Author: Lindis Taylor

NZSO with Steven Osborne in Shostakovich, Beethoven, Webern

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Conductor: Matthias Bamert with Steven Osborne (piano)

 Passacaglia for Orchestra, Op 1, by Webern, Piano Concerto No 1 (Shostakovich), Symphony No 7 (Beethoven)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington. Friday 15 May 2009

There were many NZSO followers who were sorry when Matthias Bamert, who had several years as assistant chief conductor of the orchestra, did not become Music Director. However, he maintains his earlier, highly fruitful relationship. On paper, the programme looked a little odd; Webern has never become a much loved composer, apart from among a small band that sees music as an analytical challenge and professes to derive pleasure from esoterica.

His Opus 1, the Passacaglia, however, is another matter. Written before falling in with the rigours of Schoenberg’s 12-note system, it demonstrates the huge talent that seemed ready to carry forward the German tradition of Brahms and Wagner, Strauss and Mahler – and the young Schoenberg of Verklärte Nacht and Pelléas and Mélisande. It is a work, like the two Schoenberg pieces mentioned, that arouses the hope that perhaps there’s a lost corpus of works by these composers that continue the tradition of communicable music, or that suggest, more constructively, that we have not given the later angular, intellectual works a fair go, and we should try harder: that of course is the proper approach.

For the Passacaglia is a passionate and engaging work which, given expose such as the tone poems of Strauss and Schoenberg enjoy, would seem to be a candidate for popularity. It’s a set of variations on a fairly sombre theme but which lends itself to a wide range of emotions; naturally, everyone points to its likely derivation from the last, Passacaglia, movement of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony.

We could hardly have had a more persuasive advocate for this piece than Bamert, whose credentials extend to every corner of the repertoire. Perhaps shamefully, I confess this was my first live hearing, and I was overwhelmed by the searing emotional richness, dynamic range and opulent orchestral canvas, and the evidence of Bamert’s aural imagination in laying it out, at once well-ordered and expressive.

There were no romantic langours, no self-indulgent excesses of rubato or dynamics; yet the orchestral detailing, the entrancing patterns of colour achieved through effects like muted tremolo passages for strings and brass, offered plenty of scope for the construction of a narrative background. And it prompted regret that Webern was soon to turn his back on such gifts.

It would have been hard to conceive of a greater contrast between the 1908 Webern and Shostakovich’s first piano concerto of 1933, both written around the age of 25. The former a strenuous effort to meet the over-heated expectations of late romantic Vienna, and his mentor Schoenberg in particular; the latter, an ebullient display of the youthful confidence and popular success that the young Shostakovich had won, in a soon to be shattered Communist dream. The word sardonic, almost automatically used to describe its character, suggests a hidden, anti-communist agenda; but is it correct to attribute to the composer, as early as 1933, incipient disillusionment with the system?

Again, Bamert proved his infallible taste and stylistic instinct, not to mention burning energy and an ability to inspire the orchestra to the greatest intensity, whether handling the frenzied excitement of the fast, circus-like passages or the moments of sentiment and even profundity in the Lento, or pointing up the array of parody quotes from all and sundry.

Steven Osborne was his ideal collaborator, capable of matching whatever speeds were adopted and responding precisely to the abrupt tempo and mood changes. The work is scored with no wind instruments, timpani and the trumpet being the only instruments to off-set the strings. The effect, made vivid by the riveting performance that was as much a show-case for the orchestra’s virtuosity as for the pianist’s, was to emphasise the brilliant, hard-edged piano and trumpet and the contrasting legato of the strings – black and white rather than full colour.

But it also drew smiles of delight from the audience, surprised by the rare, conspicuous appearance of wit in music. A piano encore in the shape of an improvisation on a jazz piece by Oscar Peterson could not have been better judged. Though it did prompt thoughts about the absence of visits in recent years by major figures of the jazz world. Have we heard anyone of the stature of Keith Jarrett in recent decades?

Finally, after the interval came Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. The first two movements could have been called ‘studied’ or metronomic and they were, but they were also alive with a tension that was almost hypnotic, over a bed-rock pulse from rich basses and cellos.

I must have heard a performance of the symphony in my youth in which the Scherzo was so without variety that I developed an aversion to it, and what I felt were tedious repeats. Words scribbled on my cuff during this performance included ‘energy’, ‘intense’, ‘varied colouring in winds’, subtleties’. In other words, I didn’t long for that final chopped-off reprise.

I was prompted to note the conductor’s gestures during the last movement. They are compact, yet free and compelling, there was graceful bounce in its rhythms, a delicious bite in the strings; all sections of the orchestra created an opulent, integrated sound.

 

L’Italiana in Algeri from the NBR New Zealand Opera

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L’Italiana in Algeri by Rossini 

Conducted by Wyn Davies, director: Colin McColl, set and lighting design: Tony Rabbit, costumes: Nic Smillie, chorus master: Michael Vinten.

Singers; Wendy Dawn Thomson, Conal Coad, Christian Baumgärtel, Warwick Fyfe, Katherine Wiles, Richard Green, Kristen Darragh.

St James Theatre

Saturday 9 May 2009

The first of the two staged productions from New Zealand Opera in 2009 made a hit of an opera that is not really in the top twenty, even in Italy.

The Italian Girl has one of Rossini’s familiar, effervescent overtures, a couple of well-known arias and a lot of music that is infectious and witty, but a plot that is pretty thin.

It was last seen in New Zealand in 1983 in a production by Mercury Theatre in Auckland, the successor to the short-lived National Opera of New Zealand.

In the past 30 years, there has been a huge revival of interest in Rossini’s oeuvre of round 38 operas, most of which are not comedies. In his day he was more famous as a composer of dramatic opera. Among the comedies, one can think, after The Barber of Seville, only of La Cenerentola, this one and Il turco in Italia; there were several one act comedies – farces, burlesques – from his early years and in his last years in Paris – Il viaggio a Reims and Le comte Ory. All the other 30-odd operas are tragedies, dramas drawn from antiquity, medieval romances or from recent literature.

