness of legitimate political issues sometimes surfaced in the songs too, as in Freedom Come-All-Ye, touching the question of the Scots (and by inference, other peoples of the ‘British Empire’) fighting ‘foreign’ wars.

Thus the evening offered intellectual and social interest, and healthy provocation as well as more simple musical pleasure.

Wonderful NZSO programme of masterpieces from the heartland of classical music

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jaime Martín with Garrick Ohlsson – piano

Beethoven: Leonore Overture No 3, Op 72b
Mozart: Symphony No 35 in D, K 385 (Haffner)
Brahms: Piano Concerto No 1 in D minor, Op 15

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 13 November 6:30 pm

I had the feeling that both conductor and pianist had, contrary to the indications in the programme, been to New Zealand before. It looks as if I was wrong about Jaime Martín (I wonder if I’m confused by J Laredo of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio), but I can clearly recall Ohlsson’s visit though I haven’t found evidence in my large file of programmes.

This however, was a monumental concert, given totally to three unassailable masterpieces; it’s the sort of programme that one imagines all music lovers wish was much more common than it is.

The third Leonore Overture was a splendid choice with which to open. It’s the most dramatic of the four that Beethoven wrote for Fidelio over the space of a decade, though Leonore No 2 is the same length and uses most of the same material and deserves to be aired, along with the No 1 and the last one, actually called Fidelio, that Beethoven wrote for the final, successful version of his opera in 1814. It opened with a fine emphatic chord subsiding to beautiful flute- and oboe-led phrases from Bridget Douglas and Robert Orr that use the melody of Florestan’s first aria.

One’s attention was quickly drawn to Martín’s rearrangement of the orchestra, basses on the left and given licence for supercharged command, the distinctive classical timpani, at the level of the strings, demanding attention; second violins front right with violas behind them. Donald Armstrong was in the Concertmaster’s seat

The overture’s depiction of elements of the opera was more than usually vivid, with the string body at its most opulent, horns and trumpets, the only brass in the score, supplying more than enough martial character. The two forays from the off-stage trumpet seemed to come from slightly different quarters, a nice theatrical touch, if my ears were telling me the truth. And the triumphant Coda was more exciting than I felt it reasonable to expect.

It’s a long time since I heard the Haffner live, a favourite from the days when as a student I used to pay nine pence for an hour to explore music in the old Central Library’s record room at the east end of the main upstairs reference room.

Though string numbers were reduced – 12 first violins and normal decreases from that – there were no real concessions to ‘authenticity’ and I enjoyed the greater opulence of the orchestra, which echoed the sort of full-blooded performance we’d heard in the Beethoven. Even so, the idyllically charming Andante was played with singular delicacy, the long piano passages by violins laid out with particular beauty. The whole movement seems to embody the quintessential Mozart: civilized, melodically rapturous, offering room for subtle and delicate gestures at many places.

Such unobtrusive gestures added interest in the Menuetto too, again a movement (anthologized in piano albums) that seems to speak in unmistakably graceful, Mozartian accents, particularly in the Trio. In the last movement, the smaller classical timpani that the orchestra obtained some years ago were delightfully conspicuous, trumpets high and bright, with a feeling that both horns and trumpets were travelling a little to the side of the rest of the orchestra – meaning to suggest that they lent an extra note of enchantment.

Hearing this again confirmed my particular affection for this symphony and made me wish our orchestras programmed the dozen or so best Mozart symphonies routinely.

Brahms’s first piano concerto occupied the entire second half. Modern timpani replaced the classical ones now; as you might infer from references to their contributions in the earlier works, Larry Reese took his role seriously; here in the Brahms, though they are clearly scored to be heard prominently, too seriously? It suited my personal taste, but I’m conscious of harbouring an excessive pleasure in loud low sounds not perhaps shared by everyone.

After the mighty orchestral opening, the piano enters with singular modesty, and Ohlssen did it right, somewhat matter-of-factly, nothing flashy. Soon Brahms was supplying Ohlsson with material for more weighty pianism which he dealt with in a characteristically muscular manner, soon in the company of thrilling, throaty horns. The piano was always admirably in balance with the orchestra and it was reassuring to sense a fine meeting of minds over tempi, expressive gestures, dynamics, the orchestra seeming to rejoice in whatever spectacle or meditative moments the pianist took slight liberties with.

