Author: Lindis Taylor

Concert No 6 of Michael Houstoun’s triumphant return to Beethoven

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas: Concert No 6
No 4 in E flat, Op 7
No 14 in C sharp minor, Op 27, No 2 ‘Moonlight’
No 15 in D, Op 28 ‘Pastoral’
No 31 in A flat, Op 110

Michael Fowler Centre

Sunday 10 November, 5pm

Let me go back three decades.

This series celebrates Michael Houstoun’s 60th birthday, and the 20th anniversary of his earlier cycle, in 1993.

It is also the 30th anniversary of a momentous step for music in Wellington. In 1983, as Charlotte Wilson quotes from the Introduction to the 1993 programme, the Wellington Chamber Music Society, inspired by its chairman Russell Armitage (and indeed the whole committee), took a bold step. With some opposition from the national federation of chamber music societies, the predecessor of Chamber Music New Zealand, the society inaugurated a series of Sunday afternoon concerts; in the first three years they were held in the Victoria University Memorial Theatre, attracting good crowds, enticed in part by free mulled wine in the interval.

The original impulse was to enable us to hear chamber music that a) demanded less familiar groups, such as sextets or nonets, and music for woodwind and brass instruments, and b) would give performance opportunities to local players – up-and-coming players – who were largely neglected by the then Music Federation of New Zealand.

In that first four-concert series, in June/July 1983, the Wellington society engaged Michael Houstoun for a Beethoven recital; he played the Op 10 no 3, along with the Pathétique and the Appassionata.  (The success of that series inspired a further short series in October; and an important new music series had been launched!) In 1984 Houstoun played Op 2 No 3, Op 78 and the Waldstein, and so on annually thereafter. In 1986, the year of the first International Festival of the Arts, the concerts moved from the university to the Concert Chamber – the original 600-seat chamber upstairs in the Town Hall.

The annual Beethoven recital from Michael Houstoun was a regular high point, and the goal was set to play all the sonatas. That goal was reached by the early 1990s.

Armitage then proposed a re-packaging of the entire sonata canon in a dedicated festival over the space of three weeks.  It would take place in the Ilott Concert Chamber in the newly strengthened and rebuilt Town Hall.  They ran from 3 to 24 November 1993, on Saturday and Wednesday evenings.  I was at all the concerts and reviewed five of them for The Evening Post; Gillian Bibby reviewed concerts four and five. For me the chance to hear Houstoun in this series was one of the most remarkable privileges in my reviewing career.

Houstoun took his series over the following months to Auckland, Napier, Christchurch and Dunedin.

But it was not the first complete Beethoven cycle in New Zealand. I had clipped a letter from The Listener of 19 March 1994 that recalled a series in Dunedin in 1968 by Hungarian pianist Istvan Nadas when he was artist-in-residence at Otago University.

However, to the matter in hand.
This time, it was Chamber Music New Zealand itself that took up the baton, with elegant and generous acknowledgement from Euan Murdoch of the many sponsors and other individuals as well as the staff of CMNZ who created these repeat performances, that attracted here an audience of more than 600.

Each recital was carefully constructed to balance early and late, famous and unfamiliar, to offer contrasted moods and, for those with perfect pitch, satisfying key relationships. The latter were hardly evident in a programme that had Op 7 in E flat next to the Moonlight in C sharp minor, and the Pastoral in D before Op 110 in A flat.

The E flat sonata is less familiar, without quite the emotional warmth or the electrifying drama of the famous ones.

I was slightly uncertain about the sound I was hearing on Sunday. Seated well to the left, the piano’s sound in the first sonata seemed a little unfocused, which I put down to the sometimes wayward acoustic in certain parts of the MFC, but could have been imperfections in the piano voicing.  Nevertheless, Houstoun’s impetuosity and rhythmic energy in the Allegro molto rapidly overwhelmed technical matters, and the fine subtlety of dynamics, the hint of rallentando towards the middle section and the ever-changing patterns of the music focused attention on the music’s essential grandeur and inventiveness.
In any case, moving to a central position after the interval I found the sound perfectly balanced and coherent.

No mood remains constant through any movement, portentousness and wit in the Largo, gaiety and moments of repose as the major-minor key switch enlivened the scherzo-like Allegro. Finally, the last movement breaks the predominant triplet rhythms of the first three movements, though the speed, now in duple time, seemed otherwise to change only slightly.

The Moonlight stands in dramatic contrast to the Op 7 as its moods, really in all three movements, remain constant, but it didn’t mean that the all-too-familiar first movement was monotonous; all manner of minuscule tempo changes, rubato, the teasing obscurity of rhythms in the vacillating triplets. The insouciance that Houstoun brought to the Allegretto was free and heart-easing and it made the reckless speed of the flawless last movement all the more astonishing.

The Pastoral sonata is far from ‘pastoral’ in the usual sense; none of the names bestowed on the sonatas had Beethoven’s sanction and it’s surprising that such an inappropriate name as this has continued to be used. In fact, not all editions use it: my Augener album does not. Written just after the Moonlight, it takes an entirely different path that for me creates a very strong and interesting musical character; Houstoun’s playing elevated its stature well above the merely picturesque, to a work that is purposeful, with impressive formal strengths as well the most engaging thematic inventions. The Andante created a cloistered feeling, 2/4, squarish in shape after the 3/4 rhythm of the Allegro, and hinting at some sort of mechanical movement. If you still seek something of the outdoors, it might be found in the last movement which opens in a fanciful mood but is laced with bravura passages of sweeping scales and arpeggios. Houstoun’s playing would have surprised any doubters of this sonata’s originality and enchantment, and it reinforced my own admiration and delight.

All three of the last sonatas have a place in music that has to be likened to religious revelation and for an increasingly secular society, it is music of this kind, as well as the most transcendental poetry, drama and prose fiction and visual arts that have come to be seen as a fully satisfying substitute for religion.
Though all three are uniquely different one from another, all are masterpieces.

The first movement of the Op 110 opens with a melody that is of quintessential beauty in the quite untroubled key of A flat major, calling up a unique spiritual state, reinforced by its repetition and elaboration that is comparable to the chanting of religious ritual. The ethereal atmosphere emerged from the stillness of Houstoun’s performance, a stillness mirrored by the sense of peace and repose that his demeanour at the keyboard expressed, utterly undemonstrative, without gestures, merely the medium for the music itself.

And though the second movement, Allegro molto, is a startling change, with just a near modulation into D flat in the middle, it was in perfect accord with the nature of what went before. Then there was the remarkable recitative that leads to the lamenting Arioso which the programme notes explain, quoting Antony Hopkins, as suggesting that Beethoven here expresses frustration at the inadequacies of his musical resources: a theory that seems to me to belittle not just this sonata, but Beethoven in toto.

