Author: Lindis Taylor

Scandinavian and New Zealand players unite wonderfully for the two greatest clarinet quintets

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Waikanae Music Society

The Dalecarlia Clarinet Quintet:
Anna McGregor (clarinet), Manu Berkeljon (violin), Sofie Sunnerstam (violin), Anders Noren (viola) and Tomas Blanch (cello)

Mozart: Clarinet Quintet in A, K 581
Brahms: Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op 115

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 6 July, 2:30 pm

I understand that the Waikanae Music Society asked for and got a programme other than those that the promoters of the New Zealand tour (Chamber Music New Zealand) was offering. Both Chamber Music Hutt Valley and Wellington Chamber Music settled for either the Mozart or the Brahms plus ‘fillers’ in the first half.

This concert was first advertised as the Antithesis Quintet, which might have referred to the programme, sub-titled ‘Concert of Opposites’. But as a result of an injury sustained by one of the string players, the personnel was changed and subsequently the name, to Dalecarlia. The players are members of the Dalasinfoniettan orchestra, based in Falun which is in the region of Dalecarlia (Dalarna in Swedish) in central Sweden.

For the record, the original material that we posted on Coming Events on this website, listed the following members: Anna McGregor (clarinet), Hilda Kolstad Huse (violin), Sofie Sunnerstam (violin), Fanny Maréchal (viola) and Katrine Pedersen (cello).

Neither the interview with Eva Radich on Upbeat on Friday nor the websites we’ve looked at touched on the reasons for the three personnel changes and the name change.

I’d been at the Lower Hutt concert and had been impressed by the Mozart quintet but at Waikanae, from the very opening, there was something different, in the extraordinary beauty and gentleness of the clarinet’s rising phrase, and the same feeling of greater care and finesse from the strings. The pianissimi were breathtaking, from all the players.

I wondered whether the quite different acoustic might have explained what I felt was a more fine-grained and penetrating performance (still jet-lagged at Lower Hutt?). It has been customary to criticise the hall as a cavernous sports stadium but, apart from the sound becoming more dim for those seated far from the stage, the sound now is clear, seeming to enhance the distinct timbres and articulations of the individual instruments. I really relished the sound.

Naturally, the exquisite second movement, Larghetto, prospered is this space where the clarinet is very centre-stage, and it was possible to delight in Anna McGregor’s rapport with the strings (remarkable given that the group has really been together such a short time); I am often given to thinking as I listen to music of great beauty, that it is the most overwhelmingly beautiful creation ever, and this was indeed one of those times. And the Menuetto and Trio were not far behind: beguiling, unhurried, with long passages for strings alone, the first violin (Sofie Sunnerstam) producing a lean yet satin-smooth tone.

The last movement is in the theme and variations form, though the variety that Mozart introduces makes one quite overlook the fact that we are hearing the same basic tune over and over. The third variation, in A minor, gives the viola (Anders Noren) a gorgeous minute of exposure, a premonition of the longer Adagio of the fifth and last variation. These gracious slow phases seemed to me the most awesome moments of the work, though it ends with a restorative Allegro coda: just perfect.

Fancy getting the Brahms Quintet in addition, in the same concert! That will also be played at the Wellington Chamber Music concert at St Andrew’s this coming Sunday, along with pieces by Ross Harris and a Swedish composer.

Brahms makes a much more concerted work from his resources than Mozart had. Clarinet and strings play together, singing their distinct parts in more complex five-part ensemble. For this, the two violins changed places: Manu Berkeljon was leader here. At Lower Hutt I had felt that her violin blended slightly better in the ensemble, but at Waikanae I could not make such a distinction, though Sofie’s instrument sounded a little lighter in tone, lending a welcome contrast between the two.

Compared with the sunny, delighted mood of the Mozart, composed just two months before he died, Brahms, in B minor, sounded a great deal more weighed down by the burdens of the world (though his death was still six years off), with almost anguished passages in the first movement. Violins had the opening phrase of the first movement, but the clarinet opens the sombre Adagio with its three descending notes, leading to one of Brahms’s most beautiful, elegiac melodies; its stillness was transfixing.

The players handled the brief third movement, a disguised Scherzo, giving no pause for meditation. Like Mozart’s, the last movement is a set of five variations; it’s led by the cello (the excellent Tomas Blanch) into deeper waters, not to be misled by the tempo marking Con Moto.  Again, considering the shortness of their time together (though most of them are used to collaborating in the chamber orchestra in Falun), I was moved by the integrity, of their playing, of the same mind, exploring Brahms’s essentially serious nature through the complex strands of the Finale and finding profundity as well as enchantment in it.

The loud applause from the 350–plus crowd proved that the Waikanae Society had not been wrong to seek both these great works – after all, why not when you’ve travelled 20,00km to play them?

 

NZSO under Venezuelan conductor triumphs with essential German and Russian masterpieces

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New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rafael Payare with Alisa Weilerstein – cello

Schumann: Manfred Overture, Op 115
Prokofiev: Symphony-Concerto for cello and orchestra in E minor, Op 125
Mahler: Symphony No 1 in D

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 27 June, 6:30 pm

A couple of highly promising young musicians whose existence have so far escaped my attention appeared with the NZSO on Friday.  Rafael Payare is the product of Venezuela’s Sistema musical organisation that involves young people seriously in classical music, and has already given rise to one of the most illustrious young conductors, Gustavo Dudamel. Payare is obviously following a similar path.

He is married to Alisa Weilerstein, the cello soloist who played the Prokofiev.

It was easy to see how the orchestra has responded to Payare’s approach both to them and to the music; starting with the overture, Schumann’s Manfred. Apart from Shakespeare, only two English writers have become big business in other parts of Europe: Byron and Scott, and for composers in particular. Byron attracted Berlioz, Donizetti and Verdi, Liszt and Tchaikovsky. Schumann too who was drawn to Byron’s verse drama, Manfred. Byron dismissed Manfred, written in 1817, as something eccentric and untheatrical, writing that he didn’t know whether it was good or bad. He called it ‘mad’ and wrote that he had rendered it quite impossible for the stage. In spite of that, Schumann composed not just an overture but other pieces of incidental music for the play, suggesting that he did envisage that it might be staged. I don’t know whether it was. There was a good deal more contemporary dramatic literature in Germany in the early 19th century than there was in Britain.

The central attraction of the piece was a kind of supernatural being who lives with the guilt of an unnamed crime (it was no doubt that which attracted both Schumann, and Tchaikovsky, in his little-played Manfred Symphony). Byron wrote it in Venice after fleeing England after the exposure of his relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh.  It was the product of the age of Faust Part I (and the character Manfred owes something to Faust in fact – yes, I did read it many years ago) and other works of the Sturm und Drang era including Schiller’s Die Räuber, and the English Gothic novel.

