In the review of Hannah-Elizabeth Teoh’s recital at St Andrew’s on The Terrace last Wednesday, 6 July, we had not identified the three encores that she played, and had emailed her for the details.
She has told us: Scriabin’s Mazurka Op 3 No 6 and two Preludes, Op 22 No 2 and Op 11 No 23.
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pinchas Steinberg and Simon Trpčeski (piano)
Night on Bald Mountain (Mussorgsky); Piano Concerto No 3 in C minor, Op 26 (Prokofiev); Symphony No 4 in F minor, Op 36 (Tchaikovsky)
Michael Fowler Centre
I sat one seat away from a couple who, at the end of the symphony, sat stony-faced, and I mean with countenances sculpted from the finest granite: arms folded, so that any suggestion of an agreeable emotion, in sympathy with the storm of applause, and even a few shouts, was out of the question.
I suppose there are still a few people who came across some of the writers of the puritan school of severity and joylessness, and have themselves never listened with normal ears; people who dismissed Tchaikovsky as contemptible for having written music that is widely loved: the church of “if it’s popular, it can’t be good”.
If you detect a note of irritation in my reaction, you’d be right. For I happen to be one who thinks the two finest symphonists of the 19th century, after Beethoven, are Brahms and Tchaikovsky, closely followed by Schubert, Bruckner and Dvořák, and then Schumann, and you-add-the-rest. Anyway, this was a simply stunning performance.
Steinberg may not be a household name like Abbado or Barenboim, Gergiev, Rattle or Haitink, but he’s got a pretty respectable pedigree in opera and orchestral music with major orchestras and opera companies.
He conducted Tchaikovsky’s F minor symphony, without the score, with a searing conviction, whether through the most breathless pianissimo or the most ferocious and tempestuous climaxes. A powerful opening gambit was to be expected in the first movement, but it was followed by a thrillingly slowly paced waltz episode, where the orchestra was guided in serenely lyrical music that might have been misplaced from any other composer’s slow movement. Then it was the control of slow crescendos and slow accelerations (and their reverse) that contributed to the tension and the brilliance of the landscapes revealed from the mountain-tops.
If there were moments when I was slightly worried by the hush or the stillness of some passages, their importance was soon revealed through their contrast with the storming victories that followed. Steinberg’s secret was to invest familiar music with a revelatory freshness.
No conductor is needed to produce the many rapturous individual solo performances by oboe or clarinet, flute, horns or bassoons, or even perhaps by the beautiful playing of cellos at the beginning of the Andantino, but a Steinberg was definitely required to bring about the transitions and the evolutionary passages, and the whole structural grandeur and excitement that held the audience transfixed throughout (perhaps that was my neighbours’ problem).
Then there was that remarkable Scherzo: pizzicato strings, whose dynamics undulated voluptuously, and as phrases passed two or three notes at a time through all the five strings sections. The pizzicato parts were separated by a Trio of the most exquisitely refined woodwind and brass playing, finding colours and subtleties that were fascinating, hardly imagined.
It was the last movement where all Steinberg’s genius was consummated; the rhetorical eruptions, driven by the sweeping left arm, built through the energy that he inspired in the players to a coda of ferocious pace and white-hot emotion.
Mussorgsky
The concert had got off to a splendid start with a devilishly thrilling account of Rimsky-Korsakov’s version of Mussorgsky’s witches’ Sabbath. It was polished, biting and for those predisposed towards the supernatural, exciting or terrifying. The sudden shifts, in the opening fanfares, from one orchestral chorus to another were at once vividly contrasted and seamlessly joined. The strings glowed with a dark velvet refulgence.
Nothing was as rapturous as the way the orchestra dimmed and quietly left the mountaintops at the end.
Macedonian pianist
Then the concerto, with Macedonian pianist Simon Trpčeski.
A local weekly described his country as being only 20 years old.
In case that evokes the image of a land rising from the ocean back in 1991, a word of encouragement: this was the Greek kingdom over which Alexander the Great ruled in the 4th century BC, when his conquests spread Greek influence as far east as India. Slavs settled in its northern region from about the 7th century and it was an independent Slav kingdom in the late 10th century AD. It was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1355, and when they were finally driven out in 1913 it was divided between Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece. The Slav northern part became part of Yugoslavia from 1918 and it was a republic of the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia after the Second World War.
It gained complete independence in 1991. There is inexplicable tension with Greece over the name since it is also the name of the Greek province immediately to the south with its capital Salonica.
Prokofiev’s Concerto No 3
The music. I was a bit disappointed that the most familiar of Prokofiev’s piano concertos was chosen for Trpčeski’s one concert (to be repeated in Napier, Hamilton and Auckland). He did write five of them, all worth hearing; what about a less-known Rachmaninov (1st or 4th), or the intriguing Scriabin concerto, and much other Russian piano music?
That said, the 3rd is highly entertaining: the first movement opens encouragingly, the orchestra playing a droll waiting game, for the piano’s entry which is without fuss, acting the part of an instrument of the orchestra rather than the flashy hero who holds himself apart. The remarkable thing was that, through Trpčeski’s modesty and refinement, the piano’s presence had a much greater impact, and actually charmed us through the constant varying weight of contrasting phrases; it all enraptured the audience from the start.