The Adagio is a gorgeous movement, offering the rhapsodic Brahms rich opportunities which Ohlsson handled with gentleness and restraint; again horns often provided important counterweight to the piano and other winds. Pairs of clarinets or oboes accompany and precede some of the most rapturous piano passages that lead to the broad fortissimo in the latter part of the movement. The last couple of minutes of ecstatically prolonged meditation were spell-binding.

The boisterous Finale is then emotionally welcome; though it’s about 12 minutes long, it’s one of those episodes that one longs to go on forever, and the performance by orchestra and pianist never had me in doubt that I was lucky to have been born in a time a place where it could be so splendidly played: in a city with a great symphony orchestra, and in a post-Brahms era, and before the end of civilization as we know it.

Applause was long and impassioned and Ohlsson chose to play an encore that could not have been in greater contrast: Chopin’s Waltz in C sharp minor: restrained, poetic, perfect.

 

NZTrio at the City Gallery with a programme slightly changed from Upper Hutt three weeks before

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NZTrio (Sarah Watkin – piano, Justine Cormack – violin, Ashley Brown – cello)

Beethoven: Symphony No 2 in D (arranged for piano trio)
Kenneth Young: Piano Trio (a new commission)
Fauré: Piano Trio in D Minor, Op 120

City Gallery Wellington

Tuesday 10 November, 7 pm

I had reviewed the pieces by Beethoven and Kenneth Young at the Trio’s concert at the Arts and Entertainment Centre in Upper Hutt on 19 October. Here at the City Gallery, the Saint-Saëns was replaced by Fauré’s Piano Trio.

I was pleased at the chance to hear both the Beethoven and Young again. It confirmed my enjoyment of Ken Young’s commission by the Trio, his facility with the instrumental characteristics of the trio, both in ensemble and more particularly in his attractive and arresting writing for the individual instruments, alone or in duet.

I had written somewhat half-heartedly about Beethoven’s arrangement of his second symphony for piano trio. This second hearing changed my opinion quite significantly. Whether on account of the more immediate acoustic of the hard surfaces of the gallery (surrounded by the enhanced photography of Fiona Pardington) or of being closer to the players, or even the result of studied or incidental changes in the balance between the instruments, I can’t say.

Now I felt that the way Beethoven had distributed the orchestral parts among the trio members sounded much more idiomatic and natural than they had before. So I found myself rather more in sympathy with the comments by Ashley Brown, admiring of the success of Beethoven’s commercially-driven adaptation of his symphony.

The new item in the programme was Fauré’s Piano Trio. It is better known than the Saint-Saëns in the other programme, but not as popular as, say, the first piano quartet; it deserves to be. The historical context of music is generally relevant, at least for music of the 20th century and later. It occurred to me that here was Fauré, like Saint-Saëns, writing music that was apparently deaf to the effects of the First World War that ended four years before, to the activities of young French composers such as Les Six, to Ravel, Stravinsky, or the Second Viennese School. Yet it is a sophisticated work that reflects the genius of the period in which the composer flourished.

The opening, by piano and cello, is warm and lyrical, and I recalled his birthplace, Pamiers, south of Toulouse, towards the sunny foothills of the Pyrenées; and I didn’t really expect the build-up of energy, even passion later in the first movement. The players’ feeling for balance was specially marked in the second movement, an Andantino, which didn’t stop a particularly assertive statement from the violin towards its end, enough to make me pleased I was a few rows back from the action.

The last movement was the only place where I felt the possible impact of more contemporary musical influence, perhaps of Ravel, and through rhythms that hinted at Latin America I wondered whether Fauré had heard Milhaud’s Brazil-influenced music or even Villa-Lobos himself. The Trio captured the work’s spirit with impressive energy and a determination to prove that even at 77, Fauré still retained his creative vigour and a lively musical imagination, far from settling for an old age without originality or challenge.

 

 

Czech Philharmonic Children’s Choir gives enchanting concert at St Andrew’s

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The Czech Philharmonic Children’s Choir conducted by Petr Louženský, piano accompaniment by Jan Kalfus

Music by Novák, Dvořák, Martinů, Mysliveček, Lukáš, and a sung dance piece, Slavnosti jara, by Otmar Mácha

St Andrew’s on The Terrace, Wellington

Monday 2 November, 12:15 pm

We have visits from overseas choirs from time to time, but I don’t think I’ve encountered one like this before. Words like enchanting, artless, exquisite, tender, crystalline, joyful, guileless, come to mind, and it refers to both the singing, and the dancing.

