Author: Lindis Taylor

Expansion of review of Il Corsaro, published by London’s Opera magazine

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Il Corsaro (Verdi)

Production by the New Zealand School of Music, conducted by Kenneth Young and directed by Sara Brodie

Soloists, chorus and orchestra of the School of Music

The Opera House, Wellington

Friday 26 and Saturday 27 July 2013

This is a review of the New Zealand School of Music’s July production of Verdi’s Il Corsaro. Its core is my review for Opera magazine in London; it was printed in the December issue, and was posted on this website in mid December.  I decided to publish here what I had written, since it was a good deal more than the magazine was able to print, and have placed it chronologically about a fortnight after the performances. Frances Robinson’s review was published at the time on this website.

My colleague Nicholas Tarling, in Auckland, drew attention in the August issue [of Opera magazine] to the failure by Opera New Zealand to tackle a planned Billy Budd this year as New Zealand’s acknowledgement of the Britten centenary. Verdi was evidently not even on the horizon, since there’s enough exposure in ordinary seasons to the popular pieces.

But in Wellington, the auspices for 2013 pointed rather firmly to Verdi as the New Zealand School of Music’s biennial production (Britten had been honoured in 2011 with an enchanting production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and Wagner might have seemed a little beyond the school’s ordinary resources). The head of the school, Professor Elizabeth Hudson, earned her doctorate at Cornell University with a dissertation on Verdi and she was later asked to prepare the critical edition of Il Corsaro for the University of Chicago Press and Ricordi. This production was the happy fruit of that circumstance.

Unsurprisingly, this was the New Zealand premiere; I had thought it might also have been an Australasian premiere, but I later discovered, by accident, that the semi-professional Melbourne City Opera had staged it in 2006.

Apart from an interesting little essay in the programme booklet about the problems of settling on the best possible edited version of the piece, Elizabeth Hudson refrained from direct involvement in the production.

Instead of performing in one of the venues in the school of music itself, the production was brought down town into Wellington’s ‘other’ round-1900 era, Opera House which, both nights I attended, was comfortably filled, apart from the top gallery. (It’s slightly smaller than the 1500-seat St James Theatre where professional opera in Wellington is usually staged).

Il Corsaro is one of Verdi’s shorter operas – about one hour and forty minutes – and the scope of the roles looked manageable by capable students. Such was the talent on hand that the four main roles were double cast to spread the opportunities around. On successive nights (26 and 27 July) I saw both casts.

Stage director Sara Brodie did not resist the temptation to get Byron on stage in a mute role at the start and a couple of times later. Otherwise, there were no directorial liberties or indulgences. If at first glance the story in Byron’s poetic drama is pretty straight-forward, the stage reality uncovers a story of some originality. It overturns the common shibboleth that women are always the victims in opera: for Gulnara, Pasha Seid’s favourite in his harem, murders him in order to save the captured Corsair, Corrado, to whom she is attracted. And at the end she is the only one of the four principals left alive; something of a victory for feminism in the 19th century!

Though double cast, there was no question that the first was better than the second: on average, the levels of talent and accomplishment were balanced between the two casts. One of the two Corrados, Thomas Atkins, sang with a little more swagger and command than Oliver Sewell whose voice was perhaps a little more polished and lyrical.

Both Medoras easily conveyed a fragility and an archetypical romantic disposition towards suicide: Elizabeth Harris in cast No 1 was a little more natural in the role than Daniela-Rosa Cepeda, in the second; though the latter suggested a tenderness that was touching.

The Gulnara was really a no contest, given the extraordinary gifts, musical and histrionic assurance, of Isabella Moore who has already made an impact nationally in non-student performances and competitions. Her alternate, in Cast 2, Christina Orgias, presented a somewhat less determined and murderous disposition, which lent the confrontations with Pasha Seid less conviction.

The two Seids were more even, with the Frederick Jones of Cast No 2, exhibiting just a little more
authority in both voice and acting than Christian Thurston.

The choruses were among the best things. Though there were too few pirates in the opening chorus to
make an immediate impact on the audience, the later mixed choruses were more full-blooded and showed evidence of excellent coaching both musically and in stage movement; and their frequent mélées and the Act III battle demonstrated director Sara Brodie’s flair in crowd control and at least in the general choreographic aspects of the sword conflicts between pirates and guardians of the harem.

The musical management was in the hands of Kenneth Young, among the country’s leading resident conductors; the 55-piece orchestra may have been a shade less than professional, though there was much distinguished playing and the needs of the singers and of the drama itself were splendidly served.

 

Diverting and highly accomplished lunchtime guitar quartet concert at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Guitar Quartet (Owen Moriarty, Tim Watanabe, Christopher Hill, Jane Curry)

Music by Paulo Bellinati, Manuel de Falla, J S Bach, Almer Imamovich, Rimsky-Korsakov, Inti-Illimani

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 7 August, 12:15 pm

Whether it was quasi-musical competition from construction work outside, or a quick assessment of the likely tastes of the audience, there were changes to the programme. We did not hear Craig Utting’s Onslow College Suite. (Lyell Cresswell hasn’t so honoured my old secondary school).

Baião de Gude by Paulo Bellinati finds a surprising number of entries through Google, with numerous You-Tube performances. However, live performance is the thing; it began with the most beguiling, whispered sounds that seemed hardly possible from guitars, but it was the chorus of four guitars, I suspect, that removed the more obvious articulation sounds that usually accompany a single guitar. Though melody seemed unnecessary in the context of the impressionist washes of colour and graphic patterns, what hints of melody there were, were clearly secondary to the swift, rushing effects that most characterized the piece.

In place of the Utting piece were three pieces by de Falla, from El amor brujo: ‘Cancion del amor dolido’ (Song of suffering love), ‘Danza del terror’ (obvious) and ‘Danza ritual del Fuego’ (Ritual fire dance), offered a wonderful display of the finesse and virtuosity of the quartet, its precision and its exact positioning of rhythmic patterns.  Though the ensemble was always something to admire, the line of each guitar was always audible too. Each was skilfully arranged from the orchestral original, by Owen Moriarty, and they came across in the most idiomatic, authentic manner.