L’Italiana in Algeri

The secret of such comedy was fully understood by Conal Coad who took the part of Mustafa, the Bey of Algiers (Governor of the Ottoman province). He has shortcomings in western eyes, and these are mocked by presenting his character without the stock gestures of cheap farce. Coad knows that comedy depends on adopting an outwardly serious demeanour, with careful limits to stock comedic gestures, allowing pomposity and lack of self-awareness to be observed rather than drawn crassly to our attention.

Thus his every movement was pregnant with satire or self-evident foolishness; and his very presence on stage caused smiles: he was the essential focus of the comedy, and he triumphed.

The Italian Girl, Isabella, was sung by Wendy Dawn Thomson, a graduate of Victoria University and virtually runner-up in the 2005 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World. She has sung at Covent Garden, Opera Australia, Scottish Opera, Opera North, among others and at major festivals. She is a splendid actress with a voice that is rich in histrionic character, though it was not, on the first night, particularly large: not as I remembered her in The Death of Klinghoffer in Auckland in 2005.

Degrees of under-projection also affected other singers, something not evident when they were at the front of the stage. Thomson’s performance consisted, however, as an opera singer’s must, in far more than simply good singing; she threw herself round the stage, used her limbs and her face expressively, drew all eyes to her whenever she was on stage.

I assumed that Christian Baumgärtel, as her lover Lindoro, had vocal problems in the early stages, as his voice was strained, reedy in ‘Languir per una bella’. But in his duet with Mustafa, ‘Se inclinassi…’, the hilarious water-skiing coup de théâtre, all was forgotten. By the second act he seemed more comfortable, as both his acting and singing expressed confidence and greater ease, finally displaying the form that justified his journey from Germany.

The most striking aspect of the production was the staging. It was presented as an onlooker’s view of a filming of the opera as soap opera, with an amusing, showoff, sometimes obscene film director (Stephen Butterworth), gesturing and shouting unscripted instructions to performers and camera and lighting crew somewhere in the gallery.

Above and behind the stage was a screen on which was projected in real time, what a camera in the wings stage left was capturing on the stage below the screen. It puzzled and distracted to begin with, but one got the hang of it.

It could have been a mess, but director Colin McColl had developed his idea, with set and lighting designer Tony Rabbit, with such confidence and so convincingly, that it had its own logic and the audience totally accepted it; more, they loved and were enchanted by it.

However, it’s a pity that Colin McColl’s notes, seeking to justify the setting by likening Rossini to today’s soap-operas, both denigrates the greatness of Rossini and ridiculously elevates the contemptible squalor of most of today’s TV theatricals. And the character of the production might reinforce that unfortunate comparison in the minds of less aware audience members; that was the excuse for skimpy-clad, non-singing ‘beach babes’ (I’m not sure what the beaches are like around Algiers city). My feeling was rather, that it would have persuaded sceptics that opera is absolutely not a museum art, any more than Shakespeare or Michelangelo are.

But all the hilarious stage business would have meant nothing if not underpinned by Wyn Davies’s management of the musical shaping, its tempi, the Rossinian spirit and élan, the orchestral discipline as well as imposing the final degree of ensemble between soloists, orchestra and chorus. (I hope it will be noted that I do not refer to the conductor, as most reviewers do, as simply the conductor of the orchestra: he conducts the entire performance).

The chorus was one of the performance’s great ornaments; though not numerous, their polish, clarity and energy was a credit to the work of Michael Vinten as chorus master. (It’s all male, in spite of the opportunity for using soprano and alto castrati, seeing they are eunuchs).

I particularly enjoyed the patriotic chorus in Act II where a combination of the basic stage green, the red t-shirts and white of some costumes reflected the Italian flag as well as spelling Viva Italia: foreshadowing Verdi’s ‘Va pensiero’ in Nabucco.

The lesser characters can seem rather secondary in some productions, but here the strength of both Warwick Fyfe’s Taddeo and Richard Green’s Haly made their roles both significant and memorable. In his notable Act II aria ‘Ho un gran peso sulla testa’, Fyfe, corpulent in white, had both striking physical and impressive vocal presence. At each of Green’s entries, particularly his aria ‘Le femmine d’Italia’, his imposing bass demonstrated his wide experience at ENO in London and the medium-sized house at Bremerhaven.

The Bey’s wife, Elvira and her maid, Zulma – Katherine Wiles and Kristen Darragh, were both splendidly cast and there was some debate in the interval about whether their figures and legs, rivaling the three beach-babes, had recommended them for the roles as much as had their vocal gifts. Wiles’s interventions were particularly vivid – one would hardly have thought she needed Isabella’s guidance in assertiveness. Darragh was clearly distinguished in the several ensembles.

This production is a brilliant combination of a passable libretto and sparkling music, all viewed through a production that plants it vividly and consistently in the present day.

Post scriptum

I enjoyed the performance so much that I went along to the second one on Tuesday (11 May), got a seat high in the gods. But there, little blemishes that I had ignored on Saturday loomed a bit larger: the shrill piccolo in the overture which I’d put out of my mind, was more annoying as it recurred at other points in the performance. Likewise I’d left little misgivings about the orchestra’s playing unexpressed; but in the gallery, where the orchestra’s sound seemed amplified above the voices, occasional untidiness in ensemble and obtrusive volume, crowding the singers, was noticeable as it had not been centre stalls. But their playing was very much at the very decent level of the many German opera house orchestras that I’ve heard.

Again I found tenor Baumgärtel’s voice a bit thin, even pressured and unbeautiful, though his acting wholly compensated. And my pleasure was confirmed in the voices and histrionics of the other singers. Nor could I fault the treatment of the work, the business of the filming, the entr’actes enlivened with the dispatch of singers not needed in the next scene, marshalling the chorus and the singers for the next act, retouching makeup, quick reviews of the action and so on; but it became a little tiresome occasionally.

