Author: Lindis Taylor

Young Musicians Twelfth Annual Concert with NZSO players

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Michael Monaghan Young Musicians Foundation

Twelfth annual concert, conducted by Peter van Drimmelen and Kenneth Young

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Sunday 13 September

It had been announced some time before the concert that this one was the last under the current arrangements; arrangements that began in 1996, with the formation of a trust to remember an NZSO violinist, Michael Monaghan, inspired by violist Peter van Drimmelen, with the first of the annual concerts in 1998.

They have consisted of performances by eight secondary-school, and occasionally younger, musicians, accompanied by players from the NZSO and others. All concerned have given their time free while other costs have been met from supporters and sponsors.

Peter van Drimmelen has been the driver throughout and he has decided that now is the time to withdraw from the project.

Before the final item on the programme, several people spoke: Ian Fraser, a former CEO of the NZSO, Chris Finlayson, Minister for the Arts, who spoke of the importance of the enterprise and its achievements, and finally the Education Office of the NZSO told the audience what it had expected to hear: how the scheme was to carry on.

Deserved praise went to Peter van Drimmelen.

In brief, it is being taken over jointly by the NZSO Foundation and the orchestra itself and it will be expanded to provide comparable activities in other centres.

The Foundation’s remaining funds will be handed to the NZSO Foundation.

Though it would be reckless to claim that standards of performance have improved out of sight, it might not be altogether wrong. I can remember earlier concert in which there were several very impressive performances but one or two that didn’t quite measure up.

This time all eight reached a very high standard, with the last two, cellist Lucy Gysbers and violinist Julian Baker, giving particularly polished performances.

Whether by chance or by a certain amount of tweaking the selection, the concert formed a satisfying programme. The opening piece was a most successful choice – French flutist/composer Benjamin Godard’s Valse, a delightful blend of Straussian Vienna and Offenbachian Paris in a showpiece for the flute in which Jae-Won Um displayed a sure instinct and played attractively.

In the slow movement from Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, and in several subsequent pieces, the roguish acoustic of the cathedral took its toll; though probably not so bad from the front seats, at the rear, bass sounds were unduly exaggerated. Sometimes it created an interesting effect that was not too out of place; at other times, in parts of the Sibelius, the orchestral bass instruments weighed heavily on the violin. With the benefit of a very warm-toned violin Chikako Sasaki got inside it successfully.

Sophie Rose Tarrant-Matthews played the last movement of Beethoven’s third Piano Concerto, again subject to an overbearing acoustic, but strikingly musical; her dynamics and her easy and natural phrasing, avoiding rigid rhythms, were always obvious.

Asaph Verner was even more tested by Ravel’s big orchestra, rich in high woodwinds and percussion, in the first movement of his frightening Concerto in G. Balance between the piano and the orchestra was again hard to achieve, but a fine, brave talent was conspicuous.

The second half was devoted entirely to stringed instruments. Claude Lily Tarrant-Matthews (was this a first, with two siblings among the chosen?), only 11 years old, gave a surprisingly mature performance of the slow movement of Mozart’s third – G major – Violin Concerto. She took it slowly but made full use of that opportunity to explore its lyrical beauties.

Benjamin Pinkney was the only player to tackle a New Zealand piece: Anthony Ritchie’s Viola Concerto, first movement. An interesting work, but it was difficult to assess the performance because of the stridency of high woodwinds and the distraction of too much going on in the orchestra to the detriment of the viola’s role.

The middle movement of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto was played with considerable accomplishment by Lucy Gysbers. Though soloist and orchestra found balance difficult, her playing was confident and very musical.

Finally a little-heard Violin Concerto by Kabalevsky was the choice of Julian Baker. He played its first movement, something of a showpiece, happy and boisterous in fine Soviet style, with good grasp of its style, unostentatiously yet with flair.

There was perceptible relief at the concert’s end from the audience on the announcement about the programme’s continuity. While there are still enormous deficiencies in the teaching of music in schools and simply in exposing children to classical music, this initiative goes some small way to redressing the shortcomings. May it flourish now, and nationwide.

Wellington Orchestra and Houstoun in Beethoven 4

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Tangazo (Piazzolla); Piano Concerto No 4 in G (Beethoven); Symphony No 104 in D ‘London’ (Haydn)

Vector Wellington Orchestra conducted by Marc Taddei with Michael Houstoun (piano); dancers from Footnote Dance

Wellington Town Hall, Saturday 12 September 2009

The fourth in the Wellington Orchestra’s subscription series continued the orchestra’s theme of combining the symphony with dance and movement. An imaginative enterprise but it presents quite surprising aesthetic problems.

