Author: Lindis Taylor

Notable Brazilian guitarist presented by the embassy and the NZSM

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Aliéskey Vianna (guitar)

Presented by the New Zealand School of Music and the Embassy of Brazil

Massey University Theatrette, Wellington

Thursday 18 October, 6.30pm

The Embassy of Brazil has been hosting regular cultural events for a few years, and these are often of music, featuring Brazilian musicians. We have been aware of them but it has taken us till now to get to attend and to write about them.

The recital by Aliéskey Vianna was particularly drawn to our notice through that excellent daily radio programme, Upbeat, on RNZ Concert at midday. Eva Radich seemed to establish a delightful rapport with him and he proved articulate, indeed remarkably fluent in English, and well-informed and not just about his own instrument, but about music in general – classical, popular, Latin, jazz, anything…

He was born in Brazil’s third largest metropolis, Belo Horizonte, in the state of Minas Gerais, about 400km north of Rio. He graduated from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

The visit was evidently initiated by Dr Jane Curry, head of classical guitar performance at the School of Music, who attended the University of Arizona at Tucson a few years after Vianna had been there and the two had become friends.  The Massey theatrette was almost full when we arrived, of guitar students and members of the Brazilian community and a few other diplomats who, from personal experience, are not in general as interested or as cultivated in the arts as is often imagined. However, some were there, though the majority of the audience judging by the talk during the interval and at the supper later, were from the Brazilian community.

It was a mixture of classical and other music – the ‘other’ being pieces by a couple of famous Brazilian composers.

Inevitably, he began with two pieces by Villa-Lobos – the familiar first Prelude and the less familiar Study No 11.  Suggesting that he was approaching the acoustic diffidently, for a space full of people sounds very different from an empty one during an earlier test-run, his playing in the Prelude was soft, unassuming and discreet, which offered a very attractive view of it; though its middle section took on a more confident character.

I could not discern the particular technical aspects that Estudo 11 might have been been intended to offer work. It began deliberately, soon moving through a series of disparate harmonies, tremolo effects using fast repeated notes, then a theme that seemed derived from chords rather than the other way round: determined by the colour and flavour of the melody.

The next two pieces came from the late and early 18th century: Fernando Sor’s Fantasia Op 18, a prelude and set of variations on a theme by Paisiello. The prelude was a brief affair that seemed to lead without much change of mood into the statement of the theme in question, which was a thoroughly typical, melodious piece from the time of Haydn and Mozart. The composer put it through a conventional routine which offered plenty of opportunity to show the guitar’s lyrical strengths, some of great delicacy, others of fleetness, one using odd muted strings, and one employing only the left hand in both stopping and plucking the strings; it could hardly have been played without a very occasional fluff.

Bach’s Chaconne has, as Vianna remarked, been adapted by a great many musicians for a great many instruments from its original for solo violin. In Vianna’s own arrangement, it seemed particularly well adapted to the guitar, and it emerged from the treatment in an illuminating, tasteful performance.  It was strongly driven by a feeling of forward motion; at the same time the playing conveyed the underlying grief the Bach no doubt felt at the sudden death of his first wife. The last few minutes of the movement in which quite an emotional punch is created, especially in Busoni’s famous piano arrangement, also had a singular impact on the guitar.

The second half began with a couple of improvisations in jazz style, on themes by jazz composer Ralph Towner. Improvisation is a mysterious art, and one hard to judge in the absence of a knowledge of a performer’s entire oeuvre; for there’s always the lurking question, how much is the exercise of a good memory, following sequences that have been thought out in the mind and on your instrument perhaps many times before. The old game of improvising on a theme offered by audience members provides a more transparent test, though even here, well-practised passages, decorative effects, chord sequences that lie readily to the hands of the improviser but are unfamiliar to an audience, make it a problematic process. All one can say is that Vianna displayed most impressive fluency and versatility, commanded easy-sounding harmonic changes, a wonderful range of ornaments and fleet passage-work. And the two pieces, Toledo and The Juggler’s Etude, seemed to evolve in an organic manner, enabling you to gauge where the playing was heading and how far off was its conclusion.

Vanna told us that Anibal Augusto Sardinha, better known as ‘Garôto’ (his nick-name sounds menacing, but means ‘The Boy’) had emerged from the streets of São Paulo where he was born in 1915, playing the banjo, in popular music, especially the samba. After he went to Rio de Janeiro in 1938 he soon met Laurinda Almeida and Carmen Miranda who took him to the United States with her. His music turned towards jazz and Duke Ellington and Art Tatum were among those in his concerts; but the sounds of the bossa nova are not too remote.  He died in 1955.

His Inspiracão seemed like an exercise in slithering chord changes below scraps of charming if slightly sentimental melody; while Lamentos do morro expressed its lament in hard chords and plucking that would approximate staccato playing on other instruments, in very lively, extravert bossa nova rhythm.

Sergio Assad (presumably no relation), born in 1952, is an important Brazilian composer/guitarist, famous in a duo with his brother Odair. You will find a formidable list of his compositions in Wikipedia.

His three movement suite, Aquarelle, opened with Divertimento where a partly obscured theme was underpinned by bossa nova rhythms and a dazzling array of notes that suggested a fastidious musical personality. Valseana was what its name suggested, as disguised and subverted as Ravel’s orchestral essay, was adorned by decorative flourishes and arpeggio flights. The closing Prelúdio é Toccatina somewhat mirrored the Sor Fantasie, with its short Prelude forsaking Brazil for the sobriety of Bach, while the Toccata handled its material as any devoted disciple of Villa-Lobos would have learned to do through the example of the sequence of the Bachianas Brasileiras.

Apart from the exemplary, if not utterly flawless, performances, there were Vianna’s well-chosen and intelligently expressed remarks about the composers and the pieces, touching on the influences that contributed to their style and handling. The rather slight programme notes and spoken remarks that have often accompanied other guitar recitals has been a matter that I have previously had the effrontery to lament. Here was an example of a performer presuming no less musical background that would a pianist talking to an audience that was about to hear Bach or Liszt or a string quartet on Haydn or Beethoven

 

Brilliant Bartered Bride redeems shortcomings of its Cold War setting

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Bartered Bride by Smetana (NBR New Zealand Opera)

The Vector Wellington Orchestra and the Opera Chorus; conducted by Oliver von Dohnányi; directed by Daniel Slater; associate director and choreographer: Tim Claydon; associate director: Jacqueline Coats; chorus master: Michael Vinten

Cast: Anna Leese, Peter Wedd, Conal Coad, Andrew Glover, Taryn Fiebig, John Antoniou, Patricia Wright, Richard Green, Helen Medlyn, Jeff Kingsford-Brown

St James Theatre, Wellington

Saturday 13 October, 7.30pm

New Zealand Opera continues to explore every year or so, as much as it safely can, slightly unfamiliar operas. Their record so far has been unfaltering, and this splendid outing of something a bit on the fringe has maintained the high score. An opera has been revealed that many will have heard of but few expected to see here. This production has put it into the mainstream, into the class of comic operas with Rossini and Donizetti, Strauss and Offenbach or G & S. The music has character, wit and energy, and the story is no less probable than the average comic opera – or theatrical comedy for that matter.

