Author: Peter Mechen

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!

 

 

 

 

 

Four-handed piano delights from Sunny Cheng and Kris Zuelicke at the NZSM’s Adam Concert Room in Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Koki NZ School of Music presents:
Sunny Cheng and Kris Zuelicke – Piano Duo

MOZART – Fugue for Piano, four hands K.401
DAVID HAMILTON – Five New Zealand Characters
SCHUBERT – Grand Rondo in A Major D.951
POULENC – Sonata for Four Hands
MENDELSSOHN – Andante and Allegro brilliant Op.92

Lunchtime Concert
Adam Concert Room, NZSM Kelburn Campus
Victoria University of Wellington

Friday 11th September 2020

I didn’t leave home early enough to find a park, or be able to walk to the concert venue in time for the first item’s beginning – so I came in with the first item still in midstream, actually waiting outside the door, so as not to disturb the music’s flow or the listeners’ concentration. I could hear it all reasonably clearly, and was soon caught up in the intricacies of what was left of the music. This fugue was originally composed and played by Mozart as a solo piece, a commentator at the time noting that  the composer “played this piece with no help, while others could manage it only via a four-hand execution”. There’s been a suggestion that the work was devised for a “modified keyboard instrument with pedals like an organ” – Mozart’s father made reference to Wolfgang owning one of these instruments in a letter to his daughter Nannerl – “he has had a big pedal-fortepiano made which stands under the grand piano, is three spans longer, and surprisingly heavy!”

Having settled myself in after the Mozart had finished, I was ready for David Hamilton’s “Five New Zealand Characters”, which was next on the programme – they turned out to be pieces the composer had written for two children of friends he had stayed with in the UK some years ago – Hamilton comments in a note accompanying the music that the pieces “are written with an easier primo part, but both parts contain some challenge especially in the rhythms”. The pieces’ titles refer to various birds and animals “which have a special place in the biosphere of New Zealand”.

Because of the intricacies of trying to find a seat I missed hearing clearly the spoken announcement introducing the five sections of the work, and so wasn’t sure of the order the pianists had adopted – I discovered later from the SOUNZ website that opening the set was “The Sleepy Tuatara”, the music consisting of a lyrical, repeating figure sounded over a chordal, hymn-like melody, with ear-catching dynamic variations, and a swopping to the treble of the melody over a bass ostinato for the second part. The piece’s title seemed to fit the music, but I was worried regarding the second piece’s title in view of its music –  a chirpy staccato mood with angular hopping set against running figures, quirky harmonies and textural changes – were these really “Pekapeka – long-tailed bats”? And “The Little Spotted Kiwi” was a wistful figure seeming to inhabit vistas reminding one of Monet’s water-lilies, an all-pervading 3-note figure sounding over a murmuring, watery bass.

The two remaining were less problematical – I loved the music for “The Fantail (Piwakawaka)”, a playful romp of a piece, with running figures answered with a cheeky chirp! – and the swaggering cake-walk-like rhythms of the last piece fitted the picture of  “The Yellow-Eyed Penguin (Hoiho)” like a glove!

Worshipping the Schubert four-handed pieces for piano as I do, I confess to being slightly disappointed with Cheng’s and Zuelicke’s performance of the Grand Rondo in A Major D 951  I thought their pacing of the work was nicely judged, but found much of it too dynamically unvaried  – I wondered whether a bright-sounding instrument and a forward, lively acoustic in the Adam Concert Room was something players new to the venue perhaps needed to be wary of. But, right from the very beginning, where I wanted the music to “steal in” more winningly, I felt the tones seemed too forward, too “beefy” in places, and, of course, left the more forthright episodes little room in which to really expand and make their point via contrast. Just occasionally the players did drop their tonal levels, but not for long enough – the music didn’t maintain the more inward character the playing all-too-briefly suggested. The change of accompanying figuration to triplet figures would have been an appropriate place to intensify the tones and build to an “opening up” of the dynamics, but by then my ear had been over-sated and I was wanting some relief – it was as if the composer had been talking to me in a somewhat mezza-forte voice the whole time, and I was craving something different. They played as if performing in a much larger hall, and for some reason feeling a need to reach out to its extremities – a manner of presentation not needed in this venue!

Fortunately, both the Poulenc and the Mendelssohn items that remained gave a lot of pleasure by dint of the players’ responsiveness to the music’s “character”. I enjoyed the motoric “charge” of the Poulenc Sonata ’s opening, a mood that changed to wistful wandering for a while before the opening “clattered” back again, only to be abruptly “kicked downstairs” for its pains!

The second movement’s ostinato-like figurations alternated charming sequences with acerbic gestures, the playing’s tonal variation of a range that the Schubert item should have had; while the last movement playfully tossed figures between the hands, before building up a growling, insistent bass to near orchestral splendour – Poulenc’s melodies had such insouciance, such a simple, casual manner, with a ‘kind of “nudge-wink” ending proclaiming “That’s all, folks!” Most engaging!

I thought the Mendelssohn work “Andante and Allegro Brilliant” got the concert’s best playing from the pair, the playing romantically full-throated at the work’s beginning, with plenty of light and shade and rhythmic pliancy of phrasing, all of which gave the onset of the Allegro a sparkling energy which conveyed rippling fun and enjoyment, including some great swirling bass figurations! A more lyrical, gently swaying episode mid-movement captured a trio-like contrasting relaxation, the minor-key moments conveying a real sense of the music’s melancholy – some additional swirling arpeggiations  brought back the lyrical “trio” section in a heart-easing way, Cheng and Zuelicke pulling out the pianistic throttle with a Lisztian deluge of running figures that together brought the music home – a whirlwind triplet-driven coda left us breathless and satisfied at the end – great stuff!

 

Intensity, conflict, and resolve from the Aroha Quartet and oboist Robert Orr at Lower Hutt

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music Hutt Valley presents:
The Aroha String Quartet and Robert Orr (oboe)

Aroha String Quartet: Haihong Liu, Konstanze Artmann (violins)
Zhongxian Jin (viola) / Robert Ibell (‘cello)

BRITTEN – Phantasy Quartet for oboe and string trio
BEETHOVEN – String Quartet in F Major Op.59 No. 1 “Rasumovsky”
ALEX TAYLOR – Refrain for String Quartet
BLISS – Quintet for oboe and string quartet Op.21

St.Mark’s Church, Woburn Road, Lower Hutt

Tuesday 8th September 2020

I thought this concert featured a most enterprising programme, a combination of familiar and relatively unfamiliar music, with works for oboe and strings framing two strings-only pieces, providing continual interest and variety for listeners. With each of the concert’s “halves” featuring a shorter, followed by a longer piece, the presentation had an unforced ease of both delivery and reception, the ensemble’s efforts warmly acclaimed at the concert’s end.

Beginning the evening’s music was a remarkably precocious work by the nineteen year-old Benjamin Britten , a Phantasy Quartet for oboe and string trio, the title referring to a genre dating back to Elizabethan and Jacobean times of instrumental music whose single-movement form was “free”, varied and spontaneous in effect. One analysis of the music I read was that which described the piece as “a sonata movement with a slow section inserted between the development and recapitulation sections”. Britten’s very individual way with his compositions seemed to have confused rather than impressed his Royal College professors, and only one of his pieces was given a performance by the College during his three years as a student there, with a number of his works (this Quartet included) getting performances in London independent of the College’s influence.