The concert opened with an interesting dance piece by Astor Piazzolla, perhaps the only Argentine composer many classical music followers have heard of. His fame rests on taking tango music into the concert hall, taking its essence and subjecting tango rhythms and melodic motifs to classical techniques.

The piece began with basses and cellos playing slow, sonorous, elegiac ideas, soon picked up by violas and violins in quasi-fugal fashion: it might have been Tchaikovsky or Mahler. As it proceeded dancers came up the aisles and sat on chairs on stage.

When tango music emerged, one of the dancers rose, the female in scarlet, making arching, long-legged, tango-style gestures as she stalked across the stage. Unfortunately, neither the male nor the other female quite matched her command of the idiom; and one kept hoping that some arresting, authentic tango would develop; it didn’t quite happen.

I did not envy the dancers, called on to perform on a bare stage, without scenery or props, dancing to music that had really been gentrified, turned into polite concert music, stripped of most of its essential sensuality. Theatricality was missing.

What followed was an entirely different matter.

Michael Houstoun’s presence throughout this series of Beethoven piano concertos has certainly been the key to their success. His playing, again, was immaculate, finely shaped and with discreet dynamics and rhythmic flexibility. It was perhaps too discreet for the orchestra to pick up for after the piano’s famous opening, the orchestra didn’t quite prolong and develop the musical features that were implicit in those phrases, but when the piano re-entered the temperature rose subtly. The first movement cadenza thus proved a particularly engrossing phase.

The slow movement could well be called merely an Intermezzo, but it is of singular beauty and the orchestra judged its character and scale with great sensitivity. This was an excellent collaboration between piano and orchestra, creating a wonderful stillness, a stylish sense of occasion.

The size of the orchestra will be defended on ‘classical’ grounds; this is so, but the smaller the band, the more testing are matters of balance, absolute unanimity in the string playing and in blending of winds and strings. While it may have been better to defy ‘classical’ strictures a little and risk a few more strings, the whole performance, embroidered by very fine wind playing, again reinforced how important it is that this orchestra be maintained at good strength and in good morale. .

Usually the London Symphony seems one of the weightiest of the 12 that Haydn wrote for his two London visits. If this performance didn’t present it as of quite the grandeur of Mozart’s last three, for example, that too may have been a question of orchestral size.

Conductor Taddei changed the orchestra’s string seating for the symphony: from the left, first violins, violas, cellos, second violins, and it offered a subtly better sound picture.

After the somewhat less than monumental Adagio introduction, the Allegro itself gained stature as it got into its stride; there was energy and vivacity. The Surprise-Symphony-like fortissimi in the varied Andante were effective, as was the woodwind quartet that adorns it and Taddei knew how to dramatise the quirkiness of this typically off-beat Minuet and Trio and to keep interest alive throughout the novelties of the last movement.

There was a pretty full house, if one ignored the scattering of empty seats in the stalls. It’s a pity that the quality of the seats in the stalls – too close together – encourages the audience to sit in remote parts of the gallery.

Guitars at Old St Paul’s Lunchtime concert

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Guitar music by Andrew York, Radames Gnatali, Brahms, Piazzolla, Paulo Bellinati

Wellington Guitar Duo (Christopher Hill and Owen Moriarty)

Old St Paul’s, Tuesday 8 September 2009

The guitar is not, perhaps, an instrument that you think of as devotional, adapted to what you do in a church. In fact, however, the delicacy and subtlety of this string instrument sits very comfortably in a fairly small church, especially one with such architectural and historic beauty as Old St Paul’s. The guitar, after all is a close relative of the lute and its keyed descendants such as the clavichord, harpsichord or spinet.

To its disadvantage is the relatively small repertoire of music of more than a century old, and the dominance of much of its recent repertoire by Hispanic dance music, not to mention the universe of popular music. We are not used to thinking about guitar music as being as important or as valuable as that of instruments more central to western European music tradition.

So it is common to fortify programmes with arrangements of acknowledged classical pieces: on this occasion the candidate was the Andante, Theme and Variations movement from Brahms’s String Sextet, Op 18, one of his best loved works, and music that, through John Williams’s arrangement, sounded extremely well on two guitars, overlooking those parts in which your mind’s ear longs for the low sonorities of a viola and cello. Its gently shifting harmonies seemed to be just what a sensitive guitarist would choose, though a repeated accompanying figure became monotonous in the fourth variation.

The programme of Christopher Hill and Owen Moriarty began with a piece by United States composer and guitarist Andrew York. His Sanzen-in was inspired by the ancient temple and garden in Kyoto which, with gently syncopated rhythms in common time, evoked a past but not perhaps a Japanese past; the flavour was generalized Latin rather than Asian.