I had not heard the Manfred Overture for many years and wondered whether its strong impression on me would still exist. It was, and very much. Schumann’s account of the subject is taut, melodically strong, portraying the hero’s sombre, disturbed character, and this performance was arresting and excitable, giving Schumann the most persuasive account one could hope for. It’s scored for a normal orchestra, double woodwinds, except for four horns which lent a fine dramatic resonance. The conductor handled the unexpected turns with panache, particularly the mock anti-climax at the end.

Prokofiev’s Symphony-Concerto was played by the NZSO with German cellist Alban Gerhardt about six years ago, in what I recall as a fire-eating performance, feverish, with pretty fast speeds.

Here there were smaller string numbers (12, 10, 8, 8, 6) and an otherwise conventional orchestra.  The cellist in the open phase did not project her sound very strongly, but her instrument carried the essentially lyrical solo writing engagingly, contrasting with the more sombre orchestral scoring, dominated by its repeating, stolid rising theme that opens the piece. It’s an arresting and dark rather than an ingratiating work however, even though the energy of the Allegro movement is compelling and there’s plenty of more conspicuous playing for the cello.

Most of those I spoke to, unfamiliar with the work, did not find it engaging, which was my own reaction when I first encountered it many years ago. A merely routine performance will never do: its enjoyment demands a highly persuasive performance, to turn what at first seems dry, rather laconic, melodically obscure music into a work that has some real emotional integrity, even at times, excitement. For example, after the cadenza in the middle of the Allegro the orchestra returns to a pulsing cross-string passage that is emotionally gripping, like the sound of a hammering steam train at high speed.

The second is the longest movement and seems to contain the widest variety of moods and speeds, and it’s here that a driving propulsion and a sense of purpose emerged, powerfully inspired by Payare’s direction of the orchestra. Though the last movement begins with what can only be described as a real melody, first-time listeners can be forgiven for sensing a severity and unforgiving character in the work as a whole, and that initial impression can be hard to shake off even as very interesting developments and quite memorable sounds create a work of art that is strong and original without recourse to alienating avant-garde techniques.

It’s quite a tough work nevertheless; and there was no doubt that the relationship between conductor and cellist lent the performance a special energy and displayed a belief in and an affection for the music.

Then came Mahler’s First Symphony. The orchestra reassembled after the interval, at full strength (which I discuss later). It opens with the most uncanny, ethereal sounds, such as no symphony at that time had approached in any way, an exploratory feeling, as off-stage trumpets and then cuckoo sounds on clarinet suggest a pastoral scene, reinforced by one of the most beguiling Wayfarer songs; and quotes from other songs, his own and ‘Frère Jacques’. From the very first, the orchestra created a sound world that was vivid and full of character.

For a first symphony, it is impressive both for its individual character, its novelties of shape and structure and in the size of orchestra used. Much of that character derives from its evolving growth and the revisions which the programme note covers to some extent – born as a five movement symphonic poem in two parts, begun when Mahler was 24 and first performed in Budapest when he was 29. That version included a movement known as Blumine (Flower piece) lifted from an earlier work most of which has been lost. That one movement, found in 1966, had been between the first and second movements when it was played in Budapest in 1889 and again in 1893 and 1894. The Budapest version was called ‘Symphonic-Poem in 2 Parts’.

Between the Budapest performance and the revision for Hamburg in 1893 Mahler added the name Aus dem Leben eines Einsamen (From the Life of a Lonely-one). Just before the Hamburg performance the name Titan was added, though he made it clear that it was not in any way about Jean Paul’s novel. But he removed that title after the Hamburg performance in 1893 and there is no reason for it to be so-called now. (Titan, published in 1800-03, is a somewhat wild, Romantic novel a prominent feature of which is its beautiful and evocative nocturnal landscape descriptions, a feature that can be easily visualised in the symphony).  The third performance was in Weimar on 3 June 1894. Here, the Blumine movement was deleted.

The orchestration of the Budapest version was conventional for the time, with double woodwinds and four horns, but by the 1893 Hamburg performance Mahler had supplied it with three of each woodwind instrument.

For Weimar in 1894 Mahler increased his winds: four each of the woodwinds, and 3 additional horns making a total seven horns. There are two sets of timpani as well as additional wind instruments to lend extra power in climaxes, mainly in the last movement. It still included the title from Titan.

The present form was only arrived at for the fourth performance in Berlin in 1896 when the title Titan was deleted and it was named for the first time, ‘Symphony in D major’.

Its provenance from a tone poem contributes to its greatness and its permanent place in the repertoire: a miraculous combination of imagination and narrative with the structure and discipline of the traditional symphony. This explains the remarkable originality of this first symphony, but it hardly accounts for the confidence its composer displays in handling very disparate materials and the triumph of creating a soundscape that met initially with strong criticism but which really assured its eventual and permanent success. It is that strong, original voice, along with a very rich melodic gift, that has kept it among the most popular symphonic works.

But music does not play itself, and it proved the ideal subject for a young conductor with exceptional energy as well as great musical imagination and the ability to inspire an orchestra that sometimes shows a certain resistance to the efforts of young, gifted, ambitious conductors. This time the orchestra was very obviously won over.

The other aspect of this and of Mahler’s other earlier works is the absence of any impact from the horrors of war, which were to affect to a greater or lesser degree, most composers who lived beyond the second decade of the 20th century. Mahler knew no wars. (There might be no wars to account for the more complex emotional landscapes of the later symphonies, but an increasingly tortured life can explain that).

He was only ten when the short but awful Franco-Prussian war took place and died three years before World War One began. I often contemplate the enormous emotional gulf between Mahler and the composer who was probably most influenced by him – Shostakovich, who grew up surrounded by the effects of the Revolution and then lived through Stalin’s terrors and the Second World War.

Out of the long peace that had brought the Austro-Hungarian Empire to its condition of decadent complaisance, the artist could indulge in the self-absorption that gave rise to Freud and a bit later, Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben and Salome, and compose a finale ending in huge triumphalism, with horns and trombones standing to point their instruments into the audience in an uproarious spirit of invincibility. And the house went wild, with far more noise and clamour than reticent Wellington audiences usually allow.

 

The lyrical and the spectacular from Thomas Gaynor at TGIF Cathedral lunchtime recital

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Thomas Gaynor – organ

Bach: Prelude and Fugue in G, BWV 541
Bach: From the Leipzig Chorales: “Schmücke dich”, BWV 654 ; Trio super: “Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend”, BWV 655
Saint-Saëns: Fantaisie in E flat; Danse macabre
Widor: Organ Symphony No 6 – Allegro (1st movement)

Cathedral of St Paul

Friday 27 June, 12:45 pm

This year is the 50th anniversary of the dedication of Wellington’s Anglican Cathedral, and so the concerts staged this year celebrate that.

This particular recital was apparently organised by the late John Morrison, who, among many activities that helped the arts, particularly music, to flourish in Wellington, was chairman of the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Wagner Society. Your reviewer, as a member of the society, wants to record that link.

