The year’s centenary profoundly marked with a Requiem for the Fallen: O’Sullivan and Harris

(New Zealand Festival)

Purcell: ‘Hear my Prayer’
Messiaen: ‘O sacrum convivium’
Beethoven: Molto adagio from String Quartet in A minor, Op 132
Schnittke: Three spiritual songs
Ross Harris with words by Vincent O’Sullivan: Requiem for the Fallen

Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir, the New Zealand String Quartet, taonga puoro played by Horomona Horo, Richard Greager (tenor)
Conductor: Karen Grylls

Cathedral of St Paul, Wellington

Friday 28 February, 8 pm

One of the major events in any genre in this year’s festival, this concert, involving choir, string quartet and other soloists, deserved the full house that it attracted, as well as the immediate, standing ovation at the end.

The key element of course was the cantata (shall we call it, instead of a liturgical work?) that occupied the last part of the concert. The work of Vincent O’Sullivan and Ross Harris, it was written with this year’s momentous centenary very much in mind: the outbreak of the First World War in August of 1914. There is little new in the view that that war – all war – is evil and futile; made even more tragic by subsequent revelations that the Great War, in particular, happened through inexcusable
confusion, vacuous notions of ‘honour’, imperial ambition, and a failure of nerve and rejection of common sense. I have just read the latest of the hundreds of books on the origins of World War I, The Sleepwalkers, by Christopher Clark. No shred of statesmanship is evident in any quarter.

Poet and composer shared the same view, and there was nothing of conventional jingoism or patriotism in the words or the music. Naturally that eliminated the possibility of ‘pomp and circumstance’ music expressing glory, hope, righteousness or victoriousness. Into parts of the Requiem Mass, in Latin, O’Sullivan has interwoven comment, personal narrative and observations that leave little room for the usual religious blandishments.  He captured the essence of one of the most profound experiences in the history of this country.

Inevitably some of the language is familiar from the multitude of poems and stories that flowed from the 1914-18 war and from all wars every since.

In the Libera nos, the meaning shifts to pleading for freedom from ‘the hate we return for hate’, and to save us to return ‘from the hurl of grenades and impending wrath’.
The central and most arresting and horrific section is the Dies Irae in which the words of the mass lend themselves to describing the terrible wars of men and not merely the punishments of the Day of Judgement. Here, quite terrifying drums and trumpets as well as contributions from taonga puoro delivered a fearful message.
There are some strikingly vivid words: ‘Ah, the silence / lies gorged on fear’, ‘hear the random sweep of fire, / hear the leaden gasps choked choir’.

Later, in Memento mori, tenor Richard Greager represented the ordinary soldier, back home, years later, haunted for ever by memories of the horrors he experienced: ‘And I met a cobber on the road / Coming down the remembered way, / Only I was here, as large as life, / and he was in Suvla Bay.’

It was a semi-staged performance, facilitated by placing the performance platform in the centre of the nave, so the audience was divided on either side, thus allowing twice as many to be close to the performance; a great advantage in a very resonant acoustic. It also meant good sight-lines. Steps on all four sides allowed the choir to come and go, to divide into varying groups, as well as for Richard Greager and Horomona Horo with koauau and putorino which, played with the quartet and singers, surprised me by being pitched in tune with western instruments. The string quartet occupied the middle of the platform.

Jonathan Alver (former general director of NBR New Zealand Opera), guided the dramatic elements, the movements, sensitively and coherently, and the lighting, under Paul O’Brien, was both useful and atmospheric.

The words, as well as being in the programme book, were projected, along with graphic photos of the scenes of troops and trenches on to screens on either side of the platform.

The total impact was moving and unsentimental, and the music illuminated the words without artificiality or technical display, employing the unusual vocal and instrumental
resources with imagination and resourcefulness.

There had been no interval between the first half hour of the programme and the Requiem. The first half had included a surprisingly varied range of elegiac music, similarly free of affectation; Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir under Karen Grylls sang Purcell’s ‘Hear my prayer’, Messiaen’s ‘O sacrum convivium’ and Schnittke’s Three Spiritual Songs.  It was remarkable to find such common spiritual ground between the widely different environments of Purcell and Messiaen, and again in the charming simplicity of the Schnittke songs, sung in Russian; ensemble singing was exquisite, and while individual voices were certainly distinguishable, the choir’s involvement was absolute, creating an arresting impression through scrupulous attention to phrasing, note values, attack, dynamics.

In between, perhaps the most famous movement from Beethoven’s late quartets – the Molto adagio from the Op 132 – was played with a keen sense of its poised, profound emotion, though varying between deep seriousness and joy, casting a spell over the audience.

I dare say that this concert will stand as one of the most memorable highlights of this festival.

 

Baroque guitarist Hopkinson Smith reveals a little known era of Spanish music in exquisite recital

Hopkinson Smith playing a five-course baroque Spanish guitar

Music by Gaspar Sanz, Francisco Guerau, Antonio de Santa Cruz

Wesley Church, Taranaki Street, Wellington

Monday 24 February, 6:30 pm

This was Hopkinson Smith’s second performance in Wellington; the previous day he had played at Pataka, the museum and cultural centre in Porirua. I gather there was a full house, and a highly appreciative one.

His rather memorable name has been around for many decades: I confess to thinking he was English (he was born in New York, was educated at Harvard, and long resident in Switzerland) and so there were several surprises and even more delights to be found at this recital by a refined, quietly witty, unpretentious American who seems to command every kind of plucked string instrument (apart from the harp): his extraordinary discography on the Internet is worth a look.

Though he opened the recital without making any comments  about the music or the instrument he was playing,  he did speak at the end of the first bracket of three pieces by Gaspar Sanz  (1640-1710, from Aragon), thus a contemporary of such composers as Lully, Buxtehude, Stradella, Charpentier and Biber.  In terms of Spanish history, the 17th century had seen the decline of its military and political greatness, having squandered the superficial wealth that gold from the Americas had brought them.  But great empires in decline often continue to produce art of lasting quality.

These ‘Three Spanish themes’ which came from a collection published in Zaragossa in 1674, Instrucción de música sobre la guitarra española, suggested a refinement of taste, somehow in contradiction to the grandeur and pomposity still exhibited by the Spanish court and the nobility. There was little chordal writing or employment of rich harmonies; rather, a hesitant quality in the Pavanas with variations, colouring by lots of runs, subtle decoration and rhythm changes. Folias displayed a sort of flamenco character, with strumming across the finger-board.