The choir was established in 1932 to meet the needs of Czech Radio; it survived World War II and the years under Communism and became associated with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in 1952, a relationship that lasted 40 years. The choir is now independent and exists with help from the Czech Government, the City of Prague, the National Theatre, the Prague Philharmonic Choir and a number of other cultural, media and commercial organisations. They have the world record of three wins at the famous choral competition at Tolosa in Spain (in which the Voices New Zealand won gold and silver awards in 1998) and an astonishing range of other international awards.

If I’d had the impression from the word ‘children’ that these were predominantly primary-school-age children, it was clear at once that while some were probably under 13, the great majority were teenagers and so it is to be considered a ‘youth choir’. There were about 40 performers in all, all but five, girls. Two mature, taller boys contributed fine lower voices.

Otherwise, it does have the character of a children’s choir, on account of the freshness, clarity and innocence of the soprano voices. Though only 40 travelled, some 800 are currently participating in the wide range of singing, dancing and musical activities in Prague.

The most striking visual features were the costumes, beautifully harmonised, peasant-derived skirts, bodices, ribbons in the hair, floral and foliage head decorations, and the impression of pastoral innocence expressed by calm yet animated faces, bare feet, modest deportment.

The concert was in two parts. The first half was devoted to religious and secular pieces by familiar Czech, Moravian and Slovak classical composers: Dvořák, Martinů, Novák, and Mysliveček, and a couple of names unfamiliar to me: Zdeněk Lukáš and Otmar Mácha.

There was a quality in their singing that marked them as different from comparable New Zealand voices: an unaffected simplicity and delight in their performances conveyed as much through facial expressions and gestures as their voices. While their dress was harmonious in the use of pastel shades, style and dress length, there was considerable variety in colour and detail within the peasant style.

There was delightful variety in the five straight vocal items that filled the first 20 minutes or so: a spirited though soulful Gloria by Novák; a bright, staccato, dance-like song, ‘Sentencing Death’, by Martinů, with its brief interruption by a triple-time phase in the middle. A song entitled ‘Wreath’ by Lukáš followed, with alto voices more pronounced; there was a fast staccato section followed by several tempo changes all handled with accuracy, fluid dynamics, with the voices indeed wreathing the most charming patterns.

The second part of the concert came with ‘Spring Celebration’ (Slavnosti jara) by Mácha, in effect an extended folk ballet, with choreography by Živana Vajsarová. What turned out to be the ‘singing’ part of the ensemble (some 20) gathered round the piano on the left of the platform in front of the sanctuary, while the rest retreated. And they returned through the doors at the rear of the sanctuary in small groups, running, dancing, in different, more colourful, costumes, to dance, as well as to sing. Among the non-dancing singers there emerged a player of cow or sheep bells and a recorder player, who lent the bucolic tone to the ritual. A rite of spring, no doubt, but not of the violent kind Stravinsky has accustomed us to.

They bore garlands of fir and pine, a May-pole is brought on and the attached ribbons were woven by eight dancers, now in fresh costumes, circling it in complex patterns. The piano led the dancers through slower and faster steps: the footwork might not have been balletic in the classical sense but it was perfect, and utterly diverting, clearly a considerable feat of memory.

Then a flaxen-haired puppet on a long pole appeared – the symbol of Winter; it is subject to increasingly hostile gestures of rejection and finally thrown into the wings. A solo voice emerged at this stage, firm and clear, a symbol of Spring no doubt, and she was encircled by others as the new season finally triumphs.

Throughout, Otmar Mácha’s music was either authentic Czech and Slovak peasant songs and dances, or convincing imitations that were typical of the rich fund of folk music that is familiar to us in the music of Dvořák and Smetana. It became increasingly joyful and exciting, the dancing reflecting the effervescent spirit of the music wonderfully as it accelerated towards a heart-raising conclusion.

Even after the formal ending of the performance, more was at hand, with folk or operetta tunes that were familiar, but names eluded me apart from one that resembled ‘Roll out the barrel’.

Yet that did not satisfy the enraptured audience, and Dvořák’s ‘Songs my mother taught me’ rather changed the atmosphere and allowed them all to retire quietly.

As background, here are some words from the choir’s website (http://www.kuhnata.cz/en/):

“Over the course of its existence it has given thousands of talented children a love of music and art. Its most talented children have grown into distinguished musicians – conductors, directors, composers, singers and instrumentalists. Its tradition and the breadth of its artistic scope makes it a unique artistic institution, not only in the Czech Republic but throughout Europe…. During its existence, the choir has recorded over 50 CDs of both Czech and international music.”

