Author: Peter Mechen

THe NZSO’s “Monumental” concert…..counting the ways

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
MONUMENTAL

RICHARD STRAUSS – Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings TrV 290
Four Last Songs for soprano and orchestra TrV 296
TCHAIKOVSKY – Symphony No. 5 in E Minor Op.62

Emma Pearson (soprano)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Hamish McKeich (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday 9th October, 2020

As much as I’m not a great fan of the use of “catchwords” to describe the content of concerts, such as both the NZSO and the NZSQ have been using to characterise specific events over the past year, I must admit that occasionally the description “hits the spot”, as with the use of the word “Monumental” to describe the orchestra’s most recent concert in Wellington. Though a somewhat “loose” definition, and reining in three otherwise very different pieces of music on this occasion, there was definitely a “monumental” aspect to each of the works played – in fact, it was probably the only commonality the three works shared, certainly sufficient to “bond” our otherwise disparate listening experiences.

Each of the pieces enacted a kind of ritual of human universality, something profound and moving in every case – the tragedy of the opening piece, composer Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings, a lament for the destruction of aspects of his homeland’s culture and heritage through warfare, was as profound on both a public and private level as his final composition, “Four Last Songs”, a gorgeously valedictory paean to earthly fulfilment and resignation to the unknown mercies of death. And in the case of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, written in the throes of its composer’s somewhat congenital self-doubt, the music represented a large-scale, self-revelatory quest towards the distant light, the opening “darkness” of the motto theme which was to bear the brunt of the work’s remarkable journey as intense, terse and tightly-woven as anything its composer had previously written, and here confronted with remarkable directness and resolution which won through in the end.

First up was the wholly remarkable Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings, a veritable cri de coeur from the pen of Germany’s foremost composer of the age, Richard Strauss. For much of the first part of the twentieth century the darling of those wishing to uphold and glory in the idea of German pre-eminence in musical composition, Strauss’s fortunes under Hitler’s Third Reich seemed confirmed after the composer was made President of the Reichsmusikkammer, the State Music Bureau, in 1933. Disillusionment for the composer soon set in with the authorities’ disapproval of his collaboration with a Jewish writer as librettist for his newest opera, and of his refusal to enact discriminatory policies against Jewish musicians – he was forced to resign from his post, and his Jewish daughter-in-law and grandchildren were threatened with incarceration, as were a number of his daughter-in-law’s relatives, many of whom were to be eventually exterminated.

In the informative programme note for the Metamorphosen, a 1945 diary entry by the composer was quoted, revealing Strauss’s long-term feelings towards the Nazi regime – “Twelve years of the rule of bestiality, ignorance and illiteracy under the greatest criminals”. But even more heartfelt was the anguish of the composer at one of the immediate legacies of Nazi rule, the destruction by Allied bombing of some of the most significant German opera houses and concert halls – Strauss is further quoted regarding a particular instance of this tragic loss, that of the Munich Court Theatre – “…..where Tristan and Die Meistersinger received their first performances…… (and) where my father sat at the first horn desk for forty-nine years – it was the greatest catastrophe of my life….”

The most tangible result of the composer’s grieving for the loss of German culture was his writing of Metamorphosen, a work that links to Bach in its contrapuntal mastery, and to Beethoven in its direct quotation of the latter’s Funeral March from the “Eroica” Symphony (in the score Strauss inserts the comment “In Memoriam!” next to this quotation). One commentator whose thoughts on these references I found described critical conjecture regarding their significance as “a can of worms”, leading to a comparison of Strauss’s murky early relationship with Hitler and the Nazis with Beethoven’s initial admiration for Napoleon, with both composers coming to express their disillusionment in musical terms. Others have pointed to Strauss’s copied references to a poem of Goethe’s in the former’s sketches for Metamorphosen, a poem that expresses the elusiveness of self-knowledge, a finding of “the true being within”, and one which perhaps found a sombre realisation in the music. The truth of it all remains a mystery.

I was shocked when checking previous Middle C reviews of the NZSO’s playing of this work to find that I’d last reviewed a performance no less than TEN (!) years ago, one conducted by the orchestra’s Music Director Pietari Inkinen. On that occasion I remembered the stunning “choreographic” effect of the performance highlighted by the musicians (apart from the cellists) standing up to play, the actual placement of the players underpinning the multi-strandedness of the work by ensuring their visibility. In other words it was a feast for the eye as well as for the ear to “watch” as well as “hear” the interactions of the separate lines, the group resembling a “monumental” piece of clockwork in irrevocable motion.

If the visual element was rather less-pronounced in this performance (the players more tightly-grouped around their conductor), the actual musical texture by way of what I remembered of the earlier performance seemed tighter, something probably accentuated by the players’ closer grouping. It should be mentioned that there aren’t twenty-three solo strings “going at it” for the whole time, nor are each of the strands entirely independent – the ninth and tenth violins, the fifth viola, the fifth ‘cello and all three double basses spend much of their time “doubling” with other instruments, in places to add volume to particular melodic phrases – but even so, the work is still a staggering contrapuntal achievement on the part of the composer, and a real test of an interpreter’s ability to make almost half-an-hour’s worth of luscious-sounding string-playing cohere with sufficient variety.

Here we were treated to gorgeously rapt opening sounds from the lower strings, the violas then introducing the oft-to-be-repeated fragment from the Eroica’s slow movement, and the violins joining in with the work’s gradual and dignified “terracing”, the full complement of players eventually engaged as the music intensified into a richly-upholstered sound-texture. As the work progressed, the mood seemed almost celebratory, the lines swaying and soaring as if in the grip of some kind of ecstatic memory – but Hamish McKeich’s direction allowed for plenty of ebb-and-flow of tone and texture with numerous solo and concerted detailings – a series of paired-note exhortations led to a full-blooded outburst, the playing florid and impassioned, when suddenly, the music plunged into minor-key darkness, long sostenuto lines, and with the “Eroica” quotation dominating the heartfelt and deeply-wrought a sense of desolation at the piece’s end.

One might have thought it was piling Pelion upon Ossa in programming the composer’s final composition Vier Letzte Lieder “Four Last Songs” immediately after the equally valedictory Metamorphosen – but though three of the four songs have death as their abiding theme, the music and texts display a calm, accepting, even welcoming character in response to the words’ “end-of-life” scenarios. Composed in 1948 at the age of 84, Strauss never intended these songs to be his “last” works (the title by which they’re known collectively today was bestowed on them by a publisher), though he was undoubtedly aware that his end was near – he had actually wanted to write five songs altogether, but only managed four, the first with words by Joseph von Eichendorff, Im Abendrot
(At Sunset), and the remainder with texts by Hermann Hesse. Together they make a near-perfect sequence, with the first-composed Im Abendrot placed last, as Strauss intended, though he left no instructions regarding the order of the others, which was chosen by the publisher also responsible for their collective title.

My previous encounter with the voice of Emma Pearson, the soprano soloist for these songs this evening, was the New Zealand Opera Company’s 2017 Carmen, in which she played a sweet-voiced, engaging Micaela – but even more memorable was her earlier (2012) astonishing portrayal of Gilda in the Company’s 2012 Rigoletto, which prompted me to comment at the time on her winning combination of “silvery tones, physical beauty and add-water vulnerability”. So I was looking forward to reacquainting myself with her voice and presence, and, happily, wasn’t disappointed.

After a properly dark and turbulent opening to the music, the singer’s opening phrases of the first song, Frühling, rose clearly and confidently aloft, easily penetrating the orchestral fabric and demonstrating a ready responsiveness to the musical ebb-and-flow with an ear-catching variation of tone – a voice which could both soar and float, expressing by turns the text’s exhilaration and tranquility at the onset of Spring. Some exquisite detailing by the orchestral winds marked the opening of the second song, September, with Pearson’s focused direct tones delineating the garden in mourning and the chill of the dying summer – her vocal control allowed her to “resonate” with the instrumental strands in places, and then transfix us with a phrase of great beauty. Singer and conductor shaped the song’s final paragraph, voice and instruments dovetailing sublimely to create at the end a kind of floating strand of sound taken up with lump-in-the-throat poignancy by Sam Jacobs’ noble horn tones.

Another dark beginning to a song came with the third Beim Schlafengehen (Going to Sleep), one which gently roused itself to greet the singer’s entry, a perfect marriage of tones and impulses, Pearson’s voice sounding like a devout prayer with the phrase “Nun der Tag mich müd gemacht” (Now the day has wearied me) before gloriously conveying the “yearning” quality of the following “Soll mein sehnliches Verlangen” (Shall my ardent longing…), her attack on the high exposed notes of the purest quality. There were great exchanges between the singer and solo instrumental lines, including a sequence for solo violin which Vesa-Matti Leppanen delivered gloriously, and to which Pearson replied with almost Wagnerian sweep and grandeur at her re-entry, the music flowing unstoppably, with a gorgeous concluding vocal phrase, “TIef und tausendfach zu leben” (It may live deeply and a thousandfold), and a cherishable coda, horn, strings and wind distilling moments of rapt beauty.

After this, the final song Im Abendrot was a kind of release, a “letting go” (as suggested by the text, with its final line “Is this perhaps death?”), Pearson responding to the great orchestra outburst at the beginning, and to the horns’ brief but radiant salute with calm surety, her voice working with rather than against the orchestral tapestries in replicating the text’s description of a world going to sleep, the flutes’ song of the larks rising like fireflies from out of the darkness. From the rapture emerged the big vocal line at “So rief im Abendrot” (So profound in the Sunset), Pearson’s tones not as clean in the taking of the highest note as she might have liked, but still glorious, after which the solo horn gently underpinned the singer’s final, almost murmured words, leaving conductor and orchestra to suggest the light and spaces beyond the concluding birdsong and the fading light – a marvellous achievement!

As with all performances of a certain “quality”, having some time immediately afterwards to savour a particular listening experience is a joy in itself, which the interval at this concert duly provided. And then it was back to our seats afterwards for our third “monumental” journey of the evening, with both the terrain and the means of traversal fascinatingly different, the piece being the Tchaikovsky Fifth Symphony, to my way of thinking the most “classical” of the Russian composer’s works in this genre while being imbued with just as much “Russian” spirit, colour and atmosphere as any. It was the first Tchaikovsky symphony I got to know, and I can still hear the “sidebreaks” in the 78rpm acetate discs recording I’d got from my grandmother’s “Vinnie’s” shop when a student!

Absolutely superb clarinet playing from Patrick Barry began the symphony with the “motto” theme that dominated the work, here keeping the phrases moving rather than dwelling on their brooding, intensely Russian character. A bassoon joined the clarinet as a kind of “middle voice”, creating an ear-catching flavour as the hushed, but sturdily-sprung march began, the winds “shading” rather than accenting their phrases in rising to the crescendo. The strings joined the march, energised by the rushing, gurgling wind-detailings, preparing for the brass entry, the sounds excitingly layered to cumulative effect. Hamish McKeich didn’t pull the contrasting string phrase around too much, letting it naturally expand at first, but giving it more emotional juice a bit later, the climax slightly anticipated, I thought, by the brass, but still nicely controlled, the horns surviving a “blip” with their very first of a set of fanfares, the music developing some exciting exchanges between sections, until the bassoon led the music’s way back to its recapitulation – some lovely augmented decoration of the theme by winds this time round!

Next, my favourite Tchaikovsky symphonic slow movement got a superb reading, begun in grand style with Sam Jacob’s playing of the opening horn theme, drawing the sounds, it seemed, from out of the air as the music proceeded, the oboe drawing away in a different direction with another theme, followed by the horn and supported by the other winds and the lower strings – out of this came the somewhat Elgarian THIRD melody from the strings, the “phrase-point” of the melody not QUITE achieved at its climax, but the intention was manifestly there! What a movement this is! – and was, here, with the winds instigating a FOURTH theme, supported by the strings and turned into a tremendous “statement of entry” for the motto theme from the work’s beginning! A few poised pizzicato steadyings, and the music set off , revisiting most of the material presented thus far and joining in with an even more impassioned repetition of the “Elgar-but-not-Elgar” theme (so very exciting and this time PROPERLY snow-capped when it eventually descended!!), and a sudden, dramatic return of the motto on vehement brasses and roaring timpani! Thank goodness for the music’s solicitous return to a more elegiac mood, beautifully finished by the clarinet.

Rather incongruously “salon-like” when it first began, the third-movement waltz’s whirling figurations generated ever-increasing clout as the music tirelessly spun its ensnaring lines around and about our sensibilities, the wind-playing an absolute joy to experience, and the strings tireless in their evocations of diaphanous enchantment. The finale, too, exerted its own rumbustious kind of ebb and flow, the motto theme opening rich and proud at first but soon finding itself under siege and taken on a whirlwind journey, brasses declaiming, timpani roaring and strings suddenly goaded into action! I wasn’t sure that the first of the two cataclysmic crescendi in the Allegro vivace hit the spot exactly, but the brass gave a good account of the motto theme amid the rest of the orchestra’s “Francesca da Rimini-like” agitations, and the  orchestral ferment held up brilliantly here until the Maestoso opening returned with its by-now triumphant theme, a whirlwind coda rounding off the jubilant mood. Bravo!