Before playing the next group, entitled ‘Europe in Miniature’, Smith spoke about his guitar, a replica of a 17th century Spanish guitar with five courses (that is, pairs of strings tuned to the same pitch or at the octave); he noted that his instrument was tuned according to Sanz’s directions, with the two lowest courses tuned an octave higher so that no bass notes could be produced. The result is ethereal, transparent and, in the artist’s own words, the instrument was ‘liberated from the bass, thus the tonality has a unique poetic aura which in its best moments creates a magic of its own’.

It is perhaps more attuned to a venue rather smaller than the church; the space somewhat reduced the feeling of the refined character of this small instrument as well as making Smith’s words hard to hear. But a smaller venue would have meant turning many away.  While the guitar might have been minimally amplified, his voice was not.

There were six pieces in the bracket ‘Europe in miniature’. The first impression was of a certain lack of variety, particularly of key, though they may have been closely related keys; until the final piece, Tarantela which shifted dramatically with much more vigorous strumming, occasional hitting the body of the guitar, creating a very lively musical fabric. The earlier pieces were drawn from various parts of Spain and Europe in general, though always infused with a character that seemed essentially Spanish; varied in rhythm, duple to triple back and forth, lively dotted rhythms that were sometimes difficult to distinguish from quaver triplets. The delicacy and refined taste of the music steadily made itself familiar to me as the concert proceeded.

The two pieces by Francisco Guerau (1649 – 1717/1722, from Majorca) came from a famous publication of 20 years later (Poema harmonico, 1694). The Passacalles del primer tono, one of some 30 passacalles in the volume, proved a longish work, perhaps the most substantial and characteristic in the programme . There was a subtlety of invention and expression, a variety of rhythms and tempi, of unobtrusive counterpoint where, in its central part, its melodic evolution became increasingly intriguing and difficult to follow and appreciate. Towards the end, a meandering, fluid character emerged, in a more marked triple time, that was neither a minuet, a sarabande nor any kind of German Ländler.  Smith’s own notes described Guerau’s music as ‘some of the most sophisticated  writing for the guitar from the entire baroque era’.  Further exploration will be rewarding.

His Canarios (from the Canary Islands), less elaborate but more sparkling and delightful, involved a lot of strumming  that suggested the flamenco style of Andalusia.
The first half ended with a Jácaras, a lively dance by Antonio de Santa Cruz who seems to be a more obscure figure, comparable with Guerau in style, and dated around 1700.

The second half was devoted to five pieces by Sanz: a flowing Preludio based around scales and arpeggios. Then a Marizápalos which emerged as the source of the slow movement from Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, a lovely set of variations.  A jig followed, and then another Passacalles, this time ‘del segundo tono’: bold strumming  and more dense clusters of chords, creating a more ‘modern’ impression than many of the other pieces.

Finally Sanz’s Canarios which proved to be the source of the last movement of Rodrigo’s Fantasia para un gentilhombre; as expected, it was delightfully lively and attractive.

The entire recital, exquisitely and brilliantly executed by Hopkinson Smith,  opened a window for me to a period of music that I was fairly unfamilar with. From a period that is contemporary with the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution in England, of Purcell and Blow, Jeremiah Clarke and Eccles; or Louis XIV’s France of Lully, Charpentier, Campra and Couperin, it evokes a society of perhaps greater refinement and sophistication, though it is pertinent to recall that this was also the era in Spain of the emergence of the baroque Zarzuela, the early form of comic opera that re-emerged strongly in the 19th century.

 

Beethoven blazes to the front of the NZSO’s ‘Five by Five’ symphony series

New Zealand International Festival

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hamish McKeich

Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture and Symphony No 5 in C minor, Op 67

Michael Fowler Centre

Monday 24 February, 12:30 pm

Day One of the five concerts devoted to the great fifth symphonies by five great composers opened with a performance that promised a splendidly successful enterprise across the span of the Festival.

It was hard to guess the kind of audience that might buy tickets for a concert at a different time and in a different format from usual. However, the auditorium was reasonably well filled with an audience that seemed younger and more varied than those at the normal subscription concerts.

I had rather expected, at a concert that no doubt anticipated a lot of listeners who were giving classical music a try, some introductory comments from conductor Hamish McKeich. It was probably good simply to let this mighty music speak for itself: even though there was no printed programme or even a list of songs, they launched straight into Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture. The overture was for a play written by a young contemporary of Goethe and Schiller: Heinrich Joseph von Collin. The subject is the same as Shakespeare’s – about a misguided, 5th century BCE Roman general ‘who lets pride and a perverted sense of honour destroy him’ (Folger Library Shakespeare series). Collin is unlikely to have known the Shakespeare play (which has never been particularly popular on the English language stage) for very few of the famous Shakespeare translations by A W Schlegel had appeared by 1804 when Collin’s play was written. I can find no evidence that Schlegel or his successors translated Coriolanus.

The opening chords are dark and compelling, suggesting Coriolanus’s power and blind determination, followed by a gentler lyrical phase that is thought to reflect his mother’s attempt to calm his bellicosity. The impact by the orchestra was of stunning force, all sections magnificently integrated in the expression of purpose, in the resonant and lively acoustic (depending where you sit – I was centre stalls about row S, this place is no less responsive than the Town Hall).

The symphony was no less majestic and powerful; right from that famous call to attention, so much detail and refinement of expression entered into the biting pulses of the first movement as well as a relentless pursuit of a challenging journey the goal of which was always clearly in view. There was space, scrupulous care with note values, suspenseful dynamics and subtle tempo changes that expressed the blazing determination that propels the music.

The orchestra handled the beautiful second movement with a sort of restrained force and no less passion, again making the perfectly familiar music sound freshly enchanting and surprising. Here it was possible to relish individual playing, always by the cellos, and strings as a whole, several times from the bassoon, while meltingly beautiful colours were spread by the horns.

The magical, secretive transition to the Scherzo always takes me by surprise and this time, as in the thrilling tempo changes through the Finale, the hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck experience was real.

We are so flooded by music of all kinds today that it is forgivable to wonder whether another hearing of a great but well-known work will yet again have the same impact as it did, first heard many decades ago.  In this case, from the first moment, under the spell of conductor McKeich, I felt that I was present at a very great performance indeed; I have rarely felt such a sense of euphoria throughout the performance and emphatically, when the last insistent chords died away. Far more than ritual applause broke out at the end.

