Author: Lindis Taylor

Adventurous and rewarding recital by Richard Mapp and Donald Maurice

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Boris Pigovat: Prayer and Botticelli’s Magnificat (world premiere)
Georges Enescu: Sonata in the Romanian Folk Character (transcription by Donald Maurice)

Donald Maurice (viola) and Richard Mapp (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 4 July, 12.15pm

Students at New Zealand schools of music, and those at the school in Wellington in particular are fortunate in working in an environment that both encourages original composition and its performance, and encourages the exploration of not so new music.

Obviously, that is not at the expense of furnishing students’ memories with the great music of the past, though many will have come from secondary schools where exposure to very much of the wealth of music of earlier times has been patchy.

Certain of the teachers at the school have developed a reputation for unearthing music of unfamiliar composers as well as unfamiliar music of quite famous composers.

Donald Maurice has been prominent among them. Apart from being a leading figure in the international viola scene – he inspired the hosting of the International Viola Congress in Wellington a decade or so ago, for example – he has done very significant work in promoting the work of certain composers.

He published his own completion of Bartók’s unfinished viola concerto. With his colleagues in the New Zealand String Quartet he has committed to CD all 17 of Alfred Hill’s string quartets. And a couple of years ago, Maurice conducted the Wellington Chamber Orchestra in a concert of music by Bartók, Gary Goldschneider (a Romanian-inspired piece), Alfred Hill (one of his symphonies), Enescu and Pigovat (In Arentinian Style).

Mapp’s career has followed a more traditional, pianist’s path in terms of repertoire, returning to New Zealand after a lengthy career around Europe; and now lending his talents generously to accompany a great variety of musicians, students as well as distinguished professionals, in wide-ranging repertory; his much praised CD of piano music by Granados also indicates an exploratory disposition.

So this was another case of discovery. Maurice made a mark in 2011 with his recording with the Vector Wellington Orchestra, under Marc Taddei, of The Holocaust Requiem by Boris Pigovat; that followed the orchestra’s concert in 2008, with the first performance of Requiem outside Europe, as well as Prayer (which was played at the present recital), a piece for viola and harp, and a string quartet.

The Requiem was performed again, in September 2011, by Kenneth Young conducting the New Zealand School of Music Orchestra with Maurice playing viola.

Clearly he is attracted to the Israeli composer whose Prayer and Botticelli’s Magnificat he played at this concert.

Prayer is a slow, elegiac piece written during the composition of the Requiem, and breathing the same air; it too seems perfectly conceived for the viola which took charge of the emotional flavour of the piece, even though the piano’s role, when I could turn my attention away from the beauty and intensity of Maurice’s playing, was an essential participant, and handled with the utmost sensitivity by Mapp. Inevitably, I suppose, I also detected the accents of Ernest Bloch, particularly in the piece’s later phases.

Botticelli’s Magnificat was almost the work of another composer entirely, inspired by the famous painting in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, placing the Medici family in a religious context. It is coloured in light tones, treating the two instruments in somewhat unusual ways, in which the piano is accorded greater prominence much of the time; it carried an open, clear melody while the viola played a sustained single note, a pedal, though in the treble register; however, the viola soon picked it up and elaborated it.

If our experience of Pigovat had been moulded so far by that Requiem and the Prayer, here was a more gracious, gregarious and peaceful fellow, though no less able to express emotion. It was a spirit that both players had no difficulty in communicating.

The sonata by Enescu was an even more interesting discovery (for me). An arrangement by Maurice of Enescu’s third violin sonata in A minor (Op 25), titled ‘dans le caractère populaire roumain’, as is the transcription. He has played it in the United States and Australia, as well as previously in New Zealand.

It struck me that one could approach it from one of two quite different standpoints: one, as a misalliance between generally lively folk music and its enforced conformity with formal classical composition styles; two, as offering a useful and imaginative model for the reassertion of the most common source of inspiration for serious composers over the centuries – popular music which is assimilated into interesting formal structures, as with the last movements of the third Razumovsky Quartet or Brahms’s Piano Quartet Op 25, or Smetana’s Ma Vlast.

I incline to the latter view, hearing it as arising from the same source as his two wonderful Romanian Rhapsodies, only here employing more refined resources. It starts with themes that are distinctly gypsyish in both instruments, with the piano often assuming a rather more important role to begin with, divertingly decorative against the viola which is confined for a while to sustained bowings that are in the nature of pedals.

The note about the second movement suggested a sinister mood, darkness, but I did not sense nocturnal terrors or the presence of anything supernatural, though the piano was given to darting about unpredictably. The third movement too was characterised in the notes in highly fanciful terms, and again my fears were not realised, but the character of the music and the highly accomplished playing convinced me that their pains with its performance had been justified and that more of Enescu’s music deserves a regular place in concert programmes.

Mostly musical anniversaries of 2012

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Earlier in the year we threatened to publish a list of significant musical anniversaries that deserved to be celebrated in 2012. It’s not too late.

This has obviously been a work in progress, constantly being added to, and it will never be exhaustive; we would welcome being told of omissions or corrections from others whose minds are bent in a similar way.

In addition to musical references are some to writers with (or without) musical connections.

1512

Supposed birth of Jacob Clemens non Papa, Flemish Renaissance polyphonist. Died c. 1555.

 

1562

John Bull and Jan Sweelinck were born this year.

Adriaan Willaert (Flemish composer) died in Venice in 1562, where Giovanni Gabrieli lived and died in the same year.

 

1612

Poet Richard Crashaw was born in 1612. He was one of the religious poets of the 17th century, so-called metaphysical poets.

 

1662

Francesco Cavalli (born 1602) was invited to Paris by Cardinal Mazarin where, in 1662, he produced Ercole amante at the Théâtre des Tuileries in Paris with Louis XIV taking part, dressed as the Sun King.  Cavalli’s opera career began in 1639, near the end of Monteverdi’s.

 

1712

John Stanley was born; a blind English organist and composer.

Corelli’s 12 concerti grossi were published in 1712

Handel’s first opera in London was Rinaldo in February 1711. In 1712 he composed Il pastor fido.

Alessandro Scarlatti’s Il Ciro was premiered in 1712.

Frederick the Great, the enlightened Prussian monarch, was born in 1712. He was both a brilliant leader, military strategist, arts and music lover. He was a flutist and employed Bach’s son Carl Philip Emmanuel who perhaps, in 1747, encouraged the king to invite his father to Potsdam. For father Bach it was an often discomfitting experience.

