Author: Lindis Taylor

Wolfgang Wagner dies

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Composer’s grandson and former Bayreuth director exits the stage

The Bayreuth Festival has announced that Wolfgang Wagner, grandson of the composer, has died at the age of 90.

Wolfgang Wagner was director of the German opera festival for an astonishing 57 years, when in 1951, alongside his older brother Wieland, he restored it to the calendar after a lull brought by the Second World War. As well as directing the festival administratively, both brothers also directed productions artistically – Wieland was by and large the more forward-looking of the two in this regard.

Wieland died in 1966, at which point Wolfgang assumed sole command. Under his leadership, Bayreuth enjoyed a degree of modernisation both on and off stage – the famous 1872 opera house underwent significant renovation and leading directors were invited from overseas leading to a number of groundbreaking productions, with Patrice Chéreau’s controversial 1976 Ring Cycle in particular proving a challenge for critics and audience alike. Demand for tickets soared, and there is now a ten-year waiting list for those who want to attend.

Fittingly, however, Wolfgang Wagner’s long life and career itself was not without drama and controversy. In 1997, Gottfried, Wolfgang’s estranged son from his first marriage, attacked him in print for failing to renounce his mother’s anti-Semitism and the Wagner family’s close ties to the Nazi leadership.

And then, two years later, the Wagner family found itself at loggerheads over who should take over directorship of Bayreuth, with Wolfgang grimly hanging on to his position well into his eighties and insisting on having the right to name his successor. Only in 2008 did he finally step down, with the festival passing into the joint hands of his daughters Eva (from his first marriage) and Katharina (from his second), despite the rival claims of Nike Wagner, Wieland’s daughter.

Reporting on his death, the Bayreuth website says that Wolfgang Wagner ‘dedicated his whole life to the legacy of his grandfather’.

Source – BBC Music Magazine website

Netherlands and New Zealand music from SMP Ensemble

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The SMP Ensemble conducted by Lucas Vis

VISTAS — music by Karlo Margetic, Louis Andriessen, Jack Body, Dylan Lardelli, Anton Killin, Yannis Kyriakidis  

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University

Friday 26 March 2010

The recent St Andrew’s series during the Festival included a concert by the SMP (Summer Music Project) Ensemble; that comprised music by Polish and New Zealand composers. This concert was entirely of New Zealand and Dutch music. Michael Norris introduced the concert Caprice Arts Trust director . They included the Caprice Arts Trust, the New Zealand School of Music, both universities, the Netherlands-New Zealand Association, KLM and Creative New Zealand. There was one premiere; some pieces were quite new and others as much as 40 years old.  

The title of the concert was Vistas: I suppose honouring Dutch conductor, Lucas Vis, a prominent figure in the promotion of new music. Most of the music in this programme was written for unconventional instrumental combinations and most eschewed the kinds of sounds that have been embraced by the generality of music lovers. Composers of this turn of mind seem comfortable carving a isolating niche, largely rejecting the standard musical formations and forms, such as the symphony orchestra or the string quartet, most kinds of tonal music and even the strains of contemporary music that have found more general acceptance.  

The first piece, written for a probably unique combination, was Karlo Margetic’s Hommage à WL: that is, Witold Lutoslawski. It opened, and closed, with Yoshiko Tsuruta playing with soft mallets on a wood block, soon supported by a dense bed of winds and strings: clarinets and horn; violin, viola, cello and double bass; piano and percussion, and it evolved into an aleatoric exercise (for which Lutoslawski was noted) each instrument playing according to his/her own instinct, but launching afresh at the end of each phase; those points were about the extent of the conductor, Lucas Vis’s, role. Occasionally a definite punctuation point arrived, e.g. with piano and cello; the mood became increasingly disturbed, even frenzied, before subsiding.  

Louis Andriessen’s Zilver was written in 1994. The prevailing character was vivid contrasts of pitch, setting flute against piano, vibraphone and marimba, all of which played identical or closely related lines. While the effect was distinctive, one lost a sense of the individual instruments; this was the effect of much of the music in the concert, for while the ensemble was smallish, several pieces were scored extensively for all together, in this case seven voices that the ear is not accustomed to hearing all sounding at once.

The music, nevertheless, gained in coherence as repeated motifs – gestures rather – were handled, at slowly increased speed and changing rhythms, at one point seeming to make wry allusions to the Viennese waltz. It drew to a close by dismantling the tighter framework that had evolved.

Jack Body’s Turtle Time dates from 1968 – a setting of surrealist poems by Russell Haley. Dated? well, perhaps, but it successfully maintains its character: witty, eccentric, the poems brilliantly articulated by Karlo Margetic, with huge gestures, likewise surreal, that reached out insistently to the audience. The music and its performance by piano Sam Jury), harpsichord (Jonathan Berkahn), organ (Matt Oswin)and harp (Natalia Mann), imposed a sort of irony of very traditional sound sources handled with drollerie and wit.  The words might have been a useful addition to the programme note.

Then came the ‘World premiere’ (I do wish we could just settle for ‘first performance’; I do doubt that even the composer expects a rush of breathless music publishers and promoters wanting performance rights in Buenos Aires and St Petersburg). Dominating the stage was the contrabass clarinet of Justus Rozemond, reaching two meters high, along with piccolo, piano, viola and cello.  

Noh theatrical precepts lay behind Dylan Lardelli’s piece, entitled Aspects of Theatre; where each performer rehearses alone, and the eventual performance is the first time the players have got together. The resulting spontaneous spirit was palpable; the musical experience was of extreme dynamic variety, of seemingly random, widely spaced pitches, whose relationships were irrelevant.  Though I have to plead failure to get Noh theatre, in spite of first hearing 40 years ago at the Athens Festival, and subsequent exposures.