 

Lively opera debut from an ambitious new Hawke’s Bay company

The Marriage of Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro) by Mozart, sung in Italian with English surtitles
Presented by Festival Opera

Creative Director: Anna Pierard
Conductor and stage director: Jose Aparicio; production designer: Richard Wood; set designer: John Briggs; lighting: Dan Browne; costume designer: William Waitoa
Cast: Count: Changhan Lim, Countess: Jennifer Davison; Figaro: Garry Griffiths, Susanna: Carleen Ebbs; Cherubino: Sabine Garrone; Caroline Hickman, Joel Amosa, Thomas Barker, Laura Jeffares, Howard McGuire

Napier Municipal Theatre

Tuesday 18 February, 7pm (and 20 and 22 February)

Through the 1990s I went to most of the operas staged by Hawkes Bay Opera in the Hastings (later renamed Hawkes Bay) Opera House. The company rather declined from the early 2000s, but there has been some recovery since the return to Napier of Anna Pierard and her husband Jose Aparicio, who have been involved, Jose as artistic director and both Anna and Madeleine as principals with recent productions presented by the company.

But this is a new and distinct enterprise, employing four principals from overseas, the rest New Zealanders, most from Hawkes Bay. Unusually, Aparicio took on the responsibilities of both musical director and stage director. And there I may as well begin, saying that in both spheres he imposed a professionalism, energy and polish that is unusual in a new company that is perhaps, not 100 percent professional in its employment of singers and instrumentalists. He refrained from doing the sort of violence to the staging that is common in Europe and also makes its appearance in this country. His production, along with the occasionally mishap-plagued surtitles, managed to present the story with clarity and wit.

Because the production was designed to adorn musically Napier’s Art Deco festival, the era was changed from the 18th century to the 1920s. Sets (designer Richard Wood) and costumes (William Waitoa) were carefully designed and achieved that, without excess, without drawing attention to any kind of pretentious symbolism, simply rather beautifully. The era translation was highly successful.

The brilliant little overture was accompanied by a projected mimed sketch of the essentials of the opera’s predecessor, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville – the first of Beaumarchais’s great comic trilogy that satirized class structure in pre-French Revolutionary Europe. ‘Meaningful’ but irritating activities often accompany the overture in opera these days, but this was appropriate and funny.

And the orchestra, which impressed with its speed and precision in the overture, repeatedly caught the ear through the performance, for its finesse and an accuracy that was well beyond what might be expected from an essentially amateur ensemble, that receives no help from Creative New Zealand.

So the first act opens in the room the Count has offered to Figaro and Susanna for their planned wedding; there’s a central stair that divides right and left and provides a useful device for various later activities such as the encounter between Susanna and Marcellina, which both Carleen Ebbs and Caroline Hickman carried off in convincingly catty fashion.

The stair is swiftly replaced in Act II by a wall in the Countess’s chamber, with the windows through which Cherubino escapes;  later the windows are replaced in the Count’s reception hall by a huge full-length portrait of himself in splendid toreador’s garb, which he sits in front of to adjudicate the promise of marriage suite between Figaro and Marcellina. Every design touch seems right, effective and comic.

The comic highlights were quite wonderfully performed, the dance of the chairs between Cherubino, the Count, Susanna, Basilio and finally Figaro; the growing confusion in the face of the Count’s attempts to flush out whoever it is in the Countess’s wardrobe; and the scene’s end with Cherubino’s jump from window, gardener Antonio’s entrance, the Count’s bafflement, the final thwarting of the Count’s attempts to stymie Figaro’s wedding as Figaro is discovered as the illegitimate child of Marcellina and Bartolo. Each scene is splendidly paced and the confusions made as clear as I’ve ever seen them for the audience, even in the extraordinary Act IV.

Chief honours went to Carleen Ebbs’s Susanna, with a voice and histrionic talent that seemed designed for the role, though by the fourth act tiredness taxed her vocal agility. Hers was the kind of performance that automatically brought a smile to the face.

About equal was the portrayal of the quietly polished, cynical but finally outwitted Count from Korean baritone Changhan Lim; he refrained from undue arrogance: the words and the music do that well enough. In his scene in Act III, his ‘Hai gia vinta la causa’, was a splendid, display of anger and frustration.

The role of Cherubino tends to be rather central, as one of the most famous comic cross-dressing tours-de-force; Sabine Garrone didn’t seem a natural in the role, apart from convincing female to male walk and gesture and her generally youthful appearance. Her voice suffered intonation lapses as well as not being quite the right fit for the role; I wondered whether there should have been an announcement about a vocal ailment.

The Countess has two famous arias that are considered of central importance. In her first appearance in Act II, United States soprano Jennifer Davis sang ‘Porgi amor’ beautifully, if with such retiring quietude that the audience was not driven to applaud. Her characterization however had a dignity and restraint that may not have been diva-driven, but was simply very true to the nature of the role.

Gary Griffiths is a big man, perhaps not a classic Figaro in appearance, with the hard-to-achieve mix of obsequiousness and cleverness; nevertheless, with a fine baritone voice he was as good a bumbling object of Susanna’s irritation in the first scene as later, the sharp-witted schemer devising ways to thwart the Count.

The role of Marcellina is usually portrayed as large and matronly and of a certain age. Caroline Hickman was none of the above (she is eventually revealed at Figaro’s mother and thus has to be round 50) and her part did seem miscast, but only for a moment, since, slight, young and pretty, with a bright voice, she carried it off with such conviction that I had to conclude that Mozart and Da Ponte must have made a mistake.

Though Joel Amoso had a lapse in Act I, he proved well cast as Bartolo, his demeanour and voice fitting the role very well.  Tenor Thomas Barker as the slippery music teacher Basilio enjoyed his comic opportunities, relishing the chance to create embarrassment and confusion, and he carried them off well. The young Barbarina, a classic soubrette role, is a small part which often in the hands of a singer well down the list misses some of its comic potential. Laura Jeffares looked the part and sang brightly, no slow-witted servant-class, but well equipped to participate in the dissembling and role playing in the last, hilarious act. Antonio, the tipsy gardener, was a well-cast Howard McGuire, futilely throwing spanners in the works.

This is a most promising venture and it has made a startlingly fine start, with a brilliant production of one of the greatest operas in the repertoire. The company’s intention is to seek opportunities to mount opera in festivals around New Zealand. There are increasing numbers of festivals and most of them would benefit hugely from the injection of wonderful music.

I might as well conclude by remarking that twenty years ago, when I was reviewing for The Evening Post, I was able to review performances such as this in the paper. This was certainly a musical event that deserved attention from both The Dominion Post (if it was remotely interested in acting as the Capital’s only newspaper) and The New Zealand Herald.

 

The two organs on display: St Andrew’s on The Terrace first off in Wellington’s concert series

Jonathan Berkahn – the chamber organ and the main organ

Music by Byrd, Samuel Wesley, Mendelssohn, Edward d’Evry and William Wolstenholme

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 12 February, 12:15 pm

The long-standing (since the 1970s) Wednesday lunchtime concert series from St Andrew’s on The Terrace is back in town: this was the first for 2014. And the rest of the year’s series is mapped out, though not in detail.