Though McColl’s treatment was risky, it worked, and a second viewing gave me no reason to fault it, as an acceptable, goofy version of an opera that you can do almost what you like with, such is its fundamental silliness. At my distance from the stage, the surtitles were hard to read, often not visible, and I gauged that they were probably too high on the screen for the dozen back rows: there seemed no reason for them not to be at the bottom of the screen, where they would have been visible to the whole house. The texts however, were pithy and well judged. Like Mozart’s Entführung aus dem Serail, it dealt with the then popular subject of the nature of the Muslim world, and contacts between Christians and Muslims. Strangely, though the Balkan conquests by the Ottoman Empire in the previous century had posed a serious danger to Christian Europe, and their armies were near the gates of Vienna just before 1700 – the Austrian Empire was saved only by the timely arrival of a Polish army – attitudes towards Muslims were far more tolerant and even amused than they are today in certain countries.  Then there were no human rights commissions to object to stereotyping and ridiculing of a religious community. And so a Muslim leader could be pilloried for behaviour considered not comme il faut by polite European society of the time.

Lexus Song Quest 2009, Auckland, and Wellington recital

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Reviews of the Final of the contest in Auckland and the recital in Wellington by the three prize-winners

1. Auckland

Six finalists with New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Lloyd: Julia Booth, Aivale Cole, Kristen Darragh, Andrew Glover, Wade Kernot, Polly Ott.

Auckland Town Hall. Thursday 23 April

In the second half of the contest, when all six finalists sing opera or oratorio arias with the NZSO, it was the fifth singer who caused the sensation. She sang an aria from Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, not very familiar, entitled ‘Es gibt ein Reich’. She sang it with extraordinary insight, passion, care with its pace and articulation: in short here was a stunning, real Strauss soprano, of which we have only produced one other – Kiri Te Kanawa. Yet this singer has an arresting beauty of voice, an earthiness and power that is different from – I hesitate to say greater than – her great predecessor.

Her name is Aivale Cole and she is from Wellington. I recall first hearing her in a small opera called Classical Polynesia at the 1998 International Arts Festival, and have watched her progress over the past decade, among other things gaining first prize at the prestigious Australian Opera Studio in Perth. And she has started to win principal roles in major opera houses.

The audience burst into a frenzy of shouting and applause as her Strauss aria finished and you could sense a general feeling that most people present knew the result then. And when she sang ‘Ritorna vincitor’, Aida’s great aria from the opera of that name, the big audience did a repeat performance.

Adjudicator, the great German tenor Siegfried Jerusalem, awarded her first prize.

The other finalists were not at all to be dismissed however. Auckland bass Wade Kernot gained second prize; as he had in the 2007 contest. He has a powerful, resonant bass voice that remains firm below the bass stave, but is at its most attractive in the middle baritone range. The first half of the contest comprised lieder and songs, accompanied by pianist Terence Dennis, and Kernot impressed at first with a Brahms lied, ‘Verrat’, investing it with convincing drama. His arias were ‘Se vuol ballare’ from The Marriage of Figaro, effective if not spectacular, but the great monologue of Philip II of Spain in Verdi’s Don Carlo, ‘Ella giammai m’amo’, did seem to put him in serious contention, with its deep insight into a lonely king reflecting on the path his barren life had taken.

Of the three not rewarded, I felt Kristen Darragh had been unlucky, for her song by Hahn was gorgeous, the aria ‘O mio Ferrando’ from Donizetti’s La Favorita arresting, and she gave a very impressive rendering of Lucretia’s aria from Britten’s opera on the Shakespeare poem. However, she was vindicated by inclusion in a principal role in L’Italiana in Algeri shortly afterwards.

This was one of the strongest contests of the many I have attended: all we need now is enough real opera activity to employ all the talent that emerges from our academies and universities.

(an edited version of the review for The Dominion Post)

2. The winners’ recital in Wellington. Aivale Cole, Wade Kernot and Julia Booth with Terence Dennis (piano)

The Opera House, Wellington; Thursday 30 April

There was a big audience at the Opera House for the Wellington recital by the three place-getters at the Lexus Song Quest held the previous week in Auckland.

This was the first time the contest has presented such recitals, believed to be compensation to the rest of the country because Lexus has stipulated that the finals should be held every time in Auckland. It will be recalled that Mobil, based in Wellington, had rotated the final around all the main cities and that, ironically, some of the smallest audiences were usually in Auckland.

The recital was a quite different experience from the competition final. The atmosphere allowed singers to respond more openly, in a more relaxed manner without the competitive tension. The singer who responded best to this was runner-up Wade Kernot. His Brahms lied, which had been dramatic enough, but monochrome, was now a most interesting and varied narrative. In addition he sang a droll Beethoven song, ‘Der Kuss’ with sufficient gestural accompaniment to make its ironical points amusing.

Instead of ‘Se vuol ballare’ which he’d sung in Auckland he sang the Catalogue aria from Don Giovanni which was a brilliant showcase for his studied comic skills and for a voice capable of pointed tonal variety. On the other hand, his great Don Carlo monologue was rather more involving than Fiesco’s ‘Il lacerato spirito’ from Simon Boccanegra which he sang in Wellington. And ‘Ol’ Man River’ suited him, not merely because of its low notes but because he could invest it with such a feeling of defeat.

Away from comparison with the other three singers, the gap between Julia Booth and the first and second place-getters was more noticeable; she seemed to have lost some stature on account of the greater maturity and assurance of the other two singers. In ‘Die Forelle’ her voice seemed smaller and less warm than in the Auckland Town Hall and her second lied, Böhm’s ‘Still wie die Nacht’, sort of lesser-Schumann, though nicely sung, was less interesting. In comparison, her adventurous Britten song, ‘A Poison Tree’ had marked her Auckland performance as well-schooled and well-understood.

Her arias in Wellington were generally more comfortable. She sang none of the same pieces as in Auckland: now it was the touching ‘Il est doux, il est bon’ from Massenet’s Herodiade (made familiar on CD by Gheorghiu), and ‘Ain’t it a pretty night’ from Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah. Her voice tends to thin at the top, but her middle register is attractive and expressive. After Cole’s and Kernot’s consummate duet ‘Bess you is my woman now’, Julia was not well placed for her singing of Gershwin’s early song ‘The Man I love’  (originally for inclusion in Lady Be Good of 1924). An interesting tune for sure, but in Booth’s hands too fragile.

