Author: Lindis Taylor

Opera Society revives its tradition of presenting promising young singers in tantalising song

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Songs and arias
(New Zealand Opera Society – Wellington Branch)

James Benjamin Rodgers (tenor); Georgia Jamieson Emms (soprano); Elisabeth Harris (soprano); Christian Thurston (baritone)
Piano accompaniment: Catherine Norton

Liszt: Three Petrarch sonnets
Songs by Georg Tintner, Mahler
Arias by Gounod, Leoncavallo, Massenet, Nicolai, Verdi, Britten, Douglas Moore, Weill, Richard Rodgers and Sondheim

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart

Thursday 6 August, 7:30 pm

Once upon a time, the Wellington Branch of the New Zealand Opera Society used to stage almost monthly recitals of mainly opera arias and ensembles. As performances of the real thing increased in the 80s and 90s, with the establishment of Wellington City Opera, annual productions by both Victoria University and Wellington Polytechnic schools of music as well as a variety of adventurous ad hoc amateur groups, the appeal of de-contextualised arias and excerpts diminished.

Now that the number and variety of staged performances has seriously declined, scope for aria recitals should again have developed. So we must welcome a venture of this sort: the audience was large enough to encourage the society to try again.

First thing to exclaim about was the enterprising range of items. Absent were almost all the standard arias from the top 20 operas, as well as the once common scattering of popular art songs by Schubert and Schumann.

James Rodgers
One of the most surprising was the first bracket – Liszt’s famous settings of three sonnets by Petrarch; they were also among the most challenging, and in the hands of tenor James Benjamin Rodgers, not flawless in execution.

My main concern was with his gauging of the church’s acoustic. It’s a fine space for the singer, but very easy in which to misjudge the amount of force required for projection. The expression of passionate and unrestrained emotions in the poems tempts the singer to deliver tempestuously, with too much force. The beginning of No 104 was much more promising as Rodgers captured better the calmer sense of puzzlement, but too often one wanted a little more subtlety, variety of mood, just a softer, less driven voice.

So I looked forward to his later pieces. The first of them was the third act duet between Violetta (Georgia Jamieson Emms) and Alfredo in La traviata; here his voice was beautifully modulated, capturing the confusion between his full awareness of Violetta’s imminent death and his need to support her delusionary dreams of happiness. The pair was excellently matched in tone and dramatic perception.

Unusually, Rodgers sang, from Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, the male chorus’s interlude describing Tarquinius’s ride to Rome to rape Lucretia, the wife of his general Collatinus. An absolutely splendid portrayal, with a peerless piano accompaniment from Catherine Norton.

Next morning Lucretia herself delivers an extraordinary, dignified lament, ‘Give him this orchid’, before killing herself before her husband: it was Elizabeth Harris’s triumph. Incidentally, one must record that the opera was done by the then Conservatorium of Music of Massey University a decade or more ago.

James Rodgers’s final group of pieces clinched his standing as a very fine singer, capable of grasping a wide variety of musical styles and emotional dilemmas. There were excerpts from two Kurt Weill works; the operetta The Firebrand of Florence and his ‘musical tragedy’ Lost in the Stars; and from Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods (here duetting with Emms). Rodgers caught the wit and variety of mood keenly, demonstrating a natural talent for ‘becoming’ the character in question both through vocal nuance as well as facial expression and gesture. The title song from Weill’s Lost in the Stars sat right in the middle of his voice. In ‘Finishing the hat’ from Sunday in the Park his pianissimo conveyed perfectly the tortured conflict that the painter Seurat faced.

James and Georgia ended the concert, together again, with ‘It takes Two’ from Into the Woods, sensitively revealing the nature of the relationship between the couple. The two singers were again beautifully matched in this touching duet.

I am one who has not found it easy to enjoy Sondheim’s musical theatre, perhaps through exposure in live performance only with amateur productions; but the two examples here rather captivated me. Nevertheless, professional productions, which is what these pieces demand, are very unlikely in New
Zealand.

Georgia Jamieson Emms
Georgia had first displayed her interpretative talent with three songs (two by Theodore Storm and one by Hesse) set by Georg Tintner who fled to New Zealand from the Nazis in Austria before WW2 and, typically, found it almost impossible to gain musical recognition here, though he eventually became conductor of the New Zealand Opera Company. I hadn’t come across any of his compositions before; in these three one could hear hints of inter-war Vienna, touches of Alban Berg, Schoenberg and influences from Mahler and even Liszt could be perceived; secure and confident in realisation though nothing strongly memorable. But the performances would have charmed the composer.

Later offerings from Georgia included an unfamiliar aria from Nicolai’s German take on The Merry Wives of Windsor. It’s often done still in Germany but here we know only the overture and perhaps the splendid Drinking Song. This ‘Nun heilt herbei’ was sprightly and expressive, with comic effects that Georgia delivered very well. (Nicolai was a strange case, dates exactly those of Chopin, but a much smaller talent; he wrote a few other operas none of which held the stage).

That was followed by the Traviata duet, in which she created a moving and lively simulation of dying.

Georgia’s last items were an aria from Weill’s Street Scene of 1946, entitled ‘An American opera’, and then the ‘letter scene’ from Douglas Moore’s famous (in America) The Ballad of Baby Doll. In
both she displayed a lovely timbre, with careful control of emotional expressiveness.

Christian Thurston
Thurston arrived on stage in the middle of the first half and sang two opera arias, both amorous yearnings after forbidden fruit: ‘E fra quest’ ansie’ – Silvio’s aria from Pagliacci, and the rather less known ‘Vision fugitive’ from Massenet’s Hérodiade. Unlike the Jokaanan in Strauss’s Salome, here John the Baptist is made to feel quite open lust for the seductive Salome.

In both arias I felt that Thurston was pushing his voice excessively. While it was disciplined and firm, his voice lacked colour and emotional variety and didn’t really convey the trembling, out-of-control emotion that one expects to find in, and to be touched by, the words and the music itself of these two arias.

His third song was addressed to a young lady who was accessible to the singer: Emile’s well-loved ‘Younger than Springtime’ from South Pacific. But here again he missed the gentleness and sentiment of the beguiling melody in spite of a voice of even quality and pleasant timbre. I could not decide whether the problem was his miscalculation of the nature of the acoustic, encouraging needless pressure on his voice, or simply the choice of pieces that suited neither his voice nor his histrionic talents.

Elizabeth Harris
Before her aria from Lucretia, mentioned above, Elizabeth Harris had sung one of Mahler’s songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Das irdische Leben. The subject echoes Schubert’s Der Erlkönig; and she sang it with tremulous intensity.