What surprised me however, half way through the opening Allegro, was a feeling of uninvolvement, that the tension, the temperature, had dropped below the level of full commitment. Yet Steinberg was undoubtedly creating a colourful canvas with finely wrought dynamics and rubato, even though some of it seemed to lie at the surface of musical experience.
The second movement kept me involved more steadily, with a piano part that took on more a life of its own; the sudden outbursts at speed, the hugely vigorous episode in triple time that just as suddenly subsides, with its several retreats to quiet lyrical passages. All the quirkiness of Prokofiev’s score, with shimmering lights, ever-changing rhythms, some motoric, some lyrical, were exposed. In the last climactic build-up there was a fleeting impression of faltering synchronism, but Beecham’s injunction was followed: all finished together.
Prokofiev seems to delight in throwing off balance an audience’s preconceptions of the character of the three movements of a concerto. The simplistic fast – slow – fast pattern has been long banished and myriad contrasts are found within each movement, by much more obtuse, unorthodox means. Nevertheless, pianist and conductor brought about a level of delight and musical fascination that was rare, again with its treading water episodes allowing time to reflect.
After his third return to the platform following great applause, the pianist took a page from a music stand near him and concert master Vesa-Matti Leppänen and principal cello Andrew Joyce brought their seats forward to surround the pianist who then told us that they were to play a trio arrangement of a Macedonian folk dance. They carried it off brilliantly, digging into the characteristic rhythms that one encounters in all the southern Slav countries. The audience was even more vociferous.
Hannah-Elizabeth Teoh – piano
Bach: Partita No 6 in E minor; Beethoven: Sonata in E, Op 109; Fauré: Theme and Variations in C sharp minor, Op 73
St Andrew’s on The Terrace
The young pianist Hannah-Elizabeth Teoh comes from Wanganui and has been a student of Judith Clark in Wellington for five years. I had not heard her play before: her performances were insightful and remarkable.
She gave the sort of performance of Bach that utterly vindicates the playing of Bach on the piano, for every movement had a character and a spirituality that she had the sensibility to enrich by her command of dynamics and timbre, through an ability to sustain or cut short each note that the harpsichord cannot achieve.
The sixth partita is the longest of them and perhaps the most serious and inward. The opening Toccata is the longest of the movements, and it was here, at once, that her mature view of the music became clear: its series of broken chords that called the listener to attention, the steady, deliberate pace, and the surprise presented by the arrival of a fugue after a couple of minutes, which she played with a certain magisterial ceremony. There was nice weight in her left hand that gave the fugue clarity as the theme moved into the bass, and touches of rhetoric towards its end were spacious and beguilingly decorated.
The Allemande had an easy fluidity and the Corrente offered evidence of thorough assimilation, with delicious touches of light staccato with fluent scales and ornaments, each phase ending on the major triad. It runs into the Air, no simple, pensive melody but seemingly a series of hesitant questions that are not answered.
Then there was the elaborate, discursive Sarabande, which can challenge a young player whose worldly experience is limited. Here, it was her address at the piano that caught my attention, something in her posture that spoke of a real inwardness in which all sense of a disciplined tempo or rhythm became irrelevant in a large-scale fantasia-like movement. The following Gavotte was a total contrast, where its spirited rhythm was the immediate heart of the music.
It was the Gigue that struck me as unusual, so strong was the pulse of the double-dotted rhythm, perhaps a shade too slow, that it scarcely maintained the feel of the dance. Elegant, lively musical intelligence replaced jollity, and her reading was perfectly persuasive.
To be presented next with Beethoven’s Op 109 in a mere lunchtime concert might have seemed an excess of riches. But it’s a nice contrast, in a sanguine, major key that seems to portray in the first two movements at least, a restlessness that prevents any idea from holding the stage more than a few moments. An optimism seems constantly striving to emerge, though remarkably at odds with the deafness, financial, medical and other problems that afflicted Beethoven in his last years.
Teoh’s playing, always insightful, did not allow the sudden changes of mood, from the Vivace to the Adagio, to weigh too heavily. The airy flourishes in the first movement sounded as if the hammers scarcely touched the strings; and the way she varied the weight of notes in each new and modified version of the tunes was hardly the playing of a student. There were feathery, fairy-like phrases that rose and fell, then sensitively varied weight on particular notes and phrases, all reflecting a combination of careful study, technical fluency and simple intuition about the emotional and spiritual sense of the piece.
The second movement, Prestissimo, is very fast, volatile, echoing much of the disrupted spirit of the first, though it too avoided suggesting the sort of disorder that some performances seem to produce. Her dynamics again often depended on judicious emphases on bass notes and phrases. If there were slips my ears neglected them.
The Theme and variations of the peaceful Andante demonstrated Teoh’s precise sense of the right pace, a buoyant walking pace, and the right degree of change from one variation to another. She achieved a spirituality that never approached sentimentality or melancholy. The whole was somewhat astonishing in a student of her experience.
