Author: Lindis Taylor

Bach Choir brings its 2012 to a splendid conclusion with Vivaldi, Handel and a trumpet

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Bach Choir conducted by Stephen Rowley with soloists Rebekah Giesbere, Ruth Armishaw, Hannah Catrin Jones, John Beaglehole and Rory Sweeney
Janet Gibbs – organ

Beatus Vir, RV 597 (Vivaldi)
Trumpet Concerto in E flat (Neruda) with Mark Carter – trumpet
Dixit Dominus (Handel)

St Peter’s Church, Willis Street

Sunday 25 November, 4pm

The Bach Choir is one of Wellington’s more distinguished choirs, founded in 1968 by the late Anthony Jennings, a notable harpsichordist and one of New Zealand’s leaders  in the revival of interest in the authentic performance of baroque and early music.

Though the choir’s fortunes have fluctuated over the years, it has experienced a steady improvement in performance standards and confidence under Stephen Rowley.

Vivaldi’s transition from a minor, one-piece composer (The Four Seasons) who was generally absent from the ranks of significant composers (look at any book of music history from before the second world war, even 1950), to a major eminence alongside Bach and Handel has been interesting. His surviving operas have been the most recent discoveries. It was probably Vivaldi’s melodic fecundity and resultant absence of the need to elaborate endlessly one or two hard-won tunes, that caused earlier generations to deprecate and dismiss him.

I had not heard this Beatus Vir before; the earlier of his two surviving settings.  A famous Beatus Vir was one of the first pieces of early Baroque music I ever heard, in my teens – the setting by Monteverdi. And I seemed to hear echoes of it in Vivaldi’s version of a century later.  Vivaldi sets the text (Psalm 111) taking care to reflect meanings, almost of every word, and the use of individual singers, soprano and alto (Rebekah Giesbers and Hannah Catrin Jones) at first and then tenor John Beaglehole, lent the rather severe imprecation of the Psalm brightness and delight.

One of the departures from the strict liturgical character is the repetition of the opening line, imposing a musical rather than an ecclesiastical character on the work, The polish of the orchestral accompaniment from the Chiesa Ensemble comprising NZSO players, lend the whole enterprise a professionalism which the choir readily took upon itself; oboes contributed elegantly in accompanying women’s solos and duets; and Janet Gibbs, largely unobtrusive, emerged occasionally as the principal accompaniment.

But the most striking feature of the performance was that sheer melodic ease that both choir and orchestra handled with such endless accomplishment.

A trumpet concerto completed the first half of the concert: a rarity by a Czech composer, Johann Baptist Neruda, born a generation after Vivaldi, Bach and Handel, proved rather more than a routine baroque concerto. The soloist, Mark Carter, made no concessions to baroque practice, playing a modern, valved instrument; though, probably in accord with the practice of the time, he also directed the orchestra, waving his trumpet about gracefully.  Trumpet and orchestra bloomed in the fine acoustic of the church, allowing the easy legato of the Largo movement to expand, and taking the last movement, marked Vivace, at a pace that was rather slower than that. Though the first movement offered bravura opportunities, it was in the cadenza towards the end that Carter’s fluency finally showed itself. The endless emerging of music by forgotten composers and of lost works by better-known ones, serves to blur age-old judgements about the received masterpieces of the handful of ‘famous’ composers who have dominated music history for several centuries.

Confirmation that such things as masterpieces can still be acknowledged came with Handel’s Dixit Dominus, which occupied the second half. This remains undisputedly a prodigious creation by the 22-year-old composer from his Italian years. Written in Rome while the famous Papal ban on opera was in effect, all of Handel’s dramatic gifts are heard in the Dixit Dominus (Psalm 109); it is marked by one of the most dramatic openings, at least of the baroque period.
It was an arresting start signalling the great opera composer who was to emerge as soon as he reached a more congenial climate – Florence.

The three soloists who had shared the Vivaldi were now joined by soprano Ruth Armishaw  and baritone Rory Sweeney, for a  variety of episodes; alto Rebekah Giesbers enjoyed a striking episode with cello obbligato in the ‘Virgam virtutis’; the fast chorus ‘Tu es sacerdos’ went very well, though sopranos sounded a bit stretched as they negotiated the high passages; when all soloists sang together with chorus, as in (vi), ‘Dominus a dextris tuis’, the similarity of timbre between tenor and nominal bass, Rory Sweeney, somewhat reduced the variety that is a significant aspect of Handel’s composition; but this taxing episode for all soloists against throbbing bass strings they carried off splendidly.

‘Judicabit in nationibus’, in which Handel displays his fugal skills, was probably more tricky that it appeared; it’s little wonder, listening to this, particularly the exciting, staccato passage from ‘Conquassabit…’, that he had so quickly made a big impression in the Roman musical world. The two sopranos promptly changed the tone in ‘De torrente’ capturing beautifully the lamenting character of the verse. The soloists’ diction was generally excellent, while that of the choir was uniformly clear, even though they were probably tiring in the pulsating, motoric rhythm of the Gloria that becomes an extended fugue as it moves to its exultant conclusion.

Though both the works of the first half of the concert are very fine, and so well performed as to display their best qualities, this early Handel masterpiece was a splendid way to end the Bach Choir’s year.