I arrived as Gaynor was about four minutes into the Bach Prelude and Fugue, the sounds thrilling about the great space of the cathedral. I’d missed the Prelude but the fugue was proceeding with energy and, given the great reverberant cathedral, was emerging with as much clarity as was consistent with the character of dense contrapuntal music and the need for it to resound in a way the echoed what Bach saw as life’s enigmatic meaning. There was an elasticity in the tempo and a familiarity with the capacities of the organ illuminated the music through well contrasted registrations.

Two pieces from what are known as the Leipzig Chorales followed: they are among the relatively few purely organ compositions written at Leipzig, BWV 651 – 668. “Schmücke dich” (‘Deck thyself’), a beautifully calm piece in which Gaynor played the prominent chorale melody on a distinct stop in sharp contrast with the comforting, weaving, quaver accompaniment. And the ‘Trio Super’ “Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend” (‘Lord Jesus, turn to us’) followed without a break. I can find no explanation of the term Trio Super; its character was very similar to the preceding piece with the vocal line played, again, on a more prominent stop than the accompaniment (not being an organ expert, just a lover of the instrument, I hesitate to guess at the names or ranks of the myriad stops).  It was joyous and lively, moving colourfully through a number of keys.

In some ways the leap of 150 years or so from Bach to Saint-Saëns’s seemed less remarkable than the dates might have suggested; a commentary on Bach’s sophistication rather than any conservatism in Saint-Saëns. His Fantaisie in E flat is one of his earliest works (1857, age 22), evidently before he had developed any particular melodic individuality; after an unobtrusive opening, it struck out bold and fluent, demanding of the player plenty of virtuosity and Gaynor’s employing of a colourful range of stops allowed detail to be heard clearly.

Then came the most spectacular piece on the programme – the very popular Danse Macabre which I’d never heard played on the organ before. It’s had several incarnations: it began as a setting of a poem by Henri Cazalis with piano accompaniment, then came the orchestral tone-poem, with a violin replacing the vocal line; it was transcribed for piano, famously by Horowitz, and the standard organ version is by Edwin Lemare. Lemare’s arrangement exploited the organ’s most flamboyant characteristics and the organist’s skills and flair: it called for the most unusual individual stops and combinations thereof, re-creating the spooky effects, the dark rushes of all-stops-out of the climactic crescendo. In fact, the organ version seemed to capture the unearthly, dehumanised feeling of the piece even more dramatically than is possible with the orchestra, and Gaynor lost no opportunity to overwhelm us.

Charles-Marie Widor was ten years younger than Saint-Saëns, and so impressed the latter that he appointed Widor his assistant at the Church of the Madeleine in Paris, age 24, in 1869, and the next year lobbied for his appointment to St Sulpice, in which the famous organ-builders, Cavaillé-Coll, had built their most spectacular organ; Widor was there till 1933.

The Toccata from his Fifth Symphony is his most famous piece. But here we had the welcome chance to hear something from another symphony, the first movement of the 6th. Quite a lot of rhetorical writing, clamorous flourishes, hectic turbulence, then arresting chorale-like passages, all adorned in authentic registrations that illuminated the intriguing contrapuntal writing and the variety of tones and colours that are there to be enjoyed.

Gaynor will spend the northern summer at courses in France and Germany before returning to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester for further post-graduate studies. Quite a large audience heard this recital and will have been highly impressed both by his committed and virtuosic playing and the chance to hear the wonderful resources of the organ being fully extended.

Winner’s tour for Nikki Chooi, 2013 Michael Hill Violin Competition: a finished artist

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Nikki Chooi – violin, Stephen de Pledge – piano and Ashley Brown – cello
(Chamber Music New Zealand and the Michael Hill International Violin Competition)

Mozart: Sonata for piano and violin in E flat, K 302
Smetana: Piano Trio in G minor, Op 15
Beethoven: Violin Sonata in E flat, Op 12 No 3
Jack Body: Caravan
Ravel: Tsigane

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 20 June, 7:30 pm

Canadian Nikki Chooi won the 2013 Michael Hill International Violin Competition and this concert was in the middle of a series of sixteen concerts and recitals around New Zealand, which forms part of the prize.

Oddly, the biographical notes in the programme only listed the competitions in which he’s had success, orchestras with which and places where he has played. It neglected to say where and when he was born and had his early music education. Almost all the concerto engagements mentioned, like those in New Zealand, seem to have followed competition successes, mainly in Canada and Belgium.

He was born in Victoria, British Columbia, to parents of Chinese descent, began to learn the violin at the Victoria Conservatory at the age of four, and at  fourteen entered the Mount Royal University in Calgary. In 2012, he graduated Bachelor of Music from the Curtis Institute of Music and was awarded the Milka Violin Artist Prize upon graduation. Though no website discloses his date of birth, he was under 28 when he won the Michael Hill Competition. He now studies at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, under Ida Kavafian and Donald Weilerstein.

Chooi played three programmes round the country, the common pieces throughout being Ravel’s Tsigane and the piece Jack Body was commissioned to compose for the competition itself.

Wellington’s allocation began with one of Mozart’s two-movement sonatas (in E flat, K 302) that he wrote for his ill-fated Paris tour of 1778.  The players eschewed any attempt at ‘historical practice’ since, after all, few halls are equipped with a fortepiano or harpsichord and one such as the Michael Fowler Centre would lose a lot of the sound. In truth, the character of Chooi’s playing seems to flourish with the music of the 19th century, with its warm, voluptuous tone and his genuine instinct for expressive ‘Romantic’ music.

These sonatas are titled with the piano first and the violin seeming to be the accompanying instrument. But there was no sign here of the violin being secondary, their contributions were equal and in accord. The two movements are not strongly contrasted, as the second, Andante grazioso, though different in rhythm and mood, was not markedly different in tempo.

Chooi’s violin was flawless, its tone opulent. It might have been a Beethoven of 20 years later.

After the interval, they did play Beethoven of 20 years later: the last of Beethoven’s first three violin sonatas, Op 12. It is common to approach Beethoven’s early, pre-1800 music as if it was more like Mozart and Haydn than his own later music. But the current broadcasts by RNZ Concert of Michael Houstoun’s piano ‘re-cycle’ series of all the piano sonatas last year has illuminated the gulf that exists between even his early works and his predecessors.

This E flat sonata was evidence. Again, the two musicians were in total sympathy in this, the most sophisticated of the set, with its combination of bravura and melodic inventiveness. In the slow movement, with charming quavers rippling from the piano, there was delightful ease and gentleness quite without self-attention. Can musicians who produce music of such evenness, tonal beauty and fluency really get to the heart of Beethoven? Well, yes, in this instance.

I became familiar with Smetana’s piano trio when it seemed to be quite frequently played, twenty years or so ago – perhaps in the days when Czech musicians used to visit more often; perhaps it was coincidence that led me to think it was somewhat central to the trio repertoire. But what prompted its inclusion here? It flows from the piano trio phase of the competition, in which cellist Ashley Brown was involved.