Then came a much anthologised opera aria from an unknown opera: from Gounod’s first opera, Sapho: ‘O ma mère immortelle’. It’s a touching little piece which she handled with sweet sensitivity. She also sang one of Britten’s brilliant cabaret songs, Johnny, which she carried with sparkling acting and a zaney, daring self-confidence along with Catherine Norton’s dazzling piano.

The concert as a whole has to be rated a considerable success, both as highlighting one singer who has gained some international success and three others of great promise.  As I observed at the beginning, the decline in the amount and variety of live opera in performance should create a renewed thirst to explore opera, through excerpts, that look less and less likely to be performed here. And it is disturbing that such well-schooled and talented singers as these are unlikely ever to find full employment in this country.

 

 

Duo Tapas: violin and guitar play winning St Andrew’s lunchtime concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Duo Tapas (Rupa Maitra – violin, Owen Moriarty – guitar)

Vivaldi: Sonata in A minor, Op 2 No 12, RV 32
Mark O’Connor: pieces from Strings and Threads Suite
Arvo Pärt: Spiegel im Spiegel, arr, Moriarty
William Squire: Tarantella in D minor, Op 23, arr Moriarty

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 5 August, 12:15 pm

Duo Tapas is a fairly visible little ensemble on the Wellington music scene; but it pays not to take them for granted, as playing much the same repertoire, with minor variations in their frequent concerts. It could be because I haven’t heard a couple of their recent concerts that this programme was entirely new to me.

They began with Rudolph Buttman’s arrangement of one of Vivaldi’s violin sonatas, the last of the set published as Opus 2. The programme listed the movements as Preludio, Allemande, Grave and Capriccio. Other sources offer different movement titles: Preludio, Capriccio, Grave, Corrente; or Preludio – Largo, Capriccio – Presto, Grave, Allemanda – Allegro. Of course I did not discover these variations till I explored the internet later; no doubt they reflected the liberties publishers felt able to take in the 18th century.

I wondered during the performance about the appropriateness of the titles, and had jotted a puzzled note that the last movement hardly sounded ‘capricious’ – rather, just brisk.

Never mind.
The duo were absolutely justified in taking up this successful arrangement of one of Vivaldi’s many lovely pieces, more than usually melodious, sounding as if he had the guitar very much in mind when he cast the continuo lines (for cello and harpsichord).

Mark O’Connor is an American composer, now in his early 60s, who has devoted himself to listenable, rather infectious music. The title refers, obviously, to the stringed instrument and the threads connecting the thirteen little movements in the suite, a sort of history of United States popular music, offering examples of many styles of music from Irish reels and sailors’ songs of the 16th century to recent times. They played ten of them. I had counted only eight when they ended, which was probably the result of failing to notice a pause and change of style. There was a convincing sense of anticipation with Off to Sea, as the sails picked up the wind; the last piece, Sweet Suzanne was the longest, most bravura and arresting: a colourful and entertaining collection.

Arvo Part’s Spiegel im Spiegel is nearly as popular as his Fratres: hypnotic, a masterpiece of simplicity. The translation for violin and guitar involved retuning the bottom E string of the guitar to a low F, to deal with the repeated anchor. Rupa Maitra played it with just discreet vibrato and a riveting stillness. Again, a very convincing transformation.

Finally, there was a piece by William Squire, a name that was once, perhaps still, very familiar to cello students. He edited a series of albums of varying difficulty: I still have two of them, as well, to my surprise, as the Tarantella in D minor, played here. It didn’t make a deep impression on me sixty-odd years ago, but this version worked very well, though I could not argue that the duo had unearthed a masterpiece. Nevertheless, the character of the two instruments, the players’ rapport and the way in which their musical instincts combined might have brought the most unpromising composition to life.

Don’t hesitate to get along to their next concert, wherever it might be.

 

Just a half hour of St Andrew’s organ before you go home: Bach and Pärt

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

‘Way to Go (Home)’
Fourth Wellington Organists’ Association twilight concert

Heather Easting and Danielle van der Zwaag on the gallery pipe organ

Bach: Concerto in A minor (BWV 593) and Das alte Jahr vergangen ist 
Arvo Pärt’s Trivium

St Andrews on the Terrace

Tuesday 4 August, 5:15 pm

Middle C is a little red-faced on account of neglecting this interesting and unusual series of organ recitals at St Andrew’s. Though we’ve had them listed from the start, our reviewers have failed to find their way to the church at this after-work time-slot.

The first thing to note is that St Andrew’s is one of Wellington’s many churches that has a good pipe organ which presumably gets a work-out on Sundays, but rests untended during the rest of the week. Occasionally, the Wednesday lunchtime concerts feature an organist at either the main organ or the baroque organ in the nave of the church. The decision early this year to offer recitals that are intended to capture workers on their way home is enterprising and the three recitals before this one have drawn small but not discouraging audiences; this time the audience was bigger (I do not suggest that my arrival doubled the audience size) and programmes ran out.

The St Andrew’s organ has had restoration work done in recent times, and it sounds impressive: clear, robust, colourful. The programme demonstrated two very contrasted aspects of its range: as an instrument managing baroque music well, with stops well-adapted to the slender and not too powerful capacity of the pre-Romantic organ; as well as the very singular compositional manner of Arvo Pärt.

The first Bach work, played by Heather Easting, was his Concerto in A minor, (BWV 593) a transcription of No 8 of Vivaldi’s L’estro armonico. Op 3, originally for two violins.  It makes a
splendid organ work, and must surely help overcome a lingering Vivaldi-snobbery, driven by the same snobbery that tends to diminish a lot of music that has good tunes and an emotional pull. This performance was more than adequate, first because it seemed to demonstrate the strengths of the instrument itself and second, without indulging in registrations that were too thick and undifferentiated.

A short piece by Bach followed, played by young organist Danielle van der Zwaag: Bach’s Das alte Jahr vergangen ist, BWV 614, from the Orgelbuchlein (Little Organ Book). It has a somewhat meandering character which at first I mistook for a hesitancy in the playing, but its essential sophistication combined with unpretentiousness, as well as its thoughtful performance, made it a nice transition to the next, utterly different music.

Heather Easting returned then to play Pärt’s Trivium. The programme note explains: it means ‘where three roads meet’ (Latin); it has three voices: two manuals and pedals, the triad sonority, and a tripartite form. Some of the high reed sounds produced early on didn’t much appeal to me, and it seemed just a bit aimless, but all was explained with the fortissimo opening of the second part, which would have been meaningless without the earlier movement. But beyond that are considerations of Pärt’s spiritual intentions which the programme note discussed. The composer pitches two opposing voices: Part’s invention, tintinnabulation, and melody, suggesting the spiritual and the temporal; and I’m sure that the pursuit of the thoughts of musicologists on those matters would lead to a more enriching musical, if not metaphysical, experience.