The rest of the programme was of South American music: by two Brazilian composers, Radames Gnatali (two pieces from his Suite Retratos) and Paulo Bellinati. Gnatali was born in 1906 in Porto Alegre (get out your atlas) and his four movement Retratos was composed in 1956 and arranged by the composer for many different solo instruments and ensmbles . The beguiling waltz, Ernesto Nazareth, recalled music like Granados’s Valses poeticos, with its attractive rubato and dreamy character; the second, Chiquinha Gonzaga, presumably named for a musician friend, exercised the two players’ rhythmic dexterity.

Bellinati’s Jongo ended the recital. Written in 1978, using one of the many Brazilian dance rhythms, it has become a standard in the guitar repertoire, and the duo’s performance was highly accomplished.

There were two very contrasted pieces by the famous Argentinian, Astor Piazzolla (which Christopher Hill explained he had transcribed from a recording because of difficulty in obtaining scores – one hopes, not just to avoid paying royalties). One, Zita, was one of his characteristically elaborate and complex tangos where one admired the players’ ensemble through the spiky, unpredictable rhythms; the second was Whisky, and indeed created a feeling of happy disorientation.

A programme of this kind made me aware both of the riches that the past half century have brought to the guitar repertoire and the depths of (at least my) ignorance of the world of Latin American music, apart from the few obvious names. Would it have been a good idea to have used a recital like this to elevate this music, by its presentation, to the status of a comparable recital of European classical music, with documentation in the shape of informative programme notes about the composers and the music?

It seems a shame to perpetuate the impression of guitar music, and Latin American music generally, as light-weight and not worthy of musicological attention, by not offering background material of interest to a (let us assume) musically cultivated audience such as comes to these concerts.

　

The Aroha Quartet at an evening at St Andrew’s

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Haydn: String Quartet in G, Op 54 No 1; Szymanowski: String Quartet No 2, Op 56; Beethoven: String Quartet in E flat, Op 74 (Harp)

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

St Andrew’s on The Terrace, Saturday 5 September 2009

The Aroha Quartet, comprising four Chinese players, three of them in the NZSO, has been around since 2004. I heard what I think was their first public performance, at Old St Paul’s in Wellington, and was very impressed; I have heard them since then and have enjoyed their programmes and their performances. But the group has not really achieved what it might have if the players had been able to devote more time to playing together. They have now suffered a slight set-back with the loss of their cellist Jiaxin Cheng, after she married Julian Lloyd Webber; she has been replaced by NZSO cellist Robert Ibell, an experienced chamber musician, formerly cellist in the Nevine Quartet which has disbanded.

Once again, the quartet put together an excellent programme, of one of Haydn’s less often heard quartets, Beethoven’s splendid Harp Quartet (not for the harp), and Szymanowski’s second; that was the best thing in the concert.

The programme notes comment that Haydn’s Op 54 quartets are ground-breaking and that No 1 is among his most popular. If that is so, I have been neglectful, not having heard it played live before. But it is indeed an adventurous piece: lively, witty, varied, entertaining. I had mistaken the start time – 7pm – and missed the first and some of the second movement; the minuet was highly diverting, never mind an occasional slip, and the players made the finale a thing of teasing boisterousness.

The best known work was Beethoven’s Op 74. Here it was possible, in spite of the absence of the kind of polished ensemble and virtuosity that we are used to hearing on recordings by great quartets, simply to enjoy the frank and disarming enthusiasm that’s so infectious in players like these. If the somewhat startling dynamic outbursts in the open phase of the first movement sounded a bit unconvincing and there was some smudgy ensemble in the Scherzo, all it did was do highlight a musicianship and technical skill that was generally irreproachable; their grasp of the style and intellectual character of the music was of a high order.

It was in the Szymanowski quartet that these talents could best be enjoyed; most of us did not have the sounds of some famous recording in our ears and were therefore more ready to hear what the Aroha Quartet did as definitive. Its shape is unusual, the first and last movements, using folk-like tunes, quieter and more lyrical than the second movement which is marked Vivace, scherzando. The haunting effect of the opening passage, with its muted strings played at the octave, and tremolando violin and viola, caught the mysticism that had entered the composer’s imagination through his involvement with eastern philosophy. All changed in the second movement with a big extrovert melody that suddenly turns assertive, even violent.

Though the repertoire of the string quartet is probably even larger than that of the symphony, so there is no urgency for new works, the Aroha Quartet made a good case for the more frequent dusting off of Szymanowski’s two quartets.