Footnote: Despite some almost Hanslick-like reactions from various contemporary commentators, the work was enthusiastically received in Europe, less so in America – in some ways we are in my opinion somewhat the poorer in our time through invoking blanket “politically correct” disapproval of any comment characterising any ethnic group as indulging in almost any sort of behaviour, as witness what the music correspondent for New York’s “Musical Courier” wrote in 1889 “……One vainly sought for coherency and homgeneousness…in the last movement the composer’s Calmuck blood got the better of him, and slaughter, dire and bloody, swept across the storm-drive score!” Sir Thomas Beecham might have exclaimed approvingly (as he did once, in an entirely different context) – “Gad! – what a critic!”

 

 

Riveting performances by the Orpheus Choir and Orchestra Wellington of works by Faure and Rachmaninoff

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington and the Orpheus Choir of Wellington present:
RACHMANINOFF – The Bells

FAURE – Requiem in D Minor Op.48
RACHMANINOFF – The Bells  Op.35

Margaret Medlyn (soprano), Jared Holt (tenor), Wade Kernot (bass)
Orpheus Choir of Wellington (Brent Stewart, director)
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 3rd October, 2020

Under the circumstances of Covid-19 and its world-wide strictures, I’m truly grateful, along with so many others, to be living in a place where activities such as concerts of the quality of that which I attended in the Michael Fowler Centre on Saturday evening could even happen, let alone be enjoyed so freely and readily. Given in the same week as the NZSO’s inspiring “Eroica” concert conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Orchestra Wellington’s equally uplifting collaboration with a sonorous and versatile Orpheus Choir made for a week’s fascinating and rewarding diversity of orchestral activity. I admit to being tempted into writing an all-out notice of lament that this particular concert in the Orchestra’s “Rachmaninoff season” didn’t “go for broke” here in presenting a couple more of the composer’s choral works instead of Gabriel Faure’s beautiful but oft-played Requiem – has Wellington ever heard the Russian composer’s achingly lovely “Spring” Cantata for baritone, choir and orchestra, or his enchanting “Three Russian Folksongs”?  What a programme, together with “The Bells” that would have made! But one must be grateful at the chance to hear “The Bells” in concert at all, and especially in such a vibrant and idiomatic performance as here. Perhaps on a future occasion………

Here was, in any case, a fascinating contrast of compositional styles and idioms presented via a pair of masterworks from composers whose music, though not exactly contemporary, emanated from the same late-Romantic Age (Faure’s Requiem in its final form dates from 1900, Rachmaninoff’s “The Bells“ from 1913), even though each couldn’t be more different in its expression! Though the Faure Requiem’s performance here was never going to give the impression of a church ambience in such surroundings as the Michael Fowler Centre and with a choir of the Orpheus’s size, there was in fact a historical precedent for the numbers involved, with the final, augmented version of the composer’s work receiving its premiere in 1900 at the famed Palais Trocadéro in Paris, fellow-composer Paul Taffenel conducting forces numbering 250 performers.

Conductor Marc Taddei most thrillingly took the course of utilising the choir’s tonal resources for intensely dramatic effect, with the group’s music director Brent Stewart’s expert training and leadership evident in the singing’s control of dynamics and overall shaping of the sounds throughout.  Right from the intensely focused opening Requiem aeternam we relished the controlled honing of the words’ purpose, the “et lux perpetua” thrilling in its outpouring of light and strength, the “luceat eis” a more prayerful supplication. Everything was here underpinned by finely-wrought orchestral playing, with the opening largo becoming andante, and the strings’ counterpointing the tenors’ fervent repetition of the words “Requiem aeternam” – I liked also the almost fiery cries of “exaudi” immediately after the loveliness of the sopranos’ “Te decet hymnus”, emphasising once again the drama of the text’s contrasts, which continued throughout the invocations of the Kyrie and Christe sequences.

A smaller number of voices in a more intimate setting would perhaps have found even more flavoursome nuances in the Offetoire with the repetitions of “O Domine Jesu Christe”, but the “terracing” of these supplications was finely placed, aided by the delicacy and sensitivity of the orchestral playing, the string harmonies reminding me in places (just before the “Hostias”) of some of Vaughan Williams music, Faure’s evocation of “the insubstantiality of lost souls wandering among the abysses”. After these exhortations, how beautiful was the entry of the bass with his “Hostias”, Wade Kernot a touch hesitant here and there, not inappropriate in such a context, but managing to convey enough of the music’s major-key optimism to ease the burden of suffering so tellingly engendered by the music.

A performance highlight for me was the Sanctus, for a number of familiar reasons at first, the celestial tones of the harp, the purity of the women’s and the sonority of the men’s voices, the ethereal playing of the orchestra, all contributed to a sense of ever-burgeoning bliss and radiance, but which then burst forth with unprecedented glory at the introduction to the words “Hosanna in excelsis”, the horns  here for once casting aside all inhibitions and filling the spaces with golden-toned exhortations and resonances, the like of which I’d never before experienced in a live performance, the voices matching the full-bloodedness of the exultation – this was always a moment I’d considered special, but on this occasion one that infused me with incredible joy and excitement at having experienced a kind of long-awaited fulfilment of the music’s promise! – unforgettable!

Normally the Pie Jesu which follows straight on works for me as a kind of corrective to such excess as I’ve described – a cleansing, even a purifying kind of experience which straightaway takes me elsewhere, far from any festive or revelric scenario. I was therefore not a little dismayed at hearing Margaret Medlyn’s voice making such heavy weather of the music’s stratospheric lines, though I had thought it odd that she would be performing it anyway, as her voice has always seemed to me more suited to dramatic roles far removed from the ethereal delicacies of Faure’s music in this instance – something of an evocation of, in William Blake’s words, “a world in a grain of sand”. As it proved she appeared far more at home in the Rachmaninoff which followed after the interval – she was obviously going to always be the choice for the soprano soloist in this work (I still remember a stunning recital featuring some Rachmaninoff songs she and pianist Bruce Greenfield gave on a celebrated occasion – https://middle-c.org/2010/07/from-garden-to-grave-margaret-medlyn-and-bruce-greenfield/) – but surely it’s a voice that would always have been unsuited to Faure’s Pie Jesu? I’m only sad to find myself less than enthusiastic about a performance by a singer whose work I’ve deeply admired in the past, but in vastly different music…..

The serene opening of the Agnus Dei was but the beginning of a journey which took us through contrasting episodes of lyrical beauty (orchestra and tenor voices at the beginning), rapt communion  (those “Wotan’s Farewell”-like chromatic soprano descents at “Lux aeterna”) and blazing fervour (the “quia pius est” pleading from choir and orchestra just before the reprise of the very opening of the work, the choir positively incendiary at “et lux perpetua”!). Then, with the dark, throbbing “Libera Me” we seemed back in the underworld, Wade Kernot’s suitably dark tones secure with the music’s gravitas and direct focus, and the choir creating real frisson with the cries of “Dies illa, dies irae” over throbbing timpani, pulsating organ and louring brass, the horns again superb! The bass’s awe-struck but tender return to the final moments of  the “Libera Me” beautifully signalled a “coming through”, with the organ pedal at the end suggesting something of the abyss over which we had just been taken.

In a sense, the journey’s end came with the “In Paradisum”, the organ positively seraphic at the outset (though nothing I’ve heard anywhere matches the instrument on Andre Cluytens’ EMI recording at this point for sheer beauty!), the voices similarly angelic, the overall atmosphere quietly ecstatic, as befits where we’d been taken to. And yes, I remembered finding myself thinking at this point that it would have been nice to have heard those other Rachmaninoff works I mentioned, but this in nearly all of its parts certainly “did it” for me, thanks to all concerned. Nevertheless, I was glad of the interval’s “quantum leap” therapy, in preparation for what we were about to hear.

A pity we couldn’t have somehow had texts and translations on hand for the Rachmaninoff work, delivered as it was in a Russian translation by symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont of Edgar Allan Poe’s original poem, more of a transliteration, really, which gave an unsurprisingly “Russian” view of Poe’s imagery, dispensing with some of the repetitions and adding peculiarly Russian contextual images and ambiences – Balmont himself called it “an adaptation, more an imitation than a translation”. Besides Rachmaninoff’s own native pessimism of outlook, it all reflected a kind of prophetic sense of impending doom at the failure of the ruling Romanov dynasty to address the life-threatening issues facing many of the Russian people at that time, a situation that was to catastrophically resolve itself in 1917 with the Revolution. Though I’m hardly conversant with the language, I found its peculiar version of Slavic exoticism certainly made a visceral effect, thanks to sterling efforts by the soloists and the chorus, the SOUNDS of the words mirroring the characteristic textures of Rachmaninoff’s music throughout.

The work as a whole could be characterised as a journey from light to darkness over the four movements, and also a life’s journey from carefree youth to impending death. Equally it’s a compendium of human experience refracted through several peoples’ creative processes, with the composer tying the threads together in his music. So the opening “Silver Sleigh Bells” was a kind of magical awakening to a bright, crystalline Russian winter’s day, an instrumental sequence depicting something of a “Jingle Bells” scenario, the music’s scintillating progress halted by the tenor’s arresting “Slyshish!” (Listen!) and then (in a moment which equalled the frisson of the horns’ playing in the “Sanctus” of Faure’s Requiem) the choir broke the poised silence with a tumultuous repetition of the tenor’s single word! – nothing could go wrong from that moment on in the performance, such was its brilliance, depth and resonance of conviction! Tenor soloist Jared Holt I thought did an absolutely splendid job, timing the delicacies of his word-painting with great skill, while conveying terrific energy in his more declamatory utterances.The celebratory mood gradually evolved to one of reflections of “sweet oblivion” as the chorus atmospherically hummed its lines, with string harmonics glistening and eerily whispering, until, roused by the tenor at “Sani mchatsya”, chorus and orchestra built the excitement and volume towards a veritable tsunami of sound which broadened magnificently into a peroration of utter splendour, and then gradually dying to the merest whisper.

Ironically the first few measures of the second movement “Mellow Wedding Bells” featured the first four notes of Rachmaninoff’s “signature motif” the medieval plainchat “Dies irae”, one that grew in intensity before being augmented by the yearning choral voices, counterpointed by a dying fall line from the strings, one which evolved into a romantic meditation upon a pair of eyes gazing at the moon. Margaret Medlyn plunged into her lush lines with total involvement as the orchestral strings and winds conjured up an “Isle of the Dead”-like web of intensities, together with different bells adding their voices to the panoply of interlocking lines and single notes that characterised this movement – the soprano line rose to ecstatic heights when describing the “fairy-tale joy” of the bells pouring their holy blessing on the future. The “Dies irae” chant returned to inform the choral lines with thoughts of “a future where sleeps a tender peace” as the bells continued their blessings, leaving the last word to a descending pair of clarinets.

Following this was the “Loud Alarum Bells” chorus-and-orchestra scherzo, here another performance tour de force, right from the beginning – instrumental warning signals came in a crescendo of panic, before the voices’ conflagration of terror and confusion raged and roared, a “tale of horror, hurling cries into the night” in a frenzy of fear. The music’s sudden downward plunge into a brief trough of despair seemed as frightening and harrowing as the confrontational ferment which reared up again, the Orpheus Choir members displaying incredible energy and committed engagement towards realising the volatility of the composer’s writing. The sheer clamour enlivened even the Michael Fowler Centre, normally not renowned for its immediacy of sound, building up towards the movement’s end to a visceral assault on our listening sensibilities, but one which we wouldn’t have missed for worlds! A gloomily introspective lull towards the end was savagely interrupted by a brief but abruptly decisive payoff, the ensuing bruised-and-battered silence as devastating as was the music itself!

Completing the life-cycle, the survey, the picture, was the final movement “Mournful Iron Bells”, characterised by the poet as “the sound of bitter sorrow, ending the dream of a bitter life”. Here, Rachmaninoff used the mournful strains of the cor anglais to characterise the opening mood, creating an incredibly “laden” sound-picture, the singer (Wade Kernot) intoning his solo supported by an overwhelmingly fatalistic orchestral backdrop, the detailing here almost unnervingly vivid and impactful. Together, singer, choir, conductor and players brought about a heartfelt climax with the words “Vyrastayet v dolgiy gul” (It grows into an endless cry!), before the brasses hinted once again at the “Dies Irae” chant then brutally helped energise the music at “Someone shrieks from the belfry!”, hammering home the bass’s words, allowing for no hope – only terror, pity and hopelessness. After the singer’s final bitter pronouncement of  “…i pratyazhno vazveshchayet a pakoye grabavom” (slowly proclaiming the stillness of the grave), the music suddenly lightened, drifting into the major key and offering a concluding glimmer of consolation.