I think it’s allowed to express the composer’s profound grief at the entire human condition, at the inadequacy of the human spirit in dealing with the cruelties and evils of the world as well as the despair he faced through deafness and the ailments that would soon kill him. Yet that’s not Beethoven’s conclusion. The sonata ends with an extraordinary fugue that breaks off to return to the Arioso before accelerating to a final peroration, which Houstoun created in a spirit of almost overwhelming exultancy.

An exultancy that found voice in another clamorous, standing ovation. Thank you Michael Houstoun and Chamber Music New Zealand.

 

Aroha Quartet fills the Futuna Chapel with impressionist and colouful music

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Aroha Quartet (Haihong Liu and Blythe Press – violins, Zhongxian Jin – viola, Robert Ibell – cello)

Shostakovich: Two Pieces for String Quartet
The White Haired Girl by Yan Jinxuan, arranged for string quartet by Zhu Jian’er and Shi Yongkang
Debussy: String Quartet in G minor

Futuna Chapel, Friend Street, Karori

Sunday 3 November, 2pm

Prefatory note: The Aroha Quartet leave in December for their second tour to China where they will play in the spectacular new Xinghai Concert Hall in Guangzhou, and to Zhongshan. They will have with them works from six countries including China and New Zealand.

This initiative, the Sunday concert series at the Futuna Chapel, to make good use of an architectural gem that was saved from the attentions of developer/vandals a decade ago, began last year and shows every sign of survival and even flourishing. The disposition of seating is perhaps not ideal, and one’s normal expectation of the shape of a church needs a little adjustment: which part is the nave and which a transept or alcove? Seats/pews are placed at right-angles with the ‘sanctuary’ at the place of convergence. A slab-like ‘altar’ occupies most of the raised sanctuary which means musicians sit at floor level with impaired visibility from back rows.

But the sounds, which are actually the main thing in music after all, are clear and full.

The players had set us a little test. We all listened sympathetically to the first piece in the programme: the Chinese string quartet arrangement, presumably. My notes commented on the fact that even in the period of the Second World War as the Japanese were steadily devastating and slaughtering both soldiers and hundreds of thousands of civilian people, there was little outward sign of a distinctive Chinese flavour, let alone anguish, in the rather gentle music; and the first episode ended with a long warm note on the viola.

But then a second part continued with spiky, pizzicato, satirical sounding, like a polka. Ah!!! I know this – it’s Shostakovich; they are playing his Two Pieces for String Quartet first.  The first piece is the elegy that Katerina was to sing in the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, lamenting her boring life; it came to the stage in 1934 with an infamous sequel. Though I’ve seen the opera three times over the years, I didn’t recognize it.  The second piece, a Polka from the 1930 ballet, The Age of Gold, composed before the evils of Stalinism had reveled themselves; it is a satire of the decadence of capitalism and Western politics. Shostakovich made the arrangement in 1931 for the Vuillaume Quartet (Vuillaume was a most famous, 19th century French luthier); long before Shostakovich had written his first string quartet.

So we came to The White Haired Girl. Haihong Liu introduced it and Robert Ibell took us through the musical motifs that mark the various episodes: a tale of a poor young girl, persecuted by the cruel landlord but eventually rescued by the Red Army which was fighting the Japanese invaders.

The White-Haired Girl (Bái Máo Nǚ) is a Chinese opera and ballet, the music by Yan Jinxuan; later it was adapted to ‘Beijing Opera’ and for a film. The first opera performance was in 1945; the film was made in 1950; the first Beijing Opera performance was in 1958 and the first ballet performance by Shanghai Dance Academy, in 1965.

I should really not have mistaken the first piece in the concert. We have reviewed it previously. Peter Mechen wrote a review of a performance at St Andrew’s in October 2010 and I reviewed one in June 2012 at Paekakariki. Accordingly, it was no surprise that the quartet handled it confidently, making no apology for its distinct European musical characteristics, while weaving the Chinese elements colourfully and idiomatically. The musical narrative is based on motifs representing episodes of the story: the north wind, the red ribbon, day turning to night, joining the Eighth Route Army (against the Japanese invaders) and so on. Unlike the typical western classical string quartet, the individual instruments seemed to be expected to draw attention to themselves without ostentation, and it allowed viola and cello, especially, to shine. Certain effects lent themselves predictably to a film sound-track: marked dynamic contrasts, tremolo effects for moments of alarm or terror, sudden fortissimo chords depicting violence.

Though it might sound a bit unsophisticated to some western ears, its success within the idiom and musical culture of China was clear, as was the comfortable manner of its performance.

At their Mulled Wine concert at Paekakariki last year the Aroha Quartet also played the Debussy quartet.  I would be less than honest if I pretended to claim that their performance here was better or worse than last year’s: I don’t remember as well as that. This was simply extremely comfortable and idiomatic, sounding at once spontaneous and thoroughly ingested.

Their dextrous dynamics always reflected the sense of the music; in the second movement long-breathed, summery violin strokes alternated with the lively rhythms generated by pizzicato. They players understood what Debussy meant by Andantino, doucement: it was almost breathless, quite still, with a beguiling melody launched on the viola and passed on to the others in turn, and became a kind of recitative, flowing absent-mindedly, without bar lines.

The fourth movement began very quietly, rather more modéré than that word might suggest, but it simply increased the delight as the mood livened a couple of minutes later, becoming warm and opulent.

 

Intelligently constructed programme exquisitely sung by Lisette Wesseling

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TGIF lunchtime recitals at the Cathedral
Lisette Wesseling – soprano, with Richard Apperley – organ and Michael Stewart – piano

Music by Vivaldi, Handel, Mozart, Schubert, Glanville-Hicks, Finzi and Sondheim

Cathedral of Saint Paul

Friday 25 October, 12:45 pm

The Anglican Cathedral is now running two classes of Friday lunchtime recitals. The monthly organ recitals are ‘Great Music’ (even if they are played on the Choir or the Swell manual) and there are others, just called ‘brief recitals’, which are also often at the organ.

I’ve heard Lisette Wesseling several times over the years, though I seem not to have written reviews of the performances. As well as singing in the Cathedral Choir she has, I imagine among much else, sung solos in Bach’s B Minor Mass and a concert that included both Bach’s Magnificat in D and Jesu meine Freude.