Jonathan Berkahn has become a well-known keyboard player in Wellington since studying at Victoria University; following in the footsteps of his teacher Douglas Mews, he plays the organ as well as harpsichord and fortepiano, and he has recently become a choral conductor (The Festival Singers). Here, he gave the church’s two organs an all-too-rare work-out. (I wish these concerts employed the organs more regularly; it seems an awful shame that concerts in churches so rarely put on public display the instrument that has been specifically built for and installed in them).

The programme was a bit unusual, almost wholly devoted to English organ music: the one departure, Mendelssohn, whose organ sonatas were, in any case, written for England.

Berkahn played the first two pieces on the chamber organ, on the right of the sanctuary: a Fantasy by William Byrd, from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, and from the late 18th century composer Samuel Wesley, a Voluntary in C (Op 6 no 2).

The Fantasia emerged as a set of variations that begin in plain, open registers, unadorned, and through four or five successive stages grow in complexity, rhythmic variety, syncopation, brightness, using increasingly rich stops with more reed characteristics; they also accelerated subtly till at the end we got a 1600 equivalent of the Rossini crescendo of round 1820. An enjoyable, thoroughly persuasive performance.

Berkahn’s university thesis was devoted to the music of Samuel Wesley. To clarify: born in 1766 (four years Beethoven’s senior), he was the son of the hymn writer Charles Wesley who was the brother of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism in the early 18th century. Samuel’s son, Samuel Sebastian Wesley (born in 1810, same year as Schumann and Chopin), was also a musician, a noted organist and composer.

Jonathan entertained the audience with a quote from his thesis in which he vividly described Wesley’s eccentric, irresponsible, even criminal nature, and his rejection of Protestantism for Roman Catholicism, to family dismay, as well as his great musical gift.

This Voluntary, in four parts, displayed a post-Handelian quality, but could also have been influenced by Arne and Boyce, as well as by his contribution to the revival of J S Bach. The limited range of the small chamber organ sounded exactly in keeping with the style and Berkahn played with authority, using the organ most skilfully to achieve both clarity and due weight.

The exploration of a composer like Wesley is just another element in discrediting the tedious assertion that Britain produced no major composer between Purcell and Britten (perhaps Elgar).

After speaking briefly about the Mendelssohn sonata, remarking that his organ sonatas were written in response to the suggestion that he write some voluntaries (Berkahn said that he wrote sonatas instead because he didn’t know what a Voluntary was), he walked upstairs to the main organ in the gallery over the west door.

There had been commentaries on earlier pieces from without by pneumatic drills which contributed sporadically to the sounds within, but at the moment when Berkahn raised his hands to the keyboard, the noise stopped. The sonata began with a few loud chords but immediately subsided in the minor key to the hushed introduction to the first movement. The commanding contrast to the modesty of the chamber organ was impressive, and I found myself, a not unwavering advocate of Mendelssohn, becoming quite engrossed in the sophisticated procedures that he pursued, and at Berkahn’s command of the very attractive instrument. It’s not a long piece and that worked in its favour, allowing just enough time to absorb the ideas in the course of their fairly economical development.

Next was a Nocturnette (a new form to me) by one Edward d’Evry (also a new one to me – 1869-1931). Moonlight was the suggested characteristic and though it was hardly a match for Beethoven or Debussy for evocativeness, its brevity was a compensation for its inconsequentiality. But very charmingly played.

Finally, another name that rang only faint bells: William Wolstenholme (1865-1931). There is an imposing list of gifted, blind organists, and he makes probably only a modest contribution to their number. His Finale in B flat was chosen as an arresting close to the recital, but it was more bombast than rapture and I could not escape the feeling that his heart was not in it and that he wished he’d been asked to write an adagio elegiaco or a lacrimosa instead. A French contribution here (say Lefébure-Wély) might have sent us out of church with spirits higher uplifted.

However, in total, this was an admirable recital, a welcome reminder of the riches of the organ repertoire and the many underused instruments (apart from church services) in the city; the high points had really been the Byrd and Wesley on the chamber organ.

 

 

Scintillating Te Papa concert by National Youth Orchestra

The NZSO National Youth Orchestra conducted by Benjamin Northey

Lilburn: Aotearoa Overture; Matthew Hindson: Homage to Metallica; Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade, Op 35 (with Vesa-Matti Leppänen – violin)

Te Papa, second level concourse

Thursday 6 February, 11am

Ben Northey’s name should have been familiar to me as his website (www.benjaminnorthey.com) refers to up-coming concerts that include the NZSO in November: entitled In the Hall of the Mountain King, where he will conduct Mozart’s Paris Symphony; the Variations on a Rococo Theme by Tchaikovsky (with cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan) and two works by Grieg.

He has just conducted the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra and the next six months see him conducting the Melbourne, West Australian and Tasmanian symphony orchestras, both Opera Australia and Victorian Opera and the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra.

His presence in front of the National Youth Orchestra at this Waitangi Day concert, and the manner of his introductory remarks revealed a gift for communication; but his musical talents appeared at once, perhaps most tellingly with the first piece, Lilburn’s Aotearoa Overture, which offered persuasive evidence of a talent for scrupulous dynamic shading and a clear grasp of overall shape.

There was a fine hush over the opening bars played by elegantly rich strings and a delicacy and clarity in the following dance-like theme, lit by fine wind playing. Though by the end, I missed a feeling of Lilburn’s understated climax which exists in the score.

The next piece was something of a celebration of a fellow Australian musician, Matthew Hindson, as well as a calculated effort to get on side with young players who might not entirely have outgrown a passion for rock music. His Homage to Metallica (‘homage’ is an English word, pronounced with first syllable stressed, not ‘hommage’, the French, where syllables are pretty evenly stressed and the ‘h’ not sounded at all) does not refer directly to the old rock group or to its music, but its aim seems to be to take their sounds and shapes further, along lines that might be more familiar to classical music audiences; or not.

A glance at Hindson’s website reveals a radical turn of mind, and though he presents an amiable demeanour and speaks of the need for new music that will keep audiences engaged, his musical ideas seem framed by essentially non-traditional objects and notions, with eccentric titles (e.g. Rave-Elation, Boom Box, Headbanger, A Symphony of Modern Objects) that seem to speak of the iconoclast and rebel.
I was amused to contemplate the performance’s juxtaposition with the large sign marking the ‘Awesome Forces’ display of powerful and dramatic geological phenomena alongside us, from which the chattering sounds of highly engaged children (often recently with my own grand-children) were in constant accompaniment. Hindson would have smiled.