The history
But first, the opera’s background in New Zealand. It has not been entirely absent from the New Zealand stage; it was one of the operas produced in the second decade of the legendary New Zealand Opera Company. It was in 1964, and I did not see it as I was overseas, but I recall reading about it in the New Zealand press. That year the company was about at the height of its success: both The Bartered Bride and Rigoletto toured nationally with the then NZBC Symphony Orchestra, and nationally meant to a dozen or more towns; and there were were also a Cosi fan tutte which had been produced in Wellington at the end of 1963 (I saw that) and then travelled to Auckland, Nelson and Blenheim, and La cenerentola (Rossini) was staged in Auckland and Wellington.

And note too that the Dunedin Opera Company, which was established in 1956, a little after the New Zealand Opera Company, and is still at work, staged The Bartered Bride as its first production in 1957, revived in 1962; though that would have been a very pro/am affair.

Certainly, by today’s standards, those productions would appear pretty amateur, but at that time very few people travelled overseas and saw real international opera, and there were very ready audiences for opera all over the country. In reality, through those years, and especially the 1980s and 90s there was a lot more opera to be seen throughout New Zealand than there is now, if not as polished as it usually is today.

This splendid performance
Before I describe my misgivings about the production, I will dwell on the performance itself, much the most important aspect and which was such a delight.  The English translation is by David Pountney and Leonard Hancock, and the dialogue by Daniel Slater, the director; it was idiomatic and sometimes witty, and the surtitles were excellent though often remaining on the screen too briefly for me. I am a firm advocate of opera in the original language, and earlier I had some misgivings about it, but in the theatre I was won over right from the start, for there is not a great gulf between the rhythms of Czech and English.  Most voices projected very clearly but the surtitles were still a help.

The programme booklet was comprehensive, with scholarly articles by Nicholas Tarling and Nicholas Reid: well worth the money.

And there is no doubt about the fully international character of this latest production, hired from Opera North which premiered it in 1998; it was widely praised then, and at revivals.

The opening scene is something of a coup, with the villagers carrying chairs for a choir rehearsal under a stiff conductor who has them singing quite brilliantly to infectious Slav rhythms, in praise (ironically) of the country’s liberation. (The real chorus master was Michael Vinten). And though the chorus doesn’t sing a great deal, its contributions are always high points both through the music and their tight and energetic ensemble, in particular their coming in at the end of the Polka and during the circus scene.

Perhaps the most striking, and astonishing element is the troupe of acrobats who enliven all the dances, especially the Furiant and the circus itself with the Dance of the Comedians, where their spectacular juggling and hair-raising hurling of each other high in the air and trusting their catchers so implicitly adds a very singular element to the performance.

The lighting (Simon Mills) is so subtly executed that you are virtually unaware of it.

Roles are excellently cast, the chorus vivid and well schooled, and the orchestra plays with good ensemble, energy and colour; conductor Oliver von Dohnányi guides things spiritedly.

As usual, the cast is a mixture of New Zealand and overseas singers. The vivid Napier-born soprano Anna Leese fitted the role of Mařenka like a glove, with a strong, beautiful voice portraying intelligence and determination; her costume – an unstylish mix of bluish jerkin over pink skivvy and blue jeans  –  her demeanour, like those of almost all the cast did indeed recreate the look of the 1970s – anywhere – not merely in communist countries. (Anna gave a good interview in The New Zealand Herald: look at http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10834706).

Her boy-friend, Jeník, is English tenor, Peter Wedd, who has sung in Australia in two Janáček roles (and two roles in Kátya Kabanová elsewhere – looks as if he’s a Czech specialist); he wore a leather jacket and brown trousers (the designer of costumes and other aspects of the production was Opera North’s Robert Innes Hopkins). Wedd’s voice and lively performance were as arresting in his role as was Leese’s. The duets of Mařenka and Jeník are important moments of the opera and they carried them off as if they cared.

The arrival of Conal Coad on stage always seems to bring with it the feeling that, here is a truly polished and convincing production. I confess I didn’t become aware that Kecal had been transformed into the village mayor till I read it in the programme; and it didn’t make his bullying more or less acceptable. But he didn’t ham it or try to play for laughs; his performance, with brilliant patter-arias in the last scenes, simply fulfilled the role’s expectations splendidly, even in his devastating humiliation at the end.

The approved bridegroom for Mařenka appears after the second exciting acrobat-led dance – the Furiant – in Act II: the earlier invisible Vašek (New Zealander Andrew Glover) appears and explains himself in a mock stammering manner. But the scene was lustily funny in which Mařenka, pretending to be someone else, paints a terrible picture of her own self for Vašek’s enlightenment, causing him immediately to abjure her.

The interval came after Act II with preparations for the circus, one of the most spectacular scenes, with the Ring-master, played by actor Jeff Kingston-Brown who was given wittily topical (for 1972) lines touching life under communism. It also introduces what is little more than a brilliant cameo role, a circus performer, Esmeralda, sung by sparkling soubrette performer Taryn Fiebig, one of the most catchy and hilarious numbers. Vašek is paired with her and for a moment she serves to confirm Vašek in his determination not to marry Mařenka.

Mařenka’s parents had appeared in Act I in the dealings with Kecal. They are Australian John Antoniou and Patricia Wright, who is still one of the best sopranos in this country. Now, in Act III, Vašek’s parents and, it turns out, Jeník’s too, show up. They are very well delineated by New Zealanders Richard Green and Helen Medlyn and one wished they’d had bigger roles.  One feels a bit sorry for Vašek, as the unlikely match with Esmeralda doesn’t materialise.

It’s a pity that this splendid comic opera has not become a standard repertoire piece outside of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the homeland of conductor Oliver von Dohnányi, who has been its conductor for Opera North as well as many other companies (though I don’t see Bratislava or other Slovak cities among them). He led the singers and orchestra with energy and drew strong rhythms from the orchestra in the dances and the various ensembles and choruses built on Slavonic ideas.

From Austrian bucolic to heroic communist peasant?
Daniel Slater, the director, is quoted saying he thought a shift in era would make the characters more believable, and so he moved it from its original time, mid-19th century, to 1972, a few years after the Prague Spring when under an enlightened leader, Dubček, there seemed momentary hope that the harsh hand of communism might be at least softened, only to be dashed by the arrival of Warsaw Pact troops.

It was produced only eight years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the world was still fascinated by the events of 1989/90, dramatising the stark contrasts between the old evil days and the – well, what? – the bright optimism of the 90s punctuated with the happy scenes in the former Yugoslavia?

This production is already 14 years old.

And the world has moved on, a very long way, since then.