The arrangement of Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto was just as successful, again sounding as if Bach was writing for guitars; for there seems indeed to be a disposition in much of Bach’s music for performance on the guitar (not to mention on almost any instrument you’d like); although later in the first movement an alternating 2-note motif became a bit persistent.   Owen Moriarty here played his 7-stringed guitar, which allows an extension of a fourth (I think) below the guitar’s bottom E string; its contribution was often conspicuous, in providing richer bass sonority. The second movement (there really isn’t a middle movement) was excellently fast, its rhythms and dynamics undulating elegantly, and the expectation of closure beautifully cultivated in a diminuendo.

Almar Imamovich is a Bosnian friend of both Owen and Jane stemming from their days at the University of Southern California; he arranged Sarajevo Nights, originally for flute and guitar, specifically for and dedicated to the New Zealand Guitar Quartet. Very lively, complex rhythmically, it seemed to hold no terrors for the quartet which brought it to life, whether or not it concealed reflections on the terrible experiences of the 1990s, with obvious affection and total conviction.

It was probably no surprise that Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol proved such a success in this arrangement by W Kanengiser for guitar quartet. The 7-string guitar, here in Jane’s hands, looked after the important harp parts in this colourful and tuneful work, capturing the essence of Spain without sentimentality, or any sort of expressionist excess; their perfect ensemble was exposed for all to hear. The cadenzas that suggest the guitar, were of course particularly effective, especially in the fourth
movement, Scena e canto Gitano.  And the excitement of the end of the last movement that is generated in the orchestral original was palpable.

There was an encore, of a Tarantella by Chilean composer Inti-Illimani, transcribed by Christopher Hill, offering another fine display of fleet fingering, syncopated rhythms and a melodious central section.

This mix of arrangements of well-loved music and attractive contemporary pieces specially composed for guitar quartet makes a very satisfactory concert programme, and offers a fine opportunity to enjoy this highly accomplished, world-class ensemble, a matter that I trust New Zealand audiences understand.

 

Music and revolution take stage at Old St Paul’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Klezmer Rebs (David Moskovitz – lead vocals, trumpet; Heather Elder – violin; Sue Esterman – accordion, vocals; Jonathan Dunn – trombone, vocals; Rose OHara – piano, vocals; David Weinstein – guitar, mandolin, vocals; Rainer Thiel – bass)

Old St Paul’s

Tuesday 6 August, 12:15 pm

This hybrid group, roughly descended from the Yiddish culture of eastern European Jewry and early jazz band traditions broke the usual pattern of (relatively) sober classical lunchtime concerts at Old St Paul’s.

Their frequent style and subject matter, congruent with their name, is revolution, booze, sex and most things in between. For example there’s the title song of their latest CD, Anarchia Total, which could well become one of the most alarming projects under the most urgently needed revision of state security measures in the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill.

Lyrics and music for it were said to have been written by ‘Freedomfighters across the globe and Urs Signer’ (the group’s clarinetist who did not play this concert: I heard the word gaol in an obscure reference to his whereabouts). Anyway, I was offered the following background note to Anarchia Total: partially written in Schwyzerdütsch (Swiss German).

“Schwyzerdütsch? Even if you can’t speak it, the message is clear: For love and justice, against fascism and the police state. To the barricades everyone! Against racism and the patriarchy!  Reb Urs’s music and lyrics spread Spanish, Māori, English and Yiddish onto a Schwyzerdütsch substrate, cemented together with energetic, mad craziness.  There’s only one thing for us – Total Anarchy … Anarchia Total.”

It was a rousing performance which will doubtless swell the numbers at their training camps.

The quasi-military character of the squad was emphasized by the expropriation of elements of Royal New Zealand Navy uniform by the trumpeter/vocalist David Moskovitz, viz an officer’s hat. But to regain a military/civilian balance, there were other cultural insignia, such as the embroidered skull-cap worn by guitarist David Weinstein and the dresses worn by the women that might have suggested, variously, the hippie era or Bukovinian/Ruthenian peasant dress.

The music was in keeping: happy, irreverent, using a variety of boisterously played instruments. The trumpet and Sue Esterman’s accordion were always prominent, emphatic and feet-tapping. For several items Moskovitz took the trumpet from his lips and sang, in which pianist Rose O’Hara joined.

Guitarist Weinstein also played mandolin, which at times suggested the Greek bouzouki (to which I’m a bit addicted), as when they played the charmingly nostalgic, American-composed Flatbush Waltz. The violin of Heather Elder was rather masked during the first pieces but emerged later; I wondered whether it depended more on amplification than I would have expected.

Then there was Jonathan Dunn’s trombone which led the way into Yoshka, enjoining us: ‘Drinken Bronfen Nichten Vine’ (‘drinking whisky not wine’), an injunction supported in varying aspects by trumpet, mandolin, violin, good bass lines and some nice scooping on the accordion, with clapping in which some of the audience joined. Its character was Balkan, though to Yiddish words.

A departure from the usual Klezmer style, at least it seemed so to me, came with Moonlight, a song in Ladino (don’t confuse with the Romance language, Ladin, spoken in parts of north Italy: South Tyrol, Trentino and Belluno) the Spanish-derived language of the Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain under the benign reign of King Ferdinand at the end of the 15th century. With the arrival of a guest singer, Manny Garcia, and Rose O’Hara singing again, this attractive song began in Ladino but their linguistic talents were soon obvious, as I later recognized English.

Yet another example of the Jewish culture in the Latin world came with Gedenk, a tango from Argentina.

Rose sang a couple of further songs, some using pretty hand movements, Odessa Bulgar and Bublichki, before there was another urging to debauchery, a striking drinking song composed by Moskovitz and clarinetist Signer, Kumt, kumt, khaverim (Come, come friends).

Finally they checked whether there were Russian speakers in the audience; when no hands were raised, “That’s good; this is a filthy Russian song”; it was called Zvezda (Star) and when no translation was offered I had to assume that here was the compulsory hymn to sexual licentiousness. At least, the music was pretty risqué.

