Author: Peter Mechen

Ensemble Zefiro a breath of fresh, tangy air in Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand presents:
ENSEMBLE ZEFIRO

Alfredo Bernardini , Paolo Grazzi – oboes
Alberto Grazzi, Giorgio Mandolesi – bassoons
Dileno Baldin, Francesco Meucci – horns

HANDEL – Due arie HWV 410,411
Marcia in F Major HWV 346
FASCH – Sonata in G Minor, FWV N:g1
TELEMANN – Ouverture in F Major TWV 55:F9
HAYDN – Parthia in C Major Hob.II.7
MOZART – Divertimento in E-flat, K.252/240a.

Michael Fowler Centre,

Friday 10th August, 2018

I’ve copied out the titles of the pieces as per programme, which accounts for the unusual names for aria (arie), overture (ouverture) and partita (Parthia), the last of which I thought at first was some kind of misprint. But no – there it was – Parthia, an alternative form of “partita”. So as it was something I didn’t know before I thought it was worth committing to review! However I must admit to being a little bemused by something else in the programme, the description of the Greek God Zefiro (whose name the ensemble has adopted) as “tender and Kind”, when I knew the legend of the same God’s jealous petulance which prompted the mean-spirited act of using his powers to blow a discus off course to disrupt a game between Apollo and a young boy, Hyacinth, whom Zefiro fancied – which ploy went horribly wrong when the object hit and killed Hyacinth! – the best-laid plans, etc…….still. there are so many conflicting stories regarding these deities, it’s a case of “pick-and-choose” when it comes to identifying with certain personalities and their traits. (hmmm – I’d better get on with the review, I suppose…….)

I loved the ensemble’s playing, right from the beginning, though I must admit that Handel’s music is one of those phenomena happily available to all and sundry that simply can’t help inducing a sense of well-being and contentment on contact! Here, straightaway, we in the audience (a decently-stocked ground floor at the MFC) were simply buoyed along by the energy, wit and charm of the composer’s seemingly limitless invention, fully realised by the ensemble’s playing. And what made the music even more endearing on this occasion were those characterful “authentic-instrument” sounds, the arrestingly nasal oboes, the throaty bassoons and the fruity (if occasionally asthmatic) horns. The point of the exercise seemed to me to refreshingly differentiate and contrast, rather than blend and smooth over, the different strands, the distinctive voices.  Why, I found myself thinking, as the music went along, would you want to “blend” sounds in a way that negated so much character and individuality, of the kind that was on show here?

Well, as Ecclesiastes says, there’s a time for everything, a time to blend and a time to differentiate (to coin an extremely unpoetic phrase!). It was simply refreshing to encounter an evening’s playing which seemed to proclaim “Vive la difference!” rather than seek to contain, control and smooth out differences in sounds. Not that Ensemble Zefiro couldn’t “blend” when they wanted to – but even when they did no individual strand or timbre disappeared or lost any of its character. It’s a quality I sometimes encounter when playing older orchestral or wind ensemble recordings, on which one hears sounds that are individual to the point of being quite “ornery” at certain moments – afterwards, turning to recordings of almost any 21st-century orchestra one finds oneself at a loss to discern any individual “character” in the actual sound, however skilled the playing might be.

Another quality that the authentic instrumental timbres underlined in the music was its “out-of-doors” aspect, and not only regarding the horns – in the second of the Handel “Arie” (HWV 411) I felt a kind of “spaciousness” about the sounds, a ready evocation of the “al fresco”, to do with, perhaps, a number of things, the players standing in a line accentuating the music’s antiphonal aspect, and the spaciousness of the Michael Fowler Centre, not to mention the horns in particular having “outdoor” associations anyway. But regarding the last point, both oboes and bassoons here took on more of a rustic character than I often associate with them – and in fact, the group’s spokesperson, Alfredo Bernadini, alluded to this “out-of-door” association, ironically when introducing a very different work by the evening’s second composer, Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688-1758).  Bernadini described Fasch’s piece, a Sonata in G Minor for two oboes and bassoon, plus bassoon continuo, as much more “chamber” and intimate in style.

The piece opened with a Largo movement,  the tones sombre and plaintive, and the instrumental timbres expressive and gorgeously fruity. One could hear before long why it was that JS Bach had a high regard for Fasch’s music, with the piece moving steadily and unerringly towards an expressive climax immediately leading to the second movement Allegro. Here was zest and bounce aplenty in the writing, the oboes offering chattering melodic leads and the bassoon delicious stepwise counterpoints. The composer replicated his markings for the following two movements, the second Largo enabling the bassoon to demonstrate its engagingly wheezy lyrical tones, working with its continuo partner in figurations an octave apart, and sounding like a pair of ancient, characterful voices! The Allegro finale really put the onus on one of the bassoons with an insanely virtuosic part, the notes literally flying from his instrument!

Telemann’s music then made an appearance, an “Ouverture in F Major”, a work written along the lines of JS Bach’s Orchestral Suites, consisting of an initial piece also called an “ouverture” followed by a number of French dances – while Bach wrote only four such words for instrumental ensemble, Telemann produced well over a hundred. This particular Ouverture (or “Suite”), for two oboes, two horns and bassoon continuo, was nicknamed “The Hunt”, referring in part, perhaps, to the prominence given the pair of horns in the work.

Certainly the opening piece gave the pair ample opportunity to make their presence felt, mostly by interrupting the more garrulous oboes at every possible opportunity, reminding them that they were still “here”. The Allegro section of the opening was spectacularly marked by the horns with a fanfare-like figure, again keeping a watchful ear on what the oboes and bassoon were doing. Throughout, the bassoon seemed almost an intermediary between the garrulous Montague-like oboes and the volatile Capulet-like horns, calling the ensemble to order when things got outlandish (particularly the occasional hi-jinks from the Capulets!).

Right through the course of the dances, the instrumental detailings gave us great delight, chirpy phrases galore from the oboes and occasional blasts of wind from the horns during both of the Passepied sections, a lovely glow illuminated with horn calls during the Sarabande, fanfares and giggles at the ends of phrases further enlivening the Rigaudon, and a dignified, regal sweep and grandly processional poise accompanying the concluding Le Plaisir. The ensemble certainly gave us “moments per minute” during this varied and entertaining sequence.

An interval later we were taken into the classical world of Haydn and Mozart, necessitating a change of instruments for the oboe- and bassoon-players. Thanks in part to the cheekiness of Haydn’s writing for the ensemble in the first movement of his Parthia in C Major, we didn’t notice as sharply as we might have the change in actual “engagement” of the instrumental sound, the tones smoother and more elegant-sounding in themselves, though here employed by the composer in ear-catching ways with writing whose wit and sparkle recalled  certain of the composer’s piano sonatas. The first of the work’s five movements featured a fanfare-like leading motif being tossed about in gay abandon, and given extra pomposity by the horns, and finishing with an abruptly-turned phrase which left a single low note unashamedly exposed (I involuntarily snorted with laughter, and had to apologise to my companion at the next break in the music!).

A regal and dignified Menuet-and-Trio began with oboes only, before turning to a Trio section with delightfully emphatic horns, all of which preceded an Adagio with a lovely, easeful rhythmic carriage, the oboes rhapsodising, the bassoons gently jog-trotting and the horns contributing answering or “rounding-off” phrases – everything so beautifully and expressively played. Then came ANOTHER Menuet-and-Trio, this time lots of minor-key staccato strutting, completely different in character to the one before. Haydn then rounded off the work with an unbuttoned presto gallop across the fields for all concerned, the bassoons performing miracles of articulation and repeated-note playing, and horns whooping in delight, the piece finishing with a Beethovenish “take that!” gesture!

The Mozart Divertimento K.252/240a in E-flat concluded the programme in style – the ensemble generated an engaging “swing” to the rhythm over which the oboes sounded the melody, the horns and bassoons easefully alternating between chordings and “echo phrases”. The Menuetto was a sprightly dance with gloriously “burbled” horn-writing, exhilaratingly performed, before a rather strange Trio section with a repeated descending figure, here played faster than the main dance, for some reason – it sounded merely as though the players wanted to get it over with so they could get back to the real fun!

Then came, rather unexpectedly, a Polonaise, its rhythm catchy and foot-tapping, like a popular dance number – some lovely antiphonal writing here, which the ensemble coloured nicely with varied dynamics, the horns making much of the rhythm’s syncopations. Presto assai said the finale, and the players responded with energy and wit, finishing with a flourish! We thought the players would by then have “blown themselves out”, but they generously came back for an encore – one, moreover, with a difference, a work entitled “Homage to Haydn” (sitting some way back from the platform as we were, neither my friend nor I could quite make out the announcement of the actual composer’s name).