The Phantasy Quartet was first performed by Leon Goossens, the leading English oboist of the period, in 1933 with members of the grandly-named International String Quartet in a BBC broadcast, the work then being repeated in concert in London by the same players later in the year. Its symmetrical construction features marching sections beginning and ending the piece, the oboe singing over the marching rhythms. The work’s themes are then given quicker treatment similar to a development before a central, lyrical section for strings alone arrives. After the oboe re-enters, the music “mirrors” the opening, with a return to the quicker exposition, and then to the opening slow march.

I enjoyed the freedom and exuberance brought to the work by the Aroha players and oboist Robert Orr, here, the march rhythms by turns strongly and variedly etched by the strings, and  the oboe intoning its song with the freedom of a bird’s flight; and the quicker expositions becoming more argumentative and combatative. The slower strings-only section slowly transforms a gently-swaying manner into surgings of strongly-expressed feeling, one which the oboe again floats over at first as before, then helps to crank up the energies briefly. The return of the marching rhythms of the opening delights the oboe even more, soaring like a bird rising up to meet its mate mid-flight, then becoming as one in song, one whose resonances gradually recede as the march-rhythms of the strings stutter into a richly-wrought silence!

Next was the well-known Op.59 No.1 “Rasumovsky” Quartet of Beethoven’s, here, to my ears, given an almost disembodied kind of texture by the Quartet players at the outset, whose effect I found hauntingly attractive  – I admit I was sitting towards the back of the auditorium, and not in my accustomed listening-place nearer to the players, which would account for some of the more “distanced” kind of ambience. But it was more than that – I thought the playing had a “liquidity” which tended to smooth over the usually-encountered angularities of some of the writing – it made for some exquisite sounds, and extraordinarily deft pairings of voices, as in the antiphonal exchanges near the exposition’s end, those “refracted” chords which I imagine are the aural equivalent of a revolving mirror, bringing images into unexpected proximity and letting them go just as easily. The quartet also got a lovely ‘layered” effect during the development in letting the motive “descend” through the textures, with detail sometimes merely “brushed “ in, all very spontaneous in its realisation, which was a hallmark of the performance as a whole.

The “drum-tapping” beginning of the Allegretto drew our attentions into the musical argument, the phrases deftly tossed between the instruments at first before excitingly progressing towards a full-blooded announcement of the melody – it all made a colourful contrast with the poignancy of the minor-key melody that followed, a melody that the composer wove back into the opening rhythms of the movement, creating incredible expectations and wonderments as to where the music was next going to go, playing with both harmonies and trajectories in masterly fashion. The recapitulation of the opening melody’s most engagingly “grunty” form was a great moment here, as was the continued integration of the yearning melody in the music’s flowing sweep – the players seemed to have tapped into some kind of inexhaustible energy-source, giving the music all that it needed up to the drollery of the movement’s ending.

Such noble, dignified sadness was expressed by the slow movement’s opening paragraph, the cello’s first traversal of the theme capturing for me the very soul of the music, but matched in reply by the violin’s comparable eloquence with the second subject. I thought all the players responded wholeheartedly to the music’s “nowhere to hide” quality of candour, with voicings that readily conveyed the deep emotion of the composer’s well of sorrow – out of it all suddenly bubbled the first violin’s mini-cadenza leading to the cello’s forthright, striding into a new world of “taking arms against a sea of troubles”, and bidding all follow the lead, alike through jaggedly syncopated thickets and rolling, tumbling terrain, the mellifluous liquidity of the work’s opening left far behind by the players as they tackled what seemed like “the real stuff” here, a white-heat of intensity, as much spirit as substance dancing about the instruments and pushing the players to their limits at the end – inspiring work from all concerned!

A break, and the music was run again, this time with a New Zealand work I had heard before (and reviewed), in 2015, coincidentally, also played then by the Aroha Quartet, though with a different second violinist,  Alex Taylor’s Refrain for String Quartet –  https://middle-c.org/2015/10/aroha-quartet-with-sounz-and-rnz-concert-does-local-composers-proud –   ‘Cellist Robert Ibell introduced the piece, getting the quartet players to play the “refrain” for us (a beautiful choral-like piece), and then talking about the composer’s used of a compositional technique called “shadowing” (the players demonstrating this as well), a line followed by another in close succession, almost like a echo effect, or a visual shadow. The actual piece itself began violently, in “tantrum” mode at first, before the first “refrain” or a chorale-like passage interrupted the agitations, the music’s extremes delineating the states of mind wrought by what the composer described as “social paralysis”, a chaos of confusion reverberating between action and inaction. The “shadowing” demonstrated by the players seemed to represent efforts at articulation, the result being an impulse-filled soundscape, in places chaotic, in others strangely haunting and vibrant in effect. The beauty of the “refrains” to my mind served to underline the dysfunctional ambience in which they existed and/or grew into or from, moments of lucidity marked by stillness and loneliness in which one could hear one’s own voice coming back at one, the shadowings underlining the futility of attempts at communication, everything Imagined rather than real and by extrapolation leaving us all in the same boat! Those equivocal feelings at the piece’s end which I commented on in my previous review here came back as confused as before regarding the “imprecise” nature of human interaction.

Finally we heard a work by Sir Arthur Bliss – I don’t believe in depriving musicians thus decorated of their honours, as seems to be the current custom – as WS Gilbert remarked: “If everybody’s somebody, then no-one’s anybody!”. His music I’ve never seriously “gotten into” – so it was a rare treat to encounter a work by the composer via such a committed performance as this one. Bliss’s Oboe Quintet, written in 1927, was commissioned by the American philanthropist and patron of the arts, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge for a festival of music in Venice, where it was premiered by the same player, Leon Goossens, as was Britten’s work which we heard earlier in this concert. Though English, and influenced by the folk-song revival which gave English music such increased impetus in the early part of the twentieth Century, Bliss’s early work was thought of as avant garde by the critics – there were pastoral influences, but frequently unconventional, and at times experimental and exotic touches, the fruit of early dalliances with Stravinsky and the music of Les Six. Later his music moved towards a more richly conventional idiom, found in works like his Colour Symphony and choral work Morning Heroes.

The Oboe Quintet has become one of Bliss’s most-played and recorded works, written at a time when the composer was reconciling his contemporary interests with the sheer depth of his English heritage. I thought the mix brought out a certain restless quality, as if a number of creative elements were bent on “holding their own” in the music’s sonicscape. The work’s “sighing” opening, beautifully essayed by the violins plaintively invited the other strings to join in, the oboe songfully opening up the vistas further – a gentle dance ensued, the oboe maintaining its song while the strings gradually and deftly energised the accompaniment with nimble bow-bouncings and more trenchant accentings, their lines ascending, and delivering Holst-like astringencies – a “hurt” quality emerged from it all most effectively, the quietly melancholic song left to the oboe to resound at the end, like a bird crying out.

What a rich and sonorous melody from the oboe at the start of the Andante con moto slow movement! -so much so that the violins have to repeat some of it, reluctant to let it go! Throughout the movement’s first part there’s such a “lonely” quality of utterance,  sometimes led by the oboe and then the textures sometimes strings-only and (in one particular place) Borodin-like. Then, suddenly, a folkish irruption of energy enlivens the music so gorgeously, the music very physically propelled by the strings beneath the oboe’s melody – blood-pumping stuff! But soon, the lonely, melancholic mood returns with the oboe’s “solitary shepherd’s” song, and only dreams for company.