 

Contemplations of life and death from disparate times and nations

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Orchestra Wellington conducted by Marc Taddei

Beethoven: Leonore Overture No 2, Op 72
Mussorgsky: Songs and Dances of Death with Jonathan Lemalu – bass-baritone
John Psathas and Warren Maxwell (vocals and guitar): Pounamu, a ‘concerto’ for voice, guitars and orchestra

Wellington Town Hall

Sunday 28 July, 4pm

In 2008 Warren Maxwell, frontman of Little Bushman, collaborated with John Psathas and the Auckland Philharmonia in a concert entitled Little Bushman meet the APO; and in the following year, the NZSO also staged the Little Bushmen collaboration, again with Psathas, and on a film score, The Strength of Water.

Psathas approached Maxwell again suggesting the idea of a collaboration that would become Pounamu. It was performed with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra in May 2011 and later that year the contemporary music ensemble Stroma took it on in a reduction from the original score for full orchestra. The orchestral original has awaited a performance in Wellington and it found a place filling the second half of a concert by Orchestra Wellington.

It was understandable that not all of the orchestra’s usual audience showed up although it was by no means a poor house. Judging by the style of the acclamation from a significant section of the audience a good representation of the followers of Trinity Roots/Little Bushman was on hand.

What Wellington heard was an expansion of the original, heard in Auckland; a sixth part was composed for this revival. Maxwell described the work in his programme notes as well as in an engaging interview with Eva Radich on Radio New Zealand Concert’s Upbeat programme in the preceding week. In six sections, it contemplates shortcomings of our society, neglect of disadvantaged groups such as the homeless and unemployed, the elderly, those with hard-to-manage addictions and so on: those on the outskirts of the community (as he puts it).

In his unmistakable, hushed and breathy voice, often in an alto, falsetto register, accompanying himself on regular or bass guitar, he sang/delivered in sprechgesang, sometimes addressing us, sometimes third parties, sometimes the universe. In ‘Grandma’s Tears’ we heard a recording of thoughts and memories of his grandmother(?) in her 90s.

In light of the normal practice of reproducing the words in full, often in the original and in English of liturgical works and songs, it was a pity not to have printed at least the essentials of what he spoke (which was done with the four Songs and Dances of Death).

It was not entirely clear from either the notes or what he told Eva Radich, how much of the music was conceived by him and how much was originated by Psathas; or was Psathas’s contribution largely orchestration?

It was moving, poignant, capturing the nature of the  words and subject matter; just occasionally, and more, I thought, in the closing phase, it suggested a film score, a shade too elaborate and sophisticated, and expressing less sincerity as it did so. It was long – some 35 minutes – but did not outlast its interest, and the eventual impression was of a partnership between equals even though the idioms themselves – the symphonic and the Maori-tinted rock/popular worlds – might have been very far apart.

The other vocal work on the programme was astutely chosen, for it touched on certain of the same human concerns, four poems by a friend of Mussorgsky’s, one Golenishchev-Kutuzov. Mussorgsky, like Psathas/Maxwell, set them in music that often, at least in the first song, approached Sprechgesang, singing without apparent strict notation, though the voice seems to find telling pitches which I’m sure could be notated if one were disposed to try.

Though my first hearing of these songs was from an LP I bought at a sale in the 1950s, purely on exploratory impulse, sung by Jennie Tourel, with the Bernstein at the piano, which has remained a sort of bench-mark, there is no doubt that a dark bass-baritone delivers them with more immediacy and realism.

There could hardly have been a more powerfully sympathetic singer than Jonathan Lemalu, of these dark though not really despairing songs, for Death is depicted mainly as friend, offering peace in place of suffering. Lemalu’s Russian sounded as if he were singing in his first language and his entire demeanour and vocal quality expressed their sombre but richly musical quality with utter conviction.

And the orchestration by Shostakovich gave them wonderfully appropriate, almost too particular accompaniment, leaving little to the imagination. Under Taddei the orchestra did them vivid and detailed justice.

Finally, the first work on the programme was one of the four overtures that Beethoven wrote for the various incarnations of his troubled opera, Leonore/Fidelio.

Just to refresh memories, No 2 was probably the first written, and was the one played at the opera’s first production in 1805; No 3 was a modified version of it which was played at the revival in 1806; in the latter, the trumpet call was moved from near the end in No 2, to nearer the middle of the piece. No 1 was found among Beethoven’s papers after his death (and carries the posthumous opus number 138), perhaps intended for a performance in Prague that did not eventuate; possibly, judging by the abrupt ending, it was unfinished. The Fidelio Overture was written for the revised version of the opera produced in 1814, less than half the length of either Nos 2 or 3.

This was a spacious, stentorian performance, opening with huge dramatic chords, nothing like the relatively polite chords one can hear on some recordings; and later, Taddei created great, suspenseful pauses between arresting scene changes. The blazing, victorious trumpet leading to the finale made a marvellous impact, played from the back of the gallery by Chris Clark.

Though Taddei held tempi under effective tension throughout, all that changed in the last stretta bars in which the orchestra hurled themselves, chocks away, into the peroration that proclaimed Florestan’s rescue.

The orchestra’s adventurous programme was entirely vindicated.

 

Robert Costin’s rewarding organ exploration of the Goldberg Variations

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

TGIF recital at St Paul’s

Robert Costin (organ)

Bach’s Goldberg Variations – a selection

Friday 26 July, 12:45 pm

On one of his frequent return visits to New Zealand (he was assistant organist at St Paul’s in the mid 1990s), Robert Costin made time to play at one of the cathedral’s Friday lunchtime recitals that enjoy the title TGIF (Thank God it’s Friday is the full liturgical title).

He has created an organ adaptation of the Goldberg Variations, which he has recorded on the organ of Pembroke College, Cambridge. That is a small chapel organ of two manuals and pedal board; the 1708 organ has been considerably modified but the most recent work on it has restored it significantly. That recording, which I bought at the Friday recital, offers a much less exciting and colourful account, though admirably clear and no doubt closer to Bach’s aesthetic, than Costin was able to offer on the opulent if seriously hybrid organ in the present cathedral.

The lunchtime concerts are restricted to about 45 minutes; this was of scarcely a half hour’s duration, consisting of the Aria and fourteen of the thirty variations.