 

1762

Two Italian instrumental composers, Francesco Manfredini and Francesco Geminiani died.

André Chénier, the French poet, was born; though a supporter of the Revolution, he wound up on the wrong side of the leaders of The Terror and was guillotined just two days before the fall of Robespierre. Librettist, Luigi Illica, used the facts of Chénier’s life to write a libretto that inspired Umberto Giordano to write his best, or at least his most famous, opera, Andrea Chénier.

Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, premeired in 1762 One of the most important operas in the sense of changing the idea of what opera was.

And Thomas Arne’s best-known surviving opera, Artaxerxes was produced in 1762 at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. It used a Metastasio libretto which had been set by J C Bach the year before, for Turin.

1812

Friedrich von Flotow was born (Martha, of 1847, whose most famous aria is the lovely ‘Ach, so fromm’, better known in the Italian version, ‘M’appari’; it’s also famous for its version of ‘The last rose of summer’).

Pianist, Liszt’s rival, Thalberg born

And these died:

Franz Hoffmeister. Music publisher and prolific composer, contemporary of Mozart in Vienna (see Mozart’s Hoffmeister Quartet, K 499)

Jan Ladislav Dussek: Bohemian-born composer and pianist, peripatetic: Netherlands, Germany, Russia, Lithuania, France, England.

The 1812 Overture was not, of course, written in 1812, but in 1880.

In 1812 Rossini’s career had just begun. His first opera was La cambuiale di matrimonio in 1810, not a success. But by 1812 he was turning 20 and getting into his stride; he premiered four operas in 1812:

L’inganno felcie, in January
Ciro in Babilonia in March
La scala di seta in April
La pietra del paragone on my birthday 26 September

First performance by Carl Czerny of Beethoven’s 5th piano concerto in Vienna

 

Literature in 1812:

Byron’s Childe Harold published in 1812

Russian novelist Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov was born in 1812. Famous mainly for Oblomov, whose chief character is a paragon of sloth.

Two of the greatest literary figures in 19th century Britain were born just 200 years ago: Charles Dickens and poet Robert Browning. I don’t know whether Dickens was particularly interested in music, but Browning was. A poem I came across at school has continued to fascinate me: A Toccata of Galuppi’s. in which Browning’s familiarity with music and its technical elements is clear.

Pertinent lines:

“Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!
I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;
But although I take your meaning, ‘tis with such a heavy mind!

“Here you come with your old music, and here’s all the good it brings.…

“…
While you sat and played toccatas, stately at the clavichord?

“What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,
Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions – ‘must we die?’
Those commiserating sevenths – ‘Life might last! We can but try!’

“…
Hark, the dominant’s persistence till it must be answered to!

“So an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!
‘Brave Galuppi! That was music! good alike at grave and gay!
‘I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!’”
…

When I read it in the 1950s, the name Galuppi (1706 – 1785) meant nothing to me and 30 years later it still meant very little, till the arrival of the CD and the desire for new music that was, in general, not satisfied by most contemporary music, stimulated the exploration of early music, including a lot of Galuppi’s music – operas, concertos, chamber and organ music.

And now we find Galuppi, just one of a host of Italian composers who flourished through the 18th century, filling the previously empty years between the death of Vivaldi and the arrival of Rossini and Paganini who heralded a revival of Italian music. Some of the reappearing composers of the 18th century: Sammartini, Tartini, Locatelli, Geminiani, Salieri, Piccinni, Sacchini, Paisiello, Martini, Cimarosa, Jommelli, Traetta, Sarti…

1862

Delius and Debussy born

As well as: Edward German – composer of English operetta, Merrie England

Alphons Diepenbrock, one of the rare race of Dutch composers

Léon Boëllmann, organist and composer: his best known work is Suite Gothique.

Ludovic Halévy (La Juive) died in 1862.

Two major operas were premiered in 1862:

Béatrice et Bénédict (Berlioz) at Baden-Baden

La forza del destino (Verdi) at St Petersburg

 

Two German poets died in 1862:

Ludwig Uhland and Justinius Kerner

And Gerhart Hauptmann was born, a playwright, best known for Die Weber (The weavers). He was Silesian and his end was poignant and barbaric. He was among the millions of Germans forcibly expelled at the end of World War II from the countries of Eastern Europe and the former eastern provinces of the pre-war Germany, such as East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia. The fact of being a great writer, a Nobel Prize winner (1912), now 84 years of age, made no difference to the orders of the Soviet colonel charged with the task of expelling all Germans from Hauptmann’s town. Faced with the finality of the order, Hauptmann fell ill and died and was buried, not according to his wishes, but on an island in the Soviet occupied zone of Germany, near Stralsund in the North Sea.

Maurice Maeterlinck, playwright, was born in 1862; in my childhood I remember being taken to a play called The Bluebird in the Opera House in Wellington. But he’s most famous for writing a play that inspired a composer born in the same year as he was – Debussy, who set Pelléas et Mélisande as an opera which led to considerable animosity between poet and composer.

 

1912

The following composers born :

Xavier Montsalvatge, many singers are attracted to his Cinco canciones negras

Carlos Guastavino, the fourth best-known Argentinian composer after Ginastera, Piazzolla and Golijov.

Jean Françaix 

José Moncayo –he wrote the exciting ‘Huapango’

Igor Markevitch – conductor/composer

Two radical American composers: John Cage and Conrad Nancarrow

Hugo Weisgall: Moravia-Jewish-born American composer, of mainly vocal music and opera.

Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Australian woman composer, much earlier than any comparable New Zealand woman composer.

Deaths:

Jules Massenet and

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Franz Schreker wrote Der ferner Klang in 1912, the best known of his operas, several of which have regained popularity recently.

Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé first performed by Ballet Russes at Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris

Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire first performed, in Berlin

In Stuttgart, Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, initially just a 30minute opera, libretto by Hugo von Hofmansthal, was given as double bill with Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme: a thank-you to the great stage director Max Reinhardt who had directed Der Rosenkavalier. Hofmannsthal reworked the two elements, opera and play, into a new, integrated opera which Strauss set in 1916.

Mahler‘s Ninth Symphony was premiered in Vienna in June 1912, a year after his death.