Anton Killin’s Two Moments were approximately that; when its end seemed unexpectedly close to its start, Vis led a second performance there and then. In spite of its brevity, the composer had taken pains to score it carefully for seven strings, winds and an accordion carefully arrayed on stage. Interesting, though the purported depiction of the life of Denisovich and the death of Solzhenitsyn failed to register with me, and I had to wonder about the sort of audience envisaged by the composer.

The last piece, Tinkling, was for a much larger ensemble, ten players. Eshen Teo – flute, Andrzej Nowicki – clarinet, Peter Maunder – trombone, Dylan Lardelli – guitar, Dorothy Raphael – percussion, Yoshiko Tsuruta – marimba, Vivian Stephens – violin, Charley Davenport – cello, Simon Eastwood – double bass, Sam Jury – piano. A reworking, shortening of an earlier piece, based on a riff by Thelonius Monk, there was more for the mind to adhere to than with some of the other pieces.  More familiar musical patterns and procedures were suggested; subtle dramatic moments occurred, and arresting little accelerations; attractive hints of rubato in repeated phrases. Again however, I found the busyness of the scoring prevented distinguishing many individual instruments a lot of the time; why bother then with such detailed instrumentation? Pianist Sam Jury had been particularly notable and conductor Vis singled him out.

There was no question about the accomplishment of the players who devoted themselves with commitment to some pretty challenging music that clearly appealed to this audience. The concert was well-attended and there was long applause for the ensemble and for the conductor in particular.

Crisis in public radio

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Most of our readers will be aware of the announcement a week ago by the Minister of Broadcasting, Dr Jonathan Coleman, that Radio New Zealand would have to sustain cuts; and he eyed especially RNZ Concert.

This alert was first posted on 8 March: it is now updated in order to be visible.

In case the message was not clear enough, please write letters to the Minister of Broadcasting, Dr Jonathan Coleman saying whatever you feel about this move to barbarity. There is a splendid blogsite called Savepublicradio with some 20,000 names subscribed to it. That is great, but individual letters, by the thousand, are also needed.

It is also to be noted that the arguments in support of Public radio in general are not entirely congruent with the more particular arguments in defence of Radio NZ Concert.

Look at the way the Government back-tracked on the Goldcard public transport issue when there was a great protest.

We must do the same. Use the thoughts in the article below and/or add your own.

The threat is extremely serious, and urgent.

But the first thing to consider is the legitimacy of the minister’s action. Radio New Zealand is funded through New Zealand on Air which was set up to be an arms-length body that distributes funds to TVNZ and Radio New Zealand. How it allocates its money is not a matter for Government control – that was the reason for establishing an independent authority.

The $38 million that RNZ gets from NZ on Air is divided between the National and the Concert networks, with the great majority going to National. Some $5 million goes to Concert; smaller sums go to Radio New Zealand International and the archiving of programmes.

Because the board of Radio New Zealand is also an independent body, insulated from political interference, it too should not have to base its financial decisions on instructions from above.

So what Dr Coleman is doing is simply attempting to influence the functioning of two independent state authorities; the Radio New Zealand Act specifically forbids the minister’s interference in operational matters.

It is also worth asking why in its effort to cut spending the Government is unable to distinguish between areas where cuts might be tolerable, and would yield significant savings, and areas such as broadcasting where cuts would be crippling and the savings in dollar terms negligible.

Dr Coleman proposes the introduction of advertising and commercial sponsorship. They were the proposals made by his predecessors in the early 1980s which were eventually set aside, mainly by as a result of a change of government. Commercial intrusion into a national radio system at once raises the risk of interference, and of an inexorable pursuit of ratings, pressure to popularize and to dumb-down, pressures that would harass and ultimately sideline the most precious element of Radio New Zealand’s work, the Concert network.

In any case, the additional cost of an advertising department, which would be necessary, would undoubtedly outweigh the revenue it would be able to attract, at least as far as Concert is concerned.

There would hardly be an audience that would respond more negatively to the advertisers during its broadcasts than those of RNZ. Advertisers would know that.

Radio New Zealand is already labouring under severe budget cuts imposed over the past two decades, including staff cuts. It is dishonest to point to slightly increased staff numbers over recent years as bureaucratic growth: a small recovery has been made but numbers are still far below those of two decades ago. Staff simply do a great deal of unpaid, voluntary overtime.

Ratings are not at all relevant (though RNZ Concert’s ratings are remarkably high by international measures; contrary to Michael Law’s remark in his scurrilous Sunday Star Times article, the ratings are published on the RNZ website). The role of RNZ Concert is comparable to that of a national library, a national art museum: a storehouse of material that is available for all, at any time people want or need it.

RNZ Concert offers great music of all ages, that has stood the test of time, and new or neglected music that deserves to be given a hearing. Terms such as ‘elitist’, ‘pointy-headed’, ‘minority interest’ are no doubt applicable also to classic works of art and literature from Botticelli and Michelangelo to Monet, Homer to Shakespeare and Tolstoi…

Just as a national library’s role is not to be measured by the frequency of borrowings or visitors through the doors, the importance of a ‘fine music’ or ‘classical’ broadcaster is not to be measured by ratings.

Civilisation survives through the care taken by those in charge of cultural things to preserve artifacts from the past, and the present.

The Radio New Zealand Charter starts by calling for: ‘Programmes which contribute towards intellectual, scientific, cultural, spiritual and ethical development, promote informed debate, and stimulate critical thought…..programmes which encourage and promote the musical, dramatic, and other performing arts, including programmes featuring New Zealand and international composers, performers and artists.’

One of the areas that would suffer with cuts would be the ability to record concerts for later broadcast from around the country. Already these are severely reduced from the level a few years ago. For many concert promoters, broadcast fees make the difference between viability and no performance at all.

Polls show that 84% of those polled agree that it s important for New Zealand to have a national broadcaster. Over 90% think it provides fair and balanced information. Even more believe that it contributes to the development of an informed society, and nearly 90% think it provides programmes not generally found on other radio stations.