 

The Tudor Consort in taxing but excellent concert from the Renaissance and Messiaen

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The Tudor Consort conducted by Michael Stewart

Renaissance Influences V – Springtime

Music by Claude Le Jeune, Claudin Sermisy and Olivier Messiaen

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Saturday 24 November, 7.30pm

The last of the series of concerts from The Tudor Consort that sought connections between music of the Renaissance and the present gave rise to the most recondite relationship with links that drew together the medieval story of Tristram and Iseult (as it is in Matthew Arnold’s narrative poem), and a little known work of Messiaen, Cinq rechants (‘five refrains’) for 12 unaccompanied singers.

The Cinq rechants form the third part of a strange trilogy that Messiaen composed after world war 2. The first is an hour-and-a-half-long set of poems called Harawi for soprano and piano; the second part is the Turangalîla Symphony, and Cinq rechants is the third. They are all inspired by/derived from the Tristan and Isolde story.

Its most authentic early form of the Tristan story is found in the German poem by Gottfried von Strassburg of around 1200. It was included by Malory in his Le Morte d’Arthur (though it is not, of course, strictly part of the Arthurian legends) in the 15th century and hence is found in Tennyson’s version of Malory’s poem, in his Idylls of the King.

It would be hard to identify any musical connection between the legend and Messiaen’s composition, though there are verbal references to Brangaine and Yseult in the first of the five poems which Messiaen wrote, partly in a made-up language devised for onomatopoeic reasons.

What then is the connection with the 16th century French Calvinist composer, Claude Le Jeune? The Tristan story and Le Jeune’s Spring theme were linked through Messiaen.   Le Jeune wrote 33 ‘airs’ and six more extended chansons, with the title Le Printemps. We heard five of the latter: ‘Revecy venir du Printems [Printans]’, ‘Voicy du gay Printems’, ‘Chant de l’Allouette’, ‘O Rose reyne des fleurs’, ‘Le Chant du Rossignol’.

Messiaen knew them and was influenced by Le Jeune’s technique of somewhat rigidly echoing stressed syllables in the text with long notes in the music. While this offers sensitive treatment of the meaning of the Old French (of benefit to very few of the audience I imagine), it made rhythms irregular; combined with a melodic penchant that paid more attention to meaning than to lyrical beauty, the results were interesting rather than beguiling.

Thus their performance was not an easy task and the choir displayed singular accomplishment in making them so musical, especially those singers who occasionally took passages by themselves.

The choir also sang a chanson, ‘Au joli bois’ by Claudin Sermisy, who was thirty years Le Jeune’s senior. It was in a much more familiar polyphonic style, Italianate perhaps; the wood might have been beautiful but the singer was grief-striken, not that the spirit of the music or the singing gave that away.

Then, before the interval came the five Messiaen songs. The first began in deceptive calm from women’s voices while the men disturb it, singing pseudo-Hindi words. They continue making use of linguistic, poetic devices that have, for Messiaen, musical equivalences that vary in their effects as the listener grasps or fails to grasp what he is seeking. There is nothing simple in the music; one was often overwhelmed by the virtuosity exhibited by the choir, and wondered that so few hints of imperfection appeared.

For all the difficulties presented for the singers and the listeners, earlier and later hearings, even if only of bits of the cycle such as are found on You-Tube, begin to cohere musically, and encourage one to explore more of the less-known works of this extraordinary composer.

The Tudor Consort continues to offer Wellington wonderful opportunities to enlarge and deepen (if such a flawed metaphor is allowed) our musical horizons.

 

 

Superb English Trio performs in context of Pettman/ROSL Arts

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The Leonore Piano Trio (Benjamin Nabarro – violin, Gemma Rosefield – cello, Tim Horton – piano)
Piano trios: Haydn’s in C, Hob XV:27; Ravel’s in A minor; Dvořák’s in F minor, Op 65
(Royal Over-Seas League, in support of Sistema Aotearoa)

Legislative Council Chamber, Parliament

Friday 23 November, 7pm

The members of this fine English trio were here as part of the panel judging entires for the Pettman/Royal Over-seas League scholarship.

They have made time to perform in several centres around New Zealand and this was the first of three concerts in the Wellington Region – the others are at Waikanae and Greytown. Several of them have been devoted to musical charities. This one at Parliament, hosted by the Minister for the Arts, Christopher Finlayson, was dedicated to Sistema Aotearoa, the Venezuela-originated scheme that gets children from disadvantaged areas into performing classical orchestral music. It has made a remarkable beginning in South Auckland and is being taken up elsewhere.

The trio gave a full and substantial programme, in performances that set them at once among the finest chamber music ensembles to have visited New Zealand for some time. The Haydn trio in C, Hob. XV:27, is among his last chamber pieces, written in 1797. It is a very fine work and these players treated it as, and made us believe that it was, a masterpiece. Its opening chords were electrifying, and it continued in a way that could well have suggested that its composer was Beethoven, such was its emotional range and intellectual stature. Perhaps there were some present who felt the playing was out of character with Haydn’s real creative nature, though I heard no such remarks; it did indeed invest the music with qualities that are to be found more in the music of decades later.

The impact of the playing was enhanced by the brilliant yet warm acoustic of the Legislative Council Chamber. It was the second concert there in the space of a week: on the previous Friday, the National Youth Choir had sung in the chamber (sadly, nowhere else in the region) to widespread admiration.