Beginning with and establishing an infectiously strutting march reminiscent of Haydn’s “Military” Symphony, the music reached what we all thought sounded like a concluding cadence, but then continued, despite one of the bassoonists standing up, bowing, and then leaving the platform and coming down into the auditorium as the others played on. After another sequence had finished, one of the horn players did the same thing, followed a few measures later by the second horn player, leaving the oboists and one of the bassoonists continuing to play! One by one, each oboist finished a phrase, and then stood up and left the platform, with the single bassoonist left – he played a doleful-sounding minor-key cadenza-like passage finishing with a trill, and then stood up, acknowledging our laughter and applause, as did the others who rejoined him.  It was all great fun, and completely in accord with the delight we’d experienced and enjoyed throughout the concert.

 

Monteverdi’s Orfeo – a “rarely comest…spirit of delight” from Eternity Opera

Posted on by Peter Mechen

CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI – Orfeo (1607)
An opera in Five Acts
Words by Alessandro Striggio

Cast of Singers
Music – Laura Loach
Orfeo – Will King
Euridice – Alexandra Gandianco
Nymph / Prosperine – Olivia Sheat
Shepherd 1 / Infernal Spirit 2  – Garth Norman
Shepherd 2 – Sally Haywood
Shepherd 3 / Infernal Spirit 1 – Peter Liley
Shepherd 4 / Infernal Spirit 3 – Minto Fung
Messsenger – Alexandra Woodhouse Appleby
Hope – Milla Dickens
Charon / Pluto – Joe Haddow
Echo – Tania Dreaver
Apollo – Theo Moolenaar
Chorus – Bill MacKenzie
Chorus – Philip Oliver

Eternity Renaissance Orchestra

Concertmaster – Anne Loeser (violin)
Viola – Sophia Acheson
Viola da Gamba & ‘Cello – Imogen Granwal
Cornetto & Trumpet – Peter Reid
Alto & Tenor Sackbuts & Recorder – Peter Maunder
Bass Sackbut – Jonathan Harker
Guitar – Christopher Hill
Theorbo – Jonathan Le Coeq
Triple Harp – Tiffany Baker

Music Director – Simon Romanos
Producers – Emma Beale, Minto Fung, Alex Galvin
Lighting –  Haami Hawkins
Repetiteurs – Craig Newsome, Joel Rudolph

Hannah Playhouse, Wellington

Saturday 4th August, 2018

To my consternation, I learned after the performance on Saturday evening was completed, that this was to be the only “outing” for Eternity Opera’s production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo! On a number of counts, this was regrettable, if only for the fact that I knew of a number of people who weren’t able to attend the performance and who had expected (as I certainly did) that there would be at least one further chance to catch up with it – a matinee the following afternoon, perhaps? But no, that was “it”, I’m afraid – and though I’m counting myself among the lucky ones who witnessed such a bold and breathlessly beautiful undertaking by Eternity Opera, I’m feeling dismayed by the thought that neither would a new audience be given the opportunity to enjoy Monteverdi’s masterpiece, nor would the performers be allowed the satisfaction of consolidating their achievement with a second public performance.

There would have doubtless been any number of reasons for this, both artistic and financial – my general lamentations merely reflect the interest and excitement which I experienced over the time leading up to the production, the in situ enjoyment of and pleasure in the performances, and the aftermath’s glow of satisfaction as I recalled the music’s and the presentation’s delights. A pity that such an enterprising venture (one, incidentally, which was completely sold out) lacked what it was in material terms that would have enabled the performance to have become a “season”, however tantalisingly brief a one!

But such was not to be – and we had, instead, performers giving their all as if their lives depended on the outcome, presumably buoyed along by knowing that this was going to be their only “shot” at the business in hand, and in the process conveying something of that feeling to we in the audience. Even before the music began our expectations of something out of the ordinary were galvanised by the presence of certain instruments alone, such as the gigantic theorbo, a viola da gamba, a triple harp, a cornetto and a couple of tarnished, trombone-like sackbuts alongside those which were rather more familiar, all brandished by the players of the Eternity Renaissance Orchestra.

In Monteverdi’s score over forty instruments are designated, though their exact usage was often decided upon by the interpreters depending upon the forces (and performing spaces) available – and the number of players needed were always fewer because the composer kept certain instruments for certain scenes. Here, for example, the score was realised by no more than nine players, some of whom changed to a different instrument in places – to give one example, sackbut player Peter Maunder demonstrated all-round skills with some nifty recorder playing at certain points.

At the beginning we very properly got all three renditions of the well-known opening flourishes, a martial-sounding toccata, played variously by the winds and strings at contrasting dynamic levels, as was the custom at the court of Mantua, in honour of the Duke. On the face of things an obsequious gesture very much of its time, the sounds have since become a splendid springboard for the entry of listeners into a timeless realm of expression, graced by Monteverdi’s music and  Striggio’s poetry. Mentioning at this point the momentary inaccuracies of intonation and rhythm in the playing at the outset is to get the unimportant things out of the way, first – what fully engaged us instead was the music-making’s focused purpose and its continuation throughout the drama, a purpose which never flagged across the work’s five-act span.

This was a “concert” rather than a “staged” performance, and was sung in English, both of which circumstances enabling the Introduction’s singer, Laura Loach, to completely command the stage in the role of Music. Her whole deportment was arresting, her diction perfect, and her voice true, appropriately varied, and thoroughly engaging, everything beautifully balanced between voice and instruments. While neither Garth Norman nor Sally Haywood (as First and Second Shepherds respectively) could similarly imbue their voices with similar strength and precise focus, each maintained a steady vocal line with sufficient expression to give their words an inner life. Each of these singers then joined in with the choruses, as did the others at various times throughout.

Conductor Simon Romanos kept things judiciously moving between singers and instrumentalists, picking up the lines between voices and the various ritornellos and sinfonias as required, and keeping firm control of the numerous changes of rhythm and metre as well. He seemed to give the individual singers the space they required to properly “phrase” their individual figurations, and the instrumental ensemble similar leeway throughout. Olivia Sheat as Nymph took a few phrases-worth of space, I thought, for her voice to settle in her solo, though in the Fourth Act singing the part of Proserpine I thought her tones steady, her vocal inflections convincing and her sense of rapport with her cohort as Pluto, Joe Haddow, absolutely delightful!

With the arrival of Will King’s Orfeo on the scene, everything seemed to begin to pulsate more deeply, partly to do, I think with the expectation created by the imminent appearance of the eponymous hero, but also with King’s own vibrant sense of presence in the role, capped off by his fine, ringing voice! His on-stage partner, Alexandra Gandianco as Eurydice, though not as resplendent vocally, responded with a clear, true voice, leading up to the choruses which proclaimed the marriage, the “Come Hymen, come” sequence particularly beautiful, the voices evocatively augmented by instrumental strains. Various expressions of delight came from Peter Liley’s Third Shepherd, again the voice not especially voluminous but focused and agile – the singers felt more freedom in the following duet and trio, whose words remarked on the symbolic progress of winter to spring.

Act Two’s liveliness at the outset mirrored the nuptial happiness of Orfeo in his declaration of new-found joy at the beauty of the woods, and the sturdy duetted response of the two shepherds, Garth Norman and Peter Liley, with wonderful support from the ensemble, including great violin- and recorder-playing. The mood became even more euphoric with Orfeo’s comparison of his previous misery to his present joy, made all the more exuberant by King’s exultant singing and the ensemble’s energetic playing.  All of this, of course, made the arrival of Alexandra Woodhouse-Appleby’s Messenger all the more dark and disturbing, here given an expressively stark and tragic aspect by the singer’s power of concentrated sorrow in both appearance and voice. At the news of Euridice’s sudden death the shock was galvanic, the hurt unmistakable on Orfeo’s part, King’s response then beautifully grown out of his character’s dumbstruck grief towards a powerful and passionate resolve to rescue his beloved and bring her back “to see again the stars”.