Lisette is blind and you will find material on her website and other websites which also discuss what she feels is a much more troubling burden – stammering. Her degree in psychology (as well as music) no doubt helps to make her comfortable in openly exploring her difficulties and her continuing efforts to deal with the stammering; blindness is an affliction for which there are well understood ways by which a ‘normal’ life can be led. But look at the BSA website (www.stammering.org/stammeringblindness.html‎), where she writes in answer to the question which is more difficult: “The answer I give usually surprises people: stammering is much more difficult to live with than blindness.”

Last year, at the production of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, I was not amused at the depiction of Vašek as a figure of fun, inept and stammering. But that’s how librettist and composer conceive him: what should a director today do with the role? Much like directors’ dilemma with roles like Monostatos who was treated in 1791 by Da Ponte and Mozart very differently from the way he might be today.

Thus she reads both the notation and the words in braille as she sings; though it struck me that with the enhancement of other faculties that blindness develops, her memory would have made reading the score unnecessary.

Here is a bright, accurate, distinctive voice that was demonstrably at home in all the musical style that this short recital covered, from late baroque to Broadway musical. She began with two early 18th century pieces by Vivaldi and Handel. The programme leaflet gave no details of the pieces beyond the bare name of the song or aria.

Both the first pieces were accompanied beautifully by Richard Apperley at the chamber organ. The Vivaldi, the first movement of a sacred motet, Nulla in mundo pax sincera, RV 630 (“In this world there is no honest peace”) is a delightful aria in an almost dancing rhythm, light and high, seeming to be written for her kind of voice, and, as with so much Vivaldi, one is astonished that earlier generations ignored the huge quantity of his music that is so rich in melodic invention.

The same goes for the Handel  aria, Süsser Blumen Abaflocken, one of his German songs (Neun deutsche Arien), HWV204, called in Hyperion’s CD note, “a sensual evocation of the scent of Amber flowers, in which the middle section describing the soul soaring heavenwards bears a resemblance to Cleopatra’s ‘Piangerò’ from Giulio Cesare”. Lisette’s high notes truly relished the range she was called on to inhabit, and I loved the cathedral’s long echo here, giving me more of the voice than she was actually producing.

Mozart’s Idomeneo is no doubt more familiar to opera-lovers than to those who may have come across the previous two songs. ‘Zeffiretti lusinghieri’ (‘Pleasant Zephyrus’), sung by Ilia in Act III. This too revealed a happy, summery atmosphere as Ilia, the daughter of Priam, the defeated King of Troy, sends her love to Idamante, son of Idomeneo the King of Crete. It was yet another song brimming with hope and joy which Lisette obviously relishes and performs in a voice coloured with happiness. The accompaniment here was by Michael Stewart at the piano.

Frühlinsglaube, Schubert’s setting of a harmless lyric by Ludwig Uhland, is also filled with the delights of Spring (‘Faith [or belief] in spring’), one of the best-known, happiest, most guileless songs.  Here her voice floated easily, revealing an instinctive affinity with the Lieder genre.

Next was a song by Gerald Finzi: ‘It was a lover and his lass’ from As You Like It. This was perhaps the only song in the programme that suffered a little from the acoustic, calling for faster speed and given more to harmonic variety which a reverberant acoustic tends to muddy.

But it provided a nice link with the next song, in imitative Tudor/Stuart style.

Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1912-1990) was one of Australia’s earliest woman composers (along with Margaret Sutherland and Miriam Hyde) and her music has found its way into the mainstream of Australian music. Her music is accomplished and attractive, demonstrating an approach that owes much more to contemporary European models than to anything that might suggest Australia.  You can find this song on You-Tube: ‘Come Sleep’ is a setting of a poem by playwright John Fletcher (of ‘Beaumont and Fletcher’, and a collaborator with Shakespeare in Henry VIII and Two Noble Kinsmen) and the setting suggests the style of the Tudor/Stuart composers.

Finally, a song from one of Stephen Sondheim’s most popular works, Into the Woods, which inter-twines Grimm fairy stories. ‘No one is alone’ presents a comforting message along the obvious lines, at the end of the musical. There’s a gentle swing as the melody moves easily in short phrases which Lisette sings with all the clear unpretentiousness that is Sondheim’s secret.

This series of concerts hasn’t yet taken off in terms of audience support. The Cathedral does not have quite the convenience and welcoming atmosphere that St Andrew’s does.

But we should hope that the attention given to the series over the years by Middle C might eventually persuade Wellingtonians whose Fridays weigh heavily on their spirits that here is the answer.

 

String students from the School of Music gain public performance experience

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Undergraduate string students of the New Zealand School of Music:

Music by Bach, Beethoven and Shostakovich

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 23 October, 12:15 pm  

Even when great music is not played by top musicians with immaculate technical skill, it can be warmly delightful.

Regulars who enjoy Wellington’s various free (or nearly free) lunchtime concerts are not simply those who can’t tell the difference between the good and nearly good. They just love the music. This was one of the occasions when almost all the playing was both technically accomplished and, more importantly, played with love and understanding.

Caitlin Morris opened with the Prelude to Bach’s First Cello Suite. Her playing tended to lengthening of certain notes to a slightly exaggerated degree, but her handling of dynamics was careful and sensitive to the inner spirit of the music.

Violist Aidan Verity played an adaptation for her instrument of the Allemande and Courante from the Fourth Cello Suite, in E flat. Not quite as well mastered (there was a wee stumble in passing from the one movement to the next which clearly affected her confidence), she made a convincing case for the work’s performance on the viola, and her programme note points to a recent scholarly view that Bach may have been writing for the slightly smaller violoncello da spalla.

Most impressive, perhaps of the three solo performances was Julian Baker’s playing of Sarabande and Gigue from Bach’s solo Violin Partita in D minor. The Sarabande was spacious and well paced though some of the rhythmic ornaments might not have been handled with perfect elegance, but the Gigue was confident and fast, impressing with the confidence with which it maintained its speed, and managing very well the ticklish decorative rhythms.

The two other items involved more than one player. Beethoven’s Romances are not, I suspect, as familiar today as once they were. (My early acquaintance with the F major Romance, Op 50, may not have been typical. I indulge a reminiscence…  In my upper sixth year (now year 13) year I had an August holiday job with the late and lamented Wellington Competitions (1970s R.I.P.), part assistant stage managing and part assisting the adjudicator in the gallery of the old, upstairs Concert Chamber of the pre-rearranged Town Hall. He was John Longmire, minor English composer and pianist, and friend and biographer of John Ireland. This Romance was performed more than once by competing violinists and I was in love with it.  Anyway…)

Violinist Alina Junc and pianist Choong Park did a charming job with it, occasional slips in the violin’s handling of ornaments and intonation notwithstanding. The pianist maintained her partnership in sympathy with the violin; it was not altogether clear to me why the slightly enigmatic end missed its mark, but let me hope that this performance might encourage its resuscitation in general affection.