The third piece in the admirable programme was an impressive Theme and Variations by Fauré, unknown to me, written in 1895 (he was 50) as a Conservatoire examination piece. Schumann seemed the closest in style and spirit, but I suspect I may not have done well in a blind test to identify the composer. There are eleven variations in all, grouped so as to create something in the nature of a three or four movement suite or sonata. Such a plan ensured that the work had a shape that listeners could fasten on to, and the rest was the job of the pianist who dramatized the moods, the light and shade, holding the attention, thus ensuring that many would be inspired to drop into Parsons before going back to work, to explore more of the Fauré that might be unfamiliar.
She waited a long time for applause to subside and then said she’d play three short pieces by Scriabin. Here was yet another field in which she seems to be instinctively at home, with a composer who doesn’t get the attention he deserves.
She played the Mazurka Op 3 No 6 and two preludes, Op 22 No 2 and Op 11 No 23.
Capital Choir conducted by Felicia Edgecombe
Gounod’s Messe-solennelle-Sainte-Cécile, and a miscellany of choral songs
Central Baptist Church, Boulcott Street
I’d only heard about this performance of the most famous of Gounod’s masses a few days earlier and was at once animated by the prospect. Though previous experiences of the choir hardly led me to expect them to tackle a reasonably large-scale liturgical work of this kind, I was excited in anticipation and my hopes were well met.
The concert was dedicated as a benefit for a Christchurch choir with which Capital Choir had made contact – the South Brighton Choral Society, two of their members had been flown to attend the concert, they spoke about their situation and they returned with a cheque for the balance of the takings. The Christchurch choir is the main choir of the city’s astern suburbs, which have suffered the worst damage from the earthquakes.
Capital Choir is an all-comers’ choir of around 60 voices, mostly sopranos; if there are some voices that would hardly survive in a small ensemble, the skill of their conductor, Felicia Edgecombe, lay in creating a most impressive, homogeneous sound that was balanced and generally in tune.
While I waited for the Gounod, the choir entered singing chant-like the words ‘Viva la musica’, and the first half consisted of a handful of light items: Franck’s Panis angelicus, two songs by conductor Edgecombe and three popular songs – The Girl from Ipanema, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square and When the Saint go Marching in. They were sung with energy and evident enjoyment and it was clear that great pains had been taken to achieve first-rate ensemble, and to created an effect that was warm and opulent; the more problematic male voices, fewer, as usual, in number, were nicely integrated. Vocal production seemed always unforced; what was missing in the last group perhaps was a little of that elusive ability to swing.
They were ably accompanied by the choir’s pianist Belinda Maclean.
By the time the Mass began I was well prepared, as a result of their singing of the near contemporaneous Panis Angelicus, for a performance that would vocally beguile the ears. The Kyrie indeed did that, reassuring me of the choir’s ability to do justice; the soloists were the next question, and the opening page of the Gloria set me at rest for the soprano solo was taken most capably by erstwhile pianist Belinda Maclean whose accompanying duties in the Mass were taken over by Rosemary Russell. (Naturally one missed the orchestra, especially in the instrumental Offertorium, so essentially an orchestral interlude, but the ears soon accept the situation. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that Gounod had scored it for a large orchestra – as well as double woodwinds, it calls for four bassoons and four horns, pairs of trumpets as well as cornets, organ with pedals, and six harps). Baritone Rhys Cocker took a very attractive ‘Domine Deus’ section of the Gloria, followed at the ‘Qui Tollis’ by tenor Chris Berentson whose voice sounded rather tight at first but soon relaxed, notably in his solo at the opening of the Sanctus.
The Credo is the longest section and the one that has been subject to a certain scorn, ‘swaggering’ for one writer, but which seems to me simply a fulsome statement of the composer’s at-that-stage anyway, touching and unclouded belief. The big tune is splendid and the confidence of its performance was infectious.
At the ‘Et incarnatus’, the three soloists take over alone, soon alternating with the choir: here, they did not quite achieve the expected hushed, mystical atmosphere that is called for, though at ‘Crucifixus’ a dramatic quality emerged; then one of the few moments of unsteadiness came with the ‘Crucifixus’. But vigour and confidence recovered fully at ‘Et resurrexit’, which even achieved a certain grandeur.
One has got somewhat used to the Sanctus anthologized by sopranos – notable Kiri – but the tenor is more authentic in a liturgical context, and as I said above, Chris Berentson dealt with it comfortably. It’s a lovely movement, majestic without bombast, and the choir performed it with considerable warmth and emotional variety: well rehearsed.
The Benedictus was the final opportunity for the soprano; with a voice somewhat tremulous, whether incidental or intended, Belinda Maclean’s singing was far from inappropriate at this stage of the mass.
Throughout most of this early work (well, he was about 35 but had not yet made a great mark as composer), Gounod maintains a dignity and authentic expressive power, but in the Agnus Dei he seems to succumb to something that weakens the spiritual atmosphere, breaking up the normal rhythm of the words so as to diminish their sacred import; there is something routine about the melody that takes charge in this movement. As well as the choir continued to sing, they hardly overcame the diminished dignity with which the composer’s first masterpiece concludes. At least it is not prolonged and ends without undue flamboyance.