Those figures would suggest that the great majority of New Zealanders would reject the barbaric statements by Michael Laws in the Sunday Star Times on 21 February, claiming, unbelievably, that commercial radio can do the job as well! Laws hosts a talk-back on commercial radio and so his backing of Coleman’s idea of privatizing the national news service is predictable.

One might have criticisms of the range of news gathering and the obsession with crime, violence and sport – even on RNZ Concert, when what is wanted is less tabloid reporting which commercial news services would be bound to provide even more of – pandering to the lowest common denominator, and instead, more solid political, economic, arts news, both domestic and international, which would be highly improbable from a commercial service.

RNZ Concert plays a huge role in enabling classical music to be heard, especially New Zealand music – mainly classical of course (as popular New Zealand music can be expected to find the support it deserves from commercial radio). Its role in making direct broadcasts of major concerts is what the radio service in all civilized nations is expected to do; and it is the recording of concerts for later broadcast that is even more important for the international dissemination of New Zealand music.

Radio has become almost the sole vehicle by which the broad public can become familiar with the entire field of classical music, now that exposure to it has been largely deleted from school syllabuses.

Some of the world’s greatest tragedies have been the loss of great libraries and art collections – such as that of Alexandria in the late Roman era; the rich collections destroyed by conquering religions like Christians at various periods who destroyed huge quantities of classical literature and art; the Nazi’s destroying thousands of works of ‘degenerate’ art; the loss of great libraries and museums in recent decades through insurgency or religious extremism, in Bucharest and Baghdad, and the Taliban’s destruction of Buddhist religious sculpture in Afghanistan; and a few years ago an accidental fire in a princely library in Weimar rich in manuscripts, early printed books and music.

A national radio network might not deal in the same kinds of physical artifacts (apart from the scores and the recordings) but its role is of comparable importance to a country’s level of civilisation and culture.

Let not New Zealand, recently faced with threats to its National Library, and now once more to its public radio system, join Romania, Nazi Germany, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Second concert by Freiburg Baroque Orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Freiburg Baroque Orchestra conducted by René Jacobs with Gottfried von der Goltz (violin) – second concert

Symphony No 92 in G (‘Oxford’ – Haydn), Violin Concerto No 5 in A, K 219 (‘Turkish’ – Mozart), Symphony No 41 in C, K 551 (‘Jupiter’ – Mozart)

Wellington Town Hall

Thursday 18 March 2010

These two concerts brought what is widely regarded and one of the half dozen finest period instrument orchestras to us.  It’s just as well such a band comes to play the great music of the late 18th century, as the big symphony orchestras don’t play it much anymore, having become embarrassed about it over the past 30 years for fear of criticism from the early music purists: Haydn, Mozart, even early Beethoven.

The orchestra comprises excellent musicians who, even without the discipline of a conductor, produces performances that are arresting and idiomatic, flexible and in perfect accord. That was the effect of hearing Mozart’s ‘Turkish’ violin concerto in which the soloist, von der Goltz, the orchestra’s concertmaster, made the running in its interpretation, in its rhythms and tempo:  was it fair to wonder whether Jacobs’s influence was tempered here, without the somewhat curious speeds and sudden rallentandi that characterised the two symphonies, particularly the Jupiter?

The concerto is an extraordinary piece for a 19-year-old. The rising arpeggios of its opening phase had all the speed needed, coloured by restrained vibrato; he was not shy of giving different shapes to the ornaments, of putting the stress, unusually, on the second beat, of taking his opportunities to elaborate phrases with little cadenza-like flourishes. All this was arguably in keeping with knowledge of 18th century practice, though I felt that the main first movement cadenza had echoes of the 19th century. The second movement found the soloist in a state of exquisite calm, playing with an intimacy of tone peculiar to the baroque violin. It lent a startling contrast to the last movement where the Turkish elements, popular in Vienna at this time, burst upon it and where an authentic sounding vigour emerged.

The two symphonies were presented in a way that inhabited a sound world that was rather more different from we are used to with conventional orchestras. Here, with Jacobs himself fully in charge, there was much to admire, in the warm sounds of the flute and the two wooden oboes, the natural horns and trumpets, enhanced by the clarity of the Town Hall; the hard timpani were distinctive, but after a while their sound seemed to become slightly dislocated from the ensemble of the rest of the orchestra.

I hardly recognized the slow movement of the Oxford Symphony though it was one of the pieces that I played, as cellist, in a predecessor of the Wellington Youth Orchestra a long time ago. And there were speeds that were, shall we say, surprising, even though one has heard this music played rather like this on record often enough. I was open to persuasion, and enjoyed the performance though I will also continue to enjoy full-blooded performances (if any) by conventional symphony orchestras.

Jacobs’ field extends from Monteverdi through Bach and Gluck and as far north as Mozart, and really, no further: for him perhaps, Mozart is cutting-edge contemporary. Much of the performance of the Jupiter symphony was simply alive and filled with energy; though we are very familiar with ‘historically informed’ performances, it was still stimulating to hear live, such a performance of a masterpiece that sits very much in the modern symphonic tradition. So it sometimes called for open ears and mind. The minuet was very fast. But in the Finale, I was troubled by what I felt as excessive ritardandi, followed by a sudden resumption of the earlier tempo. Do it once, but four time in exactly the same way and it becomes a cliché.

Much as this performance was revelatory, suggesting the sort of sound that Mozart might have known, I have in my mind performances by modern orchestras that manage to prolong and intensify the drama of this great finale, affording its marvellous contrapuntal and fugal structure a grandeur and power that may be a little inauthentic but which works more on the emotions than does the lighter fabric of a classical (rather than baroque, one might add) orchestra.