The unregenerate, such as this reviewer, finds great pleasure in the Cathedral organ and he thoroughly enjoyed this performance, and would have been happy to have been subjected to the entire work.

The great variety of ways in which Bach’s music can be treated, given some basic constraints, of an educated taste, is always a surprise. I found myself won over as the Aria began, projecting a very open and sophisticated statement. And the first variation followed suit in its sheer joyous optimism. There was something essentially of Bach in the adaptations even though there were obviously sounds that organs of his day could not have produced.

Variation 4 using pedals prominently created an even bolder and more colourful effect than could be obtained on either harpsichord or an organ of Bach’s time.  Certain variations such as No 13, using light stops and charming, delicate embellishments, lost nothing at all of such refinement.  No 16, in French ouverture style, offered a fine extrovert contrast that used power of the bigger stops to rousing effect.

Even though we heard fewer than half of the variations, Costin had chosen a very representative group; only a listener with the entire work in the memory might have regretted missing certain ones.

The charm of this performance lay in the enjoyment of the taste and skill of an organist who was clearly fully familiar with and in such full command of the instrument that he could have transformed music of much less intrinsic beauty and profundity into a totally rewarding experience.

You will find details of the CD on Costin’s website: www.robertcostin.com  or www.stonerecords.co.uk

 

Interesting interdisciplinary chamber music exploration led by violinist Jack Liebeck and friends

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Einstein’s Universe (Chamber Music New Zealand)

Jack Liebeck (violin) and Stephen De Pledge (piano) with Victoria Sayles (violin), Julia Joyce (viola) and Andrew Joyce (cello)

Beethoven: Violin Sonata in G, Op 30 no 3
Bloch: Three Nocturnes for piano trio (1924)
Brahms: Sonata movement (the FAE sonata) – Scherzo
Samuel Holloway: Matter
Brahms: Piano Quartet in C minor, Op 60

Wellington Town Hall

Tuesday 23 July, 8pm

This unusual conjunction of music and science derives from a meeting and consequent friendship between violinist Jack Liebeck and Professor Brian Foster, a distinguished physicist and fellow of the Royal Society.

Liebeck is interested in science and Foster in music (he is a capable amateur violinist) and their complementary interests led to their meeting in 2003; in 2005, the World Year of Physics, they dreamed up a concert-cum-lecture idea that involved the exploration of Einstein’s love of music and his performance gifts (violin and piano).

It caught on and Liebeck says it keeps being requested. With De Pledge, he did a tour of New Zealand in 2009. Strangely, though de Pledge gave a solo piano recital in the Town Hall, the pair played together only at Lower Hutt and Upper Hutt (I heard them at the Expressions Centre in Upper Hutt). And while Foster was also, apparently, in New Zealand in 2009, I am not aware that an Einstein concert performance was given here. Liebeck has also played with the Auckland Philharmonia.

The publicity surrounding this tour to ten centres, from Auckland to Invercargill, would suggest that Liebeck’s involvement with Einstein and science is a major element in his performing career. But I can see no mention of these in his website apart from his being Artistic Director of the Oxford May Music Festival, a festival of Music, Science and the Arts. On the other hand the website gives an illuminating picture of the range of music and places in which he plays. It suggests that it could be very rewarding to bring him back with one of the chamber ensembles that he works with or has created.

The major Einstein element was an hour-and-a-half illustrated talk before the concert by Professor Foster which, unfortunately, I could not get to. There Liebeck was on hand to play examples of the music that Einstein was thought to have loved and played: most importantly Bach and Mozart. The Einstein connection of the recital itself was rather more tenuous of course. We could be happy to accept Beethoven’s Op 30 No 3 as much loved by the physicist and it was a marvellous opening, displaying a finesse, subtlety in the infinite range of dynamics and articulations that both the players brought to it; an urgency combined with delicacy and restraint in the first movement, with delicious undulatings from the piano whisperings from the violin. The middle movement, the minuet, introduced a sombre tone, a charming waywardness that teased with a sense of being adrift.

The fact that members of the Royal Society of New Zealand had been given tickets meant the presence of many unfamiliar with chamber music – perhaps with classical music and its shape, generally; for applause broke out at the end of each movement. That was OK at the extrovert end of the first, but
the second ended in a spirit of ethereal breathlessness where I hoped for silence; we didn’t get that. Perhaps it’s a small price to pay for the possible awakening of a few unbelievers to The Way and The Truth.

Then came the Scherzo movement that Brahms contributed to a collaborative violin sonata written with Schumann and one of Schumann’s pupils, Albert Dietrich, in 1853. The 20-year-old young genius can clearly be heard. It blossomed at the hands of these two ultra-refined musicians who could bring so
much colour and timbral fascination to it: De Pledge produced sounds from the piano that even hinted at a glockenspiel.

A more direct link between the players and Einstein came with Bloch’s Three Nocturnes; he was President of the Ernest Bloch Society (Professor Foster is vice president of the Bloch Society). These pieces were played by De Pledge with Victoria Sayles on violin and Andrew Joyce on the cello, giving scrupulous attention to the markedly different character of each nocturne; the last was rather more boisterous than one might want when trying to sleep. I had not come across them before and they rather modified my earlier impression of Bloch’s musical character. They are so charming and, I imagine, so delightfully rewarding for the players that they deserve to be born in mind by piano trios looking for different repertoire.

Before the interval came the work commissioned by Chamber Music New Zealand from the current Mozart Fellow at Otago University, Samuel Holloway. It was a piano quartet, with Victoria Sayles taking her husband’s place on the violin, plus Julia and Andrew Joyce. Jack Liebeck acted as conductor through the music whose textures were so insubstantial and the rhythms hard to define.

It picked up the theme of the programme: Matter; taking seriously the task of finding a way of simulating in music the atomic particle structure of matter, through the use of what a decade or more ago would have been referred to rudely as ‘plinck-plonk’ music: such thoughts were dispelled very quickly. It’s largely atonal, widely spaced, staccato note sequences, mainly subdued in dynamics, with not much (any?) melodic invention. Yet the effect was strangely beguiling and even though not much happened in the sense of recognizable development or cyclical evolution, it created suspense that was so emotionally coherent that it was possible to gage intuitively how and when it would end, some time before it did. Though I do not actively pursue music of this character, I found it curiously engaging, partly as a result of the thoroughly studied, sensitive and engrossing performance.