Ravel’s piano trio followed. In the Haydn, it was the piano and violin that made the greatest impact; my position probably diminished the sound of the cello. But here, after all instruments had become equal during the Romantic period, the cello was prominent for the beginning. But the cello’s individuality was only one of many characteristics that made the performance remarkable, Though the players never took inauthentic liberties, there was an engaging hint of hesitancy as they began, soon overtaken, dramatically, by a total assurance, vivid in the delineation of the quick changing moods: one moment intense, the next rhapsodic.

Ravel calls for sounds that are unfamiliar in music before his time; the scherzo-like second movement, inspired by the Pantoum poetic form of the Malay people (which we’d heard a day or so before in Debussy’s Five Baudelaire song settings) was both exotic and complementary to the character of the first movement, and those qualities were produced vividly by the players.

In the third movement, with its ancient title Passacaille (Passacaglia), the players took us far away in time, but strangely near in classical sobriety to the previous movement. To have heard this great work, so powerfully and masterly performed, by a trio of such distinction was revelatory.

The violinist of the trio remarked that Dvořák’s Trio, Op 65 was perhaps his best (though acknowledging the the Dumky was probably the favourite). But it just misses greatness, in the Brahmsian sense. Given that it comes close to Brahms in character, the fact that one of the most gifted melodists of all time failed to clothe it in music like his own piano quintet or the last three string quartets (Opp. 96, 105 and 106), points to the error of trying to win approval through turning aside from his own genius. Technically, formally, it complies with all the criteria that Brahms would have endorsed.

Nevertheless, it was played magnificently, even making me review the above feeling that I’ve always had about the trio.

So it was a superb concert in a superb environment, given in support of an admirable cause, which I am heartened to learn is being supported by the Minister and his Ministry. But I still await a major turn-around by the Ministry of Education to reinstate arts, including the teaching of classical music as compulsory subjects through to at least Year 11 in schools.

 

Lisa Harper-Brown frames fine Opera Society recital

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Lisa Harper-Brown (soprano) in Concert with Christie Cook – mezzo soprano, Stephen Diaz – counter-tenor, Cameron Barclay – tenor, Kieran Rayner – baritone
Bruce Greenfield – piano

Songs by Debussy and Rachmaninov, Montsalvatge, Brahms and Elgar; arias and ensembles by Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Bizet, Rossini, Saint-Saëns, Handel, Monteverdi, Bach, Bellini and Bernstein
(Vocal recital by New Zealand Opera Society, Wellington Branch)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Tuesday 20 November, 7.30pm

Once upon a time the Opera Society used to present regular recitals, every month or so. Then, as opportunities multiplied for singers to appear in professional and amateur productions and in recitals at the university schools of music, the screening of opera films slowly became more common and the society’s recital programme diminished. Instead, there are monthly screenings of operas on DVD.

British-born, Lisa Harper-Brown has worked in Australia for some years and has recently been appointed to a position in the vocal department of the New Zealand School of Music. She provided the professional element in the recital, singing no opera but instead, brackets of songs by Debussy and Rachmaninov.

Judging that most of the audience was probably unfamiliar with Debussy’s five 1889 settings of Baudelaire poems (called ‘Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire), Lisa spoke about them, singing them in pairs. Her remarks were scholarly and perceptive, touching on Debussy’s affinity with Baudelaire, with symbolist poetry, the impact of Wagner and philosophical thought of the time.  Though the songs come early in Debussy’s career, before any of the best known piano and orchestral music, it is good to be reminded that before this set, in his first decade of work – the 1880s – he wrote around 60 songs.

Her opening of the first song, Le balcon, burst on the audience like a thunder clap; it demanded attention but also suggested that she did not at first have the measure of the acoustic, and almost at once modified her delivery. As the song continued (it is very long) it also became clear that Lisa had a complete grasp of the young composer’s aesthetic and his command of wide dynamics and huge pitch range. The singer encompassed it, if not with ease, then at least with astonishing virtuosic skill, none of which obscured the essential voluptuous, and sometime decadent, quality of Debussy’s creations.

The songs tax not only the singer; they also make huge demands of the pianist whose task is to simulate an orchestra, for in them the recent impact of Debussy’s visit to Bayreuth as well as the influence of eastern music can be heard, in both voice and piano. Bruce Greenfield’s contribution was highly impressive, exhibiting subtlety and luminous Impressionist colourings.

Christie Cook graduated on music from Otago University and is now studying with Flora Edwards, planning to do further study overseas. She sang three widely varied songs: one of Montsalvatge’s Five Negro Songs (Cuba dendro de un piano) capturing well enough its singular quality; then Brahms’s Die Mainacht, which seemed to have been perfumed oddly by the previous song, giving it an unbrahmsian voluptuousness; and then one of Elgar’s Sea Pictures (Sea slumber song) which seemed to me free of a routine English contraltoesque quality; instead she invested it with her experience of singing in foreign languages.

Later in the concert Christie returned to sing Isabella’s fear-filled aria, ‘Cruda sorte’, from The Italian Girl in Algiers. Her excellent lower register and the sheer weight of her voice were more evident here, and I was reminded of a comparable voice such as Marilyn Horne’s, as she handled this taxing aria. The second-most-familiar aria from Samson and Delilah, ‘Printemps qui commence’, followed; her duplicitous role was quite persuasively portrayed, in an excellent performance. A stylish, risqué  number (The Physician) from Cole Porter’s Nymph Errant ended her bracket, the musical line well done though clarity of diction might have been better.