During much of the 20th century it became fashionable to deprecate Gounod’s works that had been so popular in the mid-19th century, especially, after some of the facts of his life and his character became widely known. In recent decades the balance has been largely restored, not only for the best of his liturgical works, but more especially the ‘other’ operas such as Sapho, Le médecin malgré lui, Mireille,
The Saint Cecilia Mass had made a real popular impact at its premiere in the great church of St Eustache in November 1855 only six months after the premiere there of Berlioz’s Te Deum. In some parts of Europe, Munich for example, the mass was more esteemed than any of the operas, and it was certainly the composition, preceding Faust by about four years, that brought him emphatically to the attention of the general public.
A quote by his (non-believer) friend (for the most part) Saint-Saëns is interesting:
“The appearance of the Saint Cecilia Mass caused something of a stir. Its simplicity, its grandeur, its serene luminosity rose over the musical world like a dawn, and embarrassed many people… Rays of light emanated in floods from the Mass.”
L’Orgue symphonique: French organ music in the symphonic tradition
César Franck: Pièce symphonique, Lento and Sortie from ‘L’organiste’; Chorale No 2 in B minor; Pastorale from ‘Six pièces’; Cantabile and Pièce héroique from ‘Trois pièces’
Douglas Mews at the organ of the
Church of Saint Mary of the Angels
In a celebration of the legacy of the church’s great organist Maxwell Fernie, Saint Mary’s is presenting three recitals by three organists of French symphonic organ music. This was the first, devoted to the founder of a tradition that set a new path for organ music which continues to
the present day.
It arose through the arrival of a composer whose instincts led him away from the emphasis on opera in the France of the early 19th century, to the rediscovery of the choral music of the Renaissance and Bach and of the German symphonic tradition.
The other contributor to the blossoming of organ music and its performance from around 1850 was the advent of the great organ builder Cavaillé-Coll: Franck was appointed principal organist at the Marais church of Saint-Jean-Saint-François in 1853 where Cavaillé-Coll’s new organ astonished and delighted him. That church is now the Cathédrale-Sainte-Croix-des-Armeniens, and its website records that it houses two organs by Cavaillé-Coll, one of them built in 1844 – certainly the one that Franck played. I have heard chamber music and vocal concerts there but have not heard the organ.
The programme notes say that he earlier encountered a Cavaillé-Coll organ in the church of Notre Dame de Lorette; that was certainly his first organist post, but it is not clear that the church had a Cavaillé-Coll organ; that church’s website makes no mention of one. In 1858 he became principal organist at the new church of Sainte-Clotilde with its magnificent Cavaillé-Coll instrument and remained there the rest of his life.
The recital began with three early pieces from a large collection, L’organiste. Pièce symphonique, was an extrovert piece in very four-square military tempo in its outer parts in which Mews used
suitably brash stops, contrasted with a gentle middle section. The Lento movement and the Sortie were offered no more than hints of the great organ works that were to follow, though Mews’s imaginative registrations made the most of them.
The second of the three Chorales written in his last year was the most important work of the recital. The chorales do not enjoy the strong melodic character of some of his music, and their success depends greatly on the colours that the organist can create from the combinations of stops that he can contrive; Mews familiarity with Maxwell Fernie’s in-some-ways idiosyncratic masterpiece allowed him to move from one phase to the next, from the boisterous to the pastoral to the heroic, with dynamics and colourings that were always immaculate.
The Pastorale of almost 30 years earlier is one of the most familiar of his works – I think my LP including a performance by Jeanne Demessieux was one of the first organ discs I bought aged about 20: I am chastened by Mews’s reference to its being in an ‘easy-listening’ style. Nevertheless, it wears well, especially in such an affectionate, subtle performance.
The ‘Three Pieces’ were written for the inauguration in 1878 of the Cavaillé-Coll organ at the Trocadero (across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower, built ten years later). The Cantabile enjoys a vivid melody on loud reed stops that, like most of Franck’s tunes, ranges over a quite narrow compass. The last item was the Pièce héroique, played with splendid vitality and timbale colour, the raucous pedal stops perhaps a little indiscreet but perhaps intended mocking and undoubtedly arresting.
As a totally inappropriate aside, it stuck me as odd that in Mews’s well-recorded, 2010 CD in Priory Record’s Great Australasian Organs series, he included no French music in a programme that in itself I find less than interesting, and which to me hardly displays the Wellington Town Hall Organ in the sort of important repertoire that does either player or organ proper justice.
Psathas: A Cool Wind; Sibelius: String Quartet in D minor, ‘Voces intimae’; Beethoven: String Quartet in F, Op 59 No 1
Vesa-Matti Leppänen and Rebecca Struthers (violins), Andrew Thomson (viola), Rowan Prior (cello)
Ilott Theatre, Town Hall
Felix the Quartet, which is drawn from string players of the NZSO, has been going for more than a decade. Former concertmaster Wilma Smith was a founding member and her place was taken by incoming concertmaster Vesa-Matti Leppänen. If players of this calibre had been playing together as a full-time quartet over that time, I suspect the impact of their performances would be a little more uniformly well integrated and arresting then it sometimes is.