The Romantic character of the piece seemed to suit the players, especially the violinist for whom Smetana’s elegiac and tempestuous music offered broad scope. Opening with the violin, alone, in a strong, sombre announcement of the work’s prevailing character, even the first movement develops in various ways after cello and piano enter.

The Trio section of the second movement is divided into two distinct parts, continuing the quixotic mood changes that characterize the whole work, and which the players handled with aplomb. Often passionately rhetorical, occasionally calm, then agitated, this music offered the players scope for more passionate and grieving performance than they actually embraced, especially the violinist, whose commitment to producing beautiful sounds played down the pain in the music.

The last two pieces fall into the class of bravura, designed to tax the player(s) to the utmost. Caravan, for solo violin, might have seemed a little out of character for Jack Body for, in spite of its origin as a Persian song, there seemed little Persian in the style of the ‘arrangement’, as it was rather overwhelmed by the flamboyant music that proved ideal for its purpose. Chooi had its measure and delivered a spectacular performance. The same went for Ravel’s Tsigane in which the violin has a long, virtuosic, solo introduction before the piano entry. The piece is no mere aural spectacle however; it has musical substance and both musicians handled its pianissimo phrases and subtlety with considerable musical discretion.

Choral Symphony in a triumphant end to NZSO’s monumental Beethoven symphony cycle

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the Orpheus Choir, conducted by Pietari Inkinen
Soloists: Tiffany Speight, Anneley Peebo, Simon O’Neill, Peter Coleman-Wright

Beethoven: Symphonies No 8 in F and No 9 in D minor (Choral)

Michael Fowler Centre

Sunday 15 June, 3 pm

In the NZSO’s Beethoven cycle of 1995, the Choral Symphony was accompanied by Symphony No 1, an arrangement just as interesting as linking it with No 8. Each is similar in length, and both represent Beethoven writing in a style more traditional than some of those he would write or had written.

These juxtapositions, that have illuminated each concert, have been as rewarding as the performances themselves; probably none has looked as dramatic as this one. To begin, No 9 is nearly three times the length of No 8: I’d guess it clocked in at a bit over 70 minutes, and it breaks conventions by setting a famous poem as its last movement.

Unlike any of the earlier ‘classical’ examples, there is no slow introduction; instead it hits the ground running. It’s in the same key as the Pastoral and though its first movement is faster than that of the Pastoral, it’s also in triple time and there is a distinctly similar tone, that suggests the flavor of the Ländler of the countryside.  Yet neither at its first performance nor in the centuries since (and this year in the two hundredth anniversary of its first performance) has it become a popular work.

I guess it was pure chance that it was the first complete symphony that I bought – 78s of the pre-WW2 Weingartner performance with the Vienna Philharmonic, for 18 shillings and sixpence – at the age of about 19. It’s generally slower than Inkinen’s and most modern performances.  The records are still enjoyable: I have a soft spot for it.

The second movement, Allegro scherzando, led by a bright tune in the strings, is in common rather than triple time and so it’s a cross between traditional slow movement and a bright dance-like episode. The orchestra seemed to relish the abrupt ending.

To add confusion for the traditionalists, the third movement is Tempo di menuetto with a slower, more convincing minuet character than the minuets in either Symphonies 1 or 4. However, the bassoon lent it a kind of comic, peasant character that might reinforce a link with the Ländler rather than the genteel minuet.

If speed had given me a bit of trouble elsewhere, that of the last movement, Allegro vivace, seemed entirely justified: speed was of the essence, even though my Weingartner benchmark hardly supports it. What I enjoyed about the whole performance was a kind of serious-minded joyfulness.

Perhaps it was hardly fair to have it play the part of a light-weight curtain-raiser to the main event.

When we came back after the interval the empty choir stalls were full of singers in black and white, ranged from sopranos on the left to basses on the right, opposite to the orchestra where cellos and basses were arrayed on the left behind the first violins. Was there some arcane intent here?

The Ninth Symphony broke all sorts of conventions, the most obvious of which are the inclusion of a choral element with soloists in the fourth movement, and its length, which can take between around 65 and 75 minutes. I didn’t time this, but it was brisk and I’d guess would have been nearer 65 minutes, about 25 of which are taken by the last movement.

Though it is more common to dwell on the character of orchestration in the music of the later 19th century as more instruments, particularly percussion were incorporated and wind instruments became more varied and numerous; and technical improvements made them more versatile and in theory a bit easier to play. But in the hands of a Mozart or a Beethoven the imaginative employment of what was normally available in orchestras of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, was often very beautiful, rich in nuances and arresting effects.

Beethoven’s increasing deafness mattered (especially to him), but his years of good hearing had filled his memory and he could obviously hear in his mind what his imagination created and could write down a good representation of it. So the very talented body of wind players in the NZSO could take full advantage of his colouful use of wind instruments in these two symphonies. Beethoven’s dramatic use of timpani was a relatively new phenomenon as was the introduction of trombones, in the last movements of the 5th, 6th and 9th, and four horns in the Choral. In the 9th he also uses a bass drum (tucked under the wall on the right side), cymbals and triangle. Thus one could well enjoy the diverting instrumental effects that Beethoven created, especially if one felt, for example, that the metronomic games in the Molto vivace (Scherzo in all but name) were a bit prolonged.

So a little more flexibility with the tempo might have better held attention. The fact is, however, that variety consists in the rallentandos that Beethoven marks at structural junctures in each movement, and in the dynamic changes that Inkinen marked vividly. It’s also true that the dramatic turning points deliver so much more power and impact if relative calm has preceded them, and Inkinen’s management achieved that most effectively. It was the slow (third) movement that seemed to lose its way; beautiful as it is and regardless of the care and subtleties of the playing, I lost concentration during the repeated episodes, though tiredness may have been to blame.

Everything that can be said about the fourth movement has been said: there are so many ways in which its structure can seem problematic or awkward, and commentaries these days often dwell on those. However, the unassailable aspects of Sunday’s performance were the orchestral playing: painstakingly careful dynamics, well balanced against choir and soloists, bluster set against ethereal moments, as the famous choral theme arrives, pianissimo, before chaos interrupts, and the violent fortissimi at climaxes that might be heard as ‘cheap’ effects but are usually wonderful.

The splendid chorus (rehearsed with obvious rigour and insight by Mark Dorrell, whose work hardly gets noticed in the programme) that filled the auditorium with clearly articulated German words was almost too vivid, exposing the (wash-your-mouth-out!) bombastic poetry, all in honour of something called “JOY”. Surely poetry of such passion and high-mindedness is about something of greater, more profound significance, even given that “joy” doesn’t seem to represent such a universal emotion as “Freude”! The substituted word “Freiheit” (freedom), which has often been suggested as what Schiller actually expected to be inferred from “Freude”, was in fact used at the famous 1989 concert under Bernstein at the Brandenburg Gate to celebrate the smashing of the Berlin Wall.