A St Patrick’s Day ensemble: clarinet, piano and strings

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The Leprechaun Ensemble: Philip Green (clarinet), Tom McGrath (piano), Anne Loesser and Cristina Vaszilcsin (violins), Peter Garrity (viola), Rowan Prior (cello)

Clarinet Quintet, K 581 (Mozart), Sextet: Overture on Hebrew Themes (Prokofiev), Piano Quintet, Op 34 (Brahms)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 17 March 2010, 6.30pm

This early evening concert may have been one of the most looked forward to though its audience may have been reduced by the clash with the first of the two concerts by the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. Those present were richly rewarded.

There was curiosity about the meaning of the name, and the best guess seemed to be the date of the concert, St Patrick’s Day.

Philip Green is co-principal clarinet in the NZSO and he has also made a big contribution to chamber music since coming to New Zealand from Australia in 2002. The sound he produces is very beautiful – steady, clear, capable of a very wide dynamic range and variety of colours, and he performs masterly glissandi and note-bending.

The sequences of up and down arpeggios in the first movement were not simply exercises; they were organic things with individuality, ravishing expressions of musical delight, sounding as if Mozart expected that nothing was likely to disturb the course of his life.    

The first movement is a masterpiece of structure, but also of rapturous melody; the second movement is no less, each instrument displaying the players’ gifts, often most attractive in duet. One of the effects that caught my ear was the alternating phrases between clarinet and the two superb violins where the violins’ tone seemed to merge with the clarinet. The ornaments in the Minuet and Trio were beautifully turned and the clarinet led the movement to a particularly glorious end. None of the repeats in this music were unwelcome; perhaps, even, there were too few! The variations of the Finale were the final source of wonder, the variety of mood and emotion, of colours and decorative effects and the prolonged phrases of the closing page were of unbelievable beauty.

Whether it was decided to play Prokofiev’s sextet first and then to look for a piano quintet to make full use of Tom McGrath; or whether the presence of a clarinet and a piano together with a string quartet led to a search for a piece using all six, who knows?  Prokofiev’s little piece is a charmer, usually heard in its orchestral clothes, but this is the real way. Right at the start I knew we were in for an exemplary performance, right inside the composer’s mind, Its sharp contrasts of mood and tempo make it an engaging piece and these players let no nuance go unexplored and enriched. Makes you wonder that its success did not inspire him to write more for such ensembles.

As if the most beautiful of clarinet quintets (well – what about the Brahms?) was not enough, I shall recklessly suggest that Brahms’s piano quintet, Op 34 made this an evening of absolute ecstasy. There are a couple of other piano quintets of surpassing beauty too, but this one did for, or rather undid, me. I listened to the lovely viola melody in the opening pages, and soon to the duetting by the two violinists (both exceptionally fine musicians and treasured imports from Europe in the past decade to join the NZSO’s first violins). Other charming little musical relationships of twos and three also emerged.

At first I thought the piano was not entirely at one with the quartet, but by the second movement I had completely changed my mind. Sure there was an occasional slip, but McGrath seemed to fall in naturally with the spirit of the string playing, the colour and rubato, their expressiveness.  His hesitant opening phrases in the second movement endeared the piano’s part to me and their sensitivity to moments of restraint or particular emphasis, seemed second nature.  The string players did well to invite McGrath back to Wellington to play with them.

Their instinct for the dramatic found full scope in the last movement, the withholding, and the releasing of tension, finally giving way to the galloping motif than plunges to the finish.  Brahms fecundity seems to know no end; till the very end you sense him, with difficulty, resisting the temptation to let his endless flow of fresh ideas and variants delay him.

I hardly need say this was a wonderful concert.

St Andrew’s: a Tuesday of New Zealand music

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St Andrew’s on The Terrace concert series

Tuesday 16 March 2010, concerts at midday and early evening

Lunchtime: New Zealand Music for Woodwind. Music by Anthony Ritchie, Pieta Hextall, Jack Spiers, Gillian Whitehead, Ben Hoadley and David Farquhar

This proved to be a wholly New Zealand day. At lunchtime, a group of mainly contemporary pieces for solo winds or groups and in the 6.30 slot, three string quartets by New Zealand’s first real composer, Alfred Hill.

The lunchtime concert comprised mostly solo pieces for flute, clarinet and bassoon, with only two for several players. Luca Manghi was the busiest player with solo pieces by Anthony Ritchie and Ben Hoadley. Hoadley was also the bassoon player and he founded the group; he teaches at both the Auckland University and the New Zealand schools of music.

Ritchie’s piece, Tui, was typical of much of his music: descriptive, arising from the natural world. The music began to sound from somewhere behind us, probably in the choir gallery, simulating the bird, with staccato notes soon coalescing into broad melodic patterns. The tui gives a composer permission to use almost any sound that the instrument can produce, such is its versatility and imitative powers, allowing the bending of the pitch of the notes occasionally.

Ben Hoadley’s piece was called ‘…after a while only the green of the grass is left’, the last line of a poem that his grandmother wrote, about sparrows. Again the flute plays  bird role, starting with fluttering, then subsiding to into a diatonic melody, a peaceful sequence, livened briefly with fast arpeggios. Again, a virtuosic performance from this Italian who lives in Auckland and freelances between the New Zealand Symphony, Auckland Philharmonia and Christchurch Symphony orchestras. 

The second piece on the programme was 7.0, no clue to the meaning, apart from being a response to the Haïti earthquake – it certainly wasn’t the Richter reading. Composer Pieta Hextall is Wellington-based, playing in several groups including Improv Noise Band, and the RNZAF Band. She studies at the New Zealand School of Music and you might find her helpful in Parson’s Books and CDs.

7.0 is for flute, clarinet (Anna McGregor) and bassoon, starting very quietly with clarinet, then flute and then the bassoon in its highest register; all played in unison or at the octave, briefly; sombre and evolving to coherent harmonies with careful dissonances. The first section ended after intense screaming from the flute. The second section contained more panicky sounds and the last section returned to calm, broken by though lamenting bass notes.