So is it dated already? To me it felt like that. There is a tide in the affairs of men (as Brutus said) – of history and art. What happened to the Soviet empire was momentous and amazing, and to transplant an old opera into that period was adventurous. But is it still, today?

The common justification for theatrical changes of time and place is the fresh perceptions and levels of meaning, insights about the story itself made possible. What did we learn about the nature of the Czech people, of political life, or of the psychology of human beings?

Apart from the very amusing promotional rave from the Ring-master at the start of Act III with his witty allusions to communist leaders and the threatening existence of Big Brother in Moscow, very little.

I approached it with an open mind, but the feeling grew steadily that the presence of a totalitarian regime in the background offered little more than a bit of visual ugliness in the set.

The opening chorus, directed in a somewhat martial manner to be sure, did not offer any special insights into the nature of life under communism.  It’s Liberation Day rather than simply a holiday, but that seems not to change the way the people behave.  There was no modification, nor could there have been, in the story that revolves round the planned marriage as a matter of financial convenience. Micha, a well-to-do merchant, was still able to exploit a poor peasant who seems still to own his own farm (though we know that collectivisation was not nearly as sweeping in the satellite countries as it was in the Soviet Union).

There were still plenty of typical country scenes and pretty villages in Czechoslovakia in 1972 – I spent a few days there in the 60s. I was bemused at Slater’s relating how he had toured the country looking for ‘an authentic Bohemian village, [one not] prettied for tourists’. (He could have done that a lot more cheaply by looking through media photos). To have fastened on this bleak scene seems sadly perverse.

Where do the comrades live, work and shop, and go to school and drink beer? On stage we see a big grey transformer, a couple of red steel drums, beer barrels on a table and four poles that might have been watch towers or carried search-lights. Was it a border post? But the folks gathered in this odd outdoor place to have their choir rehearsal. What an eccentric community!

While these feelings about the point of the change of era remained, my enjoyment of the performance grew. It’s the music, to be sure, but much more than the overture and the three well-known dances. It’s not one of those operas with an embarrassing libretto that survives entirely through the music, for the story is fairly adroit and credible, at least in theatrical terms. The only place that always seems weak is in the last scene where Jeník fails tell Mařenka at once, in simple terms about the stunt he has pulled over the broker which will make their marriage not only secure but financially rewarding. But theatre depends on characters who don’t ask the obvious question or offer the obvious explanation at the right moment.

In conclusion, the shifting of the production to the 1970s did no great harm; it allowed a few moments of amusement but really offered no fresh insights into the opera or into the human condition. All the important elements, of singing and orchestral playing, were of undisputed international quality and another opera has, at least for us, been admitted to the ranks of top 20.

School of Music guitar students delight Lower Hutt lunchtime audience

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New Zealand School of Music Guitar Ensemble, conducted by Jane Curry

Music by Gibbons, Dowland, Bach, Andrew York, Piazzolla, Brouwer, Carulli

Church of St Mark, Woburn Road, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 10 October, 12.15pm

Two distinct ensembles took part in this delightful recital, some of which was to contribute to the final semester assessments of senior students. Eight players formed the ‘ensemble’ while four of them – the more senior students – formed the quartet. The Ensemble started and finished the programme.

Two pieces by Elizabethan/Jacobean composers opened it. Orlando Gibbons Fantasie for keyboard was very short but demonstrated, in this most accomplished arrangement by one of the guitarists, how effective it could be made to sound in another medium that involved the creation of far more notes.

John Dowland’s The Frog Galliard was written for the lute and arranged for an ensemble by his contemporary Thomas Morley; a more elaborate, courtly affair, in slow ¾ rhythm, it was played fluently with only a few missed notes, leaving an excellent impression of the musical talent within the ensemble.

The fourth of the Preludes and Fugues (in F major) from Bach’s Eight Preludes and Fugues, BWV 553-560, followed (it is now believed they were written for pedal clavichord, not organ); I don’t think that, knowing of the earlier doubts about its being by Bach, affected my impression that it did not display a very typically Bachian character. The Prelude moved along fluently and interestingly with its nods at different keys while the Fugue made use of rocking series of thirds that did rather call for a bit more elaboration.

These three pieces and the later ones played by the Ensemble were conducted by Jane Curry.

The next two pieces were played by the Quartet (Nick Price, Jamie Garrick and Cameron Sloan and Mike Stoop). Andrew York is a prominent American composer for guitar, and his Quiccam sounded a very formidable challenge for the players, required to produce a considerable variety of awkward effects that were rather better than mere devices for idle bravura display, and they handled its complex, varied parts with skill and a good sense of where the music was going.

A rather gruesome piece by Argentinian tango exponent Piazzolla was La muerte del Angel, about the death of an angel in a typical Buenos Aires knife fight. The slashing of the knives was audible as were various unusual effects and articulations. Again, this was a credit to the accomplishment of the students and the adventurous guidance by their teachers.

In Cuban Landscape with Rain the full ensemble took over again. By Cuban composer Leo Brouwer, it was accompanied by a sudden rain squall that descended on the church, to general wonderment. The piece featured impressionistic effects such as very fast repeated notes simulating tremolo, and chaotic, percussive effects that rattled like the rain.

There were two famous guitarists at the turn of the 19th century: Ferdinando Carulli and Mauro Giuliani. Carulli was born in the same year as Beethoven (and Wordsworth); he settled in Paris and it may well have been his playing that prompted Chopin, who was also in Paris during the last decade of Carulli’s life there, to remark that there was no more beautiful instrument in the world than the guitar, save perhaps two guitars.

This Quartett, Op 22, would readily support that opinion, with its formal opening, as if for a concerto, and its tuneful, operatic style that sounded very much of its time, the opéras-comiques of Grétry or Boïeldieu. So ended a concert before a moderate sized audience who would have been unlikely to have been very familiar either with the classical guitar or with its repertoire. The School of Music is doing an admirable job with its sustained policy of getting talented students out into the community, with great mutual benefits.

 

‘Close encounters’: NZSO’s admirable enterprise to get good music on to the street

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New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Peter Walls

A free lunchtime concert

The Waltz from Farquhar’s Ring Round the Moon; Overture to Il Seraglio (Die Entfürhrung aus dem Serail) by Mozart; ‘Le bal’ from the Symphonie fantastique (Berlioz); Liebestod (orchestra alone) from Tristan und Isolde (Wagner); Enigma Variations (Elgar) – Theme (the  opening Andante), and Variation No XIII (***); Ravel’s Bolero – conclusion.

Michael Fowler Centre

Tuesday 9 October at 12.30pm (repeated at 6.30pm)

The aim of a concert of this sort is not to prove to a highly discriminating audience that it is in the presence of one of the world’s finest orchestras (though, of course it is), but to seduce both that class of listener and any others who have strayed in, because there was nothing better to do this particular Tuesday midday, with some highly entertaining, non-challenging music.

A fine orchestra like this plays itself, but an expressive conductor’s arms and hands and body can vividly illuminate the music for the audience, in the same way that choreography does with ballet music.

