Author: Peter Mechen

NZSM Concerto Competition – an evening of elegance, frisson and feeling

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music Concerto Competition 2020 – Final

Finalists

Lucas Baker (violin) – BARBER: Violin Concerto
Isabella Gregory (flute) – REINECKE: Flute Concerto in D Major, Op.283
Otis Prescott-Mason (piano) – SAINT-SAENS – Piano Concerto No.2

Collaborative Pianist: David Barnard
Adjudicators: Catherine Gibson (CMNZ)
Vincent Hardaker (APO)

Adam Concert Room, NZSM Kelburn Campus
Victoria University of Wellington

Thursday, 30th July 2020

This year’s final of the NZSM Concerto Competition provided something of a musical feast, even if one of the concertos performed (Saint-Saens’ Second Piano Concerto) was presented with a somewhat truncated finale, for whatever reason. With three promising and extremely accomplished performers playing their respective hearts out (and admirably supported by the efforts of collaborative pianist David Barnard, whose playing of the orchestral part of the Samuel Barber Concerto was a treat in itself to experience), it made for an absorbing listening experience, one to rate at least equally with the actual result of the contest, at least for this listener, with no “affiliations” connected with the outcome!

First up was violinist Lucas Baker, whose chosen work (Samuel Barber’s beautiful Violin Concerto) brought out the young player’s seemingly instinctive feel for the “shape” of the composer’s largely rhapsodic phrases and larger paragraphs – throughout, I was convinced by Baker’s heartfelt approach to both the work’s lyrical and more heroic sequences, his instantly characterful tones enabling us to quickly enter the “world” of the music, despite some untidiness of rhythm and intonation in some of the transitions. The player then confidently attacked the angularities of the second movement, and nicely brought out the fervour of the lyrical writing and the silveriness of the contrasting stratospheric section, concluding with beautifully withdrawn tones at the movement’s end.

The finale’s technical difficulties were also most excitingly squared up to by Baker, his fingers flying over his instrument’s fingerboard to exhilarating effect, with his pianist an equally committed and involved participant in the composer’s vortices of note-spinning – the spills were as exciting and involving as the thrills, both players capturing the devil-may-care spirit which abounds throughout this final movement. Whatever niceties of detail were smudged or approximated, Baker readily conveyed to us an engaging sense of “knowing how it should go”, which carried the day as a performance.

No greater contrast could have been afforded by both the player to next appear and the work chosen! – this was flutist Isabella Gregory, and the work Carl Reinecke’s D Major Flute Concerto, written (somewhat surprisingly, I thought, upon hearing the piece) in 1908, the composer hardly deviating from his early enthusiasms for the music of Mendelssohn and Schumann. In effect, the work is that rarity, a romantic flute concerto – here, it was given a sparklingly lyrical performance by its gifted performer, obviously in complete command of both the piece’s overall shape, and the mellifluous detailings that gave the music such a unique character – complete with a surprisingly abrupt conclusion to the first movement! The sombre nature of the second movement’s opening accompaniment contrasted with the solo instrument’s more carefree manner, played here by Gregory as a somewhat easy-going accomplice to rather more stealthy mischief-making, though I found the Moderato finale a wee bit under-characterised – I thought the rhythms could have a bit more “kick” in places, though this was something which the more energetic concluding sequence in due course suitably enlivened, the virtuosity of the soloist making a breathlessly exciting impression to finish! Altogether, a delightful and suitably brilliant performance!

The evening’s final contestant was pianist Otis Prescott-Mason, who had chosen Saint-Saens’s wonderful Second Piano Concerto – a work whose character I recall once described as “beginning like Bach and ending like Offenbach”! Throughout the first movement I found myself riveted by the young musician’s spell-binding command of the music’s ebb-and-flow, the “spontaneous” element of the opening improvisation as finely-judged as I had ever heard it played, Prescott-Mason truly “making the music his own” and working hand-in-glove with his collaborator to create the sense of Baroque-like splendour that informs the music – what I particularly liked was the spaciousness of it all, allied to the clear direction of the underlying pulse of the music, to the point where the sounds had an inevitability of utterance which perfectly fused freedom and structure, Saint-Saens at his most potent as a creator. What a pity, then that such poised, and finely-tuned focus seemed to me to be then somewhat impatiently cast aside, the second movement’s playfulness over-rushed and the rhythmic deliciousness and delicacy of it all to my ears duly lost – Saint-Saens’s humour is always po-faced and elegant, and the playing in this movement I thought unfortunately failed to realise that “insouciance” which keeps the music’s character intact. I then hoped that the whirlwind brilliance of the finale might have restored some of the impression created by the pianist in that superbly-crafted first movement – but the work was unexpectedly and severely shortened, allowing little opportunity for a “renaissance” of identification with the music’s world on the young player’s part.

All in all, the result of the competition very justly, I thought accorded the laurels to flutist Isabella Gregory, whose performance indicated an impressive totality of identification with the music she played, as regards both execution and interpretation. Both her rivals, Lucas Baker and Otis Prescott-Mason, I thought, turned out most engaging performances of their pieces, without quite rivalling the winner’s consistency and strength of purpose. But what things all three achieved in their different ways!  And how richly and gratefully we all relished their talent and musicality in entertaining us us so royally during the evening!

Koru Trio – giving the St.Andrews’s audience its koha’s worth and more……

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Koru Trio at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington

BEETHOVEN – Piano Trio No.5 in D Major Op.70 No. 1 “Ghost”
ZEMLINSKY – Piano Trio in D Minor Op, 3

The Koru Trio – Anne Loeser (violin) / Sally Isaac (‘cello) / Rachel Thomson (piano)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Lunchtime Concert Series, Wellington

Wednesday, 29th July, 2020

One of the largest lunchtime concert audiences I’ve seen at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace enthusiastically responded to two splendid performances by the Koru Trio, a group known to me up to now by reputation only – a quick check of the Middle C review archive confirmed that so far I’d not had the good fortune to review a single concert by the ensemble. I must record here that, long before the interval I was already bemoaning the opportunities I’d missed out on over the years, the Trio having been formed as long ago as 2011! In fact, to my astonishment and pleasure,  the concert replicated the excitement and interest of another I’d recently attended at the same venue, and had subsequently reviewed – that by the newly-formed Ghost Trio, coupling, as here, one of Beethoven’s masterly works in this genre with a lesser-known one by a different composer. On that earlier occasion it was the miraculous Op.1 Piano Trio of Andrzej Panufnik, while here, the Koru Trio after THEIR Beethoven performance gave us the no less remarkable, youthfully-conceived Op.3 Piano Trio of Alexander Von Zemlinsky.

First came the Beethoven Trio, Op.70 No.1, known popularly as the “Ghost”, a nickname attributed by most accounts to the composer’s former pupil Carl Czerny associating in later years the second movement’s evocative writing with the ghost of Hamlet’s father – interestingly enough, Beethoven was toying at the time of writing this trio with the idea of an opera about Macbeth, which accounts for the forgivable slip of association in the Koru’s otherwise excellent programme notes, which had Beethoven’s music recalling Hamlet’s encounter with his father “in Shakespeare’s Macbeth”! The work begins completely differently, of course with an exciting, energetic unison, here instantly grabbing the listeners’ attention with strong, focused playing, which continued throughout the lyrical response to the opening “helter-skelter”. The development began with “another way of doing the opening”, whimsical exchanges leading to major key exhortions and wonderful roller-coaster ride figurations, and left me relishing the thought of the composer’s chortling with exuberant glee at the “plunge” back into the recapitulated opening figure! As much as I loved the energy of the playing I was as much taken with the delicacy and feathery quality the players found in some of the writing, even if from where I was sitting the St.Andrew’s acoustic seemed to favour the piano at the strings’ expense.

Vibrato-less tones from the strings added to the slow movement’s “spooky” effect, the lines suitably eerie and suspenseful, punctuated by sudden bursts of tone and spidery keyboard descents and tremolandos – I thought pianist Rachel Thomson’s beautifully-sustained trilling and tremolandi helped create an almost Musorgsky-like atmosphere in places, with Anne Loeser’s and Sally Isaac’s string playing suitably spectral in attendance. The group marshalled the tensions to great effect – in places the tones were more “lament-like” than ghostly, with the two crescendi almost unnerving in their lack of inhibition. I thought that, as the movement’s end approached, the instrumental sounds in places became “as from the earth”, the music a mere conduit through which mysterious impulses were giving tongue.

A measure of relief was afforded by the first strains of the finale – a kind of “glad we’re out of there” feeling which burgeoned into exuberance in places, every player contributing to the buzz of activity, and sharing the bouts of momentary bemusement at the lines occasionally spinning upwards and disappearing in Houdini-like fashion, only to reappear as if descending by parachute! It made for a thoroughly invigorating entertainment, bristling with good humour and well-being, just the stuff needed! – a lovely performance!