Laurence Durrell was born in 1912: His Alexandria Quartet was a sensation when it appeared in the late 1950s, among students of literature anyway. (I re-read copies which are to be found both at home in Wellington and our beach bach). I wonder what its reputation is today.

 

1962

Britten’s War Requiem first performed at Coventry Cathedral

These composers died in 1962:

Fritz Kreisler – a number of works written ‘in the style of’, and initially published as by those mainly 18th century composers.

Jacques Ibert – his most popular pieces are Divertissement, based on his incidental music for the play Le chapeau de paille d’Italie, later a film by René Clair; and Escales (Ports of Call).

John Ireland, who, long after his death has been favourably re-assessed after decades of neglect.

Eugene Goosens. Best known as conductor but regarded himself more as a composer.

Hanns Eisler. He was a refugee from Nazi Germany to the United States, but after being accused of Communist connections by the McCarthy committee (look at Wikipedia: ‘Hollywood Blacklist’) returned to East Germany in 1948. Berlin’s principal music academy is named for him: Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler”

 

 

Mulled Wine accompanies Aroha String Quartet concert at Paekakariki

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Haydn: String Quartet in B flat, Op 76 No 4 (Sunrise); The White-haired Girt by the Lu Shun Collective; Debussy: Quartet in G minor

Aroha String Quartet (Hai-hong Liu and Blythe Press – violins, Zhongxian Jin – viola, Robert Ibell – cello)

Memorial Hall, Paekakariki

Sunday 24 June, 2.30pm

I heard the Aroha Quartet’s first concert in 2004 and was pretty impressed and have followed them with great interest ever since. The original quartet comprised four Chinese players, three playing in the NZSO and one, the viola Zhongxian Jin, teaching at Victoria University and free lancing. Hai-hong Liu remains leader; the other two were second violinist Beiyi Xue and cellist Jiaxin Cheng.

Jiaxin Cheng reportedly married Julian Lloyd Webber and was replaced by Robert Ibell in 2009. Anne Loeser replaced second violin Beiyi Xue for a while; young Kapiti violinist Blythe Press has now taken the position.

I wondered whether the earlier homogeneity might have been a bit compromised by the change, since Blythe Press is clearly the least experienced member of the quartet. And those suspicions were aroused in the performance of the Haydn quartet where each instrument sounded quite distinct and I found myself listening to it as a piece for four soloists rather than for a single entity that happens to consist of four players on four instruments.

In some ways the quartet gave what might be felt undue emphasis to certain notes and chords in the first movement, creating greater dynamic contrasts than was perhaps ideal. There was an occasional stray note in the early stages but generally the ensemble was very fine. The point is that the hall is highly responsive and you hear every line of music distinctly which makes the task very challenging: the least smudge can be spotted and seamless ensemble is so much more difficult to achieve.

The quiet of the second movement, Adagio, offered the charming accompaniment of the muffled sound of a high sea breaking on the rocks on Paekakariki’s beach; it’s one of the special charms of the hall, along with the westerly view from the windows, across the sea towards Kapiti. Unfortunately, the bright sun made it necessary to draw the curtains during the performances.

It’s a short movement but time enough to hear the four players in a more subdued and refined mood.

There is marked contrast between the Minuet and its Trio middle section and I enjoyed the vigorous, peasantish character they created. Throughout, the music is about contrast, between emphatic chords and intervening calm phrases, dynamics, styles, and of course, the individual sounds of each instrument, and here the contribution of Blythe Press’s violin seemed to have found the measure of the music and of his companions.

The second item was a curiosity – a piece derived from a 1945 Chinese opera which, following the Communist victory in 1948, was adapted to conform with the ideology.

The White Haired Girl, set in the northern border region, Shanxi, tells the story of a peasant girl who is kidnapped by a landlord because the girl’s father owes him rent; and she is held as a slave and concubine, maltreated; but manages to escape and lives for years in caves until she finds her way home. But her privations have made her hair turn white.

The story commended itself, with modifications, to the Communist authorities and because of its attractive melodic character, it became highly popular during the Mao years.

It was indeed an attractive piece, built on motifs that represented elements of the story: the north wind, the red ribbon, day turning to night, joining the Eighth Route Army (against the Japanese invaders) and so on. It lay very happily for the quartet, with long-bowed chords and lyrical passages, tremolo effects, all of which could be related easily to a story.

It was later arranged as a ballet and for a film. The arranger for string quartet was clearly very conversant with western music and, specifically, with string writing. One could hear hints of 19th century western music; so there was no problem in attuning the ears to alien sounds and the non-Chinese members of the quartet sounded as at home in it as the two original members.

If I had wondered about the quartet’s homogeneity in the Haydn, Debussy’s quartet laid it all to rest. Though it’s an early work (1893, before L’après-midi d’un faune), Debussy succeeded better than many composers of string quartets in making the four instruments sound as one (not that all composers sought to do so), and this was a performance of the utmost refinement and sensitivity in which each player suppressed his own individuality to find a common voice.

Yet the individual voices were often there, as at the beginning of the second movement where the motif is passed from viola to second violin to cello, and where there was marked dynamic contrast between the theme and its accompaniment. Of the beautiful third movement – ‘doucement expressif’ – they made a most entrancing Cézanne-like canvas, a work of intense unity of expression.

They played another Chinese piece as an encore: Saliha, arranged by Ji-cheng Zhang. This was even more reminiscent of 19th century eastern European music, deriving as it did from Xinjiang Uygur, the far-western, Turkic region of China.

Thankfully, the hall was well filled for this splendid concert which is a credit to the promoter of the Mulled Wine Concerts, Mary Gow, and her team of supporters. This series is complementary to the chamber music concerts at the other end of the Kapiti district, run by the Waikanae Music Society, reinforcing evidence of the musical riches of the region.

Viola students of New Zealand School of Music on show at St Andrew’s

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New Zealand School of Music: viola students  – Alexa Thompson, Vincent Hardaker, Alice McIvor and John Roxburgh

Music by Carl Stamitz, Glinka, Hindemith, Walton

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 20 June, 12.15pm

This lunchtime recital was a showcase of four viola students, taught variously by Donald Maurice, Claudine Bigelow and Gillian Ansell.

Three of the four pieces were of parts of the whole. The first and second movements only of Carl Stamitz’s Concerto in D were enough, which was enough to exhibit the strength’s of Alexa Thompson, large tone, confident, relishing the big sound from her C string; inevitably there were minor intonation blemishes.