But finally, what a pity word had not been more widely spread about this wonderful ensemble. St Andrew’s had prepared and distributed a small flyer and it was included in Radio NZ Concert’s Live Diary, but I didn’t read about it in print media. As a result, the church was far from full, as it truly deserved to be.

 

 

NZSM piano students give impressively mature performances at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Piano students of the New Zealand School of Music

Rebecca Warnes (Haydn’s Sonata in F, Hob. 23 –first movement), Louis Lucas Perry (Liszt’s Ballade No 2), Nicole Ting (Mozart’s Sonata in D, K 576 – second and third movements), Choong Park (Brahms: Op 116 – Intermezzo and Capriccio, Andrew Atkins (Haydn’s Sonata in C, Hob. 48)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 28 October, 12:15 pm

The end-of-year exposure of five of the most talented piano students at the New Zealand School of Music was, I suppose, a follow-on from the four-day series of student recitals between 5 and 8 October which had featured cellos, violas, voices and guitars.

The five pianists were placed according to their academic level, but I could not have distinguished them merely on the basis of the standard of their performances. I can only say that I was very surprised to learn later that Rebecca Warnes was a first year student, for she played the first movement from a, to me, unfamiliar Haydn sonata (Hob, 23) which was a delight both as sparkling and imaginative Haydn, and in its playing with such awareness of its characteristic wit and surprises. Her assured rhythms reflected the melodic character and tone of the music so perfectly.

Louis Lucas-Perry took on Liszt’s second Ballade, in B minor, which is not often played now, though I came to know it in my teens through its frequent appearance in those days (Louis Kentner perhaps?) in the Concert Programme (2YC as it then was). It’s been a bit denigrated in the past, but I’ve never taken that as other than the still common view of Liszt as merely a flashy show-off. The vivid dramatic narrative, its melodic strength and its striking contrasts, are emotionally involving. The pianist captured much of the overt charm of the sunny theme that keeps returning in changing guises as well as the contrasting, quasi-military episodes. Whatever its shortcomings (he’s a second year student) I enjoyed it immensely.

Third-year student Nicole Ting played the second and third movements of Mozart’s last piano sonata, in D, K 576. It’s not for beginners, and to play the slow movement with such lightness of touch and subtlety, and the finale with its bravura and gusto, announced a young musician who negotiated her way most thoughtfully through its considerable challenges.

Choong Park, also a third year student, played two of the seven pieces from Brahms Op 116. They are all entitled either Intermezzo or Capriccio, though the programme did not identify them. They were Nos 3 and 4, the Intermezzo in E and the Capriccio in G minor. The Intermezzo is not among the most familiar of Brahms’s late piano works; the notes might not be hard to find but the feeling and musicality, without the benefit of warm melody, is less easy to engage an audience with. Perhaps he allowed himself a bit much romantic heaven-gazing, but there was no doubt about his understanding of the Brahms, the gentle, contemplative figure. The Capriccio was a fine contrast, opening with fuoco rather than capriciousness perhaps, and I felt initially that the fortissimo passages verged on the tempestuous, but those moments were soon swept aside by the general conviction of his playing.

Andrew Atkins is an honours student; he played both movements of one of Haydn’s later sonatas, Hob. 48 in C major. This second opportunity to hear a Haydn sonata was a delight; it bears witness to the renaissance of his piano (and much other) music in my lifetime: the sonatas used to be considered little more than student pieces. Hob. 48 is very interesting. Just two movements, first slow, then fast. The first, about eight minutes of Andante, exploring basically a single musical idea slowly, thoughtfully and entertainingly. There are delightful flashes of light, subtle articulations, lightly etched rallentandos and ornaments beautifully positioned. There followed a (I’m guessing) Vivace or Presto finale that was assured, economical in its structure, saying what he wanted to say and ending without fuss.

I imagine few, other than the pianist himself and his tutors, would have perceived anything to fault in this delightful performance. (I understand that the tutors concerned with all five pianists were, variously, Jian Liu and Richard Mapp).

This was a thoroughly satisfying concert from both the point of view of the pieces chosen – all unhackneyed and most rewarding– and the pianists’ impressive level of accomplishment. These opportunities to hear performances by university school of music students are a wonderful enterprise, a credit to cooperation between St Andrew’s (especially Marjan van Waardenberg) and the university.