And as for  the finale’s throwing down the gauntlet, with those uncompromisingly fraught chromatic fanfares right at the start, well, something obviously needed to be said and got out quick (“and not remembered, even in sleep!”), so steadfastedly did the music “play its way through” whatever anxieties the composer had conjured from out of his subconscious. The players here demonstrated tons of energy and spirit in doing so, though, and everybody made a splendid fist of the appearance of the Irish folk-tune Connolly’s Jig, which certainly did its best to clear the air! – and a right royal battle its cheerfulness waged with the music’s darker elements, too! I thought the playing was fantastic in its focused energies, and the brilliance of Robert Orr’s florid figurations at the piece’s end was jaw-dropping! What a great companion-piece this was for the Britten work at the concert’s beginning, and how resounding a success the concert was in its entirety!

 

 

A memorable debut by a new ensemble – “The Capital Band” presents works by Mozart and Schubert

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Capital Band presents
“DEATH AND THE MAIDEN”

MOZART – Symphony No.29 in A Major K. 218
SCHUBERT – String Quartet in D Minor D. 810 “Death and the Maiden” (arr. string orchestra)

The Capital Band
Music Director – Douglas Harvey

Vogelmorn Hall, Vennell St., Brooklyn, Wellington

Saturday, 5th September, 2020

A warm welcome to “The Capital Band” and its conductor/Music Director, Douglas Harvey, on the spirited showing made by the musicians during their first Wellington concert on Saturday evening! At a time when Covid-19 is wreaking havoc for organisations planning concerts of live music-making, any fresh endeavours in such a respect are welcomed, but even more so when presented with the kind of enthusiasm and verve that greeted we of the audience, gathered in a seemly, socially-distanced manner in Brooklyn’s charming and atmospheric Vogelmorn Hall (a new venue for me as an audience member!). Each of the two works programmed were given in a way that conveyed a kind of essence appropriate to the spirit of the occasion, and certainly left this listener in a buoyantly satisfied frame of mind relating to the overall experience.

There may be others who, like me at first, might imagine an ensemble with the name “The Capital Band” as consisting of strong, jovial and fearless brass band-people, ready even to try their hand at reimagining and reworking classical symphonies and romantic string quartets! However, reading “between the lines” of the ensemble’s online post advertising the concert did, I admit, seem to indicate (even in this most remarkable of all possible worlds) that the musicians were classical orchestral players – in fact, (and here, I quote) “an innovative and exciting group of younger semi-professional, amateur, and non-fulltime musicians and comprises current and former members of Orchestra Wellington, the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra, the National Youth Orchestra, the New Zealand School of Music ensembles, and various other orchestras in the greater Wellington region”. I recognised at least two of the players as members of the previous year’s NZSM Orchestra, though most of the faces were new to me.

Ruminating that “strong, jovial and fearless” could well be synonymic with “innovative and exciting”, I settled down to enjoy the concert, pleasurably anticipating the strains of the opening of one of my all-time favourite symphonies, one representing an acme of youthful symphonic achievement on the part of its composer, the eighteen year-old Wolfgang Mozart, whose adorable Symphony No.29 in A Major K.201 began the evening’s music. Unlike other “Salzburg” symphonies written around this same time by Mozart, most notably the explosive G Minor K.183, this work begins gently, with a gracefully rising set of octave leaps proclaiming the simplicity of absolute mastery – I remember being left open-mouthed when I first heard this music almost fifty years previously, and still marvel today at its focused utterance, whatever tempo its life-pulse is measured at by different interpreters.

I learnt the work through a 1960s recording made by Otto Klemperer with the New Philharmonia Orchestra of London – a reading whose first movement gestures seemed more like implacable movements of heavenly bodies in the firmament than expressions of youthful energy – even though Klemperer’s performances of the Minuet and Finale were as spirited as any, the latter with magnificently al fresco horns resounding across the vistas. The slow movement’s progress was also stately, though exquisitely shaped, with the coda marked by full, rich wind-tones answered by strings in like manner. For years afterwards I couldn’t listen to any other performance of this music, as each seemed trite and superficial compared with Klemperer’s profundity and substance. Then a recording conducted by Benjamin Britten (a gifted Mozartean) with the English Chamber Orchestra seemed to me to triumphantly marry Klemperer’s strength with more urgency, paving the way for my listening to become more accustomed to lighter and swifter readings of the work without experiencing a feeling of some essential quality being lost.

Here, with a performance by “the Band” that celebrated the music’s youthful vigour rather than seeking any profundity or timelessness, my “born again” attitudes were given a splendid going-over by Douglas Harvey’s and his players’ spirited reading of the opening movement –  a case of “Thus, though we cannot make our sun / stand still, yet we will make him run”! The playing brought out all the dynamic contrasts one could want, as well as allowing the “middle voices” of the work to speak – there was a certain rough-hewn quality about some of the passagework, with the lead-up to the second subject in the repeat particularly “grainy” in effect; and some of the staccato work I thought blunt almost to a fault (arguably a matter of taste in places, of course!). By contrast, the slow movement had plenty of grace and charm , with flutes here substituting for oboes (and doing a wonderful job, it needs to be said), their held notes together with those of the horns “warming the textures” beautifully, the string phrases allowed their “internal voices” effect with ease and naturalness of flow. I actually wanted the winds to be given a bit more time to enjoy their mid-movement trill, but the players made the most of their “moment” at the movement’s end, the strings answering in splendid accord.

A mischievous and sprightly Minuet featured some deliciously saucy flute-and-horn unisons at the end of each string-sentence – very rustic and unequivocal, like a disapproving village policeman’s “Ere! – Wot’s all this, then?” By contrast the Trio’s repeated, gracefully “swooping” string phrase was charmingly “choreographed” by some of the players, putting their all into it! The finale was all bluster and dust, Harvey and the players going for broke, the scurried string figurations excitingly executed, and the horns in particular having a ball with their “Yoicks! – tally-ho!” calls ringing out, the occasional “cracked” note merely adding to the excitement of the chase! I loved the “He said damn!” chattering of the divided strings in the second finale episode, the second violins doing particularly well in taking the lead during the reprise. Some concluding energetic unisons, exuberant fanfares and farewell flourishes, and it was all over, to great acclaim!

After the interval the string players returned for an ensembled performance of Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” Quartet, one I thought must have been the Mahler arrangement (though unfinished by him and completed by David Matthews) – but I’ve since been told this particular version was an arrangement made by the Capital Band players themselves. Having never heard the string orchestra version before I was amazed by how “effective” it all sounded, the opening particularly arresting by dint of the string numbers and, in this performance, the attack and commitment of the players. The ensemble frayed a little during the second subject’s quicker sequences, though the players did better with the “inverted theme” passages that followed. Some of the lines were given to solo strings in places, which added to the music’s overall light and shade, and making the reintroduction of the opening all the more dramatic. And the agitated coda and its dissolution into shadow and mystery was most confidently and securely negotiated – all very spooky!

I loved the “heartbroken” aspect of the slow movement’s opening, the textures made almost Tchaikovskian with those additional strings, the “faintly beating heart” impression all the more palpable, the melody line beautifully nuanced, light hand-in-glove with shadow. The ensuing variations featured a significant amount of solo playing, the players involved splendidly negotiating the sometimes torturous melodic twists of the various lines – and I was taken as never before by the similarity of one of the variations (in a minor-key way) to a corresponding sequence in Brahms’ St Antoni Variations! Another impressive sequence was a throbbing pedal-point episode which gradually built in intensity, before dissipating in a halo of lovely snow-bright harmonies at the movements end. The heavy-footed Brahmsian syncopations of the scherzo’s opening sounded like great fun, here, giving way to a Trio whose grace and elegance seemed worlds apart, even if the violins were tested by the high-lying passages in places.