Alexander von Zemlinsky’s Piano Trio made up the rest of the concert, the work exerting no less a fascination on an audience by this time in thrall to the blandishments of the music-making. The work’s Schumannesque opening – darkly passionate, as if its composer was “wrestling with ghosts” – alternated with contrasting sequences, a wistful longing which transforms into a feeling for the German woods with characteristic horn-calls evoking the romance of darkness and mystery. We heard long-breathed lines whose harmonies modulated in and out of the shadows in fine Romantic style, the influence of Brahms, who encouraged the younger composer, readily apparent (Brahms, incidentally, insisted that his own publisher print Zemlinsky’s work). A grand romantic summation ended the first movement, brought off here with great style and panache!

A warm, richly upholstered piano solo (in places bringing to my mind Janacek’s piano writing) began the slow movement, before violin and ‘cello joined in, and so initiated a most passionately-voiced threesome, bristling with impulsive sequences (amid which I caught an echo of Dvorak’s ‘Cello Concerto!) and reaching a kind of fever-pitch before subsiding, exhausted, into gentleness and rapture. By contrast the finale was all skitterish urgency and al fresco energy to begin with, accompanied by redolent hunting sounds from the piano, which fought a rearguard action to keep the strings on the move – I enjoyed the lively interplay between the opposing camps, Zemlinsky’s writing never predictable, and, in fact, saving a brightly-gleaming frisson of surprise and delight for the very end – a work I enjoyed getting to know, and through which the Trio made a lot of fun in sharing with us so joyously!

 

 

Orchestra Wellington concert triumphs despite first-half technical glitch

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Michael Houstoun plays Rachmaninov

RACHMANINOV – Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor Op.30
TCHAIKOVSKY – “Manfred” Symphony in B Minor Op.58

Michael Houstoun (piano)
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 25th July 2020

Saturday evening’s concert by Orchestra Wellington, the first of the ensemble’s somewhat rearranged 2020 season, promised to be something of a blockbuster occasion, with two justly famous (for vastly different reasons) works from the Russian  repertoire together making for an evening’s spectacular music-making. Long regarded as one of the most difficult and demanding of romantic piano concertos, Rachmaninov’s legendary D minor work has proven an irresistible challenge for many of the greatest pianists over the years, and on this occasion was given a beautifully persuasive rendition by Michael Houstoun, supported both flowingly and meticulously by conductor and orchestra. An unexpected hiatus during the work’s second movement caused by a technical problem was quickly and securely dealt with, and the music safely gotten on the rails again by the musicians in an entirely admirable fashion.

Tchaikovsky’s programmatic B Minor Symphony “Manfred” has achieved a different kind of fame over the years, one based on its relative neglect by default, having as many detractors as champions, and being generally regarded until recently by both musicians and commentators as the weakest in a structural sense of the composer’s seven works in this form. Marc Taddei and his musicians ignored all such preconceptions by approaching the symphony very much on its own terms, fully embracing its programmatic nature and thus setting free all of the music’s dramatic and poetic possibilities, with truly spectacular results!

Added to the attraction of the programme was a real sense of occasion generated by the musicians involved brought about by the post-lockdown recommencement of Orchestra Wellington’s original programming for the season – achieved with a couple of time readjustments,  this was possibly a “first” for any orchestral body in the world for 2020. Music director Marc Taddei paid tribute in a short speech to the leadership and purpose demonstrated in high places which had enabled concerts here in New Zealand to be recommenced in such a manner. The orchestra had, of course, already made a highly-acclaimed reappearance on the concert platform for a Mozart series during the previous month, one featuring concertmaster Amalia Hall as both soloist and music director.

Another musician whose plans (sadly for us all, for retirement) had been “put on hold” through his generous response to a need created by the Covid-19 pandemic for his services was the evening’s soloist, Michael Houstoun. Having on previous occasions amply demonstrated his mastery of all aspects of Rachmaninov’s piano writing in this concerto, Houstoun seemed here to take a less virtuosic, more-than-usually organic view of the music this time round, with little untoward irruption or attention-drawing point-making allowed to disturb the flow of ideas, instead expressing everything as integral to the whole, and certainly never allowing the piano to dominate . The orchestral voices were given full rein, making for a fascinatingly-voiced dialogue of phrases and longer lines, with the wind-writing in particular making its presence felt. Rachmaninov has never, I feel,  been given sufficient credit for the more “intellectual” aspects of his writing, his detractors in particular quick to overemphasise his emotionalism and his “outdated” romantic gesturings, ignoring felicitations such as the skill with which he inter-relates the various motifs throughout this work. And those moments of “glorious expansion”, particularly those given tongue by the strings in places, here grew out of the material so naturally, for me further underlining a sense of being caught up in the first movement’s incredible flow of impulse and colour.

Just as beguiling here was the second movement’s richly-wrought sense of undulation, those various outpourings of feeling building and breaking over the waves’ edges so gloriously, led variously by the piano and then the orchestra – such a pity that one of these oceanic burgeonings was unexpectedly interrupted by the pianist’s electronic page-turner malfunctioning or inadvertedly losing its way, bringing the music to a halt – a brief re-alignment from soloist, conductor and orchestra, and we were off again, climbing towards that same ecstatic fulfilment of expression with even more determined energies – by contrast, the movement’s “scherzo-waltz”  section was here deliciously, almost lazily realised, giving the notes a chance to scintillate rather than merely “blur at speed” – the nocturne-like mood returned impassionedly, the strings allowing another surge of feeling before being silenced by the piano’s sudden call to action, heralding the finale.

Again, Houstoun chose not to assail the music with flailing figurations, but kept the momentums at a steady surge, holding the tempo in accord with an overall flow and imparting by turns a delicacy and an impish quality in places. Noble brass tones resonated the textures before hushed winds and strings introduced the haunting contrast afforded by a delicate scherzando sequence – lovely, crystalline playing from Houstoun, here, leading to the magical reiteration of the latter part of the first movement’s second subject, perhaps the concerto’s most “lump-in-the-throat” moment. Afterwards came the return of the “galloping horse” motiv that began the finale, and the almost combatative exchanges between piano and orchestra leading to the work’s apotheosis (Rachmaninov’s own “Cossack Cavalry” moment during this section rivals Chopin’s “Polish Cavalry” surgings in the latter’s Op.53 Polonaise). The orchestral strings sang the “big” concluding D Major melody like crazy, so it was a pity that the dovetailing right at the end of the work between piano and orchestra seemed suddenly fraught and uncertain, and the ending somewhat roughly-wrought! – so uncharacteristic of the performance as a whole!

Unfortunately, these relatively momentary “glitches” saw the pianist depart from the performing platform after acknowledging the orchestra and the audience, and not return, despite our enthusiastic applause, All of us most assuredly wanted to (a) let Houstoun know that the mishaps were of little consequence compared with the magnificence of the whole and (b) salute him and his fellow musicians for responding to these happenings with such efficiency and professionalism – one would hope that something like these same sentiments would have been conveyed to him as a matter of course afterwards.

Whether or not this somewhat “damp squib” ending of the first half made conductor and players all the more determined to bring off what followed in the concert with something wholly memorable is probably academic conjecture – the fact was that, from those first haunting wind chords of the opening “Lento lugubre” movement of Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony, the playing exerted a vice-like grip on our attentions, the remainder of the orchestra amassing its forces in the most full-blooded manner imaginable – such trenchant string tones and baleful brass, recalling like passages in the same composer’s “Francesca da Rimini” – there was tenderness, too as the strings savoured the theme Tchaikovsky wrought to characterise his hero Manfred’s memory of a lost love, followed by wild desperation as the memory became an obsession and a torment, culminating in a full-orchestra reiteration of Manfred’s own despairing motif.

Respite from the gloom was provided by the work’s inner movements – firstly by the whimsical charms of the watery abode of the Witch of the Alps, and a charmingly graceful Trio section which could have come from one of the great ballets, Tchaikovsky adroitly working the “Manfred” theme into the music’s blandishments – both the feathery scherzo-like textures and the silken grace of the trio were brought off here with great orchestral panache. The Berlioz-like third movement at first evoked pastoral scenes with a beguiling oboe solo carried on by flutes and counterpointed by a horn with the strings, a rustic dance bursting delightfully on the scene, but just as quickly swept away by an almost martial sequence – the volatility of the music amazed and entertained as the sounds swirled into a kind of passionate frenzy, brought to a halt by distant church bells and begun again by the winds, the music’s volatility leaving one bemused as to what next to expect!

The finale was an “Allegro con fuoco”, a bacchanalian-like riot of colour and energy with a distinct Russian flavour, delivered with tremendous elan – as the excitement died down, the brass sounded a kind of ‘knell”, returning us to the mood of the symphony’s opening, the hero having failed to elude his doom, one cruelly “mocked” by a driving fugue, which quickly turned into a kind of danse macabre, hurling itself to no avail against the “iron gates” of fate. What anguished strings and pitiless harp cascadings! –  all leading inevitably to desolate lamentations and a final reiteration of Manfred’s fateful theme, given the full, apocalyptic (perhaps that should read apoplectic?) treatment, an organ thrown in for good measure at the end, to bring some spiritual peace to the hero with death’s release. Conductor Marc Taddei would have at the end, I think, been justly proud of his own and his players’ efforts in bringing this “symphonic monster” to such overwhelmingly visceral life!

Surely RNZ Concert ought to have recorded this, an historic occasion for so many different reasons? Wouldn’t one have expected this to have been an occasion worth preserving? I would have thought so!……however, as I saw no microphones, it seems as if memory alone might have to suffice when we hearken back and remember what we can of this remarkable feast of music-making, in the midst of remarkable times!