The last movement, Allegretto, of Shostakovich’s Piano Trio, Op 67, was played by Junc and Park together with cellist Xialing. As other performers had done, Alina spoke helpfully about the piece before starting with the staccato and pizzicato gestures, sensitively and confidently.  It became a highly impressive demonstration of the three players’ grasp of the work’s background and inspiration, the lamenting Slavic melody becoming a powerful climax expressing pain and grief.  The audience were in no doubt that they were hearing a performance of great conviction and power, and the trio were loudly applauded.

 

Momentous first Wellington concert by 40-year-old Tallis Scholars

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The Tallis Scholars conducted by Peter Phillips

Tallis: Loquebantur variis linguis; Palestrina: Missa Papae Marcelli; Allegri: Miserere; Arvo Pärt: Nunc dimittis; John Tavener: The Lamb; Byrd: Ave verum corpus and Laudibus in sanctis; Tallis: Spem in alium (with 30 local singers)

Cathedral of Saint Paul, Wellington

Monday 21 October, 7:30 pm

Foreword
Some interesting facts have emerged with the first visit to New Zealand in the forty years of the Tallis Scholars’ existence. Even though director Peter Phillips was married in Wellington (at Old St Paul’s as he told Eva Radich on RNZ Concert’s Upbeat programme on Monday), as a result of his friendship with distinguished Wellington musicologist John M Thomson, the choir never visited New Zealand. Yet this will be its seventh visit to Australia and it has toured Japan 14 times. How can we manage these things better?

New Zealand has a particularly strong choral tradition and its youth choirs have toured with great success, winning in international competitions. But it seems to be no one’s brief to get overseas choirs or vocal ensembles here. The same is true for orchestras large and small, unless they initiate a tour themselves. The New Zealand International Arts Festival, in its great early years, has been almost the only body to fulfil this role (recall the Hilliard Ensemble and I Musici, in recent years).

Evidently, this tour by the Tallis Scholars was inspired by John Rosser, director of Auckland’s Viva Voce choir, and was brought to fruition through Chamber Music New Zealand in partnership with the New Zealand Choral Federation and support from the Deane Endowment Trust. CMNZ has from its beginnings in the late 1940s collaborated with its sister Australian chamber music organization to get world-class chamber groups here. But there has been no comparable organization whose concern is to bring choirs, or even individual singers here.

The task of gathering thirty additional voices and rehearsing them for the performance of Tallis’s Spem in alium was in the hands of John Rosser, Karen Grylls and Timothy Noon.

In the good old days the NZSO used not only to bring its soloists to play with the orchestra, but saw to it that they gave solo recitals where they could be fitted in to the orchestra’s schedules. That, sadly, seems to have stopped: no doubt they don’t pass the cost/benefit test, now that price rather than value is the criterion. (One of the enlightened measures of the former communist regimes was the maintenance of a state organisation to manage cultural visits in both directions, even though usually with a heavy political hand).

Is it too much to hope that, since private initiative is not working, such a body, arms-length from, say, the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, might be set up to perform this important role? Or to encourage the Choral Federation to undertake these activities with the promise of Creative New Zealand grants such as provided to Chamber Music New Zealand?

A comment from Chamber Music New Zealand
After sending this piece to CMNZ, Chief Executive Euan Murdoch has replied, enlarging on the extent to which they already promote singers and vocal ensembles. We confess, while recalling the performances by each of the named groups and singers, that we had not put the picture together, as Euan has now done, pointing out the way CMNZ has been casting its net more widely in recent years.

Here is Euan Murdoch’s comment: 

“Regarding your comments about a CMNZ-type organisation to tour singers and vocal ensembles, it’s not really necessary. That’s what we already do. If we had more resources, we’d do more! I am a firm believer that chamber music encompasses instrumental and vocal ensembles. That’s why over the last five years or so we’ve toured The Song Company twice, Voices NZ chamber choir, Jonathan Lemalu, the Pierards, Jenny Wollerman and Anna Leese. Many of these artists have been supported by the Deane Endowment Trust who share our vision for showcasing the best NZ has to offer alongside the best that the world has to offer. The 40-part motet project with the NZCF was a prime example of this.”  

The Concert
The Cathedral of Saint Paul was sold out for this second concert in the New Zealand tour: Christchurch on Saturday, Auckland and Napier in the following days. I had a seat in the Choir gallery above the west door and it was a splendid position both visually and aurally.

It was a very well thought-out programme: three of the best-known renaissance choral pieces and other pieces that were sung so clearly and dramatically that the audience was no less engrossed and enraptured by the less familiar. The first sounds of Tallis’s Loquebantur variis linguis, (‘The Apostles spoke in many languages’) voices weaving polyphony, expanding in the long echo of the cathedral, were awesome. Though there were only ten voices, and one focused at times on individuals even when many were singing, the combined effect was balanced, in beautiful accord and giving an impression of a strong and weighty choir of much greater size.

Palestrina’s great Missa Papae Marcelli (dedicated to Pope Marcellus II who reigned for a mere three weeks in 1555) was a marvellous study in the refinement of choral writing; without overstatement, each part of the mass was characterized with subtle attention to the sense of the text. A tenor opened the Gloria with its first exclamatory words to be echoed by the full choir; understated dynamic shifts kept the ears and mind alert to what was going on. The ‘Qui tollis’ verses were a contrast (though the words were fairly clear even when the whole choir was singing energetically, it might have been helpful for those not familiar with the Catholic liturgy, especially in Latin, for the drift of the text to have been summarized in the programme notes), soft and prayerful, words enunciated with clarity, and ending with richly textured male voices.

Such emotional expressiveness kept the liturgical drama alive, especially in the Credo where the words ‘Crucifixus est’, were illustrated poignantly in slow and lamenting phrases. Voices inhabited a disembodied, airy space, less varied dynamics and with legato lines in the Sanctus. In contrast, hushed women’s voices brought an ardent quality to the blessing expressed in the Benedictus.

Finally, in the Agnus Dei, gentleness pervaded, leading to full polyphonic richness in the near ecstatic tone of the sustained harmonies that ends the movement, somewhat echoed in the repeat that served to enrich the whole experience.

After the interval Allegri’s Miserere offered an interesting disposition: a solo tenor in the pulpit, four singers at the rear of the sanctuary and the other five at the front of the choir stalls. Even at the distance I was from the singers, the acoustic contrasts so presented seemed to add to the spiritual significance of the piece. The phrases of the high soprano that seem to yearn heavenward as it reaches top C, had a singular intensity that was as moving to a non-believer as to a traditional worshipper.