The galloping rhythms of the finale again brought a strongly committed physical response, readily conveying a sense of headlong flight, and tellingly interrupted by the heroic stance of the second subject, the playing strong and unyielding! And both violin sections did well with the contrasting rushing figures (1sts) and the singing lines (2nds), coming together to catch the music’s incredible drive forwards into the music’s vortex-like heart, and through the opening’s recapitulation into a fragmented amalgam of desperate, fugitive-like impulses, something which only the white heat of the coda’s kinetic energies could hope to quell – the peformers found incredible surges of elemental feeling at the end, giving their all.

At the end, conductor Douglas Harvey thanked us all for attending the concert, the musicians then applauding us most heartily for our support! An encore was a “lullaby” a piece whose provenance I forgot to ask about – but it sounded as though it could have been something written by Aarvo Part, simple voicings expressed in radiant. luminous, open-textured lines – all part of a most impressive first outing by this new ensemble, of which we will hopefully hear a great deal more!

“Passion” for once an apposite description of a stunning NZSO Concert with conductor Gemma New

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:

PASSION
Works by Robin Toan, Elgar and Tchaikovsky

TOAN – Tu-mata-uenga “God of War, Spirit of Man”
ELGAR – Concerto for ‘Cello and Orchestra in E Minor, Op. 85
TCHAIKOVSKY – Symphony No 6 in B Minor, Op. 74  “Pathetique”

Andrew Joyce (‘cello)
Gemma New (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Live televised broadcast without an audience, due to Covid-19 restrictions
Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, August 29th, 2020

In response to the “social distancing” restrictions put in place to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 virus, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra has, since March 25th of this year been giving free premieres of online performances on a newly-employed “microsite” enabling supporters of the orchestra and lovers of music in general to view some of the concerts originally scheduled for 2020. To this end, the orchestra has made available for free viewing a mix of 2020 concerts and several notable past events previously captured on video.

As with initiatives and activities associated with on-line digital content in general, I confess to being something of a tentative user of the technology, and, as such, have been slow to “take up” the opportunities afforded by the orchestra’s recent activities in this area.  Curiosity, however, got the better of me on the occasion of the concert scheduled to be conducted by Gemma New, the New Zealand-born conductor who’s been making a name for herself overseas for the past few years. As I was originally scheduled to attend the event in situ, and review it for “Middle C”, I was thus left with the singular option of getting to grips with the technology and watching the concert streamed “live” on my computer/television. Relieved that the directions for setting this up weren’t exactly “rocket science”, I managed to actually make it work (a small step for man, etc…), and proceeded to thoroughly enjoy the concert!

Being a “veteran listener” to numerous RNZ Concert broadcasts of presentations by both Wellington orchestras over the years, I was anticipating the enjoyment of informed commentary from the announcer on this occasion, not so much in terms of the music, but regarding something of the history and personality of the New Zealand conductor Gemma New.  Though I found Clarissa Dunn’s generous speaking tones at the outset ambiently over-projected in relation to the orchestra’s sound (a volume adjustment did the trick), I thought her mid-concert interview with New (was it “live” or pre-recorded, I wonder?) splendidly informative, asking most of the questions I’d hoped she would ask, and establishing what sounded like a fruitful rapport of exchange.

We got from New something of her all-abiding enthusiasm for music-making, of her experiences as an orchestral violinist, of her early equating score-reading with a fondness for mathematics and its order and discipline, and of the steps of her career-path, from her first, youthful conducting experiences with the Christchurch Youth orchestra through to her current position as Music Director of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra in Ontario, Canada, and her most recent appointment as Principal Guest Conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. We learned something of her attitudes towards her craft as exemplified by people she’d encountered and come to admire in the conducting role – Simone Young, Andris Nelsons and Yannick Nézet-Séguin were names mentioned as exemplars for her. Her New Zealand roots remain very much in Karori, otherwise home is “where her suitcase is” for the moment – an apposite commentary on the nature of a top-flight performer’s existence, I would think! She opinioned that New Zealanders ought to be justly proud of their national orchestra, being able to cope so well and perform so amazingly under the present Covid-19 regime!

All of this was expressed mid-stream, of course, as far as we listeners were concerned, whatever the actualities – and it helped make for a truly absorbing amalgam of music-making and relevant commentary throughout the concert-time, beginning with a piece that New remembered as a player in the NZSO National Youth Orchestra in 2005, the premiere performance of Robin Toan’s “Tu-mata-uenga “God of War, Spirit of Man”, one which she apparently requested specifically to perform at this concert. I well remember the impact the piece made at its premiere, which I think I reviewed on “Upbeat” all those moons ago – on the strength of this present performance the music had lost none of its capacity to grip the listener’s attention and hold it fast throughout.

The thunderous opening, a portrait of the god himself, vividly recalled the characterisation I remember as a child when reading the AH&AW Reed retellings of the Maori Creation Story – that of Tu, “the warlike one”, whose response to the problem of his parents’ embrace giving their children no room to freely move about their mother’s earth-body was to suggest they be killed! The music ebbed and flowed with layered intensities, giving way at one point to a more spaciously-wrought ambience, albeit with the warlike spirit hovering over the scenario – and as the decision was made and agreed upon to separate the parents rather than kill them, the tensions broke out in full hearing once again.

It struck me while listening how much Toan’s music resembled Sibelius’s Tapiola in its maintaining of an unrelenting basic mood and how its constant reiteration of figures related to the overall characterisation of the piece’s subject, the war-god. It was interesting, too, that the composer took pains to emphasise in her title for the piece a kinship with mankind in Tu’s makeup, as if indicating a blueprint for ever-present conflict and strife in humanity, to this day. The piece’s climax, the cruel severing of the parents’ limbs by Tu, their separated bodies awash with blood, had an unrelenting quality that reminded me also of Holst’s climax to his Mars, the Bringer of War in The Planets, one that continued unabated to the end, vividly characterising the act of making a “new world to view” as something often brutal and destructive.

A different kind of a response to human savagery, even though never actually stated or portrayed in the music, informed the programme’s second piece, Elgar’s elegiac, and often grief-stricken “Cello Concerto, written during 1919, in both the wake of the catastrophic First World War, and the shadow of his wife Alice’s physical decline (she died the year after). The composer swore it would be his last work – “there is no inducement to finish anything”, he wrote to a friend later that same year; and though he lived on for another fourteen years, only sketches remained of the works that still occupied him. The music sums up both a life and an era, but continues to fascinate and captivate to this day, over a century onwards.

The work had been scheduled by the NZSO this year for a performance with German ‘cellist Johannes Moser, but the orchestra’s principal cellist, Andrew Joyce, was ideally equipped to “take over” the task, having played the work numerous times. Joyce’s opening recitative was an eloquently declamation rather than an assertive call to attention, musing his way into the music’s sobriety – not until the ‘cello made its first heartfelt ascent did an orchestral tutti give full tongue to the composer’s anguish. The winds’ wistfulness was lovely, as was the cellist’s long-breathed response, with the briefly, bravely-smiling second melody giving rise to further ebb-and-flow of emotion, New and the orchestra reiterating the material searchingly, sorrowfully, and hauntingly, the  soloist’s chilling vibrato-less reiteration of the main theme accompanied by ascending figures by winds and strings. A second desperate ‘cello ascent and an even more powerfully punched-home tutti left the timpani gloomily resonating and the ‘cello faltering as the movement’s main theme (which the composer said would be heard on the Malvern Hills long after he had departed) gradually took its leave.