The first half of the concert, comprising Psathas’s A Cool Wind and Sibelius’s only mature quartet was somewhat unexciting, due partly to the music itself. Psathas’s piece is a subdued piece, inspired by the player of an Armenian wind instrument, the duduk. It inspired a meditative strain which persisted throughout both its sections, apart from a modest call to attention at the end of an introductory passage.
A modal character coloured a good deal of the writing, though the nasal quality of the duduk, mentioned by the composer, was scarcely audible. Hints of a Balkan melodic flavour, which may well be characteristic of the Caucasus region too, lent it an air of serious melancholy. A melody of sorts that first appeared on the first violin, passed from one instrument to another, over a pervasive rocking, two note motif; it found its most distinctive expression briefly on the viola. After the ‘call to attention’, the textures became more complex in an imperceptible, unobtrusive way, and led the listener onward without effort. I half expected the second movement to introduce a new tone, but the mood and the motifs and their accompanying devices recurred in substantially similar character, perhaps with certain modifications to the melodic ideas. Nevertheless, it provides cheering evidence of a Psathas other than a master of percussion-strong orchestral scores.
The shifting of the Sibelius quartet to the first half meant, as I remarked above, a too unrelieved melancholy quality throughout. Only the end of the last movement really raises the temperature from its series of varied but dispiriting and not very memorable melodies. That is in spite of the expectation in the scherzo-like second movement and the fourth movement, Allegretto, of greater liveliness, through their more emphatic rhythms. But the austerity of the music itself makes that difficult to achieve in spite of playing that was often on the verge of introducing more emotionally involving episodes. The heart-warming experiences of evolving, modulating ostinati that bring excitement and drama to most of the symphonies are sometimes hinted at but never realized.
The Allegro finale does inject a rather splendid stretto-style accelerando which perhaps leaves listeners with a happy impression, but for me it is too little, too late. However, I heard some appreciative remarks about the piece, and particularly about its performance, which was indeed a thoughtful and well-studied interpretation of this product of one of the more somber periods in Sibelius’s life.
The first of the three Razumovsky quartets filled the second half and seemed to me, at least, fully to have justified the whole concert. The opening bars from first violin and eventually more important cello set the tone of the entire performance, driven by high spirits, optimism, energy, and played with singular attention to detail, to dynamic nuances. The viola managed to secure some of the focus with the second subject, but that was only a passing phase as the principal theme again dominated the coda.
Though Rowan Prior’s lovely cello also opened the second movement, a more equitable distribution of responsibility followed as the first theme passes to second violin, then the viola to first violin: this is a most intriguing movement which Felix brought splendidly to life. The slow movement, in F minor, though essentially desolate in tone, the players never allowed to become less than deeply moving; at its end the first violin surreptitiously leads in to the finale. To me, the entire last movement seems to be a coda to the Adagio, never quite insisting on its own independence in spite of its sonata-form structure; it’s like a series of perorations that the composer cannot bear to allow to wind up.
For all the revelations and subtleties that the players brought to the two works in the first half, it was the Beethoven that, inevitably I guess, was the most persuasive, both as a musical masterpiece and in its performance, and it left the audience with a sense of complete fulfillment.
String students of the New Zealand School of Music – mainly viola students of Gillian Ansellof the New Zealand String Quartet
St Andrews’s on The Terrace
The interest of these concerts from students rests as much with the experience of hearing gifted though partly-formed players, as with hearing music that is rarely heard at ordinary concerts. I sometimes hear somewhat condescending critical remarks from people who see concerts as opportunities to display their own knowledge and imagined refined taste and discernment. The real pleasure however lies in the revelations that one can derive from listening sympathetically to performances that are a little less than perfect or ideal in terms of technique, style and interpretative overview. They often throw more light on the nature of a piece than a performance that’s perfect.
One of the two familiar pieces on the programme was part of a Bach cello suite – the Prelude and Allemande from the Third Suite in C, arranged for viola. Naturally, the opening phrases arrived as a surprise, no matter how much one was prepared for it (and I had heard the suites played on the viola before). For some reason, the tone was bolder and more strongly projected that I’d expected, a matter of the character of the instrument played by Vincent Hardaker, as much as his particular view of the music, which may have continued at a more uniform dynamic level and tempo than was ideal. However (he played from memory) it was polished, accurate pitch-wise and elegant in its articulation. He allowed a little more dynamic variety in the Allemande, which was also characterised by a feeling of determination, still displaying signs of the rigorous effort that lay behind its mastery.
There were a couple of concerto excerpts from Mozart contemporaries. Hoffmeister was a friend of Mozart’s while Karl Stamitz emerged from the family that had created the famous Mannheim court orchestra in the middle of the 18th century and which Mozart hugely admired and whose orchestral characteristics profoundly influenced him.
Hoffmeister was not merely a musical friend of Mozart; his name is perhaps better remembered, attached to the K 499 string quartet that he published. He composed many concertos for many instruments. Alice McIvor played the first two movements of his viola concerto in D, accompanied by Douglas Mews. With the score before her, her playing was fluent and the handling of ornaments relaxed and artless. Her cadenza was confirmation of her basic musical sense, where any slight intonation flaws were a small price to pay for a charming and proficient performance.