After the interval we returned to standard repertoire. Brahms wrote three piano quartets; this was not the familiar and best-loved of them perhaps (that’s the G minor, Op 25), but written about 20 years later. (The core players returned: Liebeck and De Pledge, Julia and Andrew Joyce). The third quartet, also in a minor key, C minor, is more typically sombre and is not, till the gorgeous Andante third movement, furnished with the immediate melodic delights that the first quartet enjoys.

The Scherzo second movement doesn’t shift from the minor tonality even though its rhythm is energetic. The texture becomes symphonic, some might use the word dense, but the performance was always marked by the clean playing in an ideal acoustic. It’s the third movement that makes an unorthodox tonal shift from C minor to E major (not the relative major which would be E flat), so making the move to a sunnier landscape, with its quite rapturous melody, more dramatic. Brahms knew he had a ‘trouvaille’ and the players knew it too.

The last movement, in which musicologists have spotted borrowings and references of several kinds, returns to a degree of complexity which some might ascribe to a melodically barren moment.  Indeed, it gave Brahms a great deal of trouble, shown in one aspect in his reference to Goethe’s Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers). Because that reference seems to me quite pregnant, let me quote
a few lines from a website: www.youtube.com/watch?v=snJjPMdBZzY.

“A letter from Brahms, sent with the manuscript to Theodor Billroth includes the following enigmatic comment: ‘the quartet has communicated itself to me only in the strangest ways…For instance, the illustration to the last chapter of the man in the blue frock and yellow waistcoat.’ This refers, somewhat obliquely, to Goethe’s Werther, which Brahms admired. Meanwhile, he remained deeply dissatisfied with the work, and wrote to his publisher Fritz Simrock, ‘you may attach a picture on the title page, i.e.
a head with the pistol before it’.” Last month, in Germany, I picked up a copy of Werther which has always been seen as a key literary impulse of the Romantic movement. Inter alia, it has been blamed as the original driver of copy-cat suicides.

So there were several reasons for my listening with great interest to the music and its scrupulous and illuminating performance, and a delight in the entire concert.

 

 

 

 

Enterprising take on the year’s anniversaries with Wellington Chamber Orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Chamber Orchestra conducted by Michael Vinten

Overture: Oberto (Verdi)
Requiem on the anniversary of Verdi’s death (Puccini)
Plymouth Town – ballet music (Britten)
Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten  (Pärt)
Hommage à Wagner: Liszt’s Venice: music for Wagner’s death (arranged by Michael Vinten)
Symphony in C (Wagner)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 7 July, 2.30pm

2013 is the two hundredth anniversary of the births of Verdi and Wagner and the centenary of Britten’s. Here was an ingenious concert that included pieces from the early years of each composer as well as music written to mark the deaths of the three.

Some were fairly obvious, others obscure and interesting, if not great works.

Those in the habit of listening to Radio New Zealand Concert after midnight will have become familiar with a disc of Verdi overtures which I’m sure I’ve heard half a dozen times over the years. (Much less interesting is their attachment to overtures by Marschner). The all-night programme seems to be drawn to certain discs and I have always enjoyed this one.

Oberto was the first opera that Verdi completed and was performed, at La Scala indeed! It reveals Verdi as a bold melodist and orchestrator, in the style of the day which was heavily influenced by Bellini. It’s interesting as demonstrating the accepted and expected approach of the day that made no virtue of ‘originality’ but merely sought to display talent in finding memorable, dramatic music that fitted the story and maintained the attention of those paying for their seats: today that’s considered tawdry commercialism in some quarters.

It was a fine way to start, as there was little that a sub-professional orchestra could not play adequately. Gusto and good sense compensated for some rough edges and the usual problem of modulating the volume of brass instruments.

I had never come across the little Requiem that Puccini wrote in 1905 to mark the fourth anniversary of Verdi’s death. It was a bit hard to discern the composer of Madama Butterfly of just the year before. It was composed for choir, solo viola and organ but this was an arrangement for orchestra. It was thoughtfully played but didn’t leave much of a mark. I’ve listened to You-Tube performances, both employing a choir, which I confess I found a little more engaging that the orchestral version.

More interesting was a very early work by Britten, a ballet score entitled Plymouth Town, the story hinting a similar topic in Bernstein’s ballet Fancy Free and the musical, On the Town, though the scenario involved a bit of violence in the middle that Britten handled with a mixture of inventiveness and inexperience. Largely based on the evolution of the sea-shanty A-roving, the first few minutes, working well with cellos and bassoon did not strike me as offering music that cried out to be danced, but it became more ballabile in the course of its 20 minutes duration. There were later passages that offered flute, clarinet and timpani some attention, and there were well controlled pianissimo string and woodwind passages marking a restoration of peace.  Given that Britten was writing for the stage, where other senses could be engaged, it was hardly surprising that the music alone seemed a bit long.

Then came the piece that had opened the NZSO concert two days before: Arvo Pärt’s moving Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten. Tubular bells were unobtainable and the part was played at the piano; the piano, played to produce the purest sonority sounded most appropriate.  Of course, the performance lacked a little of the sense of breathless grief that can be achieved, but the final note of the ‘tubular bell’ lingered longer in the air than seemed possible.

After the interval Wagner had the floor. It began with Vinten’s quite Wagnerian-sounding orchestration/precis (shall we say) of a couple of Liszt’s late piano pieces prompted by Wagner’s death in 1883. One was entitled Hommage à Wagner and the other, Am Grabe Richard Wagners, which Liszt had partly orchestrated. There were hints of Götterdämmerung and Parsifal; not a bad experiment in musical manipulation, and well played by the orchestra.