Joyce gave the instrument’s gestures their due in the recitatives which followed, pizzicati followed by tremolandi, with a touch of bowed “sighing” to boot!  The winds finally sparked a committed response, the cello launching into the second movement’s running figure, the playing catching more and more of the music’s physical excitement, with the mood switching kaleidoscopically between humour and anxiety. The “real” business of the music returned with the Adagio third movement, its tragedy/tenderness ambivalence fully realised, with the great upward leaps having all the “hurt” one could imagine. Finally, the fourth movement’s gruff outbursts, fuelled at first by anger and frustration, were here dissolved movingly into sorrow, soloist and orchestra seeming to weep in turn in places, the emotion incredibly candid and properly “squared up to” in this performance – the beauty of the work’s final vision of happiness forever fled was movingly voiced, before the musicians between them abruptly consigned all such dreams to oblivion.

The interview with Gemma New came and went, and in what seemed to us no time at all we were back in front of the orchestra for Tchaikovsky’s sixth and final symphony, the justly-renowned “Pathetique”. New had briefly characterised some of her thoughts regarding the work in the interview, equating the opening movement with a Russian winter’s darkness, and the second, 5/4 movement containing a lament on the composer’s part  over his mother’s death from cholera, to quote two instances. I’d thought the idea of such an emotionally driven approach to the work most stimulating, the opening paragraph of the first movement confirming this approach with its evocation of intense darkness, followed by an exquisitely-nuanced main theme, one whose repetition conveyed as much hurt as intense joy. The allegro outburst mid-movement had real “bite”, and built the tensions up to an impressive “wall of tumultuous sound” by the time passions had exhausted themselves, and the clarinets had expressed the big theme’s loneliness and resignation.

New drove the 5/4 waltz movement quickly and urgently, as if the extra beats were to be “shaken off” rather than allowed their long-breathed expansiveness – this, plus the “trio” section’s tense, anxious aspect gave the movement extraordinary vitality, as if the music was trying to actively “redeem” itself. Came the reprise, and there was, or there seemed, more breathing-space for the melody’s framework, more tenderness in the phrasing, and a sense of resignation, reinforced by the beautiful wind descents at the movement’s end.

In contrast, the March had plenty of swagger, along with its vitality and bustle, without being febrile and “possessed”, the triplet accompaniment sufficiently pronounced as to generate plenty of underlying drive, allowing the clarinet sufficient room in which to “point” its phrases. New generated a frisson of excitement around the build-up that grew out of the famous brass shouts and sudden silence, holding the intensities in check while allowing the excitement to gather, the great march statements kept steady, the whirling figurations arching like well-oiled windmill-blades, and making a more-than-usually powerful impression for that! After such an intense marshalling of forces the silence at the tumult’s end was deafening (and especially with no audience to be fooled into clapping too early!).

But it was the finale which set the seal on this performance through its maintaining of tension and focus – New got the strings to convey a most extraordinary sense of pain with their falling phrases, everything so beautifully layered and nuanced, the winds replying in kind with their counter-phrases, the second of these cleverly varied, so withdrawn and desolate-sounding. The major-key middle section of the movement developed incredible thrust, the brass adding their weight of emotion with desperately flailing phrases. From there onwards the phrases of all the instrument groups became more and more disconnected, leaving telling “spaces” between the utterances that seem to denote a soul who had “lost the way” – with desperation then taking hold and resulting in dissolution, the gong-stroke was allowed to really “speak” for once, and the ensuing silence recalled the darkness of the work’s opening, the trombones deathly angels, and the strings simply laden with grief! – like the Elgar work earlier in the programme, this was music that could and did, in places, weep! The depth of utterance found by the lower strings at the end left us in places where no light or life held sway.

One groans at the all-too-frequent use of words such as “passion” in publicity statements these days, one of a number of words that have become cliched and meaningless through over-use – however, on this occasion, the epithet did in fact convey what Gemma New and the NZSO players managed to so wholehearted achieve on behalf of the music’s composers, but especially in the Tchaikovsky – a stirring achievement by all concerned.

At last! Chamber Music Hutt Valley’s 2020 Season!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Georgian England: Country Fiddle to Court – Music by John Playford, Joseph Gibbs, and Georg Frideric Handel

PLAYFORD – “Paul’s Steeple” and “La Folia” (from “The Division Violin”)
GIBBS – Sonatas for Violin and Continuo Nos. 4, 5, 6, and 8
HANDEL – Sonatas for Violin and Continuo HWV 361, 364a and 371

Lara Hall (baroque violin)
Rachael Griffiths-Hughes (harpsichord – instrument courtesy of Douglas Mews)

St.Mark’s Church, Woburn Road, Lower Hutt

Friday 28th August 2020

If ever an organisation merited a special award for stickability in the face of troubles, it would, in my book, be Chamber Music Hutt Valley – after facing dissolution at the end of 2019 through difficulties in finding enough people “on the ground” to assist with running the concerts the Society overcame that problem only to find its well-crafted 2020 programme severely disrupted by Covid-19! The response was a reorganisation of the season which resulted in the year’s first two concerts having to be cancelled and a substitute found for the final concert’s would-be performers, prevented from visiting the country by the pandemic! Somewhat bloodied, but still unbowed, the Society made the changes and finally opened the doors for its first 2020 concert on Friday 28th August, one which appropriately marked the occasion with distinction as regards both the artists and their presentation – violinist Lara Hall and harpsichordist Rachael Griffiths-Hughes brought to us a delightful programme of music from Georgian England.

Until relatively recently the Georgian era of music and music-making in England was popularly thought to have been dominated by non-English composers such as Handel, Corelli, Geminiani and Veracini, a historical perception that in its way underpinned the development of the idea (particularly opinioned in nineteenth-century Germany) that England had indeed become “Das Land ohne Musik”. But harpsichordist Rachel Griffiths-Hughes in her excellent notes for the programme accompanying this concert, pointed to a more recent resurgence of interest in the contributions made to Georgian musical life by English composers hitherto neglected, prominently figuring one Joseph Gibbs (1698-1788) in these explorations.

Born in Dedham, Colchester, Gibbs was the son of a musician, John Gibbs, who played in a shawm band called Colchester Waits. The son became an organist, firstly at Dedham St.Mary’s Church, in 1744 and then, more prestigiously, at St. Mary le Tower, in Ipswich, a post he remained in until his death – he was obviously an all-round musician, being (a) in considerable demand as a performer in Ipswich’s musical life and (b) producing collections of both violin sonatas and string quartets, though unfortunately only a few pieces of his organ music seem to have survived time’s ravages. His fame did spread beyond these regional confines with the publication of the sonatas, subscribed to by composers William Boyce and Maurice Greene, to name but two contemporary sources of interest in his work. The Sonatas have more recently been praised by various commentators as representative of the finest work of that era by an English composer, and they have actually been recorded – by both the Locatelli Trio on Hyperion (CDA 66583, unfortunately deleted!) and Eboracum Baroque (on a hard-to-find “Sounds of Suffolk” issue!) – frustration, I fear, awaits the enthusiastic collector!