Ghost Trio haunts sensibilities long after final notes in concert sounded

Posted on by Peter Mechen

A remarkable lunchtime concert by the Ghost Trio at the Adam Concert Room….

Ghost Trio – Monique Lapins (violin), Ken Ichinose (‘cello), Gabriela Glapska (piano)

BEETHOVEN – Piano Trio In C Minor Op. 1 No.3
MARTIN LODGE – Summer Music (2001)
SHOSTAKOVICH – Piano Trio in C Minor No.1  Op.8

Adam Concert Room, Te Kōkī NZ School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington

Friday, 17th July 2020

I had heard the Ghost Trio perform the same Beethoven work more than a fortnight previously (a concert reviewed below by my colleague, Steven Sedley), though this time round it was coupled to a different programme. Instead of the remarkable Piano Trio Op.1 by Polish composer Andrzej Panufnik (which I would have liked to hear again), the musicians chose to branch out in a different direction,  with each of the accompanying works expressing what I thought was a certain affinity with Beethoven’s music. We heard Kiwi composer Martin Lodge’s engaging “Summer Music”, whose effect was a kind of miniature out-of-doors, “Pastoral Symphony-like” sound-adventure, interlacing both natural and human noises. This was followed with a Piano Trio written by the then sixteen year-old Dmitri Shostakovich, a work whose Beethovenian “charge” of emotion alarmed the young composer’s professors at the Petrograd Conservatory as profoundly as was Josef Haydn disturbed by the boldness of his most famous pupil’s Op.1 C Minor Piano Trio.

As with the St.Andrew’s performance, the players drew their listeners into the composer’s world of dark and serious purpose from the very opening phrases, the sequences generating a disturbing quality throughout the instrumental interactions which never relinquished its grip. Sitting closer to the players in the Adam Concert Room this time round I felt involved all the more in the constant flow and ebb of  intensities, the explosive nature of the music’s dramatic contrasts, and the disconcerting upward\downward semitone shifts of the opening theme in places. Though the gloom was occasionally leavened by a contrasting, if briefly-wrought lyrical theme, any sunnier prospect was quickly clouded over again in no uncertain terms, the first-movement repeat emphasising the thrall in which we were held – and the development was similarly charged with tensions, light and darkness unceasingly pushing and shoving one another to one side – it was quite a ride!

The theme-and variations second movement promised some relief from Beethovenian brow-beating, and the players responded at the opening with some nobly-wrought sounds – perhaps it was partly due to the music’s playfulness but I found myself listening as much to the playing’s solo lines as to the concerted effect of the music-making throughout, the dialogues and “trialogues” as involving as the ensembled sounds – I relished the playful pizzicati of the third variation, the soulful cello solo of the fourth, and the sparkling chromatic keyboard runs of the fifth (all beautifully executed and characterfully dovetailed), to mention but a few ear-catching features.

As much scherzo as minuet, the third movement fused a certain wistful quality with playfulness, the piano’s frequent decorative figurations making a marked contrast with the occasional emphasised accent – again, the musicians gave the music’s angularities full scope to proclaim the work’s character, while allowing a fantastic element (those strangely-echoed resonances which suggested in places hidden voices directing the ebb and flow of things) some treasurable moments of sleight-of-hand, even magic.  As for the prestissimo finale, the players found more character than mere “virtuoso roar” with which to give voice to the music’s agitations, their nimble articulations (the pianist especially fleet-fingered!) creating wonderment and delicious anticipation as well as excitement, with the composer reserving the biggest surprise for the hushed, somewhat “spooked” coda, the musicians voicing the mystery and unease of it all to perfection at the end.

I hadn’t heard Martin Lodge’s “Summer Music” for some time but thought its appeal as instantly-involving as ever, with “hit the ground running” energies at the outset leading the listener into a world of vividly-wrought happenings. Both music and performance came across as remarkably organic, with swirling piano figurations and swinging thematic lines eventually giving way to sequences of stillness, the world stopping to listen to itself and inviting us to eavesdrop. Out of these breath-catching pointillistic etchings returned those same songs, a yearning for the natural world amid “humanity’s mad inhuman noise”, perhaps? – all very “Scene by the Brook”-like in its rediscovered innocence –  and leading into and through various undercurrents of pulse  to a beautiful and wistful blending of action, nature and memory at the end. The performance here caught me up in its vivid response to the music’s “story” and its accompanying array of alternating bustle and beauty.

So to the Shostakovich Trio, an equally remarkable evocation of the sixteen year-old composer’s thrall to a young woman, Tatyana Glivenko, whom he had met on holiday in 1923 in the Crimea (he was actually convalescing from tuberculosis at the time) – the music grew partly out of material he’d written for other works he had since abandoned, a Piano Sonata and a Quintet. Though nothing serious developed from the encounter with Tatyana, Shostakovich kept in touch with her by correspondence for many years. Two years after completing the Trio, the youthful composer performed the work as part of his application to continue his musical studies at the Moscow Conservatory, and was actually accepted, though his continuing ill health in the end forced him to remain at the Conservatory in Petrograd.

This single-movement work owed much of its bold, almost cinematic character to the composer’s part-time job as a cinema pianist playing the accompaniment for silent films. Shostakovich’s sister Zoya remembered that her brother and two of his friends actually used the cinema accompaniment as a rehearsal for the Piano Trio on one occasion, remarking that “the people whistled and booed!” But Shostakovich’s music from an early age seemed to revel in these characteristics, a family friend, the novelist Konstantin Fedin recalling hearing the boy playing his own compositions to guests at the family home – “….unexpected works which forced one to listen as if one were in the theatre, where everything is so clear that one must either laugh or weep.” Despite, or perhaps because of this ready accessibility, the Trio wasn’t published during Shostakovich’s lifetime, and had to be reconstructed from various sources, the missing last twenty or so bars of the piano part in fact “recomposed” by his pupil Boris Tishchenko.

Again, this was a remarkably involving performance, the players at full stretch in the more virtuoso, densely-woven ensemble passages, but “owning” their full-blooded expressionist character as great-heartedly as they did the more lyrical and unashamedly romantic passages, the whole almost Mahlerian in its all-embracing fervour. To comment on this or that individually-wrought passage seems of less importance than marvelling at the concerted “sweep’ of the music’s realisation by the ensemble – long may the Ghost Trio’s efforts continue to thrillingly haunt their audience’s sensibilities thus!

“Emperor of Composers” – an eponymous Piano Concerto and a lovely Symphony, “live” from the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BEETHOVEN – Piano Concerto No. 5 “Emperor”
–  Symphony No. 6 “Pastoral”
Diedre Irons (piano)
Hamish McKeich (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Wednesday, 8th July 2020

Following its hugely successful inaugural post-lockdown concert Ngū Kīoro… Harikoa Ake (Celebrating Togetherness), the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra has refocused its concert activities on rather more conventional repertoire with this all-Beethoven presentation, a sure-fire audience drawcard which certainly worked its magic in that respect, the result being a sold-out Michael Fowler Centre for the concert. An additional attraction was the presence of Diedre Irons, one of the country’s finest pianists, as the soloist. Most enterprisingly, the orchestra made arrangements for the concert to be streamed “live” on both radio (RNZ Concert) and on “Facebook” by RNZ Concert’s recording team and camera operators. My experience of hearing previous concerts I’d attended in the Michael Fowler Centre via recordings by RNZ Concert had already disposed me positively towards the results achieved by the latter, often securing a finer, better-balanced sound than I’d had when attending the actual concert – so people who had recourse to viewing and/or listening to the broadcasts were, in my opinion assured of an excellent musical experience sound-wise!

In addition, the “live-stream” audience was advantaged by an informative commentary from the Concert FM announcer, as opposed to the complete lack of documentation available in either written or spoken form for the concert-hall audience – I was surprised no programme was printed for distribution, the ticket-holders having been “informed” that “a printable programme was available on-line”. To my way of thinking, this situation was a poor advertisement for the orchestra and especially when one of the items performed, Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony, had a definite and informative “programmatic” aspect which, had it been printed and distributed, would have helped people new to concerts to enjoy the experience more deeply (the usually-eschewed audience-clapping between movements which took place on this occasion suggested that there were a number of people present unfamiliar with the music and with concert-hall conventions.

Nevertheless, the crowd was a cheery one, and the buzz of excitement beforehand was palpable, no doubt partly a reflection of people’s delight at having a real, “live” concert to attend once more, and partly a response to the programme’s undoubted appeal – it was something that altogether seemed to reflect and revitalise the world of live music-making as it existed before the pandemic’s ravages. What better composer than Beethoven could be chosen to reflect in his music this “revitalisation”? Of course, with so many great works to choose from, the concert organiser could hardly go wrong – easier, though to choose the “Emperor” Piano Concerto as the stand-out work among Beethoven’s compositions in that genre than to suggest a Symphony, where there are so many equally great ones! As it turned out, the “Pastoral” was an inspired choice – though what more arresting way might there be to begin a concert than with a piano concerto whose “title” is “The Emperor”?