Together with his “All Night Vigil” Op.37, written in 1915, “The Bells” can be said to be one of the composer’s self-avowed favourite works, worthy of a regular place in the choral repertoire. The work, heard “live” was a revelation for me, and must have been for many others who attended. Grateful thanks are due to both Marc Taddei and Brent Stewart, the respective Music Directors of Orchestra Wellington and the Orpheus Choir of Wellington, for enabling a performance that will, I’m certain, stay in the memory of those who heard it as marking a precious occasion.

NZSO’s “Eroica” programme title lives up to its name at Wellington’s MFC

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
EROICA – Music by Anthony Ritchie, Jean Sibelius and Ludwig van Beethoven

RITCHIE – Remembering Parihaka (1994)
SIBELIUS – Violin Concerto Op.47
BEETHOVEN – Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Op. 55 “Eroica”

Vesa-Matti Leppänen (violin)
Miguel Harth-Bedoya (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellingto

Sunday 27th September 2020

CEO of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Peter Biggs, summed it up in his foreword in the printed programme for the orchestra’s most recent presentation initiative – named after one of the three works presented, Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony – when he referred to 2020 as “what continues to be a challenging year for us all.” Biggs and his staff rose to that challenge admirably in enabling  Peruvian-born conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya, presently resident in the United States where he is Music Director of the Forth Worth Symphony Orchestra, to travel to New Zealand and isolate for two weeks, so he could conduct the NZSO in this series.

One would perhaps expect that, in the case of every professional orchestra of quality, its concertmaster could, at short notice, assume the responsibility of performing as a soloist in a repertory violin concerto, as has the orchestra’s current leader, Vesa-Matti Leppänen, in the same series. I’m not able to say whether the violinist Augustin Hadelich who was unable to come to this country to take up his original engagement had intended to programme the same concerto, or whether Vesa-Matti had chosen a different work to play; but the Sibelius Violin Concerto seemed, not surprisingly, a natural fit for its performer, and proved a great success.

Repertory-wise, conductor Harth-Bedoya’s tenure as Music Director of the Auckland Philharmonia from 1998 to 2005 would presumably have given him exposure to a range of New Zealand-composed works, among them, perhaps, the work presented today,  Anthony Ritchie’s Remember Parihaka, which was the first item of the concert. Before the music began, however, one of the orchestra players, Andrew Thomson (principal second violinist) in welcoming the audience to the Michael Fowler, made mention of the impending retirement from the orchestra at the concert’s end, of a long-serving member of the second violins, Lucien Rizos, in response to which announcement the player was warmly acknowledged by both his colleagues and this evening’s audience – a nice touch!

And so we began our listening with the aforementioned work by Anthony Ritchie, Remember Parihaka, one which I had heard on a recording some time ago without remembering too much about it, except that it was atmospheric and impactful, and seemed in accord with what I already knew about the disgraceful and brutal happenings associated with the “armed takeover” by Government forces of the Taranaki village where the Maori spiritual leader Te Whiti o Rongomai lived with his followers, implementing their policy of non-aggressive resistance to the white settlers’ push to acquire Maori land. I had read author Dick Scott’s book “Ask that Mountain” some years ago, and was interested to learn of Te Whiti’s methods being known and adopted by Mohandas Ghandi in later years, both in South Africa and in India.

The music began spaciously and ambiently, lower strings and air-borne wind figures conveying both peace and foreboding. The string lines rose like the morning sun, the sounds punctuated by louring chords from horns and winds, violins sounding a tense affirmation of the oncoming day, with the violas singing a more tender, caring line as the flutes repeated their birdsong. Pizzicati and scampering string movement joined with winds in suggested people running and gathering, as a field drum conveyed a kind of march-like purpose, energising the rest of the orchestra and giving rise to repeated warnings from the birdsong. As the tensions mounted and the warning cries became more frequent the bass drum gave voice to purpose, brutal and direct at first, then with deeper, more menacing ostinato underpinning the strings and winds, leading to a cataclysmic cymbal scintillation, signalling a culmination, a general violation, a triumph of might, leaving desolation in its wake – all that remained were sounds of deep lamentation. It was all rather less graphic a musical experience than I’d remembered, somewhat subtler in effect – and perhaps more enduring for that.

We then turned our attentions to the Sibelius Violin Concerto, performed by the orchestra’s regular concertmaster, Vesa-Matti Leppänen (whose place today in the leader’s seat was ably filled by his deputy, Donald Armstrong). I’d heard Vesa-Matti perform in a solo capacity before (most memorably, Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending) but he surpassed even that achingly lovely performance with this one in terms of sweetness of tone and clarity of texture. At first I thought his tone a tad small to do full justice to the heroic gestures which flex their muscles and soar aloft in various places, but as the music proceeded it became obvious that the focused intensity of his playing was actually carrying every note to our ears, if in a way that didn’t rely so much on grand gesturing as absolute clarity of articulation. Conductor and orchestra seemed to understand this implicitly, in places such as where the solo viola richly “counterpointed” the violin or the clarinets murmured an ambient backdrop. There were places where orchestral muscle was flexed most excitingly, a tutti leading up to brass and timpani “letting rip” sounding overwhelming in such a context. Vesa-Matti was disinclined to “attack” the notes in an obviously virtuosic way, but instead play them simply and expressively – his fingerwork in passages which called for extreme dexterity was astonishing, as towards the conclusion of the first movement cadenza.

Harth-Bedoya got some beautiful wind-playing at the slow-movement’s beginning, the clarinets pure and liquid, the oboes pastoral and engaging, and the flutes and timpani defining in the space of a few notes touches of open-air brilliance contrasted with deep shadow – a memorable piece of tone-painting. The soloist then took up his rich, glowing line, matching the horns in the playing’s warmth, and with hushed tones echoed by the orchestral strings setting in dramatic contrast the following orchestral tutti, big and black-browed, the brass and winds particularly arresting! But what magically sotto voce octave passagework from Vesa-Matti we heard, with everybody else in accord, building the tones in a dignified way towards the movement’s big concerted statement, leading to more enchantingly soft playing from everybody, the mood reminding me suddenly of the end of the first movement of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, no less – a similar sense of “coming through”…..

The programme notes quoted most aptly the famous description of the work’s finale as “a polonaise for polar bears” (from writer and musicologist Sir Donald Francis Tovey – 1875-1940), summing up both the strength and weight of the music’s rhythms, though Vesa-Matti’s violin seemed to lightly skip across the snowy vistas in comparison to the accompaniments. I particularly liked his lightness of touch in the passages where Sibelius seems to “crowd in” the notes to the extent of distorting the rhythms, except that here the soloist’s nimble-fingered momentums seemed  easily to encompass the figurations, avoiding the trenchant angularities of some performances at this point. I relished the waspish buzzings of the muted horns and the bouncing accompaniments from the double basses, especially in tandem with the soloist during the latter’s high violin harmonics, which were thrillingly, eerily played! I hadn’t previously seen passages in the work where the soloist was accompanied by first-desk strings alone, which here added to the variety of textural incident. In the work’s coda the intensities were screwed tightly up, the soloist singing high, bright and breezy, and the orchestra gathering its forces to match the violin’s outpourings – a totally exhilarating experience!

It seemed as if, at the music’s conclusion, the audience didn’t want to let their concertmaster-turned-concerto-soloist go, calling him back repeatedly, along with the conductor, for further ovations. A nice touch was Vesa-Matti’s presenting of his bouquet to the retiring violinist Lucien Rizos before leaving the stage for the last time. Then it was the interval; and after we’d waxed lyrical concerning the concerto and its performance in every which way to anybody else who would listen, it was time to return to the auditorium for the “Eroica”.

Two extremely smartish E-flat chords, and we were off! With brisk, driven passagework, bright and eager detailings, and the phrasing sharply and urgently delivered, with that slightly “clipped”, authentic-performance manner, it seemed we were in for a thrillingly front-on Beethoven experience from the beginning (complete with the first-movement repeat!) – I thought here of the legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini’s words when asked to describe what he thought of the “Eroica’s” first movement, his reply being, “Is not “Eroica”! – is not Napoleon! – is Allegro con brio!”. Here, conductor Harth-Bedoya seemed to encourage his wind-players (and who wouldn’t, with such talent, here?) to “play out” so that, not only in their solos, but in the “middle voices” of the orchestral texture, it all seemed uncommonly rich and detailed. Together with the energies of the playing, this made for a real sense of something vibrant and living, the strings digging into their syncopated accents when building up to the massive central-movement climax underpinned excitingly by the timpani and capped off gloriously by the brass!

Harth-Bedoya brought out the work’s dramatic and exhilarating qualities as much as a sense of something epic – and there were two moments in particular which I thought so brilliantly illustrated these qualities in turn, aided by superb playing in each case. First was the drama of the horn’s wonderful “false entry” just before the music’s recapitulation, a moment that reputedly took some listeners at the work’s first performance by surprise, to the composer’s annoyance! – here sounded to perfection before the rest of the band “crashed in”! Then, as the music surged towards the end, and the theme was played by horns, then strings, then winds and finally the brass, with ever-growing intensities, Beethoven unaccountably allows the brass only a few notes of the theme before getting his trumpet to break off in favour of letting stuttering winds finish the phrase! However, many older recordings (including the one I was “raised” on) allowed the trumpet line to continue playing the theme right through, as Harth-Bedoya did here, to my admittedly guilty satisfaction (I still prefer it, and on first hearing the “authentic” version on record had to be convinced by someone whose knowledge I respected that the trumpet hadn’t been removed through a tape-edit error, or something!)

The renowned “Funeral March” was just that, a loaded, purple-and-black experience, the beautiful string-playing capped off by Robert Orr’s glorious oboe solo. Harth-Bedoya again brought out the music’s drama, getting sharply-delivered contrasts in dynamics and textures from his players, the more military major-key sections blazing with momentary triumph before succumbing to the grief and anger of the episodes which followed, Bridget Douglas’s sonorous flute-playing as pivotal to the range of emotions as the oboe’s at the beginning. The strings here simply “nailed” the fugal sections of the movement, giving the music’s trajectories incredible power, picked up by the winds and brasses (and Laurence Reese’s timpani speaking volumes as always), with the double basses attacking their post-fugue “moment” with spine-tingling weight and edge. And the “ticking away” of life and breath towards the end made for a kind of sublimity in the silence that followed the music’s brief but telling final exhalation.

“Is not “Eroica”! – Is not Napoleon! – is Allegro vivace!“ Toscanini might also have exclaimed at this life-enhancing point in the Symphony – for here, indeed, was a scherzo, a quicker, more dynamic replacement for the classical symphony’s usual minuet, a change Beethoven had already made in each of his first two symphonies. Beginning with feathery playing from the strings and perkily-delivered themes  from the winds, the music then seemed to explode in joyful energy, the verve and physicality of the playing a heady delight! The NZSO horns also delighted with their playing of the Trio, Harth-Bedoya getting the players to begin the final rendition of their fanfare in startlingly assertive fashion, a gesture that I’m willing to bet Beethoven would have loved!

As he would have the attacca, which here plunged us into the ferment of the Finale’s opening before we had time to draw breath at the scherzo’s end! – Harth-Bedoya and the players made much of the dynamic contrasts between Beethoven’s use of the seemingly innocuous bass-line tune from the “Prometheus” music and several violent “knocking at the door” irruptions at the end of each of the measures. And the conductor would have none of the reversion to solo string lines which had so entranced us on a previous occasion when Orchestra Wellington performed the symphony for the following string passages, up to the appearance of the actual “”Prometheus” theme on the oboe. But what playfulness, what spirit and what character was engendered by the players in their treatment of Beethoven’s fugal explorations – the lines by turns sang, teased, shouted and giggled, and Harth-Bedoya got everybody to pull out all the stops for the “Russian Dance” variation, which was almost a show-stopper!

These and other episodes were silenced by the oboe and accompanying winds, giving the “tune” a decorative warmth and fullness of heart which the horns and other instruments acclaimed most heartily – some residue angst (hopes and dreams dashed?) from the struggles and tribulations of the journey was given its respectful due, before all such was swept away, Harth-Bedoya and his players going with and contributing to the flow, a veritable tidal wave of joyful release which filled the Michael Fowler Centre’s precincts to bursting, and gladdened the hearts of all present – great stuff!