At a first-hearing level, this was at once a careful and exuberant performance that may well be an excellent way to substitute the burdens of the working day with complexities of an altogether different sort.

The next ‘Way to go (Home)’ 5.15pm organ recital will not be till 6 October. A return visit is bound to be rewarding.

 

The Creation of Music Futures: object lesson in enterprise

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Music Futures – the birth of a good idea
A new voluntary body to help young musicians find their way

Sunday 2 August 2015

This post refers to our review of the concert of 26 July promoted by Music Futures, featuring young Wellington musicians, some of whom were involved with the current Chamber Music contest staged annually by Chamber Music New Zealand, and supported by the New Zealand Community Trust.

(The National Finale was held on Sunday 2 August, and was won by the Wellington piano trio which had played in the concert of 26 July, the Glivenko Trio).

After publishing our review of the 26 July concert, the organizer, Valerie Rhodes, emailed us with some interesting background to the project.

She described how the idea was born after an NZSO musician had contacted her to ask if she would consider starting an organisation to support young musicians.

“The initial meeting to form Music Futures was in December 2011,” Valerie explained. “In 2012 – we became an incorporated society and a registered charity as well as holding a launch concert in August 2012. Our first awards were given in April 2013.”

A couple of months before they launched, she had called, with Brigid O’Meeghan (cello NZSO), on Denis Adam, of the Adam Foundation, to ask whether he would offer a donation to cover the hire of St Andrew’s and the printing of a programme for that initial concert.

“At first he said ‘no’,” Valerie said. “When I was a boy”, Denis Adam observed, “we went out and got a job if we wanted something”. “Today’s youngsters want everything handed to them on a plate ……”. Valerie thanked him for listening to their pitch and they got up to go.

Then Denis said, “So how much were you going to ask me for, Valerie?”
“$500”.
He laughed, “I thought you’d be asking for a few thousand. Have you got a budget?”
“Yes, here it is.”

Valerie was chagrined to discover that the copy she’d brought had print on the other side. Denis turned it over. “So, you even use second-hand paper. In that case, I’ll give you $600 as long as you report back to me how you spent it.”

“So I did.”

She is thrilled that the group’s prescience has resulted in the Glivenko Trio winning the national contest for Wellington – the first Wellington win for many years.

Offers of financial assistance for Music Futures are most welcome. Contact Valerie Rhodes, Ph (04) 473 2224).

 

Music Futures’ praiseworthy venture with young Wellington musicians

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Music Futures

The Sound of Wellington Youth Music 2015

Manu Tioriori (selected students from the combined choir of Wellington College and Wellington East Girls’ College), conducted by Katie Macfarlane
Claudia Tarrant-Matthews (violin and piano)
Trio Glivenko (Shweta Iyer – violin, Bethany Angus – cello, Claudia Tarrant-Matthews – piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 26 July, 3 pm

This was the second annual concert by a group set up last year to help young musicians in Wellington. The organisation exists to provide performance opportunities, access to masterclasses and workshops, mentoring by professional musicians, financial awards and the hire of musical instruments.

The choir which opened the concert showed one of the advantages of co-education while at the same time being in nicely segregated institutions; the two colleges virtually share the same property, though emphatically apart when I attended the boys’ institution a long time ago. Then, the only (illicit) contact was at the corner of the tennis courts close to Paterson Street or (licitly) at dancing classes tutored by Wellington East’s physical education mistress and graced by a phalanx of girls who marched after school across our segregated territory.

Katie Macfarlane achieved lovely effects in three songs, balanced, unforced and comfortable; the second was , two Maori and one in English though French by origin: one of the better, certainly more touching, songs from Claude-Michel Schönberg’s Les misérables: ‘Empty chairs at empty tables’.  (Intriguingly, the song is not in the original French version of the musical; it was added later for the revised French version as “Seul devant ces tables vides”). The talented young William Pereira sang it, an attractive, natural voice; he sang with feeling and nice sentiment.

Their second bracket consisted of the Psalm-derived ‘I will lift up mine eyes’, the Zulu wedding song ‘Hamba Lulu’ and the locally-relevant ‘Poneke E’, a highly characteristic, catchy Maori song. Each performance caught the widely varied character of the three songs.

The presence of the pair of NZSO players earlier known as Flight: flutist Bridget Douglas and harpist Carolyn Mills, purported to be to offer something to aspire to. That was hardly necessary but the piece they played Persichetti’s Serenade No 10, was good to hear again; it’s been in their repertoire for several years. It’s just eight short movements, none of them around long enough to tire or to require the services of musical elaboration, counter-melodies, development, what-have-you…

Claudia Tarrant-Matthews offered examples of both her violin and piano gifts, both without ostentation, with discretion and insight: the 3rd and 4th movements of Bach’s violin sonata in A minor and later, Rachmaninov’s Prelude in D, Op 32 No 4.

Tarrant-Matthews also took part as pianist in the Glivenko Trio’s (which also involved violinist Shweta Iyer and cellist Bethany Angus) performance of Shostakovich’s first piano trio which they played at the NZSM Queen’s Birthday Chamber Music Weekend on 1 June (see my review of that date, where the name is explained).  This performance, like that in June in the Adam Concert Room, was played with an understanding that seemed beyond their years.

The whole enterprise was another admirable initiative that in a small way fills the great gap left by our educational authorities in the area of the arts and music especially.

Kapiti Chamber Choir tackles highly ambitious all-Jewish programme including a major Bloch work

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

A Festival of Jewish Music

Kapiti Chamber Choir conducted by Eric Sidoti with Douglas Mews (organ), Miranda Wilson (cello) and Jenny Scarlet (piano)

Ernest Bloch: Avodath Hakodesh with Roger Wilson (baritone) as the Cantor

Marc Lavry: Song of the Valley; La Rosa (Sephardic folk song arranged by Paul Ben-Haim; Hasidic Niggun (Hasidic folk song arraged by Bonia Shur; Bloch: Suite No 3 for solo cello; Schoenberg: ‘Ei, du Lütte’ (Platt-Deutsch song); Richard Fuchs: Hymnus an Gott; Mordecai Seter: A Woman of
Valour; Lavry: Hora, Song, Op 206 No 3; Bonia Shur: ‘The Rain is over’; Paul Ben-Haim, arranger: Adon Olam (Benediction)

Kapiti Uniting Church, Raumati Beach

Sunday 19 July, 2:30 pm

Two hours of composers who, I imagine, would have been no more than names to most, even those with a fairly good knowledge of 20th century music, might have looked a bit unappetising to an audience for choral music. So to start, I was surprised to find the church pretty full. And though there was nothing to suggest that other than Jewish music would be in the programme, I rather expected that music director Eric Sidoti might have thrown in a couple of more familiar pieces.