This piece is 20 years old and I am in no position to comment on its likely appeal to today’s rockers (if that’s still a current word). It demanded a large orchestra, with triple winds and a pretty fancy range of percussion including anvil, tam-tam, roto-toms, wood blocks as well as all the more common items, apart from the tuned instruments. It moved through several sections, some of it very loud and abrasive, employing sophisticated resources such as the rare Locrian mode and the juxtaposition of semitones and the once forbidden ‘tritone’ interval (in fact, an augmented fourth).

It opened with long-drawn-out percussion dominated call to arms but that was quickly replaced by a rather unexpected melodic passage on beautifully played solo viola. A gentle later phase gave voice to piccolos, snare drum and wood block. At two stages a distinct sound was introduced with NZSO concert master Vesa-Matti Lappänen playing an amplified eighth-size violin, surprisingly tiny. Much of its contribution was in heavily bowed ‘thrash’ style double-stopping that produced the sort of ugliness that was the product of the formerly popular distorted guitar articulation.

Though I doubt that a heavy metaller would have found the rhythms congenial or particularly danceable, a rhythmic presence was always there, felt more through the impact of rhythmic instruments than through rhythms themselves. A final phase brought the tiny violin back with spectacular virtuosity, Vesa-Matti’s fingers seeming sorely cramped to obtain semi-tone intervals on the minuscule finger-board.

While there were many young people in the audience, there were more of an older generation and the applause was generous but not ecstatic – it was largely, I felt, for the skills and energy of conductor and players.

Finally, the major work was Rimsky-Korsakov’s dazzling orchestral extravaganza, Scheherazade. Nothing could have been more appropriate for a young orchestra, offering scope for fine solo displays by almost every section, including an important harp part. The prominent, sinuous violin part depicting Scheherazade was played by Annabel Drummond, who carried the torch with considerable seductive flair.

The whole performance was a testament to the unfailing ability of highly talented young musicians, led by a vivid and lively conductor, to achieve standards of individual brilliance and the most disciplined, cohesive ensemble that surpass their dreams.

The National Youth Orchestra has in the past introduced New Zealand to some very interesting conductors with proven gifts in inspiring young musicians, some established, Benjamin Zander and Paul Daniel for example, some fast-rising like Yannick Nézet-Séguin. From this concert, it would seem very clear that in Benjamin Northey the orchestra has found a worthy successor to the best of them.

 

Energy and commitment with Bach Choir’s Christmas Oratorio

Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Cantatas (or Parts) Nos 1,2, 4, 6

The Bach Choir, the Chiesa Ensemble and Douglas Mews (organ) conducted by Peter Walls with soloists: Nicola Holt, Megan Hurnard, Oliver Sewell and Kieran Rayner

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart

Sunday 15 December, 3:30pm

Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, in six parts, might be one of a kind, though I have come across a reference to a tradition of five-part oratorios in Lübeck in the same period.  It is classified in the Bach catalogue as one of three ‘oratorios’: the others are one-part works for Ascension and Easter; both the Ascension and Christmas oratorios seem closer to the passions in their use of recitative from the Evangelist.

The Christmas Oratorio consists of one cantata for each of the six days of Christmas: 25, 26 and 27 December, 1 January (the Feast of the Circumcision), the Sunday after New Year and the Epiphany (6 January).

Bach adapted them, in part, from three secular cantatas, BWV 213, 214, 215 (written for the Dresden court in 1733), for performance over 1734/35 in the two principal Leipzig churches, Saint Thomas and Saint Nikolai. According to the title page of the printed libretto they were all performed in the morning at Saint Nikolai but the 3rd and 5th cantatas were omitted at Saint Thomas in the afternoon. Whether or not meaningfully, the same two were omitted from this performance in the Catholic cathedral.

The choir is in fine shape, the four soloists fresh-voiced and accurate, and their accompaniment by Douglas Mews and the specifically created Chiesa Ensemble (mainly NZSO players), all under the direction of Peter Walls, brought about a very satisfying performance, given the limited rehearsal time for singers and players together.

It opened with a brilliant chorus buoyed by jubilant timpani and brass, at a steady, imposing tempo. Here, as in all but the second part, Bach’s vivid orchestration, depicting this turning-point for the world’s salvation, was fully demonstrated, while the choral part was delivered with a gusto that assured us that we were launched into a confident and energetic performance.

The busiest of the soloists, tenor Oliver Sewell, in the role of the Evangelist, began with the account of Christ’s birth according to Luke, intoning with clear diction in appropriately declamatory style; followed by alto Megan Hurnard, in the role of Mary, with her recitative and aria that contrasted with the opening spirit through its more intimate expression.

Sewell took other roles in addition to the Evangelist; though his voice is true and attractive, I noticed an increasing tendency, as the performance continued, to slur words in a rather un-Germanic manner.

The first and second Chorales of Part I presented a more subdued character as oboes were replaced by either cor anglais or oboe d’amore; the second chorale opened with bass Kieran Rayner in delightful contrast with the women’s voices, and continuing interestingly in its alternating verses. So it was good finally to hear Rayner with his solo aria, ‘Grosser Herr, o starker König’ projecting with clarity and confidence. All his later excursions were admirable.

Part II begins with a pastoral sinfonia, in an altogether more peaceable vein. As appropriate to the cantata that deals with the Annunciation of the Shepherds, the oboists again picked up cor anglais and oboe d’amore (Bach scored it for two oboe d’amore and two oboe da caccia – the predecessor of the cor anglais).

Other instrumental colours emerged. The tenor aria in Part II, ‘Frohe Hirt, eilt’, with conspicuous organ continuo, was accompanied by brilliant flute obbligato that became increasingly sparkling in its ornamentation; though Sewell seemed here to have too many words to fit comfortably into its speed and complexity.

Also in Part II is one of the most striking and beautiful arias, ‘Schlafe, mein Liebster’, a short verse but luxuriantly enveloped in rich reed sounds, elaborated with breathtaking skill and imagination and sung beautifully by Megan Hurnard; sustaining some of her more expressive words with singular beauty.

A hint that more rehearsal might have been useful came, for example, in the chorus ‘Ehre sei Gott’ towards the end of Part II, as it was joyously sung if slightly muddied.