It used to be common for critics to remark on the physical style of a conductor, the nature of his gestures, the expressiveness of hands or of the entire body; there’s almost an unwritten convention now about what a critic should comment on and what is hors de combat; most of that is pretentious and silly.  I found Peter Walls’s movements most engaging, suggestive of emotions and the spirit of the music, varied in character, never falling into the sort of repetitive movements that can became tedious, or employing both hands in the same circular manner: he uses each arm to delineate distinct aspects of the music.

The programme at this concert was well-chosen, reflecting much of the music I am personally most deeply attached to – Mozart, Berlioz, Wagner and French music in general.

And it began with one of the few pieces of New Zealand music that has made it into the international repertoire – David Farquhar’s incidental music to Christopher Fry’s play, Ring Round the Moon (adaptation of Jean Anouilh’s L’invitation au château). The lilting strains of the Waltz created the most beguiling atmosphere, and I’d have loved the rest of the suite to have followed.

Peter Walls then spoke, a little about that music, more about Mozart and the opera and his first years in Vienna, and the Turks and Viennese fascination with that cruel, romantic people who had nearly captured Vienna less than a century before… Whether others are as ready as I am to listen to interesting, well-informed people speaking from the stage, I don’t know, but I suspect the sterility of what now passes for education, in history, literature, languages and the arts leaves too many baffled and bored as soon as such things are spoken of.  The performance gave striking prominence to cymbals and drums to support Walls’s remarks.

Then came the second movement from Berlioz’s Fantastic Symphony – The Ball, which Walls noted was linked to the Romeo and Juliet story which the composer had already discovered through the famous visit of an English theatre group, and which he later turned into his sprawling Romeo and Juliet dramatic symphony.  The orchestra played it with perhaps too much ease where greater tension might have etched the phantasm of the Harriet Smithson theme, the Idée fixe, more eerily, but its spectral quality was not lost, beautifully played by clarinettist Patrick Barry.

Walls developed the relationship between Berlioz and Wagner interestingly, with little-known anecdotes, striving in few words to bring to life the Tristan story.

In passing he said that the concert doubled as a taster for the 2013 season which will shortly be announced, and the thought that we could get a concert performance of Tristan made me so excited that I scarcely took in anything else.

But this orchestral version, without the soprano, recalled my first hearing of the Liebestod, as a young teenager who listened avidly to ‘Early Evening Concert’ which opened 2YC’s daily transmission at 5pm every day (in the early 1950s).

The exquisite opening, again on clarinet, was followed by a lovely performance.

Walls then talked interestingly about the New Zealand connection of Elgar’s Enigma Variations. He didn’t say whether he subscribed to Professor Heath Lees’s theory about the underlying theme that the whole work is enigmatically based on (you will find the problem well summarised in Wikipedia); the opening Andante was played and the audience invited to submit ideas about the basic theme (prize: phial of Tristan’s love potion). But he did deal with the arguable matter of the *** at the head of Variation XIII, evoking his early love, Helen Weaver, who broke off the relationship and went to New Zealand for her health. The rattling low C on timpani, played with side drum sticks, perhaps evoke the sound of the engines of a 1900-era steamship crossing the Atlantic.

But this variation has more commonly been connected with a friend of Elgar’s, Lady Mary Lygon, who had just departed with her husband who had been appointed Governor of New South Wales, with a reference to Mendelssohn’s Overture: Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, played on the clarinet. The latter seems to be the more persuasive story, but the New Zealand connection has its appeal.

The last few minutes of Ravel’s Bolero ended the concert, starting from the point where strings pick up the mesmerising, ostinato theme, raising the temperature several degrees. Fittingly for a concert like this, all its colour and underlying rhythms and exoticisms were played for all they were worth.

Admittedly, most of these pieces are to be expected in the programming of any symphony orchestra: it’s the Tristan that has the blood racing. Nevertheless, the concert was an excellent experiment which deserves to be tried in other centres, perhaps with slightly less erudition and more drollerie.

A generation or so ago I suspect a concert like this would have filled the hall. The reason for the empty seats had nothing to do with the reputation of the orchestra, the quality of the music or its performance; but everything to with the decay of education in the arts and the widespread resulting idea that most pop and rock music is as valid and as good as anything in the ‘elitist’ classical repertoire. One can expect that opinion from the youth, but when it is shared by ‘educated’ adults, it’s a worry.

 

A new piano trio presents two fine concerts, in Wellington and Upper Hutt

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Poneke Trio (Anna van der Zee – violin, Paul Mitchell – cello, Richard Mapp – piano)

Dvořák: Trio No 4 in E minor, Op 90 (Dumky); Kodály: Duo for violin and cello, Op 7; Shostakovich: Piano Trio No 2 in E minor, Op 67 (Wellington); Brahms: Piano Trio No 2 in C, Op 87 (Upper Hutt)

Two concerts: Ilott Theatre, Wellington Town Hall and Genesis Energy Theatre, Expressions Arts Centre, Upper Hutt

Sunday 30 September, 3pm and Monday 8 October, 7.30pm

All three members of the newly formed Poneke Trio have become familiar around Wellington: Richard Mapp over the course of many years; Anna van der Zee and Paul Mitchell more recently. It sounds like a group that has been waiting to happen, an event such as might tempt a believer to ascribe to the Almighty’s having a good day.

That was one reason for getting myself to both their concerts in Greater Wellington; the other was in order to hear both the Brahms and the Shostakovich trios, and because I had not been able to make the Wellington concert till part-way through the Dumky Trio.

One of the happiest pieces in all music opened the programme; the Dvořák trio is one of those creations that seems to have sprung fully formed into the mind of the composer, such as scarcely any composer in the century since has been inspired to write or perhaps been capable of writing.

So, I knew at once that I was in the best of hands, as the players began with a resolute tone from the cello and a gentler expression from the violin; then heartfelt chords from all three. The work consists of six movements, all between four and five minutes and in sharply varying tempi, in which Dvořák resists a temptation to elaborate too much his beguiling material, at least in a conspicuously sophisticated way; that induces the players to draw as much as possible from the music’s spirit while they have the chance.

This compression emphasises the music’s relatively informal character, that of a suite of dance-inspired pieces such as composers of the Baroque age used in their suites. Though each movement is cast in an A-B-A pattern the reprise of A is no mere repeat; and the programme note draws attention to further evidence of art concealing art in the pattern of keys from movement to movement, some clearly related while others a bit remote, such as that from D minor/major to E flat.

The well-conceived and idiomatic performance was rich in the Romantic spirit of the late 19th century.

Though written only 30 years later, the Kodály Duo for violin and cello seemed to come from an entirely different world and age. At first hearing many years ago I found it pretty alien, but it has slowly taken shape and its ‘melodies’ have become, at least, slightly familiar; though I would hardly echo the programme note’s description; after admitting that its slow acceptance was because of ‘Kodály’s idea of a tune’, it then asserts that ‘the work is rich in glorious melody’. For me, words like ‘harsh’ and ‘angular’ still come to mind, yet there is undeniably an absorbing character both in the music and certainly in this compulsive performance.