All the more reason to welcome the advocacy of Lara Hall and  Rachael Griffiths-Hughes, whose playing brought the music and its composer to life with considerable elan and winning sensitivity. One of the articles  I read in an on-line interview with a violinist who had played these sonatas mentioned Gibbs’ extraordinary “eye to the future” in the music’s portrayal of “realistic characters and raw emotions”, going on to further comment that while Gibbs, compared with Handel and Geminiani “perhaps lacks (their) innate understanding of the violin and the finesse of their compositional idioms”……one has the sense that he (Gibbs) “….understood the drama of performance”. He went on to comment that the brilliance of the writing seemed often to demonstrate an eagerness to explore as many performance and music-character ideas in the shortest possible time!

The programme featured four of Gibbs’ Sonatas, along with two by Handel, and two sets of Variations  by John Playford (1623-1686), from a collection called “The Division Violin” – Playford took popular tunes of his day and wrote elaborate-sounding sets of variations on each of them. In the midst of all of this rather more consciously-contrived “display”, Handel’s music from two of his Violin Sonatas actually sounded somewhat more conventional to the ear, given that it was characterised by the strength, nobility and lyrical feeling we have come to expect from this composer. Next to the music of his great contemporary, however, Gibbs’ work held its ground by dint of the playing’s focused engagement with the music, the conveyance of something special and characterful. Rachael Griffiths-Hughes’s helpful introductions to each piece gave us something to listen out for, encouraging us to pick up on certain things the music was doing, the rest being up to us!

First up was John Playford’s Variations on the tune “Paul’s Steeple” a song which appeared in the wake of St.Paul’s Cathedral being struck by lightning and catching fire. In the manner of all good ballads the tune began in sombre fashion, then surrendered itself to all kinds of variant treatments, angular, mischievous, melancholic and ceremonial –  Lara Hall’s fleet-fingered playing brought out a kind of narrative folksiness, the sounds vividly conveying an actual story.
Then, the first of Joseph Gibbs’ Sonatas on the programme (No.VI in F major)  continued in this same almost “pictorial” vein, a sprightly swinging dotted-rhythm introducing the piece, Hall teasing out the voicings of the line, and suggesting a certain “restlessness” about the music. A busy and energetic Allegro ended in an almost stately manner, succeeded by a Largo e piano which spoke of solitude and loss, beautifully “emoted” by Hall’s discreet touches of vibrato, and a lovely accord between the instruments, before we were suitably “sprung” by the energetic concluding Gavotta.

Handel’s appearance in the programme brought a marked majesty and serenity to the lines, a beautiful inevitability of grace and repose in the opening Andante of his A major Sonata HWV 361. The succeeding Allegro grew out of the poise and solemnity, the playing triumphantly astride the music’s energy and graceful movement. A brief Adagio brushed in a
winsome gesture of melancholy before the Allegro skipped our sensibilities away with the wind, the players catching the notes’ strength and exhilarating “fizz” of the composer’s invention. Before proceeding with the next work, Gibbs’ Sonata V in F major, Hall alerted us to the latter’s relative volatility compared to Handel’s lofty serenity, telling us to expect a caprice-like feel to the music, and some extraordinary “flights of fancy”. The opening Adagio soared from the outset, before digging in with some vigorous figuration mid-stream, and continuing with impulse-like gestures. Then, the Vivace was a fugue, no less, with plenty of virtuoso double-stopping – perhaps not every note was hit perfectly, but certainly  the fiddling conveyed a sense of the music’s forceful flow. A lovely contrast was given by the Sarabande, both instruments in serene, thoughtful accord, a brief respite before the Gigue’s life-enhancing energy burst upon us, tumbling warmth alternated with touches of rustic drollery, Gibbs’ music leading us a merry dance via Hall’s and Griffiths-Hughes’s eloquently nimble fingers!

Again, Handel’s music “lifted” our threshold of awareness, the opening music of his D Major Sonata HWV 371 somehow having a “marbled” aspect suggesting great columns of nobility and strength – and how the phrases of the Allegro which followed the opening leapt from the instruments with god-like confidence! What, then, a difference in the Larghetto! –  the first minor-key phrase seemed to take us to a well of worldly sorrow  – the lines beseeched us with a candour and then a sweetness which captivated the ear! Then, the Allegro, with its strong, running passages and its chameleon-like easeful moments made one catch one’s breath – Hall and Griffiths-Hughes resisted the temptation to “indulge” the music’s mastery of utterance at the end, though we would have allowed them a certain expansiveness with the last few phrases had they been so inclined!

After the interval came what Griffiths-Hughes described as the most demanding of Gibbs’ Sonatas by dint of its key-signature – Sonata VIII in E-flat Major, a challenge particularly for the violinist re the “remoteness” of the key to the violin’s own tuning. Adding to the difficulties were Gibbs’ “inventive” touches, the opening Grave continuously double-stopped, here richly and gloriously voiced, the subtleties closely and meticulously worked. The Siciliana’s grace and poise momentarily relieved some of the intensity, though the music abounded with spontaneous impulse denoting light-and-shade – then the Fuga, in no less than four parts, drew us into an amazingly complex web of sounds, relieved by the finale’s “hunting-horn” aspect – “Corno poco allegro”, if you please! – vividly trenchant “digging in” by both instruments vividly recreated a sense of the chase – a remarkable evocation which brought a visceral response from both musicians! Handel’s G Minor Sonata HWV 364a which followed had its share of evocation, too, the opening Larghetto sounding as if borrowed from/loaned to the composer’s own “Water Music” – such beautiful, buoyant gravitas, leading to flourishes introducing – no, not the famous “Hornpipe” from the latter work, but an equally brilliant Allegro of another provenance! The succeeding Adagio, brief as it was, had as well an air of familiarity; but there was no time to ponder its associations before the final Allegro swept everything before it in Hall’s and Griffiths-Hughes’s hands with an irresistible flow of notes – “the achieve of, the mastery of the thing” were words that came to my mind……..

And so to Gibbs’ last Sonata of the evening, the fourth of the set, in B-flat major, one whose first half my violinist who had recorded these works had described as, for him, “the trickiest”, with a challenging cadenza, and demanding double-stopped passages, not to mention some triple-stopping later in the work! The opening Largo was filled with extravagant gesturings, in both major and minor key sequences, beautifully “thrown off” by Hall,  the melodic lines seemingly more extravagant than were Handel’s, more improvisatory, the “flow” being frequently broken by impulsive gesturings. After a more conventional Allegro (demonstrating that Gibbs could “finger” lines with the ease and fluidity of Handel), the concluding Affetuosa and Variations revisited the composer’s fondness for detailing a melody with echo phrases and triplet sequences, the concluding Minuet Allegro again horn-like in its display-mode and disarmingly compelling in its single-mindedness! And after the rigours of these structured displays, it seemed fitting that Hall and Griffiths-Hughes go back to the beginning, and another of John Playford’s Variations sets, this one most enticingly titled “La Folia” (The Madness), reckoned by some to be the most enduring tune ever devised, one whose history derived from the folk music of Portugal, spreading to Spain and thence across the Mediterranean, where it reached its peak of popularity at the end of the seventeenth century, though still exerting creative impetus today.