There followed a pair of contemporary pieces: Arvo Pärt’s Nunc dimittis, (‘Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine’, or ‘Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, Lord’) written to sound well in an acoustic such as this, was expressed initially in phrases of small range, spiritual, but soon intensified with some urgent exclamations at triple forte in more complex harmonies.

John Tavener’s The Lamb, his setting of the Blake poem, was a good companion piece, from a composer commonly linked to Pärt by the title ‘holy minimalist’. Women’s voices opened in unison singing and then in piquant harmony; men’s voices join half way through, bringing the scene down to earth somewhat, with its steady line of undulating crotchets: one of his most popular and delightful works, this exquisite singing was a shift to a beautiful pastoral view of religious belief.

Two short motets by William Byrd (Tallis’s pupil) brought us back to the choir’s home ground; the Ave verum corpus (‘Hail, true body’ [of Christ]) uses the voices in alternating phrases to create a peaceful interlude, a genre known as a ‘gradual’, between parts of the Ordinary of the Mass. Dynamics rose and fell, rarely departing from the steady four-part writing throughout.

Laudibus in sanctis Dominum celebrate supremum (to give the first line in full; it’s a paraphrase of Psalm 150, ‘Praise the Lord’ or, to connect with familiar Latin versions, ‘Laudate Dominum’). More upbeat than the previous piece, the ensemble, starting with sopranos, and adding altos, tenors and basses one by one, sang with a certain grandeur and joyousness as conveyed in the repeated little five-note up-and-down motif, and making much of the complex rhythms.

The Forty-part Motet
The singers went off so that arrangements could be made for the arrival of the thirty additional voices to sing Tallis’s 40-part motet, Spem in alium (or in full, ‘Spem in alium nunquam habui praeter in te’ = ‘I have never put hope in other than you’).  Peter Phillips had told Eva Radich about the hazards of having to rely in the countries they visit on extra singers having been well coached, confessing to several minor catastrophes over the years. But he’d said he had no misgivings here, and indeed, apart from some quite expected a lack of complete clarity of diction, nothing went wrong. Here, much more than usual rests on the conductor in giving cues and keeping things in line; his task was relatively free of stress.

My first hearing of this, as well as, for example, the Missa Papae Marcelli, was from The Tudor Consort under Simon Ravens, whose inspiration for establishing his choir, which still flourishes, was undoubtedly the Tallis Scholars. At their concert in March 1992, I think in the context of the New Zealand International Arts Festival, it was in this cathedral, also jam-packed, the choir was driven to sing the entire work a second time as encore. It remains a moving and vivid memory.

(An aside: you’ll be fascinated to look at The Tudor Consort’s website which lists a complete archive of their performances since 1986).

I think I have heard at least one other performance in the intervening years but I cannot trace the choir or the time.

For the present Wellington generation however, Spem in alium became familiar to hundreds through the audio display at the City Art Gallery a few years ago when 40 speakers were arranged in a circle, each carrying one voice, though with slightly recessed sounds of all the others within range.

In addition to those performances, Wellington has been fortunate in having a sufficiently big population of knowledgeable music lovers to maintain several choirs that have made all the important renaissance music familiar to us.

So this audience knew what they were going to hear and were suitably enraptured. They clapped and stood, refusing to leave till the choir returned for a third time and repeated the last phase of the piece (from bar 104). Searching afterwards for somewhere to have a drink, at the only watering hole open nearby, Rydges Hotel, I ran into several people who’d been there; recognizing each other by programme in hand: all sharing Cloud Nine. This momentous experience was perhaps the most memorable musical event of the year.

 

Fine artistry and insight by Duo Cecilia, cello and piano duo

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Duo Cecilia (Lucy Gijsbers – cello and Andrew Atkins – piano)

Beethoven: Seven Variations on ‘Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen’ from The Magic Flute
Rachmaninov: Cello Sonata, Op 19, Third movement – Andante
Paul Ben-Haim: Canzona
Schumann: Fantasiestücke, Op 73
Debussy: Cello Sonata

St Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 16 October, 12:15 pm

Lucy Gijsbers is in her master’s year and Andrew Atkins the third year of his B Mus at the New Zealand School of Music. Both have already distinguished themselves in competition and academic achievement. Lucy has played as soloist with orchestras as well as being principal cello in both the NZSM and the National Youth orchestras.

Each took turns introducing the pieces they played: both needed to be more aware of the need to properly project their voices. But they had little to learn about projecting the music they played. Their launching the recital with Beethoven’s delightful variations on ‘Bei Männern’ was a coup, as it offered the audience the chance to hear both their mastery of the notes, as well as expressive niceties. The opening was a display of darting, varied dynamics, changing with delightful aplomb from bar to bar.

The duo created the impression of playing the parts, each entirely engrossed in their own view of the music and what they were doing with it. Yet when I paid attention to the combined sound, the ensemble was excellent, listening to each other and responding to each other’s accents and turns of phrase; nothing uniformly bland.

The slow 6th variation revealed the players’ beautifully controlled tone with restrained vibrato, and the last variation announced the imminent ending by giving special emphasis to principal phrases.

On 4 October in the Adam Concert Room of the New Zealand School of Music I heard Inbal Megiddo and Jian Liu give an illuminating performance of Rachmaninov’s Cello Sonata. These players played the slow movement of it. To focus on a single movement is often a quite different experience: it opens with a long, seductive piano introduction, a beautiful melody, intensely meditative; Rachmaninov gives quite a lot of solo playing to the piano and that, far from seeming to obscure the cello’s significance, drew
increased attention to its more sparingly expressed contributions. Gijsber’s playing was exquisite.

Paul Ben-Haim was a leading Israeli composer of the earlier 20th century. The single movement, which I think Atkins said (both he and Lucy spoke too quietly) came from a cello concerto, which is listed in an internet site as having been written in 1962. It speaks in a coherent tonal language, though its character struck me as having emerged from the climate of the second half of the 20th century, as well as containing well integrated marks of Middle Eastern sounds. I’m not aware of hearing Ben-Haim’s music before and this induces me to explore.

Schumann’s three Fantasy Pieces, Op 73 are among the most played cello pieces; if played as they were here, by musicians who approach them with liveliness and without any sense of having to justify over-familiar music. They are delightful, spontaneous pieces, far from easy to bring off. Most effective were the charming narrative sense of the first movement, Zart und mit Ausdrück, and the third movement Rasch und mit Feuer which opened with almost frightening attack, typical Schumannesque impulsiveness with a calmer middle section where the cello called attention with her well-chosen stresses on certain notes at the top of phrases. The piano’s role was distinguished throughout the recital but seemed to rise to special heights in the formidable accompaniments of these pieces.