The main thing was Bloch’s big Jewish liturgical work, but the first half was given over to non-Bloch, apart from a piece for solo cello, his Suite No 3, played by Miranda Wilson.

The rest comprised music entirely by Jewish composers, mostly religious in character. Four Israeli composers featured, no doubt familiar to any aficionado in the audience: Paul Ben-Haim born 1897 in Munich, Marc Lavry, born in Riga in 1903, Mordecai Seter, born in Novorossiysk in Russia in 1916 and Bonia Shur, also born in Riga, 1923.

Bloch’s Cello Suite: Apart from its shape, five movements alternating quick and slow, suggest Bach as a model, though a glance at Wikipedia’s list of music for solo cello will deter most people from seeking influences. In contrast to the emotional warmth of the popular Schelomo for cello and orchestra, the piece sounded a wee bit remote and soulless; perhaps the performance could have risked more expressiveness and colour, though my impression is likely to have more to do with things that don’t reveal themselves at first hearing.

The first piece, Lavry’s Emek, or Song of the Valley: Rest in coming, unaccompanied, began hesitantly, but soon gained confidence, comfortable in its modal character and staccato rhythms, the kibbutz setting hinting at a kinship with early Soviet workers’ songs and dances. A similar spirit existed in Lavry’s Hora Nirkoda (‘Let’s dance’. Greek for ‘Dance’ is ‘Choros’: a borrowing?).

The first arrangement by Paul Ben-Haim was of a song in Ladino, the Spanish dialect language of the Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain by Philip II round 1492, and fled to the Levant, Greece and other parts of Europe. La Rosa, like Emek, was unaccompanied, carrying a beguiling tune. The last piece in the first half was a Benediction (Adon Olam) also arranged by Ben-Haim. Roger Wilson, as Cantor, alternated in this with the Choir, in a serious six/eight rhythm.

Bonia Shur contributed an arrangement of a Hassidic folk song, with piano accompaniment, vigorously pulsed, charmingly sung. His own song, The Rain is over, comes from The Song of Songs; though I hadn’t heard it before, it struck me as a rather more alluring song than it actually sounded here.

Mordecai Seter’s Eschet Chayil (A Woman of Valour) began with a couple of women’s voices in duet, soon joined by the rest of the choir which became quite animated, with changing dance rhythms in the piano.

That left two songs from unexpected quarters: Schoenberg’s setting of a Platt-Deutsch poem, ‘Ei, du Lütte’; a delightful, sprightly little song from the young composer, aged about 30.  Richard Fuchs was a German/Jewish composer who sought refuge in New Zealand in 1939 and was ignored as a composer during his eight final years here, but was rediscovered through the efforts of his grandson, theatre director Danny Mulheron.  Fuchs’s Hymnus an Gott was sung by Roger Wilson, a Hasidic religious poem expressing emphatic belief.

So, although there was no departure from a Jewish/Hebrew musical programme, I found the variety of the generally unfamiliar music interesting and enjoyable, prompting me, as I write this, to explore these paths further by means of the communication and information technology now at our disposal.

Then in the second half came the 50 minute-long Avodath Hakodesh, a setting of the Jewish Sabbath morning service. Though Bloch is still known (in his lifetime, much to his annoyance) as a Jewish composer, he struggled to shake off the image. Little of his music was Jewish, though critics have been unable to resist finding signs of Jewish music in his work. A generous commission prompted this large-scale work (though he didn’t get paid in full). He thought of it as an oratorio though there is no narrative element, a necessary feature I suppose.

He wrote: “It far surpasses a ‘Jewish’ service, it has become a cosmic poem, a glorification of the laws of the universe.” Rather than an oratorio, it has been compared to Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.

He wrote it, he said, “not for the Jews – who would probably fight it – nor the critics” but for himself. Nevertheless, the music, at times harsh and austere, has the warmth, sensuality, passionate intensity, and the fervour of Hebrew literature, as critic Olin Downes wrote about a New York performance.

It is hard to detect details of the overarching musical structure at first hearing, the repetition of musical motifs and their relationship to liturgical elements, yet such things are present, and they make their impact in a subliminal way.

Though not quite a substitute for the orchestra, the digital organ in Douglas Mews’s hands was much better than a piano would have been, particularly in the Symphonic Interludes which Bloch uses to create a sense of unity.

There were many parts that were impressive, for example in the Toroh Tzivah in Movement III where
Cantor and choir alternate in the commanding verses about the laws of Moses; and at the peaceful, pastoral Etz Chayim he in Movement IV. And in the more eventful Fifth Movement where the Cantor, chanting in English, expounds on universal ideals of human behaviour and the tone becomes impassioned; and a calm spirit returns with the soulful Adon Olom.

Though the demands of such an ambitious and spiritually infused work are frankly more than a choir of this kind can be expected to bring off very convincingly, the whole was impressive, and one admired the conductor’s endless energy in the guidance of singers with clear entries, and gestures that characterized the ever-changing moods and tone of the music.

Conductor, choir, baritone Wilson and organist Mews have done us a favour in exposing this rarity, and the accompanying pieces in the first half, to our awareness: now we know there’s more to Jewish-coloured music than Prokofiev’s Overture on Hebrew Themes, Schelomo and Kol Nidrei.

 

The Apprentice, La Mer, Ibert’s flute concerto and an enchanting francophone premiere from National Youth Orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

NZSO National Youth Orchestra conducted by José Luis Gomez with solo flute, Bridget Douglas

Dukas: L’apprenti sorcier
Ibert: Flute concerto
Salina Fisher: Rainphase
Debussy: La mer

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday 2 July 2015, 6:30 pm

The National Youth Orchestra has generally played a major symphony in the second part of its main annual outing (and this is its 56th year). They’ve included Mahler’s First and Seventh, Tchaikovsky’s Fourth and Fifth, Shostakovich’s Tenth, Rachmaninov’s Second, Brahms’s First and Second, as well as Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, Also sprach Zarathustra, many taxing concertos and other large and challenging works. Back in 2007, they played La Mer (I’ve only looked back a dozen years); and they played it again here.

This concert was conducted by José Luis Gomez, a young Venezuela-born, Sistema-inspired musician who has already made an impact in North and South America as well as in major European cities (Hamburg, Frankfurt, Liverpool, Stuttgart, Madrid…) in both opera and orchestral performance. Though he appears not yet to have worked in France, his programme was almost wholly devoted to French music (one can easily argue that a young composer like Selina Fisher, is essentially a disciple of the Debussyish, French tradition) which calls generally for a different and in some ways more difficult aesthetic approach to music.