NZSM Orchestra with conductor Hamish McKeich showcases achievements by 2020 award-winning composer and instrumentalist at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music presents:
Music by Mica Thompson, Carl Reinecke and Johannes Brahms

THOMPSON  – Song
REINECKE – Flute Concerto In D Major Op.283
BRAHMS – Symphony No. 2 in D Major Op.73

Isabella Gregory (flute)
Hamish McKeich (conductor)
New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington

Saturday, 26th September, 2020

Pandemic restrictions having been relaxed of late (though judiciously more “on hold” than entirely done away with), we were allowed more-or-less regularly-spaced seating at St. Andrew’s to hear the most recent of the NZSM Orchestra’s public concerts, one featuring the recent winner of the School’s Concerto Competition, flutist Isabella Gregory (see the review at https://middle-c.org/2020/07/nzsm-concerto-competition-an-evening-of-elegance-frisson-and-feeling/), playing the Reinecke concerto with which she won the prize, though on this occasion with a full and proper orchestral accompaniment! Flanking her polished, sparkling efforts were two other items, the concert beginning with a work for orchestra  entitled “Song” by Hawkes Bay-born composer Micah Thompson, and concluding with the well-known Second Symphony by Brahms.

Thanks to the aforementioned ravages of Covid-19 upon the present year in respect of public music-making and -presentation, this was, I think, the first 2020 NZSM orchestral concert I’d attended , though I had seen a few of the individual players in other orchestral and chamber presentations at various times. It was certainly one worth the wait for, and promised much beforehand, with the NZSO’s principal Conductor-in-Residence Hamish McKeich due to rehearse and direct the performances. Also, one of the NZSO’s recent Guest Conductors, Miguel Harth-Bedoya apparently worked with the orchestra during this period – though it’s not clear whether the latter had any direct involvement with the orchestra’s preparation for this concert.

The evening began with “thanks and praise” from the director of the School, Prof. Sally Jane Norman, thanks for the efforts of people in staging the concert in the face of near-insuperable difficulties, and praise for the efforts of the musicians and their tutors – mixed in with all of this was warm appreciation for people’s actual attendance at the concert, supporting the school’s activities in fostering the careers of young composers/musicians.

First we heard a work by composer Micah Thompson, called “Song”, and inspired in part by the poetry of British poet Ted Hughes (1930-1998), specifically in this case a 1957 poem “The Hawk in the Rain”. Thompson explained, both in a progamme note and by means of an internet post (https://www.facebook.com/NZSMusic/videos/1186964995018168) how the poet’s interest in the “identity, history and mythologies of particular animals” had informed his own approach to exploring musical instruments’ characteristics and their use – he used Hughes’s “wild, sometimes brutal, but always expressive and melancholic” verses as a kind of counterpoint to his own creative impulses. As the programme printed the text of Hughes’ verses, I couldn’t help comparing his earthier, more confrontational expressiveness to that of an earlier poet, Gerard Manly Hopkins, in the latter’s comparatively rarefied (but just as dramatic and musical) poem from 1877, “The Windhover”, describing the flight of another bird of prey, a falcon.

Thompson’s work also took a number of previously-composed solo pieces, for piano, clarinet and flute, and “collaged” them into what he called “an orchestral space”. This space coalesced into life, the ambient beginnings featuring slivers of percussion, mingled with taonga-puoro-like calls, creating an atmosphere of wildness and vast resonances of possibility – long string lines were punctuated with birdsong and wild gesturings, the sounds suggesting flight both with impulses of wing-beatings and the stillnesses of soaring. Long-held notes for cello, winds, brass and violins accentuated the spaces while various scintillations suggested light-changes, both osmotic and sharp-edged. The celeste brought an almost cow-bell nostalgia into play, contrasting with the increasing combatative-edged intrusions from both clarinet and horn solos, the implicit violence of the poem’s words here suggested abstractedly, one of a number of “perceptions” hinted at by the music. Returning to whisperings, the sounds took on a kind of “mystic” feeling, the flute playing a fanfare-like birdcall, a cadenza-like passage which seemed to awaken the surrounds more markedly, the strings rustling, the percussions tinkling, the basses gently rumbling, the piano chirruping, everything freely modulating before drifting into a silence coloured only by the flute’s gentle call. I like the “assuredness” of it all, its focus supporting tangible imagery and feeling amid all the ambient suggestiveness.

Carl Reinecke’s Flute Concert has long been regarded as the instrument’s principal Romantic flagbearer, given that the composer was of the Romantic persuasion  along the lines of Mendelssohn and Schumann, rather than of Liszt or Wagner – though befriended by Liszt and given introductions by the latter to contacts in Paris, Reinecke remained a firm adherent of the more conservative 19thCentury school. The work’s gentle, Brahmsian opening was essayed beautifully by the players, here, with some lovely horn playing, and beautiful phrasing from the flute at the player’s entrance. The soloist’s “big tune” was answered by the brasses the exchanges taking us into a melancholic, romantic world of feeling, rounded off by a stirring orchestral tutti. I thought Gregory’s playing even more astonishing than when encountering her in the competition’s final, the orchestral accompaniment perhaps giving the soloist more variety to react to and establish a personality very much her own.

The slow movement took on the character of a kind of “Romantic legend”, a gift for a skilled storyteller, dramatic brass and timpani preparing the way for the flute’s narrative, which was here developed with a real sense of occasion and adventure, the ensemble seizing its chances to dramatize the music at every opportunity, an impulse somewhat tamed by the flute’s bringing the ending of the movement into the major key, as an antidote to the relative darkness! Horns and wind threw out a jaunty aspect at the finale’s opening, the flute taking up the polonaise rhythm with gusto, throughout the movement steadfastedly steering the music back to the dance whenever different episodes sought to diversify the expression – a charmingly winsome game of dominance, in which the flute was triumphant, the work’s coda featuring exciting exchanges between Gregory and the musicians, Hamish McKeich keeping the momentums simmering, right to the work’s festive conclusion.

Concluding the programme was a quintessential conservative-Romantic work, the Brahms Second Symphony, one which gave  the composer opportunity for some impish fun in describing the music beforehand to his friends – his tongue-in-cheek characterisations of parts of the work were reproduced in the excellent programme notes, comments such as the words “so melancholy that you will not be able to bear it – I have never written anything so sad, and the score itself will have to come out in mourning”. If at times gruffly expressed, Brahms certainly didn’t lack a sense of humour!

I enjoyed the performance enormously, in the first movement right from the near-perfect horn-playing at the work’s beginning, with its answering winds and floating string responses, through the “lilt” of the playing of the second subject theme by all concerned, and the stirring brass response to the increasing ferment of the development’s exchanges, to the lovely “spent” character of the climbing strings and the glowing wind replies when the opening was recapitulated (I loved the confidently-produced “zinging” quality of the strings’ playing of the dotted-rhythm fanfares shortly afterwards!). And though not absolutely note-perfect, the solo horn’s valedictory passage towards the movement’s end was so beautifully shaped and sounded, the string-playing that followed couldn’t help but sound ravishing (ravished, perhaps?) in reply.

The strings dug into the second movement’s opening as if the players really meant it, the top note of the succeeding upward phrase a bit shaky first time round, but more secure on its repetition – again the horn-playing shone, with the strings, and the winds following, and similarly shining   in succession. As the music floated over graceful pizzzicati both winds and strings sang full-throatedly, confidently leading from this into the music’s darker-browed sequences and holding their ground amid the storms and stresses, the winds eventually coming to the rescue, encouraging the strings to pick their way through the wreckage, putting the crooked straight and making the rough places plain as they went……the return of the opening sequence by strings and winds here made such a heart-warming  impression, even if  the horizons were again darkened and the brasses and timpani held sway for a few anxious moments – amid the uncertainties, winds and strings registered a further brief moment of apprehension with the timpani, before squaring up with a “let’s get on” gesture that brought the sounds to rest.

The third movement, an Allegretto grazioso featured a perky oboe supported by clarinets and followed by flutes  – lovely! The strings delicately danced into the picture, the tempi amazingly swift, the playing precise! – fabulous playing and skilful dovetailing when the oboe rejoined the mix with the opening theme – the lovely “flowering” of the wind textures was then matched  by the strings’ “darkening” of the same, after which the dancing resumed with earnest and energy – and I loved the re-delivery of the opening wind tune by the strings, the downward part of the phrase played with what sounded like a satisfied sigh! – very heartfelt!

The finale was, by contrast, all stealth and mystery at the start, creating great expectation before bursting forth, McKeich and his players creating an invigorating “togetherness” of ensemble, the winds gurgling with excitement when given their turn! The strings gave their all with their “big tune”, the tempo kept steady, the tutti blazing forth with excitement, the syncopations flying past at a tempo, and the sotto voce of the opening’s return maintained. Another excitable tutti was relished, before the triplet-led episode allowed a hint of melancholy to descend upon the textures before the movement’s opening sequence returned with a few ear-catching variants – a bit of scrawny playing here and there simply added to the excitement and abandonment, the brass heaving to with some elephantine comments, and the rest of the orchestra girding its loins for the work’s cataclysmic coda – noisy, but joyful and exuberant! It was a performance which got at the end a well-deserved accolade, doing the composer, as well as the conductor and players, proud!

“….And we shall be changed” – the New Zealand String Quartet’s completion of its 2020 Beethoven journey

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand String Quartet presents:
VISIONARY – Beethoven 250th Anniversary
BEETHOVEN – String Quartets:
Op.130 in B-flat Major – original version with the “Grosse Fugue” finale –
later published separately as Op.133 (1826)
Op.131 in C-sharp Minor (1826)

The New Zealand String Quartet
Helene Pohl, Monique Lapins (violins) / Gillian Ansell (viola) / Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

Hunter Council Chamber, Hunter Building, Victoria University of Wellington,
Kelburn Parade, Wellington

Friday, 25th September, 2020

The listings in both the printed programme and the advance publicity suggested that we would get to hear BOTH of the “finales” of Beethoven’s String Quartet Op.130  at the culminating concert of the New Zealand String Quartet’s series presenting all of the composer’s String Quartets. TWO finales? Well, after the first performance of Op.130 in 1826, the general critical reaction regarding the original “Grosse Fugue” finale was one of disbelief and misunderstanding, so much so that the composer’s publisher urged him to compose an alternative conclusion for the work, and publish the “Grosse Fugue” as a separate piece, Op.133.

Tonight’s programme listed all six movements of the revised version (the new finale being an Allegro in B-flat), and then listed the Grosse Fugue as a separate, stand-alone item. But then, as ‘cellist Rolf Gjelsten proceeded with his spoken introduction regarding the delightful disparities in the makeup of Op.130, he ignored any descriptive mention of Beethoven’s alternative Allegro and straightaway spoke of the “Grosse Fugue” as if it was the “finale” the quartet was going to play – and so it proved, to my surprise and immense pleasure.

Some commentators have recently advocated that the most satisfactory solution when presenting this augmented assemblage is to play the original version immediately followed by the alternative finale – though one might consider such a plan as consigning the unfortunate Allegro very much to the realms of an “appendage”, this course at least follows the thread of compositional events and allows listeners to directly “experience” the disparity between what one might respectively call vision and pragmatism.

Out of curiosity I checked to see what the NZSQ had done when previously performing this work – and to my surprise discovered that it was not I. but my Middle C colleague Lindis Taylor who had been fortunate enough to gather these particular cherries, last time round! ….https://middle-c.org/2012/09/fancy-having-such-a-quartet-in-our-midst-the-last-of-the-glorious-beethoven-series/…in my defence I should say this all had happened (to my great astonishment) no less than eight years previously! – but I was at least able to ascertain that the Quartet indeed played the original version on that occasion as well!

I well remember upon first hearing this work over forty years previously, via one of the first recordings to present Op.130’s original version and jettison the alternative version of the finale entirely (the 1973 LaSalle Quartet on a Deutsche Grammophon LP), how remarkably “listenable” the work’s interior movements seemed to me to be, compared with those of some of the other late quartets I’d encountered at that time. It’s actually this accessibility that’s given rise to the most puzzlement among commentators, who have fallen back on descriptions of the work such as “an altogether strange miscellany of movements”, “a hotch-potch of character pieces”, and “an emulation of the baroque suite, with its contrasting dances”, all of which reactions have a validity of sorts without, it seems, managing to get to grips with the business of defining the indefinable.

Obviously, critical discernment has “walked the walk” regarding Beethoven’s late works over the duration – the composer’s own response to contemporary opinions – “they are not for you, but for a later age” – resonates more tellingly and fruitfully with ideas such as Rolf Gjelsten’s “essay in disruption” comment regarding the quartet as a whole, hinting at the subversion of association lurking beneath the bright-eyed exteriors of each of the pieces in question, and placing their assemblage into the category of a delicate balance between disparate elements. He also mentioned the context of comparison with the work’s very different concert companion this evening, Op.131, a piece whose structure set contrasting episodes into an organic whole, with transitions enabling the work to be presented in a continuous flow.