The third prize went to soprano Julia Booth, Canadian-born to New Zealand parents, a Waikato University graduate. She probably gained credit for a challenging Benjamin Britten song, ‘A Poison Tree’, which she handled very intelligently; and perhaps for Dvorak’s Song to the Moon, and Liu’s last aria from Turandot, ‘Tu che di’ gel sei cinta’.

Ensembles were an interesting feature. The Flower Duet from Lakmé was a fetching blending of Julia Booth and Aivale Cole, the trio from Così fan tutte, slightly less so, alongside Wade Kernot’s imposing Alfonso.

I was anxious that my opinion of Aivale Cole’s triumphant singing of the aria from Ariadne auf Naxos (‘Es gibt ein Reich’) would be vindicated by her singing in Wellington. While in this piece her voice was more even and opulent in the recital than in her earlier items, it was perhaps the one time that I missed the Strauss orchestra, as wonderfully supple and sensitive as Dennis’s accompaniments were.

But before that she had sung the three songs from Korngold’s Op 22; the first two were good if not really demonstrative of her quality, which appeared more convincingly in the flowing melody of ‘Weil ist stille eingeschlafen’. Her other opera offering was the famous La Wally aria, ‘Ebben? Ne andrò lontana’, which, rather expectedly, displayed her talents at their best, her tone dramatic, vividly expressing her anguish.

In her last bracket of American songs, her choice, apart from her duet from Porgy and Bess with Kernot, was ‘Sometimes I feel like a motherless child’, arranged by John Carter, easy and fluent; again it revealed a voice and a musical sensibility capable of finding the authentic style and spirit of almost anything.

Christopher Hainsworth at the organ of St Mary of the Angels

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‘Last Night of the Poms: an homage to the Silver Fernie’

Church of St Mary of the Angels, Wellington, Saturday 19 April 2009

One did not know quite what to expect from Christopher Hainsworth’s humorous and cryptic title of his concert. But it certainly disclosed one of the aspects of the concert: his sense of humour with its double entendres and puns; ‘Elgar-rhythms’ for example (get it?); an arrangement of a Csardas by one Monti (‘not of the Python family’). Christopher talks about the music and how he’s handling it; it’s pitched at a somewhat unsophisticated level, not assuming, for this concert, much musical knowledge.

Hainsworth was raised and educated in Wellington, and after taking degrees in French and music from Victoria University took a doctorate at Toulouse. That led to academic posts in that region as well as in New Zealand (Waikato University) and he is now titular organist at Béziers Cathedral in the département of Hérault in the Languedoc-Roussillon region. This recital was in part to launch a CD celebrating a 1974 radio broadcast by Maxwell Fernie at his Saint Mary of the Angels organ (Radio New Zealand tapes are now lost), and he played several of those pieces. They included a Berceuse by Eduardo Torres and a Pastorale by Lefébure-Wely. This CD is referred to in the article below, by Nicola Young.

The purpose of the concert was to celebrate his teacher, Maxwell Fernie, organist for the last 40years of his life at the church of St Mary of the Angels, and who designed and supervised the building of the famous organ housed in that church. It is undoubtedly an instrument unique in New Zealand, designed according to French and Belgian taste and traditions in which Fernie was steeped. Though it is only a three-manual instrument, it is sufficient for the church, one of Wellington’s most traditionally beautiful in the neo-gothic style.

So it was not surprising that the most striking characteristic of Hainsworth’s playing was his comprehensive mastery of the individuality of the registrations of this organ which he knows intimately, and tightly executed, sometimes cheeky ornaments, neatly inflected.

Though on occasion Hainsworth could show a flair for massive couplings and multiple registrations, his playing on the whole was limited to single or very few stops at one time, though they could alternate and change kaleidoscopically. He exploited its most brilliant qualities in the most startling and colourful ways, often with keen wit but always with restraint and taste.

It is therefore inappropriate and unkind to comment on the music itself, which was light, popular in tone, avoiding altogether any of the major works in the organ repertoire. It was a mixture of English and French music from an essentially mass-audience, 19th century kind of recital: bits from Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony (in its short span showing how exquisitely he could emerge through shrouded, dark stops to full diapason splendour), a Handel organ concerto, the above mentioned pieces by Monti and Elgar and the famous Purcell tune, the Rondeau from the incidental music to Abdelazer which Britten used in his Young Person’s Guide.

Perhaps many of us were hoping for some interesting and more meaty French music, not to say even Bach. But another time perhaps.…

Re-Master: Maxwell Fernie – organist

Another view of Maxwell Fernie by Nicola M J Young

This article appeared recently in Tommy’s Lifestyle magazine and is reproduced with the author’s permission.

Wellington’s musical landscape was transformed when Maxwell Fernie returned in 1959. After five years as organist at central London’s Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral, he had been longing to get home. Max was director of music at St Mary of the Angels in Boulcott St for 41 years and organist for nearly as long; during this time he sent seismic shocks through the capital’s Roman Catholic schools and ensured St Mary’s had an organ as good as any (and better than most). His obsession with organ design and performance and choral music still reverberates through the capital, 10 years after his death at the age of 89.

Now a CD has just been launched in New Zealand and France, based on a radio broadcast made by Max in 1974: ‘Christmas Maximus’, performed by Christopher Hainsworth (a New Zealand classical organist based in Beziers, France), on the pipe organ Max designed. The CD replicates the broadcast’s programme, together with some of Max’s favourite Christmas music, a composition by Douglas Lilburn, and a number of French pieces selected by Chris Hainsworth. Max was the quintessential Wellingtonian, despite his years studying at London’s Royal Academy of Music and working abroad (with a stint in New Zealand’s Expeditionary Forces in Egypt during WWII).