A couple of weeks earlier I’d heard Andrew Joyce and Diedre Irons play Debussy’s Cello Sonata in a Wellington Chamber Music concert and here it was again. Debussy told somebody that he was dissatisfied with the work, his second to last as he struggled with cancer during the First World War, but I doubt whether many of today’s listeners find it unsatisfying. It’s short and compressed and unsentimental; and while it’s a work that could hardly have been written a decade earlier, it does not pay direct attention to the radical innovations that the Schoenbergs and Stravinskys were introducing. These young players approached it as if they’d been living with it for years in their technical mastery and ease with the musical idiom, but judging by the spontaneity and freshness of the performance, it sounded as if they’d just discovered it.

Once again, here was evidence of the wealth of wonderful music-making to be enjoyed for free (or nearly) in many parts of greater Wellington.

 

All the guitar students from NZSM prove more is more

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand School of Music Classical Guitar Concert

Music by Jorge Cardoso, Maximo Pujol, Stephen Goss, Peter Warlock, Antonio Ruis-Pipó and Vivaldi

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 9 October, 12:15 pm

Three weeks ago I heard some of these student guitarists at Old St Paul’s (17 September). This time all twelve students in the classical guitar department of the school contributed to a mainly different programme that was, if anything, even more interesting and more accomplished.

The Suite of Latin American pieces by Cardoso that had me a bit confused last time was the last work in the earlier programme; here it was first. Perhaps because of that, the trio (Jamie Garrick, Christian Huenuqueo and George Wills) sounded more practised than before. Nevertheless, Samba d’Ouro (Ouro is evidently Portuguese for Gold, as well as being a place name in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Caterina) might have been lifted by a little more rhythmic sensuality.  Camino de Chacarera (which is a folk dance typical of north-western Argentina), was sensitive and nicely articulated. From the next piece, Zamba de Plata, much longer than the first two, there was more movement, along with charm and delicacy in its syncopated rhythms.

And the last two pieces, both evidently from across the Andes, built on the players’ growing confidence: Polca Peruano, elusive but quite melodious, and Vals Peruano, in a triple time slightly disguised by cross rhythms which made it teasing and delightful.

Fin de Siglo (‘End of the century’) by Maximo Pujol, from Buenos Aires, seemed less concerned with visceral pleasures and more with drawing attention to interesting textures and moderately complex shapes: the first part, Andante Tranquillo, and the second, Allegro, a post-Piazzolla, tangoish rhythm. In the middle of the Allegro there’s a nice contrasting, melancholy section which the players captured with grace and feeling.

The same selection as in the last concert from Satie’s Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes, arranged by American guitarist Stephen Goss repaid a second hearing. These were for guitar quartet (Jake Church,, Cormac Harrington, Emmett Sweet and Cameron Sloan). While the two Gymnopédies are the more familiar, the Gnossiennes, forming an entity so successfully, lent themselves to more interesting colourings and a hint of mystery. The main impression of the playing was care, thoughtfulness and writing that was beautifully adapted to the guitars.

Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite might have seemed an unlikely case for guitar adaptation, but then it’s based on Renaissance musical ideas which were naturally disposed to the lute and the quartet handled their dance rhythms firmly and gracefully.

The last two pieces involved the full guitar orchestra, twelve in all, with Owen Moriarty conducting. Ensemble was admirable and the variety of sounds and dynamics made these thoroughly entertaining, even if the price was some lack of spontaneous rhythmic lift. The first was Américas by Antonio Ruis-Pipó, actually written for eight guitars, with contributions in the form of clapping and finger-clicking, all generating a convincing orchestral feel.

The last work was an arrangement of Vivaldi’s Concerto Grosso, Op 3 No 8, the set entitled ‘L’estro harmonico’. Here the concertino, for two guitars, was shared by two players taking each of the two parts: Christian Huenuqueo and Cameron Sloan in the first, and George Wills and Nick Price in the second part. Vivaldi survives almost any sort of arrangement and here the disposition of the parts through the several groups created a really full orchestral sound, with varied dynamics and changes of plucking techniques between each section. Maybe they didn’t take the word ‘spiritoso’ in the second movement quite seriously enough, but there was little to carp about in the entire, most delightful performance.

 

Courageous Wellington Youth Orchestra tackles enterprising programme amid space difficulties

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Youth Orchestra conducted by Hamish McKeich with Arna Morton (violin)

Twentieth Century Classics: Lilburn: Song of Islands; Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No 1, Op 35; Sibelius: Symphony No 7 in C, Op 105

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Saturday 5 October, 7pm

Though audiences at the tri-annual concerts by the Wellington Youth Orchestra are sometimes no bigger than the number of players, and this one was probably about that too, critics do not exaggerate when they remark that in most cases the performances are impressive and satisfy all but the most (unrealistically) demanding of listeners.

Again, if your interest is in hearing great if unfamiliar music pretty well played, as distinct from imagining serious deficiencies compared with our professional orchestras, why not come along? When did you last hear a performance of any orchestra work by Szymanowksi? A look through the 5-year archive of Middle C reviews reveals only the Concert Overture played by the NZSO in April 2010.

So we rely on our amateur and student orchestras to come up with performances of slightly out-of-the-way but quite important music like Barber’s Cello Concerto from the Wellington Chamber Orchestra or Rachmaninov’s Third Symphony from this orchestra last year.

On Saturday we heard Szymanowski’s First Violin Concerto. It’s a very demanding work, exploring a sound world that might have suggestions of certain of his contemporaries, but is quite likely to lose listeners in its mystical sound-painting. The challenge for the violinist was as great, and in the treacherous acoustic, much of the dense and low-pitched sound verged on the chaotic.  The difficulties for both soloist and orchestra are so great that the impact can be cluttered, its real beauties almost impossible to perceive because of Szymanowksi’s scoring and musical imagination.

The opening from woodwinds and the solo violin’s sparkling, ethereal lines promised well enough as the violin sustained its long notes voluptuously. Arna Morton is certainly a gifted player and her navigating the fiendishly complex and rhythmically intricate decorative phrases had to be admired. What is demanded above all is a sound that is warm and opulent, but strangely, from what was evidently a fine violin (on loan from the New Zealand School of Music’s donation from Clare Galambos-Winter) the sound was a bit less than that and its tone, sometimes edgy and brittle, did not altogether capture the sensuality of Szymanowski’s music.

One of the shortcomings of a youthful orchestra can be its difficulty in sustaining pianissimo sounds, and providing a really sensitive underlay for a solo part that is rarely of blazing intensity, though still
demanding extraordinary virtuosity and finesse. The occasional outbursts from the orchestra left too little space for the intricacies of the violin part to emerge, apart from passages such as 8 or 10 minutes in where the violin has vigorous marcato down-bowings that match the orchestra’s exuberant mood.