The piano introduction to the Stamitz viola concerto served to demonstrate the debt in terms of idiom and style that Mozart owed to his older contemporary, though not in sheer musical inventiveness and beauty. Megan Ward played only the first movement, with surprising ease, meeting its technical challenges stylishly.
The other familiar piece was the first movement of Brahms’s first sonata (for clarinet or viola) Op 120, No 1. I have tended to feel that these two beautiful sonatas of Brahms live more vividly on the clarinet, and here indeed, Leoni Wittchou’s viola sounded somewhat subdued alongside the piano part. Nevertheless, her playing was very engaging, emotionally varied, allowing its calm and languorous qualities to be relished.
The only item that was not primarily for the viola was Dohnanyi’s Serenade in C, Op 10, which has become somewhat popular on account of the rather small repertoire for the string trio, and its intrinsic qualities. I seem to have heard it several times, most recently at the Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson and from the Antipodes Trio during the St Andrew’s season of concerts in March (both reviewed on this website).
Alice McIvor returned, after Douglas Mews (without any assistance from students!) had rearranged seats and music stands, with violinist Lydia Harris and cellist Anna-Marie Alloway to play three movements. While the opening Allegro is a bit clunky (to use an unprofessional term), the Romanza and the fourth movement have considerable charm. Though the viola part was very competent and produced some lovely expressive playing in the Romanza, the player who caught my ear at many points was the cellist; in the opening passage her playing was surprisingly subdued, but when the cellist’s role was to lead, a player of great sensibility and easy accomplishment emerged.
The fourth movement is a Theme and Variations where all three players demonstrated technical skill, interpretive insight and impressive musical maturity.
No real allowances had to be made to enjoy the music in this recital, very much testimony to Gillian Ansell’s mentoring, on its own terms.
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen
Symphony No 6 in A minor by Gustav Mahler
Michael Fowler Centre
The absence of a notable soloist usually leads to a less well populated auditorium, but clearly the name Mahler works like a famous composer and a star soloist rolled into one. There were a few gaps, to be sure, and I speculate that they would have been filled if the orchestra had not abandoned its ‘senior rush’, discounted late ticket selling policy.
Audience expectations were high, and they were not disappointed.
In brief, this was a magnificent, world-class performance that would have inspired a standing ovation in most of the great musical centres of the world. Wellington audiences are shy: fear of standing up, alone: but here a brave first one would have had the whole house up in a flash.
The orchestra had been augmented by additional players, some, I gathered, from Christchurch. About 116 in all; it is the biggest of all Mahler’s symphonies in terms of instrumental demands, not only in the range of instruments but also in player numbers: nine horns, six various trumpets, five flutes and piccolo, double timpani and harps; and I counted more in some strings sections than were listed in the programme. There were several less familiar items: celeste and tubular bells, a brace of cowbells that were carried through the aisles in stalls and gallery; Mahler’s use of percussion, though impressive in 1906, is hardly radical in comparison with their exploitation in recent times . The pièce de résistance was a specially acquired mighty hammer and solid wood drum that delivered the famous three strokes of fate in the last movement.
Such was the scene that greeted the audience – the entire stage and the raised levels behind the strings packed with players and equipment.
Apart from the scale of the piece, both in numbers of players and duration – almost and hour and a half – there are musicological matters. Mahler’s works were not subject to the numbers of published versions of his symphonies such as occupy the attention of Bruckner scholars studying the various published versions of many of his 11 symphonies, but Mahler’s Sixth had its birth difficulties.
In the course of rehearsals before the premiere at Essen in 1906, Mahler changed the order of the second and third movements, so the Andante came before the Scherzo. According to Wikipedia, he took that change so seriously that he had erratum slips inserted in the existing published score and ordered his Leipzig publisher to produce a revised edition to take account of the changed Andante – Scherzo order.
But the editor of the International Mahler Society’s edition of 1963 claimed that Mahler had again changed his mind, settling for the Scherzo – Andante sequence; and so there are two justifiable versions in use now. Michael Kennedy, in the booklet essay accompanying Simon Rattle’s 1990 account with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, says: “But no evidence to support this assertion has ever been presented”.
And it is interesting that the latest edition of New Grove Dictionary of Music simply states that the Andante was “originally presented as the third movement but subsequently relocated as the second”.
I have that Rattle recording in which the Andante is first, and have to confess that I find it more emotionally and structurally persuasive to hear the Andante straight after the first movement.
Wikipedia lists the performances by leading conductors using each edition. More have used the Scherzo-Andante version but many, including Abbado, Jansons, Ivan Fischer, Barenboim, Gergiev, Maazel and Slatkin have performed the Andante-Scherzo version. Inkinen is listed in the former camp (Wikipedia presumably listed him on the strength of the cancelled performance with the Japan Philharmonic earlier this year; this was Inkinen’s first performance of it).