True to its nickname, the work was here grandly begun, with each of the three opening orchestral chords bedecked by answering solo flourishes from the pianist, Diedre Irons, resonating from these arresting gestures in differing ways and setting the tone for an intriguing interplay of interpretative energies from orchestra and piano throughout the movement. Conductor Hamish McKeich and the orchestra then set off as they meant to go on, gathering the music’s detail up and into a trajectory of sure-footed, finely-graded purpose, each statement beautifully “terraced’, flowing from one another with its own character shining forth (some wonderful horn-playing) but keeping both ebb and flow subject to the overall rhythm’s driving energies. Irons’ piano-playing was straightaway more expansive in reply, savouring her phrases with characteristic point and focus, but opening up the poetic vistas and ensuring that every note, it seemed, was given its proper weight, reaffirming its place in the scheme of things.  This slight duality of purpose between orchestra and piano was evident with every orchestral tutti,  McKeich and his players pushing the basic pulse ahead by a notch or two, followed by Irons’ slight expansion of those same pulses as if responding to the beat of a slightly different drum. One couldn’t fault Irons’ eloquence in what she did, though in one or two places I thought the left-hand passagework seemed slightly too emphatic at the expense of forward movement. Still, the music’s line was always engagingly maintained on both “sides”, nowhere more so than in the exchanges leading up to the recapitulation of the work’s opening, begun with orchestra and piano hammering chords at one another at point-blank range with great gusto!

Conductor and players got a lovely “colour” at the slow movement’s beginning, capped off beautifully by the flute’s  voice joining the strings. The piano’s entry instantly enchanted, with the winds seeming almost loath to properly dove-tail their utterances with the soloist’s opening phrases for fear of breaking the spell, but unhesitatingly joining in later, horns contributing a kind of “dreamy fanfare” carried on by the winds over the pianist’s poetic musings. Later, flute, clarinet and bassoon exquisitely took up the music’s lines with the piano in tow, right to the movement’s precipitous edge, with the sounds teetering on the points of the music’s far-flung pre-echoes, and “the horns of elfland” softly beckoning, the piano then plunging into that exhilarating hurly-burly of the finale’s beginning, daring the orchestra to do likewise! Again, Irons’ manner was grand and expansive, obviously the fruit of her deep love of and familiarity with the music, a warm and rich response to Beethovenian energies, as much glowing and retrospective a viewpoint as immediate and spontaneously-wrought. McKeich and his players matched her every impulse, gesture and outpouring with sounds that rounded off the colour, variety and wholeheartedness of the music and its performance.

The concert’s second half wrought for us a different kind of sublimity, perhaps a more solitary and personal outpouring of emotion on the part of the composer, in the form of the “Pastoral” Symphony, written  a year or so before the “Emperor” Concerto. Famously described by Beethoven as “more an expression of feeling than painting” the work nevertheless has enough pictorial elements to constitute a seriously-regarded “programmatic work”, the three middle movements in particular depicting specifically-described natural and human-generated phenomena, such as a brook’s rippling water, various bird calls, a village band, and a violent thunderstorm.

I so relished the first movement’s performance, here – I thought McKeich and his players straightaway caught that “first, fine careless rapture” of experiencing nature at first hand, a true “awakening of pleasant feelings” as described by the composer. I loved how the playing suggested the rusticity of the sounds, through the ever-so-slight “chunkiness” of the rhythms, avoiding any sense of glibness or picture-postcarding. The famous “walking rhythms” of the first movements development section were deliciously realised, the crescendo in each case having a “glowing” quality, a true “expression of feeling” which overwhelmingly suffused the senses. All the instruments involved covered themselves with glory, here, with the rhythmic gait of the strings, the singing quality of the winds and the sonorous glow of the brass producing a memorable evocation of contentment.

For me the “Scene by the Brook” wasn’t quite so effusive at first, the string figurations not given the “room” for the stream waters to gurgle and babble as I would have liked – but the winds were, by way of compensation, encouraged by McKeich to play out and generate a scenario of exquisite beauty, with beautiful exchanges of timbre and colour among the various instruments. The conductor’s encouragement of whispered tones from the strings throughout placed the emphasis on the winds and created something of a Beethovenian “chaos of delight” through the birdsong – and the nightingale, quail and cuckoo imitations at the movement’s end were sublime!

The scherzo, styled by the composer as “Peasants’ Merrymaking”, involved me the least of all the movements, save for the wind-playing – oboe, clarinet and horn played their parts to perfection as “not very confident” village musicians doing their best! Despite the efforts of the players I thought McKeich’s tempi here produced a somewhat bland effect, not rumbustious and “hearty” enough at the beginning, and with too extreme a tempo change for the more vigorous sections, certainly one beyond the capabilities of a rustic village band! The storm, however, was sensational, with the timpanist using hard sticks (and possibly “authentic” drums – what articulate skins!), all of which imparted real menace to the thunderclaps, augmented by the screaming winds and baleful brass – a terrific onslaught!

Came the finale, introduced by gorgeous wind and horn solos, and sublimity returned, the balances beautifully judged, the tempo allowing a radiance sufficient room to flourish and suffuse the ambiences, and the playing filling out the ample spaces with a heartwarming generosity. I liked, as with the first movement, how McKeich again got a certain chunkiness of articulation in places, maintaining a rustic kind of feeling and entirely avoiding any slickness or unwanted glossiness to the end result – the work’s rapt conclusion rounded off a singular and rewarding concert experience.

 

 

 

 

A beautiful “Mozart hat-trick” from Orchestra Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

AMALIA AND FRIENDS PLAY MOZART
Violin Concerto No, 3 in G Major K.216
Symphony No. 36 in C Major K.425

Amalia Hall (violin and director)
Members of Orchestra Wellington

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

Saturday 20th June 2020

This was the third and final of the three programmes of Mozart presented on consecutive Saturdays in June 2020 by Amalia Hall and members of Orchestra Wellington, of which ensemble she is the concertmaster. Intended to be a kind of celebration of the nation’s lifting of “lockdown” conditions originally imposed by the Government to counter the presence of the Covid-19 virus, the concerts, though still limiting audience numbers to a hundred per event brought forth an enthusiastic and appreciative response to the ensemble’s return to “live” music-making in the capital.

My Middle-C colleagues, firstly Janice Potter and then Lindis Taylor, enthusiastically wrote about the previous couple of weeks’ performances by the same musicians, sentiments I was more than happy to echo this third time round. Here, I was firstly charmed and delighted with the direction and solo playing of Amalia Hall in the third of Mozart’s delectable series of Violin Concertos, before being thoroughly invigorated by the spirited response of the Orchestra Wellington players (again directed by Hall, this time from her concertmaster’s seat) to the same composer’s “Linz” Symphony, named after the place where Mozart wrote the music – in the space of a four-day sojourn there, no less!

While enjoying the St.Andrew’s venue as a near-ideal place for chamber and solo instrumental performance I’ve always had reservations about its suitability for orchestral performance – however, as we all know, the capital’s capacity for providing such venues has been more-than-usually under siege of late with strictures involving earthquake risk involving the temporary closure of halls, theatres and churches, necessitating places such as St.Andrew’s being brought in as a welcome stopgap for the time being. Here, with a smaller-than-usual ensemble, and a professional standard of performance, my usual concerns regarding sounds over-burgeoned thru players being crammed into insufficient spaces were happily put aside.

Particularly felicitous was the Violin Concerto’s performance, here, the music’s delight engaging the eye as well as the ear – firstly came the cheering sight of the leader/soloist joining in with the work’s opening tutti, playing the first violin part, and integrating her instrument’s sound with her fellows, and then of a sudden beaming her soloist’s single line (reinforced by frequent double-stopping) upwards and outwards as an independent spirit, and clearing the orchestral sound as a bird clears the treetops! Hers was not a “big” instrumental sound on this occasion, but an intensely focused one, whose detailings were etched and drawn like fine gold, as were the accompaniments from strings and winds – not that vigour and energy were at all lacking when required, of course, with the joyousness of Mozart’s writing given full vent at appropriate moments.

Something of the work’s extraordinary range of colour owed a great deal to its unusual scoring, Mozart substituting two flutes in the slow movement for the pair of oboes that had so characterfully contributed to the first-movement’s textures. Along with the violin’s “floating” line, the whole of the movement took on a kind of airborne quality, the muted strings enhancing the flutes’ suggestion of something not quite of this world. Equally remarkable was Hall’s playing of the cadenza, the lines bedecked with echoes and resonances, counter-voices and harmonies, all creating a remarkable multi-layered manifestation of sublimity

Contrasting with such rarefied beauties was the rumbustious, back-to-earth finale which “bounced” its way engagingly around and about, circumventing a couple of quirky contrasting episodes, before  briefly reappearing, and somewhat insouciantly bidding us farewell with a gentle, un-upholstered statement from the winds! Earlier, I had pricked up my ears at hearing Amalia Hall play what I call a “turn” at the end of each of her phrases after the opening tutti, instead of the “accustomed” trill – the first recording I ever owned of this work was David Oistrakh’s, who also played a “turn” (for want of the correct term, as I’m not a “proper” musician!) and it was nice to be “returned” to the memory of that, for me, so-o-o formative performance of this music after hearing “most” other violinists playing (a tad inconsequentially?) a trill….. either would have been a delight in such a context of fruitfulness as was ours in St.Andrew’s that afternoon….