The younger Stamitz was a few years older than Mozart and echoes of his genius-contemporary, or rather, just the idiom of the period, were to be heard though, with piano accompaniments from Douglas Mews, the orchestral character was hard to gauge; the viola cadenzas however might have been envied by Mozart.  It’s melodious music but the memorableness of the latter’s melodies was hardly there.

Carl Stamitz’s music seems not to have been subject to modern cataloguing, judging by what I can find on the Internet; one site lists a viola concerto in D as his Opus 1 – this may be it.

Vincent Hardaker played just the third movement of a viola sonata by Glinka, said in the notes to sound thoroughly Russian. What impressed me however was the almost complete absence of Russian sound, either in melody or rhythm, and there was little to suggest that the composer was other than a talented student of Mozart and his lesser successors like Spohr, Ries or Hummel, for Glinka was a comfortably-off, cosmopolitan composer who was a popular figure in west European musical circles, though when he returned to Russia in the mid-1830s he was inspired to write his two great Russian operas. But his other music remained largely west European in character (pace Vladimir Putin).

Vincent was another confident, fluent player who treated the piece as a serious composition, from a composer quite at home in the classical/romantic style.

The third piece was by the most famous violist/composer of the 20th century – Hindemith. Trauermusik, which the programme note explained as the piece the composer wrote hurriedly for a London concert just after George V’s death in 1936. In four short sections, it starts with the orchestra (piano), and to begin with, sounds as if Hindemith was rather hoping that a main idea would come to him as he went along. Alice McIvor, a second year student like the two earlier players, found the right tone and her playing led to music that conveyed something of a spirit of real mourning emerge. More characteristic Hindemith sounds appear in the second movement in a  faster 3/8 tempo. She played carefully, warmly, overcoming the lack of orchestral support which was a more serious lack here than in the Stamitz. Nevertheless, Douglas Mews’s accompaniment was as well coloured and expressive here as it had been in the pieces from earlier eras.

The last piece was the Viola Concerto by Hindemith’s near-contemporary William Walton, written at Thomas Beecham’s suggestion for Lionel Tertis, the father of modern viola playing (at least in the English-speaking world). Surprisingly, Tertis totally failed to perceive its greatness and beauty and ‘rejected it by return of post’.

It’s one of Walton’s major works, his first to mark out his stature as a really important composer; and one of the relatively few really successful large-scale symphonic works, written largely in the ‘great tradition’ (to borrow literary critic F R Leavis’s term), to have come from the middle years of the 20th century. It was played by the NZSO with Nigel Kennedy in 1987 and with Tabea Zimmermann in 1995.

Two players shared the job; masters student John Roxburgh took the first two movements and Alice McIvor returned to play the last. Merely to contemplate a great work of this kind, in which the orchestral element is so important, shows considerable courage, even temerity, and I could not pretend to have had the sort of experience that I’d have had with a full-scale performance. But as far as was possible, the two violists gave it a brave and understanding exposure; and of course it was good to hear it live (for me live performance, unless grossly incompetent, is generally more satisfying than a recording), if from only two instead of 80-odd instruments; it’s 17 years since an orchestral performance here. (And so, it led to the plucking from my shelves of the splendid Kennedy/Previn/RPO recording which did sound a bit different).

It might not have been kind to have the two violists sharing the undertaking for I thought McIvor had the slight edge when it came to confidence and grasping the emotional essence of the music, but that might have been rather on account of the intrinsic character of the slow movement. But it was good to end this short concert with such a substantial piece, which did demonstrate the ambitious standards and the quality of both teachers and students at the New Zealand School of Music.

 

 

Fine exploratory recital of Shakespeare songs from Corby and Beardsworth

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A feast of Shakespeare with Megan Corby (soprano) and Craig Beardsworth (baritone), who trade as ‘Voxbox’, with Catherine Norton (piano)

Old Saint Paul’s

Tuesday 19 June, 12.15pm

Here was a splendid recital by two polished and practised singers, grasping a theme that lends itself to a varied programme. Well, varied if I ignore the fact that the only non-English settings were by Strauss.

The songs were shared, roughly, alternately between the two, starting with Megan singing two early settings (except that the first, said to be anonymous 16th century, overlooked the fact that Othello, from which the Willow Song came, wasn’t written till about 1604).

However, Megan began as she would continue, singing without the score in front of her, in a bright, attractive voice, well articulated, with clear diction.

Two settings of several songs were offered. Craig’s first was ‘Orpheus with his Lute’ from Henry VIII (one of the last plays believed to be a collaboration with John Fletcher), set by Arthur Sullivan. His high opening note emerged in a remarkable falsetto, beautifully controlled, that increased in volume, and continued in phrases that demonstrated impressive discipline over tone colours and dynamics.

The same words reappeared later from Megan in a setting by American composer William Schuman, neither especially memorable nor unmelodious, but given a thoughtful performance.

‘Blow, blow, thou winter wind’ from As you like it also appeared in two settings: Thomas Arne’s of 1740 from Megan and Roger Quilter’s of around 1922 from Craig, an open-voice alternating with more conversational tones, ending with striking dramatic notes.

From the same composer came the setting of ‘Take, o take those lily lips’ from Measure for Measure (perhaps more famous among music-lovers as the play Wagner’s early Das Liebesverbot was based on); and again Craig’s velvety voice found a fruitful role in it.

Megan sang the deeply moving dirge, ‘Fear no more the heat of the sun’ from Cymbeline, composed by Ian Higginson (to me unknown, though the Internet tells me he was born in Merseyside and works around the Midlands) , in tones that reflected the emotion, though the quite elegant setting didn’t, for me, match the power of the words (the greatest, best-known poetry is the hardest to set to music, for nothing can improve on the way the poet himself has used the rhythms and sounds of words to convey the intellectual and emotional force of beautiful poetry, which is why, many believe, Schubert set so many poems by poets of the second rank).

However, Gerald Finzi’s setting of that poem does approach it more nearly, and it appeared in the group of Finzi songs that Craig sang later. That group was a highlight of the recital, and that, probably the most striking performance, with the slow rise and fall of dynamics, and the piano’s contribution that somehow evoked the presence of death. And it must be recorded that Catherine Norton’s playing was far more than simply appropriate, sensitive and supportive.