Celebrating the 200th anniversary: Haydn and the New Zealand String Quartet

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Haydn String Quartets: Op 64 No 5 (The Lark), Op 74 No 3 (The Rider), Op 20 No 5, Op 77 No 1 (Compliments)

New Zealand String Quartet (Helene Pohl and Douglas Beilman – violins, Gillian Ansell – viola, Rolf Gjelsten – cello)

St Mary of the Angels, Saturday 29 August 2009

Peter Mechen has written a review of the first of the two concerts by the New Zealand String Quartet on Tuesday 25 August, commemorating the 200th anniversary of the death of Haydn. That concert contained, not only 21 excerpts from the quartets, from Op 1 to Op 103, but also recitations by the four quartet members from letters and memoirs recorded by a number of biographers and commentators. (Admirably, the programme listed the references so that the audience could seek out some of the books the next morning at library or on internet).

That tour de force of musical adventure and theatrical entertainment was not repeated in the second concert which I heard on Saturday (it had been played first on Thursday 27 August in the Hunter Council Chamber).

This repeat of the second programme was held at 6pm, in part, presumably, to enjoy the evanescent light of day as it dimmed through the stained glass, allowing the church soon to be lit only by prolific candelabra (in the singular it’s ‘candelabrum’, by the way).

For this they chose four of their favourite quartets, and played them with profound affection, brilliance and insight.

Many of the popular quartets have acquired nick-names; three of the four were The Lark, The Rider and Compliments. The earliest was from Op 20, published in 1772, a group that was nick-named The Sun, presumably on account of the publisher’s engraving on the cover. Just as the earlier concert had been a revelation in terms of the growing maturity and the increasing complexity and sophistication of Haydn’s writing, so the comparison between the two quartets in the second half, Op 20 No 5 and the Op 77 No 1, 30 years apart was very striking.

The former is a serious work, in F minor, and the themes of the first movement lend themselves to imaginative development that evidences the compositional learning Haydn already commanded. Though it was the Op 33 set, ten years later, that inspired Mozart’s set that he dedicated to Haydn, it is easy to understand how the style, shape and melodic evolution of this earlier quartet would have impressed the younger composer.

The first movement impresses with a convoluting, ever-expanding theme, and the quartet managed to portray its unusual character without excessive minor-key sombreness; on the other hand the thoughtful, quite elaborate Minuet does not present the normal unbuttoned peasant dance; and the unusual Adagio, a Siciliano in triple time ends with typically Haydnesque flippancy. All of these unconventionalities the players handled with calm understatement. And then there’s the fugal, though quite short, last movement; just to show that he wasn’t simply a tunesmith.

The rapport and compatibility of the string quartet members and their marvellous command of the notes justified the performance of this relatively early quartet.

Op 77 No 1 (Compliments) has a far more varied and confident character, each instrument offered a great deal more individuality, all manner of original, vacillating rhythmic and melodic touches in the first movement ending with enchanting scales from Rolf Gjelsten’s cello. It was written, indeed, after the publication of Beethoven’s Op 18 set and in many ways it demonstrates an intellectual and artistic breadth that Ludwig would have embraced. I have rarely heard the quartet playing with greater accomplishment and in an accord so completely engaged.

The first half contained the more diverting works – familiar, brilliant, melodic: The Lark, clearly justifying its name, with Helene Pohl’s violin soaring beautifully in the first, too short, movement; with one of the loveliest of Haydn’s slow movements in a ravishing performance; and a vivace finale which they turned into a scintillating prestissimo.

The Rider was one of the quartet’s earliest Haydn quartets and for me, their handling remains unexcelled. They tackled the opening Allegro with such a carefree, open air spirit, in spite of its minor key (the common classification of major and minor modes as happy and sad really is nonsense). The slow movement, somewhat reminiscent of the great slow movement of the Emperor quartet, highly ornamented, so different in tone from the adjacent movements, was laid out exquisitely. The infectious galloping rhythms in both first and last movements faltered at none of the hurdles and the lower strings supported the sure-footed gallop: so fast, so ‘con brio’ in the final Allegro, that its excited breathlessness hinted at the mood of which Mozart was master in The Marriage of Figaro.

‘Hideous Love’ offered by Brio, opera ensemble

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Excerpts from Handel’s Acis and Galatea, Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, and Verdi: Un ballo in maschera, Il Trovatore, Rigoletto

Brio: Janey MacKenzie, Jody Orgias, John Beaglehole, Roger Wilson; piano: Robyn Jaquiery

St Andrew’s on The Terrace. Wednesday 26 August 2009

The success of the somewhat heterogeneous range of voices comprising the vocal ensemble Brio lies in their energy and histrionic flair and the plain delight they four take in what they undertake. On this occasion Roger Wilson replaced the ensemble’s usual baritone Justin Pearce.