More was to come, of course, if somewhat different in character to the concerto – a symphony, no less, one which Mozart wrote in the space of four days while sojourning at the city of Linz, the name by which the work has been known ever since. I still have the renowned conductor Bruno Walter’s once-popular “rehearsal recording” of this symphony somewhere on my shelves, and therefore can no longer hear the work’s opening without also hearing Walter’s voice exhorting his players to “come off” the note at the end of each measure at the beginning – “Bahm! – OFF! Ba-bahm! – OFF! Ba-bahm! – OFF!” – and so on! Happily the ghost of that memory wasn’t evoked on this occasion, partly because Amelia Hall’s tempi were quicker and the sounds more resonant – and partly because I was too taken by her slightly elevated “podium seat” which enabled her to more visibly perform the function of “leader” and “conductor” of the orchestra at the same time!

Hall and her players brought out the work’s definite “festive”quality at the beginning with those “Bruno Walter” notes, but also made good the sequences imbued with strains of melancholy (yearning lines from both strings and wind during that same introduction, set against the opening call to attention) and also touches of humour (some droll, quasi-furtive passages predating Leoporello’s music in the yet-to-be-written opera “Don Giovanni”) contrasting with the more assertive “joie de vivre” that drove the music forward. I enjoyed, too, the bringing out of those sinuous lines in the development which wreathed up and over the music, casting a new light on what had transpired, and making us listen afresh to the recapitulation, attended at the conclusion by those “lines of experience”.

The poise and grace of the slow movement’s opening fell gratefully on the ear, with drums and brass making splendid counterweighting points to the lyricism – I thought the different lines “swam” a bit in relation to each other in places, the rhythms a tad soft-edged at some of the different voices’ exchange-points, though one could conclude that the performance in general eschewed a kind of vertical precision as an end in itself and favoured singing lines instead. (I was merely looking for something to criticise, I must confess!) A swift Minuet with a lively “kick” made a gorgeous “rustic impression – or aft the very least, the illusion of gentility being “rusticated”, to pleasing effect! The trio’s seamless flow allowed the oboe a magical couple of moments, nicely taken.

At the outset the finale was a real “scamperer”, the first “sotto voce” phrase brimming with expectation, if the tiniest bit frayed at the edges the first time round – though I liked the phrase ends here being played for all they were worth right to their full length, instead of being given what sounds to my ears a self-conscious, somewhat “mannered” tapering off at the ends by ensembles purporting to be “authentic”. I loved the performance’s energy and sense of fun in the exposition, and the cut and thrust of the more “sturm und drang” parts of the development – Hall got a terrific response from her players throughout, the strings working hard, the winds and brass rock-steady for the most part, apart from a few bars where they lagged fractionally behind the strings (albeit together!), everything building up most satisfyingly to a grandstand finish, the heavyweights (brass and timpani) ringing out with the joy of it all, to great and well-deserved acclaim.

 

 

 

Wanganui Music Society 75th Jubilee Concert includes Wellington guest musicians

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wanganui Music Society 75th Jubilee Concert

Vocal and instrumental music
Various Artists

The Concert Chamber, War Memorial Centre,
Queen’s Park, Watt St,. Whanganui

Sunday, 8th March 2020

Every now and then (and without warning) a “Middle C” reviewer will be overcome by a “questing s

pirit” which will result in the same reviewer popping up somewhere unexpected and writing about an event whose location, on the face of things, seems somewhat outside the parameters of the usual prescription for “Middle C’”s coverage – vis-à-vis, “concerts in the Greater Wellington region”. In this case mitigating circumstances brought a kind of “Capital connection” to a Whanganui occasion, and certainly one that, when I heard about the details beforehand, was (a) eager and (b) pleased to be able to take advantage of the chance to attend and enjoy!

This was the 75th Jubilee Concert given by the Wanganui Music Society in the city’s magnificent Concert Chamber, part of the superbly-appointed War Memorial Centre. The concert was one which brought together musicians who were either members of the Society or who had previously contributed to past programmes – so there was a real sense of appropriateness concerning the event’s overall essence and presentation of community performance and guest participation. And though my own connections with the city and its cultural activities were more tenuous,  I felt here a kind of “once-removed” kinship with the efforts of the Society and its artists, being a Palmerstonian by origin and in the past having taken part in similar events in that not-too-far-away sister-city.

To be honest, however, my presence at the concert was largely to do with a particular piece of music being performed that afternoon – Douglas Lilburn’s song-cycle, Sings Harry must be one of the most quintessential Kiwi artistic creations of singular expression ever made, bringing together, as it does, words and music formed out of the flesh and blood, sinews and bones of two this country’s most archetypal creative spirits, Lilburn himself and poet Denis Glover. The Sings Harry poems were the poet’s homespun observations about life made by a once-vigorous old man looking back on his experiences for better or for worse – and six of these poems were taken by the composer and set to music that seemed to many to fit the words like a second skin.

Glover, at first enthused by his friend Lilburn’s settings, gradually came to disapprove of them, at one low point famously and disparagingly characterising the music as “icing on my rock cakes!”. The work has survived all such vicissitudes, but still today doesn’t get performed as often as I, for one, would like to hear it. Which is where this concert came in, offering the chance to hear one of the piece’s most respected and widely-acknowledged exponents, Wellington baritone Roger Wilson, bring it all to life once more, rock-cake, icing and all, for the edification of those who attended this Jubilee event.

Another Wellington connection was afforded by a second singer, mezzo-soprano Linden Loader, who’s been in the past a familiar performer in the Capital’s busy round of concerts, if mostly, in my experience, as a member of a vocal ensemble rather than as soloist. Here, though, she took both roles, firstly as a soloist in two of Elgar’s adorable Sea Pictures and a folksong arrangement, My Lagen Love by Hamilton Harty, and then joining Roger Wilson for three vocal duets, one by Brahms and two by Mahler, the latter calling for some “characterful” expression which both singers appeared to relish to the utmost!

The only other performer whose name I knew, having seen and heard her play in Wellington as well, was flutist-cum-pianist Ingrid Culliford, whose prowess as a flutist I’d often seen demonstrated in concert, but not her pianistic skills, which made for a pleasant surprise – her partnership with ‘cellist Annie Hunt created a winning “ebb-and-flow” of emotion in Faure’s Elegy; and while not particularly “appassionato” the playing of Saint-Saens’s work Allegro appassionato by the pair had plenty of wry mischief – an affectionate performance! She also collaborated as a pianist with the excellent young flutist Gerard Burgstaller, in a movement from a Mozart Flute Concerto, and then as a flutist herself with soprano Winifred Livesay in beautifully-voiced and -phrased renderings of American composer Katherine Hoover’s evocative Seven Haiku.

Other performers brought to life what was in sum a varied and colourful amalgam of music, among them being pianist Kathryn Ennis, possibly the afternoon’s busiest performer! As well as partnering both Linden Loader in music by Elgar and Hamilton Harty, with Roger Wilson joining the pair for vocal duets by Brahms and Mahler, Ennis then later returned with Wilson for Lilburn’s Sings Harry, and, finally, closed the concert with two piano solos, pieces by Liszt and Khachaturian. I though her a sensitive and reliable player, very much enjoying her evocations with Loader of the differing oceanic characters in the Elgar Songs, singer and pianist rich and deep in their response to “Sea Slumber Song”, and creating a bard-like kind of exotic wonderment with “Where Corals Lie”. Harty’s My Lagen Love also teased out the best in singer and pianist, here a winning mix of lyricism and candid expression, with a nicely-moulded piano postscript.

Piano duettists Alison Safey and Alton Rogers brought flow and ear-catching variety of tone to their performance of the first movement of a Mozart Sonatina K.240, before further treating us to Matyas Seiber’s Three Short Dances, each one given an appropriate “character” (I liked the slow-motion Habanera-like aspect of the opening “Tango” a good deal!). Afterwards came violinist Jim Chesswas, most sensitively accompanied, I thought, by pianist Leonard Cave, the two recalling for me childhood memories of listening to Gracie Fields’ voice on the radio, with a strong, sweetly-voiced rendition of The Holy City, giving me a lot of unexpected pleasure!

Roger Wilson’s and Linden Loader’s “Duets” bracket both charmed (Brahms) and entertained (Mahler) us, the singers collaborating with pianist Kathryn Ennis in Brahms’s “Es rauschet das Wasser” to bring out moments of true magic in the lines’ interaction (ardent, steadfast tones from Loader, and tenderly-phrased responses from Wilson, the two voices blending beautifully towards the song’s end, with everything admirably echoed by Ennis’s resonant piano evocations). After this the Mahler duets were riotous fun, each singer a vivid foil for the other, the characterisations almost larger-than-life, but readily conveying the texts’ none-too-subtle directness.

Soprano Marie Brooks began the concert’s second half, her sweet, soubrettish-like tones well-suited to Faure’s Après Un Rêve, her line secure, somewhat tremulous of character, but well-focused – her pianist, Joanna Love, proved an admirable collaborator, whose sounds blended happily with the voice. Flutist Gerard Burgstaller then impressed with his control and command of line and breath in Mozart’s opening movement of K313, as did soprano Winifred Livesay in Katherine Hoover’s Seven Haiku, her partnership with Ingrid Culliford as mentioned above, distilling some memorable moments of loveliness.