Act Three’s sonorous opening brought both splendour and darkness, the brasses thrilling amid the occasional spill with both regal pomp at the beginning, and grimmer timbres of the utmost solemnity as Orfeo entered accompanied by Hope, attempting to gain access to the Underworld. Milla Dickens’ Hope was truly and steadily sung, the voice nicely expanding as it ascended, and stylishly negotiating the figurations, bringing convincing emphasis to the words “Abandon all hope ye who enter here!”. King’s impassioned plea for Hope to remain was startlingly interrupted by the infernal combination of voice and rasping instrumental timbres, from Joe Haddow as the ferryman Charon, challenging Orfeo’s presence with beautifully sepulchral tones, splendidly supported by the brasses. The hero’s famous aria “Possente spirto” received a tremendous performance from King, ably supported by various instrumental combinations, firstly the pair of duetting solo strings, followed by the cornetto, whose phrases were echoed most effectively offstage by a sackbut. Then the guitar, theorbo and bass viol augmented the singer’s fearless coloratura-punctuated passages, leaving the triple harp to fill the brief interlude before the singer’s “Orfeo am I” with flourishes and gestures that seemed to bring time to a standstill.

At the conclusion of King’s impassioned pleas of “Give me back my love”, we were riveted, taken up with the heart-rending eloquence of the singer’s supplications, so that no-one dared move, much less applaud!! The ensuing ritornello expressed Orfeo’s ultimate triumph, as Charon slept, allowing the hero entry into the infernal regions. Act Four began with the appearance of the Underworld’s Royal Couple, Proserpine and Pluto, the former pleading with the latter to allow Orfeo to take Euridice back to the world of light and stars with him. Both of the two singers I thought built on what they had established with a separate role earlier in the drama, Olivia Sheat as Proserpine seeming to me to “find” her focused tones more freely and comfortably than when a Nymph, and Joe Haddow as Pluto an even more darkly imposing personality than his Charon – between them they actually generated a touch of “infernal” chemistry, which, together with Pluto’s decision to allow Orfeo to recover Euridice bore out the chorus’s comment in the wake of the interchange “Today, pity and love triumph in Hell”.

From this came the extraordinary sequence of events during which Euridice was regained and then irretrievably lost by Orfeo, as he wrestled with his conflicting emotions before eventually disobeying Pluto’s edict that he was not to turn and look back at her during their outward journey. Will King conveyed most tellingly the character’s characteristic volatility with both body and voice, bearing out a later chorus comment that “Orpheus conquered hell, but was conquered by his own emotions – worthy of eternal fame shall be only he who has victory over himself”. Again, the character’s overweening confidence, underlined by the jaunty instrumental accompaniments, with strings and continuo giving the rhythms plenty of spring, was in a few moments dashed by a sudden loss of confidence and crisis of faith.

Even though the drama wasn’t in a strict sense “staged” here, I still felt the moment of Euridice’s loss was awkwardly presented by the protagonists in a visual sense – their actions and movements didn’t clearly enough convey what the words and music were saying (all admittedly difficult to do in a concert scenario!). Alexandra Gandianco’s singing admirably served to put across Euridice’s sorrow and despair, as did that of King as her would-be saviour, characterised here as reaping a whirlwind out of his impetuosities. The tragedy of the moment was superbly underlined by the sneering brasses, who joined with the strings and continuo to realise a sardonic processional, heralding the chorus’s already-quoted verdict on the hero’s flawed resolve.

A cruelly cheerful-sounding sinfonia launched the final Act, bringing Orfeo to those same woods where news of Euridice’s death was brought to him. Again, Will King was equal to the music’s possibilities, realising the character with an affecting sense of heartbreak and sorrow, the mood amplified by the affecting strains of Tania Dreaver’s voice as Echo, and further intensified by Orfeo’s self-indulgence in his grief, complaining at the paucity of Echo’s replies. It remained for Apollo to descend from the heights, Theo Moolenaar making a properly dignified entrance as the God of the Sun and Light and Healing, the voice comforting and true-toned, rather than overtly celestial and all-commanding, chiding Orfeo for his intemperance, and his obsession with earthly, as opposed to heavenly delights. Their duetting worked well as Orfeo was taken to heaven, having been promised by his father that he would enjoy Euridice’s likeness in the sun and the stars.

It fell to the chorus to further lighten the mood of tragedy with sprightly and energetic verses celebrating the hero’s transfiguration, a mood we were invited to join along with the singers and the ensemble by conductor Simon Romanos, our cheerful company clapping in time with the energetic moresca rhythms that concluded the work. Rather than belittling the story’s intensities and profundities, the “lightness of being” feeling engendered by these concluding gaieties served to highlight all the more the epic nature and scope of the drama we had witnessed, a quality of overall perspective which some of Mozart’s greatest music also possesses. It was to the company’s credit that the production and its performers realised, I thought, Monteverdi’s genius at bringing into being such a work, so that its impact, like Orfeo’s lyre, sang and resounded long after the work’s last strains had been sounded.

 

 

 

 

 

Klara Kollektiv musicians vary the musical fare to resounding effect

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Hutt Valley Chamber Music presents:
KLARA KOLLEKTIV
Anna McGregor (clarinet)
Manu Berkeljon (violin)
Taru Kurki (piano)

ANTHONY RITCHIE – Three Scenes (for solo clarinet – 2016)
CÉSAR FRANCK – Sonata for violin and piano  (1886)
DOUGLAS LILBURN – Sonatina for clarinet and piano (1948)
JEAN SIBELIUS – Romance for violin and piano Op.78 No.2
BÉLA BARTÓK – Contrasts, for clarinet, violin and piano  (1938)

Little Theatre, Lower Hutt

Thursday 26th July 2018

I wondered on first sighting whether the name “Klara Kollektiv” indicated the first names of the group’s three musicians – could this be “a bevy of Klaras”, a “Klaras kollektiva”, so to speak? And then I saw Anna McGregor’s name in the publicity, which in the nicest possible way put paid to my brief whimsy, as subsequently did the ensemble’s playing throughout the concert, demonstrating part of the title’s true purpose, ”klara” being Swedish for ”clarify”. Each of the pieces presented had either a simplicity or a startling vividness of utterance in performance, nicely balancing the content with its exposition, and bringing us closer to the music as a result.

As for the ”kollektiv” part of the title, it referred to the group’s collaborative aspect, the two New Zealanders, Anna McGregor and Manu Berkeljon, joining musical forces with Finnish pianist Taru Kurki for this current Chamber Music New Zealand tour. Both McGregor and Berkeljon have previously toured here with other musicians – see Middle C reviews from 2014, https://middle-c.org/2014/07/dalecarlia-clarinet-quintet-getting-the-music-through/ and https://middle-c.org/2014/07/scandinavian-and-new-zealand-players-unite-wonderfully-for-the-two-greatest-clarinet-quintets/ – and will presumably continue to do so on future occasions for our much-anticipated pleasure.

As the above linked reviews suggest, the venture seems to bring out the very best from the players, the music-making to my ears having a special kind of eloquence, perhaps born of both commitment to the cause and a delight in partnership, between performers and with composers as well.  The concert’s opening item featured a work for solo clarinet by Anthony Ritchie, written for Anna McGregor in 2016 – in three movements, or ”Scenes”, the music took us on a journey of exploration, firstly, in an opening movement subtitled Stealth, of the clarinet’s capacity for contrast and colour, in setting cheek-by-jowl passages of cat-like tread against sudden raucous squawks of alarm. The music allowed for plenty of theatricality, both in the instrument’s startling variations of sound-character and the player’s capacity for physically choreographing the music – one (eventually) thought beyond one’s childhood memories of Sylvester-the-cat and Tweety-bird cartoons to more enigmatic scenarios or narratives as the music unfolded.

The second part, Bush scene, presented tranquil and ruminative resonances at the start, McGregor’s long-breathed phrases generating eons of endless time and stillness with each impulse (beautifully-controlled playing!), before moving into a livelier, more rhythmic sequence with a chatterbox-like aspect becoming more and more eloquently ”passionate” (excuse the word) of utterance, and then subsiding and returning to the stillness of the opening. Finally, Play danced with infectious fun and energy, McGregor relishing the contrasts between sequences, setting ”cool” against ”full-on”, and ”impish” against ”soulful”,  her intonations unfailingly true across a brilliantly varied dynamic range of expression.

What followed couldn’t have been a greater contrast, with Manu Berkeljon (violin) and Taru Kurki (piano) setting in motion the limpid opening tones of César Franck’s Violin Sonata, the music most beguilingly “awakened” by the players, pianist Taru Kurki’s beautiful colourings preparing the way for violinist Manu Berkeljon’s rapt purity of line, both musicians giving us the notes as if freshly discovered throughout the opening exchanges. Once or twice a hesitancy in the violinist’s phrasing ruffled the music’s surface momentarily – the final ascent seemed a tad off-balance, which hurried the concluding string phrase – but generally, the sense of rapturous awakening to delight was shaped most winningly throughout.