The soloists are a special problem. Here, we had Peter Coleman-Wright in the bass part, launching the singing with the mighty exhortation to warring parties, “O Freunde, nicht diese Töne…”.  But surely “joy” is not the medicine for the chaos that prompts this mighty command; the word the chorus is looking for in response is surely “Freiheit”. Coleman-Wright’s name is familiar both in Australia and Europe; I’ve heard him several times in principal baritone roles for Opera Australia. In addition, at Covent Garden for example among many major opera companies, he has sung Dandini, Billy Budd, Papageno, Marcello, Gunther and Donner as well as Beckmesser.

It’s cruelly exposed, and he made a strong impact even if the sound, slightly uneven in production, was not a perfect fit for the job. Soprano Tiffany Speight (Australian) and mezzo Annely Peebo (Estonian) had a well projected duet of good clarity, and both displayed, as far as the roles allowed, attractive and theatrical voices. Simon O’Neill was the only New Zealander to make the cut (really! – surely we could have done better! On the other hand it’s important for us to hear top class overseas singers); he clearly relished his big solo moment, with commanding vocal incisiveness and physical stature – he looked as if he enjoyed singing this part, back home. When tenor and baritone reopened a soloists’ episode at Allegro ma non tanto, with “Freude, Töchter aus Elysium…” the low-pitched line didn’t allow their voices to emerge so well; otherwise the following quartet was glorious.

The great final peroration with the orchestra and choir in sublime and ecstatic accord leaves the soloists standing helplessly, contributing only with their faces in a semblance of engagement. But O’Neill could be detected participating, mouthing the words, quietly, with every appearance of involvement in the music and its message.

This time there was no hesitation from the audience. All able-bodied members of the audience sprang to their feet, clapping, shouting and whistling. A triumphant conclusion to a landmark symphonic cycle.

 

In the marvellous heartland of Beethoven’s symphonies: concert No 3

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen

Beethoven: Symphonies No 6 (Pastoral) and 7 in F and A, respectively

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 14 June, 6:30 pm

On Friday, after posting my Thursday review, I was reminded that this was not the first Beethoven cycle that the NZSO has undertaken – a fact that I should have remembered for I reviewed them for The Evening Post, in November 1995.  Then, the symphonies, conducted in the Town Hall (give it back to us!) by Janos Fürst who died in 2007, were spread over five concerts over three weeks, from 1 to 18 November; the performance of the Pastoral was accompanied by the 5th (Emperor) Piano Concerto, with Michael Houstoun, and the other pairings were: 2 and 3, 4 and 5, 7 and 8, 1 and 9.

On Saturday evening we heard the 6th and 7th symphonies. The dynamics were rather different from the first two concerts: the Pastoral is the second longest of them; it is a departure from the normal classical four movements, has a pictorial programme, and is one of the most loved of them all. Though the evening was becoming cloudy, the sun shone in the Michael Fowler Centre and the air danced.

Sitting centre stalls, one hears things in perfect balance and the large orchestra delivered a sound that was opulent, clear and balanced both spatially and between sections. As in the earlier performances one’s ears became attuned particularly to the ten cellos and eight basses, as large and as beautifully played as in the most famous orchestras: bass weight and sonority are fundamental to an emotionally satisfying performance.

This lent the first movement, ‘cheerful feelings aroused on arriving in the countryside’, glowing warmth and colour, the colour mainly from the woodwinds and horns, though they tended to be a bit covered by the strings, the writing for which must be held partly to blame.

The second movement, a ‘scene by the brook’, is slower but the playing was no less resolute, holding the attention in the gentle embrace of a languid summer’s day. Inkinen’s guiding of the third movement was characterized not only by playing that portrayed an unsophisticated gaiety, a sort of rhythmic stiffness, but also in playing that was, at one point presumably deliberate, a little wayward in articulation, simulating amateurs. Though I could see little of the wind players, I did glimpse Peter Dykes playing the lovely oboe solo here.

The storm was most effective with a sudden calm and a shocking return of the thunder which leads to the rapturous finale, cellos seeming to lead the choir in singing a sort of hymn of thanksgiving to end a wonderfully varied and beautiful performance.

The seventh symphony, after the astonishment and excitement of its discovery when I was about 19, has not really held its place in my heart. It has its moments, such as the inviting though remarkably long introductory passages, but there has always seemed to me too much unadorned thematic repetition, too little plain beauty. The exception is the slow movement, merely an allegretto, but which is a refuge for a few minutes with a heart-warming melody; it was performed here with sufficient rhythmic flexibility to overcome the constant pulse that, to me, imposes a shade too much rhythm to perform the role of bringer of repose in the midst of wildness and ecstasy.

The symphony, nevertheless, makes big demands on an orchestra, and Inkinen took every advantage of abrupt dynamic changes, of opportunities for grand or exciting tuttis, long stretches of molto vivace figures and passage-work, to showcase solos, such as the frequent ethereal or sparkling flute passages from Bridget Douglas.

I suppose it is the third movement, Scherzo in all but name, that seems to repeat once too often.

The Finale which is marked as a modest Allegro con brio – not Molto allegro or Prestissimo, or some such – is usually played as fast as possible and was here. Merely very fast doesn’t work, and I think this performance verged on using speed rather than intensity and emotional integrity as its driver. Nevertheless, Inkinen set the audience by the ears as he changed gears, aborting a third repeat of the Presto. The compulsive theme that Weber thought proof of Beethoven’s madness took hold of the auditorium and there was a sense of mesmerized astonishment as it drove forward with a sustained momentum to a climactic ending.

There was shouting and long applause and many of the audience came to their feet (though not as many as those who stood at the end of No 5 the night before) through a sense of exhilaration as the music seems to express some kind of triumph shared by all mankind, foreshadowing the mood of the Choral Symphony we are to hear on Sunday afternoon.

 

Great start to NZSO’s Beethoven festival with the first three symphonies

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen

Beethoven: Symphonies No 1, 2 and 3, in C, D and E flat respectively

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday 12 June, 6:30 pm

Here is the third in Pietari Inkinen’s great symphonic cycles, following Sibelius and Brahms. This time, of course, the greatest such creations in the whole history of symphonic music.

It was interesting to hear Inkinen’s conversation with Eva Radich on RNZ Concert in which, as far as I know, not having caught all of it, neither remarked that simply to tackle this music is to make a statement about the world-class character of the orchestra, as well as to suggest something about the conductor’s feeling about his own readiness to undertake such a grand and formidable project.

Even in the decades immediately after Beethoven’s, it has pleased many critics to dismiss the first and second symphonies, in comparison with the later masterpieces. To so judge them is to overlook the fact that by 1800 when the second was composed, no existing symphony could come anywhere near them, apart perhaps from Mozart’s last three. How ridiculous it is to compare a composer’s relatively early works with more complex and profound music that might have emerged later.

To play these three in the same evening was in fact to allow us to hear the clear kinship that they share. The stately and confident character of the opening of the C major symphony announced at once that Beethoven had absorbed and surpassed, at least in adventurousness, the models of Haydn and Mozart.  Though one must be careful not to confuse those elements that might represent ‘progress’ (a dangerous notion) with inspiration and creativity involving the expression of profound human truth.