Sings Harry was a focal point for me, of course, Roger Wilson here admirably characterising the work’s unique qualities in his brief spoken introduction, remarking on its essential “elusiveness” for the performer, and nicely characterising his “journey” of involvement with the work. Here I thought singer and pianist effectively evoked “Harry and guitar” at the outset, and caught the whimsicality of the character’s “sunset mind” which followed, in a suitably harlequinesque manner. Of course, Glover and Lilburn whirl us almost disconcertingly through such moments before setting us down in deserts/oases of aching reflection – firstly “Once the days”, and even more tellingly, after the whirlwind of “Come mint me up the golden gorse”, leaving us almost bereft in the following “Flowers of the Sea”, The latter sequence here palpably grew in poignant resignation with each utterance, leaving us at the end “broken open” and completely at the mercy of those ceaseless tides. I thought Wilson’s and Ennis’s presenting of both this and the concluding “I remember” totally “inside” the words and music, and felt somewhat “lump-in-the-throat” transfixed by the ending – Harry, with his guitar, was left as we had found him, but with so much understanding and intense wonderment by then imparted to us……

Kathryn Ennis concluded the concert with two piano solos, firstly Franz Liszt’s well-known Liebestraum No. 3 and then a work new to me, a Toccata by Aram Khachaturian. While I thought the Liszt technically well-managed I thought everything simply too reined-in as the piece gathered in intensity, the expression held back as if the player was fearful of provoking that often-voiced criticism of “vulgarity” made by detractors of the composer and his work, but which in committed hands can, of course, produce such an overwhelming effect! Better was the Khachaturian, presented like some kind of impressionistic “whirl” here, to great and memorable effect – happily, a fitting conclusion to the proceedings!

 

 

NZ Opera’s “Eight Songs for a Mad King” a brilliant, Janus-faced experience

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NZ Opera presents
EIGHT SONGS FOR A MAD KING

Music by Peter Maxwell Davies
Texts by Randolph Stow and George III

The King: Robert Tucker

The Musicians: Stroma New Music Ensemble
Hamish McKeich (conductor)
Rachel Fuller (keyboard/s)
Luca Manghi (flute)
Mark Cookson/Patrick Barry (clarinets)
Yuka Eguchi (violin)
Heather Lewis/Robert Ibell (‘cellos)
Jeremy Fitzsimons (percussion)

Director – Thomas de Mallet Burgess
Production Designer – Robin Rawstorne
Assistant Conductor – Timothy Carpenter
Repetiteur – Rachel Fuller

RNZB Dance Centre, Wellington

Monday 2nd March 2020

Firstly, some background for the curious – the “King” of this concert’s title is King George III of England, who suffered from mental illness throughout his adult life, eventually being removed from his throne and kept under lock and key in Windsor Castle. Over his final decade he lost his eyesight and hearing, and fell prey to frequent manic episodes, by all accounts babbling endlessly as he slid into dementia, and eventually dying in 1820 at the age of eighty-one. The King owned a number of caged bullfinches, and during his confinement became obsessed with teaching his birds how to sing tunes played by a mechanical organ or music-box. This instrument, along with a note identifying its provenance as owned and used by the unfortunate Monarch, came to the notice, almost two hundred years afterwards, of Australian author and poet Randolph Stow, who was inspired to create a series of poems, parts of which were drawn from recollections of witnesses to the King’s outpourings, and directly illustrated his pitiable condition. British avant-garde composer Peter Maxwell Davies set these poems to music, writing with the vocal talents of one Roy Hart in mind, a virtuoso South African singer who had become interested in exploring the range and limits of the human voice.

At the time of the work’s premiere, in April 1969, Davies fully expected “Eight Songs” to remain a “one-off” for Hart, never imagining anybody else being able or even wanting to perform the piece. He was therefore surprised and delighted at how the work soon took on a life of its own, becoming a classic example of a new “music-theatre” genre, which redeployed (and often subverted) existing performance conventions. Davies himself recorded the work with his own virtuoso avant-garde music-group, “The Fires of London”, though sadly for posterity, not with Roy Hart, the creator of the  role – fortunately the soloist on the 1971 Unicorn recording, Julius Eastman, was a worthy successor.

In his notes accompanying the recording, the composer stated that his intention was “to leave open the question – is the persecuted protagonist “Mad George III” or someone who thinks he is George?”. Naturally the work will forever be associated with the monarch in question, given that the song texts contain numerous actual quotations of the King’s words – the novelist Frances (Fanny) Burney was Queen Charlotte’s lady-in-waiting for five years, and during that time she recorded both events and utterances in which the King was central (as an example, the whole of the text of the sixth song, “The Counterfeit” is transcribed by Randolph Stow from Burney’s diary). But the suggestion that the character of the King might also represent any such deluded individual straightaway lifts the work out of its singular and historical confines and into the realm of general human experience, of which mental illness seems in our time to be an increasingly common affliction. Davies reminded us in his notes that until relatively recent times, “madness” was something to ridicule, and in more severe cases isolate, often in the most inhumane and nightmarish conditions; and while treatments and care-environments are nowadays less primitive, the stresses and inbalances that, if ignored, can lead to mental illness are still very much with us.

New Zealand Opera’s innovative production of the work gives audiences not one but two separate and different views of the terrain in all senses of the word – the mindscape of an extremely disturbed individual, firstly (as happened in my particular case) from the “outside” 0f the performance space, visible from the outside through windows, and audible by means of headsets for each audience member. So, first time round, we were seated in the open air, cannily underneath a tarpaulin in a space next to the building in which the opera was being performed – and through the windows we could glimpse the singer performing his on-stage peregrinations, and via the excellent headphones we clearly heard his cocktail mix of song, sprechgesang and random, wide-ranging vocalisings, along with the constant instrumental collaborations from the ensemble – the whole thing was an “outsider’s view”, a process that was observed, but without direct involvement, something that one could easily distance oneself from at a moment’s notice if one felt so inclined.

What a difference after one was ushered inside for the second performance (each took about thirty minutes), to sit right next to the stage (which was a kind of “catwalk” extending the whole width of the audience-space, and with seating on both sides)! Here, we straightaway felt “drawn in” by the immediacies, the sometimes startling proximities , and the “sharing-the-space” phenomenon that can make great theatre (and music-making, of course!). Singer Robert Tucker, looking none the worse for wear after having already given one performance of the piece appeared in close-up somewhat disconcertingly (a) youthful, and (b) dapper, not quite in accordance with my preconceived “image” of a deranged George III, but nevertheless exuding a kind of “authority” from the outset, entering quietly but portentously, and sitting at one end of the catwalk activating a “Newton’s Cradle”, waiting for the first of the instrumental explosions whose force and violence punctuate the music-drama.

In some performances the instrumentalists are positioned in separate giant birdcages, each player representing one of the King’s bullfinches he attempted to teach to sing – here the players weren’t thus confined, but sat as an ensemble at one end of the platform, the singer alternating his attentions between them, his audience(s) and wherever his mind’s fancy took him. And the “double audience” added a dimension to the singer’s confusions, his awareness of interiors and exteriors pathetically expressed amidst his tirades by glances through the windows at an “outside world”. Despite the close physical proximities, the venue’s largely empty spaces behind where we sat and its ample acoustic seemed to me to underline the essential solitude of the King’s existence. His interactions with his musicians and the audience, despite their sometimes startlingly visceral nature seemed all fantasy. “I am weary of this fate – I am alone” sang the character at the conclusion of one of the songs.

The performance in every way was astonishing – Robert Tucker as the King “owned” his character in a way that explored a gamut of human emotion, engaging our sympathies at his “plight” as readily as activating our discomfiture with his volatility. The demands of the role pushed the concept of “singing” into realms of expression which transcended the idea of the voice as a musical instrument as we might generally accept it through what the composer aptly termed “terrifying virtuosity”. But in appearing not as any kind of caricatured asylum-bound lunatic, whose tirades were neither extreme, nor “onslaught-like” as were some of the performers in the role I’ve witnessed on film, Tucker’s delineation of the character always seemed intensely human, in places touchingly bringing out the tendernesses of some of his utterances (as observed by Fanny Burney in her diary), if at times squeamish-inducing (as throughout his “close-up-and-personal” interactions with a hapless flutist, during “The Lady-in-Waiting”, brilliantly carried off by both singer and player). His anger, too, spectacularly vented at one infamous moment in the piece, mirrored a kind of reality of frustration, an impulse in tragic accord with human behaviour gone awry. This “one-of-us” aspect suggested  by the production brought home , to my mind, the “for whom the bell tolls” aspect of our human existence, so that our “relief” at the King’s eventual departure was singed with spots of pity and sorrow and even horror at the finality of the concluding percussive juggernaut, which consigned his heart-rending cries to oblivion.