One of the tell-tales marks of orchestral imbalance, the lack of clarity in orchestration which is not really all that thick, was my inability to hear either the celeste or the harp even though I was sitting on
the left side, not far from them: they were rather lost in orchestral turmoil.

It’s really a most beautiful concerto which demands subtlety and extremely careful balance between sections and between instruments. I rather feared that this admirable initiative, allowing an audience to hear a work that seems neglected in this country, was not quite the triumph it might have been.

The other works in the programme were more within the reach of the orchestra. Lilburn’s Song of Islands deserves to be better known, written while he was living very much in the world of Sibelius; in fact I know of no other composer whose music has so absorbed aspects of Sibelius’s sound world while imposing on it his own musical personality. Lilburn was 30 when he wrote this piece and he has made a
distinctly personal statement in it, creating sounds that might be hard to hear as picturing the Otago landscape but which do seem to suggest New Zealand in a quite confident and mature way. By and large, the orchestra, particularly the strings, produced very fine, near velvety sounds, while it was the woodwinds whose lines seemed to fare less well, not quite so well integrated.

The orchestra was strengthened in almost every section by professional guest players and though I could not see well who was playing the principal parts in the prominent and generally most accomplished wind passages, I imagine they were given mainly to the Youth Orchestra players themselves.  The guest players’ roles would have been in mentoring and in maintaining good ensemble and balance rather than seeking the limelight.

Sibelius himself was represented by his Seventh Symphony, not his easiest to bring off on account of its single-movement structure and the need to enliven rhythms amid big sweeps of broad melodic washes. If there were the usual problems of too loud brass and timpani, where a degree of modesty might have been expected, the strings were again conspicuous for their warmth and homogeneity, and woodwinds as they danced against timpani.  The orchestra’s playing was most effective in passages where stronger rhythms and bolder melodies arose.

The orchestra is faced with a conflict between playing in a space which is too small and reverberant and in the Town Hall where they have generally played in the past to good effect, but which is too big for the modest audience that usually comes.

Splendid, dramatic Mozart Mass from huge Orpheus and Youth Choirs

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Orpheus Choir of Wellington, the Wellington Youth Choir and Orchestra Wellington conducted by Mark Dorrell

Soloists: Anna Leese, Emma Fraser, Oliver Sewell, Kieran Rayner

Mozart: Exsultate Jubilate and Mass in C minor, K 427

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 28 September, 7:30 pm

Many of us think of Mozart’s ‘Great’ Mass as being one of the unassailable masterpieces, up there with his Requiem and the requiems of Verdi, Berlioz, Brahms and Fauré, and great choral works Messiah, Bach’s passions and the B Minor Mass, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, and so on.

But the not exactly over-flowing Michael Fowler Centre suggested that I do not have a lot of company (were ticket prices a bit high?). Almost all the side seats of the balcony were empty and the stalls were not dense with enthusiasts. It’s not as if we hear the work every year. Perhaps I don’t remember another choir performing it in recent years, but my last recollection is the Orpheus’s performance in 1988.

This was a splendid performance. We had the (perhaps inauthentic) experience of a huge choir, the Orpheus and the Youth Choir together, filling the choir stalls, which sang with enormous energy and, often, unaccustomed speed.

The mass was preceded by Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate, the solo part taken by Anna Leese. The orchestra gave spirited and authentic support, driven by Mark Dorrell, taking pains to create varied dynamics and articulations. In the same way Leese varied her projection, sometimes seeming to create a buffeting effect, a varying of intensity rather that actual volume, I thought. And it was notable that the orchestra’s dynamics scrupulously took account of what the soprano was singing; there was no ostentatious baroque affectation, such as a ban on vibrato, though the playing was always crisp and lively. The orchestra was on great form with excellent woodwind, brass and timpani making prominent
contributions.

There was a nice accompaniment in the Recitativo by the chamber organ, with a solo cello contributing the other element of the continuo. Here, with longer legato lines, the soprano sounded more at ease than in the Aria, allowing her voice to flow more comfortably, and the little cadenza at the end was very striking. Finally, the best-known section, the Alleluia, involving a dramatic modulation, held few terrors for Ms Leese.

The major part of the evening was taken by the Mass, almost an hour long though it is famously incomplete, with no Agnus Dei and a few other smaller sections missing. But these are concerns only for the listener who mistakes it as a liturgical work; that is irrelevant for us and may not have been very important to Mozart either, though it is speculated that he used other Mass settings that he had written to fill the gaps. Some filling of gaps is common and the version used here is a common one, by Mozart and Haydn scholar, H C Robbins Landon.

The performance paid attention to all the great variety of styles and treatments which, as the notes in the programme point out, reflect earlier and current choral and operatic styles: Bach and Handel, Gluck and Pergolesi, involving choir, orchestra and soloists in taxing activities.

In the spell-binding opening, which seems at once to promise a creation of great moment, the music sets a moderato tempo, though the orchestra and choir were generally crisp and staccato, which allowed more attention to detail both on the part of performers and audience. In the Kyrie different sections sang contrasting words simultaneously, with varying emphasis; Mozart’s constantly changing use of various sections of the choir, dividing parts, always with perceptible dramatic intention, found scrupulous treatment by the choir. For all its size, Mark Dorrell achieved marvellous precision, varied colour and great power from the choir, throughout; often emphatic as in the ‘Gratias’, and slow and arresting in the pleading ‘Qui Tollis’, against stabbing strings in angry dotted rhythm, that focus attention on the final words, ‘Miserere nobis’; one of the choir’s real high points.

Anna Leese took the first soprano part, entering a couple of minutes into the Kyrie, and delivered at a subdued, stately pace: which is how it should be, leading movingly, with the choir, to the beguiling little melody that soon takes it over.

The bass Kieran Rayner, entered momentarily at the beginning of the Gloria, giving the words a sober, robust masculine tone, though it is a predominantly choral section. Anna returned in the more lively ‘Laudamus te’ section, singing with crisp phrase endings, scaling the heights in a few decorative, bravura passages.

Soloists appear sparingly through the piece; the second soprano, Emma Fraser, does not appear till the ‘Domine Deus’ when both join in duet; a duet that presents continuous challenges. Fraser’s voice offered a somewhat unexpected contrast with Leese’s: Fraser was distinctly brighter and allowing one to feel that the latter was singing a mezzo role.

After the choral ‘Qui Tollis’ the two sopranos were joined by tenor Oliver Sewell in the ‘Quoniam’; there the women’s more penetrating voices slightly disadvantaged the tenor, and Fraser’s voice outshone Leese’s by its sheer brightness.