The latter exists in roughly equal measure in Josquin, Tallis, Palestrina, Monteverdi, Handel and Bach, Haydn and Mozart, Schubert and Berlioz, Verdi and Wagner, Bruckner and Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Strauss, Debussy…

Inkinen’s input could be heard in the careful energy that he projects, civilised by discretion and precision, but given dramatic character by the vivid dynamic shifts, readiness to allow flexible rhythms and to make arresting changes of tempo.  The slow movement, in triple time, opens with attentive fugal treatment of the unpretentious theme and it’s a sudden pianissimo that enlivens it. The Menuetto, indicated ‘allegro molto e vivace’ seems like a contradiction: it must be one of the fastest ever – I’d hate to try dancing to it; it’s really a scherzo in disguise.

The true heart of the symphony is the last movement, starting with the repeated, playful attempts to play a scale; here Inkinen gave the orchestra licence to burst the seams, very fast, employing quite simple material adventurously and without too much attention to orchestral proprieties.

The second symphony, in D, set alongside the first, reveals a confidence and discursiveness in the longish Adagio introduction which seems to merge more organically into the Allegro.

The performance seemed to relish the chances to disappear into pianissimi occasionally, suddenly to burst out afresh. There are repeated conversations between strings and winds – clarinet, then bassoon, flute, horn… Here, and often in this and in the Eroica, Inkinen seemed to cherish beautifully executed wind playing. And in the Scherzo, one felt a scarcely contained impulse to flippancy. But it’s the finale where it was possible to sense the emergence of a more versatile and dynamic composer, the music taken at some speed almost as if pushing players beyond their limit.

There seemed a much shorter distance between No 2 and the great Eroica than is suggested by many commentators.

Two commanding chords take the place of the Adagios that introduced the two earlier symphonies. I might have hoped for a slightly more fearsome impact but these were a good enough announcement of a composer for a revolutionary era.

You could have argued that the full-sized orchestra used in Nos 1 and 2 was larger than is kosher for essentially classical works (strings were 16, 14, 12, 10, 8), but the numbers were right for the Eroica.  Though scored for three horns, compared with two for Nos 1 and 2, we had four offering more flexibility; otherwise the orchestra was of the same size.

Here, as in the earlier pair, Inkinen’s stamp consisted, rather than through any radical interpretative revelations, in paying striking attention to dynamic and tempo markings which were sufficient to hold the audience in a semblance of trance throughout. For example the emphatic, thudding wind accompaniment to the lyrical strings; but more than anything, there was constant delight in the many solo wind phrases or passages from flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and of course horns and trumpets. Though this orchestra’s strings are incomparable, it’s the clarity and beauty of the winds (horns have recovered their form) that lends any performance special piquancy, and these are all available.

No Eroica can survive without a Marche funèbre (again, nearly 20minutes long like the first movement) that is masterly and profound. This performance had weight from the great body of cellos and basses, as well as transparency, emotional impact, slow, treading tempi and a knack of subsiding into anguished pianissimi from which it seemed almost impossible to recover.

The justification for four horns became clear in the Scherzo: joyous, sanguine, life-affirming, and then the Finale filled the auditorium with energy, achieved through fugal writing, high-lighted by sudden breaks, sustaining an expectancy and excitement that built to the grandeur and triumph of the Coda. That, I am loath to confess, sounded just a little less thrilling than my hopes had been (certain performances, early in life, sometimes raise expectations that are impossible to erase). Nevertheless, in all, this first concert exceeded reasonable hopes, and confirmed both the orchestra’s excellence and the conductor’s vision, sense of structure and his awareness of the importance of refinement and detailing, not to mention pure excitement.

The next three evenings are bound to be among the year’s most memorable.

 

 

 

Tawa’s orchestra tackles substantial programme under lively young conductor

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Tawa Community Orchestra conducted by Andrew Atkins and Laura Barton (violin)

Mozart: Symphony No 25 in G minor – first movement: Allegro con brio
Wieniawski: Violin Concerto No 2 in D minor, Op 22
Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture

Tawa College Hall

Sunday 8 June, 2 pm

There are several community, amateur orchestras around Greater Wellington; their major role is probably to enable local musicians to get orchestral experience; not to lay any claim to offering dazzling musical revelations. Most of the audience no doubt comprised friends and family members. Many of those have a genuine interest in music of the classical kind, and no matter the level of accomplishment, it is always interesting, sometimes pleasantly surprising, to be at such concerts.

My connection was as family member, but I was more than a little interested to hear how the players would cope with pieces that were one hundred percent solid classical repertoire.

The first movement of Mozart’s ‘Little G minor symphony’, No 25 (distinguishing it from the other one, No 40) would have resonated with many, as the urgent music, with arresting syncopation, that opened the film Amadeus. While the opening bars were an interesting exhibition of the meaning of ‘balance’, demonstrating the challenge of getting an integrated sound from the varied instruments of the orchestra, which are by nature so incompatible. More striking however was the energy that the young conductor, Andrew Atkins, a graduate student at the New Zealand School of Music, brought to the job. He imposed a professional tempo and sense of momentum on the performance that to a good extent masked any weaknesses of ensemble and technical competence in the players. Nevertheless, the real Mozart showed through, the spirit and the melodic genius.

It was the next piece that had me intrigued. While the Mozart employed a fairly limited orchestra – horns the only brass instruments – Wieniawski, writing about a century later, called for the full Romantic orchestra, double woodwinds, horns and trumpets, three trombones and timpani.

Here too the presence of several guest players, including many from the School of Music, strengthened strings and brass, in particular.

Though I knew both Wieniawski’s violin concertos, I cannot recall hearing either played live, though it would be surprising if the Michael Hill Violin Competition had not thrown one of them up at some stage. The concertos of instrumental virtuosos tend to be denigrated or ignored, though Paganini’s, Vieuxtemps’s and Wieniawksi’s remain in the repertory. However, this one is well-wrought, melodic, interesting; but it would hardly have survived an amateur performance without a pretty competent soloist.

Violinist Laura Barton is a student at the New Zealand School of Music.  After getting through the formal and not uninteresting orchestral introduction, with a certain tentativeness, Barton’s first phrases sounded as if she was feeling her way, but she very quickly hit her stride, playing without the score in front of her, though there remained, very understandably, a degree of tenseness. But if the audience still had to be convinced of her credentials, the first movement cadenza demonstrated an accomplishment that banished any doubts.

The gentle second movement, Romance, demonstrated an unsentimental lyricism and true musicality in the violinist. While Barton despatched the last movement, with its exciting gypsy rhythms, with an aplomb that not only confirmed a fine violinist in the making, but an orchestra that did not disgrace the performance.