Acis and Galatea was given a semi-staged performance by New Zealand Opera a few years ago in the Opera House. It is a hybrid work, classed as a masque, a hybrid dramatic form that possibly has more in common with the French opéra-ballet, practised by Lully and Campra. First performed in 1718, it was Handel’s first dramatic venture in English; his only other dramatic piece in English, a true opera, not counting oratorios, was Semele.

Roger Wilson began with Polyphemus’s aria, ‘O ruddier than the cherry’ – one of those arias that one wishes was in Czech or something we didn’t understand. The odd case of a love song that seems more designed to dismay than to seduce. I was as struck by John Beaglehole’s tenor aria – as Acis – ‘Love sounds the alarm’, a vivid, penetrating performance.

Towards the end of the aria Janey MacKenzie, as Galatea, and Wilson joined in with a display of theatrical ferocity that truly shook the altar.

If the final quartet, now including Jody Orgias, didn’t offer the most beautiful blend, it was dramatic, diction was clear and it did what is most valuable – encouraged us all to rush to the library to borrow score or recordings.

The Italian version of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (why the reference to Berlioz’s 19th century version?) might not have exemplified hideous love, but Jody Orgias, as Orpheus, evoked a bereft figure and her unusual timbre did grief very well. The following duet, ‘Vieni, appaga il tuo consorte’ between Orgias and MacKenzie was the more credible, given the marked contrast in their voices. Beaglehole took over the role of Orfeus to sing ‘Che farò senza Euridice’ with feeling and minor intonation flaws.

The rest of the concert was Verdi’s. First, the night scene in Un ballo in maschera where Amelia consults Ulrica with Riccardo observing. Jody’s singing captured Ulrica splendidly, filled with foreboding, while Janey captured the timorous Amelia’s anxiety very well.

The next case of unlikely, if not hideous, love was that between the Conte di Luna and Leonora in Il Trovatore. Roger Wilson as the unhinged count, expecting to get Leonora on condition of freeing Manrico, again summoned fearful Verdian rage, while MacKenzie’s part gave her an opportunity for some impressive bravura singing.

The last excerpt was the great quartet from the last act of Rigoletto, where each character reveals starkly different emotions, and here they were delineated with remarkable vividness.

The group’s regular pianist, Robyn Jaquiery supported all the singing colourfully: the piano was raised to the middle level of the steps that rise to the sanctuary: an excellent improvement both in visibility and sound.

Wellington Regional Aria Contest: Dame Malvina Major Prize

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Wellington Regional Aria Contest Final: Hutt Valley Performing Arts Competitions Society; Adjudicator: Angela Gorton. Finalists: Rose Blake, Kieran Rayner, Amelia Berry, Elitsa Kappatos, Olga Gryniewicz. Pianists: Catherine McKay and Emily Mair

St Andrew’s on The Terrace. Sunday 23 August 2009

In recent years what used to be the Aria Contest of the Hutt Valley Performing Arts Competitions Society has struggled to survive. For many years it was The Evening Post Aria, but after The Dominion and The Evening Post merged in 2002, the paper dispensed with that responsibility. It has now been taken under the wing of the Dame Malvina Major Foundation and the first prize is now a generous $4000.

That being so, it was surprising that there were only five entrants to the aria competition, compared with more than 20 in some earlier years. There was a clash with the aria contest in Dunedin and there were other apparently competing events that prevented many singers from other parts of the country from taking part this year.

The adjudicator was Angela Gorton. The accompanist Catherine Norton who gave the most sensitive support to all but one of the singers; Emily Mair accompanied Kieran Rayner.

All singers were between 20 and 22 years of age, and all but one of them had appeared in the New Zealand School of Music’s production of Semele.

The first contestant was Rose Blake who was the alternate Semele. She chose Marzelline’s aria from Fidelio, ‘O wär ich schon mit dir vereint’. It is usually hard to take the first position in such a contest and nervousness and probably inadequate warming up affected her voice which, though proving quite strong, was tight and her phrasing uneven. It was no surprise that her second aria, ‘I’ll take no less’, from Semele, found her in much better shape, more practised and confident in her gestures as a result of the stage experience.