Cameron Barclay is an Auckland graduate but has been heard this year in striking performances of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis and the concert performance of Candide in Wellington. He sang ‘Il mio tesoro’ from Don Giovanni, in well-judged character, and a pathos-tinged Eugene Onegin aria: Lensky’s ‘Kuda, kuda’, contemplating his likely fate in the duel.

Kieran Rayner joined Barclay next to sing the duet from The Pearl Fishers. It came off splendidly, the two voices blending beautifully even though (perhaps because) the two have timbral similarities.

Rayner’s other offerings came in the second part of the concert. His sturdy baritone was a fit instrument for Bach’s ‘Grosser Herr, o starker König’ from the Christmas Oratorio. If this displayed his capacity in a joyous religious context, his bel canto offering from Bellini’s I puritani (‘Ah, per sempre io ti perdei’) offered profane matter into which he injected a degree of passion.

The runner-up in this year’s Lexus Song Quest, Stephen Diaz, entered to sing two arias: ‘In se Barbara’, a trouser role for contralto, sung by Arsace in Rossini’s Semiramide; and ‘Verdi prati’ from the castrato role of Ruggiero in Handel’s Alcina which he sang in the wonderful production by Opera in a Days Bay Garden earlier this year. Both arias were among the best things of the evening and brought expected vociferous audience response.

Christie Cook returned to sing with Diaz the duet ‘Pur ti miro’ from The Coronation of Poppea.  I can’t help hoping that modern scholarship is mistaken in the belief that it’s not by Monteverdi – it’s one of the loveliest pieces in the opera! The pair sang it with a rapturous beauty that totally disguised the couple’s villainous behaviour that got rewarded with happiness (brief in the event), and earned another outburst of enthusiasm.

Lisa Harper-Brown returned to conclude the concert with three Rachmaninov songs (Lilacs, Op 21:5; In the silence of the night, Op 4:3; Spring Waters, Op 14:11) which she sang in Russian, without a score in front of her. Both her impressive diction and her well-conceived musical interpretations suggested suppressed passion as well as classical elegance. The last song, Spring Waters, with its keenly evocative piano accompaniment (in case we needed reminding of the near uniform excellence of Greenfield’s playing), was a powerful testament to the genius of Rachmaninov as a song writer, making me wonder why his name is not included routinely when people speak of the world’s great lyrical composers.

The ensemble piece (Cook, Diaz, Barclay, Rayner in ‘Some other time’) from Bernstein’s On the town was a sort of anti-climax after the beauties of Rachmaninov and a great many of the earlier pieces. Recalling those affirmed this as an exceeding happy experience.

 

Wellington Orchestra with its end-of-year winnings musically and in survival

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The Vector Wellington Orchestra conducted by Marc Taddei with Michael Houstoun (piano)

Symphony No 44 in E minor ,‘Trauer’ (Haydn); Piano Concerto No 2 in C minor, Op 18 (Rachmaninov); Symphony No 4 in C (Schmidt)

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday 17 November, 7.30pm

The last concert of the 2012 series by the Wellington Orchestra attracted a very big house. If the major attraction was Houstoun and the Rachmaninov, there would have been a lot of empty seats after the interval, which is sometimes the case when a little known piece is to fill the second half. From the almost unchanged audience after the interval, I have to assume that a lot of people were curious to discover what Franz Schmidt sounded like (presumably knowing only the enchanting Intermezzo from his opera Notre Dame).

Haydn
The first half was in minor keys: Haydn’s pithy, sombre Trauer symphony, in minor, the one before the ‘Farewell’, opened the concert; and it was followed by Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto in C minor. Characteristically in the 18th century works in minor keys were outnumbered about five to one by the major key. The Haydn began with strong chords that announced serious matters, but almost at once took up a spirited, crisp tune, driven along with confident rhythms. The orchestra was pared down to roughly the size that Haydn would have used at the Esterhazy Court, and Taddei demonstrated a commitment to and a flair with Haydn that produced a gripping performance. The Menuetto, as second movement, was surprisingly lively in pace, yet thoughtful, drawing attention here to the singular perfection in the balance between strings and winds and timpani. The third movement, Adagio, exposed a composer who might have been nearing 40 but whose genius still had more than three decades in which to develop, with the London symphonies and the great masses of the turn of the 18th century. Haydn’s spirit of endless melody here was played with both clarity and as much emotional exposure as a composer of the period could have legitimately produced.

Houstoun
There was a strange spirit in the atmosphere as Michael Houstoun entered to play what is perhaps the most popular of all piano concertos. There was nothing too seductive or haunted with the opening chords, not too slow or portentous; both piano and orchestra were in accord in handling the emotions implicit in both the first and the slow movements with a rationality that emphasised form and the intellectual qualities of the music. The approach allowed for the big climax towards the end of the movement to emerge in strong contrast to what had gone before, all the more impressive in its balance, with all departments sounding clear but none obtrusive.