And so we began with Op.130, the sounds emerging easily and fluidly, as if beamed from a kaleidoscopic structure slowly revolving, until the crisp incursion of a dancing allegro, as taut as a well-controlled spring but with an impulsive kind of energy, quickened our blood and sharpened our senses, ready for the rest of the movement’s working-out of the two, quite separate premises, here  given the utmost character and focus, in the players’ intensity of attack and depth of perceived emotional response. A mercurial, furtively-scampering Presto followed, dissected mid-way by a madcap violin roller-coaster ride (with fearless playing from Helene Pohl!). Its closely-accompanying companion, an Andante con moto, cleared its throat and sang a tender song as time ticked away underneath, the lines seemingly at the mercy of spontaneous impulse, with everything almost surreal in its variety (heartfelt sighings next to mischievous pizzicati), the playing always alive to possibility – as conductor Otto Klemperer once said, “not the themes but their working-out, is the essential thing in Beethoven”.

I’ve always enjoyed the seemingly artless Alla danza Tedesca, but never quite registered the richness of the instrumental exchange to this degree before, and especially the tossing of the line between the instruments at one point near the conclusion, as each plays only one bar of the theme at its “turn” – a representation of sudden discontinuity and evanescence of feeling? The melody came back at the end, but a sense of something “dismantled” remained, perhaps for the Cavatina that followed to put to rights – here was the most serene ambience imaginable, the flowing, murmuring lines touching a couple of release=points, then delving into darker places in the “Beklemmt” (oppressed, anxious) sequence before returning to its former lyrical warmth.

After disconcerting the listener with a panoply of styles and sounds over the previous five movements, Beethoven then  proceeded to complement/renounce/obliterate all that had gone before in the quartet with the outlandish “Grosse Fugue”, a movement the composer subtitled “tantôt libre, tantôt recherchée” (sometimes free, sometimes studied) – as he had done with the forms used so far in the quartet, Beethoven here stretched and distorted commonly regarded “fugal” practice in a way that defies analysis except in the most specific terms – more impactful to instead quote Igor Stravinsky’s comment that it was “absolutely contemporary music that will be contemporary forever”. As previously mentioned, its abrupt appearance surprised some of us, due to the listing of the “replacement” allegro in the printed programme as the work’s sixth movement!

Once we had recovered from the shock of that opening unison flinging its challenge upwards and outwards, we set ourselves to make the journey with the players. As was the quartet’s custom all but the ‘cellist stood to play, something which I’d always thought gave the ensemble an “edge” in readily conveying that very important gestural component of the music, and particularly so with this composer’s work. Such a choreographic rendering of the music visually emphasised parameters of movement and stasis, energy and stillness, strength and grace, all of which were components of this extraordinary piece. Rather than a distraction, I’ve always found the group’s responsive physicality “added value” in my appreciation of how they interpret the notes – and in terms of involvement and commitment they never disappoint, and certainly didn’t here.

Of course, the fugue’s revolutionary explorations, exhortations, propositions and implications made the perfect foil for the work the composer himself indicated was his ”favourite” of all his quartets, the C-sharp Minor Op.131, which we heard after the interval. Completed in 1826, it was one of a trio of works which began with the Op.132 “Heiliger Dankgesang” quartet (published out of order), and continued with Op 130 and its “Grosse Fugue” finale, before this one, Op.131, rounded off the group. Beethoven’s very last compositions were one further String Quartet (Op.135) and the aforementioned single “Allegro” movement written for Op.130.

Cast in seven movements which were individually numbered in the score but intended to be played without a break, the first movement of Op.131 was a slowly-evolving fugue described by various commentators in term such as “most melancholy”, “most moving”. “superhuman” and as having “extraordinary profundity”. The NZSQ players caught a distinctive expressive quality with their lines, individual sounds at once warm and spare, and evolving constantly like light, the upper reaches having a radiance as well as an occasional edge, the lower tones sometimes warm, sometimes grainy, refusing to “settle” on a constant state, as if delineating a process rather than a product. The mood brightened with the D-major Allegro molto vivace, the players gently “dancing” the gregarious folk-like theme  until a violin flourish announced the fourth movement, a set of variations marked Andante (ma non troppo e molto expressivo)!

The violins charmingly shared the opening theme, setting the tone of spontaneous creation as the viola joined in, the subsequent episodes appearing wind-blown at times, delivered with a wry grin and a raised eyebrow at others – the players tossed the melody about, their tones engagingly varied, ever leading the ear on, viola and cello teasingly exchanging philosophies, leading the music upwards towards the violins, who at one stage punctuated the swaying rhythms with startling pizzicato notes – but how beguiling were those upwardly gliding amalgams of thirds and solo lines whose highest note transfixed the ensemble’s attention, and brought forth repeated clusters of entranced luminosity! – receding then into chant-like murmurings as the cello grumbled its approval. It was music that beguiled our senses and transported our imaginations to realms seldom visited.

And then, as happened with the concluding moments of the titanic Grosse Fugue, the composer’s sense of fun suddenly energised the ethereal realms, even if the individual flourishes made by each instrument weren’t uniformly note-perfect in some instances – the ensuing accelerandi, and the almost fairground-like processionals brought us back in touch with terra firma via a couple of piquant landing-points. They were mere symbolic gestures, as the cello lost no time in calling us to order for the scherzo!

This had tremendous energy and drive, the ebb and flow nicely controlled without the rhythms being over-regimented – a mixture of precision and flexible spontaneity, with great, stinging pizzicato notes at the transitions, and an ear-catching dynamic variation of the penultimate statement of the main theme – almost like a sotto-voce whisper, and terribly conspiratorial-sounding! – it was almost a Monty Python “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” moment when the sequence returned at the end! The sequences were then broken up into fragments, and the momentums curtailed, the attentions suddenly turned in a new direction, by way of an Adagio quasi un poco andante! One might have thought this would blossom into  another full-blooded slow movement, but we got instead a couple of minutes of exquisitely-voiced expressions of the utmost melancholy and sorrow, something that was then as peremptorily cast aside as it was deeply-felt in sound and concentrated effort!

With the music’s return to C-sharp minor at the finale’s beginning, we were in tonal terms returned by the composer to where we came from – and the playing here vigorously and unequivocally put across the composer’s message telling us to stand steadfast and hold our own, defying our troubles and sorrows.  Not only did the finale share the key of the opening movement but its second subject presented a sterner, more assertive “next-of-kin” thematic version of the work’s opening fugal melody,. The “quick march” of the dotted rhythm shared the argument with flowing solos from the violin and viola, and sequences of running passages without any let-up in the tempo. And the players managed the music’s “resolution” towards C-sharp major at the end with a beautifully-detailed sense of inevitably that afterwards lingered in the mind all the more naturally and profoundly – as would any like kind of journey encompassing similarly vast territories…….

Nota Bene Choir – an amalgam of mystery and illumination at St. Mary of the Angels

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Nota Bene presents;
WONDER AND LIGHT  (How to get ahead of yourself while the light still shines)

Nota Bene Choir / Heather Easting (organ)
Shawn Michael Condon (music director)

BENJAMIN BRITTEN – Rejoice in the Lamb  (Festival Cantata)
words by Christopher Smart
Jenny Gould (soprano), Viriginia Earle (alto), Patrick Geddes (tenor) Peter Barber (bass)
Nota Bene Choir
Heather Easting (organ)

MORTON LAURIDSEN – Lux Aeterna
Nota Bene Choir
Heather Easting (organ)

JOONAS KOKKONEN  – Lux Aeterna  (Organ Solo)
Heather Easting (organ)

ERIC WHITACRE – Lux Aurumque (translated by Edward Esch)
Nota Bene Choir

RIHARDS DUBRA – Stetit Angelus
Nota Bene Choir

GRAHAM PARSONS  (words by Jenny Bornholdt)
Instructions For How to Get Ahead of Yourself While the Light Still Shines
Nota Bene Choir

Also, music by GRAHAM KEITCH, KATE RUSBY and ANDREW STEFFENS

St Mary of the Angels Church,
Boulcott St., Wellington

Sunday, 20th September, 2020

Surely the Church of St.Mary of the Angels in Wellington’s Boulcott St. is one of the city’s most spectacularly beautiful places in which one can make music, in addition to its acoustics being particularly suited to certain kinds of music for the human voice. In terms of sheer amplitude of sound the venue is surpassed by Wellington’s Cathedral of St.Paul, but in some music it’s at the expense of clarity at the larger church – here one seems to get the best of both worlds, along with an impressive visual manifestation of aspects of divine worship, irrespective of one’s own spiritual beliefs!

Nota Bene’s “Wonder and Light” programme, under the direction of guest conductor Shawn Michel Condon (music director of the Bach Choir of Wellington), seemed tailor-made for such an environment, being “supported” at almost every juncture of the presentation, the exceptions being items where the English-language texts needed more ambient clarity for their particular points to be conveyed “meaning-wise”. The concert organisers went as far as providing a screen at the front on which were projected Latin texts and translations where applicable, but it was the English-text items that could have done with “help” in this area – particularly those of the works by Britten and Graham Parsons. Britten’s “Rejoice in the Lamb” is sufficiently well-known for the idiosyncratic texts of poet Christopher Smart to be gleaned more-or-less satisfactorily without the help of surtitiles, but I was at a loss to make sense of a good deal of poet Jenny Bornholdt’s text for the Graham Parsons work, despite my deriving a good deal of pleasure from its title alone!

This caveat apart, I derived a good deal of pleasure from the programme, being particularly “taken” by the power and beauty of Morton Lauridsen’s “Lux Aeterna” which occupied most of the first half. Performed entirely in the choir-loft at the church’s rear, the sounds seemed to indeed come from heaven, encouraging one to suspend one’s “mortal coil” for the duration and abandon one’s senses to the music’s “soaring” quality and be suitably transported by it all – in fact, I didn’t even notice the aforementioned screen with its projected Latin words and translations until the concert’s opening item, English composer Graham Keitch’s brief but beautiful “O lux beatissima” , had nearly run its course!

Keitch’s work straightaway set the ambient tone for the concert, the opening bright and welcoming, and building to a glorious expansion of sound at the climax, Heather Easting’s brilliant organ-playing adding to the panoply of sound – I was reminded of comedian Michael Flanders’ explanation concerning his and pianist Donald Swann’s very “assertive” opening number in the pair’s “At the Drop of A Hat” revue presentation, Flanders drolly remarking that the song “helps us get the pitch of the hall!”. Morton Lauridsen’s more extended “Lux  Aeterna” which followed began less assertively with a quiet organ solo, the figurations gradually opening up the vistas for the voices, a sound characterised by resonance and warmth, bringing comfort via the gentle tones of the “Requiem”, and then resounding splendidly for “Exaudi Orationam Meam” (Hear my prayer), before coming back to earth.

The “Miserere” of the next section alternated some beautifully “floated” phrases in tandem with the organ, enlivening the discourse with the occasional angular note or phrase. The “O nata lux” (O born of light) section began with the organ, then some tender harmonies from the choir, rising in fervour at “Dignare clemens supplicum”, and even more so at “Nos membra confer effici” (We may become part). Joyous, celebratory strains filled the ambiences with “Veni Sanctus Spiritus”, a sequence which featured the voices repeatedly ascending, flinging their voices aloft in exultation. The “Agnus Dei” brought a more pensive mood became more pensive,  with each of the three supplications adding to the intensities of the previous one, the third and last adding the word “sempiternam’ to the phrase, which prompted some extended upward-thrusting expressions of redemptive desire. With the return to the words of the opening, “Requiem aeternam”, and “Lux Aeterna” the women’s voices soared over the men’s, leading to the piece’s final fervent “Alleluias”, introduced by the organ, but brought to fruition by the choir in splendid fashion, after which a quiet “Amen” sequence brought the music to a close.

Benjamin Britten’s piquantly delightful cantata “Rejoice in the Lamb” began the concert’s second half, the singers remaining in the choir loft for the work’s performance, which surprised me, as I thought the texts, written by sixteenth-century poet Christopher Smart, would require the singers to be closer to their audience for the words to properly “tell”. As it turned out, the diction and projection of all the singers, both solo and in ensemble, enabled more of the text to be heard and understood than I expected it would, apart from the most rapidly-delivered passages. Still, I thought it a pity that the words weren’t projected on the screen as were those of the Lauridsen “Lux Aeterna”.

The lovely opening, like a day’s awakening, was a kind of morning prayer, intoned by the men’s voices and accompanied with adroit timing and great whimsicality on the part of organist, Heather Easting. And while the more forthright choral passage “Let Nimrod the Mighty Hunter” was noted more for its thrust and weight than its clarity, the music’s dancing energies made a joyful, almost abandoned impression – and the succeeding “Alleluias” were so very beautiful and moving. The first vocal solo, that depicting the poet’s cat, Jeffrey, was delivered with beautiful vocal tones by soprano Jenny Gould and great dancing charm from the organ, even though the words from a distance were well-nigh unintelligible. Just as charming in a more forthright manner was the Mouse, sung by Virginia Earle with some spirit, the creature’s “personal valour” defying the cat’s murderous intentions! A tenor solo elucidated the “great blessings” of flowers, quiet and dignified, but true toned, if showing a little strain in places; and supported sonorously by the organ’s ability to “colour” its notes.