If one’s pleasure lies in finding flaws in a performance, one can almost always satisfy it by trying, and it’s not hard with such a demanding piece that calls for such persuasive advocacy. More important than perfection is evidence of sincerity and conviction on the part of the two players: that was there.

At the Sunday concert at the Ilott Theatre, Shostakovich’s Trio, Op 67, filled the second half. Perversely, an early thought was: why could Shostakovich write a piece like this piano trio, set in a time even more horrendous than that which Kodály lived through 30 years earlier, yet clothe it in sounds that touch the emotions so powerfully and involve the listener through an understandable language?

The trio played its famous opening with all the skill needed to create the foreboding atmosphere that lightens surprisingly quite soon, then continues sometimes animated, sometimes static. The second movement really showed what the trio was made of, switching from flashing energy with suppressed excitement while a sense of unease was always present, somehow at odds with the surface brilliance of the playing. I have heard the portentous piano chords that open the third movement played with just too much force, more than is needed to presage the plain dominant to tonic entry by the violin; here, Richard Mapp’s attack was just right and these players found an excellent balance. And in the clockwork rhythms that rule the last movement, the stiff-legged march theme alternating with pizzicato strings could have left its Soviet listeners in no doubt as to an underlying meaning; the strings bowed heavily, simulating shouting protest till things subsided into a more measured argument. All these nuances were captured expressively but not too emphatically to end a highly satisfying performance of a great work.

Brahms’s second piano trio was played at Upper Hutt. The opening phrase came with a warmth and unanimity of tone, at a pace that might be called languid; while I felt that Mapp was straining a little to lift the tempo at the start, I soon decided that the three were very much of one mind, not just about speeds but about the emotional colours of the piece as a whole. They were totally at home in the essentially Brahmsian, muscular and slightly sentimental first theme.

The steady pace of the Andante movement, with the almost heroic double octaves in the piano, made a memorable impression, punctuating the melody heard first on the violin; it’s a variations movement that forms the emotional heart of the whole work, and though there are always minor matters where one wonders about a balance or a phrasing detail, it was beautifully played. More taxing in a technical sense is the Scherzo, particularly for the piano and this was sparkling and pretty flawless; one of Brahms’s loveliest tunes adorns the Trio section and it was given careful, succulent exposure.  Through the finale, Giocoso, the sense of jollity seems clouded and the performers did nothing to conceal that it is foolish to expect happiness to last, and it is the movement’s nobility and seriousness that left the strongest impression from this performance.

It’s timely again to remark on the pleasure of simply attending concerts at the arts centre in Upper Hutt, with its spaciousness, its nice café and an appropriately sized auditorium with agreeable acoustics – and no parking problems, though the railway station, too, is close by.

 

 

Diverting variety of opera scenes in New Zealand School of Music’s annual opera fiesta

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

A Night at the Opera from the New Zealand School of Music

A review jointly composed by Rosemary Collier and Lindis Taylor who each attended one of the performances 

Eighteen singers accompanied by Mark Dorrell – piano;

A list of singers and the scenes in which they sang will be found at the end

Scenes from:
Mozart: The Magic Flute, The Impresario, The Marriage of Figaro;
A Hand of Bridge by Barber;
Anna Bolena by Donizetti;
Princess Ida by Sullivan;
La Bohème by Puccini;
Die Fledermausby J Strauss II

Director: Jacqueline Coats;
Vocal coach: Lisa Harper-Brown;
Tutors: Richard Greager, Margaret Medlyn, Jenny Wollerman

Adam Concert Room, Kelburn Campus

Friday 28 and Saturday 29 September at 7.30pm

This was a concert of opera scenes, arias and ensembles, a stand-in for the traditional opera production that the school of music has been mounting, with few exceptions, since the 1970s. In fact, considering that the former Polytechnic Conservatorium used also to stage an opera every year, Wellington almost always enjoyed two student productions a year, a valuable addition to the offerings (two or three a year) from the then Wellington City Opera.

The performance space was large with the audience spread round three sides and a huge white screen backdrop covering the chamber organ and the entrance.

Staging was minimal and with only the piano to support them, the singers were certainly more exposed than they would be in a full production. That probably made it harder to create a satisfactory depiction of a fairy-tale scene like Tamino’s meeting with the Three Ladies and Papageno, even with the brave attempt at projecting shadow puppets on the screen behind the performers.

The piano was played by Mark Dorrell who has made a deep impression in the city as an accompanist for singers as well as conductor of the Orpheus Choir. He drew sounds from the piano that seemed as if they had been written by the composer, conjuring such a variety of colours that I scarcely missed the presence of an orchestra.

Some of the singers in both The Magic Flute and The Impresario displayed some lack of ease in their performances, though most threw themselves into the roles with huge energy. Any weaknesses in the first half, however, were probably on account of the demands of Mozart which tended to test them both in terms of vocal refinement and variety, as well as being called on to express emotions of greater subtlety. Thus those same singers often seemed in slightly better control of their voices in later appearances.

Some of the male singers seemed unaware of the need to sing the words as though for the first time, in order to project the meaning and the drama.

The costumes and wigs of the Three Ladies (Christina Orgias, Awhina Waimotu and Rebekah Giesbers) were amazing, suggesting Valkyries perhaps, and they sang with Wagnerian strength. After one has become familiar with the Flute, any early impression that the roles of the Three Ladies are secondary is dispelled: not only are they vocally demanding but each needs individual characterisation, and the three singers showed a lively awareness of that, even if ultimate polish proved a bit further off.

The performances by Jesse Stratford and Rory Sweeney as Tamino and Papageno also showed that combination of good understanding and an awareness of what they aspire to.

The famous vocal duel between the two sopranos in Mozart’s one-act The Impresario (Der Schauspieldirektor) was a surprising offering, a particularly challenging scene to bring off with the necessary amount of hilarity.

The two roles are, of course, quite scary, and there was no concealing that in Esther Leefe’s and Tess Robinson’s daring and vivid performances of Madame Silberklang (Silverklang) and Miss ‘Sweetsong’ (Mlle Herz in the original), there were weaknesses which the nature of their ego-driven roles actually accommodated. In fact, the only other sung role in the original is that of Vogelsang, the company tenor who attempts the mediation. Here, that singing role was ascribed to ‘Eiler’, the banker, who, in the original, takes a non-singing role, threatening in the end to pull the funding in order to force the two vying singers to back off. The other spoken role is that of Frank, the impresario.

Esther Leefe, as the aging prima donna, wore a blond wig and carefully failed in her repeated attempts at top Fs. Tess Robinson’s voice was a little unsteady at the start but both did a great job. In the role of ‘Eiler’, William McElwee’s vocal colouring was a bit under-developed, but he showed more accomplishment in his later appearance as Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus, with fine comic flair.