His immaculate dressing (including homburg hat and floppy silk handkerchief) was a novelty to the generations of Roman Catholic school children to whom Max introduced some of Europe’s most glorious ecclesiastical music. His brilliant teaching, exuberance, panache, perfectionism and excoriating wit were eye-opening (and slightly terrifying) to Wellington children raised in the very buttoned-down 50s and 60s, as he trained school choirs, conducted recitals and concerts, taught piano and organ, and performed – often J S Bach, his favourite composer, and nearly always with the extemporisation for which he was renowned. At the end of the 11am sung Mass every Sunday, parishioners and devotees from afar would stay seated while Max played and played – many years on, my not-particularly-musical ears can recall the joys of his ‘Christus Vincit’ and, at Christmas, ‘Personent Hodie’.

Max also established the Schola Polyphonica which, for its 21 years, was generally considered the finest choir in the country; it specialized in Renaissance music (in particular 16th century polyphonic music) and performed with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra on a number of occasions. Max was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in 1954, a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, awarded the OBE in 1974 for services to music and the Papal Cross pro Ecclesia et Poniface in 1989. He was Wellington’s city organist for 27 years, and supervised the brilliant restoration of the Town Hall’s organ

(considered one of the best organs in the world). Organ restoration is fraught with fashion and politics: the butchered modernisation of Auckland Town Hall’s organ in the late 1960s led to 30 years of complaints and outrage, culminating in its recent restoration – back to the original brief. His lasting legacy, however, was the organ at St Mary of the Angels built to his own specifications.

Before Max was even thinking of returning home from London, the parish priest at St Mary’s sent the details of a proposed new instrument – a modest ‘two manual’ organ. This was no use to Max; instead he designed a more complex organ, determined Wellington would have an organ suitable for all music: baroque to contemporary, with particular emphasis on the pipes’ clarity (essential for his beloved contrapuntal music). He ‘borrowed’ his favourite Westminster Cathedral pipes overnight to copy their specifications and even tracked down details of other specialized pipes from, for example, the cathedral in Lucerne, Switzerland.

The Maxwell Fernie Trust was founded by his widow, Greta, to continue Maxwell Fernie’s legacy by awarding an annual scholarship of $10,000 to promising New Zealand organists and conductors of choral polyphony. The first scholarship will be awarded next year, on the centenary of Maxwell Fernie’s birth. The Trust aims to raise $100,000 through donations, bequests and fundraising events. The Trust has produced two CDs, both $32 (including postage) and available from secretary@maxwellfernietrust.com:

Christmas Maximus: featuring French organ music played by Christopher Hainsworth. Tenebrae Responsories 1585: sung responses for Holy Week, composed in 1585 by Tomás Louis De Victoria and performed by the Schola Polyphonica. The CD has been digitally remastered from the original 1981 recording made at St Mary of the Angels.

www.maxwellfernietrust.com

The Tudor Consort in Gesualdo’s Tenebrae Responsories

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Tenebrae Responsories for Good Friday by Carlo Gesualdo

The Tudor Consort directed by Michael Stewart

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Friday 10 April

The re-creation of entire liturgies of the medieval and renaissance church has long been a popular activity for early music groups and The Tudor Consort has a long history of such achievements under all its directors from the founder, Simon Ravens, on. Some have been intensely rewarding, but the Tenebrae Responsories of Gesualdo (1560-1613), (cf Campion and Monteverdi, both born 1567, Shakespeare, born 1564), were a challenge.

They were undoubtedly a challenge for the choir, which their director Michael Stewart led admirably through twelve polyphonic motets of extreme complexity and harmonic originality.

Gesualdo’s music was engrossing, but there was simply too much chant, and I wondered whether we would have lost anything if each had been somewhat abbreviated.

Familiar as I was with Gesualdo’s music, I was repeatedly surprised by the chromatic part writing that must have been alarming dissonance to the ears of 1600. The effect was remarkably modern, as tortured contrapuntal lines expressed in music the sometimes cruel and harrowing images and events that the words of the Responsories called up: they narrate the events at the Last Supper, Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

The Tudor Consort has always paid attention to the theatrical element, and here, we had the church dimly lit by candles on the columns separating nave from the side aisles and a candelabra of a dozen candles in the sanctuary behind the singers. One by one they were extinguished, the tradition of the Easter Tenebrae services, till only one remains, representing Christ. And we’d been warned to desist from applause till the traditional ‘Great Noise’ broke out, signifying the earthquake reported after the crucifixion.

The service is in three sections, one each for the three days in question, each introduced by an Antiphon and Psalm, chanted from the pulpit by Michael Stewart, then three alternating Lessons, drawn from the Bible and Responsories, that represent Christ’s words or thoughts and later an observer’s comments on the Crucifixion; the lessons and antiphons are chants while the Responsories are Gesualdo’s music.

It was the Antiphons and Lessons that introduced each Responsory, handled very well I must say, but to rather extended and unvarying chant, that I felt might have been abbreviated, for no one, I imagine, was following, in the dark, the English translations in the programme.

Chants, dare I say, are of limited interest, while Gesualdo’s music for the Responsories is remarkable, original, exciting, expressive, dramatic in its attention to the drama of the words of each piece.

The Tudor Consort sang throughout with their accustomed clarity and precision, stylistic awareness, careful diction and varied colouring and dynamics.

 

Music in the time of Monet – Note Bene at Te Papa

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Choral songs by Debussy, Lili Boulanger, Poulenc and Ravel

Nota Bene, conducted by Christine Argyle.

The Marae, Te Papa

Saturday, 4 April 2009

One of the musical accompaniments for the temporary exhibition entitled Monet and the Impressionists was an hour-long, free concert by Wellington chamber choir Nota Bene. It was founded in 2004 by Christine Argyle whose voice is familiar to listeners to Radio New Zealand Concert and it has become known for its varied and perhaps quirky programmes, such as one entitled Sentimental Journey which recalled the character of broadcasting before most of the choir were born. The choir also operates in the market-place as a ‘choir-for-hire’ for weddings as such.

In 2007 I commented in a review that “it’s always impossible to predict the character of the next concert; so far, each has been a unique creation, built around a musical idea; not an academic concept, but something that lends itself to a programme that is invariably entertaining.”

This Saturday afternoon concert did not fall into that class for its character was prescribed.

It was a free concert, open to the rest of the museum and ordinary museum visitors, attracted by the sounds, came and went; some stayed standing at the back – every seat was taken; some drifted away.