Words and music took a sudden detour into darkness for the next section, the poet’s equating his sufferings with those of his “Saviour”, and describing his own fears and terrors, the choir and organist relishing the composer’s use of sharp, angular contrasts and chiaroscuro-like settings of light against darkness. The mood gradually lightene as the last soloist, bass Peter Barber proclaimed God in all things, putting across the words with increasing elan and conviction, and succeeding in rousing voices and organ to a dancing celebration of God’s creation in rhyme and rhythm. At this point the choir, by way of a series of hushed, absolutely delicious chordings, registered that, the day being almost done, serenity and contentment were at hand – the Alleluias of the work’s first part returned, bringing with them a lump-in-the-throat-inducing feeling of empathy with and for the poet, a disturbed but intermittently happy soul.

An organ solo by Joons Kokkonen, almost epilogue-like in relation to the Britten work, built like a great “flowering” from its muted beginnings, strangely echoing the cries of “Silly fellow!” in the Britten, but with each step-like sequence, moving to a higher realm of radiance, the bass notes near the end taking on an almost Fafner-like aspect of menace and magnificence! The climax almost combatatively “clustered” the notes before the music eased into a resolution, withdrawing to a distant, muted standpoint of serene stasis – beautiful!

From the Kokkonen work’s relative severity we were taken to what appeared from its title to be a form of profound drollery, in the form of a work by Palmerston North composer Graham Parsons, “Instructions for How to Get Ahead of Yourself While the Light Still Shines”, the words by poet Jenny Bornholdt, many of which, alas, the ample acoustic annoyingly blurred (with no help forthcoming from the screen). Tracking down the poem’s words later made me regret all the more that the performance couldn’t under such circumstances elucidate them more clearly – all delightfully childlike and sagacious at one and the same time! It seemed unfair that the Latin texts of the evening’s performances were invariably supported by “the word added to flesh”, whereas the English-text works were left to keep themselves afloat as best they could without any such help…..thus it was that the Eric Whitacre work “Lux Aurumque” which followed had the words and their translations on display, readily conveying a directness of focus for the piece in a certain way, aside from the mere visceral effect on the listener of voices beautifully teasing out the sound textures, creating luminous abstractions that could be relished as such on their own.

The remainder of the programme was “lighter” fare, though every item got the sort of treatment whose sounds brought out the essential character of the music – a traditional Finnish song, “Kaipaava”, for example (one comparing the beloved to fine grass, while the “self” remains as “lowly as the earth”) had the altos beginning with the song’s minor-key melody beneath a descant from the sopranos, the men joining in the third verse, and a soprano solo adding to the colour and folksiness of the presentation. Rihards Dubra’s work “Stetit Angelus” (An angel stood near the sanctuary of the Temple) was actually more substantial than its companions, opening with a remarkably vibrant oscillating chord from the women, over the top of the men’s deeper tones, the effect  one of ecstatic swaying figures – the whole was bound together in a hymn-like chant, the women holding a single line and the men interlacing its strands – a magical evocation. “Underneath the Stars” was a song by Kate Rusby, for SATB featuring a soprano solo with an echoed accompaniment, while the concert’s final item was “Spells of Herrick” by Andrew Steffens, accompanied on the piano by Heather Easting, the first part an “Incantation”, beautifully harmonised by men’s voices at the beginning (the words a mystery!), and the second, more assertive section “Charms” expressed an effect suggested by the eponymous title!

Altogether a feast for the senses, a concert well-named in its amalgam of mystery and illumination.

Voices of Women – A New Zealand sufferage celebration by Janet Jennings

Posted on by Peter Mechen

VOICES OF WOMEN

Music by Janet Jennings
– a celebration of the successful struggle by women to gain the vote

Magnificat (soprano, violin, marimba)
A Daughter of Eve (soprano, piano)
Sit Down With Me Awhile (mezzo-soprano, piano)
Myself When Young (soprano, piano)
Voices of Women (voices, violin, marimba, piano, percussion)

Voices: Jayne Tankersley (soprano) Stephanie Acraman (soprano) Felicity Tompkins (soprano) Cartrin Johnsson (mezzo-soprano) Mere Boynton (voice)
Instrumentalists: Maia-Dean Martin (violin) Yoshiko Tsuruta (marimba) Katherine Austin (piano) Noelle Dannenbring (piano) Rachel Fuller (piano) Maria Mo (piano) Rachel Thomas (percussion)
Conductor (Voices of Women) Rachael Griffiths-Hughes

Produced by Wayne Laird for Atoll Records

ACD201
www.atoll.co.nz

Inspired by the 125th anniversary of the 1893 Electoral Act in New Zealand which gave women the right to vote in New Zealand, the first self-governing country in the world to enact such legislation, this CD collection of works by Janet Jennings was first performed as a single concert in Hamilton, at the Dr. John Gallagher Concert Chamber, University of Waikato, presumably by the same performers.

The opening work, Magnificat, brought to us ethereal visitations of sound from a solo violin, birdsong-like and wreathed in resonances from the marimba, and then joined by the more earthly but still exaltedly beautiful tones of soprano Jayne Tankersley, a human voice addressing heaven, and aspiring to a blessed state with her beautifully-floated omnes generationes. The long-breathed lines became animated at Fecit potentiam in bracio suo (He hath shewed strength with his arm) with voice and violin (the latter played by Maia Dean Martin) flexing their respective energies, after which the singing was increasingly visited with a kind of “possessed” aspect, a heightened presence, the considerations increasingly unworldly and spiritual. Added to this exultation were Yoshiko Tsuruta’s warm and energised marimba colourings at Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto, continuing right through  the “charged” radiance of the Amens.

Whether “A Daughter of Eve” was the programme’s or the composer’s name for the group of three Christina Rosetti songs, I’m not certain – but the set began with Rosetti’s heartfelt exploration of feelings associated with motherhood in “Crying, my little One”, the vocal line beautifully and heartfeltedly maintained by Stephanie Acraman, with sterling support from pianist Katherin Austin. The musicians then relished the relatively unbridled energies of the jolly, angular ditty “Winter: my Secret”, a charming series of pacts made by the poet with Nature and its different moods, the mercurial word-patternings setting enigmas against enigmas in an idiosyncratic way. The lamenting, claustrophobically coloured “Daughter of Eve suggested a loss of innocence wrought by circumstance, poor judgement and little care, day giving way to night, summer turning all too soon to winter, singer and pianist expressing the song’s despair with a deft but always sensitive touch.

New Zealand poet Ursula Bethell’s verses from a collection called “From a Garden in the Antipodes” expresed an intensely personal pride in creating something beautiful, a garden in which the poet “laboured hour on hour”. In a group called “Sit Down With Me Awhile” mezzo Catrin Johnsson and pianist Rachel Fuller delineated both anecdote and detail with a good deal of personality and character. The eponymous opening song outlined the hard work of creation and celebrated the ensuing rewards.  The process was continued with Warfare, a part war-chant and part dance, making a gardener’s peace with adversarial pests, while Ado railed against nature for outstripping the gardener’s best attentions with what the poet called “orgies”! I loved “Easter Bells”, the ambience generously resounding with vocal and instrumental ambiences – Jennings’ writing evoked a powerful sense of ritual and heartfelt faith in the process of change and renewal.

The title of the next group “Myself When Young” was not, in this case, anything to do with Edward Fitzgerald’s “Omar Khayyam” verses – but were settings of poems by Jean Alison Bartlett (1912-2006), written when the poet was 18 years old – soprano Felicity Tompkins’s brighter, more youthful, if less detailed tones energetically conveying the excitement of the poet’s work being published in “My poem was printed”, and with pianist Maria Mo’s evocative, flexible phrasings, savouring the sensuousness of a poem’s words in “Stop, Look, Listen” – beautiful evocations from singer and pianist, here – a pity the on-line text of this song “broke off” mid-way through, denying us the full impact of the words’ meanings……

Finally, there was “Voices of Women”, an extended “sprechgesang” kind of setting which articulated speeches and writings by various women from different parts of the world. Conductor Rachael Griffiths-Hughes powerfully launched the music’s Shostakovich-like opening, the ensemble’s playing (joined to splendid effect by pianist Noelle Dannenbring and percussionist Rachel Thomas) giving the scenario all the tension and “edge” needed throughout the lead-up to the anguished, repeated cries of “Is it right!”, powerfully underlining the spoken words of the first of these women, Kate Sheppard. Unfortunately, the production didn’t signify more clearly which performer was singing and speaking at any one time during the work – but after the speaker’s eloquently-delivered Kate Sheppard quote came a stirring setting of a poem by American Charlotte Perkins Gilman, from 1911 (predating American women suffrage by nine years!), the unnamed singer brilliantly and sonorously articulating the text, particularly telling at the words “That not a woman’s child – nor her own body – is her own”.

The opening music returned to herald Kate Sheppard’s announcement (a different singer) of the passing of the suffrage legislation – I thought the newsreel-like progressions of comments and events had a direct sweep and energy which made for effectively powerful and theatrical listening, the instrumental-only sequence driving the times forward to the present day and the voice of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, “speaking from Parliament” – spoken at first, rather than sung, paying homage to Kate Shepherd and Margaret Sievwright, and containing the telling words “we stand on the shoulders of giants, and they stood on the shoulders of mothers…” Fittingly, the work ended with a fully throated paean of exultant praise and celebration from the ensembled voices, and suitably sonorous underpinning by the instrumental forces – a splendidly-voiced triumph of reason and justice. Janet Jennings’ powerful work has here given ample tongue to the fruition, then and now, of that resounding triumph.

 

Beethoven’s creative “quartet-journey” superbly delineated by the NZSQ at St.John’s in the City, Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand String Quartet presents:
UNIVERSAL – Beethoven 250th Anniversary
BEETHOVEN – String Quartets :
Op. 18 No. 6 in B-flat Major(1801)
Op.95 in F Minor “Serioso” (1814)
Op.127 in E-flat Major (1825)

The New Zealand String Quartet
Helene Pohl, Monique Lapins (violins) / Gillian Ansell (viola) / Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

St.John’s in the City Presbyterian Church
Willis St., Wellington

Saturday 19th September 2020

Continuing its “tour” of Wellington venues by way of bringing to us all of Beethoven’s String Quartets during his 250th anniversary year, the New Zealand String Quartet gave the latest instalment of its traversal in the austerely beautiful Willis St. Church of St.John’s in the City. Something about the venue suited the music on this occasion even more than usual, to my mind, the refinement and directness of certain of Beethoven’s sequences mirroring the church’s relatively undecorated aspect, and other, more warm and humanly discursive episodes seeming in accord with the magnificent stained-glass biblical triptych on the rear wall of the nave facing the altar. It was a stimulating and atmospheric space in which to experience this deeply-felt and richly-wrought music, all the more so in performances by the Quartet whose commitment and execution seemed to almost intuitively penetrate to its real substance.

Today’s musical journey began with the composer having reached a kind of apex with the last of his six Op.18 quartets (though there seems to be disagreement as to whether this is in fact the sixth of the set in order of composition, some accounts claiming it to be the fifth), in B-flat Major, completed in 1800 and published the following year. Having accepted the challenge of writing quartets and thus “competing” with his idols Mozart and Haydn, the young Beethoven in the course of writing these works seemed to “re-invent himself” as a composer, having already made his mark as a performer. And in the process of doing so he sought to escape from those same influences that had at first inspired him to achieve something new – of all the Op.18 quartets this is the one that most clearly indicates a “new way forward”. Driven partly by the desperation of knowing that he was going deaf and that his days as a performer were numbered, and partly by his desire to overcome these difficulties and “conquer through music”, he produced a work which both saluted and farewelled each of his great exemplars, and strode forth into an age he was to make his own.

A jaunty country walk began the opening movement, Haydn-like in its al fresco, bucolic quality, texturally varied in its sharing of the thematic material, and dynamic in its combination of middle-voice trajectories and dovetailed linear thrusts from all the instruments. I was swept along by the performance’s initial brio, and found myself enjoying the digging-in with the players’ efforts by way of relishing the development’s major-minor alternations and lovely duetting sequences, and the occasionally madcapped moment in the otherwise “straightforward” (as the programme note commented) recapitulation – I did enjoy the players’ revisiting of the opening “laughter holding both his sides” gesture just before the movement’s end. The slow movement trod a graceful Mozartean measure at the outset, the mood of the music then abruptly sombre and Shakespearean, denoting a change in thinking, in fortune, in awareness. However, the opening’s return found the violin’s melody richly and engagingly decorated by the others, and even a brief return of the “Ghost” music was but a “blip” on the horizons, the concluding phrases farewelled with graceful pizzicati.