The last work was even more of a challenge, written about the same time as the concerto, a product of Tchaikovsky’s early years, it is a colourful and vivid symphonic poem after the manner of Liszt, depicting three episodes of Shakespeare’s play.  No one could have expected a particularly polished performance from the orchestra, yet the energy and zest that young maestro Atkins drew from it, the poignant, lyrical music of the love scene, produced a performance that was quite engaging. There was a palpable feeling that the entire orchestra was giving more than they might have believed possible, and they as well as the audience were being rewarded accordingly.

 

Programme ‘by popular request’ calls for wide-ranging period and stylistic variety from The Tudor Consort

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The Tudor Consort conducted by Michael Stewart

By Popular Request

Frank Martin: Mass for Double Choir – Kyrie
De Lassus: ‘Matona mia cara’
Josquin des Prez: Missa ‘L’homme armée’ – Gloria
John Dunstaple: ‘Veni sancte spiritus’
Stanford: The Bluebird
Pärt: Summa (Credo)
Allegri: ‘Miserere mei’
Vaughan Williams: Mass in G minor – Sanctus/Osanna I/Benedictus/Osanna II
Byrd: ‘Ave verum corpus’ and Agnus Dei from Mass for Four Voices

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Hill Street

Saturday 30 May 2014

It seemed a good idea: invite their subscribers/audiences to suggest music to be sung at the next concert, which should ensure a good audience, comprising those who’d submitted ideas and lots of others, who would be curious about the result of the game.

But it was a cold night, though fine and clear, and maybe there was something unmissable on television, and since I’d arrived about 7.15pm I waited for the church to fill. It didn’t.

Swiss composer Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir is probably one of his best known works, yet he held it back for forty years, feeling that it was too private a communication with his deity to be exposed to the rude masses (my gloss). The ‘doubleness’ of the music refers to the number of parts, yet it was curious to have it sung by this pretty small choir (16).

The Kyrie opens with what is described as a ‘quasi-plainchant’, spare and ethereal but it soon expands to involve the whole choir, and the two pleas ‘Kyrie eleison’ and ‘Christe eleison’ are in stark contrast between calm beauty and serious agitation. The singers dramatized it with a feeling of driving conviction.

There could hardly have been a greater contrast with the next piece, of 450 years earlier. A delightfully bawdy little ditty, ‘Matona mia cara’, from the 16th century master of religious polyphony, Orlando de Lassus (you can take your choice of variations from Roland de Lassus, Orlande de Lassus, Orlando di Lasso, Orlandus Lassus, or Roland de Lattre). Though he was equally famous for his chansons.

This was a song sung by a German lancer who attempts to woo an Italian girl in very basic Italian muddled with Spanish and German, employing ill-understood, suggestive words that just might have succeeded with a fairly knowing and susceptible lady. Even the onomatopoeia had an erotic ring to it and the choir evidently enjoyed themselves. So did we.

The music moved another century back to a Mass by Josquin des Prez, one of two based on the widely popular L’homme armée, this one on the sixth tone, in other words the Aeolian Mode, equivalent to A minor. They chose the Gloria which is opened by a tenor followed by sopranos and altos, and the tune lent the setting a character that modern ears could more easily absorb than is often the case with Renaissance polyphony; this in spite of the sophistication of the counterpoint. Most striking perhaps was the lengthy Amen in canonic style. Even more striking however was the sheer skill and idiosyncratic familiarity of the choir, including the voices that were given solo episodes here and elsewhere.

Then came a motet by English composer John Dunstaple (most of us are probably more familiar with the spelling Dunstable) who lived half a century before Josquin: Veni sancte spiritus, ‘Come holy spirit’. (You’d expect both the adjective sancte and the noun Spiritus to have the same ending. Sancte is the vocative case, used to address people, Spiritus must also be in that case but with the ending ‘–us’ is presumably a fourth declension word where the vocative takes the same ending, as the nominative case.)

Here was the only intrusion by non-voice in the concert: bass Timothy Hurd (otherwise known as the City Carillonist) produced a tenor dulzian (or dulcian), the predecessor of the bassoon, though I suppose the several smaller members of the dulcian family might be closer to the shawm, the oboe’s ancestor. This lent the music a very distinct quality, in addition to the interest of the structure and rhythm of the short line of the Medieval Latin verses that recall parts of the Carmina Burana.

Then a leap five hundred years toward the present with a short and lovely part-song, The Bluebird, by Stanford, evocative and a little sentimental, where soprano Erin King sang the touching solo part. With Arvo Pärt’s Summa, his setting of the Credo, came the only piece from the late 20th century: faced with the words, I was struck for the first time by the way the music seems to move, or not move, in reflection of the words, denying the singers much opportunity for tonal or dynamic variety. The choir performed immaculately.

By this stage it had struck me that while following suggestions of music for this concert, choir director Stewart had arranged them following the order of the Ordinary of the Mass, interspersed with motets and songs that could be considered as representing the Proper of the Mass.

The second half began with Allegri’s Miserere, with John Beaglehole singing the tenor part from the pulpit while four other soloists from the choir sang from the gallery. But for the first time in the evening the performance revealed characteristics that suggested a lack of confidence, even a lack of rehearsal that appeared in their handling of ornaments and even occasionally with intonation. There was no other item in the programme where I felt the choir had not quite the measure of the style of the early Italian 17th century.

The following movements from Vaughan Williams’s Mass in G minor also called for a group of soloists whose performances were an impressive demonstration of the strength and polish of the choir’s individual voices.  The Vaughan Williams Sanctus and Benedictus were marked by the most scrupulous intonation, articulation of varied tone and tempo changes.

Byrd’s Ave verum corpus for nine voices brought the choir back to its home territory, in a truly beautiful performance and, following the order of the Catholic liturgy, the concert ended with the Agnus Dei from the Mass for Four Voices. It found them in complete sympathy with the idiom, comfortable: the lines flowing and weaving with the ease that comes from familiarity and confidence.

The concert deserved a much larger audience.

 

Orchestra Wellington confirms its stature in large scale late Romantic as well as Haydn, and honours Franz Paul Decker

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Marc Taddei dedicates Bruckner’s 7th symphony with Orchestra Wellington to Franz-Paul Decker

Orchestra Wellington conducted by Marc Taddei with Deborah Humble (mezzo soprano)

Haydn: Symphony No 84 in E flat ‘In nomine Domini’
Wagner: The Wesendonck Lieder
Bruckner: Symphony No 7 in E major

Cathedral of Saint Paul, Wellington

Saturday 24 May, 7 pm

Orchestra Wellington’s concerts in the second half of last year, banished from the Town Hall, took place in the Opera House. I missed both of those. The move to the Anglican cathedral might have been partly in the nature of an experiment, now that Wellington seems to be faced with the depressing news that strengthening of the Town Hall seems to have become more expensive and the city council seems ready to sacrifice yet another feature of Wellington as a sophisticated, culturally rich city, which is about all we have left, apart from Government, after the flight of manufacturing and most corporate head offices.

Gone are both one of the best concert halls in the country, the gem of a recital hall, as well as the fine city organ, and the splendidly spacious west foyers of the previous “strengthening” in the early 1980s. (By the way, who’s to be held responsible for an inadequate job back then?).