The scene from Figaro was from the riotous second act in the Countess’s room from the point where Cherubino has jumped from the window as the Count and Countess return to break into the wardrobe where the Count thinks and the Countess fears that they’ll find him, through to the entrance of Basilio, Bartolo and Marcellina. Though all were costumed in period, the lack of stage amenities demanded more vigorous employment of audience imagination.

Angélique MacDonald’s Countess was visually and histrionically attractive though initially she was a little unstable in pitch. Robert Gray, the Count, didn’t really display the fury and frustration that is his hallmark in the entire scene, though his vocal quality is agreeable. Amelia Ryman created a spirited Susanna and Figaro (Christian Thurston), in a plum, velvet jacket, took his role excellently. Antonio the gardener was sung by Daniel Dew, who looked and delivered in perfect style.

The scene ends after the entrance of Basilio, Bartolo and Marcellina (respectively: William McElwee, Jamie Henare and Rebekah Giesbers) who reveal the earlier marriage contract between Marcellina and Figaro; their smaller roles at this point were very effective. The whole extended scene was carried of with as much wit and delight as could reasonably be expected.

After the interval Awhina Waimotu, Christina Orgias, Fredi Jones and Rory Sweeney entered chatting in good American accents before sitting down to a round of Bridge. It must be the shortest opera in the repertoire, allowing just one major monologue each to the four players, revealing their inner lives and suggesting two hopeless marriages, masked by social conventions. The performances were varied and variable, from the confident Bill of Fredi Jones to the pathetic lament of Geraldine excellently sung by Awhina Waimotu. In between were the slightly self-conscious performance by Rory Sweeney as David, dreaming of becoming rich, and the empty-headed Sally, whose childish longing for a fancy hat almost made us feel sorry for her.

The great scene from Donizetti’s Anna Bolena in which the name role (Amelia Ryman) and the woman who will be Henry VIII’s next wife, Jane Seymour (Angélique MacDonald), was a dramatic high-point of the evening. It rests as one of the pinnacles of the bel canto era, and one of the great scenes in opera. The Queen’s long solo grew in intensity and credibility as it unfolded, while Seymour’s responding monologue well displayed their entrapment. They were splendidly costumed, sang strongly if not with the ultimate degree of polish and accuracy, but compensating with the total conviction with which they invested their performances.

The scene from Princess Ida, one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s lesser operettas, did not much amuse me [comments in this paragraph are Lindis’s], though the three men (Daniel Dew, Jesse Stratford and Jamie Henare) carried it off with real flair, exposing individual delineation clearly, though they share the age’s ridiculously passé attitudes to women’s higher education. So the fundamental silliness of the piece rather got in the way of enjoying the quite well-executed nonsense.

The last scene of Act I of La Bohème gave two of the most experienced voice students a great opportunity: Tom Atkins as Rodolfo and Isabella Moore as Mimi created near professional performances, accurate in pitch, well phrased and finely detailed in timbre and dynamics. We heard both the great arias and the duet ‘O soave fanciulla’ splendidly sung, as well as the calls from the other three students from the street below, all of whom had featured in earlier excerpts.

The evening ended with the last phase of Prince Orlofsky’s party in Act II of Die Fledermaus. As with all the previous scenes, it was sung in the original language, with spoken parts in English, though the final ensemble was also in English. Imogen Thirlwall proved a most accomplished Rosalinde and Fredi Jones allowed himself to be gently disgraced in a convincing performance  of Eisenstein; we noticed earlier William McElwee’s well portrayed role as Orlofsky. All eighteen singers came to the party for the final ensemble which might have been one of the few places where the Straussian delight could have been heightened even more with the support of an orchestra.

The singers and their scenes:

Christina Orgias          Flute                Bridge
Awhina Waimotu        Flute                Bridge
Rebekah Giesbers       Flute                Figaro
Jesse Stratford            Flute                Ida
Rory Sweeney             Flute                Bridge
Esther Leefe                Impresario
Tess Robinson             Impresario
William McElwee       Impresario       Figaro              Fledermaus
Amelia Ryman            Figaro              Bolena
Robert Gray                Figaro
Angélique MacDonald Figaro            Bolena
Christian Thurston      Figaro              Bohème
Daniel Dew                 Figaro              Ida
Jamie Henare               Figaro              Ida                   Bohème
Fredi Jones                  Bridge             Bohème           Fledermaus
Tom Atkins                 Bohème (Rodolfo) I
sabella Moore            Bohème (Mimi)
Imogen Thirlwall         Fledermaus (Rosalinde)

Viva Viola at Lower Hutt campaigns for full recognition with both hits and misses

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Viola Viva: The Next Generation (John Roxburgh, Alexa Thomson, Megan Ward and Vincent Hardaker)

Music by Bach, Handel, Bizet and Saint-Saëns

St Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 26 September, 12.15pm

I find that I heard other embodiments of this ensemble last year, and a solo performance by Megan Ward in June. Previous experiences entertained me more than this one did, though there were things, such as the arrangement of Handel’s Fireworks Music, that I thought came off splendidly.

Almost all music for a group like this must be arrangements, and so there is the risk of running foul of the strong feeling in the more severe quarters of the classical music world that such things are bastards, disreputable, to be deplored. Most generalisations are dishonest and foolish and so is that. All arrangements must be taken on their merits and listened to objectively, and with one’s emotional antennae switched on.

I entered just after the Overture to the Royal Fireworks Music had begun and loved the depth of sonority achieved by these instruments; while their sound was quite different from that of woodwinds and brass, it produced a similar effect, of celebration and energy, adorned with plenty of variety, notably when the pensive middle section came. In La Paix (the peace the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle at the end of the War of the Austrian Succession – succession of deceased despotic European monarchs was a bountiful source of conflict and profligate slaughter in the 18th century) I found myself wanting a little more sustained tone, but the entire three movements generally made a persuasive case for the enterprise.

The disposition of players changed democratically with each new piece, allowing each to be heard in the more prominent parts. I’ve always been fond of the Minuetto from Bizet’s incidental music for Daudet’s play, L’arlésienne; it seemed to have been much more played in the 1950s when my musical affections were at their most susceptible. But I couldn’t find it in my heart to fall for this arrangement the colours of which seem to matter more than they did in the Handel; the middle section – say, the Trio – sounded rather cloddish.

The Bach Fugue in C major – oddly truncated from its Prelude – seemed to do them no favours for it was so brief that I found it hard to become involved with, and the playing, capable as it was, simply did not persuade me. Perhaps its performance needs careful rethinking and really thoughtful repetition.

The next piece was an arrangement of ‘Lascia ch’io panga’ from Handel’s Rinaldo. Again I had misgivings about is success as a translation, and didn’t feel that it has bedded into its new habitation.