The slow movement brought several sections and individuals into prominence, Moira Hurst’s clarinet in particular, in the meandering patterns she wove with the piano. While there were moments when the word listless rather than simply Adagio sostenuto came into my head, but I soon realised such moments were cleverly calculated to maintain tension. And its beauty was enhanced through its emotional restraint.

The time to loosen the reins came with the Allegro scherzando, with a cadenza that was a sure-footed as it was exciting, as conductor and pianist allowed the emotionally shifting episodes steadily to rise in temperature. There may heave been moments when orchestra and pianist became slightly separated but it was a small price to pay for a performance in which the orchestra framed the efforts of the pianist so as to gain the maximum excitement from a peroration in which Houstoun hurled caution to the winds and made inevitable the shouting and standing ovation that erupted even before the orchestra’s last notes had died away.

Franz Schmidt bursts on the New Zealand concert scene
In the Anglo-Saxon (as well as the Latin and Slavonic) worlds, Franz Schmidt’s music has remained unknown, yet it has hardly ever been absent from the programmes of Austrian orchestras.

I was impressed that, in spite of some evidence that Taddei had long cherished the hope of conducting Schmidt’s 4th Symphony, he refrained from speaking to us about it. He simply took up his baton and signalled to trumpeter Barrett Hocking to begin. The music stand and score were absent, and Taddei conducted the entire 50 minutes of the performance from memory, flawlessly, exhibiting every sign of a deep faith in this, one of the very last of the late Romantic symphonies.

Writings about Schmidt and this symphony in particular usually mention alleged influences from composers like Mahler, Bruckner, Strauss, perhaps Schumann or Reger. It doesn’t help much. I suspect it is only in the past century that such absurd emphasis has been placed on ‘originality’, taken to imply criticism of music that shows signs of its inevitable forebears. That has had the disastrous effect of persuading composers to engage in experiments rather than musically-based composing; experiments with technique, style and form that became requirements for a serious composing career; and the recipe for alienating audiences.

Schmidt obviously belongs in the tradition represented by the above names, but his voice is his own. But he did not stand altogether aloof from the experiments of his contemporaries and friends such as Schoenberg, and devices such as polyrhythms, complex chromaticism, atonality. Nor can he be consigned to either of the competing camps that divided late 19th century Austria – Brahms v. Wagner – for he is clearly an inheritor from both and of them and their disciples. He does not indulge in programme music, or overt self-analysis or employ music as a neurosis therapy.

One anonymous website reviewer has written perceptively:
“So, think about a grand Bruckner symphony but with Viennese Romantic charm instead of the mysticism, less brass, more strings and woodwinds, lush Straussian (or Korngoldian, if you prefer) orchestration , a good amount of severe Regerian counterpoint, and you’ll get a rough idea of a Schmidt symphony. This may sound like a mixed bag or like dry, academic stuff, but instead Schmidt’s works are entirely personal and well-integrated: they are full of personal ideas and wonderful (may I dare to say catchy?) melodies, and his skills in the use of a big orchestra are splendid throughout.”

It begins and ends with the same trumpet theme, and is much given to cyclical shapes; which must make the task of memorising extremely difficult. Although referred to as melodic, melodies are not, at least on 3rd or 4th hearing, becoming etched in the mind; though the wonderful cello solo in the Adagio (superbly played by Jane Young) may well become a force that compels repeat hearings. There’s also a rapturous violin solo from Matthew Ross later in the slow movement.  And yet, the absence of strong melodies generally may well be one of the elements that compels attention and maintains the listener’s emotional commitment; modulation is constant and destabilising, and thus arousing a need for resolution and the return to a home key.

After the quarter-hour-long Adagio, the short Scherzo is an acerbic cleanser; there was no sign of fatigue after the mesmerising slow movement; in fact, the orchestra’s energy and complete command, as if it was as familiar to them as Beethoven’s Fifth, filled me with awe.  It was pretty much the end of jocularity, for the last movement had only a short brisk passage in the middle; it was mainly peaceful or elegiac, building, not to a Tchaikovsky climax, but slowly subsiding in resignation bathed by beautiful orchestral sonorities.

Free programmes
Programmes were given free by the ushers: a most admirable procedure which I have urged over the years, usually to no effect.  Small-scale concerts such as chamber music usually provide plain programmes, free, whose emphasis is readable information. For a short time New Zealand Opera provided free programmes too. The underlying hope must be that audiences will become better informed about musical history and the nature of large-scale musical structures. Now that the education system has virtually abandoned giving students at secondary level any serious musical exposure as a core subject, what is written in programmes might be the only opportunity many people have to enlarge their understanding and appreciation of music.

NZSO and opera programmes are very expensive; given the cost of writing and producing programmes it is sad that so few benefit from them. This is a short-sighted policy.

Postlude
So this last concert for 2012 was something of a triumph, ending a year that has been very worrying for Wellington’s orchestra, threatened by an ill-conceived funding restructuring by the Arts Council which seems to have been quietly set aside. Partly driven by the poorly-understood pattern of orchestral operations and responsibilities that has evolved over many years, it has been a case where balance-sheet driven logic and tidiness might have proved disastrous to the country’s musical well-being, and have saved no money in the long run.

The great audience at this concert was a heart-warming endorsement from the people of Wellington.