Finally, the most impressive work on the programme, Wagner’s symphony, written aged 19 and played in Leipzig to an encouraging reception. As the programme notes pointed out, its models were Beethoven and Weber (interestingly, Weber’s two early symphonies, both also in C major, were written when he too was 19 and 20).  Though ten years before Schumann’s symphonic ventures, it seemed to me that he and Wagner had both been similarly influenced by Weber, particularly in the scherzo, third movement. Furthermore, Wagner’s symphony was performed in Leipzig where Schumann lived in 1832, studying with Friedrich Wieck; did he hear Wagner’s work?

It’s a most impressive early work that deserves occasional outings with major orchestras, and the Wellington Chamber Orchestra made a very creditable fist of it, as they did with most of this very interesting programme.

Magnificent Nordic programme from NZSO, Vänskä and Currie

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vänskä with Colin Currie (percussion soloist)

Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten (Pärt)
Percussion Concerto ‘Sieidi’ (Kalevi Aho)
Symphony No 5, Op 50 (Nielsen)

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 5 July, 6.30pm

Osmo Vänskä’s name first came to my notice as conductor of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra in a series of Sibelius symphonies that returned to the composer’s original versions. Even though the consensus was generally that Sibelius’s further thoughts were best, there were interesting revelations; in any case, the performances were acknowledged as powerful and highly motivated.

Though in his conversation with Eva Radich on Radio New Zealand Concert’s Upbeat, Vänskä hinted at the way he has been rather confined to the Nordic repertoire, it was no bad thing for us to experience this splendid programme; just a shame that Wellington audiences seem to be overlooking the meaning of the increasingly empty boast of being the Cultural Capital: there were far too many empty seats.

Wellington heard the first of the four performances of this wonderful concert (the orchestra goes on to Christchurch, Hamilton and Auckland), and it proved to be a landmark, both for the astonishing percussion concerto by Kalevi Aho and the electrifying performance of Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony. Many of us consider Nielsen to be a symphonist in almost the same class as Sibelius, and this Finnish conductor clearly believed in the music’s stature and importance.

While Nielsen avoided referring to a ‘programme’ behind this symphony, it is generally felt that the horrors of the First World War – it was written between 1920 and 1922 – are the unspoken sub-text. Robert Layton, for example, remarks of the end of the first movement that the conflict eventually subsides leaving “a desolate clarinet mourning the terrible cost of the triumph [surely a most unfortunate word to apply to any aspect of the war, especially the Versailles treaty, pregnant with the seeds of another war]”; and an “evocation of the terrible conflict from which Europe had just emerged”.

Violence is audible in many parts, particularly in the role of the insistent automatic-weapon-like rattle of the snare drum in the first movement.

Though it is cast in two movements, each divided into several sections, a strong unity of musical subject matter binds the whole so that the audience is gripped for its entire 35 minutes or so. The symphony emerges as a very distinctive and memorable work in almost any hands, but there was a powerful, arresting atmosphere here, from the very start, with the music seeming to emerge from nowhere as violas rock across a minor third; it announced Vänskä’s intimate understanding and command.

Familiarity with the work creates a tense feeling of anticipation, awaiting the entry of the terrifying snare drum, played by Lenny Sakofsky.  Even though the drum was placed in the middle of the orchestra (where I couldn’t see it) rather than in a soloist’s position at the front, its arrival and its growing, almost overwhelming, force came as something of a shock which mere familiarity with recorded versions cannot quite prepare you for. That staccato attack is not confined to the drum however, and the driving staccato characterizes all other sections of the orchestra.

And it’s not till the last few pages that a sunny rising motif arrives to lead to the beautiful, perhaps more characteristic sound of the lyrical Nielsen with which the second part, Adagio non troppo, begins. If the tempo marking might suggest less of the drama and dynamism of the first movement, that was not the way it happened; though the conflict of the first movement was resolved, there was no loss of momentum or intensity and it proved an entirely convincing sequel.

We’d been prepared for the character of Vänskä’s performance by the two works in the first half: scrupulous, detailed attention to dynamics and to the balance between individual instruments and orchestral sections, but above all, enormous energy and rhythmic impulse.

The concert opened with Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten. It’s a piece that I have long promoted to family and friends who might need persuading of the existence of classical music that is irresistible: simple, spiritual and profoundly moving.  However, while I am usually most reluctant to parade comparative remarks about performances, I was unable to ignore the sounds of the recording by the Bergen Philharmonic under Neemi Järvi that is engraved in my head. This playing rather lacked the same clarity and deep spirituality. But its place as a prelude to the massive works to follow was intelligent and should awaken those hearing it for the first time to music other than Fratres and Spiegel im Spiegel by this singular Estonian composer.

The percussion concerto, Sieidi, by Kalevi Aho was jointly commissioned by the London Philharmonic and Gothenburg Symphony orchestras and the Luostoclassic Festival which, the programme notes did not tell you, is in Finnish Lapland (An amazing place; look at: www.bachtrack.com/about/luostoclassic‎).

It might be tempting to denigrate Kalevi Aho’s work as largely a virtuosic showcase for Currie, and to wonder about its musical substance; would it prove to be slight if the huge score were to be reduced to a solo piano version? But that is the equivalent of analyzing the artistic value of a painting by turning it into naked black and white.

While there were moments early on when such thoughts cropped up, admiration and persuasion soon supervened. As well as being mesmerized by Currie’s astonishing prowess, the orchestral episodes that offered the equivalent of the Promenade in Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, allowing Currie to move comfortably from one instrument or set to the next, were opportunities for lyrical, reflective and often simply beautiful music. Even as the soloist was in full flight, the orchestral composer was very conspicuous, in complementary developments that were exquisitely attuned to the character of the particular solo percussion passages.

The music evolved, metamorphosed, maintaining the listener’s attention through its varying moods and along its diverting paths. There is of course, no problem with the concerto’s form, formal anarchy has reigned in all styles of music for at least a century. It’s not divided into the traditional three or four movements, and the musical ideas are not handled in traditional ways: sonata form, rondo, or the theme and variations form, though that could be a way of considering it, where motifs are treated successively by each of the percussion instruments or groups of instruments, as well as the orchestra itself.

There were novelties among Currie’s battery of instruments: African hand-drums, and a five-octave marimba, which I had not seen before, and vibraphone. Three other orchestral percussionists participate, their positions prescribed by the composer – in the middle of the orchestra and on either side. The orchestral percussion makes its impact from the very start, as the hand-hit djembe is accompanied by quite stunning timpani and bass drum.