New Zealand’s musical future is in good hands with the continued flourishing of this orchestra (and let’s not forget the youth orchestras in all the major cities of New Zealand), with major support from the Adam Foundation over seventeen years, as well as from the NZSO itself.

L’apprenti sorcier
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is not really a true representative of Dukas the composer. (I elaborate some thoughts about the contrasts between the classicists and the impressionists and the place of Dukas in the aesthetic quarrels of the period at the end of this review).

But Dukas was a skilled orchestrator and a gifted composer nevertheless.
It’s a brilliant composition, fully deserving its real popularity. The woodwinds’ opening was careful and wonderfully refined, and the strings, given their full orchestral complement (16, 14, 12, etc, -approximately) produced a warmly confident chorus, solo flute emerged with a big romantic vibrato and bassoons too came out of the shadows that usually envelop them.

Though there were occasional partings of the ways in ensemble, the conductor inspired enthusiasm and energy that overcame all; the brass was emphatically present in the chaotic climax as the apprentice loses control of the situation, to complete an exciting performance of this popular piece.

Ibert’s Flute Concerto
The orchestra was then thinned out to chamber size for the fastidious but animated flute concerto by Ibert, who was one of several French composers born around the 1890s who did not join Les Six (who have been celebrated this week as RNZ Concert’s ‘Composers of the Week’).

Though I suppose it would be nice for a soloist with the orchestra to be a current or recent player with them, the selection of NZSO principal flute Bridget Douglas, who moved through comparable paths in New Zealand, beginning in Dunedin, was inspired; at the time she might have been a member of the Youth Orchestra, she was probably studying on scholarships overseas. However both her demeanour and performance display an exuberant youthfulness.

Her acumen clearly elevated the orchestra’s performance in what is certainly one of the most familiar and successful flute concertos. The playing hardly touched the ground in the first movement, capturing what can only be described as the quintessential sound of French flute music, leading the orchestra in high risk-taking exploits (remember this is the composer of the vivacious Divertissement). In the sharply contrasted, sombre, legato Andante, the light seemed to have dimmed, exposing the orchestra’s, and the soloist’s, expressive talents as they explored Ibert’s command of a more thoughtful strain of 1930s French music, absorbing both the neo-classical and the satirical, flippant character that post-first world war music had acquired.

The start of the boisterous and memorable third movement proved a bit tough for the horns, but they were vindicated later. Its jazzy rhythms, decorated with the most hair-raising flute passages are interrupted twice with pensive episodes, allowing breathing space, and for unexpectedly lyrical playing from the flute, often in charming duet or trio with other wind instruments or the strings.

Salina Fisher’s commission
The tradition of commissioning a piece from a young composer has become established. This year the composer, has, as violinist, been an orchestra member since 2010 and was concertmaster in 2012/13; she is the orchestra’s Composer-in-residence this year and has won composition prizes at the New Zealand School of Music and the NZSO’s Young Composer’s Award in 2013 and 2014. Her music has been played by several overseas soloists and chamber ensembles.

The array of percussionists signalled a more than average interest in the strange and exotic sounds available these days from that department. As well as bowing on the edges of the xylophone, the most magical effects, sort of disembodied flute sound, came from Rachel Thomas bowing on crotales; and episodes of bouncing bows on strings and bows brushing tonelessly across stringed instruments, in large, synchronised, circular movements. It was as entertaining for the eyes as for the ears.

I was impressed by the composer’s notes that elaborated, not on the wearisome explanations like: ‘exploring of extended techniques that might enrich the experience of hearing the contrabassoon with its reeds removed, underwater’, but a description of the source of the sound – here rain falling – arising from actual events; for example, she writes: “the variation in sound and movement of raindrops depending on the material upon which they fall, and the texture created when these countless individual timbres and rhythms happen all at once”.

There were rather enchanting melodic fragments, rising and falling scales played softly on the two harps. But as well as these singular devices for the depiction of rain falling, there were blocks of brass in warm harmony, which in the end contributed to a remarkably attractive sonorous chorus in an exciting
crescendo.

La Mer
I was intrigued, considering the watery nature of the previous composition, at the choice of La Mer as the big, symphonic work on the programme. I’m assured that neither was programmed to complement the other: pure serendipity. Though not at all a symphony, it is of near symphonic length and has three movements (like the Paris and Prague symphonies of Mozart, if you care).

This too uses a big orchestra, three trumpets as well as two cornets, three bassoons and a contrabassoon, again the two harps and an array of percussion including glockenspiel, all used with purpose and sensitivity. At every hearing of this masterpiece I gain a little more clarity about its melodic and rhythmic content, how the fleeting, fugitive gestures and arabesques, relate and contribute to the bewildering tapestry. In the first movement, the orchestra captured the dim awareness of dawn with the woodwinds countering the threatening sounds of timpani and bass drum, and though there were momentary slips, the growing illumination that the performance created, the brightening glow of the horns midway in the movement, was marvellous.

The Jeux de vagues, sometimes referred to as a Scherzo, to me a misnomer, has the role of an at times playful, at times calm, symphonic middle movement; it brings the full light of day, not in an obvious, brash way, but through the fluency of flutes, always to be remarked, over bassoons and cor anglais, suggesting a friendly sea. The third part, Dialogue du vent et de la mer, opened with very enthusiastic timpani and brass, but the gorgeous, swaying tune and the vivid evocation of conflicting forces were magnificently rendered.

It’s not just that this music might mean/should mean something special to one who has lived all his life close to some of the biggest seas in the world; as one of the first really major works of the 20th century, it marks for me a more important and influential development than the intellectually driven inventions of Schoenberg and co was to do a few years later; and at least as significant as The Rite of Spring.

Naturally, much of the audience at such concerts comprises family and friends of the players, but they could not have so filled the MFC, showing that growing numbers of ordinary music lovers are realising that if the music is your primary interest, rather than a social event, as much delight and revelation is created in a Youth Orchestra performance of this calibre as with the NZSO itself.

 

Reflections on Dukas and Debussy:

Above, I touched on the place of Dukas, between César Franck and Debussy and the intermediate composers like Fauré and Chausson.

After the 1880’s, Debussy picked up the sense that composers like those and others had been hinting at in previous decades. Influenced by impressionist painting and symbolist poetry, he believed music was about nuances, colours and emotions, story-telling and scene painting; organically evolving melodic ideas and rhapsodic shapes.

Dukas was born into the era of Debussy (he was four years Debussy’s junior) but, while they were good friends, Dukas adhered to the model of César Franck and the more classical, Teutonic, tradition, and he was a passionate Wagnerian; while Debussy, very consciously a ‘French’ composer, had come to reject both Franck and Wagner. But their totally opposite views did not seem to affect the happy friendship between the two.