Kennedy also records the fact that Mahler had deleted the third of the three hammer-blows, at the end of the Finale: superstition that it might be prophetic – of his own death. But there is no musical reason for conductors to do likewise, and presumably few have.
Reviewers often allege that the Town Hall provides a more balanced and responsive acoustic for music of most kinds, and it’s possible that we might have had a more uniform sound picture there, but the general impact of this performance in the Michael Fowler Centre, no holds barred, left nothing to complain about. I can imagine no more arresting and full-throated opening: a complete vindication of the size and weight of the strings – well over the normal 60 – in which timpani, cellos and basses lent their vital power along with the lower brass and woodwinds. The onset of the throbbing rhythms of the opening march clearly presaged the irresistible energy that characterised the whole performance; nor were the beautiful lyrical passages less characteristic – the gentle portrait of Alma soon follows, after the strange subsidence from the sour brass chords.
There is no great contrast between the unrelenting Allegro energico, the first movement, and the opening of the second movement, Scherzo, which starts with a comparable heavy tread, now in triple time, soon plunges darkly into growling Fafner-like (Siegfried) bass sounds, but later offers brief oboe-led lyrical moments; though even these are punctuated by hard timpani. Here, with clarinets raised to cry to the farthest reaches of the hall, the orchestra caught marvelously the alternating gracefulness and ominous shadows which Alma took to represent the ‘unrhythmic games’ of their two little children (though the second, Anna, was born only in 1904). “Ominously,” she writes, “the childish voices became more and more tragic, and at the end died out in a whimper”.
In many ways, regardless of the underlying autobiographical nature of the narrative, the symphony is one of Mahler’s more formally traditional works, without voices and without an overt programme or philosophical subtext. But it is also a massive concerto for orchestra, and one could easily spend the hour and a half attending to nothing but the memorable and surprising flourishes and fanfares, defiant outbursts and agonized lyrical passages given to innumerable, arresting, individual and groups of instruments. No sooner is there a cry of alarm or some mark of the inevitability of fate than relief arrives from the flutes or celeste, or from an expression of nature in the shape of cowbells.
The scale of the music is so huge that when one first encounters it, and this was my early experience, it is easy to feel it as an incoherent series of motifs that seem to progress without much of a plan other than the composer’s momentary impulse.
Mahler wrote to a friend in 1904, as he was in the midst of composition: “My sixth will present riddles to the solution of which only a generation that has absorbed and digested my first five symphonies will dare apply itself”.
The Andante moderato needs no special insight perhaps, as it is much closer in spirit to the glorious slow movements of the fourth and fifth symphonies. Why, in spite of its pervasive melancholy, it has not been accorded the privileged position of the Adagietto of the Fifth mystifies me. The cowbells return; strings are at their most rich and opulent; Ed Allen plays rapturous horn solos, surrounded by magical flutes and oboes.
The last movement’s enigmatic opening, alternating calm beauty with flourishes by harps and the ominous murmurings by the tuba and low woodwinds set the scene. If I found the argument hard to follow at first hearing when I was young, there is now an inevitability that I find very clear, and the undulating dynamics and tempi of the shimmering orchestral colours as they were so vividly and excitingly laid out on Friday evening, had me spellbound for the full half hour.
Yet the score seems so full of graphic detail (Strauss suggested to Mahler that it might have been ‘over-scored’) that one must be forgiven for seeking the ‘meaning’ of many passages in this movement. The more clarity and energy that a conductor such as Inkinen brings to it, unusual sonorities from single harp strings, screaming trumpets, nasal oboes, the more likely are such questions to arise. This movement’s final peroration seems to start about seven or eight minutes from the actual end: it’s no mean feat for a conductor to convince his audience that every rise and fall in temperature, ever pseudo-climax, from which tactical retreat for regrouping is undertaken, all makes sense.
But it did.
And there was no avoiding the meaning of the three hammer blows, the last surrounded by the most real, despairing, defiant peroration of all.
How lucky we are to have an orchestra, built on over 60 years of commitment and experience, and well-enough endowed to permit the performance of such magnificent works that are so central to the understanding of civilization: not just of the west, but of all mankind.
Violin music by Fauré (Andante in B flat, Op 75), Schumann (Violin Sonata in A minor, Op 105) and Szymanowksi (Violin Sonata in D minor, Op 9)
Olya Curtis (violin) and David Vine (piano)
St Andrew’s on The Terrace
Olya Curtis and David Vine make a good contribution to the chamber music scene in Wellington. For the past couple of years they have given us good performances of a field of music that, even more than solo piano recitals, is a neglected field.
You may have noticed the virtual invisibility of Fauré’s unfinished violin concerto (of which I’ve traced a couple of recordings in the Gramophone archive, first movement only, from 1979 and 2001, the latter by Philippe Graffin and the Ulster Orchestra). This being so, there is little point perhaps in dwelling on the fact that this piece published 20 years later, in 1898, was based on the slow movement of that concerto; neither is familiar. This piece is melodically slender, though agreeable and by no means trite. Given that it was thus something of a promotional exercise, it was a pity that the violin part was not quite as polished in intonation, or perhaps as refined in spirit as Fauré’s music invariably is.