 

 

Wellington Youth Sinfonietta paves the way to orchestral careers

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Wellington Youth Sinfonietta conducted by Michael Vinten

Excerpts from Swan Lake (Tchaikovsky) – conducted by Vincent Hardaker; Cirrus (Natalie Hunt); Violin Concerto in D (Beethoven)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 11 November, 3.30pm

With this concert the Wellington Youth Sinfonietta marked 20 years years of age (or should it be next year? – it was founded in 1993. There is a tendency to follow the Roman numbering system which was to count the year of a birth or a beginning as year one, so that the completion of that first year is named as year two. The same counting oddity was widely remarked on at the Millennium).

Naturally, gaps in the wind sections have to be filled by guests; flutes and oboes were the only sections entirely taken by young players and they handled three of the four trumpets: the contrasts were by no means as marked as one might have expected.

The excerpts of Swan Lake ballet were conducted by assistant conductor Vincent Hardaker; the orchestra did very well, oboes and later, the flutes gaining confidence as the music went along. One of the phenomena was a tendency of the professionals to dominate proceedings, particular members of the percussion section, whose sounds are endemically prone to overstatement in this church, so that the careful if tentative playing by young students was a bit lost during passages where percussion and brass were involved.

The orchestra had commissioned a piece from Natalie Hunt, a graduate in arts of Victoria University and in music of the New Zealand School of Music; she was Composer-in-Residence for the NZSO National Youth Orchestra in 2009. Cirrus opened with flutes followed by other woodwinds in feathery, transparent suggestions of high cloud, later darkened oddly by dulling pizzicato on double basses; the atmospheric quality recovered with marimba and triangle. The main part of the piece soon became more compact and I could admire the distinction the composer brought to her writing for the full orchestra, the underpinning by bass instruments and the unadorned line spelt out by the brass, all of which displayed her sensitivity to the limitations of young players.. The earlier hint of darkness reappeared with the arrival of insistent drums that threatened a stormy cumulo-nimbus sky.

After the interval Blythe Press entered as soloist in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, conducted, as was Cirrus, by Michael Vinten. The orchestra opened diffidently enough but their gathering confidence soon established a good foundation for the arrival of the soloist. A frequent problem was the players’ inclination to let rip wherever the marking fff appeared, to the detriment of the quieter passages. Though it was of course important to have professional support in the sections with only one or two young players, I was impressed by their often near indistinguishable contributions alongside the guest players of clarinet, bassoon, horns and trombones. Needless to say, Blythe Press’s performance was highly distinguished, always sensitive to tempos which tended to the slow side, but remained perfectly convincing. His presence clearly inspired the orchestra to playing that might have exceeded their own expectations.

This junior version of the Wellington Youth Orchestra provides an important stage for aspiring orchestral musicians, and their performances, heard in the right spirit, were here admirable.

 

Ludwig Treviranus returns to Upper Hutt for highly coloured recital of Beethoven and Mussorgsky

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Ludwig Treviranus (piano)

Beethoven: Piano Sonata in C, Op 2 No 3; Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition

Genesis Energy Theatre, Expressions Arts Centre, Upper Hutt

Saturday 10 November, 8pm

The name Ludwig Treviranus came to my notice when he played in his last high school years in the Hutt Valley, before moving to study music under Rae de Lisle at Auckland University. At that stage there was already a certain flair, a feeling for the dramatic in music, and they were the characteristics most clearly evident in the two pieces he played on this short return visit from Sydney where he is teaching this year. Last year he completed a doctorate at the State University of Florida in Tallahassee, guided by New Zealand pianist Read Gainsford.

The C major sonata of Beethoven’s first published set of piano sonatas has more pointers to the future, his own future, than to the past of Haydn and Mozart’s keyboard works; and it was the vivid contrasts in tempo and dynamics, between the crisp staccato phrases and sudden shifts to lyrical passages, even within a few bars, that marked his playing most strongly.

The second theme of the first movement was enlivened in these ways, particularly with its rippling, ornamented arpeggios; his approach made coherent the somewhat surprising cadenza that Beethoven gave himself near the end.

The brevity of the third movement is always a surprise, and Treviranus succeeded in delivering that surprise, at the same time convincing us of its rightness. The whole was not without minor trip-ups and rushes of notes that were a bit blurred; nothing detracted however from the fleetness, strength and insight of his performance.

It was a somewhat short recital: all over, including his pithy, fluent introductions, in an hour and a half. Nevertheless, there was time for him to make a lively impression on the large audience through his demeanour, his air of friendliness and of course his easy comments on the music and its context.

The second part was given to Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, which he told us he had learned in his final year at Florida. To bring the music more vividly to life he had arranged for images of the five extant paintings by Hartmann, which were the inspiration of the music, to be projected on a screen behind the piano; the other five pieces were illustrated by appropriate paintings by others, including Van Gogh’s study of straining oxen, for Bydlo.  If you search the Internet you will find a lot of partly speculative information about other possible sources among the very large retrospective Hartmann exhibition in Saint Petersburg in 1874, as well as rather more insightful writing about the composer and the painter and the aesthetic climate of Russia in the 1870s.