Conductor Hamish McKeich led the Stroma Ensemble unerringly through a veritable thicket of coruscations, appearing to never miss a beat, shirk an uproar, or delineate a disorder! – and in parallel to these subversions the players sounded the lyrical moments, the dance-tunes and the whimsical parodies (a gorgeous two-step take-off of Handel’s music at one point) with delicious elan, as well as bringing to bear their array of bird-song devices in a veritable “chaos of delight” (alas, Charles Darwin’s words, not mine!). The accordance of theatrical movement with the music was exemplary throughout, the jaunty introduction to “To be sung on the Water” followed by beautiful ‘cello solos evoking a boat-ride down the river, one of a number of enduring memories of the performance.

Director Thomas de Mallet Burgess would have been well-pleased with both the powerful overall impact and the finely-crafted detailed focus his musicians brought to this production. Its dual-performance aspect gives it a singular kind of appeal, no matter in what order one experiences the “outside/inside” presentation, be it a savouring of expectation beforehand, or food for thought afterwards! – It plays again tonight (Wednesday 4th March) at 8:30pm, and then at the same time on both the 5th and 7th later this week at the RNZB Dance Centre next to the MFC in Wakefield St., Wellington.

 

 

 

 

Jonathan Lemalu and Virtuoso Strings blaze forth in Porirua’s Te Ata Festival

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Virtuoso Strings  – O Matou Malaga (Our Voyage), with Jonathan Lemalu

Jonathan Lemalu (bass)
Nina Noble (trumpet) / Elijah Futi (piano) / Martin Riseley (violin)
Kitty Sneyd-Utting/Jillian Tupuse (violin, vocals) /Toloa Faraimo (concertmaster)
Rochelle Pese Akerise (violin) Benjamin Sneyd-Utting (‘cello)
Glenview School Choir and friends
Virtuoso Strings, Sinfonia for Hope
Andrew Atkins (conductor)

Te Rauparaha Arena, Porirua

Saturday, 22nd February 2020

Though the two events weren’t directly related, this heart-warming, youth-driven classical music event in Porirua involving Jonathan Lemalu and the Virtuoso Strings flew in the most appropriate and timely way right in the face of attitudes and rationales voiced by certain forces who had recently proposed the closure of RNZ Concert, the public network’s classical music station. Though on the face of things driven by demographic concerns (RNZ Concert’s replacement station, we were told, represented “a new music “brand” to reach a wider, younger audience”) the proposed change sadly reflects a world-wide trend involving governments in the process of defunding these “creative” activities regarded by official bean-counters as “non-profitable”, with art- music everywhere having to fight to justify its existence. Because a lot of people these days simply aren’t exposed to any classical music the latter is regarded as elitist and the preserve of “old white people”, although the “cheap-shot” by a certain commentator characterising RNZ Concert-listeners as “privileged cardigan-wearers” does seem to have backfired of late! A spirited demonstration in the grounds of Parliament on Monday 24thmade the reactions of the classical station’s loyal listeners to the proposals absolutely clear to the Government  – “Set up your new “Youth Station” by all means, but don’t cannibalise our RNZ Concert in the process!”

The perfect answer to the spurious claim of lack of significant youth involvement in classical music was provided by both performers and their audience at the Te Rauparaha Arena, Porirua’s “O Matou Malaga – Our Voyage” event, a concert featuring the artists listed above in the opening presentation of Te Ata, an “interactive cultural festival for young people in Porirua”, one sponsored by the 2020 New Zealand Festival of the Arts. Virtuoso Strings, based in Cannons Creek, Porirua, is a charitable trust which provides free music tuition and instruments to students at low decile schools in Porirua East, involving over 300 Porirua East students over the past year alone, and establishing a youth and community orchestra which has performed in many community events. Last year the orchestra toured Northland giving concerts in various centres; and a String Octet from the group  performed in Auckland during August at the National Chamber Music finals in the Town Hall, capturing the People’s Cholce Award in doing so (playing the “Goodnight Kiwi” piece by composer Craig Utting referred to below).

Grammy Award-winning bass Jonathan Lemalu is the Patron of the Virtuoso Strings Orchestra, intent on fostering the talents of the young performers, and helping individuals learn from the skills of making music, and in doing so, enrich their own lives and that of their families and community. The orchestra’s founders, Elizabeth Sneyd and Craig Utting, began the group in 2013, and have, with the help of the Virtuoso Strings Charitable Trust, former Board member Siang Lim and current members James Faraimo, Paul Setefano and Luamanuvao Dame Winnie Laban built a successful and flourishing music scheme which today is an integral part of the Porirua Community. The centrepiece of the concert’s first half on this occasion was in fact a work originally written (and arranged especially for this ensemble) by Craig Utting, a beautiful piece called “Goodnight Kiwi”, which I’d heard performed before, and here was presented as an orchestral work, with the original Octet “wrapped” in extra orchestral ambience, an attractive and atmospheric “variant” on what I’d encountered and enjoyed so much last year.

Before the concert Sir Roderick Deane welcomed us and introduced the performers, after which Jonathan Lemalu took the stage, announcing, after a few introductory remarks, that “In the beginning there was just one piano” – which was the signal for the pianist Elijah Futi to hurl forth, firstly, a keyboard version of the well-known 20thCentury-Fox signature-tune, and then gradually morph through some Gershwin-type rhythm-‘n-blues impulses (apparently excerpts from the theme music to the TV show “The Simpsons”!) and into the Grieg Piano Concerto’s first movement, accompanied gorgeously by the strings! From this grew a sequence devised and composed by Craig Utting, running the entire length of the concert’s first half, and whose sounds were accompanied by images assembled and presented by Moses Viliamu and Kitty Sneyd-Utting.  Jonathan Lemalu’s commentary  words stressing “solace” and “companionship” accompanied some Vaughan Williams-like “Greensleeves” fragments, the poignantly-phrased solo cello (Benjamin Sneyd-Utting) joined by violins sweetly descanting a counterpoint.

Then, at the announcement “Virtuoso Strings was born”, it seemed almost as if Shostakovich had come amongst the tumult, and gone “pasifika”,  with drums excitedly roaring forth as first, but the strings then underpinned the rhythm with swaying single notes, and calmed the excitement, allowing an ethereal atmosphere to settle over the ambience, with Kitty Sneyd-Utting’s wordless voice a stratospheric strand in the mix. It led seamlessly to an invocation of “Travelling” together and on individual journeys, characterising the players’ both touring with the orchestra and developing their individual skills, Lemalu singing a text written by Adrienne Jansen, asking the question “What shall I give you to take on this journey?”

Te Rangirua o Toiri was a forceful outpouring from acoustic and electric strings, piano and percussuion, in accordance with Lemalu’s words: – Te galu afi mua vaka! Oi Aue! Te lakilua! (“The first wave of fire!”), the music originally written by Utting for the Black Grace Dance Company to perform accompanied by inexperienced orchestra players needing plenty of electric and percussive support!  After this, the song Lota Nu’u, referred to by various people as Samoa’s second Nationa Anthem, was lullabic in effect, well chosen in this case by Gillian Deane, the music’s mood heightened by the singer’s suddenly raising the song’s emotional temperature with a single-toned upward modulation – a place where the request at the concert’s beginning for no applause before the interval was severely tested!

“Moving “with confidence to their own beat”, the players took Lemalu’s enjoiner to heart, the string-players augmenting the percussive outpourings with energetic angularity, the tumult assuming a kind of “thorn between two roses” character as it turned out, the speaker signalling the final homecoming with the words “The sound of our kiwis were heard”, and the leading strings standing to play Utting’s haunting “Goodnight Kiwi” set of variations. This was most engaging – we relished a remarkably free-ranging exploration by the players of tone, texture and rhythm, setting cosy nostalgia against zany humour, and rhythmic abandonment against semi-macabre disintegrations, the lump-in-throat “Hine e hine” melody flitting between the gaps at first, then sustained by the haunting voice of Jillian Tupuse, allowing her tones a variety of colourings and giving the music a “sliding”, Salvador Dali-like “do I wake or sleep?” aspect! –  all backdropped most poignantly by the original “Goodnight Kiwi “footage from TV One’s original close-down ritual – so very moving!

The programme’s second half was just as rich in a more variegated way, consisting of instrumental, orchestral, vocal and choral pieces designed to sound and celebrate the skills, both technical and musical, of players connected with the Virtuoso Strings. Introduced by the Trust’s chairman, James Faraimo,  the music of the half began with Handel’s The Trumpet Shall Sound, sung, of course by Lemalu (in excellent voice), and featuring the trumpet-playing of Nina Noble from Christchurch, a Deane Endowment scholar who will be attending the NZSM this year in Wellington – splendid playing from her, and a great and giving partnership between trumpet and voice, given that the  two are not normally positioned close together when the piece is performed as part of “Messiah”. Singers from Glenview School in Porirua East then performed a work by Christopher Tin, Kia Hora Te Marino, (Let Peace be widespread) with the added assistance from Isaac Stone and Tawa College’s Blue Notes Choir, making up a group of all ages, a full-blooded affirmation of positive feeling, the message punched out in no uncertain terms by an enthusiastic percussion section.