The deliberate visual effect is intended to reflect the shape of the music as attention on soloist Colin Currie moves from right to left and, after reaching the giant tam-tam on the left, begins a return in the other direction with the music generally exploring sounds that sounded distinct from those heard on the up-journey.

It is an extended work and makes huge demands of the entire orchestra, particularly the percussionists. I would be surprised if this performance could be heard as inferior to the premiere performance by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Vänskä. In fact, his agreeing to come to conduct the NZSO in the piece speaks volumes about the orchestra’s international reputation. Obviously, Vänskä would have agreed to conduct this massive programme only in the confident knowledge of the NZSO’s capacities.

While it might be tempting to offer a reserved view about its musical value, I did not share some opinions that it was a bit too long; in spite of the burden of being heard as a virtuosic exercise, there is real music here, of colour, spectacle, huge variety and sustained power; and I was in no hurry for it to end. All of this could hardly have been more vividly, brilliantly brought to life than from the hands of Currie, Vänskä and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

 

NZSO performs Hear and Far, but all contemporary, to warm reception

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the Orpheus Choir conducted by Tecwyn Evans.
Soloists: Jenny Wollerman, Richard Greager, Paul Whelan

John Adams: Harmonielehre;
John Psathas: Orpheus in Rarohenga

Wellington Town Hall

Friday 10 May, 6.30pm

[A review by a colleague did not materialize and this is based on my review that appeared in the Listener of 16 May. It could not be courteously published until that issue of the Listener had gone off sale. It is here somewhat changed and expanded]

Not long ago a concert of music written in recent decades, especially by a New Zealand composer, would probably have attracted a smallish audience. But things are changing.

The comfortably filled Town Hall at this concert of two pieces of music of the past 30 years was a moderate surprise.
Perhaps it’s a pointer to two linked phenomena: as in most other artistic spheres, more composers today realize that an attractive, accessible and well-made product is the only likely path to success; and it is to be observed that audiences respond accordingly.

(In this context I am bemused at the habit of publicizing a new piece of music by describing it as the ‘world premiere’, suggesting that concert promoters from Helsinki to Buenos Aires will be clamouring for performance rights. A more persuasive statement would be ‘second (or tenth) performance’).

Those elementary facts needed to be explained to neither of this evening’s composers.

John Adams’s Harmonielehre is written in open rejection of Schoenberg’s 12-tone system, yet he pays his respects to the great if misguided composer by using the title of his famous treatise urging that ages-old tonality, which evolved organically from ancient times, be replaced by an invented system.

Adam’s piece is a brilliant example of often maligned American style, of ‘minimalism’. It is music of energy, pulsing momentum, colour, yet with a dramatic shape that galvanised the audience for 40 minutes.   It starts with a throbbing outburst from brass and timpani; then marimba, xylophone, and the rest of the orchestra that includes two harps, two tubas, piano; electrical and mesmerizing, it accelerates, mutates rhythmically and generally maintains its hold on the audience.

Under Tecwyn Evans there was far more excitement than in the recorded versions I’ve heard (maybe that’s just the difference between live and recorded music). The middle of the first movement calms to a beautiful, if filmic lyricism, but recovers its opening motoric obsessiveness to the end. The middle movement, The Amfortas Wound, recalling Parsifal, relates to the creative block that Adams had experienced before writing this; more strings-led, a sort of neutral, trapped emotional state dominates. Part III resumes the throbbing rhythms but with light and calm, in tones that hint of Martinu or Nielsen; pulsating excitement returned, bringing boisterous applause.

I was intrigued to find recordings of the work on You-Tube were illustrated by abstract expressionist paintings by the likes of Rothko and Barnett Newman which, though minimal enough, hardly suggest the strong pulse that drives the music.

John Psathas’s oratorio Orpheus in Rarohenga seemed to yearn to be opera: I looked for visuals.

Accordingly, I also looked for surtitles for not all singers managed to produce the words with clarity. The programme booklet for the 2002 premiere performance, which had celebrated the Orpheus Choir’s 50th anniversary, printed the full libretto; but the notes here gave only a very generalized account of the story. Apart from the wonderful contributions of Richard Greager (Cook) and Paul Whelan (Orpheus), the words were largely inaccessible.  However, Mark Dorrell had trained the choir to sing with ardour and energy as well as clarity and precision, with very few flaws. Jenny Wollerman, singing the cross-cultural role of Venus (Cook’s observation of the Transit at Tahiti was another bit of the jig-saw; but we missed Mercury, whose transit Cook observed at The Coromandel Peninsula), was beautifully musical.

The text was by Auckland poet Robert Sullivan. It was often poetic and vivid, though it handled the widely spaced episodes without really creating a sense of time passing, from the first sighting New Zealand in 1769 to Cook’s death in Hawaii ten years later.

In a review for The Dominion Post in 2002 I wrote that I was not sure about the success of this combining Greek legend in a rather far-fetched association with Cook’s contact with Maori and the Hawaiians. For I could not avoid the feeling that Orpheus (whether god and choir) had been strong-armed into some sort of accord with Maori deities and an exploratory expedition some thousand years later.

I remain uncertain

The music however is powerful, exhibiting all Psathas’s orchestral virtuosity, melodic and rhythmic inventiveness; Evans led the large orchestra, organ, choir and soloists through this tough work with impressive finesse, accuracy and huge energy. There was spirited ovation.

 

ANZAC affords occasion for an arresting New Zealand and a moving Australian work from NZSO

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

On ANZAC Eve

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Tecwyn Evans with baritone James Eggelstone and narrator Peter Elliott

Reading from letter from Private Roy Denning, WWI; Ross Edwards: Symphony No 1, Da pacem Domine
Reading from John A Lee’s ‘Civilian into Soldier’; Christopher Blake: Till Human Voices Wake Us
Elgar: Enigma Variations 

Michael Fowler Centre

Wednesday 24 April, 6.30pm

Musical recognition of ANZAC Day (apart from ritualised hymns) has not been a common thing, as far as I can remember. And looking back over the record of reviews in Middle C, I can find no significant concerts, at least since 2008, that attempted to mark the day. The last with any sort of connection was a small chamber music concert that accompanied an exhibition of Gallipoli paintings by artist Bob Kerr, at Pataka Museum in Porirua in 2010; they in turn were inspired by Kerr’s coming across a diary of soldier at Gallipoli, in the Turnbull Library; in addition the words of a Turkish soldier offered what has become a common way of expressing today’s attitude to war: the soldiers of neither side as other than tragic victims of mindless rulers.