The last offering was Saint-Saëns’s tone poem Danse Macabre. John Roxburgh took his turn leading this, playing a good deal of the devilish bravura which was fit for a Paganini, or at least a Wieniawski as it might have been when it was written in 1873. It actually began life as a song setting of an eponymous poem by Henry Cazalis, and the composer did separate arrangements for piano solo and small orchestra before coming to its orchestral full dress.

So there is plenty of authority for adaptations here, and this one worked well, though one must be forgiven for missing the special effects such as xylophone. Its great popularity has, naturally, caused it to be dismissed by the more severe of music critics, but it is nevertheless a major work of its kind, one of the first after Liszt’s invention of the symphonic poem with its literary, artistic or philosophical references.

The players did well with the sul ponticello effects, and other departures from routine techniques. If intonation and ensemble were occasionally a fraction under perfect, its atmosphere was splendidly conjured right through to the beautifully protracted dying phrases, and the tonal quality both individually and in choruses, was often excellent, beguiling the ear.

This ensemble, and the personal variations on it that seem to occur, strike me as having a good future both in the specialised viola world and in the sphere of general classical music.

 

Litton and Hough combine with the NZSO to present an exhilarating concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Andrew Litton conducts the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra with pianist Stephen Hough

Anthony Ritchie:  Diary of a Madman: Dedication to Shostakovich; Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No 5 in F, Op 103; Shostakovich: Symphony No 5 in D minor, Op 47

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 22 September, 8pm

To label this concert ‘Around the world in 80 minutes’ is to draw a rather long bow: every concert that includes both a New Zealand and a European work could be so called. From Egypt to Russia is not far, and Ritchie’s piece is really from Russia, after all….

But Wellington’s astute concert-goers were not misled: it was an excellent concert both on account of the programme and the performers.

Anthony Ritchie is one of New Zealand’s best and most successful composers; his arrestingly named Diary of a Madman proved a splendid piece, a sort of small-scale ‘concerto for orchestra’; it was originally written for the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, to celebrate the centenary of Shostakovich’s birth in 1906. Its name derived from Shostakovich’s admiration for playwright and short story writer Gogol. He had set the story The Nose and the play, The Gamblers, as operas; another Gogol story was called Diary of a Madman, which uses the formula of ‘laughter through tears’, a formula that is very often present in Shostakovich, Ritchie writes.

It employed a large number of Shostakovich’s tunes from a variety of works, many of which would have been familiar to many of the audience, though not all easy to name. So one way to pass the time was to wrack the brains to identify each one; another pastime was to admire the orchestration of which Ritchie is a master, using xylophone or tuba or side drum with flair and wit, each element seeming to reflect something of the character of the theme involved; and also to become increasingly impressed by the organic structural feeling that accompanied its unfolding.

He hardly had to tell us, in the programme notes, that he had put them together in a process of free-association; so an attempt to find logical associations would clearly be nonsense.  It began in comfortable tonal language and didn’t deviate greatly from its idiom as music to divert and entertain.

It deserves to become a staple repertoire piece.

Stephen Hough seems to be the only great pianist who allows us to hear Saint-Saëns’s piano concertos. Years ago he played No 4; now No 5, which the composer wrote in 1896 in Luxor and Cairo, making use of some local tunes and thus acquiring the nick-name Egyptian (unlike some composers, he was not starved of melodic invention however). But the extent of this material is slight and I hear more touches of Spain and even the Balkans in this concerto.

Hough made his early reputation in certain very conspicuously virtuosic works like the Hummel piano concertos, but his playing has always revealed an exquisite poetic quality and a refined taste that the flights of unbelievable spectacle merely seem to enhance in a perfectly modest way.

On Saturday evening, he gave a spectacular demonstration of the way in which he has persuaded millions of the value of certain neglected music, particularly the much scorned Romantic composers of the second class. He has shown that the main impediment has been the belief that the music was meretricious and shallow, a view that sprang from the influence of the post Romantic and atonal schools. But it can all be blown away by a player’s musical integrity and demonstrative sincerity. Each movement has a strong individual character, with constantly changing handling of the ideas, set in delightful sunny visions.

Saint-Saëns never pretends to teutonic profundity; he can never be mistaken for Beethoven or Bruckner, and though some of his music, for example most of his solo piano works, can be called trite, far more of his music than gets played deserves to be well known. There is nothing predictable or formulaic in this concerto; its progress, as it happens, seems inevitable; nowhere more conspicuous than in the middle Andante movement, where a distinctly, perhaps north African, atmosphere appears, but which proceeds in the most unpredictable ways, portentous, then mysterious, sentimental moments alternating with deep sonorities.

The only common link between that and the Shostakovich was the number 5.

This great symphony responded to Andrew Litton’s attention just as powerfully and colourfully as had the two previous works. If one’s attention had been monopolised rather by the piano, it was now easy to be impressed by the smooth beauty of string playing, the sense of unease that was soon created, the touches of sardonic martial music, ethereal touches from the celeste or harp and the surprising entry by the piano.

At the back of one’s mind, as one listens to this symphony, is always the still unresolved question about Shostakovich’s intentions: how much do we rely on Volkov’s account of its bitter anti-Stalinist subtext, that the words attached to the score were merely to save his skin; or is it expressing a more ambivalent picture of Soviet conditions?

Nevertheless, this performance left no room for doubt about the orchestra’s ability to rouse powerful emotional responses to the music itself; it was perhaps the kind of concert that the NZSO ought to present more frequently.

 

 

Interesting, themed recital by vocal quartet at Old Saint Paul’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

‘The Hunter and the Hunted’

Janey MacKenzie (soprano), Jody Orgias (mezzo soprano), Jamie Young (tenor), Justin Pearce (baritone) and Robyn Jaquiery (piano)

Arias and songs by Tchaikovsky and Handel

Old Saint Paul’s, Mulgrave Street

Tuesday 18 September, 12.15pm

The programme notes were prefaced by the words: “Some hunt for sport. Some hunt for revenge. Others are searching for love.”

Sometimes the search for a theme that might bring to a recital some kind of common thread that seems to make the whole greater than the sun of the parts, is useful, sometimes not. This fell somewhere between, though the ground was well covered by what we heard.

Janey MacKenzie and Jody Orgias opened with two duets by Tchaikovsky.
‘In the garden, near the ford’ opened with rippling piano sounds that accompanied the two very different voices which, however, blended most attractively. In authentic-sounding Russian, their singing lifted the spirits. In a second duet, ‘Dawn’, the two voices evoked a quiet religious air in a chant-like melody, perhaps suitable for the Orthodox equivalent of Matins, in slow waltz time, and they reflected the brightening day in lines than rose in pitch and clarity.

Handel occupied the central group of the recital: three pieces from Giulio Cesare, one from Semele, and one, the trio ‘The flocks shall leave the mountains’, from Acis and Galatea.

Tenor Jamie Young sang ‘Where’er you walk’ (Semele) in a voice that was slightly brittle but more seriously, in a manner that tried too hard with needless ornamentation. As a result it was difficult to conjure an air of gentle longing. Jamie reappeared in the trio from Acis and Galatea, singing the role of Acis which framed his voice to better advantage among other singers. Janey MacKenzie sang the Galatea while Justin Pearce as the nasty Polyphemus interrupted matters with a fine, threatening confrontation.