What a tour de force here was the syncopated scherzo, something of a great-uncle to the yet-unborn Op.135 Scherzo, the players tossing off the phrases with the utmost nonchalance, the first violin even finding all the time in the world to comment on the “chaos of delight” with an extended trill! Just as vertiginous was the Trio, the rapid scamperings interrupted by a droll minor-key version of the previous roller-coaster ride, before starting off again! – a fabulous performance!  And then the players made the most of the finale, the beginning’s serene chordings torpedoed by strident harmonies, again reminiscent of the Op.135 Quartet’s finale, the composer’s marking of the score “La Malinconia” given resonance – when suddenly there was a babbling brook of a tune gaily and garrulously skipping ahead of us and leading us on, beautifully energised, making the return to the “La Malinconia” mood all the more unexpected, and its eventual dismissal all the more hair-raising when the players at the end turned the babbling brook into a torrent, one carrying off everything in its wake!

Beethoven himself regarded the next work on today’s programme (Op.95 in F Minor) as “special”, and was even somewhat protective towards it, stating in a letter to a friend that the quartet was “for connoisseurs, and not to be played in public”. His own name for the work, “Serioso”, appears in the tempo markings for the third movement, but it could equally apply to the whole quartet – it sounds rigorous, direct, concentrated and challenging, and the NZSQ delivered its four movements as such. The work’s famous opening, not unlike the Fifth Symphony’s in effect, began a kind of “chain reaction” of outbursts, followed by considerations, and then more outbursts, a tightly-knit mini-drama with an abruptly-muted ending. The ‘cello began the second movement in stepwise fashion, the other instruments sighing over the music’s halting progress. I was drawn into the players’ realisation of a ghostly, phantom-like fugue, one which seemed to endlessly descend in MC Escher-like fashion, and continue the process until rescued and led back into the light by the violin, the players rhapsodising on the movement’s theme most beguilingly.

Out of an unresolved cadence burst the scherzo – again, a terse figure at the outset, its dotted rhythm dominating the trajectories, here given enormous thrust by the players, most engaging and involving! The instruments delivered the all-pervading figure in pairs, the violins alternating with the pair of lower strings, hurling their voices across the spaces for dramatic effect – I loved the accelerating oompah-effect whenever all four instruments drove each sequence downwards and “bounced” upwards again! In the midst of the tumult was a lullaby, the players tossing their phrases gently from one to another, the brief dream scattered by the scherzo’s reappearance!  How warily the players then began the finale, feeling their way at the outset, and sighing with mortification in a manner that suggested a full-scale lament was brewing – when suddenly the music “felt” its true purpose and drove forwards, the musicians imbuing us with a similar surge of expectation! Somewhat like a highly-charged cradle-song, the lines raced forwards, pausing for breath, only to redouble their energies with headlong scamperings that suggested an amalgam of relief and exhilaration – or was that just US feeling like that?

Rolf Gjelsten and Monique Lapins having respectively “opened up” for us something of the world of each of the first-half’s quartets earlier, Helene Pohl then similarly talked about the context of the Op.127 quartet which was to follow – a world of inward sound and light unlike anything we had heard previously. It was a work in the “heroic” key of E-flat but the “triumph” of such a gesture was interlaced with questions posed by the composer regarding the beyond and its mysteries. With this in mind we settled into the sounds from those first richly-wrought chords, as ready as we could ever be for whatever realms awaited.

We felt immediately drawn in, the sounds having a “shared” quality, emphasised by the chords’ more brightly-lit repetition, the music taking its time through sequenced passages, the players bringing out various individual lines and exchanges (I particularly enjoyed violist Gillian Ansell’s “smoky” tones in some lyrical passagework towards the movement’s end). The Adagio’s opening was scarcely breathed (compared by the writer of the excellent programme notes to the serene aspect of the Benedictus from the Missa Solemnis written a few years earlier), the playing as tender and “charged” as one could wish for, the first variation elaborating the lines as naturally as the opening-up of a sprinking of flowers in the sunlight, and the ensuing jog-trot sequence animating the impulses to delicious choreographic effect on the part of the musicians (with violinist Monique Lapins, whom I was sitting directly opposite to, particularly terpsichordean in her movements!), and not unlike Schoenberg’s cabaret-like “Die eiserne Brigade” music! – from this, the mood returned to the opening, the players’ voicings then suddenly to die for, imbuing the sounds with pure emotion! The variations continued their ebb and flow between pairs of instruments, until reaching a point where the music seems to denote the movement of time itself, or else a human heartbeat, something proclaiming the essence of our existence.

A few pizzicato “plucks” and the players were off astride the Scherzo, holding onto the music’s obsessively dotted rhythms on their discursive journeyings, light-as-feather manoeuverings alternating with robust “bouncings” – the Trio seemed here to suddenly fall out of the sky, pick itself up and join hands with all of us for a “Round Dance”, then disappear as quickly as it arrived (though making a brief reappearance at the movement’s end). A “call to arms” brought the finale’s flowing gait into play, a busy, chatty tune that contrasted markedly with the second theme, strong and abrupt and brooking no nonsense! The “working out” used all of these elements, a coming-together which quartet leader Helene Pohl had earlier characterised as a kind of “party”! – but what a gorgeous effect the musicians created with their deliciously “swooning” lead-in to this, the work’s “epilogue”, a grand, almost ceremonial, summation of what had gone before, concluded with suitably majestic chordings!

Berlioz wrote in 1830 on hearing a rehearsal of this quartet in Paris, “God willed that there should be a man as great as Beethoven, and that we should be allowed to contemplate him” – to which sentiments one here today could add that of gratitude to the New Zealand String Quartet for bringing to us such vibrant performances of his works!

 

 

 

Wellington entrants shape up for the National Junior Piano Competition Finals

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Koki New Zealand School of Music presents
THREE NATIONAL JUNIOR PIANO COMPETITION FINALISTS 2020

Otis Prescott-Mason (St.Patrick’s College Town, Wellington)
LISZT – Sonetto 104 del Petrarcha / JACK BODY – No.5 from Five Melodies / BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata No.28 in A Major Op.101 (Ist.Mvt.) / PROKOFIEV – Piano Sonata No. 3 in A Minor

Ning Chin (Wellington College)
JENNY McLEOD – Tone Clock Piece No. 1 / JS BACH – Prelude from Partita No. 5 in G major / SHOSTAKOVICH – Preludes Op.34 Nos 2, 3 / MOZART – Piano Sonata in B flat Major K.333 (Ist Mvt.) / Schumann – “Abegg” Variations Op.1

William Berry (Hutt Valley High School)
CHOPIN – Scherzo in C-sharp Minor Op.39 / BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata in F-sharp Minor Op.78 (2nd Mvt.) / WILLIAM BERRY – Spring Prelude / CARL VINE – Piano Sonata No.1 (2nd Mvt.)

Adam Concert Room,
Te Koki New Zealand School of Music,
Victoria University of Wellington

Thursday, 17th September, 2020

New Zealand School of Music Head of Piano Studies in Wellington Dr. Jian Liu organised this recital for the above three Wellington pianists, all of whom are finalists in next month’s 2020 NZ Junior Piano Competition in Auckland, as a means of giving them a little extra “fine-tuning” concert performance experience. All three replicated a 20-minute recital programme of their own choice, including examples from at least three musical periods, as stipulated by the competition for performance in the final.

Music competitions come in for a lot of criticism for a number of reasons –  it’s undeniable that, at the end of the “process” through which each of these performers are going to pass , there is going to emerge a “winner”, an essential by-product of competitions, as are the numbers of competitors left who don’t “win”! There’s therefore pressure  to “perform” at these events in an out-of-the-ordinary way, which can adversely affect the quality of music-making in some instances. The subjectivity of a judge’s or several judges’ decision can also seem a cruel and random way of evaluating music performance (as, of course, can reviews written by critics!). However, many successful performers in such events are those who are able to forget about the competitive aspect and “be themselves” and seek to communicate the music’s power and beauty rather than consciously “impress” listeners and judges.

I was impressed on the latter count by the playing I heard tonight from all three pianists, all of whom at different times seemed to immerse themselves totally in their music. Subjective a reaction though it is to an extent, I feel there’s a kind of “force” at work which is generated of itself at moments when composer, music and performer seem to the listener to “meet” in a transcendental fusion of vision, impulse and effect. They’re moments which a late and much-lamented music-lover friend of mine would say “one lives for” – and thanks to the sensibilities and skills of each of these young players this evening, I experienced a number of treasurable moments such as these.

Indeed, from the first rising impulses of intent at the beginning of Liszt’s Sonetto 104 del Petrarca, as played by Otis Prescott-Mason, I felt transported by the sounds to the world of the composer’s poetic inspiration, the music beginning life as a song, a setting of one of Francesco Petrarch’s sonnets to a beloved, conceived as such by Liszt when holidaying in Italy with Marie, Countess d’Agoult, but transcribed later as a piano solo as part of the Second Book of the composer’s Annees de Pelerinage. After the initial upward flourish, the music was bardic at the song’s outset, but became more and more impassioned, with mood-swings alternating between tenderness and anguish, as per the words of the poem. These moments were all, by turns, poetically and impulsively shaped by Prescott-Mason – though I wanted him to hold his breath for the merest milli-second around the delivery of the highest of the pairs of notes during the epilogue – the poet (and composer) identifying in that moment of frisson just who it was that had caused so much delight and grief!

Jack Body’s piece (No.5 from “Five melodies”) exerted its accustomed hypnotic spell, the notes seeming to “happen” rather than being played,  the pianist enabling and then going with the music’s spontaneous flow. After this, Prescott-Mason brought the opening of Beethoven’s A Major Op.101 Sonata into being as if it were an enthralling “ritual of early morning” the textures delicate and freshly-awakened, with each phrase nicely engendering the next one, and the dreamy syncopations magically floated all about us. As with the other items he played, the music’s dynamism unfolded from within itself so that nothing sounded forced or over-modulated. Only the opening of the Prokofiev Third Sonata’s performance lacked that last bit of surety for me, the opening needing to be crisper, the rhythms a bit less clouded – however, the rest was vividly characterised, a lovely wistfulness in the second section. a Janus-faced eeriness/grotesquerie in the third “episode”, and the impishness brilliance of the finale, all glowed and sparkled under Prescott-Mason’s fingers.

Ning Chin, the second pianist, began his recital with a Tone-Clock Piece by Jenny McLeod, the first of the set (and, incidentally, a tribute-piece to fellow-composer David Farquhar, for his sixtieth birthday!) – the music Ravel-like in its crystalline clarity and gentle melancholy, the phrases seeming to pair up to answer, or “round off” any questioning or unfinished statements. A great piece of programming followed, the bracketing of music by JS Bach and Dmitri Shostakovich – Shostakovich, of course, wrote a couple of sets of keyboard preludes, Op.34 and Op.87 (the latter with fugues a la JS Bach), Chin playing Nos 2 and 5 from the Op, 34 set. I couldn’t help feeling how “modern” Bach was made to sound in retrospect once I’d heard the Shostakovich pieces, the first an elaborately decorated waltz-tune, and the second a droll left-hand melody ducking for cover beneath whirling right hand figurations. Chin’s sparkling fingers made for beautifully-wrought passagework in all instances.

Chin’s next piece was the first movement of Mozart’s B-flat Major Sonata K.333, given here in a straightforward manner (“It should flow like oil” said the composer) which gradually “warmed” over time, though the repeat didn’t seem to change its expression very much, the minor-key episode calling, I think, for just a wee bit of “sturm und drang” feeling – a bit more “relishing” of the music and its more palpable features, such as the flourishes and occasional spread chords –  to be fair, I thought more of a sense of the music’s “fun” began to appear towards the movement’s end.

I thought the Schumann “Abegg” Variations teased out the best playing from Chin – dynamics were interestingly and convincingly varied throughout the opening, and the pianist demonstrated a real “ring” in his tone that helped the second piece sparkle. Brilliant playing also marked the running-figure waltz variation, not without the occasional slip, but with such things merely adding to the excitement. I liked the “arch” gesturings, both musical and physical, of the next variation, which contrasted with the following sequence’s deftly nimble fingerwork, and the throwaway impudence of the finale – not a note-perfect performance but a characterful one!

William Berry was the third and final performer, his playing of the terse, uncompromisingly abrupt utterances  opening Chopin’s third (Op.39 in C-sharp Minor) and most enigmatic of his four Scherzi instantly grabbing our attention, before we were plunged into the presto con fuoco agitations of the opening theme, the playing suggesting its wildness and incredibly Lisztian surge before relaxing into the gentle grandeur of the E major chorale, with its accompanying filigree arpeggiations. Interestingly, I felt the pianist “grew” the filigree decorations from out of the chorale more organically when in the minor key, giving them more space in which to “sound” as if resonating in sympathy. Afterwards, he oversaw a most resplendent building up of the big chorale theme before breaking off with some astoundingly-wrought whirlwind-like agitations carrying us to the wild defiance of the final crashing chords.