Its setting was the first thing to remark. The uniquely designed marae or concert room if you prefer, decorated in the most remarkable way by Cliff Whiting, one of the most imaginative of Maori artists who has used traditional figures but juxtaposed and coloured them in a unique way. And there was something perhaps incongruous in a group of formally dressed singers performing French music mostly from the early years of the 20th century.

The ensemble began with three Debussy choral settings of three poems by the 15th century Charles duc d’Orléans: ‘Dieu! Qu’il la fait bon regarder’, ‘Quand j’ai ouy le tambourin’ and ‘Yver, vous n’estes qu’un villain’.

Only the second of the set struck me as of much interest; the others showed Debussy paying somewhat ritual homage to the age of Dufay. The third one was made delightful however by the group of soloists: Jane McKinlay, Marian Willberg, Peter Dyne and Jonathan Kennedy.

Lili Boulanger’s songs (‘Soir sur la plaine’, ‘Les sirènes’ and ‘Hymne au soleil’) were scattered through the programme and were more seriously interesting, illuminated by Emma Sayers’ colourful and individual piano accompaniments which enchanted my ear, particularly the first two which really were perfect aural equivalents of Monet . Anna Sedcole, Patrick Geddes and Kennedy again.

There were three songs by Ravel (‘Nicolette’, ‘Trois oiseaux du Paradis’ and ‘Ronde’) that hinted at folk song, sometimes droll, Satie-esque, with witty changes of tone,

Pianist Claire Harris played three Novelettes by Poulenc that punctuated the concert, they recalled now Couperin, now Satie, were flippant, spiky and the last an unpretentious, charming, rocking piece.

Whether it cast light on the Monet paintings I cannot say and whether the excellence of the choir with its splendid, lively singing registered with this varied audience, I cannot guess, but it can only be a good thing for Te Papa to use its spaces regularly to present other than the visual arts.

Mulled Wine at Paekakariki: singing with cello and piano

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Handel arias: ‘Cara speme’ (Giulio Cesare), ‘Credete al mio dolore’ (Alcina); Schubert: ‘Du bist die Ruh’, Suleika and Suleika’s 2nd Song;

Dorothy Buchanan: The Man who sold goldfinches (to words by Jeremy Commons);

Fauré: ‘Après un rêve’ for cello and piano, songs ‘Clair de lune, Nell’, ‘C’est l’extase’. ‘Notre amour’; Duparc: ‘Chanson triste’, ‘Extase’, L’invitation au voyage; Poulenc: ‘C’, ‘Fêtes galantes’.

Rhona Fraser (soprano), Richard Mapp (piano), Paul Mitchell (cello)

Paekakariki Memorial Hall; Sunday 29 March 2009

Once a railway township and down-market beach settlement, Paekakariki has become an artists’ haven in recent decades, with good reason, for it has most of the virtues sought by those for whom material goodies are not a priority. The sea, wide coastal open spaces, mountains to the east, the home of a railway preservation society and a nearby tramway museum, both with functioning trains and trams together with a bravely preserved and restored railway station, perhaps the last survivor of the grand refreshment stations from the tragically devastated passenger network that we now need more than ever; and of course, the presence in the village of others of like minds and values.

Let’s focus on the music.

At the concert’s heart was a newly written collaboration between opera historian and occasional impresario and librettist Jeremy Commons and composer Dorothy Buchanan. They have worked together before, notably in another Mansfield opera, an opera trilogy based on three of her stories. This time Commons combed the Wellington stories for words, impressions, events and the very words of the stories and on which she may have reflected in her last days in the institute run by the probable charlatan (though her biographer Anthony Alpers thought not) Gurdjieff, near Fontainebleau.

The result was a sort of prose poem, The Man who Sold Goldfinches, that Buchanan set to music that I felt rather failed to ignite, to achieve memorableness: perhaps the emphasis on the obvious phrase about the goldfinches rather revealed a struggle to find musical inspiration.

Yet the setting had its integrity, accompanied sensitively, appropriately, by Paul Mitchell’s cello (Katherine herself played the cello), and it was that, as much as the perceptive singing of Rhona Fraser that sustained interest through the performance.

The rest of the concert was a happy opportunity to hear an under-exposed singer whose career has included singing with English National Opera and elsewhere in Europe. Since returning to New Zealand I’ve heard her, notably, as Galatea in New Zealand Opera’s production of Handel’s masque Acis and Galatea a few years ago. 

It indeed included a couple of dramatically sung Handel arias: ‘Cara speme’ from Giulio Cesare and ‘Credete al mio dolore’ from Alcina, drawing some too strident high notes not well treated in the hard acoustic of the hall. The other songs – Schubert, Fauré, Duparc, Poulenc – were beautifully sung, with considerable dynamic variety and tonal colour, none more brilliant than Poulenc’s Fêtes galantes. Her encore, the lovely ‘O mio babbino caro’ from Gianni Schicchi, simply posed the question why she is not in high demand by our opera companies.

 

 

 

The Festival Singers in Bach and Rossini

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

J S Bach: Cantata No 174 and excerpts from the Saint John Passion; Rossini: Stabat Mater

Soloists: Frances Moore, Rosel Labone, Edmund Hintz and Orene Tiai; orchestra conducted by Michael Vinten

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Hill Street

Saturday, 28 March 2009

The Festival Singers are a choir with a policy of ‘seeking work alongside the Christian church’, to quote their own words. Not all their programmes comprise religious or liturgical music, but this one did and it was a nice balance between the Catholic and the Protestant.

It was a major concert, employing a large pick-up orchestra (26 were listed), a good many players from the Wellington Chamber Orchestra, all under the capable direction of Michael Vinten.

The concert opened with Cantata No 174, ‘Ich liebe den Höchsten von ganzem Gemüte’, written in 1726 for the second day of Whitsun, the 6th of June; its Sinfonia is an expansion of the first movement of the Brandenburg Concert No 3, which is scored for three each of violins, violas an cellos (the programme note, translated from the German, comments on the string scoring for the cantata, as if not aware that it is the same as for the concerto); here woodwinds and brass were added and they produced a grand sound with lively tempi, except for a good many signs of under-rehearsal.