Thus it struck me that, if the first two works were by a New Zealander and an Australian, the second half might interestingly have included a piece by a contemporary Turkish composer.

Instead Elgar’s Enigma Variations ended the concert. It was hard to perceive the relevance of a piece written fifteen years before Gallipoli in a country whose leaders were among those who might have stopped the mad slide into the war itself and were responsible for the monumental blunder of the ill-planned and wretchedly equipped landing on Turkish soil in 1915. 

The variations include moments of sadness and some kind of mourning, but so do scores of compositions by composers in every country, though before the 20th century, war was more glorified than deplored.

But that aside, this was a very human, sympathetic performance that seemed to focus on feelings of affection, sometimes wry, sometimes amused, sometimes simply expressing the depth of Elgar’s feeling for his friends, his wife, and perhaps a former, even unforgotten, love.

My earliest memory of Elgar was hearing this work, in the fifth form, on 78s, played by our music master; I particularly remembered his saying that Elgar was one of the greatest orchestrators. Whenever I hear the Enigma it is still the facility with a symphony orchestra, of a largely self-taught composer that strikes me. And conductor Tecwyn Evans exploited the NZSO’s riches of opulent string choruses, scintillating woodwind passages, the dynamic, argumentative timpani in Troyte, the trembling grandeur of the brass in Nimrod and the delicious woodwind and viola solo that describes Dorabella.  

Evans left the audience in no doubt that this remains a masterpiece and that the orchestra has more than enough resources to demonstrate all its colour and emotion.

We are assured that Christopher Blake’s Till Human Voices Wake Us had been scheduled before his appointment as the orchestra’s chief executive. Whatever, it was a very appropriate choice for the occasion, though the title has little enough to do with the tragedy of war apart from its use as the title of Ian Hamilton’s book of the same name about the treatment of a pacifist during World War II.

But it’s the last line of TS Eliot’s early poem, The Love-song of J Alfred Prufrock, a poem full of phrases that have entered the language almost invisibly and, judging by the absence of reference to its source in the programme note, unknown to the programme writer. (“Let us go then, you and I, /When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a patient etherised upon a table”, “In the room the women come and go/Talking of Michelangelo”, “Is it perfume from a dress/That makes me so digress?”, “Should I say, ‘ That is not what I meant at all/That is not ir at all’”,  “I grow old … I grow old … /I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled”, and the last lines: “We have lingered in the chambers of the sea … /Till human voices wake us and we drown”.)

The piece was commissioned for broadcast by the NZSO on New Zealand Music Day in 1986; Blake linked it too to the International Year for Peace, and used an invocation derived from Philippians 4:7, in both French and English to connect with the recent Rainbow Warrior bombing by the French secret service.

Thus there are extra-musical meanings, which can easily get in the way of the music and its impact on the listener; but it does not. Though I don’t recall hearing it when originally broadcast in 1986, I have the seminal 1995 double-CD on the Continuum label (NZSO under Kenneth Young, with Christopher Doig singing the words of the Blake piece; so this present performance was offered in Doig’s memory) containing a number of significant New Zealand orchestral works; I have always felt that Blake’s piece was one of the most arresting and important works on that compilation.

The performance was introduced again with a reading by Peter Elliott of an extract from Archibald Baxter’s memoir of his terrible treatment as a conscientious objector in the first World War. The work itself contains settings of two Dreams from Baxter’s book, sung by Australian tenor James Egglestone; he sang all three texts with conviction. For me, it was the orchestra that spoke with greatest power and meaning, in scoring that was epochal; sudden explosions from brass and timpani, then trumpets crying out in martial fifths. He scoring, though relatively light on percussion apart from conspicuous timpani and later, an insistent side drum, might sound fairly dense in places by today’s standards.

But regardless whether one can find evidence of Prufrock or of musical connotations of the title, this was a highly persuasive performance of a well-crafted work that could well have come from a respectable central European composer of the past few decades.

Finally, Ross Edwards’ Symphony, subtitled Da Pacem Domine. Edwards is one of Australia’s most approachable composers; many will be familiar with his hauntingly beautiful violin concerto, Maninyas, recorded by the Sydney Symphony under Stuart Challender; it appears on the same ABC Classics CD as this symphony, there conducted by David Porcelijn after Challender, its dedicatee, had died.

It’s a disc I got in Sydney in the mid 1990s and treasure.

Not far into the elegiac symphony one is strongly reminded of Gorecki’s Third Symphony; again, it is scrupulously, delicately scored, the evocative monothematic substance endlessly repeated in subtly, ever-changing forms, with occasional full-blooded tuttis, moments of sunlight breaking through pervading darkness and clouds. .

Edwards is quoted in the CD booklet, describing his work as “a massive orchestral chant of quiet intensity into which my subjective feelings of grief and foreboding about some of the great threats to humanity: war, pestilence and environmental devastation, have been subsumed into the broader context of the ritual”.

It is refreshing to hear music that has its origin in important issues, which transmutes the matter into artistic forms that are moving and beautiful rather than portraying the topic in a determinedly brutal, literal way.

It is likely that Edwards had heard the Gorecki symphony when he composed his work, and that its patterns lingered in his head as they did with almost all who heard it after it hit the charts in Dawn Upshaw’s momentous recording in 1993. For me, that vitiates it as little as does the kinship between Brahms’s first symphony and Beethoven’s ninth.

I found it powerful and moving and it prompted me to delve into my quite big collection of recordings of Australian music which I have always felt deserves much more attention in New Zealand for perfectly objective reasons.

So, though another hearing of the Enigma is never likely to be a problem, the other two works in the programme held my attention and moved me far more.