Came the Sinfonia for Hope’s appearance, the group consisting of musicians from various Wellington groups coming together to make music to raise funds for various humanitarian causes, and appearing on this occasion to support the Te Ata Festival’s celebration of youthful creativity. They firstly accompanied Lemalu in two characterful operatic arias, the subversive “La Calumnia” from Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia”, and the boastful “O wie will ich Triumphiren” sung by the odious Osmin in Mozart’s “Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail”, each one allowing the singer ample scope for vivid characterisation, which was achieved here with considerable elan. Then the group’s concertmaster, Martin Riseley, gave us a virtuoso performance of the last movement of Vivaldi’s “Summer” Concerto from “The Four Seasons”  with stirring support from the Sinfonia’s players.

After this was the Virtuoso Strings’ turn to accompany their patron, in two items I recalled from the previous year’s “Some Enchanted Evening” concert at the Wellington Opera House – here Lemalu seemed to me in better voice, negotiating the demands of “Ole Man River” from Jerome Kern’s “Showboat” with sonorous ease, and bringing a deep nostalgic feeling to Richard Rogers’ “Some Enchanted Evening from “South Pacific”, the singer again, I thought, freer and more detailed than in that previous performance.

Luamanuvao Dame Winnie Laban, the current Pasifika Vice-Chancellor at Victoria University of Wellington, and a recently-appointed trustee of Virtuoso Strings Charitable Trust made the most of a brief opportunity to speak to us, conveying her congratulations to the concert’s organisers and performers, before both orchestras came on stage for the final item This was Danzón No.2 by Arturo Márquez, a work from Mexico that has nevertheless gained currency as a “signature tune” for the Venezuelan Simon Bolivar Orchestra – Craig Utting rearranged the work’s scoring to include double string orchestra and piano to make up for the original’s lavish wind-and-brass parts. It all worked brilliantly under the leadership of conductor Andrew Atkins, from the sultry danzón  beginning of the piece, through the interplay between instrumental solos and tutti passages, right to the spirited pay-off at the end. The reception accorded the musicians by the audience at the concert’s conclusion capped off the excitement and enjoyment of the music-making evident throughout – altogether a heart-warming demonstration of youthful skills and energies brought out by the power of music!

Poulenc’s “La Vox Humaine” given a stunning performance

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Francis POULENC – The Human Voice (“La voix humaine”)
Words by Jean Cocteau (English translation by Johana Arnold and Barbara Paterson)

Barbara Paterson (soprano)
Gabriela Glapska (piano)

Tabitha Arthur (director)
Meredith Dooley (costumier)
Isadora Lao (lighting designer and operator)

{Suite} Gallery, 241 Cuba St., Te Aro, Wellington

Friday 31st January 2020

As we took our seats in the confined spaces of Cuba St.’s Suite gallery, pianist Gabriela Glapska was playing the music of Satie, beautifully coalescing the sounds of the composer’s Gymnopedies, the dance figurations wrought by the pianist almost as “held” as if depicted on a Grecian urn and the tones as “imagined” as they were real – “heard melodies are sweet, but…..” – here, time seemed to be slowed down, every note taking on a suspenseful, becalmed feeling, so much so that I thought Debussy’s Clair de lune which followed broke the spell that had been created (perhaps one of the Gnossiennes may have carried us further along, and into the ensuing silence more appropriately) …………. however, after the piano fell silent I was drawn into  the breathless poise of the stage setting’s opening, with singer Barbara Paterson (as “Elle”, the show’s only on-stage performer) having entered, the character tremulously waiting for what must have been a prearranged telephone call, the silences deliciously redolent with expectation and anxiety, impatience and foreboding.

Our viewing space’s angular intimacy was augmented by asymmetrically-placed ladders and a structural pillar for a centrepiece to boot, besides the art displayed on the gallery walls, Megan Archer’s depictions of what looked like entwined, almost convoluted limbs in various “clinches” underpinning the claustrophobia of the surroundings. The lighting seemed at first impersonal a la a hotel suite or utilitarian meeting-space, but as the interactive play between Elle and her telephone began to take shape, the hues and intensities of the lights responded to certain influences, reflecting the passing of time, the changing of the day and Elle’s state of mind as she struggled to make sense of her interaction with the person (her ex-lover) who had called her.

This was the scenario for a performance of Francis Poulenc’s setting of fellow-countryman Jean Cocteau’s monodrama, La vox humaine, the opera following the original play after a gap of 30 years. In each case a woman is onstage alone throughout, speaking on a telephone with her “ex” from whom she has not long parted. Poulenc worked with the role’s creator, soprano Denise Duval, in adapting Jean Cocteau’s work to operatic form, the composer reducing the original to a more malleable length, and writing for an orchestra as the accompaniment, and, in fact stating at one point that “the work should bathe in the greatest orchestral sensuality”. Duval was the composer’s favourite singer, and the pair seemed ideally matched to tackle what Poulenc described as “a musical confession” – in fact the composer was to describe later how the pair wept together “page-by-page, bar-by-bar” in what he called “a diary of our suffering” – both composer and singer had recently undergone emotional crises, obviously bringing their experiences to bear on these outpourings. Despite Poulenc’s remark concerning orchestral sensuality (I have listened to several performances with orchestral accompaniment) I thought Gabriela Glapska’s piano-playing here beautifully abstracted the colour in the orchestral score and gave us an immediacy of interaction between Elle and her “ex” whose direct quality had a definite and focused impact of their own – and singer and piano could and did, in those intimate spaces of Cuba St’s Suite venue, run a gamut of radiant, searing, euphoric and despairing emotion which made a proper foil for the myriads of more lyrical and intimate moments.

Though the opera was given in English on this occasion, I’m going to briefly revert to the work’s original language in describing this performance by singer and pianist as a veritable tour de force! (incidentally, this was a translation made, and previously performed, by an American soprano, Johana Arnold, who is in fact the mother of THIS performance’s “Elle”!) The opening “charged” silences during which Barbara Paterson compellingly held our attention while waiting for her telephone to ring were nothing short of riveting, her aspect conveying to us both her vulnerability and her determination, with movements affecting a measure of command and confidence but all too readily revealing tension and uncertainty when put under pressure, responding with bird-like rapidity to the telephone’s ringing and various unwanted external interruptions.  Both her face and form displayed remarkable aspects of grace and fluidity throughout (such as her almost coquettish teasing of her “ex” in places, as if either forgetting or choosing to ignore their actual disfunctionality) when contrasted with her rapid, almost furtive reactions to moments of shock or conflict, often succeeded by sequences of deflation and despair as if she suddenly felt drained of energy and will. Incidentally, I was pleased there was a “proper” telephone, and thought the interactions of the singer with the medium totally in keeping with telephonic use at the time – the interruptions of the singer’s conversation with her “ex” by somebody using a “party line”, though outside present-day telephonic experience, are nevertheless significant here, as they underline and indeed symbolise the overall breakdown of the relationship and its presently fraught concourse.

Always Paterson’s movements and expressions synchronised beautifully with both the words and the unheard voices of the people who talked with her, the telephone operator at the very beginning, the party-line neighbour, and, of course, her “ex”, whose status as such we didn’t really “pick up” on until that lump-in-the-throat moment where Elle plaintively responded to a request from him for a “bag” of what she called “your letters and mine” with the submissive words “You can send for it when you like”, conveying the “hurt” of the request all the more poignantly with the phrase “I had no idea you wanted them so quickly” , and of course when contrasted with the playful sensuality and kittenish aspect that entered her description for him (all a fabrication) of what she was wearing at that time.

The singer’s own arresting looks and engaging stage personality couldn’t help but sharpen the focus of our conjecture generated by her character’s relationship’s obvious dissolution – and throughout all of the possible scenarios were adroitly “brushed into” the opera’s action by the production, momentarily reflecting the attitudes and behaviours of both characters and as quickly superseded by other possibilities. Volatilities were suggested on both sides, with Elle in places abruptly and passionately responding to both her own realisations of her conflicted state and her ex’s “anger” in places as a result of things she had said, her more agitated irruptions sometimes ending in tears.  She’s shown as a romantic dreamer, whether by nature or by artifice or both – at one point the mood created by some exquisite pianissimo singing was broken by her own realisation that she was in a dream of denial, while the world pursued its own course, leaving her stranded. Her attempts to preserve the vestiges of an old intimacy was given a wonderful sensuality in places, no more so when she used the piano as if it were her lover’s body, stretching out upon it at one point as if reimagining her words “when we were in bed and I had my head in that small place against your chest”, making the intrusion of the loud music from the ‘phone all the more symptomatic. The subsequent “confession” to him that “what is really hard to bear is the second night, and the third….” is the most enduring impression of all, the mood evoked by singer and pianist readily bringing pathos as we empathise with her predicament, the empty despair of “and getting up and going out, and to go – where?” unequivocally laying all of our emotions bare…….

Very great credit to all concerned regarding this production, the performers’ sterling efforts backed up steadfastedly by Tabitha Arthur’s fluid, naturalistic and unobtrusive direction and Isadora Lao’s sensitively-wrought illuminations. Such finely-crafted and deeply-committed presentations deserve the widest possible currency, as well as the heartfelt thanks of those of us fortunate enough to enjoy what was, for this audience member, a profoundly moving experience

Further performances –
NZ Academy of Fine Arts, 1 Queens Wharf, Wellington
27 – 29 February 2020
6pm
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