Apart from a recitative ‘Furchtet euch nicht’ in Part II, soprano Nicola Holt waited till Part IV for a substantial entry. She shone in ‘Flösst, mein Heiland’, a not unattractive tremulous touch in her voice, with prominent oboe obbligato: an obbligato that includes the repeated echoing of the rhetorical words ‘Nein’ and ‘Ya’, which has attracted the disapproval of certain scholars. Because this section was taken from the cantata BWV 213 where it was set to words considered suitable, it’s been called an incongruity and inappropriate in this situation, even ‘risible’ for one commentator.  Unorthodox perhaps, but words and music seem to me a droll but quite effective device by which to vary the narrative.

Only at the end of Part VI do all four soloists sing as a quartet: only the tenor sang from the pulpit which had been used throughout for solos, while the other three sang (though I couldn’t see) from the floor; they remained individuals rather than a seamless ensemble. And a return to the bellicose character of the opening choruses brought the work to a close with brass and timpani blazing away and choir in full flight, though tiring a little, perhaps, to acclaim Christ’s quasi-military victory over death.

 

The Ginger Series tackles classical music with a captivating, oblique apologia

How to Hear Classical Music by Davinia Caddy
No 11 in The Ginger Series
Published by Awa Press, Wellington

Book review

One has waited quite a while for this brilliant little series of monographs to find a writer able to deal with what the media likes to suggest is about the most intractable (and irrelevant) of artistic fields: classical music.

The many subjects covered so far have included such quirky topics as bird watching, watching video games, how to pick a winner, fishing, as well as more serious matters like listening to pop music, reading a book, watching rugby and cricket, looking at paintings.

So I was delighted when this book appeared, in large part because a few years ago Mary Varnham of Awa Press had invited me to try my hand at the subject. It attracted me greatly because I have developed quite strong views on the nature and importance of music, especially over the 25 years that I have been writing music reviews.

But although I had clear ideas as to the style and tone of a book that would match the excellence of those that were appearing in this series, what I wrote persisted in deviating from that path. The temptation to self-indulgence (as will be in evidence below), to draw too much on my own memories and experience of exploring and discovering music, not to mention becoming unduly polemical, proved too strong, and I also came to realize that the job of being entertaining, of employing lots of amusing and relevant anecdotes, and vivid examples that would hold the reader’s attention, called for time-consuming research that I never made space for.

A quick skim through Davinia Caddy’s achievement, however, showed me how it should be done.

What struck me first was her avoidance of any predictable organization of material either chronological or by topic. So the chapters deal with notions and conceptual things that are usually introduced by an anecdote, often drawn from the writer’s own experience as a student or as a teacher.

The uses of classical music
Nothing could have been as arresting as story No 1: the author, house-hunting in Auckland, comes across the full score of Massenet’s little-known opera, Esclamonde, sitting ostentatiously on a piano in an evidently pretentious house for sale. It leads obliquely to a consideration of one of the uses of classical music – ostentation.

It was the entrée to chapters that sought to discover whether there were more important reasons for its continued relevance, indeed for its indispensability to civilization and to the fulfilment of human desires and needs.

The next chapter was entitled ‘Play me, I’m yours’; it described a phenomenon that has yet to reach New Zealand: the placing of old pianos, tolerably playable, in public places. The writer’s first encounter was with one on the approach to the Millennium Bridge in London, where she watched people play it shyly, tentatively, confidently, virtuosically (the small George dashes through the fiendish last movement of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata).   There are scores of such pianos in public spaces round London and in many cities round the world; the inspiration of British artist Luke Jerram, it’s clearly a growth industry.

Davinia observes that the pianos, in unusual places, and the music that people play on them has a remarkable social impact, and quotes thinkers from Plato on who have recorded the powerful spiritual force of music. Classical music has a hold over listeners.

Later chapters too, deal with aspects of music’s uses, starting with early Christian and Renaissance music, but somewhat surprisingly Davinia explores Ockeghem’s Missa Prolationum somewhat analytically, discussing the use of canon and other technicalities. Ultimately she reveals her reason for employing such an example – ‘you can float away on the soaring phrases’, and it leads to recalling Baudelaire’s understanding of the character of Wagner’s music which acts in a similar way.

‘Concert halls, blow ‘em up’
The matter of where music is played reappears later, in a chapter, ‘Concert halls, blow ‘em up’. A follow-up of Boulez’s famous recommendation for opera houses, she hesitates at that but perhaps shares a tendency to denigrate the normal concert hall environment: dim light, silence, quasi-religious, seeming to ignore the fact that crowds still happily inhabit these places, enjoying the whole experience of dressing up a bit, talking to others before, during and after, interval drinks; just the whole thing. (I was not born into affluence or high society, yet I never remember, as a teen-ager, feeling in the least inhibited in going to concerts in the Town Hall). Pop concerts too take place in the same halls. However, she does advocate widening the range of places where classical music happens and enlivening music with the help of other art forms; she tells pertinent stories of The Rite of Spring performances in London and Auckland where young dancers and spontaneity brought different experiences to listeners.

‘Performance anxiety’ begins with the question about the place of performers between composer and listener, concluding that our era has elevated the performer’s role to stardom compared with the view a century ago that ‘a work’s meaning lay in its internal qualities and technical innovations rather than in its social function and expressive qualities’; thus its performance was a matter of little import. It’s this emphasis today on the importance of performance that has led to seeking for historically informed performance of earlier music, particularly the baroque and ‘classical’ periods and she writes engagingly about John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists. Under this heading too, is reference to the remarkable Los Reciclados, an orchestra, the Landfillharmonic, formed by deprived children living on a landfill in Paraguay who have created instruments from recycled rubbish. See interalia: www.thisiscolossal.com/…/landfill-harmonic-an-upcoming-documentary.

Classical music for beginners
A book like this needs to offer a bit of guidance to the sort of music the tyro might be attracted to, blown away by. The little diversions in that direction read a little like self-conscious parentheses: composers’ dates of birth, and dates of pieces of music, but it’s often the musical examples that look odd, for they are generally there just to illustrate an argument rather than as recommendations that will change your life.

As a result the names sometimes appear slightly arcane and rather much attention, interesting in itself, is devoted to music unlikely to win over novices to classical music. Thus the range of actual suggestions is limited, and there is little room to describe what they are like and what they might do for or to you. Though when she does offer descriptions they are colourful and evocative.