The tune seemed here to coalesce from the instruments’ tunings, the simplicity of the line having its shape, its figuration, its texture and its gait reinvented by Playford to remarkable effect, profoundly satisfying our by now finely-honed taste for variation of the most diverse kinds, here concluding with a vigorous running sequence rounded off by a brilliant flourish! A triumph, in short, to “finish off” the evening, and one for everybody concerned!

Camerata’s latest Haydn in the Church concert elegantly “framed” by youthful endeavours

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Camerata presents:
HADYN IN THE CHURCH
Music by Mozart, Haydn and Grieg

MOZART – Sinfonia K.V.35  from the Singspiel Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebotes
HAYDN – Symphony No. 11 in E-flat
GRIEG – From Holberg’s Time – Suite in Olden Style Op.40

Camerata
Concertmaster and Director: Anne Loeser

St.Peter’s-on-Willis.St, Wellington

Thursday, August 20th, 2020

With a single downbeat at the beginning of this concert from Camerata we were taken, it seemed to me, into a kind of youthful magicland of creative wonderment, via the eleven year-old Mozart’s Sinfonia from a sacred Singspiel Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebotes  (translated as “The Obligation of the First and Foremost Commandment”), a kind of allegorical depiction of the trials of a Christian soul. This was Mozart’s first opera, premiered in Salzburg in 1767, a shared endeavour (a not uncommon occurrence at the time) with two other composers, Michael Haydn and Anton Adelgasser, organist at the Salzburg Cathedral – for whatever reason, only Mozart’s contribution, which was the first of the work’s three parts, has survived.

We heard only the Overture to the work, but it was enough to give notice of the budding genius of its composer, the music having a buoyancy and confidence that I recall marked my first encounter with some of the young Wolfgang’s wonderful early symphonies in those late 1960s’ Argo recordings made by Neville Marriner’s St.Martin’s Academy, recordings which were made in a similar kind of church acoustic. Here, Camerata’s bright and energetic playing instantly brought back to me something of that long-ago thrill of discovery – in fact, the relative unfamiliarity of the first two pieces of the concert had the effect of entering into a “bright new world”, while the better-known Holberg Suite by Grieg which concluded the concert itself still had a freshness of approach here from the players that further added to our sense of rediscovery.

I’ve been delighted with Camerata’s presentations of Haydn’s early symphonies thus far, and was as charmed as before with the ensemble’s “latest”, the Symphony No. 11  (which, incidentally, was given a remarkably high rating (7th out of 104!) in the canon by an on-line commentator who set himself the task of evaluating in order ALL of the Haydn Symphonies!). One could immediately “feel” the music’s distinction – the beautiful opening processional aspect, hinting at a deeply-felt sense of occasion, with the horns’ “held” notes beautifully opening up the vistas created by the strings’ silken lines, prepared the listener for an allegro which had C.P.E-Bach-like touches (the vigorous downward phrase that “answered” the opening, and the tremendous energy that drove the music on), with momentary minor-key sequences breaking into smiles as the sounds rolled forward.

The Minuet had both weight and “snap”, the players bringing out the angularity of the “leaned on” accents, with festive, trumpet-like figurations proclaiming the “country sports” aspect of the music. And I loved the way the winsome, wispy syncopated-note texture shrouded the trio in a bit of “elsewhere business” mystery, with one voice leading the other a merry dance! After this the Finale’s Presto opening theme snorted and snuffled its way through the textures, the hi-jinks punctuated by horn calls and reinforced by chattering winds whose sounds coloured the ample St.Peter’s acoustic in a pleasingly ambient fashion. The sleight-of-hand off-beat figures of the second episode had my ears pricked for a few moments, wanting a place to safely put my two left feet! – but the playing’s control was never in doubt, the music’s recapitulation nicely keeping us guessing as to which way our antennae would point in pursuit, and the sheer elan of it all encouraging us to hang on as best we could, with breathlessly exhilarating results.

Though more familiar territory, Grieg’s Holberg Suite (despite its piano version origins one immediately senses how the music “blooms” in its string orchestra version!) came up here right from its opening “as fresh as paint” (that phrase has unaccountably “stuck” with me from somewhere!) with playing that never looked back from the ensemble’s lively accenting of the very first note, the ascending phrases almost trenchant in their “digging into” the music, and contrasting beautifully with the light-as-air, flowing replies. The brisk tempo brought some smartish scampering from the inner voices, and some exciting descending spirallings which reprised the (now augmented) opening theme – and how the players relished the grandeur of the final statements!

How beautifully sounded was the opening of the Sarabande, hymn-like in effect, but enlivened by the energised echo-phrase at the end of each sentence – there’s some lovely work by the ‘cellos, with their individual lines drawing us into the detailings of the texture, and then followed by a wondrously-glowing reiteration of the opening theme from the ensemble, the music singing like crazy! The next movement , the Gavotte/Musette, featured violins and violas introducing the folkish opening strains, answered by the full orchestra, with lovely antiphonal statements adding to the music’s out-of-doors ambiences – the Musette, taken a bit faster, brought out the drone bass and folk-fiddle sound more pictorially, over which the melody was allowed to blossom with each succeeding phrase.

What really caught me up in the music’s flow was the Air, here launched with great concentrated purpose, and built with finely wrought tensions from the upper strings to a full-throated climax, the combination of a sombre bass and  anguished upper string lines making for a moving effect. The major key sequence featured some heart-warming exchanges between solo cello and the violins, before the other cellos joined in, taking the lead, and drawing with them the upper strings towards a reiteration of the earlier outpourings of feeling, before everything rapidly and circumspectly fell away to silence. Out of the somewhat “spent” ambience then began the Rigaudon, the solo violin cheekily enjoining its companions to “cheer up” and join the “life-dance” , underlining its enjoiner with a saucy ascent to its final throwaway note – lovely, delicate solo  playing by Anne Loeser! The ensemble then acquiesced with a flourish – and, a brief introspective sequence later, the invitation and its response was repeated – the day had been won!

Most unexpectedly and  charmingly, we were given a brief encore – a piece of Sibelius’s music I didn’t know existed, one called Vesipisaroita (Water droplets), supposedly his  first composition, written at the age of nine, for violin and ‘cello – a far cry from the masterpieces that had brought the composer world-wide fame (and including several beautiful, if lesser-known works for string orchestra), but certainly ending the concert as it had begun, with youthful endeavours, and in the process underlining a kind of “return to simplicity” which we could take unto ourselves into the night comfortably and reassuringly…….

 

 

 

Baroque Voices’ “Bingen to Becker” a harmonious celebration

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Baroque Voices presents:
BINGEN TO BECKER (Vocal music from the 12th to the 21st Century)

A Concert of Music by Hildegard von Bingen, Morley, Dowland, Hume, Monteverdi, Poulenc, Durufle, Pepe Becker, Jack Body, Constantini, Handel, Annea Lockwood, and Anon/Trad…..