Kieran Rayner, who had sung the role of Athamus in Semele, made a singular impression at once, singing the aria ‘Mein Sehnen, mein Wähne’ from Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, letting the audience realize that there’s more to it that the familiar Marietta’s Lied. He showed a naturally attractive voice, with comfortable delivery, never under pressure. His second aria showed similar accomplishment, from a contrasting opera style, Ambroise Thomas ‘other’ opera, Hamlet: ‘O vin, dissipe la tristesse’ (not something that you’ll find in the Shakespeare version). He sang with flair, in good French, his rhythm, phrasing and dynamics all under fine discipline. I had no doubt that he would be hard to beat in this small field.

Amelia Berry was the Semele that I saw on the opening night but she refrained from making use of that experience. She sang the charming, lyrical aria ‘Ruhe sanft’ from Mozart’s unfinished opera Zaïde and later, ‘Una voce poco fa’ from The Barber of Seville. She failed to articulate the top notes in the Mozart; perhaps her choice had taken her out of her natural register, or perhaps it was simply nerves. So I was not surprised with a more comfortable performance of her Rossini, lying a little lower though with more bravura, which she carried off with agility and accuracy. In this it was easier to gauge the quality of her voice, and I thought she might win one of the prizes.

Elitsa Kappatos did not have a role in Semele. Though she chose pieces that are very familiar, pieces that make considerable demands, her performances were creditable. ‘O mio babbino caro’ was a little shrill, but her intonation was accurate and she made a nice personal impression. She gave herself every advantage in the Habanera from Carmen, with an appropriate costume, she refrained from excessive gestures, yet carried off the confident, strong-willed, mezzo role with a certain flair.

Olga Gryniewicz had made a vivid impression in Semele, as Iris, and she chose one of her main arias in the contest: ‘Endless pleasure’. It was a shade less striking here, removed from the theatrical setting, the line a little too staccato, and her voice monochrome. But she did well to tackle Norina’s fine, coloratura aria from Don Pasquale, ‘Quel guardo il cavaliere’. Her voice coped with its high, airy, innocent character, her Italian was good, and rhythmic sense – rubato – well cultivated. She draws attention as a spunky, characterful singer; but an underlying strain is audible, reflecting a voice production difficulty.

Nevertheless, I had thought she would get a mention among the prize winners.

Angela Gorton awarded the Dame Malvina Major Foundation prize and the prize for the singer displaying the most consistent standard, as well as the Jenny Wollerman award for the best song or aria in French to Amelia Berry. Kieran Rayner was given the Rokfire Cup for the most outstanding singer in the senior vocal class and the Robin Dumbell Cup for the singer with the most potential. In effect he was runner-up.

Finally, I must draw attention to the longstanding devotion to the aria contest’s survival by its almost single-handed manager, Betty Bennett, for the Hutt Valley Competitions Society. It is high time that others concerned with singing in Wellington took a share of the responsibility for the contest. Contests may not be favoured in certain quarters but they still represent, in a career that is based in public performance, an important way to gain attention in a frighteningly competitive scene.

Let us remember that Wellington’s own competitions society collapsed in the 1970s; since then the society in the Hutt Valley has filled the gap. It must not be allowed to stumble.

Bach organ recital from Mews at St Mary of the Angels

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Lobet den Herrn:  Winter organ series at St Mary of the Angels: Douglas Mews

Bach: Partita on ‘Sei gegrüsset, Jesu gütig’, BWV 768; Sonata No 2 in C minor, BWV
526; Prelude and Fugue in E flat (St Anne) BWV 552

Church of St Mary of the Angels, Sunday 23 August 2009

This was the second in the series of three recitals on the Maxwell Fernie organ at St Mary of the Angels. The first was by the, shall we say, organiste titulaire of St Mary’s, Donald Nicolson. This one was by the City organist and keyboard specialist at the New Zealand School of Music, Douglas Mews. After the concert he talked in the organ loft to those interested, about the music and the organ. It was interesting to hear his comments, shorn of the usual breathless veneration of Fernie’s handiwork (to which I have subscribed), noting some of the quirks and difficulties to be encountered with the instrument’s registrations.

However, here was a fine concert of some of Bach’s great organ works, culminating in the
bold and sanguine St Anne Prelude and Fugue (though, as he noted, the tune was merely a bit like the hymn known to Anglicans as St Anne’s or ‘O God our help in ages past’; Bach would not have known it). It is thought that the two parts were probably not composed to be linked in the way they eventually came to be published.

The rest of the programme was not of particularly familiar music.

The Partita BWV 768 is a set of eleven variations on the chorale, ‘Sei gegrüsset, Jesu gütig’, of delightful variety, starting with its exposition that involved sprightly duets between pedals and manuals. Each variation led to quicker, grander or more elaborate treatment and Mews exploited some of the more entertaining stops discreetly on the way, including nasal reed stops in the third variation. It ended with a commanding summation of the piece’s essential spirit.