Happily, the pianist seemed less interested in the second movement’s ”virtuoso roar” than in finding a matching voice to intertwine with the violin’s, Franck’s own brilliance as a performer reflected in the piano part’s occasional near-Lisztian demands. What commanded special attention was the dialogue between the instruments in the movement’s central section, the exchanges by turns thoughtful and impassioned, with Taru Kurki seeming to me to give more attention than usual to the middle voices in her keyboard outpourings. Despite a couple of awkwardly sounded figures amongst the agitations, both players captured the growing excitements and burgeoning momentums of the music’s accelerando-like conclusion.

More heartfelt dialogues followed, in a slow movement which moved from the ”stand-and-deliver” mode on both sides to gestures of accord between the two instruments, as from out of the tremulous explorations and recollections of times past grew a long-breathed theme which seemed to unite the gestures and impulses in one accord. Franck’s canonic finale continued this ”entente cordiale”, with both Berkeljon and Kurki giving us the tenderest and most delicate treatment of the opening I’ve ever heard, saving the blood-racing moments for the music’s bigger climaxes towards the end, and instead fully engaged in realising some of the composer’s typically sinuous modulatory byways amongst the music’s ebb and flow.

After the interval we were treated to another home-grown piece of music, this time for clarinet and piano – Douglas Lilburn’s lovely Sonatina for clarinet and piano, written in 1948.  In three movements, the music began with a distinctive Lilburn rhythmic fingerprint in the piano part, over which the clarinet sang long-breathed, out-of-door phrases, the loveliness of McGregor’s playing enhanced by Kurki’s resonant way with the piano rhythms in a way that opened up the landscapes for us.

The Andantino second movement began with sombre, chant-like piano tones, and long-breathed responses from the clarinet, with McGregor simply making the music her own by dint of the generosity of her tones and the expansiveness of her phrases. Kurki played the ensuing flurries rather more delicately than did Margaret Nielsen on her recording with Peter Scholes, bringing out, I thought, a birdsong-like character more readily, the clarinet murmuring its assent in reply. What mastery in the writing, here! – so much ground seemed to be covered in such a brief space of time, with the clarinet’s musings suddenly given thrilling amplitude, McGregor and Kurki allowing the composer’s burst of emotion full rein to the music’s end.

The two musicicans took what seemed to me a sturdy, unhurried view of the final movement, making it almost sound like ”road music”, with the composer’s characteristic rhythmic kicks keeping everything sufficiently on the move. Again I marvelled at McGregor’s naturalness of phrasing, heightening the sense I often feel with Lilburn’s sound-world of something ”caught from the air”, and here, with some invigorating support from Kurki, taking us out-of-doors on a bracing and rewarding adventure.

Somewhat surprisingly when considering the music’s composer, we found ourselves back in the drawing-room for the Sibelius piece for violin and piano which followed. Though it may sound heretical to say so, I thought it a mildly charming but otherwise flavourless work, much less interesting, for instance, than Elgar’s ”Salut d’Amour” – and I count myself as a reasonably paid-up Sibelian, violently in love with those tone-poems and the great symphonies! I’m obviously an insufferable snob, but I would have vastly preferred the musicians to have chosen something a bit more characterful – and if something Finnish was wanted, why not go for broke salon-wise with an arrangement of the same composer’s ”Valse Triste”? – at least it’s music which has a bit of characteristic brooding atmosphere!

Nobody could ever accuse Béla Bartók’s music of being bland or unatmospheric, which was what the Kollektiv concluded the scheduled part of the programme with, by way of compensation! – this was a work called ”Contrasts”, written for and dedicated to violinist Josef Szigeti and clarinettist Benny Goodman in 1938 and given the title ”Rhapsody”. It was originally intended (by Goodman and Szigeti) that the work be a two-movement piece which could be recorded on a single 78rpm disc, but the composer had other ideas – not only were each of these movements Bartók wrote too long for such a scheme, but he also had in mind a middle movement which he produced AFTER the original pair of movements were premiered! Bartók himself, with Szigeti and Goodman, subsequently performed and recorded the whole work, now renamed ”Contrasts”, in a justly-famous 1940 recording.

First up was the Verbunkos or ”Recruiting-dance” movement, which began with a lovely, swaggering rhythm generated by the strumming violin and warbling clarinet, at first keeping in step with the piano’s marking time, and then breaking out and exchanging phrases in vigorous virtuoso mode. The piano valiantly persisted with the dance-rhythms, in the face of both violin and clarinet awaiting their chance to forcefully declaim their points of view, their phrases building up into a series of strident exchanges. After some curmudgeonly rhythmic by-play amidst all three instruments a brief but agitated clarinet cadenza concluded with the violin and piano sneaking the music to a close!

The ensuing Pihenö (Relaxation) featured long, slow-moving lines from clarinet and violin, with the piano occasionally playing tremolandi or slow ostinati. The music’s mood seemed in places to derive from the composer’s ”night music” mode in other works, except for a brief frisson of excitement between violin and clarinet, after which the charged nocturnal stillness drifted slowly backwards through the music’s last few moments, everything beautifully breathed and floated by the players.

With Manu Berkeljon laying down her violin and picking up another prior to the last movement we knew something was afoot – and so it proved!  Suddenly we were plunged into a kind of ”danse macabre” by the violinist’s opening chords as the Sebes movement began, the hair-raisingly madcap molto perpetuo in which everybody joined not unlike the sounds of a klezmer band playing as if possessed! Gradually the pace fragmented and changed to a wistful, gently syncopated gait, with some eerie chromaticisms thrown unexpectedly into the mix! All of this was swept away by the return of the frenetically-paced opening, leading to a wild cadenza from Berkeljon’s violin, skin and hair flying, before the others rejoined the fun-and-games, with wild, exuberant cries emanating from all the instruments as the players drove the music to its exhilarating conclusion!

We’d been promised an encore by the players provided our applause at the concert’s end was enthusiastic enough (a foregone state of things in the wake of such engaging music-making!), and so the musicians duly reappeared on the stage ready to give us a little more. Then, to everybody’s surprise and delight, Anna McGregor forewent her clarinet and, to the accompaniment of folksy violin figurations from Manu Berkeljon and hypnotically-voiced piano chords from Taru Kurki (the overall instrumental effect being somewhat like a hurdy-gurdy), she sang a plaintively beautiful rendition of a song called ”Worldes Bliss”. It made for a haunting and memorable ending to an interestingly varied and thoroughly engaging concert.

SONGS FOR NOBODIES – Ali Harper explores the ordinary and the fabulous

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Songs for Nobodies

a play by Joanna Murray-Smith

Ali Harper (actor/singer)
Trio – Daniel Hayles (piano)/Johnny Lawrence (double bass)/Lance Philip (drums)
Director – Ross Gumbley

Circa Theatre, Wellington

Sunday, July 8th, 2018

Having previously enjoyed Ali Harper’s one-woman shows Legendary Divas and A Doris Day Special,  I was eagerly looking forward to my “latest” theatrical outing in her presence, which I imagined would be her “take” on the singers mentioned in the pre-show publicity. Apart from Maria Callas, the famous names listed were ones I actually knew very little about, so as well as being entertained, I was expecting to be informed via a kind of mini-theatrical biopic of each of them. I did recall the publicity mentioning “encounters between five everyday women whose lives had been touched in some ways by five legendary divas”, but still expected that the singers would be the ones ultimately in centre-stage.

I was surprised, therefore, to encounter a distinctly muted and downbeat series of scenarios featuring in each case a young woman who had at some or other time encountered one of these legendary artists, and who was telling the story of the interaction from her own viewpoint. Here was Ali Harper, presented in a manner far removed from the glittering glamour and self-possession normally associated with famous performers, taking on the personas of a series of “nobodies” – a cloakroom attendant, an usher, a young English/French girl, a junior reporter, and a nanny. It was through these ordinary young women that the “Songs For Nobodies” playwright Joanne Murray-Smith allowed us tantalising glimpses of the stars. All ten characters, the singers and their admirers, were played (and their songs sung) by Ali Harper, moving both fluently and distinctively between personas via their different accents and attitudes with considerable skill and focus.

The music accompaniments were discreetly and ably provided by a trio of musicians, performing behind an opaque screen, both part of and distanced from the world conjured up by the single, immediate figure of Harper, like silhouettes who were animated by the music, evoking the smoky interiors of bars and club venues – pianist Daniel Hayles, double bassist Johnny Lawrence and percussionist Lance Philip.