Next was Beethoven’s richly enigmatic finale to the two-movement Op.78 F-sharp major Sonata, a transition from the Chopin which took our sensibilities a while to adjust to – I wondered whether Berry would-have been better served by the music to have begun his presentation with this work, both playing-in his fingers and “energising” his audience sufficiently for the Chopin piece’s coruscations to then have their full effect…….to my ears, and perhaps in the wake of the Chopin’s high-energy afterglow, he rushed the playful drolleries of Beethoven’s toying with the major/minor sequences and missed some of the humour. Still, enough of the glorious incongruities and resolutions of the dialogues which brought so much delight in this piece was caught, here – and delight, too, was to be had from Berry’s own brief but vividly expressed “Spring Prelude”, which depicted in lush Romantic terms a kind of awakening and a burgeoning of seasonal delight.

Knowing the composer of the final piece’s name but not his music, I was intrigued by Berry’s choice of a movement from a Piano Sonata by Australian Carl Vine to finish his recital – this was the second movement, marked as “Leggiero e legato”, of Vine’s two-movement Piano Sonata No. 1.  Composed in 1990 for the Sydney Dance Company (ballet rehearsal pianists beware!!) the work has since achieved full stand-alone concert-hall status, its dedicatee, Michael Kieran Harvey performing and recording the work to great acclaim, one review of his performance remarking of the work “eighteen minutes of piano dazzlement combined with a profound melodic sense”.

Berry certainly had the requisite energies and pianistic agilities to tackle this torrent-like music – beginning with a molto perpetuo, the racing energies eventually gave way to a chorale-like section, a somewhat plaintive “can we come out, now?” sequence of “eye of a hurricane” tranquilities, a suspended calm which then engendered its own burgeoning detailings to the point where the music sprang into angular declamation, then motoric action once again – one had to admire Berry’s stamina and clear-sightedness amid the plethora of pianistic incident, augmented by portentous bass rumblings, with Herculean upward thrusting gestures giving their all, and then surrendering to silence with a wraith-like final gesture. After Berry’s stunning performance I was reminded of a review I once read of one of pianist Anton Rubinstein’s American recitals given somewhere in the Mid-West, the climax of the evening’s music-making summed up by the reviewer, writing in the vernacular: ‘ “I knowed no more that evening”……..

What more can one say, but to wish these three gifted young pianists all the best in the oncoming competition……..

New Zealand String Quartet’s second Beethoven 250th Anniversary concert

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand String Quartet presents:
BEETHOVEN 2020 – NZSQ National Tour
Programme Two –  INNOVATOR

String Quartets – Op.18 No. 2, in G Major (1801)
Op. 74 in E-flat Major “Harp” (1809)
Op.59 No.2, in E Minor “Razumovsky” (1808)

New Zealand String Quartet –
Helene Pohl, Monique Lapins (violins), Gillian Ansell (viola), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

Seatoun Village Hall and St.Christopher’s Church, Wellington

Sunday, 13th September, 2020

Though it doesn’t seem to me all that long ago that the NZSQ (well, THREE of the members of the present quartet!) were previously “wowing” us with their brilliant, uniquely engaging interpretations of Beethoven’s most significant and searching set of works, I suddenly felt, amidst the frisson of excitement and intoxication which rippled through the audience at Seatoun’s St.Christopher’s Church during Sunday’s concert, as if we had all actually been covertly harbouring a desperate need for a fresh “Beethoven update” from these players! – and, of course, what better occasion than a 250th birthday year for the composer in question in which to undertake (and celebrate!) such a renewal?

These works are, of course, iconic representations of a whole genre of music, and as such well-known to audiences everywhere – but as with the NZSQ’s previous traversal of the same music (far longer ago, incidentally, than I’d remembered), it seemed as if we were here being invited by the players to “reimagine” these sound-worlds as pertaining to the “here and now”, just as one would respond to an old friend whose by-now familiar aspects, expressions and attitudes had vigorously and healthily moved with the times! So the immediacy of contact established at the concert’s outset allowed these familiarities to lead us directly towards a freshly-minted process of rediscovery, one of the ensemble’s by-now established trademarks,.

The quartet’s strategy in grouping certain individual works together over the concert series seems to be one of thoughtfully illustrating stages in the composer’s creative process which suggest awareness, discovery and fruition. While I’m not one for being drawn to music events on the strength of their often adopting as pulicity glib (and in some cases ridiculously banal) “titles” – the recent labelling of conductor Gemma New’s NZSO concert as “Passion” I thought a particularly vacuous example of “event-speak”, for instance! – I could easily cope with the Quartet’s somewhat more apposite use of the title “Innovator” for this particular trio of works, given that, in most cases with Beethoven, his works were almost constantly breaking new ground, with even his “throwback” works such as the Eighth Symphony, the Op.110 Piano Sonata and the Op.135 String Quartet pouring new life into older forms.

Fortunately, with this group any such business is soon relegated to relative insignificance when set against the actual concert experience – one of the joys of encountering these musicians thus is listening to their freshly-conceived and invariably thoughtful remarks concerning the music they’re about to play – in this case, Helene Pohl, Rolf Gjelsten and Monique Lapins in turn gave us a number of at once spontaneous-sounding and penetrating insights into the music and its context in the composer’s life at the time of each separate work’s creation – I liked also their “personalising” in each case of the effect of actually performing the works, giving us a somewhat more visceral account of what coming to grips with this music actually meant for the performer – it couldn’t help but enhance our own involvement no end in the music-making!

First up was Beethoven’s Op.18 No.2 in G Major, one of a set of six quartets  published in 1801, but whose composition dates are at variance with the opus numberings – so this G major work was actually the third to be composed. The set was commissioned by the Bohemian Prince Lobkowitz, who became the dedicatee (it was at Lobkowitz’s palace that the “Eroica” Symphony, also dedicated to him, received its first performance, the Prince subsequently becoming a patron of the composer in the form of a pension paid up to Beethoven’s death). Helene Pohl in her introduction emphasised the composer’s awareness of his hearing’s deterioration at the time of writing these works, and of the devastation it would have caused him (as reflected in letters to his friend, Karl Amenda, such as one dated July 1st – “….For two years I have avoided almost all social gatherings because it is impossible for me to say to people “I am deaf!”…..if I belonged to any other profession it would be easier, but in my profession it is a frightful state…..”

No such angst seemed to trouble the music at first, the quartet’s playing of the work’s opening rather like an involuntary sigh, leading to an awakening and a sequence of fully fledged stretches in the impulse’s direction. It was a “now, the day can begin” kind of ritual, leading to a poised, almost courtly second subject whose barely contained sense of fun bubbled up and over with the first violin’s mischievously off-the -beat repeated note-soundings, rounded off by a “well, that’s that!” D major phrase – except that, after the opening’s repeat, that same rounding-off phrase was then reiterated in the minor, and we soon found ourselves in the company of what seemed like a ghostly conglomeration, a world of eerily floated thoughts wondering how it was that everything had gotten so gloomy! And then, what a splendidly assertive arousal it was, from “cello and viola, urging a whole-hearted return to the opening theme, the “sigh” now a full-blooded statement of resolve, and the stirring commitment to the cause unassailable, the occasional minor-key hesitation aside – came the movement’s coda, however, and to our surprise ‘cello and viola were suddenly sounding a sober note of circumspection, hearkening back to those earlier spectral lines, the movement thus concluding “not with a bang, but with a whimper”…..

Had one but world enough and time, of course, one could relive the variegated pleasures of the entire concert thus, except that this is a mere review, not a performance! But such was the focus and concentration of these players, their music-making readily gave rise to thoughts and feelings which one found oneself throwing down on note-paper in frenzied, scarcely intelligible form, carried away with the up-front engagement of it all! The above account I hope gives some idea of the degree to which the musicians were able to make Beethoven’s music speak throughout the entire concert, their words being a mere adjunct to the business of investing the notes with life. The slow movement’s hymn-like opening allowed the first violin to decorate its line over sonorous supporting voicings, the phrasings beautifully terraced, as if preparing for the most soulful of dissertations – how disconcerting to suddenly have a kind of “party” breaking out, a garrulous affair with all voices having their say! Just as peremptorily the solemn mood was returned, the violin’s decorations this time echoed (almost “ghosted”) by the ‘cello, to richly-wrought effect. The sprightly Haydnesque Menuetto cast no shadows, either with its leaping opening figure (tossed about with great abandonment by the players) or its deceptively artless-sounding Trio, whose rising four-note motif gave rise to all kinds of adornments  from all the instruments; while the finale, set in motion by the ‘cello, allowed only one or two brief moments, by turns introspective and dark-browed, to cloud the music’s high spirits, the players carrying all before them with truly infectious energies.

Of course, both of the quartets remaining in the concert were conceived very much under the “cloud” of Beethoven’s by then obviously failing hearing, though Rolf Gjelsten in his spoken introduction to the first-played of these, the “Harp” Quartet No.10 in E-flat Major, Op.74, outlined for us some of the outside events, favourable and otherwise, which also played their part in “colouring” the composer’s world at the time. He invited us to imagine for ourselves the potential effect of these happenings  – to name but two highly-contrasted ones, the granting of an annuity to the composer for life by a group of Viennese nobles, and the war between France and Austria (Beethoven’s well-known “Les Adieux” Piano Sonata, also in A-flat, dated from the same time as his “Harp” Quartet, and shared some of the same characteristics).

Nicknamed “Harp” (by Beethoven’s publisher) because of the quartet’s frequent use of pizzicato in the first movement, the work with its opening “yearning” quality was beautifully articulated from the outset by the players, riding the top of a crescendo into the confidently stated three-note motif which the famous pizzicato notes replicated with great vigour, both here, and more elaborately in the later development sequence. I loved how the exhilarating “tow” of the first violin’s incredibly gutsy running figurations carried us irresistibly along to the “motto” theme’s statement which so dominated this movement. The Serenade-like second movement generated plenty of rapt concentration, with the violin at one point rivalling the viola in deep-throated expressiveness, though reclaiming its lighter voice before the movement’s end. But, after this, what an almost frightening contrast the scherzo’s opening made! And with what relentless drive did the musicians plunge into both the repeat of the opening and the “whirling dervish “ Trio! Such vertiginous energy! But then, I was riveted by those scalp-prickling, spectral tones the players took on over the final stretches of the ride, holding us in thrall! – at the end of it by rights the abyss should have been waiting to receive us all! – simply astonishing!

Of course, the said abyss was an illusion,  the spectral aspect gradually receding into the strains of a deceptively innocuous-sounding set of variations,  among them a lovely solo from the viola played cheek-by jowl with rumbustious “jolly hockey-sticks” enthusiasm by the ensemble, the music continuing to alternate similarly contrasting moods to the point where a precipitous slide became a mini-stampede of tumbling old-fashioned excitement, with its satisfied honour upheld by two quietly concluding chords!

We “used well the Interval”, digesting what we had heard, and discussing our thoughts with our “distanced” neighbours, by way of preparing for the concert’s final work, the Op.59 No. 2 Quartet in E Minor, here introduced by Monique Lapins, who re-emphasised the on-going impact upon Beethoven’s life and work of his hearing loss, and his determination (expressed by the earlier Heiligenstadt Testament, written to his brothers but discovered only after the composer’s death in 1828) to fulfil all that he felt called upon to produce. She drew parallels between the music for the “Eroica” Symphony (with its famous opening chords) and similar gestures (minor-key versions) in the quartet, and then got her fellow-players to illustrate the “Russian theme” given to Beethoven by Count Razumovsky and used by the composer in the work’s Allegretto movement (a theme which also occurs in Musorgsky’s opera “Boris Godunov”).

Thus primed, we were plunged into the maelstrom of trenchant attack, fiery exchange and brooding resonance of the E Minor Quartet’s first movement, the drama of confrontation and conflict all too palpable, the music driven excitingly, almost scarily fiercely by the players, the occasional repetitions of the searing opening chords holding us in thrall, and the dynamic vortex-like passages  drawing us into what seemed like the clamour of creation amidst burgeoning fire and tumult! The second movement’s long-breathed utterances, long-equated with Carl Czerny’s assertion  that Beethoven was evoking “the music of the spheres” in this music, felt to me in this performance to speak of ageless things, akin to a child’s feelings towards people and places that seemed “forever”, punctuated by specific fascinations whose essence was “felt” rather than comprehended – the violin’s ascending sequences, for example, or the ensemble’s two extraordinary chordal utterances, both breathcatching moments…..

But what can one say about the two final acts of the drama that the music itself doesn’t render superfluous? – and especially when delivered  in performance as “organically” as here, by these players! – after the almost Schumannesque insistence of the Allegretto’s determined “dancing with a crutch” aspect, I found the playful festivity of the “Russian” tune a welcome infusion of colour and variety, if almost tipping over into clangour In places! And (we were warned beforehand, but didn’t care!) the tensions built up by the finale’s driving dotted rhythms didn’t let up for a moment, the musicians’ surge of energy at the coda bringing our hearts into our mouths at the abandonment of it all! If music-making was about anything, we felt we understood and relished something of what it was, at that moment! Bravo, NZSQ!