The set of six organ sonatas, BWV 825 – 830 are less familiar than the sets of sonatas, suites and partitas for cello, violin and other keyboards. They were probably written in Bach’s first years at Leipzig – the mid 1720s – and to some extent made use of recycled music; they may have been written as studies for his oldest son, Wilhelm Friedmann. They are not easy, a compilation of the technical problems that a gifted student would want to master. However, their tone is generally genial, tuneful and not burdened with heavy textures, and the Fernie organ proved an admirable instrument in the hands of Mews.

The St Anne Prelude and Fugue was the most imposing of the three pieces: the prelude enjoyed certain droll figures, such as the planting of single heavy treads on the pedals, dotted rhythms. The fugue may not be a heavyweight but it is rich in imaginative devices and developments that Mews made even more interesting with his spirited, rhythmic playing and the expert, sometimes droll choice of stops.

Last Night of the Proms with Wellington Orchestra

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Vector Wellington Orchestra and the Orpheus Choir conducted by Marc Taddei with Helen Medlyn (mezzo soprano) and Donald Nicolson (organ)

Wellington Town Hall, Saturday 22 August 2009

Wellington’s experience suggests that there’s no such thing as the Last Night of the Proms. The big audiences – this one was sold out – justifies the Wellington Orchestra’s decision to stick with a good thing, or at least a rewarding thing, so the adjective ‘last’ has to be understood as a relative term. One wonders how Wellington would turn out if another of the scores of nights at the Proms were presented; they have long been the way to get an assured audience to listen to unfamiliar or new music, which would be otherwise difficult to sell to the British public.

The fact is of course that, although presented in a music venue, by a symphony orchestra and other musicians, the event is not really about music. It’s about a ritual: coloured balloons, silly hats, waving Union Jacks (albeit with little gusto), standing up and making a noise some of which doubles as singing.

Marc Taddei is the ideal front-man, just a little larger than life, unabashed by the need to act the fool with unembarrassed conviction.

Though the pattern and perhaps the secret of its longevity is sameness and familiarity, there is usually at least one gesture towards something different, like a New Zealand piece. This time they got it out of the way quickly: David Hamilton’s Zarya (Russian – Dawn), which had marked an event in space exploration; it was a stagy fanfare with dominant brass and organ that sounded pseudo-festive, as if the composer was striving to create something brilliant, momentous but not quite feeling it in his bones.

That out of the way, the normal fare follows. Handel’s Zadok the Priest, had a strangely unimpressive performance. The long introduction by strings that should move with increasing excitement through the splendid sequence of harmonies over a steady rhythm, was seriously underpowered, mainly by the small string numbers, and matters only somewhat recovered with the choir’s more convincing though hardly overwhelming arrival.

Is there any connection between these signs of orchestral weakness and the unexplained resignation of the highly successful General Manager Christine Pearce?

Helen Medlyn threw herself into the spirit of the show from the beginning, even though the two Handel arias were hardly festive; as she herself remarked, they were both sad (and neither of them was in English). The first, the famous ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’ from Rinaldo, the second, the very unfamiliar ‘Furibondo spira il vento’ from Partenope which no one would have heard of a few years ago; it’s one of the most recently unearthed of his operas. Helen gave them her best, florid passages and all, but the orchestra hardly lent her lustrous or energized support.

I was glad that she demonstrated to an audience, many of whom were probably unfamiliar with a singer without a microphone, that a real voice can fill the hall perfectly well. When it came to the Noel Coward songs in the second half however, she succumbed, though Coward would probably have been horrified. Microphones did not come into use for musical comedy and light opera till the 50s, and of course it’s been downhill since then.

But at least she demonstrated how the device could be used with subtlety and to expressive effect.

Her utterly over-the-top performance of the A Bar on the Piccolo Marina was one of the best things in the evening (a memorable demonstration of ‘slipping into something loose’; see the lyrics – http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/a/abaronthepiccolamarina.shtml).

The Polovstian Dances from Prince Igor followed, with the welcome presence of the choir (I remember hearing them played by orchestra only on radio many times in my youth without realising that they were ‘choral’ dances). Again, it was the choir that gave them the colour and energy they need so much.

When the strings again sounded uninvolved at the start of Walton’s Crown Imperial March I wondered whether it was the position of my seat that was affecting my experience; I don’t think so.

The second half is the time for flags and noise, and music inherited from an age of jingoism and xenophobia. First was Eric Coates’s Dambuster’s March, celebrating one of the much vaunted but more useless exploits of the Second World War, which succeeded in drowning hundreds of civilians but made no dent in Germany’s arms production capacity; then Elgar’s first Pomp and Circumstance March with its cringe-making words, and Rule Britannia, ironical in an age when the country has difficulty even ruling itself.