Each scene was set with directness and simplicity, doing without any distraction in the form of colourful costuming or detailed sets (a chair was the only stage-prop needed).  All served to focus us on Harper, as she conjured up a stark feeling of each of the places and times, as well as of the characters, ordinary and extraordinary, that she portrayed. Her spoken delivery was strong and consistent with the voices of nearly all the “stars”, though in a few places sounding a tad under pressure during the more tremulous or agitated utterances from the “nobodies”, the rapid pace clouding a detail every now and then.

We were taken firstly to the Plaza Athene, in New York City, in 1961.  Bee Appleton, a cloakroom attendant, was depicted in turmoil at her recent breakup with her husband, reflecting whimsically on the meaning of happiness, and whether “you know when you have it” and what happens to you when it is gone. She found herself of a sudden in the presence of the show’s star performer, Judy Garland, and was able to perform a simple service to her by fixing a hem on her costume. They talked and a rapport sprang up between them, a feeling which communicated a fresh sense of worth and of being whole again to the young woman, a feeling that was then crystallised by Harper’s incredibly intense performance of Garland’s song “Come rain, come shine”, leaving us stunned with its impact as darkness ended the scene.

Next up was the character of Pearl Abelone a theatre usher in Kansas City in 1963, where country-and-western star Patsy Cline was performing. An aspiring performer herself, Pearl contrived to sing the song “Amazing Grace” to Cline before the star went on stage to perform her own scheduled number. The exchanges between Pearl and her idol led to the philosophical, with Cline observing that “applause doesn’t help you when you’re lying in bed at night”. Here, the music worked its simple but powerful spell of unquestioning faith, with Pearl’s strength of utterance also persuading the singer to choose the girl to back her in one of her vocal numbers on the stage – a touching moment. And tragedy was evoked, too, at the moment when Pearl related how the singer decided to fly back home to see her family, and died when the plane crashed – her devastating comment was “I never brought Patsy any luck, but she brought me plenty”.

Each one of the scenes deserved comment by dint of its individuality and varied response on Harper’s part, the third being an almost surreal tale involving French songstress Edith Piaf, the “Little Sparrow” – we met Edie Delamore in West Bridgeford, Nottingham, a librarian of half-English, half French descent, whose Father was in the French resistance. Edie related how he was saved from certain incarceration in the infamous Dachau, after Piaf contrived to smuggle him out as one of the supporting musicians she had when performing in the German prison camps. Harper re-evoked the girl’s love for her father and admiration for his bravery at only nineteen years of age as a member of the Resistance. She interspersing the girl’s wonderment at the “falling from the skies” feeling about her life with verses of a gutsy Piaf-like rendition of verses of the song “Non Je ne regrette rien”.

Following the fastidious spoken delivery of the English/French girl’s epic tale, we met the contrastingly racy American tones of a young journalist, Too Junior Jones, desperate to prove herself with “real people”assignments. She persuaded her boss (Harper brought off a gem of a cigar-sucking executive cameo, here!) to give her the job of an 800-word profile of singer Billie Holiday. Here, the outpourings were fast and furious, too much for absolute clarity at all times, but conveying the youngster’s confidence and energy in spadefuls. By contrast, the singer’s persona came across as thoroughly dissolute and miserable, refusing at first to answer any questions, but then breaking into the dark, disturbing tones of the horrifying song, Strange Fruits, a kind of discourse on the US white South’s history of racist violence towards black people. Harper’s tones here tellingly penetrated and realised something of that unique timbre of Holiday’s “thick blue ink” voice.

Eventually Holiday told some of her story, reflecting that her life had been “one big problem”, that of “doin’ everythin’ too soon”. She had no musical training, but still became the first black woman to sing with a white band (Artie Shaw and his Orchestra) in the United States. Sadly, promoters created problems for Shaw and his band over Holiday because of her race and her unique vocal style, and Holiday had to eventually leave Shaw to go out on her own. Though experiencing occasional success and maintaining her reputation as a leading jazz singer, she developed addictions to both opium and heroin which eventually led to her death in 1959. Her funeral was reportedly attended by 3,000 people.

I thought the last evocation, that of a connection between opera singer Maria Callas and Orla McDonagh, the Irish Nanny of Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis’s children, the most tenuous. The encounter highlighted a pivotal moment in Maria Callas’s life, her wooing by Onassis after she and her husband, Meneghini, had been invited on a cruise on his yacht, the Christina. The observations of Orla, the Nanny, indicated that all was not well with Callas’s marriage, and Orla’s own less-than-salubrious interactions with Onassis himself underlined the man’s inveterate womanising which, of course, was to eventually leave the unfortunate Callas abandoned as she had done her own husband. Interesting and absorbing as it all was, it seemed less “involved” as an encounter compared with the others, a quality which I thought was unfortunately intensified by Harper’s brave, but at the aria’s climax, somewhat strained rendition of Puccini’s “Vissi d’arte” from the opera “Tosca”, one of Callas’s most famous roles. Coming at the end of the demanding programme, I felt it overtaxed Harper unfairly, in view of what she had already achieved – perhaps a less operatic approach (which the trio’s skilful accompaniment initially suggested, and which worked well) might have better served those taxing ”dramatic soprano” moments. Even so, the Callas episode seemed relatively “removed” to me, compared to the visceral encounters with greatness experienced by the other “nobodies”.

Despite this, the whole was a fantastic performance from Harper, equally convincing across a range of vignettes, from the vulnerable but hopeful young women touched by their encounters with greatness, to the stars themselves, somewhat bruised and battered by their popularity, but all showing aspects of the magnificence that earned them their fame. As I’ve said, the pace of the delivery was, in places, fast and furious, in moments too much for the meaning of the words, so that I missed the full impact of certain of Harper’s renditions of the homespun philosophies and observations. Still, one was left in certain knowledge of the transforming effects that stars could have in the lives of everyday people, the resonances of their songs and the inspiration that they provided. It all earned Ali Harper justly-deserved acclaim for her memorable and richly-wrought performance.

 

 

 

Orchestra Wellington’s “The Prophecy” a remarkable musical journey

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents:
The Prophecy – Music by JANÁČEK, BRITTEN and DVORAK

JANÁČEK– Taras Bulba (Rhapsody for Orchestra)
BRITTEN – Piano Concerto Op.13
DVORAK – Symphony No. 6 in D Major Op.60 B.112

Jian Liu (piano)
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 7th July 2018

Due to a printer’s mix-up, there were no printed programmes to be had for this concert, conductor Marc Taddei assuring us at the concert’s outset that he would be our guide throughout the evening’s music-making. As it turned out, the only regret at such a state of things one came away with from the concert at the end was having no tangible printed record of or piece of memorabilia belonging to a truly great musical occasion!

None of the three works presented here could be said to be tried-and-true crowd-pleasers or popular box-office drawcards – and yet, here was Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre humming with great excitement and expectation at the evening’s beginning, the venue admittedly not filled to bursting, but with an attendance that must have gladdened the hearts of the organisers at its obvious signs of public interest in the orchestra and its presentations.

On paper, the concert’s musical offerings would have caused the average event promotor in most parts of the world serious misgivings as to their box-office viability – Janacek’s Taras Bulba, Britten’s Piano Concerto and a lesser-known symphony by Dvorak – but those surviving concertgoers with longer memories than others may well have hearkened back to the heady days of John Hopkins at the helm of the NZBC Symphony (as the NZSO was called during the 1960s), when there was a similar excitement and sense of exploration of unfamiliar and untried musical worlds of delight and daring in an established orchestra’s programming.

Oh, well, those of us who value as keepsakes such things as programmes will have to be content with our memories on this auspicious occasion – “and gentlemen of England now a-bed/ shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here” would be an appropriate thought-reminder to conjure up, in years to come. I shall be accused of somewhat gilding the lily with these wafflings, but I can’t help thinking, by way of registering my delight in enjoyment of concerts such as these, how fortunate we in Wellington are at having two accomplished orchestras regularly performing for our pleasure. Though obviously not London, the situation here per capita is very likely comparable!

What, you will be asking by now, was the propellant for such an outpouring of enthusiasm – a single performance or item? –  the whole concert? – or the existence of an orchestra and conductor who are prepared to challenge and enliven and stimulate and even risk alienating their audiences?  The answer is that it’s probably all three of those things, coming together in an upward burst of well-being on my part, and a desire to tell other people all about it. Happily, my anticipation at the prospect of what the concert promised was matched by the performances, wholly predictable but with many fascinating and unexpected detailings.