And although Debussy wanted no school of Debussyistes and didn’t much like Ravel who was his passionate admirer, Roger Nichols remarks in his New Grove article: “a list of 20th century composers influenced by Debussy is practically a list of 20th century composers, tout court”.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is not truly representative of Dukas the composer. True, it was written four years after Debussy’s Prélude à l’après midi d’un faune, about the same time as Nocturnes, but while
the finger-prints of a brilliant orchestrator can be heard, there is as much Strauss as Chausson in it, and a lively imagination is needed to ascribe much to Debussy.

The programme note relates a Messiaen anecdote that suggests The Apprentice was intended as mockery of the Strauss’s symphonic poems, particularly Till Eulenspiegel, that were sweeping Europe at the time, but it is hard to believe that Dukas would have expended all that effort creating such a masterly and highly sophisticated score merely as a put-down of Strauss. My reading of Dukas’s personality and nature don’t suggest that sort of behaviour; after all he remained a good friend of Debussy even though Dukas was a traditionalist, a Wagnerian, and thus not too distant from Strauss’s musical values.

A commentator writes, for example: “While Debussy was forging esoteric links with symbolist poetry, Dukas had the effrontery to compose a symphony in plain C major!” The symphony is a close relative of Franck’s Symphony in D minor; Dukas wrote it in the same year, 1897, as The Apprentice. As for Dukas’s great piano sonata in E minor, it sounds like a fine piano work that Franck never wrote (and as a passionné of the latter, I expect that to be read as great admiration).

Anyway, as one of the disappearing generation who actually saw (and heard), very young, an early screening of the Disney film, Fantasia, in which Stokowski conducted the music along with the marvellous animated version of the Goethe story, the music has been embedded in me for a long time.

In thinking about these things, I fished out my copy of Roger Nichols’ Debussy Remembered which trapped me for a while; there were not many pertinent bits of letters from Dukas relating to Debussy apart from evidence of great warmth and mutual respect and affection. But it’s the sort of book that engrosses you with all sorts of interesting people, events and ideas.

 

 

Defences overwhelmed by seductive songs from Nota Bene under Julian Raphael

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Nota Bene: Untold Stories

Music from New England and New Zealand by Brendan Taaffe, Don Jamison and Julian Raphael

Directed by Julian Raphael, with guest musicians

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Saturday 27 June, 8 pm

Nota Bene, founded over ten years ago by Christine Argyle, has always been a slightly unorthodox choir, perhaps ‘eclectic’ and ‘adventurous’ might be better words: they often veer towards the not-so-heavy repertoire whether jazz, quasi-pop, art songs, Renaissance polyphony, folk or “World” music, with special attention to New Zealand composers, and not averse to a touch of religiose sentiment. It’s also a choir whose performances are marked by enthusiasm, fun and sparkling precision in their ensemble and diction. All of which is vividly demonstrated in their CD, NB: accents – celebrating 10 years which includes a few seriously beautiful, mainstream classical tracks. It’s been hard to extract from the CD player in my car for many months: the music is wonderful and it’s a real chance to be spellbound by the choice of music and its immaculate performances.

Background to the concert was to be found, not so much in the programme leaflet, but in the choir’s website. Julian Raphael has become well known in Wellington through his work with several choirs, and with schools. Brendan Taaffe has visited twice, holding workshops, but Don Jamison might be known only through his songs. The latter two live in Vermont, and their songs are notated using a system (and in a style) known as ‘shape-note’.

It’s defined: “Shape-note singing, a musical practice and tradition of social singing from music books printed in shape notes. Shape notes are a variant system of Western musical notation whereby the note heads are printed in distinct shapes to indicate their scale degree and solmization syllable (fa, sol, la, etc.)”; and “Shape notes are a music notation designed to facilitate congregational and community singing. The notation, introduced in 1801, became a popular teaching device in American singing schools”.

The character of performance is described in another website: “It has a distinctive sound: modal, open chords, octave doubling, unusual harmonies. It is usually sung at full volume in an exuberant outpouring of sound and feeling.”

The four shape-note pieces by Jamison (Owen Sound, Cabin Hill, Jackson Heights, Kingdom) were four-part settings of adaptations of Psalms, vaguely hymnal in a southern Baptist accent. That said, the music was most agreeable, often syncopated or swinging easily; the singing, almost all without the scores in front of them, exemplary. The songs’ superficial simplicity conceals an essential musicality and integrity of spirit.

The bracket of songs by Brendan Taaffe was a little more varied in their style and range of influences. Agawa Bay revealed an influence of Renaissance polyphony, in a brisk tempo; in Wester Caputh men’s voices sang the opening passage, a touching melody that thinned attractively as women joined. Superior was a tender, nostalgic song, in a slow tempo without any hint of syncopation, and Greenwood Lake, in slow triple time, peppered with quavers, with words that suggested a more religious awareness.

The last item in the first half was a boisterous, get-up-and-move gospel song from North Carolina, ‘Better Day a-Coming’, joyous and energetic, and here conductor Raphael threw himself into the spirit with broad arm gestures, encouraging swinging and clapping, not only from the choir but also from the audience, most of whom followed with some gusto.

Part 2 was Julian Raphael’s own: a group of songs to words by Frances Knight and music by him.  He explained that the songs, Untold Stories, were conceived during a summer holiday in France and worked over by the pair when they returned to Canterbury (England) – a ‘delightful process of collaborative song-writing’, he says.

These were accompanied by a small ensemble of Nick Granville – guitar, John Rae – percussion, Sarah Hopkins – mallets, that is marimba, and Umar Zakaria – bass, as well as Raphael himself at the piano from time to time.

The first song, Our Song, began with a long instrumental introduction, and the voices entered without fanfare; it was repetitious, in an evolving manner, carrying echoes of southern African music (Raphael has spent time in Zimbabwe and is a student of Shona culture and music; the home of a great hit in the 1950s, Skokiaan, one of the most infectious dance party numbers in my late teens, a hit by Bill Haley and Louis Armstrong, somewhat bastardised by Bert Kaempfert and James Last. There are a couple of LPs in my crowded shelves).

Having been seduced by the above experience 60 years ago, this music still has a hold on me and so, in their different ways, I enjoyed the swing and energy of all the rest of the programme: Shine me on my Way, My Heart, Disappeared and Touch the Sky. There were other influences too, the American south again, Latin American (in Disappeared: infectious, poignant, very appealing), the Balkans. And three soloists from the choir came forward to sing lyrics in most of them (Jeltsje Keiser, John Chote and Marian Willberg).