Jack Spiers – late professor of music at Otago University – wrote a piece for solo bassoon in five short movements, as a birthday gift for a friend. Her name, Sheila, provides the material for the Prelude, said the programme note  (I didn’t work it out). It’s a positive, sanguine piece that entices the listener with a sense of discovery; Hoadley was an excellent advocate and bearer of gifts.

The piece for solo clarinet was by Gillian Whitehead: Mata-au, the Maori name for the Clutha River which her Alexandra house overlooks during her Henderson Arts Trust residence. It uses the sounds of Maori flutes such as the koauau and Anne McGregor succeeded brilliantly in simulating these beguiling sounds that were inspired by the movement of the river, its whirlpools and currents.

Finally, a most attractive find in the SOUNZ (Centre for New Zealand Music) archives: a wind quartet by David Farquhar, written as a student in London. His note, giving it to SOUNZ, referred to its character, modeled on Bartok’s Sixth Quartet, and commented on the dismissive remarks by his London teacher, Benjamin Frankel. It was clearly the victim of the anti-tonal, anti-audience Gestapo that emerged after WWII and blighted the careers of so many composers.

A series of six movements, a slow introduction to each of three fast movements, there was thematic interest, and plenty of resourceful manipulation of the material throughout. The players, the oboe, clarinet and bassoon previously heard plus second clarinet Tui Clark, gave it a splendid, convincing and affectionate performance, exploring all its virtues and finding no vices of any consequence.

The work was not an ‘exploration’ of some bizarre playing technique or an intellectual concept, or even of a landscape or animal or human being. The music, with no props or narratives, such as Mozart and Brahms were content with, was plenty interesting and enjoyable.

Tuesday evening: Three string quartets by Alfred Hill (Nos 8, 10 and 11) played by the Dominion String Quartet – Yuri Gezentsvey, Rosemary Harris, Donald Maurice, David Chickering

Donald Maurice opened the concert with a short account of Hill’s life and the project to record all 17 string quartets, some of which may have never even been played. All three were written after his retirement in 1934 as Professor of Composition at the Sydney Conservatorium. Only one of the three has been recorded – No 11, and it did emerge as the most interesting and imaginative.

It might be cynical to say that his talk was the most interesting part of the concert, and I wouldn’t do so. It was indeed interesting and by no means misjudged in reflecting Donald Maurice’s enthusiasm for bringing these works to performance in excellent recordings; I did find parts of the quartets less than engrossing.

In each case, the opening phrases of movements portended a work of more substance than in fact emerged as the music developed. Yet there was always the feel of a composer of great accomplishment at work, with a ready source of melody, even if not particularly striking. The Dominion Quartet gave them each well-planned and -considered performances, taking pains over dynamics and investing the music with a rhythmic ebb and flow, attempting to make the development of the ideas as interesting as possible, even when one felt that what was to happen next was ever so predictable.

There were bluesy sounds in No 8, that gave them, not so much a jazz air, but the feel of the palm court. The second movement, an Intermezzo, actually maintained its short life with the feel of a journey commencing, purposeful and filled with anticipation. The later movements were English romantic rather than impressionist in the Debussy sense.

No 10, again, began propitiously and there was a serious cello passage, but the spirit fell away with the appearance of the first phrase of Gershwin’s ‘I got rhythm’; it seemed to prejudice the chance of the recovery of any sort of first-movement solidity. The Scherzo third movement however was rhythmically effective, had a more distinctive character,.

It was No 11 that impressed me most. The harmony was more dense and less given to cliché; there were sequences that, while not particularly original, evolved interestingly. Bluesy strains reappeared but they did not sentimentalise the piece as they had done earlier, and were not so predictable in their handling.

The Allegretto last movement was light in spirit, inhabited by catchy groups of staccato semi-quavers and ideas that were developed more naturally, less predictably than in the other two quartets,

It was an interesting exposure to a significant composer, indeed significant in New Zealand music, both for the large body of music he left and for his serious interest in Maori music, though not in a way that might meet the demands of a later generation of musicologists or ethnologists, who tend to judge not by the standards of the relevant age, but by their own: a serious failing in most spheres of scholarship. 

Three CDs of Hill’s quartets have now appeared on Naxos and the rest of the 17, including those we heard, are in preparation.

Figaro’s marvellous marriage in Day’s Bay garden

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Marriage of Figaro
Produced by Rhona Fraser; Conducted by Michael Vinten, directed by Sara Brodie.
The Count – Matt Landreth, The Countess – Rhona Fraser, Susanna – Barbara Graham, Figaro – Daniel O’Connor, Cherubino – Bianca Andrew, Marcellina – Annabelle Cheetham, Don Basilio – John Beaglehole, Dr Bartolo – Roger Wilson, Barbarina – Sophie Mackie; village girls – Olivia Martin and Rose Blake

Canna House, Moana Road, Day’s Bay

Monday 15 March 2010

I was at the third of the three performances of this startling and brilliant staging of Mozart’s great comedy.

It was at the initiative of Rhona Fraser who was both producer and the Countess, as well as owner of the property in a natural amphitheatre against the beech forest behind Day’s Bay.

Her own background, as a singer of some enterprise, made this project look inevitable.
Music graduate of Victoria University, studies in England and several years performing small roles at English National Opera and big roles in small companies such as theatre designer and impresario Adam Pollock’s. Every summer for 30 years from 1974 he brought his English opera company to perform in an abandoned convent at his famous Batignano Festival in Tuscany. It was that that persuaded Rhona of the special fruitfulness of such intimate productions, not in the conventional opera house. Since returning to New Zealand and buying the property, she has organized charity concerts and now for the first time, an opera.
No opera could have been more right.

Rhona had met opera director Sara Brodie, when she too worked at Batignano; she was the natural choice as stage director. Her hand was alive to all the possibilities offered by the house and garden and she would have encouraged and offered creative ideas to the cast, most of whom seemed overflowing with theatrical instinct.