Here, and throughout, the need to use the scores detracted a little from the creation of an atmosphere seeking to evoke theatrical performance.

The three items from Giulio Cesare came together well; first with Jody taking the alto part of Cornelia to Janey MacKenzie’s Sextus in ‘Son nata a lagrimar’ in Act I where the murdered Pompey’s wife, Cornelia, and their son Sextus lament their predicament, caught up in the political and sexual web through the designs of Ptolemy and his retinue. The emotion was well portrayed.

Earlier in that act, Caesar has been offered duplicitous blandishments by Ptolemy and Caesar invokes a hunting simile in his solo ‘Va tacito’ to hint at the revenge he seeks against the Egyptian king. Jody illuminated the castrato role of Caesar (these days a great role for counter-tenors David Daniels and Andreas Scholl) with the right emotional quality.

The beautiful aria ‘Piangero la sorte mia’ is sung by Cleopatra at the beginning of Act III after Ptolemy’s army has defeated Cleopatra’s forces and she is imprisoned, but dreams of revenge which she and Caesar achieve with Caesar’s surprise defeat of Ptolemy in the last scene. Janey MacKenzie created a convincing Cleopatra both vocally and even visually.

The recital reverted to the late 19th century with another song and two arias by Tchaikovsky. The curtain rises in Eugene Onegin with Tatiana and her sister Olga singing a duet and these two voices simulated the peasant simplicity of the two rather affectingly.

Between the two arias Justin Pearce sang what is probably Tchaikovsky’s best-known song, ‘None but the lonely heart’, a Russian translation of the second of Mignon’s songs from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren, ‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt’.

His voice is perhaps a little unyielding for the real emotional force of the song to emerge but the tone or regret and longing were there.

Then from Tchaikovsky’s penultimate opera, The Queen of Spades, the two again took very similar roles, Lisa and Pauline, children of landed gentry, sweetly adopting a peasant song for their pleasure.
It brought to an end an attractive and unusual group of songs in a setting that helped simulate the atmosphere of the theatre.

 

 

Orchestral rarities in impressive performances from Wellington Chamber Orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Chamber Orchestra conducted by Donald Maurice with Inbal Megiddo (cello)

Copland: Fanfare for the Common Man; Barber: Cello Concerto; Ives: Symphony No 2

Church of St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 16 September, 2.30pm

What an ambitious programme for an essentially amateur orchestra! Thinking back a decade or so, it would seem that the orchestra has gained greatly in the average level of skill. This was an astonishing concert.

The polish and confidence were evident at once in the performance of Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. It’s nothing that a practised group of bandsmen couldn’t do very well, but the augmented brass section of the WCO did rather more than just play the notes. There was a real feel of muscular workers’ unity in the sonorous brilliance of the playing and strains of the ‘Internationale’ were not far away.

But it was both the other major works that stamped the concert with a mark of bravery and self-confidence.  I’ve never heard the Barber cello concerto live before and as it unfolded I really doubted that I’d heard it at all.

The cello concerto is a world away from the lyrical violin concerto, though not so far as to meet with the commendation of the school of Boulez, Maderna and Stockhausen.

It is a neglected work and I imagine the reason is partly its great difficulty, and partly its somewhat remoteness of tone, and its scarcity of much immediate melodic charm. Yet it was apparently considered by Barber to be one of his most successful scores.

I came across a review of the 1951 performance conducted by Barber with cellist Zara Nelsova which declared:  “Given suitable advocacy it could be a highly popular work and deserves to have a much stronger foothold on the repertoire than it at present enjoys. The work possesses an astonishing freshness, lyricism and a natural charm which grows stronger over the years. There are few modern concertos that have such a marvellous main tune as does the opening of this Concerto, and Barber’s scoring is beautifully transparent and full of colour.”

However, in the following 60 years it has not had many performances.

I must first, however, say how impressed I was to read the programme notes, unusually fluent, literate, well-informed, wide-ranging over much more than merely the mechanics and background to the music. They were by Ben Booker.

If Haydn and Mozart and just about every composer till the 20th century, could write as if the terrible and endless wars that surrounded them did not exist, it became impossible for any art form to ignore war after World War II which may explain the angularity and ‘nightmarish’ (Booker’s word) quality of the opening.

I’ve heard Inbal Megiddo play in several, varied situations, but this was the first time in a concerto; and in a very tough concerto. The writing for the cello might be challenging, but it struck me as lying well, if not very comfortably, for the instrument, much in the middle of the cello’s range, though much quite high too.

The opening reminded me a little of the start of Shostakovich’s first cello concerto, which could only have been coincidental for Barber’s was written earlier. But perhaps it points to a similar view of what constitutes music in the late 20th century. Both eschewed the avant-garde, and the sound that Barber sought seemed to be the essential cello sound.

Most eyes and ears are on the soloist in a concerto, and Megiddo’s playing, powerful and brilliant, kept attention focused where it had to be. Her end-of-first-movement cadenza was a truly professional, virtuosic affair.

A prominent and nicely played oboe signalled the meditative, yet lyrical second movement, which made more conspicuous use of trumpets, horns and trombone – the brass played very well.

The third movement followed the normal course, though any joyousness is very tempered by a certain brutal brilliance as the cello persists with highly detailed decorative passages, all lending an air of frenzy and disturbance rather than an optimistic conclusion.

Though no one could claim the orchestra played immaculately, rehearsals under Donald Maurice had clearly been thorough enough to ensure that there were few conspicuous stumbles and for the orchestra to deliver plenty of rhythmic energy, and generally very good ensemble.

The Ives symphony was also a rarity – all his four symphonies are rarities in live performance, and I don’t recall any by the NZSO. I didn’t know this one. Its opening could have been an immature and eccentric work by Schumann or Bruckner; but such seekings for comparisons are futile. The mind has to be empty of expectations for this music.

It is in five movements. There is no mistaking the Ives trademark quotations from both classics and American folk and gospel music which, to me, still sounds eccentric: I ask myself, Why does Ives feel that this technique makes good music?

Of course there is no compulsion for a turn-of-the-century composer to write in a manner that establishes his place in the chronological sequence, in the middle of the careers of Mahler or Elgar, Debussy or Janacek, Schoenberg or Rachmaninov, Puccini or Strauss, Falla or Ravel, and so on, but in doing that he has risked being considered a permanent iconoclast and loaner, which has been Ives’s fate – but is it a fate?

There were times when the music sounded simply naïve, and not able to be set alongside the composers I’ve mentioned above. But one smiles at the composer’s studied wit nevertheless. Given all that, the performance, handling quite deftly the myriad facets of his music – sentimental, quixotic, droll, long-breathed, bombastic, satiric, imitative of so many kinds of music – was remarkably competent and satisfying,