I often wonder at the neglect these days of much of the music that took me by the throat in my teens, and still has a hold. Leaving aside the major symphonies and concertos: a variety of arias and choruses from Bach and Handel, Bach’s concertos, Handel’s Water Music and Royal Fireworks, Wagner’s arrangement of the overture to Iphigenia in Aulis, overtures of Mozart, Beethoven, Boieldieu, Weber, Rossini, Auber, Hérold, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Wagner’s Rienzi and Tannhäuser, Offenbach, Brahms’s Academic Festival, Dvořák; Beethoven’s Archduke Trio;  Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola, the clarinet concerto and quintet; Schubert: many songs, Trout Quintet, Violin sonatina in D; quite a lot of Chopin’s, Liszt’s and Schumann’s piano music; Berlioz’s Hungarian March, Minuet of the Will-o’-the-wisps; and the Trojan March and ‘Royal Hunt and Storm’ from Les Troyens; Tchaikovsky: 1812, Romeo and Juliet, Capriccio Italien, Francesca da Rimini, the ballet suites; Franck’s Symphony in D minor; Sibelius’s Finlandia and the Karelia Suite; Vltava, Symphonie fantastique, Schumann’s songs, Carnaval and Fantaisie, the Piano Quintet; Les Préludes; pops like España and Fête polonaise of Chabrier, Polovstian Dances, Widor’s Toccata from his fifth organ symphony, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol, Gaité Parisienne and Les deux pigeons ballet suites, The Bartered Bride dances, ballet music from Meyerbeer’s Les patineurs, and Offenbach’s ballet, Le papillon, Poulenc’s Les Biches; Waltz and Polonaise from Eugene Onegin, Clog Dance from Zar und Zimmermann, Polka and Fugue from Schwanda the Bagpiper by Weinberger; ballet suites from music of Boccherini, Domenico Scarlatti, Gluck, Bach and Handel; waltzes of Johann and Joseph Strauss, Waldteufel, Lumbye and Ivanovici’s Donauwellen; Richard Strauss: Rosenkavalier suite, Till Eulenspiegel, Also sprach Zarathustra and Don Juan...   [I could go on; but sorry about the proliferation, the flow became uncontrollable].

The nature of opera
Opera tends to be the target of particular attack in many quarters, criticized as irrational ever since it first appeared. Caddy deals with this up to a point, though failing to note than most opera is based on plays, poems and novels which appear not to attract the same scorn by reason of improbability; suspension of disbelief is a pre-requisite of most art.

And this chapter is distracted by consideration of the occurrence of songs within an opera that are directed within the drama rather than at the audience.  Many plays have songs in them, but opera is singled out as irrational because its medium is also that of certain parts of the story, the term is apparently ‘diegetic’ music. Her example: Carmen singing to Don José; there are lots of others: the Italian tenor in Rosenkavalier, Cherubino’s ‘Voi che sapete’, the Don serenading Elvira’s maid: ‘Deh vieni alla fenestra’. And how about Walther’s Prize song in Die Meistersinger?

So this section falls short perhaps of generating an overwhelming compulsion for the reader to become an opera fanatic.

The most fruitful pages are those where the author demonstrates how media reports of the death of classical music are stupid and wrong. In drawing on examples such as Mozart to demonstrate how classical music had not traditionally been considered elitist, navel-gazing, complex and difficult, she stresses how composers till the last century wrote music to make a living and used popular musical forms and tunes routinely. Thus it had to please the audience, and what’s wrong with that?

The problem of ‘modern’ classical music
In contrast, she quotes, approvingly, a description of much ‘modern classical’ music as ‘scientific experiment’, taking apart a piece by Milton Babbitt of no audible beauty, quoting remarks that such music is for the academic musician and not to be played in public.

Yet much unlistenable music is dutifully included in public concerts and is sometimes justified, Caddy explains, alleging that traditional sounds in music have become impossible for a serious composer in the wake of the horrors of 20th century wars. (Earlier war horrors did not impinge on Purcell or Bach, Mozart or even Beethoven or the French composers such as Offenbach, Franck, Bizet, Fauré, Saint-Saëns and Massenet who lived through the Franco-Prussian war and then the Paris commune with no marked effect on their music. Why make an exception of the late 20th century to justify the creation of ugly music?)

Clearly, she shares the view that this stuff has contributed largely, along with the huge growth of popular music and many changes in society, to the alienation of the general population from, not just the ‘classical music’ of today, but through collateral damage, to the standing of great, classical music in general.

Another major element in the decline of classical music, as well as of all the arts and literature generally, as Caddy reflects, has been their virtual banning from the school curriculum. If humans aren’t exposed to certain experiences, like music, poetry and foreign languages, in childhood and youth, they can well remain blind and deaf to them throughout life.

And finally, she deals with the civilizing benefits of classical music, tongue-in-cheek perhaps with regard to curing physical and psychological problems, but she successfully establishes, nevertheless, its ubiquity, universality and sheer indispensibility.

 

Two woodwinds, two strings, in varied concert from Nikau Trio plus

Nikau Trio (Karen Batten – flute, Madeline Sakovfsky – oboe, Margaret Guldborg – cello) plus Konstanze Artmann – violin

Telemann: Quartet for flute, oboe, violin and continuo
Honegger: Trios contrepoints
Hovhaness: Suite for English horn and bassoon (cello)
Martinů: Duo No 1 for violin and cello

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 20 November, 12:15 pm

There is a belief in chamber music circles that you stage groups involving wind instruments or singers at your peril. A strange notion that suggests that the same sort of closed mind operates within some groups of classical music lovers that they scorn in those fixated by pop music who won’t open their ears to classical music.

I was present when the Wellington Chamber Music Society started its Sunday afternoon series in 1983. One of their aims was to get performances of music for larger groups than the standard string quartet, as well as promising young groups and of music written for all kinds of instruments, but quite importantly for wind instruments; among the early concerts were Mozart’s three wonderful wind serenades which are still too rarely played. These concerts proved a brilliant initiative and were, and continue to be, highly successful.

Well, there was quite a large audience at St Andrew’s to hear this delightful group which I missed hearing at the Futuna Chapel a couple of weeks ago.

These instruments sound warm and brilliant in this resonant acoustic. I last heard them around this time last year when they played a more traditional programme of Bach, Vivaldi, Haydn and Beethoven. This time greater adventurousness paid off with music mainly of the 20th century. However, they opened with a quartet by Telemann evidently composed for these very instruments; though not much of Telemann can be charged with undue profundity, his renaissance has been accomplished through an awakening to the rewards that come from happy, polished and avowedly entertaining music that has been composed with serious intent.

The quartet delighted by its fertile and fluent melodic facility, and the players took every opportunity to exploit all the piquancy and the scope given to the characteristics of each instrument, especially in often delicious harmonic duetting. Though allegro and vivace markings seem to offer Telemann his best opportunities, the moderato middle part of the second movement had extended passages for the oboe’s lower register as well as charming duet with the flute.

Honegger has always seemed to me the odd-one-out among the famous ‘Six’ of the 1920s: Swiss, while the rest were French, not given nearly so much to musical wit or unorthodoxy or, for example, Milhaud’s prodigious output and exoticism.