Once opening formalities were over, the concert began with one of the few orchestral pieces composed by Leoš Janáček, excepting a number of opera overtures. This was “Taras Bulba”, a work which Janáček based on a novel by Nikolai Gogol, set in 16th Century Ukraine, a tale of a Cossack warrior and his two sons. The composer, though a native Moravian, was an ardent Russophile, and asserted that he wrote “Taras Bulba” because (he would echo Gogol’s own lines, here) “in the whole world there are not fires or tortures strong enough to destroy the vitality of the Russian nation”.

Janáček was, of course expressing a kind of Pan-Slavic kinship with the predominant Slavic power, as his own homeland had long been under the dominance of the Austrians, and, like many Czechs, looked to the east for support. He studied the Russian language, belonged to a Russian society in his home town of Brno, and, in addition to Gogol’s work drew inspiration for some of his other compositions from Russian writers like Tolstoy (the “Kreutzer Sonata” String Quartet), Ostrovsky (the opera “Káta Kabanová”), and Dostoyevsky (the opera “From the House of the Dead”).

Cast in the form of a three-movement “Rhapsody for Orchestra”, the music for “Taras Bulba” tells the grim story of the single-minded Cossack leader’s loss of both of his sons during the bitter conflict with the Poles, followed by his own capture and execution – the first movement concerns one of the sons, Andriy, who had the misfortune to fall in love with a Polish girl, and thus changed his allegiances, for which treacherous act he was killed by his father on the battlefield. The middle movement depicts the torture and execution by the Poles of the second son, Ostap, witnessed by Taras Bulba himself, disguised and in the assembled crowd. The final movement tells the story of the Cossacks’ subsequent attack on the Polish forces, and of Taras Bulba’s capture and death by execution, but not before the dying leader utters his prophecy (which gives the movement its name), predicting an eventual victory for the Cossacks in the struggle.

Janáček’s approach to this seemingly unpromising subject consisted of devising brief but telling motifs used in association with themes and characters in the story, and using them both pithily and with great variety. We heard plaintive cor anglais and oboe statements at the first movement’s outset, sharply interrupted by orchestral crescendi, startlingly capped by tubular bells, but then with the emotion reinstated by tender organ phrases. Conductor and players skilfully dovetailed these expressions of romantic feeling (cor anglais, oboe, organ, solo strings) cheek-by jowl with great tensions and savage interjections (crescendi, and brass shouts). Amidst these angular contrasts the playing brought out, by turns, the figures of Taras Bulba (anger, tenderness, implaccable resolve) and his son Andriy (remorse, resignation) which interact with characteristic abruptness, the whole having a kind of brutal, impulsive realism.

Both of the succeeding movements were equally well-characterised, in “The Death of Ostap”, the opposing impulses of triumph and bloodthirsty recompense expressed by the victors’ wild dance of triumph set against the pain and anguish of both Taras Bulba and his doomed son Ostap, as the latter is tortured and then executed. And in the concluding “Prophecy and Death of Taras Bulba”, repeated agitations across the orchestra took us into the midst of a battle’s confusions, uncertainties and elations, with triumph and disaster hand in hand – fanfares announced the Cossack leader’s defeat and capture by the Poles, but then the orchestra took up a groundswell of triumphal gesturings as Taras Bulba defied his enemies and predicted a great victory for his people – here, the bells and the tones of the organ joined with the orchestra to make a conclusion all the more jubilant and resounding for being so hard-won!

A much-needed respite from these intensities was provided by the need to bring out the piano and put it in place, after which we greeted the appearance of Jian Liu, the evening’s concerto soloist. Based in Wellington, and working as the Head of Piano Studies at Te Koki New Zealand School of Music, Liu occasionally appears as a soloist or chamber-music partner at local concerts, one of the most notable of recent occasions being as a member of Te Koki Trio in a performance with the School of Music Orchestra of Beethoven’s delectable Triple Concert – see the Middle C review https://middle-c.org/2018/04/nzsm-orchestras-triple-celebration-with-the-te-koki-trio/  However, as opposed to realising the tailor-made aristocratic elegance of Beethoven’s piano part for this work, Liu’s assignment for this Orchestra Wellington concert was of an entirely different order, that of bringing off Benjamin Britten’s virtuosic writing for the solo part of his 1938 Piano Concerto, the work, partly because of its technical difficulties, still something of a concert rarity.

No such impediments seemed to stay the order of the music’s going on this occasion, with everybody, soloist, conductor and players hitting their straps immediately with the opening Toccata – the result was a dazzling “tour de force” of concertante writing, the composer seemingly unafraid to push the brilliance of the writing to its limits (Britten himself gave the 1938 premiere). As for Jian Liu’s realisation  of the solo part, the playing was masterly in its virtuosity, from incisive through to elfin in quality. The players brought off the accelerando leading up to the cadenza with a spectacular concluding crash, leaving Liu to delight and bewitch us with his fantastic command of sonority and dazzling keyboard execution, before the coda gathered up the threads and ended the movement with a flurry of finality!

After this the second movement Waltz seemed here to float in from a dream-world, everything sultry and suggestive, following on from the solo viola’s beautiful melody. The piano elaborated on the material before the pace quickened, the rhythms taking on a spiky, almost grotesque character, Liu’s octave scamperings bringing a Shostakovich-like profile to the music before the orchestra re-entered with a gorgeously over-bright version of the opening theme, as if parodying the original mood!

Britten’s original third movement was called Recitative and Aria, one which he replaced with a piece called Impromptu in 1945.  A Satie-like melody from the solo piano conjured up spacious vistas, holding us in thrall until a cadenza-like flourish introduced a blowsy version of the tune by the orchestra, with arpeggiated piano accompaniment. By that time the piece’s passacaglia character was well-established, with subsequent variations of the theme involving elephantine lower-strings, whose ploddings were magically transformed by Liu, Taddei and the players into elegant waltz-steps, the characterisations coherent and vivid, before subsiding into rapt silences at the end.

Again Shostakovich’s influence seemed to haunt the music when the finale began without a break from the previous movement, the march seeming to grow out of the earth upon which the music moved. It was as if the sounds were a kind of rallying-call, further energised by militaristic skirlings from the winds, the piano’s revelry-like sounds echoing those of the brass and adding to the swaggering mood. Suddenly it was as if the tongue-in-cheek mood had awakened deeper feelings, strings, winds and stuttering brass moving the music on from vainglorious attitudes into and through more confrontational realms, the winds in particular voicing their concerns in no uncertain manner, and the piano screwing up the tensions with increasingly insistent and vigorous hammerings.

And then , as if the sounds had literally exhausted themselves and needed to refresh and regroup, the music all but melted down for a few moments, before Liu’s piano took the lead and re-established the march, underpinned by the percussion, giving the brass their chance of undying glory, with the piano’s help rallying the troops and encouraging the strings and winds to “skirl” for all they were worth! As for the soloist, such scintillating glissandi, and “devil-take-the-hindmost” repeated notes did Liu “throw into” the mix at the concerto’s end! We were stunned, enthralled and finally galvanised by it all – what a player! And, as well, what a performance by conductor and orchestra! What else could the pianist do at the very end but, after acknowledging the applause, point to the keyboard and sit down, and then, amid the sudden hushed silences, bring into being the simplest and most touching of pieces from Robert Schumann’s “Kinderscenen” (Scenes from Childhood), the lovely “Traumerei” (Dreaming)? – a “did we dream you or did you dream us?” moment, wrought of magic.

A blessed interval gave us the space our sensibilities needed to digest these wonders and their brilliant execution, and clear our receptive channels in readiness for Marc Taddei’s and the players’ unfolding of Antonin Dvorak’s Sixth Symphony in D Major. In the wake of the joyful rendering of the Fifth Symphony at Orchestra Wellington’s first 2018 concert, we were eager for more, this time with a work that promised to show an even greater array of fruits from the composer’s patient symphonic apprenticeship.

For myself, I was warmed through and through by both music and performance – the bright, eagerly-syncopated rhythms of the opening woke the music perfectly, the playing straightaway catching that ever-present rustic element in Dvorak’s music in the spacious balances, the characterful voicings of the wind instruments and the “snap” of the often-syncopated rhythms. Marc Taddei allowed his players to subtly “lean into” each of the new sequences, enough to impart a warmth and flexibility to the utterances without loosening the structures, and generally inspiring brightly-toned and affectionate playing. We didn’t get the first-movement repeat, but were amply compensated by Taddei’s and the players’ mellifluous shaping and balancing of the music.