The weather intrudes
The Friday (first) performance was the victim of the extraordinary storm that struck that evening; those who arrived were greeted, nevertheless, with a glass of wine and an aria before turning back into the storm; and most were able to come on the ‘rain day’ on Monday. There was enough interest to have mounted another performance.

Monday was, reportedly, the best evening for the weather, with the lightest of breezes, warm temperatures, and a western sky seen through the proscenium of trees that slope down to the bay and the harbour beyond, streaked with light clouds in a beautiful sunset.

It started at 5pm, with a dinner break at 6.15 after Act II, and resumed about 7.20 so darkness fell about the start of the garden cavortings in Act IV, when charming lighting made the natural setting even more entrancing.

Setting and preparation
There’s a lot of preparation involved with a production of this kind. A major task was the preparation of an orchestral score for a much reduced instrumental ensemble. That was the task of music director Michael Vinten who has had much experience. There was a piano, played by Richard Mapp, to flesh out the sound, especially the bass, sometimes even suggesting an orchestra; Mapp also played an electronic harpsichord for the recitatives. There were one each of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn but no strings apart from a double bass. The result was musically admirable and entirely adequate to the task.

And there was no chorus apart from the principals themselves, including the two nubile Village Girls.

The way the house and garden are disposed on the property allowed the ‘stage’ and the audience to change places between the first two and the last two acts. Thus the terrace in front of the house served as Figaro’s and Susanna’s room and then the Countess’s chamber while, after the dinner hour, alterations to seating moved the performance space to the lower lawn terrace while the audience was on the upper terraces, facing west toward the harbour and the setting sun. Visibility was excellent, and the sound even more so, every word clear. For while in Acts I and II the performers had the house behind them to reflect the sound, in Acts III and IV, they sang with nothing but the view at their backs; the natural amphitheatre did the rest.

The different levels allowed for stunts like Figaro leaping over the little hedge of the top level to land on the one below; and Cherubino’s escape, not into the garden, but into the adjacent swimming pool, wet tee-shirt and all.

Then there was the libretto, in Shirmer’s English translation, apart from one of Cherubino’s arias, ‘Voi che sapete’, which Bianca Andrew sang in Italian. It was witty at times, a bit laboured at others, but helped by occasional up-dating with local, contemporary references such as Seatoun as the generalized ‘elsewhere’ and where the Count goes surfing.

My only quarrel with the translation was with Figaro’s threat, after Susanna makes him understand the Count’s intentions, that ‘he may go dancing but I’ll play my guitar’; in my head, ‘…I’ll call the tune’, has always seemed the perfect English equivalent.

The performance
Let me comment at this point about the absence of a review in Wellington’s daily paper. If this were London, one might forgive The Times or The Independent for overlooking it, but for the only daily in a small city that boasts of being a ‘cultural capital’ to ignore such a large-scale, elaborate and brilliant enterprise is lamentable. In total over 600 people saw it, far more than most Fringe Festival events that the paper has been covering.

The overture began with the accompaniment of comings and goings of those who would be identified later, ending with the two who we could assume were about to become Figaro and Susanna, kissing. As their scene was about to begin, with them preoccupied, Vinten tapped his baton on the desk to call them to order. It set the tone.

Figaro, Daniel O’Connor,  is suitably young, perhaps a little too young – for this is the man-of-the-world who, in The Barber, was the engineer of the Count’s winning of Rosina against extraordinary odds. He can afford to be more mature than his master. Never mind.

Bianca Andrew, the Cherubino, was no less vivid; she will be remembered as Ino in last year’s Semele from the New Zealand School of Music, as one of Wendy Dawn Thompson’s companions in her recital and in January at the New Zealand Opera School at Wanganui. Her delivery was stylish and coloured with nice emphases on some words.

The Count’s other obsession is surfing; his (Matt Landreth’s) arrival in wetsuit and surfboard at two points titillated as he stripped to a body stocking. He displayed a stage confidence, looks and vocal style that fitted the role splendidly, though it might be unlikely that a surfie would be named as ambassador to London; there was little outward dignitas  of which even less remained after the succession of shameful revelations starting in the first act with Cherubino’s overhearing the Count’s plans involving Susanna, a scene alive with adroit movement and timing.

Costumes were ‘period’ apart from the Count.

Susanna was sung by Barbara Graham who has been attracting attention in the past couple of years. With a well-formed, excellently trained soprano and vivid stage presence, she was a model Susanna: pretty, bright, daring. She’s shortly on her way to Paris for coaching and for auditions.

To get a performance of little over two hours many cuts were needed. One I particularly missed was the spunky duet between Susanna and Marcellina; we had only the preliminary foretaste. Marcellina was far from being a Katisha. Annabelle Cheetham, her voice full of character, created a woman of uncertain years, lively, prickly, but not ultimately uncharitable; thus her role in the first act was not inconsistent with the reconciliation in the third.

Rhona Fraser as the Countess gave an exemplary performance; a voice in good shape, the right demeanour, sad disillusionment born with dignity, yet the ability to see through the last act with a warm sense of humour and spirit. She had cast herself very well and her two big arias were serious, impressive singing.

The two roles of Dr Bartolo and the gardener, Antonio were distinctly delineated by baritone Roger Wilson, voice splendid, and costumes outlandish. Tenor John Beaglehole was a very well cast Don Basilio, at once weasely and sympathetic, his voice now of good operatic proportions.

Sophie Mackie sang Barbarina pertly, and intentionally, no doubt, without too much polish.

It all ended as darkness enveloped the garden, and the always chaotic disguises, dissemblings, revenges, misunderstandings, umbrages, and the final exposure and irredeemable humiliation of the count, enacted in a real garden, with people emerging from bushes and escaping down gravel paths, had the audience entranced as they could not possibly have been in any ordinary opera theatre.