To send us home in great spirits, the choir repeated ‘Better day a-coming’. As promised by Raphael, the music – really the entire programme – proved hard to resist, eminently singable, the stuff to overcome the most diffident audience and, I’m sure, music that breaks down the rigidity of teenage taste in high school students.  Nota Bene might give the impression of an unpretentious choir, but it’s one of the best trained and most joyous in the city.

 

Unmissable violin sonata programme from APO’s Canadian concertmaster and Sarah Watkins

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Andrew Beer (violin) and Sarah Watkins (piano)
(Wellington Chamber Music)

Beethoven: Violin Sonata in G, Op 30 No 3
Lilburn: Violin Sonata (1950)
Good: ‘And Dreams Rush Forth to Greet the Distance’
Bartok: Two Rhapsodies
Ravel: Sonata in A for violin and piano

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 21 June, 3 pm

The violinist’s name would have been new to Wellingtonians – the recently appointed Concertmaster of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra; the pianist however, is very well known. But the audience was disappointing: see comments in my Coda.

I think this programme, entirely of worthwhile, interesting works, but containing only one familiar, major work, might have seemed missable to non-subscribers, unless driven by Lilburn-loyalty or special love of Bartok, and who would be paying $40 for a seat.

Beethoven
In the event, it was an excellent concert. The performance of Beethoven’s Op 30 No 3 was strong, spirited and with striking emphasis on rhythmic elements and the engaging melodies; the two players sounded as if they’d been playing together for years. The middle movement, a sort of minuet, adhered perfectly to its marking, ‘molto moderato e grazioso’, and piano and violin conversed equably, animatedly, tossing ideas to and fro. As the notes pointed out, there is playfulness in the last movement, as the two seemed to push each other a little, and drew attention to themselves with misleading expectations, and untimely modulations. All these features increase the pleasure to be found in a piece of music and one of Beethoven’s gifts was his ability to tease and mislead the audience while creating a masterpiece. All this was here in the performance.

Lilburn
This Lilburn violin sonata in B minor was actually his third. It was written in 1950 for Frederick Page (pianist and head of the music department of Victoria University College) and violinist Ruth Pearl, after Lilburn had become a lecturer at the university; they premiered it at the university and then played it again three months later in Wigmore Hall in London.

The others two sonatas, in C and E flat, were written in 1943; they were first performed, respectively, by Maurice Clare (violin) and Noel Newson (piano), and by Vivien Dixon (violin) and Anthea Harley Slack (piano).

Probably my first live hearing of the present one was at a Mulled Wine concert at Paekakariki in 2011, when Sarah Watkins accompanied Donald Armstrong. There’s an Atoll recording of both the E flat and the present one, issued in 2011, featuring Elizabeth Holowell (violin) and Dean Sky-Lucas (piano). Atoll ACD 941. It was reviewed that year in Middle C by my colleague Peter Mechen.

Andrew Beer’s comments in the programme notes about Lilburn, from a newcomer’s standpoint, are interesting. In his remarks I get a hint of surprise at what might be seen as a sort of obsession with finding a New Zealand voice, as if the job of a creative artist were to interpret or reflect his own land rather than simply to write attractive, listenable music. Such an idea, which is still current, would have puzzled Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Strauss, Prokofiev (among many others). “Telling our own stories” has become a tedious, clichéd justification for supporting New Zealand artists in all fields. There are far more important reasons.

Worrying about expressing and echoing one’s own country has been an aberration that started with the growth of nationalism in the mid 19th century, which has distorted attitudes in so many areas and fuelled the political hatreds that have dogged the world ever since.

However, Lilburn was simply a man of his times, in that matter.

Fortunately, by the time he was 35, Lilburn was writing music that exuded more self-confidence and less seeking for a New Zealand voice, and this sonata is a good example. It is now his own voice, mature, individual, yet echoing the sounds of his immediate predecessors, like Vaughan Williams, tonal and lyrical, though by no means conservative or sentimental. It has also absorbed the character of European music of the time, the tough-minded mid-century; there are moments of dissonance.

It is unusual in being in once movement, with five sections alternating between Molto moderato and Allegro. The performance establishes a searching quality which finds more confidence in the first Allegro section, with both instruments sharing a dance-like episode. The emotional undulations made the second Allegro sound like a concluding phase, but the repeat of Tempo I quickly justified itself.

In my review of that Paekakariki concert I described the sonata as “an impressive, vigorous, tightly-argued work that should have become one of the leading chamber pieces of the New Zealand repertoire.” That still stands.

The rest of the programme
The Lilburn was followed by a shorter piece by Canadian composer Scott Good, a competition piece. The notes reproduce the composer’s own views of the requirements of such a piece: very interesting and well-judged. It gave plenty of scope for virtuosity, drew on contemporary compositional trends, and it certainly, as stipulated, held the attention of an audience. Nor did it seem to think for a minute of attempting to find a ‘Canadian voice’. It simply expressed a confidence in its ability to find melody and treatments that would sound interesting. The performance delivered on all those counts, with the pianist as wholly involved in the idiom as the violinist himself.

After the interval, Bartok’s Two Rhapsodies, quite substantial pieces. Both were played with an aim of making civilized, lyrical (up to a point) music from peasant material that was unsophisticated even if complex in its own way. The first is considerably more conventional and ‘westernised’ than the second, which seems closer to its folk origins, more driven, avoiding any risk of charming the listener, with the piano in percussive mode and the violin, untypically harsh in places. One of my scribbled notes remarked that it was undoubtedly the most formidable piece on the programme, but perhaps, given that, it was over-long.

The programme ended with Ravel’s Violin Sonata, again, not one of his most familiar or engaging; somewhat severe with tunes that might be described as gestures rather than the real thing. So it’s one of those works that one has heard several times, but only the jazz-inflected second movement, is really familiar. Nevertheless, the performance extracted all its virtues, both of melody and structure – the element that allows melody to take a firm grip and holds the attention.

Coda
There have been a lot of opinions and argument about the functions of the critic, from at least the time of Plato, and no doubt in earlier civilisations. Over the years I’ve been tackled for making comments that are alleged to be outside the purview of a critic, perhaps touching on the political context of a composer’s work, his private life, the players’ circumstances, the question of state support for the arts, availability and cost of venues, the condition of music education, value judgements touching the various genres of music, and on and on… all matters of great importance in my opinion.

This is preliminary to an observation about the audience size.

The weather was cold; the venue, since last year after the closure indefinite (?) of the Town Hall, not perhaps ideal for reasons that I need not spell out, though acoustically and in seating comfort, very good. That leaves the programme; and here we find an awareness hiatus between some performers and some promoters who agree to a programme, and an average audience, about what appeals on the one hand, and what, on the other, looks a bit esoteric, worthy but not emotionally compelling.