One measure of a performance of this work is the conviction brought to the varying accounts of the Promenade that appear between our viewing of the works on the gallery walls.  Generally, the viewer was led on a thoughtful walk around the exhibition, without haste; his emotions in the music reflecting what he sees there: the slightly sinister Gnomes (or Gnomus) and a colourful, animated scene at the Tuileries. Then came the primitiveness of the lumbering oxen of Bydlo (a Polish cart drawn by a cow writes one commentator, a symbol depicting the oppressed Polish people whose country lay divided under the domination of Russia and Prussia throughout the 19th century) with its heavy emphasis on the alternating chords, unchanging in pace as they fade away into the distance.

Treviranus commands a huge dynamic range, which was called for to depict the two Jews, Goldenberg and Schmuyle; and in the sudden plunge into the Catacombs, here with the pictorial background of three blurred figures against a half-lit wall; it was one of the most evocative episodes.

And he captured the grandeur and the occasional fall into triviality in the last two pieces, Baba Yaga and The Great Gate of Kiev: that image of Hartmann’s architectural conception, never built, shows graphically how far traditional Russian visual arts were from the classically derived styles that had ruled in western Europe, and Mussorgsky’s music too takes its inspiration from that of the Russian peasant, finally merging in spirit with the Promenade. In all, Treviranus‘s studied avoidance of any too elegant or polished performance could be heard to conform successfully with what we could see projected on the screen.

The pianist plans to return to Wellington next year; though he is very interested in teaching, I hope he can make time to enlarge and polish his repertoire, especially the fields he demonstrated so promisingly this evening.

 

Clarinet trio repeats its Lower Hutt programme at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Bruch: Two movements from Eight Pieces, Op 83; Mozart: Trio for clarinet, viola and piano, K 498; Schumann: Märchenerzählungen, Op 132

Tim Workman – clarinet, Victoria Jaenecke – viola, David Vine – piano

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 31 October, 12.15pm

A review, by Rosemary Collier, of this ensemble with this programme, at St Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt, on 3 October, has just been belatedly posted on the website, the result of an oversight. It will be found at that date.

I did not hear the Lower Hutt concert, but greatly enjoyed this repeat concert, now in a different acoustic and using a different piano.  None of the shortcomings mentioned in the earlier review seemed evident here at St Andrew’s.

American string quartet plus German pianist deliver eclectic programme of great accomplishment

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

ENSO String Quartet (Maureen Nelson and John Marcos – violins, Stephanie Fang – viola, Richard Belcher – cello) with Michael Endres (piano)

Boccherini: String quartet in G minor, Op 32 No 5; Ginastera: Quartet No 1, Op 20; Gillian Whitehead: No stars, not even clouds; Dvořák: Piano Quintet in A, Op 81

Wellington Town Hall

Thursday 25 October, 7.30pm

Though there was no written mention of it in the programme, the photo on the cover and that inside revealed a change of violist. On the cover the figure was, one assumed, of Melissa Reardon, named in the season brochure, while inside it was one who had to be identified as Stephanie Fong, named in the programme. A change had clearly happened between the time of the initial contract and the quartet’s arrival in New Zealand. While the cellist comes from Christchurch and may be assumed to be one of the reasons for their coming to New Zealand, the rest of the quartet are Americans whom the season brochure called an ‘exciting young ensemble’.

One doesn’t hear a lot of Boccherini’s music; is it because there’s still a tendency to think that audiences will not tolerate anything but the Quintet, often played in the arrangement for guitar, which features the Ritirata di Madrid, or the E major quartet with the famous Minuet? Yet musicologists assure us that the other hundreds of quartets, quintets and sonatas as well as scores of concertos and symphonies, are being unfairly concealed from us.

At last the famine was broken here with a very attractive string quartet, leaving only around a hundred others to be discovered. A quartet in G minor from Opus 32, written around 1780, it proved very much worth the journey, opening with a gentle insouciance, seeming to promise twenty minutes of charm and musical inventiveness.

As was normal with quartets of the period, the first violin boldly took the top line of the tunes, though it was not hard to hear rather interesting things happening in the other parts. In particular, the cello part was given attention (Boccherini was a distinguished cellist), and both second violin and viola took the melody or echoes of it from time to time.

If one expected to hear a replica of the famous, enchanting minuet, not this one; it was marked ‘con moto’ and it was that. Dotted rhythms, vigour: hardly the music that would have engendered the sneering soubriquet ‘Haydn’s Wife’, which was coined to describe the character of Boccherini’s music. The Trio section, in contrast, enjoyed a swaying, melodiousness, not the least sentimental; each instrument could be heard making quite striking contributions. The viola’s role (how quickly she has acquired the spirit of the ensemble!) particularly caught my ear in the Finale, though it was the first violin that relished the sparkling cadenza, perhaps not a usual feature in chamber music, but where are the rules defining what you can put in your own composition?

The quartet asserted its identity which might be elusive if you were presented with the task of identifying it blindfold, but it was clearly distinct from the recognisable finger-prints of Haydn or Mozart, and in which the players demonstrated total assurance.

Big contrast with the following piece: Ginastera, none of whose quartets I’d heard. My first problem in the first movement was defining the rhythm. One of the exercises one engages in with recent (any?) music that is cast in complicated rhythms is to identify patterns, but here I repeatedly lost count; a look at the score might help…. Ginastera might have made use of the folk music of his country but he has subjected it to heavy disguise and, like Bartók, has tended to strip it of anything that might be heard as sentimental or heart-warming; it was no less absorbing however.