Before the start of the concert conductor Marc Taddei spoke about a loss of another kind: the death in Montreal on Monday 21 May of Franz-Paul Decker at the age of 90.

Decker had a 40-year association as Guest Conductor, Principal Conductor and Chief Conductor of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Decker was perhaps the most gifted conductor to have had a long relationship with the orchestra.  He was said to have had a “love affair” with the NZSO since he first conducted it in 1966, when he was “very positively surprised [by its] highly professional musicians”. He said: “It is the longest relationship I have had with any orchestra in the world”.

Perhaps Decker’s last engagement was in Barcelona in November 2010 which concluded with Strauss’s ill-omened tone poem Death and Transfiguration.

Taddei said nothing could have been more appropriate to honour the memory of a conductor so devoted to and penetrating with his Bruckner performances than his seventh symphony.

The Haydn
The Cathedral was full, and the concert opened with one of Haydn’s ‘Paris’ symphonies, Nos 82-87, written through 1785-86 on a commission from a Paris orchestra, the Concert de la (Masonic) loge Olympique.  It was a very large orchestra, of amateurs and professionals.

The seats in the cathedral had been turned around so that the orchestra was at the west end and the audience’s back were to the sanctuary, perhaps in the hope that a less reverberant acoustic would exist. That may have been effective for the two symphonies, but it offered little to the orchestra or the singer in Wagner’s Wesendonck songs.

In fact the opening Largo of the first movement of Number 84 promised both a warm and full-blooded performance and an acoustic that treated the playing kindly enough. Its slow pace left plenty of room for the echo to fade without clutter. And even in the main Allegro part of the movement, a certain amount of overlapping of sounds did not bother me. In any case I am very partial to a large space that slightly rounds the edges of symphonic performance, up to a point.

What was more significant was the sheer size of the orchestra – around 75 – which displayed impressive polish and even opulence to the point of risking the censure of the more pedantic of the ‘historically informed’ performance devotees.

But the Paris commission gave Haydn the chance to compose for a considerably larger orchestra than he had at Esterhazy and it’s clear that he jumped at the chance to use larger forces. The slow movement, in a gentle triple (6/8) rhythm, seemed to be the heart of the music, as it so often is, and I found myself wallowing in the sounds of the fine brass, the lovely legato lines, the beguiling tunes, indeed, the elegance and charm of the orchestration as a whole.

The Minuet may have been typical for its time, but who else could have written with such elan and wit. Unlike many Minuets, the Trio middle section offered only minor change of rhythm and character; might the performance, with advantage, have given it more contrast?  Nor might the Vivace finale be revolutionary, but merely of far greater interest and delight than most of the music of the time, apart from his own and Mozart’s.

A propos, it’s interesting that the young Mozart, on his visit to Paris with his mother eight years earlier, also had success with his fine Paris Symphony; apart from that, his visit was disappointing, and his mother died in Paris.

Deborah Humble with Wagner
Deborah Humble had come from Australia to sing Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder. Here was where the contribution of the cathedral’s acoustic became a matter of some interest.  The very introductory notes seemed to be coming from varying and indistinct places, as if they were disconnected, without a coherent performance plan. No reflection on conductor or players at all, but simply the mischievousness of the space.

But that opening sounded different from my memory of other performances; the programme did not identify the source of the orchestration (Wagner himself only orchestrated the last song, ‘Traüme’), and the usual arrangement is by Wagner’s colleague Felix Mottl. There are also versions by Vieri Tosatti, and Hans Werner Henze. I had discounted the latter because it is described as ‘for chamber orchestra’, though with ‘unusual wind registration’.  I discovered later that what we heard and which may or may not have been helpful in the acoustic, was indeed by Henze: perhaps sparer orchestration seemed more likely to cope better with the space.

(To my chagrin, I found a performance of the Henze version sung by Mariana Lipovšek sitting on my sagging shelves).

The characteristics of the Henze orchestration were summarised for me by the orchestra’s General Manager, Adán Tijerina: ‘for low voice, and the special feature of the particular instrumentation is the use of deep instruments: alto flute, cor anglais, bass clarinet, contrabassoon’.

The voice enters quickly after the rather spare opening hints of mood, and it was obvious at once that Deborah Humble’s Wagner credentials were for real: a fine Wagner voice, large enough to cope with the orchestra surrounding her and that acoustic, though the latter did rather obscure the intelligibility of the words. (As an aside, last year I saw the last three parts of the Hamburg Ring cycle that she had sung in, but after her involvement had finished). Her most important recent engagement was in the Melbourne Ring last November/December, as Erda and Waltraute.

Those with Wagner embedded in their souls and memories were catching quotes from parts of the Ring, and especially Tristan which was emerging during the 1850s when Wagner was in exile in Zurich. Without that connection the songs are of course just as beautiful and fully expressive of the sense and emotion of the words and can even be heard as presaging the approaching expressionism of the end of the century. These were the characteristics of Humble’s performance, beautifully phrased, warm and rounded in the lower register, lustrous and spiritual as her lines went high into the soprano range, investing the songs with a dramatic quality that could be heard as the product of a totally theatrical performer.

Bruckner’s Seventh
I like to think many of us had come particularly for the rare chance to hear a big Bruckner symphony; the seventh is probably the best known and most popular, but its hour and ten minutes length no doubt deters many orchestral managements, though hardly the musicians and conductors (and besotted audience members).

What a thrill it was to be overwhelmed by the glorious opening melody, from an orchestra that might long have languished a bit in the shadow of its big sister in Wellington. Still with somewhat smaller forces than the NZSO might muster, there was simply no area that sounded in the least undernourished. The impact of the opulent strings, the lustrous woodwinds and finally the marvellous, gleaming brass given the final touch of grandeur by the presence of four Wagner tubas (strictly, they should be called ‘Wagner horns’), which Wagner had had made for the Ring cycle, to fill the sonic gap he felt existed between trombones and horns.

In fact, at least from my seat, about six rows from the front, the big space added the important element of a quasi-religious atmosphere that enhanced and enriched the sound, suggesting both a much bigger orchestra, not to mention a performance of huge authority (Taddei conducted without the score before him, always a mark of someone who has become utterly committed to the music).

It’s one of the works, like Wagner’s operas, which one rarely feels is too long; rather, there was a sense of bereavement at its eventual end, so strongly had conductor and orchestra sustained momentum, suspense, an awe that was spell-binding, wanting just another return to this or that episode. The effect was magnified by a unhurried pace of each movement lending the music even greater profundity.

This was a superb, imaginative programme, of music that was not-all-that-familiar but all of which exercises a strong pull for quite large numbers of the more musically knowledgeable and curious; not to mention the one uncontested masterpiece.

Though this orchestra, particularly at the hands of Marc Taddei, has given us a lot of very great performances in recent years, this concert, all of it, sounded to me like the most compelling, ultimate coming-of-age for Orchestra Wellington.