The first aria is for alto in which Rosel Labone did not quite match in volume the orchestra and the nice pair of oboes. After a short recitative for tenor, Edmund Hintz, bass Orene Tiai, his voice attractive and gaining polish, sang ‘Greifet zu’, a more elaborate aria, that he managed very well. But here, the chorus sounded rather top-heavy, lacking weight in the men’s voices.

Frances Moore followed with the aria ‘Ich folge dir gleichfalls…’ from Part I of the St John Passion, her voice characterful and projecting well. The aria, ‘Ach, mein Sinn’ was sung by Hintz, whose somewhat neutral-sounding tenor voice was probably better adapted to this than to the Vixen in which he sang on the previous night. Finally, the last, great chorus, ‘Ruht wohl, ihr heiliger Gebeine’, offered a moving finish to the Bach section.

As the choir set out in the Stabat Mater with fine confidence, it struck me that they were much more at home with the Catholic liturgy, particularly as presented by the epicurean Rossini, than with the Lutheran Bach. Here, the orchestra sounded well rehearsed and disciplined: the choir well balanced, the ensemble deliberately paced, portentous, with strong timpani, and there was a fine operatic quality, emphatically so with the famous tenor aria from Hintz, ‘Cuius animam’, where the orchestra actually sounded splendid.

The soprano/alto duet that followed vindicated Rosel Labone’s vocal talent, as did her later Cavatina, ‘Fac ut portem Christi mortem’. When it came to the bass part, Tiai’s lowest notes lost quality in his aria and again in the following recitative and chorus.

The quartet, ‘Sancta mater’ proved a startling virtuoso piece, agile rhythms, almost a Rossini patter ensemble in which the words struggled to match the pace of the music.

The final chorus, featuring a very decent fugue and fine bassoon obbligato, maintained the level of energy, ensemble and balanced choral sound that had driven it throughout.

NZSO with Inkinen and Cho-Liang Lin – Barber’s concerto and Tristan for orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Melodies for orchestra (Body), Violin Concerto (Barber), Tristan and Isolde, a symphonic compilation after Wagner, arranged by Henk de Vlieger

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Pietari Inkinen with Cho-Liang Lin (violin).

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 20th March

Though reviewing concerts that are being normally covered by the press was not part of the ‘mission’ of Middle-C, and I did not decide to attend the first of the NZSO’s subscription concerts in Wellington till that afternoon, the temptation to hear Barber’s Violin Concerto, live for the first time (I think), and what Henk de Vlieger had done with Tristan und Isolde, without voices, and in just over one hour, proved too strong.

And I enjoyed the concert so much that a review, perhaps even a panegyric, imposed itself upon me.

Jack Body’s Melodies from the early 1980s opened the programme. Little of his music has been written for orchestra and I relished the chance to hear how he extended his palette to opulent symphonic musical forces.

Body writes that his intention was to ‘create coherence and continuity’ in the orchestral fabric, simply conveying something of the joy and excitement he experienced when he heard the pieces. All the outward marks of excitement – speed, rhythmic energy, and orchestration that is spare but striking, with his idiosyncratic use of percussion – were there, but in spite of a brilliant performance I found little emotional warmth or some kind of spiritual feeling which I’m sure infused the originals, even in the quieter piece from West Sumatra.

Though it was hard to perceive musical relationships, or meaningful contrasts between the three works in the evening’s programme, the two major pieces made the concert.

For most of the 70 years since its composition, the Barber concerto has been regarded in academic musical circles as rather an anachronism if not an irrelevancy. Happily, the disinterment of much of the tonal and attractive music written during the bleak years has restored Barber’s music to the permanent repertoire.

The tunefulness of the first movement is as surprising and beguiling as the lyrical, elegiac second movement. Though the last seems to take off in a direction that has not been prepared for, the whole is a vindication of the continuing relevance of a traditional form.

American violinist Cho-Liang Lin emerged as a balanced and mature musician, an ideal performer of the work through his committed and deeply sympathetic reading that brought it immediately to life. The orchestra played with a conviction and intensity that is being noticed in international reviews of its recent recordings under conductor Pietari Inkinen. Where I was, centre stalls, balance was admirable and the orchestra rarely lay too weightily on the violinist.

The second half comprised an hour-long performance of a ‘Symphonic compilation’ by Dutch musician Henk de Vlieger of music from Tristan und Isolde. Enjoyment of it depended not at all on recognition of where the various leitmotive came from or what they represented in the opera, but it did depend both on freedom from Wagner antipathy and any doctrinaire aversion to such transformations or arrangements. At the end, I was simply surprised that the hour had passed and that I  felt a great, all-consuming satisfaction.

In character, it was like one of Strauss’s longer tone poems – Don Quixote, or Death and Transfiguration perhaps, and the strength of Wagner’s musical inspiration, especially in the consummating Liebestod, compensated for what might be felt as shortcomings in the evolution of this orchestral survey.

A piece of this kind will inevitably press an automatic disapproval button in some listeners who are programmed to fault any kind of tampering with the original character of a great work. I wondered whether I might find that the treatment cheapened or corrupted the essence of the original music, but all I noticed was condensings and bridge passages – where one episode was grafted on to another. De Vlieger succeeded in avoiding anything tasteless or clumsy.

Seven episodes called up various scenes, none as dramatic as the second act love scene in the forest, interrupted by the arrival of King Marke. The music was as self-sustaining as in the opera itself, one of whose most remarkable features is the absence of harmonic resolution at any point till the very end. De Vlieger followed the same path and there were no breaks between sections and the transitions were rather well crafted.

I only had a slightly unfulfilled longing for more passionate, aching expression, perhaps a slower and more undulating pulse, in the love music.

I had wondered whether I would long for singers to emerge after the Prelude, but perhaps my first experience of the work came to my rescue: broadcasts of the orchestral version of the Prelude and Liebestod in Early Evening Concert on 2YC in the early 1950s when I was discovering music as a teenager. As a result, I even remember being disconcerted when I first heard the scene complete with singers. This purely orchestral treatment, so well conceived and played, brought me full circle.