Till last year I was on the committee of the Wellington Chamber Music Society (as it was) almost from the beginning of these Sunday concerts in 1983, and so have attended a great many of them. The number of subscribers in the Sunday series has declined steadily over many years, and so there is not a large, paid-up contingent who will come anyway, having paid for all the concerts. I can’t remember a smaller audience for a Wellington Chamber Music concert; yet they continue to be a vital element in Wellington’s music scene.

This is just one of the many musical and other organisations that is suffering from the Town Hall’s closure. Christchurch has resolved to restore its Town Hall for twice the cost of the estimate for ours. What’s the matter with our Council?

 

Orchestra Wellington in irresistible, largely Russian programme plus multi-cultural esoterica

Posted on by Lindis Taylor
Orchestra Wellington conducted by Marc Taddei

Leila Adu: Blessings as Rain Fall (vocal part sung by composer)
Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No 3 in C, Op 26, with Michael Houstoun – piano
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No 2 in C minor, ‘Little Russian’

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 20 June, 7:30 pm

Not content with the inevitable attraction of the complete Tchaikovsky symphony cycle, plus one of the most exciting piano concertos of the 20th century, Taddei added an indefinable something whose appeal might have been in any of a dozen varied musical or artistic realms. A vocal piece by a young composer, Leila Adu, of mixed New Zealand and Ghanaian birth, with its roots in those places as well as in the Buddhist spiritual, metaphysical world, but also casting an astute eye towards ‘world music’, whatever that momentarily fashionable term means, that has supplanted the non-PC word ‘folk music’.

Set to a poem by Tibetan Buddhist lama Kalu Rinpoche, it was chosen by Adu in part because it doesn’t mention a deity and so should be open to people of any religion (or perhaps none).

After some introductory remarks by Nigel Collins, in preparation for later broadcast of its recording by Radio New Zealand Concert, he welcomed acting Concertmaster Stephanie Rolfe (I suppose, substituting for Matthew Ross); then Taddei and composer-singer Adu came on stage. She stands pretty motionless, expressionless, yet seeming totally self-possessed and confident.  I’m sure her demeanour persuaded most of the audience that we were going to hear something unusual and significant, and there’s no doubt about the forces of personality and character that work in her favour in any role she chooses to adopt.

Her voice arrived first and for a moment seemed to dominate the orchestra, even though it appeared not to be amplified: it’s an engaging voice that switches several times into a surprising falsetto which was presumably to reflect the spirituality of the words. After a little while, the shape of the piece emerged: limited amount of melodic material, mostly consisting of descending scales in a rhythm that might be described as part-time jazzy, related more to the idiom of the mid-century American musical than to jazz itself. The words sometimes sounded as if being forced into existing musical patterns.

The text was a series of six nine-line stanzas, and the music varied somewhat from one to another but its style hardly varied. In the early stages the oboe defined the mood, but there were dark accompaniments from tuba, trombones and bassoon, and flashes of light from flutes and xylophone; towards the end a sense of contentment and fulfilment seemed to take over, reflected in her face enlivened at first by subtle and then more open smiles. The final (seventh) stanza involved an emotional shift, expressing through the music, more joy, more singing in the upper register, brighter colours in the orchestra.

One had the feeling in the end, trying to weigh the music, assess its value, characterise it, that given its base in Buddhist philosophy and morality, the standards that are applied to western music were irrelevant. That it’s not meant to be judged as we might judge a sonata or an opera, but perhaps rather, a madrigal or a protest song, where the message or the spirit is more important than the artistic clothing in which it’s dressed.

The colour of the air seemed to change when Nigel Collins reappeared to talk briefly with Marc Taddei about Prokofiev and his concerto during the rearrangement of the stage for the piano’s arrival. No 3 is the best known and most popular of Prokofiev’s five; in fact, it’s the only one in the traditional three-movement shape. All five are being played at this year’s Proms in London next month, by the London Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev. Sold out evidently.

In truth, the opening revealed a little shakiness, but very soon pianist and orchestra found accord and a driving, repetitious energy rapidly took charge. It was interesting to have a fundamentally non-flamboyant pianist, much concerned with the metaphysical, at the keyboard for it allowed the essential quality of the music to emerge rather than having to search for it through a haze of glitter and bravura.

Though things got a little out of sync for a moment in the second movement, the tricky alternating beats of piano and orchestra continued to be high entertainment. It falls away and suddenly becomes the Allegro ma non troppo, finale, in which the bassoon starts nine minutes of scrupulous wit and deft rhythms, the piano leading a calm section adorned with flighty flute figures, as Prokofiev continued to draw on his famous trove of tunes that he hoarded against a drying up of melodic inspiration. Such a one survives scores of repetitions that lead to an impetuous rush as orchestra and piano experience multiple climaxes, piled one on the other.

Tchaikovsky’s second symphony, like the first, emerges as a wonder: why is it not often played, as it’s such an attractive work. My first awakening to it was in the mid 1950s through the splendid World Record Club which all music lovers (when that naturally meant ‘classical’ music) joined and built up their LP collections at tolerable prices for generally excellent performances. Of course, I still have, and have just played, that ‘Little Russian’, by Giulini and the Philharmonia Orchestra. Tchaikovsky uses several Ukrainian folk tunes, which gives the symphony its name: ‘Little Russia’ was Russia’s name for its often put-upon fellow Slav neighbour to the south (not that that country has always behaved very prudently).

During the interval I had moved from a seat about seven rows from the front to row T, where the orchestral balance was better. Everything sounded great now, even though one’s ears do adjust to acoustic weaknesses and the imagination makes good. The orchestral strings, now at only two players less in each section than the NZSO, are at the level of most good city orchestras in Germany and it’s a real shame that they are not funded adequately to offer more employment and to give more concerts around Greater Wellington and in the provincial towns of the southern North Island, and Blenheim and Nelson.

The horns, especially principal Shadley van Wyk, delivered well in the several important horn passages, and the two bassoons (Tilson a former NZSO player) were distinguished, as were winds as a whole. But principal credit goes to Marc Taddei who conducted, as he frequently does, from memory; the buoyancy and warmth of the playing was simply a delight, with magical quiet passages, allowing an excellent launch-pad for crescendos. The timpani too, sounding with subtlety, in the decrescendo leading to the end of the Andante marziale, second movement.

The Scherzo was charmingly lit from above, by woodwinds: piccolo and flute prominent; all sounded well disciplined through the dancing final section. The finale opens with a splendid fanfare-like, attention-grabbing call to attention which subsides with fine timpani again and quiet strings and winds to a leisurely promenade. And the end comes with a slow acceleration, and the repetitions, with subtle instrumental changes, of the Ukrainian folk tunes by which Tchaikovsky builds excitement through the final pages. The applause was enthusiastic and quite prolonged.