Twelfth Night also yields some of the most poignant lyrics such as the concluding ‘When that I was a little, tiny boy’, ‘O Mistress mine’ and ‘Come away death’. The latter two, as well as ‘Who is Sylvia’ from Two gentlemen of Verona and ‘It was a lover and his lass’ from As you like it, were also in the beautiful Finzi group.

The latter song, from Megan, also appeared in a setting by Frederic Austin, a singer/organist/composer of the early 20th century.

It leaves the penultimate group, sung by Megan: Strauss’s Three songs of Ophelia (from Op 67) from Act IV, scene 5 of Hamlet, in which he conveys the girl’s growing madness, in tones that found acute expression of the unhinged mind.

She sang them most persuasively, from memory, in excellent German: ‘How should I your true love know’, ‘Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s Day’, and ‘They bore him barefaced on the bier’.

[And as I load this about 1.45pm, I listen to RNZ Concert broadcasting Patricia Wright, accompanied by Rosemary Barnes, singing these very songs, beautifully, though perhaps with not quite the degree of mental disorder that Corby brought to them].

The concert ended with the duet, ‘Sigh no more, ladies’ from Much ado about nothing (this one the basis of Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict) by one Sally Albrecht (born in Ohio in 1954), in jolly, galloping 3/8 rhythm, befitting the servant Balthazar’s ditty that Benedict at once ridicules. The pair, inauthentically perhaps, but most agreeably, brought things to an end with a droll note of cheerful cynicism.

It was interesting to observe that hardly any of the plays that opera composers have drawn on were among these, mainly the comedies, that song composers are attracted to. So we got no Bellini, Thomas, Gounod, Verdi, Britten…

 

Martin Rummel, cello and Stephen de Pledge, piano in highly successful programme for Wellington Chamber Music

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Beethoven: Cello Sonata in C, Op 102 No 1; Schnittke: Sonata No 1 for cello and piano; Stravinsky: Suite Italienne; Shostakovich: Cello Sonata in D minor, Op 40

Ilott Theatre, Town Hall

Sunday 10 June 3pm

It sounded as if De Pledge and Rummel had decided to keep the best till last – the best rehearsed, that is. The second, third and fourth items were excellent.

Beethoven’s C major sonata is unusually short (about 15 minutes) and has an unusual shape; the cello opens alone, presenting a sad, descending motif that, as the piano joined, became a sharing of intimacies between the two; it had real charm. But as that passage drew to a close and the much more forthright Allegro vivace took over, there was an uncomfortable disconnect between cello and piano, the latter seeming unaware of the imbalance that resulted from its impact. Often the two instruments echo each other, at other times the two are almost at odds and care has to be taken to assure a unity of feeling, rather than what I felt to be the piano tending to assert its primacy.

Perhaps the lid should be down, but in the later pieces where the balance was perfectly measured, De Pledge showed that he could get quiet and sympathetic sounds with the lid on the long stick.

Added to that was an occasional smudge or missed note in the piano.

The second movement, particularly the final section, another Allegro vivace, was affected in the same way, with the piano dominating, making too much, for example, of the sudden fortissimo chords that recur. Though, in a spirit of fairness, I wondered whether the cellist should be sharing the blame, I concluded eventually that the cello was following the composer’s intentions scrupulously.

Having gone on at undue length about the first quarter hour, I must now exclaim about the excellence of the rest of the afternoon. I have not been completely won over to Schnittke’s poly-stylistic vein, but the first cello sonata suggests the styles of different eras in a coherent, integral way. Again, the cello makes its entry alone, somewhat anguished, which the piano soon picks up. The two instruments seemed in warm accord, hearing each other with complete understanding; I enjoyed the rhapsodic cello passage with discreet punctuations by the piano.

The stark dynamic contrasts between cello and piano in the second, Presto, movement were splendidly pronounced; the piano often had a more commanding role here, too, but the sense of a carefully prepared approach was always evident. So it was with the cello’s upward, singing line in the concluding Largo and the piano’s exquisite pianissimo phrases. In their hands, the last movement was a most interesting, engaging experience.

Martin Rummel entertained the audience with some piquant anecdotes about Stravinsky, making comparisons with between the written language employed by him and Prokofiev; I forget the pretext, but the matter was interesting, even amusing: Prokofiev abbreviated to the point of eliminating all vowels while Stravinsky’s language was always meticulous.

The Stravinsky suite, drawn from his ballet Pulcinella, could have been originally written for these players and indeed, one could feel that the music of Pergolesi’s contemporaries which was then thought to be by the latter, was Stravinsky’s natural idiom. Here again, balance between the two instruments was admirable, and they conveyed in a fluent, warm manner, the dancing spirit that imbued most of the pieces, even through the unruly rhythms of the Tarantella. Stravinsky was never a composer to follow tradition slavishly and in the Minuet the players stretched normal expectations in a way that was both cavalier and sentimental.

Shostakovich’s cello sonata, from the early 1930s, is one of his best known chamber works, well-furnished with melody as well as with its constantly interesting developments and the opportunities that Rummel and De Pledge grasped to make the most of the great variety of articulation and expressive devices that Shostakovich provides. The vivid and lively scherzo-style second movement came off particularly well, enriched by the combination of a traditional framework in an idiom that could not have existed before the advent of Stravinsky and Prokofiev. It rather overshadowed the following Largo. In the finale, both instruments had their moments of supremacy but the running was pretty evenly balanced, with marcato cello passages giving way to careering scales in the piano.

So ended a splendid programme in which the only 19th century piece emerged as rather less successful and memorable than the three works from the 20th century.

 

 

 

Megan Ward launches 2012 Hutt lunchtime series with Bach on viola

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Megan Ward – viola, B Mus honours student at New Zealand School of Music

Bach’s Cello Suite No 5 in C minor, transcribed for viola

St Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 6 June, 12.15pm

The long-standing series of lunchtime concerts at Lower Hutt has started; they run through till the end of October.

Bach instructed players of his fifth cello suite to tune the A string down a whole tone, to G, so the score shows notes that would be played on the A string a tone higher than they actually sound. The viola is tuned exactly an octave higher than the cello, so A is also the viola’s highest string.