Baroque Voices: Pepe Becker (director), Anna Sedcole, Jane McKinlay, Rowena Simpson, Andrea Cochrane, Katherine Hodge (with Robert Oliver – bass viol)

The Third Eye – Tuatara’s Temple of Taste, Arthur St., Te Aro, Wellington

Sunday 16th August, 2020

Thanks to a newly-emerged Covid-19 chapter in Auckland we were a precautionary “restricted” audience for this concert, but of good cheer, nevertheless, with convivial company and food and drink available at the venue, the evocatively-named “The Third Eye – Tuatara’s Temple of Taste”, from out of which scenario “emerged” the musicians, informally dressed and congregating at the platform end of the listening-space, six singers and a bass violist, all as relaxed as if spontaneously inspired to entertain the company! By way of settling both the ensemble and its audience in, we were treated straightaway to the programme’s first two items, the first something of a “Pepe Becker Special”, Hildegard of Bingen’s O ignis spiritus, the soprano having made Hildegard’s resonant, ecstatic vocal lines music very much her own of late in these parts, and deservedly so – this was followed by an anonymous 14th-Century 3-part Canon “O Virgo Splendens” whose catchy dance-rhythms combined sacred worship and secular energy in a wholly delightful way, the ensemble’s six voices imitating a flowing river of streamlets intertwining and separating within the irresistible flow of the whole.

The introduction having “cleared” all throat and nasal (singers) and auricular (listeners) passages, Becker officially welcomed us to the concert, intended as a 25th Birthday affair for the ensemble, but “extended” to being closer to a 26th  celebration by dint of the aforementioned worldwide events exerting their influence to within Aotearoa’s shores. She talked about the concert’s themes, the items prominently figuring both love and death, and suggesting that, with humanity still in the grip of an on-going ailment, the music was expressing something of where we all were at present. Thomas Morley’s Arise, get up, my dear appropriately “revitalised” the programme from this point onwards, the singing confidently resounding through the range of tones from the altos’ beginning phrases to the silvery utterances of the sopranos at the top. “Semper Dowland semper dolens” went the name of one of the composer’s songs, and came to characterize Dowland’s oeuvre in the public’s mind – and Can she excuse my wrongs? proved no exception to this mood, Pepe Becker’s plaintive tones given a sure trajectory by Robert Oliver’s nimble accompaniments.  The changes were further rung by Oliver’s sure-fingered solo rendition of Tobias Hume’s A Pavin, featuring some extremely deft double-stopping enlivening the second part of the dance’s ritual of elegant sobriety!

Again Dowland figured with a characteristically-titled song Flow my tears, the Becker/Oliver combination suitably sombre in effect, the soprano doing well in a vocal range I wouldn’t have associated with her natural gifts, achieving dignity and clarity – the second half of the song brought forth a degree of liberation into the light, with phrases such as “Hark! – you shadows!” ringing out clearly. What a difference in every way was wrought by Monteverdi’s Madrigal Come dolce hoggi (How sweet is the breeze!) from the composer’s Book 9, the singers’ tones appropriately bright and outdoors-ish at the beginning, the vocal expression thrown widely and exploringly, the vocal ornamentations strengthening on repetition as the voices accustomed themselves to each frisson of energy, the piece’s ending expansive and resonantly lingering in the silences – lovely! The unaccompanied Poulenc Ave Verum Corpus bore an attractive, melancholy colour,  the “open” harmonies occasionally adding a medieval-sounding touch – and while the Durufle piece Tota pulchra es shared some features with the Poulenc, a pleasing melancholy, and “older” touches of harmony, the piece had a livelier, more insistent and declamatory texture, kept airborne by a lovely rocking rhythm, here beautifully regulated by the singers.

To finish the half, Becker introduced her Taurus 1: Night and Morning, a setting of Robert Browning’s pair of poems “Meeting at Night” and “Parting at Morning”, wryly mentioning to us the piece was now twenty years old (an “excesses of youth” commentary, perhaps?)  – the singers’ mingling of exhalations of breath, charged utterances and harmonic tensions, with the darkness lit by occasionally soprano soarings, all established the “romantic tryst” mood, the brief (and presumably heartbreaking) epilogue of the morning’s parting encapsulating the experience as a recalled moment in time.

On to the concert’s second half, then it was, beginning with two “Nowel/Nowell” settings (though unseasonal, it hardly matters, as each Christmas comes so quickly on the heels of another in any case, these days!) – both lively, “ringing” kinds of evocations in their different ways, the first revolving the joyous message in an infectious “back-and-forth” way, with acclamation-like cries at the end. Jack Body’s “Lithuanian manner” Nowell began with characteristically crunchy harmonies exchanged by two pairs of singers facing one another, something Mussorgsky (of “Pictures from and Exhibition” fame) would have, I think, relished, in memory of his similarly sequenced dialogues between voices in “The Market Place at Limoges” – here, the singers  built on the earthy figurations’ growing excitement and accumulations of joy and certainty as the exchanges reached a plateau of exhilaration, humanity enlivened by tidings from on high!

Alessandro Constantini’s Confitemini Domino continued the festive mood, resounding with joyous and angelic utterances, Oliver’s accompaniments reinforcing the Alleluia’s dancing rhythms with gusto. A remarkable and contradictory precursor of a similar mood evoked by the great Handel was the following duet No, di voi no vo’fidarmi, here sung superbly by Becker and Rowena Simpson, with Oliver’s assured bass viol accompaniment,  the familiar lines of “For unto us a Child in Born” from Messiah  used in the service of a completely different text, one of accusation and dismissal of love – Handel had written this (and another duet Quel fior che all’alba ride similarly re-used) a matter of weeks before beginning work on Messiah, and duly incorporating the music into the larger work! – what a delight to encounter the “original” version of such well-known music, and to hear such a committed and assured performance!

Gentler, with longer-breathed lines, and tensions of a different kind brought into play was another work by Handel, Amor, gioie mi porge, a somewhat calmer portrayal of the hardships of love, one which gathered weight and darkness as it proceeded, taking in a central, more energetic section allowing the sopranos to soar, but returning to beseechment and despair at the end, the two singers, Anna Sedcole and Becker sustaining their lines throughout with great spirit! The prospect of hearing any of Annea Lockwood’s music always excites interest, though I was disarmed by the simplicity of her 1983 work Malolo, (Rest), a Samoan lullaby using hypnotically repeating sounds, the singers “terracing” their utterances to enable all kinds of echoes and resonances, the lower voices finishing the piece as hauntingly as  it began.

Three traditionally Irish folk-song settings arranged by Pepe Becker were filled with drollery, melancholy and gentle wit, my favourite being “The Galbally Farmer”, with its rhythmic “snap”, earthy, drone-like accompaniment, and wryly-sounding vocal reinforcements of some of the text’s phrases, concluding with the tried-and-true existentialist lament “I wish I had never seen Galbally Town!”. Becker’s compositional skills were again evoked by When will we know?, a gentle balled-like setting whose closely-worked harmonies had a cool, even bluesy colouring from the viol’s plucked-string accompaniments and wind-blown vocal abandonments at the song’s end. We thought at first the evening’s music would finish by circling back to its opening, with another of Hildegard’s hymns, O viridissima Virga – this one a long-breathed unison for all the voices, ambiently accompanied by Becker’s shruti box and Oliver’s viol, the whole a kind of ritualized “bringing together” of elements presented in a flexible, organic, very human manner, the voices not perfectly together, but in expressive purpose acting as one – to our surprise and delight, we were treated to a brief encore, which deserves its own paragraph……

Once attributed to Henry Purcell, How Great is the Pleasure – Canon for Three Voices was actually written by Dr. Henry Harington (1727-1816) an English physician, composer and author, and was published around 1780 with the title Love and Music – a Favourite Catch for Three Voices. Beginning in unison, with accompaniment from the viol, the melody soared like a Shaker Hymn, then divided among three parts, finishing with words that could have described the evening’s music-making – “When harmony, sweet harmony, and love do unite!” Most satisfying!…….