But he shared the desire to avoid the complexity of impressionism and the expressionism that embraced atonality. These three ‘contrapuntal’ pieces of 1922 hardly suggested baroque counterpoint, but their straightforward style and clarity made attractive listening. The three pieces called in turn for two, three and finally all four players, involving changes to cor anglais in the second and in the third, both cor anglais and piccolo.  The players readily found the most engaging means to convey this honest and unpretentious music, typified in a certain gruffness produced by the cello that seemed perfectly in tune with the elusive charm of this piece.

Alan Hovhaness was one many composers who continued through the mid and late 20th century to compose using traditional means and were long neglected by the avant-garde establishment through those years; his name is even absent from some musical dictionaries (though not from Wikipedia).  His background – Scottish and Armenian – often led to music that has more than a hint of the Balkans, or should that read the Caucasus? For there was an engaging melancholy often associated with that region in this three movement suite for cor anglais (or ‘English horn’ in the title) and bassoon, here played by the cello.

Though the cellist played the notes with considerable feeling, making clear her sensitivity to the style and spirit of Hovhaness’s piece, knowing that it was conceived for bassoon did make me aware that the
composer had intended a different sound which might have been even more beguiling. The last movement, in a mazurka-like triple rhythm in particular seemed to invite a second reed instrument.

Finally, the trio made a concession to the presence of two stringed instruments, entirely neglecting the pair of woodwinds that had tended to lead the way in the other three pieces. I am very fond of Martinů, but this didn’t much remind me of the pieces I know, mainly the symphonies, the opera The Greek Passion, and a variety of other chamber works, one of the most recent being the delightful Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano. This first of two duos for violin and cello was written in 1927 when he was in Paris and had come under the influence of Stravinsky and the expressionist movement. This piece is melodically robust, even muscular, not just pretty, revealing touches of both Stravinsky and Bartok, though not so much, I felt, of contemporary French composers; it struck me as a rather substantial
work, not to be dismissed on account of its unassuming title, ‘Duo’. The two instruments have equal roles, and indulge in a great deal of taxing and musically elaborate counterpoint, sharing of motifs tossed back and forth which the two players brought off with a admirable commitment and persuasiveness.

I suspect that a slightly unfamiliar group such as this would have found it much more difficult before the days of Google and Wikipedia to put together a programme such as they managed here. And in employing such resources, they also bring to life for listeners in remote parts of the world music that
we’d otherwise be unaware of, and the poorer for that.

 

Delights from Emma Sayers and NZSO principal violin and horn, in ‘Piano Plus’

Piano Plus at St Andrew’s: Concert No 3

Mozart: Violin Sonata in G, K 379
Brahms: Horn Trio in E flat, Op 40

Vesa-Mati Leppänen – violin; Samuel Jacobs – horn; Emma Sayers – piano

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Thursday 14 November, 5:30 pm

The third of these enterprising concerts which have been mounted to help in the church’s rebuilding programme: the project is in its third stage which involves new public facilities to make the church a more attractive place for all kinds of social and cultural activities: a green room, reception area, toilets, meeting space, disability access and other amenities.

This evening was the centre-piece of the series in some ways: it fell in the middle of the five concerts and it involved three players; and it was the longest concert so far, containing a Mozart violin sonata and Brahms’s horn trio.

Mozart’s violin sonata in G major has somehow escaped me till now. To refresh my memory, I listened to the only CD recording I had of it but it hardly came to life or overflowed with charm.

So I was delighted to discover how an affectionate and committed performance, and of course a live performance compared with a mere recording, could so transform it. Its shape is a little unusual: an introductory Adagio leading to an Allegro in the minor key and then an extended Theme and Variations. The opening Adagio could in some ways have been a separate movement: it lasts about 5 minutes. The piano opens with four rolling, broken chords holding the floor for nearly a minute; before the violin had sounded a note I was quite enchanted, but the violin’s entry completed my delight to find what utterly charming and gracious piece it promised to be.

There was an urgency and a certain emphatic quality about the following Allegro, which moves to G minor, a sombre key for Mozart. In spite of the remark in the programme about Mozart moving away from the character of violin sonatas at the time, which was basically a piano sonata with violin accompaniment. That may have been so, but the piano still seemed to have the more interesting things to do, and Emma Sayers knew how to enrich her part, certainly every bit the equal of the violin in lending the music its allure.

The second, and last, movement is a Theme and Variations, basically orthodox yet original on account of their speaking from a lively imagination rather than a perfunctory set of predictable variations. Here again the piano tended to lead; in fact the first variation was for the piano alone. Later variations were delicate, decorated, the one instrument echoing the other; the fourth variation shifted again to G minor, very quietly, becoming imaginative and elaborate, and in the fifth the piano again led as the violin accompanied with pizzicato. And then the main theme returned, exposing both players again to more balanced musical contributions.

To provide an entrée to another era of music, Emma sought our indulgence by anticipating the expected demand for an encore at the end by playing it here, before Brahms’s horn trio. It was his Intermezzo in A, Op 118, No 2.

Brahms’s Horn Trio is rightly accorded an honoured place in the chamber music repertoire. It was chosen, as Emma explained, both because of its stature but also because Samuel Jacobs’s predecessor as the NZSO’s principal horn was Edward Allen who had loved and played the piece many times.

Its success as a composition lies in the balance and harmonic compatibility achieved between, in particular, the violin and horn, and in this performance it rested on the accord and beauty of tone that those two instruments achieved. The programme notes remarked on Brahms’s preference that it be played on a natural horn – without valves – though here Jacobs used a modern instrument.

Perhaps the most interesting sounds emerged in the Scherzo where after the emphatic staccato from the piano, which Emma Sayers produced with velvety tone rather than mere loudness, the vitality of the outer sections offer the horn its chance to return to its origins as hunting horn, though there’s still more lyrical music than brassy hunting calls. The Trio of the Scherzo follows a full close, and offers a striking contrast to the encompassing boisterousness, with charming melody that gave each player scope to explore rhapsodically.

The loveliest duetting by violin and horn is in the Adagio mesto, which we are invited to hear as sad. Here it was simply thoughtful or contemplative rather than an elegy for Brahms’s recently dead mother; the playing was expressive and lovingly spun out. It is possible to find the finale, Allegro con brio, a bit predictable with the horn running along with its sequences of rising fourths; piano and violin seem to be in control of the melodic ideas, but after a while my ear was being caught mainly by horn and piano. Nevertheless, for all the superb playing by Leppänen and Jacobs I found increasing pleasure in Sayers’s performance which was endlessly arresting and delightful.