The suite normally lasts about 25 minutes, but Megan Ward used the balance of the three-quarters of an hour to talk about the work and to pause after each movement to comment on the next. Thus there was clapping after each movement, which would have been conventional at the time of composition. That convention matched Megan’s approach to the playing which she explained was to follow aspects of baroque practice, though not slavishly. I don’t think she played on gut strings, but she did draw attention to the baroque bow, its convex shape, which produces different sounds at its heel and toe from those at the middle.

And she reminded us that all movements but the opening Praeludium had their origins in dances, but that most had moved some distance from being suitable for dancing.

Megan also drew attention to her use of ornamentation, an essential element in baroque performance. The effect, evident from the beginning of the Praeludium, was of playing that was more fluctuating, more suggesting the unevenness of human breath, in tone and dynamics; these characteristics also led the player to greater freedom of tempo, responding to the shapes of phrases as well as the hints implicit in her ornamentation.

She invited us to hear the next movement, Allemande, as song rather than dance, and the combination of a very slow pace (I’d guess around crotchet = 40 rather than the more common 55 or 60) and fluctuating rhythms left that in no doubt. It was also an opportunity to notice the generous acoustic qualities of this high-gabled church that enhanced the sustained lyrical quality of the movement.  Her ornaments sounded as if written down by Bach himself.

The Courante ran a bit faster than I expected, and Megan’s baroque interpretation meant a certain irregularity, even jerkiness, of rhythm, but there was no loss of beauty in her tone and clean articulation.

Many movements of the cello suites have attracted film makers over the years; the Sarabande gained some fame among connoisseurs when it was used on the sound-track of Ingmar Berman’s last film, Saraband. Megan approached it scrupulously, slowly, exploring its melancholy character, in a tempo that was almost too unvarying; she used no ornamentation, but she varied her dynamics artfully.

The two Gavottes offered a lively contrast, in the first, perhaps over-emphasing the first beat in the bar and passing up some of the phrasing details. The second Gavotte involved much fast fingerwork, very accomplished, but lacked the last degree of clarity.

It was a bit like her speech which was inclined to be too fast and not always clear.

Introducing the final movement, Gigue, she set our minds at rest by saying she was not striving for authenticity above all, but just to have a good time, and that was clear from the tumbling, fun-loving variety that avoided monotony.

She filled the last few minutes with an equally accomplished performance of the Sarabande from the second suite.

Not only does Megan Ward show impressive talent as a violist, but she has also a talent for talking intelligently and interestingly about things.

 

New Zealand School of Music guitar students’ interesting recital at Old St Paul’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Guitar students: Jamie Garrick, Nick Price, Cameron Sloan, Mike Stoop

Music by Bizet, Bach, L K Mertz, Daniel Bacheler and Adnrew York

Old Saint Paul’s, Mulgrave Street

Tuesday 5 June, 12.15pm

These students, plus one other, had played at St Andrew’s on The Terrace in the previous week, with a largely different programme. I missed it, as did my Middle C colleagues. I gather that they played mainly as a quartet then; at Old Saint Paul’s they played two ensemble pieces, and four solos.

A suite from Carmen opened the concert. The programme note remarked that the opera had had a rough beginning (actually, the nature of its reception has been rather distorted; it had about 30 performances in the three months between its premiere and Bizet’s death – more than any other opera at the Opéra-Comique that year, 1875; there was a great deal of popular and critical acclamation – just one or two churlish reviews; and already the Vienna Court Opera had made an approach for it to be produced there).

The performance by the quartet here began well, carefully, capturing the Spanish air that pervades it from the start, and the attractive arrangement gave each player bright solo opportunities while the others provided nicely contrasted accompaniments, rhythmically and dynamically acute, and placed on the lower strings of the instruments. However, some of the later dances did not capture quite the same charm or character, and by the time of the Toreador’s song slips occurred more often. But the Entr’acte was well done and the Gypsy Dance  was quite a delight.

The audience seemed unfamiliar with applauding customs, clapping after every section of the Carmen suite, and even more surprising between the two parts of the Prelude and fugue from Bach’s Lute Suite, BWV 997, which was played without the score by Michael Stoop. His dynamics were nicely judged and phrasing expressive. The fugue is quite long and it was no small achievement to have got through it without noticeable mishap.

Cameron Sloan played two pieces, again from memory, by one Johann Kaspar Mertz, a 19th century composer: Fantaisie originale and Le gondolier, from his Op 65; they sounded influenced by the piano music of his age – of Weber, Schubert and Schumann. Though he played these two attractive pieces very well, his spoken introduction had been inaudible. Given a composer probably unknown to most, as it was to me, a few words would have been interesting. New Grove does not list him, but Wikipedia does: named as Hungarian guitarist and composer, born in Bratislava (Pressburg or Pozsony when the city was in Austria or Hungary respectively).

Later players decided against introducing themselves or commenting on their pieces. A little coaching in the art of speaking in a medium size auditorium would be a good idea.

Equally attractive was a piece called Monsieur Almaine by Daniel Bacheler, a theme and variations. Again, I had not heard of him; moderate-sized dictionaries were of no help, though I found him in New Grove, and of course the Internet never fails. It appears that recent scholarship has brought some 50 lute pieces to light and some have been recorded.  He was born in 1572, the same year as Ben Jonson and Thomas Tomkins, around the dates of John Bull, Monteverdi, Frescobaldi. Dowland, Weelkes … With the confidence afforded by using the score, Nick Price played with a good ear for style, phrased and articulated a clearly difficult piece very well, with only minor slips.

The last soloist was Jamie Garrick who played another Bach Lute piece, the Prelude and Fugue from BWV 998; he played thoughtfully, maintaining fluent rhythms in both parts, though with occasional hesitations. The Fugue, with an attractive melody, starts slowly which demanded considerable care in its meandering passages, and in the fast passagework as it accelerated towards the end.

Finally the quartet reassembled to play a rather delightful piece by contemporary American composer, Andrew York, Quiccan. It was fast and rhythmically lively in a gently Latin-American manner. Judging by the adroit fingerwork evident in all players, it was well rehearsed and well liked.

I had not noticed that the concert was running over time, which suggests that, in all, it had proved most enjoyable.