Schumann’s first violin sonata is moderately well known and this was a rather splendid performance, that drove away any feeling that one might have contemplating the works of his last few years: that the level of inspiration had declined. For this is a fine work and it was played with much more confidence and assurance; the first movement displays in clear idiomatic terms the composer’s often denigrated talent for writing for strings; there were no important lapses in accuracy.
The second movement, Allegretto, was perfectly paced, the speed sufficient to maintain attention while affording the appropriate calm of a second movement, with nicely judged tempo changes. The last movement, Animato, was rather more than that: it was quite energetic, and blessed with a charming melody.
Szymanowski wrote his violin sonata aged about 22, when he was still under the influence of late romantics like Strauss and Scriabin. It leaves no doubt that the composer would become a distinctive voice, though not necessarily of music in a Polish idiom. If some of her intonation was iffy again, it was a very reasonable trade-off for an effort to exploit the drama and the extrovert character of the music. And anyway, some of the wayward approaches to the notes could well have been a deliberate attempt to demonstrate a freedom that one senses to be an essential aspect of this composer’s music. There was occasionally room to speculate on the balance between perfection and vitality. The sustained lasts note of the first movement drew attention through the violin’s varied articulation.
Szymanowski was a pianist rather than a violinist, yet the music presents as much challenge to the violinist as for pianist David Vine; the music led both down paths that demonstrated Szymanowski’s early command of the idioms, especially German, of the turn of the century, moving to increasing complexity and technical difficulty. Though perfection slightly eluded the violinist in the second movement, the two established a beautiful rapport through its peaceful, lyrical episodes. And in the Finale, through the excellent partnership between the two players, the level of energy and virtuosity brought this interesting piece to a highly satisfying conclusion.
New Zealand School of Music Concerto Competition
Competitors: Nick Price (guitar) – Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez; Reuben Chin (alto saxophone) – Pierre Dubois’s Concerto for alto saxophone and string orchestra; Kate Oswin (violin) – Mozart’s Violin Concerto No 5 in A; Sunny Cheng (piano) – Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G
Adjudicator: Vyvyan Yendoll
Adam Concert Room, Victoria University
This was the final round of the School of Music’s annual concerto competition, reduced now to four finalists. Each is accompanied by piano – a pianist of their choice.
First, I was impressed by the musicianship and accomplishment of all four contestants, and the way in which the finalists had emerged produced a concert of good variety.
The first contestant was guitarist Nick Price who played the obvious concerto by Rodrigo. Though I found his demeanour a little less than engaging – he made no eye contact with the audience, his head turned down most of the time towards his left hand – the music was there in a most attractive way. He played from memory.
He opened with bold, clean chords, paced resolutely: it established at once an expectation of an interesting journey through the music (which ended after the second movement). The gorgeous Adagio was played beautifully, easily paced, in a relaxed manner, as if every note had to be savoured to the full: dynamics sensitively handled, with discreet rubato that let the music breathe. He was fortunate in his accompanist, Douglas Mews, who managed to re-create the score with remarkable quasi-orchestral colouring.
Saxophonist Reuben Chin’s contest piece was Pierre Dubois’s Concerto for Alto Saxophone and String Orchestra which he played with the music in front of him, not that it detracted from an air of spontaneity and total mastery of the score. Though he opened with a slightly imperfect, breathy note, articulation thereafter was pretty flawless, shown strikingly in the big cadenza where his breath control was impressive, through some very fast, virtuosic passages. A contrasting tone of melancholy coloured the slow movement, where his highest register was admirable. The last movement revealed the composition’s French descent most conspicuously and l’esprit français was accurately captured.
Chin was very capably accompanied by Claire Harris at the piano. He was the winner: one of the two contestants I had guessed as most likely.
Kate Oswin, who had her early training and competition awards in Christchurch, as well as playing in the Christchurch Symphony and now in the Wellington Orchestra, played Mozart’s Fifth Violin Concerto. She played without the score and was accompanied by Matthew Oswin. There was a slightly casual air about her playing, and at least in the first movement I thought her phrasing was not very interesting. Technically her playing was excellent however, and she certainly showed a high level of accomplishment, including effortless double stopping, in the cadenza of the second movement. She played only the first two movements.
The Ravel Piano Concerto was the choice of Sunny Cheng who came to Wellington from Beijing aged 15. Accompanied at the piano by Douglas Mews, she played from memory all three movements. This concerto suffered more than the others from the fact of being accompanied by a second piano whish detracted somewhat from the audience’s ability always to distinguish the two, especially when the keyboards were not visible – though the two pianos were distinctive enough in tone. She gave off an air of complete mastery of the work, handling rhythms and phrasing in a comfortable manner, and sounding at home with syncopations and jazz-influenced passages. Her second movement was limpidly beautiful, with just enough emotional feeling to make contact with her listeners. The two pianos created an almost competitive spirit in the last movement; equally in control, generating a sparkling, motoric excitement as it raced to its conclusion.
Reuben Chin, the winner of the competition, will play with the NZSM Orchestra in a concert at St Andrew’s on The Terrace at 7.30pm on Friday 12 August.