The second movement, though fast, was quite subdued, embellished with a lot of edgy techniques, pizzicato and spiccato; the third movement opened with drone-like sounds from viola and cello followed by the first violin playing high, widely-spaced notes somewhat ghostly in character. It ended with an uneasy pianissimo passage from all four players. The last movement suggested the Balkans as much as the Pampas, lively peasant dances in hard-to-define rhythm, pizzicato that might have mimicked the guitar, all demanding playing of considerable virtuosity, which the players met with room to spare.

The players had agreed to tackle a newly commissioned New Zealand piece written for them by Gillian Whitehead. The composer’s note describes its elegiac origin, its name coming from a short story by Juanita Katchel who died during its composition. It opened in a spirit of self-confidence, the first violin singing over a murmuring accompaniment by the others; a series of new ideas flowed till the viola took charge in a quietly assertive manner, laying down a beautiful landscape (or mind-scape), that became agitated, almost frenzied before a sudden change of mood. I had the feeling that roles were attached to the various instruments and that the programme note might have been made more specific; but such specifics might have been a loss for the listener who was otherwise free to speculate, to dream.

However, the players seemed to have penetrated its spirit very successfully, finding a vein of music throughout its course that created a satisfying musical structure.

Michael Endres joined the quartet for the Dvořák piano quintet, a masterpiece and one of the all-time favourites of the chamber music repertory.

I was moved by the rapport that seemed to exist between pianist and quartet, at this, their first public performance together. The piano and then the cello opened in the most gorgeous pianissimo introduction creating a warm romantic spirit; and as the Allegro itself took off the viola played the big main theme and the movement continued, revealing translucent strings that matched the delicacy of the piano.  The Dumka, second movement, filled me, as usual, with delight at Dvořák’s melodic fecundity, elegiac in tone, which was illuminated by the ease and fluency of the playing; it also caught the surprising energy of the middle section.

Throughout, the performance was fast and accurate, limpid and varied in colour and rhythm, the sudden changes of tempo and mood handled as if the players were improvising them as they went along.

When faced with beautiful music being played with a certain conviction, with great spirit, I tend to be oblivious to minor flaws. I do not mean to suggest that there were things here that I failed to hear but which deserved to be reprimanded; only to record that both the music and the playing were so heartfelt and of one mind, that I was simply in no mood to look out for shortcomings.

That applied to the entire concert in which these players succeeded altogether in penetrating to the heart of all four works in the programme.

Schubert’s B flat trio given beautiful performance at St Andrew’s at lunchtime

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Koru Trio (Anne Loesser – violin, Sally Pollard – cello, Rachel Thomson – piano)

Schubert: Piano Trio in B flat, D 898

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 24 October, 12.15pm

This lunchtime concert had been advertised as consisting of movements from both Schubert’s B flat Trio and Shostakovich’s second piano trio, Op 67. In the event, the players decided to do a proper job with the Schubert and leave the Shostakovich till another time (well, I hope so). The playing of individual movements might be OK if the audience is of young people or others who have not heard a work before, to offer a taster; but one is left in an empty space when the sounds one expects to hear in a following movement just don’t come.

All are players in the NZSO, forming another group that illustrates one of the sometimes overlooked benefits to Wellington of the orchestra’s domicile in the city.

Just by the way, there were two other contributions to the city’s rich music scene this week: bolstering orchestral groups that have certain weaknesses, usually in the brass or woodwind departments. One was the weekend concert by the Wellington Youth Orchestra, playing Brahms’s Fourth Symphony and Berlioz’s Nuits d’été (quite splendid performances they were!); and on Tuesday this week, to help the orchestra of the Lawyers in their ‘Counsel in Concert’.

Schubert’s two piano trios are, for most people, the loveliest and greatest of pieces in that repertoire, perhaps equalled by Beethoven’s Archduke Trio, and any performance is approached with a certain awe and excitement. The three players’ credentials were encouraging, and their performances proved their command of not just the notes but of Schubert’s overflowing imagination that these two trios give such vivid evidence of.

What made their performance so satisfying was their sensitivity to the varying dynamics and rhythms that sustain the repetitions of the themes with interest; we never heard a plain repetition but fresh light on the idea each time it reappeared.  It was not simply a matter of playing loud or soft, but of finding a darker or lighter emotion, at places where we are persuaded that Schubert had wanted the music to reflect pain or joy. Schubert’s music is almost the antithesis of the virtuoso showpiece, yet the cello solo near the end of the first movement, though not the least self-serving, was quite beautifully played.

The contrasts of light and shade were again the secret to the moving performance of the Andante. It was the Trio, middle section, of the Scherzo that I found most striking in that movement, where the players found a remarkable stillness through the repeated pairs of quavers.

The Finale was revelatory, as if it was being played for the first time, with some kind of hesitancy towards the end of the exposition, engendering surprise at the direction of modulations which turned them into little mysteries, the violin’s extended handing of a tune, suspended in time, and in the Coda, the spirit of a moto perpetuo.

What a delight it is for the tens of thousands of Wellingtonians (particularly the legions of cultivated public servants nearby who can seek to recover their spirits and sanity during their lunchtimes) who have the opportunity to hear such marvellous music as this, week after week, for nothing more than a small donation; and taken advantage of so worshipfully by such a happy few.