Olivier Latry and Shin-Young Lee brilliant at Cathedral of St Paul organ

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Organ Conference

Cortège et litanie (Dupré), Petite rhapsodie improvisée (Tournemire – scored by Duruflé), Two parts of L’ascension (Messiaen), Feux follets and Carillon de Westminster (Vierne) and Le sacre du printemps (Stravinsky – arr. four hands)

Olivier Latry and Shin-Young Lee – organists

Cathedral of Saint Paul, Wellington

Sunday 3 June, 3pm

For those, like me, who missed the NZSO concert on Friday where Olivier Latry played Poulenc’s Organ Concerto, this recital was pretty good compensation.

Latry is one of the three organists at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris (the position at French churches is known as a titulaire). Thus he’s one of the very finest organists now alive. Such is his fame that not only was the NZSO concert a full house, but the Anglican Cathedral too was well filled.

One hears occasionally, from those more technically knowledgeable than I am, denigrating remarks about the character of the cathedral organ; perhaps from those for whom music stops more or less with J S Bach.

But for those who have listened to organ music, as music, and not as some sort of rarified and recondite technical practice, organ music runs through the musical experience of virtually every country touched by the traditions of western music, and through every era, though often carried by composers who did not work much in other spheres.

After the great baroque era dominated by Bach, the school of organ composition that seems to me, and some others, to be of great importance and delight is the French school inspired by César Franck.

Latry’s recital celebrated that; and even the evident intrusion of an arrangement of a ballet score by a Russian composer, could be seen as falling in the tradition of organ composition and organ building that was developed in France.

One of the problems of the organ repertoire is that many, most, of the names are not those of the greatest composers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Some rate, like Liszt, Franck himself, Saint-Saëns or Messiaen, as respectable 1st division composers of orchestral, choral or chamber music and some, enjoy a slightly enigmatic place in the pantheon.

Marcel Dupré was more famous as a performer than a composer, though he’d been one of the more brilliant winners of the Prix de Rome. He composed in the tradition set by Franck and Widor rather than in the impressionist or tonally ambiguous character of those who followed Vierne. He succeeded Widor at the great church of Saint-Sulpice.

The Cortège et litanie is one of his most popular pieces, opening prayerfully and building impressively as the Cortège emerges grandly (some hear a Russian influence from his friend Glazunov) with its confident theme that corrects the impression of fluttering mysticism in the Litanie. Its performance lifted it from perhaps second class to music of considerable imagination and emotional honesty.

Charles Tournemire’s improvisation entitled Petite rhapsodie improvisée was recorded as he played it in 1931 on the great Cavaillé-Coll organ at Sainte-Clotilde (Franck’s organ). In 1958 Maurice Duruflé took it down, along with several other pieces by Franck and himself, from that recording and it has now found its way on to You-Tube where you can dial it up.

What we heard on Sunday was a great deal more red-blooded and arresting than the dim and shallow 1931 recording (though it’s enough to vindicate Tournemire’s reputation). It’s a short piece marked by remarkable powers of invention, clearly justifying Tournemire’s fame as an improviser. Played here on an organ capable of great brilliance, Latry’s performance seemed to magnify its musical and colourful inspiration. He found a myriad of fluttering bird-sounds, underpinned by firm pedal notes; if the occasional tremolo didn’t seem very appropriate, the whole performance demonstrated other aspects of this versatile organ and Latry’s way of exploiting it; and it acted as a good link between the Dupré and the two Messiaen pieces that followed.

These were two of the four parts of Messiaen’s L’ascension, first written for orchestra in 1932 and then rewritten for organ a year later, when Messiaen replaced the third part (Alleluia sur la trompette, alleluia sur la cymbale) with Transports de joie d’une âme devant la gloire du Christ qui est la sienne.

The first part played was Section II, Alleluias sereins d’une âme qui désire le ciel, and there is a kind of serenity, but rather strong evidence of a ‘belief’ that is concrete, highly visual and audible, somewhat distant from the feeling inspired by traditional protestant religion.

There are times when I wonder about the immediate recognisability of Messiaen, whether it suggests that he’s merely writing the same stuff over and over, with minor variations.

I was intrigued to know what had led Messiaen to write another Part III and found a recording of the orchestral original. It is quite un-organ-like: exuberant, slightly jazzy, using an orchestra that hints at Ravel, perhaps Roussel or Koechlin.

The organ version of III is also vigorous and assertive, and Latry must have rejoiced in the great trumpet stops that are available on the cathedral organ; certainly, they would have thrilled the audience which could almost see the long horizontal pipes crying out over the left of the Choir.  Here was the blazing show-piece of the first half of the concert: great clusters of riotous runs and multi-coloured Messiaenic chords that created a triumphal peroration.

Two pieces by Vierne led to the Stravnisky ballet score which was to end the concert.

Feux follets, Op 53 No 4 and Carillon de Westminster, Op 54 No 6 are two of the 24 Pièces de fantaisie that Vierne wrote to play during a fund-raising tour of the United States in 1927.

These were well-placed as pieces lying somewhere south of Messiaen, and certainly more modest accomplishments than what followed. Latry adorned Feux follets with rare combinations of stops that created hollow sparklings, lightning flashes, a bit like Ravel’s Jeux d’eau or Debussy’s Ce qu’a vu le vent de l’ouest.

The Carillon is one of the organ’s famous showpieces, based on the uninteresting Westminster chimes, but transformed by means of harmonic colouring and surprising stop combinations, a great deal of it the contribution of the performer.

Finally came the one of the most extraordinary exhibitions of the arranger’s imagination and the organist’s (organists’) mastery of an instrument.

But how does this piece by a Russian qualify for this concert of French organ music? Stravinsky had worked in Paris from the time of The Firebird in 1910, and lived there periodically from then on, taking French citizenship finally in 1934; much of his most important music was written for French performance, and the influence of the French cultural aesthetic was as important as that of Russia.

Stravinsky had made a piano four hands arrangement of Le sacre du printemps, so the composer had sanctioned that much tampering with the nature of his work. This was the basis of the performance which then became an exercise in restoring as far as possible, the colours that were in the orchestral original, and that, through the inspired and imaginative choice of registrations, was entirely the work of the players – in this case Latry and his partner (in both senses), Korean organist Shin-Young Lee.

It was strikingly clear from the first notes that the work lent itself uncannily well to an organ arrangement. Perhaps it actually captured the essence of The Rite, a degree of violence in the dehumanising of primitive religious ritual, that allows the music to become even more phenomenal and awful in the hands of a machine with reserves of power that exceeded what any orchestra could create.

The task of making a machine produce from this music, beauty, excitement and awfulness was a supreme challenge and the result was utterly astonishing.