Finally, I was glad I happened to hear about 40 minutes of the later broadcast of the concert on Radio NZ Concert (Monday 6 April). My impressions were confirmed, not only of the success of the musical compilation, but also at the opulence of the NZSO’s performance: its careful dynamic gradations, the swelling of tone in string phrases in the second act love music, the splendour of the brass and the richness of the strings.

Gianni Schicchi in Christchurch, starring Martin Snell and Anna Argyle

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Gianni Schicchi by Puccini. Southern Opera, conducted by Peter Walls, diected by Mark Hadlow with Martin Snell, Virgilio Marino, Grant Dickson, Anna Argyle; players from the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra.

James Hay Theatre, Christchurch Town Hall; Saturday 12 March

Gianni Schicchi is the third part of a trilogy (Il Trittico – Triptych) that Puccini wrote in 1918 and was first performed at the Met in New York in January 1919. It’s the one comedy in the group and the only real comedy that he wrote (La Rondine is an ‘operetta’ rather than a comic opera).

I was surprised to find the auditorium on the Saturday, the second performance, only about half full, perhaps 500. I gathered that the first night has been fairly full, presumably by sponsors and their guests and other free-riders. The audience was somewhat larger on the Sunday when I saw it again. That may have been because the Saturday performance was competing with the Final of the National Concerto Competition with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra next door in the Town Hall. But that might not be the main reason, and I return to the question of the choice of this opera below.

The opera itself, an hour long, occupied the second half of the evening. The first half comprised a recital of opera arias and ensembles: six vocal extracts from various operas. There was no real pretence that this was the company’s first choice, for clearly another short opera, such as most companies would present, would have been normal and might have pulled bigger crowds.

Because the opening performances fell during the Ellerslie Flower Show, the first half was called Blooming Opera, and most excerpts had a floral connection, if sometimes pretty tenuous.

The programme had listed Puccini’s lovely quartet movement Chrysanthemum as the evening’s prelude – certainly highly appropriate, but it was not played.

Grant Dickson sang a sonorous ‘Ombra mai fu’ (a lime tree rather than flowers, but you got the idea), and Virgilio Marino, the Rinuccio in the opera, did the Flower Song from Carmen, a little stiffly. Rachel Doig and Maree Hawtin-Morrow shared the Flower Duet from Lakmé, a pretty blending of voices, and Stu Miles aand Stephen Chambers shared the predictable ‘Flowers that bloom in the Spring’ from Mikado,

More tenuous in the floral context were Anna Argyle’s Maiden and the Nightingale from Goyescas by Granados and Martin Snell’s Catalogue aria from Don Giovanni, a demonstration of polished wit, gesture and timing. All joined in the final ensemble from Figaro.

The director of the production, Mark Hadlow, introduced each item with a few comments about the aria and its opera and about the singer(s). His style seemed vaudevillian rather than in a neutral style that an opera audience might have expected; and the impression was slightly patronising, lending an unneeded amateur tone to the evening.

Unorthodox perhaps, but amusing and engaging. given an audience not much exposed to polished, live opera productions; evidence: breaking into applause a couple of times in the middle of quite well-known arias or duets.

The opera itself was a very considerable success. It was well cast, with strong singers in the main roles, and more than adequate singers – almost all from Christchurch – in the secondary roles. All were well suited to their roles and with musical guidance of conductor Peter Walls, met the demands both of their own roles and the opera as a whole.

The star of the evening, without a doubt, was bass Martin Snell in the title role, a former Mobil Song Quest winner and one of the half-dozen most successful New Zealand singers in the international opera arena today: he is based in Switzerland and has sung in major productions in most of the important houses, including the Wagner festival at Bayreuth. The polish, seriousness, subtlety and clarity of his performance was the critical element in the cumulative comic finale.

The credit for the entire dramatic impact however must go to Mark Hadlow; if he showed uncertainty in presenting the first half, his sure hand as a theatre director shone through in the opera itself. The handling of the aspiring beneficiaries was fluid, natural, sometimes formal in a satirical way, well distributed and balanced around the flexible stage area. He knows that the essential stuff of the comedy is in the words and the music, not in superficial gesture or farce; and the social satire at its heart was all the more sharp and funny because of it.

Southern Opera employed an all-New Zealand cast, apart from the tenor role of Rinuccio, Australian Virgilio Marino, who sang it convincingly.

It struck me that the young tenor, Stephen Chambers, who sang Marco, might have proved a very adequate Rinuccio.

It is an ensemble opera, depending not on strong individual roles apart from Schicchi himself, but on the effectiveness of the groupings of the venal family members, their interaction and their chorus-like dismay at the unfolding reality of the old man’s will. Certain members stood out somewhat: Maree Hawtin-Morrow and New Zealand’s most distinguished living bass, Grant Dickson, as Buoso’s cousins Zita and Simone. Rachel Doig as Nella and Stephen Chambers also caught the ear. Non-family members included the Lauretta of Anna Argyle whose part is small other than the hit tune, ‘O mio babbino caro’. The distinctive Valery Maksymov was Betto of Signa, and both the Doctor and the Notary were strikingly performed by Stu Myles and Sam Abbott.

The orchestra, strangely, was the only weak point, occasionally too loud, covering voices, and sometimes revealing weaknesses in articulation and ensemble. The score had been reduced by Michael Vinten for performance by about 20 players which certainly left players exposed at times, even wind players for whom such exposure is normal.

This may have been the result of the need to share orchestra members with the Concerto Competition.

Both stage and costume designs, by Mark McEntyre and Alistair McDougall, fitted the chosen period – the late 19th century – perfectly, and that shift of 600 years seemed unexceptional, no doubt just as rich in family hypocrisy and greed as any other period. The set, in particular, was ingenious and entertaining, with a revolving bed that was used with studied wit.

Both stage and musical directors were experienced New Zealanders, not a common practice of Christchurch’s predecessor company.

The next step, of course should be the regular engagement of a young assistant stage director to build experience in that area.