However, the audience made Marc Taddei’s job easy by responding spiritedly, singing along, regardless. And Donald Nicolson’s brilliant organ flourishes contributed greatly.

As for Henry Wood’s classic, Fantasia on British Sea Songs, as usual, it was much abbreviated, ending with the hornpipe, Jack’s the Lad (fifth of the nine parts): it accelerated too early, a phenomenon known in other contexts as ‘premature ….’, and so its excitement was compromised. There were good moments: Brenton Veitch’s cello solo offered a lovely calming phase; and a happy clarinet solo by Moira Hurst stood out. Last year the London Proms dropped the Sea Songs: what of the future?

The concert came to and end with the audience on its feet for the most part, in Rule Britannia, ‘No place like home’, ‘Hine e hine’ and ‘Auld lang syne’.

Even though this formula remains popular, and it does expose people to a real orchestral experience, I do wish we got some different music, such as is heard at Vienna’s New Year Concert or Berlin’s Waldbühnen concerts.

Alastair Carey with the Clerkes of Christ Church, Oxford

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

English anthems and motets, including Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices and Purcell’s ‘Rejoice in the Lord alway’

Hugo Janáček, Alastair Carey, Gregory Skidmore (the Clerkes); Pepe Becker (sopano), Robert Oliver (viol), Douglas Mews chamber organ)

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Wednesday 19 August 2009

The former tenor and director of The Tudor Consort, Alastair Carey, who left Wellington to pursue a career in England found his way into the choir of Christ Church (it does not employ the word ‘college’, though it is one), Oxford. The choir is one of the several distinguished university choirs which include, variously, professional singers – ‘lay clerks’, boy choristers and undergraduates; it is the choir of the college after which Christchurch was named because John Robert Godley, one of the city’s founders, had studied there.

Carey teamed up with two of his colleagues, all of whom have also performed with other notable choirs in several countries, to take advantage of this connection; and the three singers had sung in Christchurch before arriving in Wellington.

As the backbone of the first half of the concert, they used Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices, punctuating it with anthems and motets by other Tudor and Restoration composers.

The impact of the three voices in their first piece, Sheppard’s ‘In manus tuas’, was revelatory, producing a sound of superb blend and stylish elegance, of a polish and finesse that is not common. The baritone, Gregory Skidmore, had a voice of particular beauty, and in the Gloria of Byrd’s Mass, it emerged, additionally, with robust energy.

Most of the intermediate pieces were by Dowland: songs of loss and distress, which provided an unleavened sequence of suffering and lament. Purcell’s two anthems, ‘Lord, what is man, lost man?’ and ‘What hope remains now he is gone?’ did little to lift the air of self-pity and tragedy, beautiful though they were. However, variety was present as most of the songs – as distinct from the a cappella mass – were accompanied by Robert Oliver on the bass viol with Douglas Mews on the chamber organ.

Carey himself took a solo role in Purcell’s ‘Flow my tears’, with organ accompaniment, producing attractive, sustained lines in a tone of subdued lamenting.

The second half moved forward a century, apart from the rather charming lullaby, ‘Quid petis, O fili’ by the shadowy Richard Pygott, to consist mainly of Purcell. In the Purcell songs, the three men were joined by soprano Pepe Becker whose voice was sometimes obscured by other more prominent parts, but often her striking timbre made an impact, for example in Purcell’s ‘Hear me, O Lord’ when voices and the instruments sounded in turn, creating an interesting narrative and texture. While in the next song, ‘Thy word is a lantern’, counter-tenor Hugo Janáček and Becker created diverting rhythms and varied timbres. The music was now distinctly more modern, the composer paying attention to vocal and instrumental timbres for their own sake.

A hymn, ‘O Lord my God’, by Purcell’s predecessor, Pelham Humphrey, who had an even shorter life than Purcell (he died at 26), drew attention to a great talent. New Grove remarks that Pelham’s personality ‘embodied much of the spirit of the Restoration court … a minimal respect for institutionalized morality…’. The hymn provided a long and impressive duet between tenor and baritone in quite adventurous style.

The familiar ‘Rejoice in the Lord alway’, introduced by a striking organ prelude, brought the bracket of Purcell to an end. The concert itself then moved into the 18th century to end with Boyce’s ‘The heavens declare the glory of God’, signs of gallant style, the singers proving equally comfortable in this very different music, with a bold passage from the baritone and Pepe Becker’s soprano rising clearly above the male voice textures.