The re-creation of the unearthly introductions to both sections were extraordinarily vivid; what a brilliant transformation of the crunching rhythms of the Dances of the Adolescents, and the furious speed of the Dance of the Earth! (It certainly makes sense to employ four hands on an organ – after all most have multiple manuals – this one four: why leave so much of the keyboards unemployed for most of the time?).

Nevertheless, there were times when, for example, the throbbing beat during the Jeux des cités rivales became too cluttered but the final climax was reached with a power and terror, with triple fortissimo, or more, as the most formidable stops were brought to bear.

The large audience had judged well of the likely overwhelming musical experience to be had in St Paul’s this afternoon, and even their prolonged ovation hardly did the event justice.

 

 

Sayers and Mapp, varied and delightful piano duets at Waikanae

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Emma Sayers and Richard Mapp (piano duet)

Music by Thomas Tomkins, Mozart, Schubert. Ravel, Kenneth Young, Barber and Poulenc

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 20 May, 2.30pm

A concert of piano duets (four hands on one piano) is likely to raise discussion about the propriety of arrangements and the voicing of opinions about the merits of an orchestral arrangement of a piece for piano four hands (or two hands, for that matter).

As it happens, most of the music at this concert was originally written for four hands though two were later orchestrated for a ballet.

The opening piece was a small surprise from the Stuart period when the keyboard – harpsichord, clavichord, virginals, etc – was being used increasingly as a solo instrument, most notably exemplified in Fitzwilliam’s ‘virginal book’ published in the 19th century.

According to the programme note, Thomas Tomkins’s piece, A Fancy, ‘for two to play’, is probably the first surviving piece for two players at one keyboard. It started quietly giving the impression that the composer was really thinking of only one player, but soon its various layers emerged to justify its treatment by more than one player.

Mozart wrote several sonatas and other pieces for two pianists on either one or two keyboards. This, in F major, K 497, was not one of the best known, and in spite of Emma Sayer’s promoting it as echoing the spirit of the operas that he was writing at the time – The Marriage of Figaro and The Impresario – it isn’t really furnished with the memorable and characterful tunes that made them famous.

They played the opening Adagio cautiously, and there was even a feeling of holding back as the Allegro got under way. The air of hesitancy derived more from the music than the players; in spite of the outwardly lively tunes, and it struck me that Mozart was compensating for a slightly lower level of inspiration by adorning it with decoration and unexpected modulations.

The same feeling lingered in the Andante second movement: interesting rather than beguiling, yet we heard a performance that was well rehearsed, with attractive dynamic and tempo changes. The finale offered more lively music, the two players sporting with each other, exploiting chances to surprise, offering nothing that was routine, and ultimately leaving no room for doubt that the composer was Mozart in his masterly maturity.

Schubert’s Allegro in A minor, thought to be the first movement of a never completed sonata, was entitled by the publisher, Lebensstürme – ‘life’s storms’. It is no 947 in the Deutsch catalogue, which is immediately after the much better known, three Klavierstücke. It deserves to be as well known for it has real strength and dramatic shape as well as having a perfectly enchanting middle section. Stormy is the way it opened but the storm soon passed; it was interesting melodically as well as developing in ways that were typical of Schubert. There’s an underlying swaying rhythm that characterises a beguiling melody before the music returns to the arresting minor key, fanfare-like motif with which it opened.

Though there were charms of rhythm and lyricism that I felt were not totally realised, this performance was persuasive enough to make me pursue the piece further. If you Google ‘Lebensstürme’ and ‘Schubert’ you will find several You-Tube video clips of performances. One which captivated me was by the Georgian twins, Ani and Nia Salkhanishvili at the San Marino Piano Competition.

Ravel’s Ma mère l’Oye was written for girls, obviously highly talented, for it’s not particularly easy.  The question whether the original duet version or the orchestral version is to be preferred exercises many people; for my part, I’m seduced by both as soon one or the other starts. This duo approached it fastidiously, the wit and charm discreetly obscured, to be smiled at by others than those who respond only to the gross and obvious in humour. They played it as one, approaching the rise and fall of dynamics exquisitely and making much of the playful turns in treble passages in ‘Hop o’ my thumb’. The suite ended with the droll sleight of hand found in the last phrase of ‘The fairy garden’.

Kenneth Young’s Variations on a Prayer is based on an original chorale-like tune, according to the programme note, which went on to explain that it “explored the nature of prayer, which can take many different forms in pursuit of a universal goal”. It is the sort of comment that seems more likely to come from a composer than a writer of programme notes, but the notes later speak of Young in the third person, linking his musical character with Dutilleux and Takemitsu. In any case, Young’s music finds its way successfully between the rigours of the complex avant-garde and the indulgently melodic and sentimental, and the performance situated it without apology in the company of the early 20th century pieces in the programme.

The recital ended with another two pieces I hadn’t come across before: Samuel Barber’s Souvenirs and Poulenc’s Sonata for Piano Duet (of 1918, and so very early).

The three pieces taken from Souvenirs, a suite of six movements, Op 28 of 1951, were Schottische, Pas de deux and Hesitation-Tango. Though originally written for piano four hands, Barber also arranged it for solo piano, for two pianos and then he orchestrated it for a ballet which was first performed in 1955.  The Schottische has a jazzy quality in quick 3/8 rhythm; then a slow Pas de deux that exemplified the nostalgic aspect of these Souvenirs, and the Hesitation-Tango, (a take, I suppose, on the once-popular Hesitation Waltz that I recall from college dancing classes), slightly reminiscent of Prokofiev with wisps of a big tune that proved evanescent, and leading us into the here and now.

The Poulenc sonata would, one might think, be performed along with the sonatas he wrote for wind instruments near the end of his life, but this one, written at 19, was contemporaneous with the well-known Mouvements perpetuels . well before his ballet, Les Biches, which put him on the map in 1924. One could hear why it’s not so well known, though it’s not inconsequential, and the duo found its varied character, the dense chords in dotted rhythms of the Prélude, the improvisatory interlude called Rustique, and the speedy, staccato Final that was perhaps going nowhere, but gave the impression of generating much energy in doing so.

This enchanting recital made me realise how much pleasure is to be found in the piano duet repertoire. Mapp and Sayers have been playing together for a few years and their performances deserve to be more frequent and widely enjoyed.