Eloquent winds and silken strings opened the slow movement, answered by an atmospheric horn solo, the music’s flow long-breathed but maintaining the pulse. The minor-key outburst was almost Mahlerian in impact, though the angst was short-lived, the lyrical sweetness returning with a heart-warming reprise of the opening melody by the first violins playing high up, after which the ‘cellos also were given a “moment” with the theme. In complete contrast was the driving Scherzo, a “Furiant” with ear-catching syncopations in its main section (astonishing timpani!), and a winsome Trio, whose exquisite touches were shared by strings and winds (the piccolo particularly charming!).

Though reminiscent of Brahms’ Second Symphony’s finale at the very beginning (the older composer gave Dvorak a great deal of encouragement, with Dvorak’s gratitude to Brahms appropriately and amply expressed here), the younger man was no slavish imitator, as the latter stages of the work made clear. Taddei played the opening in an extremely relaxed manner before launching into an exciting accelerando throughout the transition passage  leading to a restatement of the opening theme, and its broadening once again. There followed an exciting and absorbing symphonic adventure, with conductor and players alive to all of the music’s possibilities and accomplishments, the drama of the material’s “working out” culminating in a sensational burst of joyous energy at the coda, the players  responding to their conductor’s challenging tempi with fire and brilliance! It was heady stuff, and made for an exhilarating finish to a remarkable concert.

The Heath Quartet – from church and the chamber to the open air

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand presents:

The Heath Quartet
Oliver Heath, Sara Wolstenholme (violins)
Gary Pomeroy (viola), Christopher Murray (‘cello)

JS BACH – Choral Preludes
GARETH FARR – Te Kōanga (CMNZ commission)
JOSEF HAYDN – String Quartet No.55 in D Major Op.71 No.2 (Hob.III:70)
BENJAMIN BRITTEN – String Quartet No.2 in C Major Op.36

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Wednesday, 27th June, 2018

This was a concert whose music-making I thought extraordinary, and I’m still thinking about why this was so days after the event! It was partly to do with the repertoire, which featured a range of diametrically opposed modes of expression from different composers, and partly the result of the Quartet’s singularly “interior” way of realising these different modes, in search of the music’s different and unique essences. That the players succeeded in inhabiting the contrasting structures and vistas of each of the works seemed to me to be borne out by the remarkable diversity of the different pieces’ sound-world. The character of each one had its feet unequivocally planted in the soil by the players and its raison d’etre proclaimed as eloquently as it seemed possible.

I thought the diversity of repertoire underlined by the effect of the opening of Gareth Farr’s evocative Te Kōanga, with its timeless realisations of “mauriora” – the breath of life – in the wake of life-giving exhalations of a different kind from a world away, which had begun the concert. The first music was that of JS Bach’s, the pieces being arrangements for string quartet of three of his Chorale Preludes, the sounds at once austere and tender, abstracted and warm-blooded, and seemingly coaxed from out of the silences by the players. The programme note indicated that the pieces came from the Orgel-Buchlein, an instruction-book which contained a number of melodies derived from Lutheran Chorales. Bach’s son Carl Philippe Emmanuel edited a collection (published in 1788) of these four-part works from which the selection of three here could well have been made.

Each of the pieces were brief realisations of a particular mood associated with an expression of faith, the first, Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein, (When in the hour of utmost need) BWV 641,. a succinct impulse of unshakeable faith, the sounds at once tender and vibrant. The second,  Das alte Jahr vergangen ist (The old year has passed away) BWV 614, sounded at the outset even more inward, its minor key setting expressing a quiet anxiety through  reiterated melody notes and upward chromatic lines as well as a questioning conclusion. I thought the third piece, O Mensch, bewein’ dein’ Sünde gross, (O Man, bewail your great sin) BWV 622, seemed somewhat at odds with its title, the sounds expressing great solace and quiet well-being. A brief ascending passage introduced a sense of striving, one which soon passed, if briefly echoed once again before the music’s serene conclusion.

Came the Gareth Farr work, commissioned by Chamber Music NZ, in memory of musician and luthier Ian Lyons who died suddenly and unexpectedly in 2015 in Wellington. In a brief printed note, the composer emphasised that the piece “was not a lament for Ian – rather, it is a joyous celebration of the things that were important to him”. Translated, the piece’s title, Te Kōanga, means “Spring” or “Planting Season”, and was intended by the composer to signify regeneration associated with the return of the sun and of the spring, with its attendant manifestations of new life and growth.

The music began with vividly ambient evocations of natural sounds – rustlings, murmurings, and birdsong – from violins and viola, over ostinato-like pulsatings from the ‘cello, which the other instruments were gradually drawn into. Atmosphere then became drama with sudden alternations between chorale-like utterances and pulsations, the rhythmic sections echt-Farr, catchy and funky, with even the birds unable to resist the “tow” of the trajectories. The sounds then drifted as if airborne, the violin intoning an exotic -sounding impulse of fancy, a plaintive, wistful strand which the accompanying instruments harmonised, again alternating full-throated Vaughan-Williams-like chordal progressions with delicate wind-blown wisps of sound, then turning the chords into bouncy Bartokian bowing gestures that drily scraped and rasped on the strings. A glow seemed to come over the soundscapes as the birdsong impulses returned, as full-throated as before, as if nature had put on a show and was now bidding us take our leave – but from out of the sounds began a valediction, sombre chords and a lamenting figure, which drifted upwards, held us for a moment, and disappeared into the silences – I sat stunned by all of this at the piece’s end, enthralled by the playing and indescribably touched by the beauty of it all.

What better music to reacquaint us with our lives that that of Josef Haydn’s – in this case, his String Quartet No.55 as per programme, Op.71 No.2, one of three with this Opus number, but belonging to a group of six (including three more published as Op.74) dedicated to one of the composer’s Viennese aristocrat friends, the Count Apponyi. They are regarded as the first string quartets written for public concert performance, rather than for noble connoisseurs in private houses. This change was brought about by Haydn, after almost 30 years of service to the Esterhazy family having been “pensioned off” by a new Prince, and becoming free to offer his services as a composer elsewhere. Enter the impresario Johann Peter Salomon, who persuaded Haydn to visit London in 1791, a venture which brought the composer great renown, and resulted in a second visit three years later. It was for this visit that the composer wrote these quartets which were grander in scale than any he had previously composed.

Right from the work’s beginning the extra amplitude of the writing was expressed by a slow introduction, a feature that was to become commonplace in Haydn’s late instrumental music. Here this took the form of full-throated chords sounding a rich D Major, before tumbling into an allegro whose energies and excitements seemed to take the listener on an exhilarating roller-coaster ride, with many an exciting thrill of ascent/descent and heart-stopping lurch sideways! Particularly striking were the unexpected exploratory modulations of the recapitulation, forays into territories which must have raised many a contemporary listener’s eyebrows in places.

The slow movement’s opening phrase was beautifully voiced by the first violin and most tenderly supported by the murmuring accompaniments throughout. A ’cello-led phrase swung the music into even more heartfelt realms, the expression generating considerable intensity of a kind one might in places associate with a later, romantic age, the playing then bringing out Haydn’s extraordinary inventive way with his material, involving, by turns, strong accents, delicately-pointed phrasings, and delicious triplet sequences. Delectable, too, was the Menuetto, sprightly and strutting at the outset, and in complete contrast with the sombre, and somewhat ghoulish chromatic aspect of the Trio, like a sudden remembrance of a bad or disturbing dream, before returning with renewed pleasure (and some relief) to the opening dance.

As for the finale, the Allegretto gave a “slow-motion” aspect to the music at the very beginning of the finale, one of a machine not properly wound up, or malfunctioning because of some hidden impediment – however, the initial “containment” of the music served to heighten the sense of release, when, two-thirds of the way through the players increased the tempo, and raced joyously to the piece’s end, despatching the final chords with a flourish.

After the interval we made ready to square up to the Britten, the composer’s Second String Quartet in C Major, a work which was premiered on the 250th anniversary of the death of Henry Purcell, a composer for whom Britten had the highest veneration, in fact using in his work a Baroque dance-form, the Chaconne (Chacony), often employed by Purcell himself. Upon reading beforehand about the Heath Quartet’s choice of this work by Britten I wondered why they chose to open the concert with Bach rather than some Purcell, thereby drawing a more immediate link between the latter’s and Britten’s music. The most obvious choice would have been Britten’s own arrangement of Purcell’s 4-part Chacony in G minor for strings – perhaps the Heath Quartet players thought such a course was TOO obvious…….