I’m sure there are other Rhona Frasers and Sara Brodies around New Zealand who could help transform the starved, struggling opera scene in New Zealand, given some resources. It’s time Creative New Zealand woke up to its real responsibilities towards the real arts and got behind initiatives such as this in a serious way.

For this was the sort of performance that contributes, not merely to the great pleasure of the audience, but also to the process of training talented singers in the business of opera. It did all these things superbly well.

St Andrew’s series features splendid Aroha Quartet

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

String Quartets by Haydn (in F, Op 77 No 2); Shostakovich (No 7 in F sharp, Op 108); Szymanowksi (No 2, Op 56); and Moon, Tides and Shoreline (Gillian Whitehead)

Aroha Quartet: Haihong Liu and Beiyi Xue (violins), Zhongxian Jin (viola), Robert Ibell (cello)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace 

Saturday 13 March 2010

Wellington is particularly well endowed with excellent string quartets; this one, consisting of permanent or occasional NZSO players and now in its sixth year, has achieved a polish and energy that deserves to be given full attention by Wellington’s musical community. Why so few there?

The last concert I heard from them, last September, also included quartets by Haydn (a different one) and Szymanowski (the same one). I was pleased to hear the latter again and another hearing increases my admiration for this enigmatic composer whose music I have pursued for many years, though I must say its somber character and the absence of memorable themes tend to prevent its taking root in my head.

It may not gain its strength through melodic richness, just as Bartok’s music, for example, does not, but in the avoidance of conventional sonorities Szymanowski goes even further than Bartok without actually rejecting tonality outright. He too uses, rather obliquely, folk tunes, this time from southern Poland – the Tatra Mountain region. In addition, there is a hypnotic feel that might be ascribed to the composer’s deep interest in Middle Eastern philosophy and spiritualism.

All this mystical, evanescent quality was brilliantly caught by the Aroha Quartet: the shimmering, muted sounds in the opening Moderato, that undulate with strange intensity. All the energy and passion is in the second movement, Vivace – scherzando, where a sort of tune emerges on the viola, alternating with pizzicato passages and bursts of high energy. The players were deeply impressive in their command of all the techniques demanded, and in their grasp of the musical and extra-musical elements that invest it.

The other fairly difficult piece was Gillian Whitehead’s Moon, Tides and Shoreline, dating from 1989.

There were interesting similarities in the sound worlds evoked by Szymanowski and Whitehead, with their combining strong spiritual as well as landscape elements.

Though the idiom Whitehead employs is not serial or particularly atonal, it is complex, not rich in recognizable melody, and not readily grasped or, I have to say, enjoyed at once. One hesitates to use a word like ‘jagged’ as it’s too often used as a gentle synonym for ugly or wildly dissonant. Such was far from the composer’s intention or, indeed, could credibly have been inspired by the Paekakariki shore, sky and seascape. Yet strangely, no visual images were conjured in my mind, though there was a variety of sounds that suggested the sea, ranging from violence to calm, and it was such a shimmering phase that drew the piece to a close; a performance that undoubtedly delved deeply into its spiritual world and had full command of the considerable technical demands.

The first work in the programme was Haydn’s last completed string quartet, Op 77 No 2. It’s not a much played piece, though that can’t be on account of any lack of melody. Its melody is not as beguiling as in his most popular works, but there is considerable rhythmic strength, vigorous dotted rhythms in the first movement and, in the second movement, a motif that recalls the famous theme in the Rider Quartet. There is a sudden, surprising modulation to the trio section and it ends in typical Haydn fashion, on the mediant. The players seemed to rejoice in the humour.

The second half of the concert began with a ‘different’ Shostakovich quartet: No 7. It’s fairly short, though in four movements, and of course not as dramatic or memorable as No 8, but any group is to be applauded for allowing us to hear something else. This one, written in 1960, was dedicated to the memory of his wife Nina who had died in 1954. It was here that I specially noticed individual players: the beautiful expressiveness of the second violin in the Lento and the strange, hollow tone of the viola as it lead the way into the frenzy of the third, Allegro, movement; and the cello which entered with its own version of the first theme of the first movement. They were unified by their common energy and discipline, and a singular understanding of Shostakovich’s music.  

It is about time we heard the entire cycle of Shostakovich quartets. What about a mini-festival? I heard them all at the Verbier Festival a couple of years ago, in a series of late night concerts, 11pm, in a tiny church where there were struggles for entry.  

 

 

Lunch with Nikau Trio at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Trio Sonata in C minor (Quantz); Petit Concert (Edwin Carr), Assobio a Jato (Villa Lobos); ‘London’ trio No 1 in C (Haydn); Trio (Graham Powning)

The Nikau Trio: Karen Batten (flute), Madeline Sakofsky (oboe), Margaret Goldberg (cello)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace 

Friday 10 March 2010

A series such as this of essentially small-scale music (i.e. chamber music) can afford to deviate from the more narrow field of chamber music – mainly the string quartet and the piano trio, with woodwind add-ons – that the main promoters of chamber music feel obliged to pursue.

So far there’s been concerts by:

            a quartet playing Klezmer (Yiddish) music,

            a jazz piano trio,

            a piano quartet,

            a piano solo,

            a jazz guitar quartet,

            an octet of strings and winds,

            the SMP Ensemble playing 20th century music from New Zealand and elsewhere involving piano and other keyboards, string quartet and double bass, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, horn, percussion, plus a small vocal ensemble.

 

Still to come, through the weekend and the coming week:

            an early music of soprano Pepe Becker and ensemble (Friday evening),

            another string quartet

            a solo violin – Martin Riseley playing all 24 Paganini Caprices,

            another octet mixing stings and winds,

            a woodwind quartet,

            a string trio playing tangos,

            a clarinet quintet playing both the Mozart and Brahms quintets,

            Greg Squires’s early music group, Scaramuccia,

            two singers in a Mahler song cycle with piano,

            and a tenor singing a mixture of Vivaldi arias and art songs.