The elaborate Gloria ends ritually with a fugal choral climax, Allegro, and emphatic in the final Amen, all of which conductor and choir drove with tremendous verve, sounding as if it were the finale of the entire mass.

The bass, Kieran Rayner, again appears at the start of the Credo, enunciating the church’s first simple command ‘Credo in unum Deum’, but the choir takes over with almost overwhelming impact, ranging far and wide in both dynamics and range, the orchestral strings dancing with pungent little quaver motifs.

The ‘Et Incarnatus’ offered display for both Fraser and for the orchestral winds, as her words are accompanied by flute, the bassoon and oboe to support a plangent, almost lamenting tone. Her voice projected splendidly, beautifully, and proved a real show-case for her in a movement which is indeed a small masterpiece. It was the only time clapping broke out spontaneously, and it was entirely deserved.

We do not hear the solo bass part properly till the final section, the Benedictus, which goes steadily, rather soberly paced to start; all four soloists are in charge for a considerable time. Both men sang well, but they were simply out-gunned in vocal intensity by the two sopranos, and it was not till the choir entered with the orchestra, in the ‘Osanna in excelsis’, that we got a hint of what might become a big choral finale. But it’s really a bit of a tease for it proves to be a slightly truncated affair, though a none the less fitting finale; in truth, however, it does lend credence to the thought that Mozart did intend to write a glorious Agnus Dei to bring his masterpiece to a really dramatic, powerful end.

But what there is, from these splendidly rehearsed forces, made a wonderfully satisfying evening.

It is probably unorthodox to draw attention to a performance that is there for the world to see and hear on Youtube, but having been so enthralled by this Wellington performance, I looked around the Internet. Here was a stunning performance by French choir and orchestra: the brilliant young Accentus Chamber Choir and the Insula Orchestra, playing on period instruments, under their conductor Laurence Equilbey. See: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTI_z714dOo‎

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Fab Five explore neglected vocal territory at St Andrew’s lunchtime concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Fab Five vocal quartet (Lesley Graham, Linden Loader, Richard Greager, Roger Wilson and William McElwee) and pianist Mark Dorrell

Beethoven’s Fidelio: ‘Mir ist so wunderbar’
Haydn: Die Harmonie in der Ehe; Die Warnung; Der Greis
Brahms: An die Heimat; Der Abend; Fragen, Op 64
Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: ‘Selig wie die Sonne meines Glückes lacht…’

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 25 September, 12:15 pm

When you Google many 19th century composers and look at the list of their works, the casual browser is likely to be surprised at the number of vocal pieces that are not the usual Lieder or Mélodies or other classes of solo songs: there are collections of part-songs, songs for duet, quartet and other small ensembles, not to mention the cantatas and motets and other choral pieces. It is particularly true of Brahms.

This kind of song seems to be rather neglected today, and they are much less performed in main-stream concerts than are solo songs.

This short concert was a most striking evidence of the rewards that are awaiting the musician who ventures in that direction.

It may or may not have been an added enticement that the two groups of part-songs were book-ended by a couple of famous ensembles from German opera.  Those opening and closing pieces certainly had that effect on me.  Nevertheless, as soon as the jewel-like quartet from Fidelio gave way to the group of Haydn vocal quartets, any doubts about the latter’s charms vanished.

The quartet from Fidelio was a short but moving opening to the recital; ‘Mir is so wunderbar’ is an ensemble in canon in which each, Rocco and Jaquino, Fidelio and Marzelline contemplate their situation and futures. Lesley Graham, as Marzelline, opens in a charmingly tremulous voice followed by Linden Loader as an appropriately youthful Leonore (Fidelio); then Rocco sung by Roger Wilson, for a moment in a tenorial register and, by no means least in the quartet, Richard Greager’s less important role of Jaquino. It was all serenely supported by Mark Dorrell at the piano.

Then Haydn. Die Harmonie in der Ehe at once lifted the spirit, not a moment’s feeling that here were a few things that have been justifiably overlooked over the last century (at least). First, the sparkling, refreshing piano part from Dorrell, and then the whole quartet singing as one, yet with the character of every voice clearly delineated. The sprightly fast quavers never slackened for a moment, and the light-hearted revelling in simple pleasures could not have been better expressed.

The next two took quite different courses: Die Warnung, a semi-serious warning, in a mock, martial vein, against dangers that can emerge from unexpected quarters; and Der Greis (The Old Man), conveying a contented melancholy, reflecting on fading strength and physical attributes, and welcoming the imminence of death, in slow, legato phases, with all four singing in heart-warming balance and lovely ensemble.

The Brahms quartets came from his Op 64, written in the year 1864. In the first song, An die Heimat, the piano at first commanded attention with a rising triadic chords in quaver triplets. The sound of Brahms is always unmistakable, though it is another thing to carry it off with such naturalness and affection. How well they four captured the spirit of rather simple and improbable contentment in the pleasures of home. In the middle, there were beautiful solo episodes from Richard Greager and Linden Loader.

In Der Abend, the piano laid out a ghostly fabric, a triple rhythm sounding the first two beats of the bar, leading briefly to a charming duet between Richard Greager and Roger Wilson, resonant and comfortable, allowing Schiller’s symbolic handling of the approach of welcome death to be conveyed as if they singers really believed it. It’s a rather common subject in German Romanic poetry.

Spirits rose in the final song, Fragen – Questions. It led off in lively triple time, 6/8 I suppose, and soon floated  up to some sort of ecstatic high with the piano contributing to the joyfulness of being in love.

The Meistersinger von Nürnberg quintet arises in the scene of Act III in which Sachs has been helping Walther to shape his Prize Song, also at hand are Eva who will be Walther’s ‘prize’, and Sachs’s apprentice David and his love Magdalene who is Eva’s nurse, or maid.

The coming together represents many facets of human goodness: love, generosity of spirit, self-sacrifice, selfless renunciation of futile hopes, the power of music to elevate behaviour which involves the principal theme of the opera: the reconciliation of tradition with creativity in art. We find all these embodied in Sachs’s own nature and behaviour.

I always find this music too short and so it was here; the use of piano was no handicap, in fact Dorrell’s performance  made if sound as if Wagner had written it primarily for the piano. Here, the fifth voice, David, was provided by current NZSM voice student, tenor William McElwee, making a good impression in the piece where even small parts are to be distinguished.  So there were splendid opportunities for all five to be heard, though it was the Sachs of Wilson, the Walther of Greager and the Eva of Graham who were in the main beams of light. It brought a delightful recital to an all too early end.