Friday’s concert may have been an unexpected delight for, while this lightish instrumental combination might have suggested small charming pieces, there was more to it than that.

It certainly opened with a predictably slight piece by the brilliant flutist, J J Quantz, who worked in the court of Frederick the Great, but it was played without the touch of daring or insouciance that can transform such music. Quantz wrote hundreds of flute sonatas, solo flute sonatas, trio sonatas and flute and other concertos: his music is agreeable. The opening Andante moderato lacked much spark, the following Allegro was more lively, with clean playing; the Larghetto, meditative but sober and the final Vivace was the expected quick piece: all played with excellent ensemble and attention to detail.

Edwin Carr’s Petit Concert (Concert, in French, means simply ‘concerto’, not necessarily featuring a solo instrument), was French in tone and demonstrated an affinity for the devices and patterns that French composers through the early 20th century cultivated. I enjoyed it; there was pleasing three-part harmony, an echoing of 18th century style by the solo cello in the second movement; each instrument carried its own distinct tune in the little Menuet, in skilled counterpoint, and finally a ‘Tarantelle’, with a gigue rather than a tarantella rhythm.

The Villa Lobos piece, Assobio a Jato, meaning ‘The Jet Whistle’ – for the composer likened the sound obtained to the scream of a jet aeroplane – for flute and cello, consisted of three very different movements, not too obviously Brazilian, the last including the whistle which Karen Battle carried off skilfully. On a website there’s a comment by the American composer, Persichetti, that the piece falls in the category of an artisan rather than an artist’s work. That may be, but it’s short and inoffensive.

Next, the Haydn Trio, written during the second of his prolonged visits to London in 1794/95, was rather more substantial than the Quantz of around a half century earlier. The two wind instruments had most of the fun while the cello part was little more than a basso continuo. But the players invested it all with considerable charm.

The most delightful piece in the programme was a Trio by Australian flutist Graham Prowning, revealed as a composer of real accomplishment, and musical imagination. Each movement had distinct individuality, handled tunes that seemed to spring from a real musical inspiration rather than effortful and forgettable. Most infections was the waltz which, while making flippant allusions to the great waltz composers, went its own way in rhythm and melody, evolving surreptitiously into the March finale.

It served to bring the concert to a particularly happy end, for the few dozen who were there.

 

Buz Bryant-Greene at St Andrew’s Festival lunchtime concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Sonata in B minor, (Hob. XVI:32, Haydn), Sonata No 2, Op 35 (Chopin), Ballade No 2 in B minor (Lizst)

Buz Bryant-Greene (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace 

Wednesday 10 March 2010

I last heard Buz Bryant-Greene in a masterclass conducted by Piers Lane at the 2009 Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson.

I suspect he was not very comfortable there even though no one could have been more genial and sympathetic than Lane. So I was pleased to have this chance to hear him again, a young pianist from Nelson who has clearly made something of an impression as a performer around New Zealand and internationally.

It was an interesting programme, though some would call it unadventurous; it is often nice to enjoy a concert that doesn’t include new or difficult music that might be good for us, but pleases few.

Life for 98% of the population of Austria in the 1780s was no bed of roses, but you’d never know it from the music of Haydn or Mozart. Thus it has lived for over two centuries and is bound to survive another two, if the world lasts that long.

The Sonata in B minor, one of the few in a minor key, suggests a serious mind but one intent on making beautiful things. Buz Bryant-Greene’s playing was a delight and his hands fairly danced over the keys, creating the liveliest rhythms, adorned with clean, accurate and spirited ornaments with little use of the pedal, and fluent runs that lifted the spirit. The changes of dynamics between the exposition and the development and elsewhere were particularly eloquent, as were the subtle changes from detached to more legato playing.

There was a limpid charm in the Menuet, with its surprising staccato centre, and a wee stumble; then flighty filigree and modestly fugal passages in the Finale which may well have altered many people’s view of Haydn’s piano sonatas.

The pianist’s note about Chopin’s second piano sonata (in B flat minor) referred to the musical pedants’ view of it as lacking coherence. It is only to the Marche funèbre to which that might perhaps apply. Perhaps through over-familiarty, it does seem to go on a bit.

It was a performance that was authoritative and carefully thought out, the spacious opening done lightly the first time, more physical when the ideas were repeated, with more marked rubato. He knew just how and when to effect gradual dynamic changes.

The following Scherzo certainly sounded as if from the same inspirational source as the first movement, rich in tonal and rhythmic variety; perhaps the Piu Lento section began with too emphatic a note, but it led to a trio-like section that suggested a full slow movement.

The slow movement is of course the funeral march. The march was on the brisk side which seemed to make it somewhat too casual, not a particularly deeply felt loss; perhaps the pianist saw it as a happy vision of the hereafter.

The whirlwind Finale was truly a marvel of speed and fluency, flawless.

I heard Liszt’s Second Ballade (also in B minor) played bravely by the young Sam Jury in a student recital last year at St Andrew’s and it appeared, just to stay with the New Zealand context, in the first volume of the CD remasterng of Richard Farrell’s complete recordings last year. I remark this because the piece has rather fallen out of favour; yet it was familiar half a century ago. I recently came across a notebook in which I used to record all the music I was discovering as a teenager, mostly on radio, and there it was.

Bryant-Greene created a huge bed of dense bass sounds lit suddenly by a couple of bars of sunny music. It is of course a narrative, to be compared with his orchestral symphonic poems and though its form might be criticized by pedants, it’s an absorbing, vibrant composition that holds the attention, especially in the hands of this pianist. Specially charming was the central love music (it tells the Hero and Leander story) where the hands constantly cross each other gracefully, a visual, as well as auditory, simulation of love-making.

There was virtuosity to spare, as well as a coherent musical view of the whole rambling piece. Another extremely satisfying concert in this rewarding series that doubles the amount of classical music in this festival.