Whatever the case we were duly presented with a totally compelling listening-experience in the form of this work, one in which the disparate elements of the concert thus far seemed to be brought together as a kind of living musical entity. Beginning with a warm and rich C Major opening, the players emphasised the music’s recitative-like character, with unison declamations over a cello drone, the lines both angular and eloquent. As the music energised and diversified, the exchanges were further enlivened by forceful accented figures, then becalmed by more lyrical contrasts, as from the violin at one point, and the ‘cello at another. Slashing chords over ostinati stirred the blood momentarily, though the music’s mood was obviously bent on further exploration rather than over-relishing any single moment, as whimsy followed whimsy, such as questioning upward glissandi, and irruptions breaking up impulses of forward movement. Ultimately the music seemed to me to express contrasts, between single and concerted sounds, order and disunity, harmony and chaos – the ending characterised this beautifully, its hard-wrought serenity disturbed by a final jog-trot figure!

The second movement’s exhilarating ride, with pesante-like unison shouts sounding over scampering triplets, took us into almost spectral territories, the energies sharp and incisive, despite their thistledown lightness in places, conveying a sense of anxiety amid the excitement, with the punctuating shouts of the downstrokes reminiscent of Mephistofeles’ shouts of “Hup!hup!” in Berlioz’s “La Damnation de Faust”! It came across as a kind of intermezzo movement, really, partly due to its brevity, and partly in retrospect as the precursor to the work’s imposing finale – a Chacony (sometimes called a passacaglia – a theme-and-variations movement), with 21 variations divided into four groups by solo cadenzas from cello, viola and first violin. Britten’s original programme note from the work’s premiere in 1945 refers to the sections expressing aspects of the theme’s (a) harmony, (b) rhythm,  (c) melody, and (d) formal structure. Good to know?

What seemed more to the point from a concert listener’s perspective was the effect of the overall musical journey, one launched by “the” theme, a strongly-accentuated unison line with a kind of “Scottish snap”, a grand and forthright statement which then seemed to fragment into endlessly inventive realisations. We heard burgeonings of upward-and-outward harmonic probings, the solo violin stratospheric in its trajectories, the ‘cello freely modulating the bass line, and the upper strings pushing their explorations to extremes, the sounds seeming the result less of contrivance than of instinct.

Following the ‘cello’s cadenza, the player began a dotted rhythm which spread across the ensemble and took on Nibelung-anvil-like insistence, the music incorporating a swirling  octave descent, a relentless three-note figure, and an anguished-sounding reiterated cry whose canonic delivery screwed up the tensions to bursting point. The floodgates opened with a baton-change running up-and-down figure, from which the viola launched into his (accompanied) cadenza, the violin maintaining a “held” note throughout, and sweetly taking up a theme, which was then repeated in thirds with the other violin, to heart-warming effect, a further upward modulation intensifying its beauty and poignancy. Mid-movement the hall was hushed by the players’ distillation of these beauties and their surety of placement of the changing moods of the music.

A lyrical moment for the violin was further charged by the ensemble’s amazingly heartfelt burgeoning of the melodic contourings, which led to the same instrument’s cadenza, brief but vigorous, and from which the final group of variations sprang. Intensive tremolandi led to a demonstrative series of mighty, concluding chords, whose repetitions immediately brought to my mind the ending of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, with its similarly spaced-out shouts of triumph over various opposing forces. Their cumulative effect here was overwhelming, the sense of an epic undertaking completed an intoxicating feeling on all sides!

As I write this I’m still imbued with a tingling sense of having experienced something quite out of the ordinary – very grateful thanks to the Heath Quartet members for taking us on such a wondrous journey!

 

 

Dvořák with Rolf Gjelsten wins all hearts at Wellington Chamber Orchestra concert

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Orchestra presents:
DVOŘÁK – ‘Cello Concerto in B Minor Op. 104
BRAHMS – Symphony No.2 in D Major Op.73

Rolf Gjelsten – solo ‘cello
Rachel Hyde – conductor
Wellington Chamber Orchestra

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

Sunday 24th June 2018

As part of the “run-up” to this particular Wellington Chamber Orchestra concert, its second of the current year, the Orchestra circulated on-line a truly inspiring issue of its occasional newsletter, Notes, one which I was delighted to get, in view of what was “coming”.  It featured a heartwarming contribution from the concert’s soloist, Rolf Gjelsten, who’s of course the ‘cellist of the much-acclaimed New Zealand String Quartet. His love for and anticipation of playing the Dvořák concerto came across strongly, as did his delight at the prospect of working with the orchestra once again (a previous collaboration involved the Brahms Double Concerto), due to the inspiration he readily derived from working with amateur musicians, who play “for love” (as the word “amateur) suggests.

Regarded generally as the greatest of ‘Cello Concertos, Dvořák’s work dates from his years in the United States, and was written over the period 1894-95. The work was supposed to be given its premiere by its dedicatee, Hanuš Wihan, but several disagreements between composer and dedicatee resulted in an impasse which delayed the work’s public appearance. By the time things were sorted out, Wihan was unavailable, and the concerto was eventually given its first performance by another ‘cellist, Leo Stern, in 1896, in London, with Dvořák conducting.

The work enshrines something of a personal tragedy for the composer as well, in the form of an excerpt from one of his own songs quoted in the work’s slow movement, “Kez duch muj san” (“Leave me alone”), the first of a set composed in 1887-88, and a favourite of Dvořák’s sister-in-law, Josefina Kaunitzová. Dvořák had fallen in love with Josefina some years before, but his affections were not returned, and he eventually married Josefina’s younger sister Anna.

However, his feelings for his sister-in-law remained, as when news came to Dvořák, while still in the United States, of Josefina’s illness, prompting his inclusion of a quote from the song in the work as a tribute to her. Shortly after the composer and his family returned to Bohemia, Josefina died, and the sorrowful Dvořák rewrote the coda of the concerto to briefly include a further reminiscence of the song, in the composer’s own words, “like a sigh”, before the whole concludes “in a stormy mood”!

Great was the sense of expectancy in St.Andrew’s prior to the appearance of soloist and conductor for the concert’s first half, akin to what I had felt in this same venue a couple of months previously at an event featuring the NZ School of Music Orchestra and the musicians of Te Kōkī Trio playing Beethoven’s grand and celebratory Triple Concerto. This time there was a single ‘cellist, albeit a resplendent-looking figure in his purple shirt, the New Zealand String Quartet’s Rolf Gjelsten, acknowledging the enthusiastic applause and settling himself and his instrument ready to play.

Despite a touch of nervousness at the beginning, with the clarinets a tad ahead of the beat, and the winds playing a swift, featureless legato, without really “phrasing” their lines, the music settled down at the first tutti, conductor Rachel Hyde holding her forces together splendidly, and continuing the flow right up to the entry of the horn with the beautiful second subject. Here it was most winningly played and phrased, and answered as warmly by clarinet and oboe, with the strings then chiming in, bringing a great surge of emotion to the proceedings.

From the moment of Rolf Gjelsten’s first entry, “owning” the concerto’s opening theme without resorting to over-emphasis, I was aware of the prominence given the wind instruments here, a balance which, to my great delight, continued throughout the work. In a live performance of this work one realises by comparison the extent to which soloists on recordings are “over-miked”, creating a sound-picture which distorts the reality of scale between solo instrument and orchestra. Here Gjelsten instead seemed as concerned with allowing other players to “speak” as realising his own tones and phrases, often playing as if accompanying and letting through other solo or ensembled lines. It all conjured up a fresh, out-of-doors feeling, the music-making characterised by a delight of different timbres in places and some hushed, very “aware” accompaniments, with nice work in places from solos such as from the flute.

The great moment of the soloist’s spectacular upward glissando and the following, suitably grand welcoming orchestral tutti was brought off with tremendous elan, the transitions from these to more poetic realisations bringing forth miracles of sensitive playing from all concerned before the eventual triumph of the brass. The conclusion was a bit raucous-sounding, but I think it goes with the territory in the venue’s relatively confined spaces (surely making the restoration of the Town Hall a matter for ever-burgeoning urgency).

By this time in the performance we were confidently awaiting (and got!) a lovely rustic wind-blend of sounds at the slow movement’s beginning, the ‘cello joining in as if breaking into spontaneous song! The clarinets sounded especially mellifluous, supported solidly by the lower brass. The soloist played and phrased with compelling candour, as if confiding in us the music’s private thoughts, a heartfelt episode which culminated in a passionate orchestral outburst of great weight, strings unified in emotion and winds subsequently realising all kinds of detailed responses (including the quotation from Josefina’s “song”), with flute and bassoon strong and steady, and the horns so eloquent, almost Wagnerian in places! All credit was due, I thought, to conductor and players for their concentration and involvement throughout this section, which produced a kind of frisson, a glow of music-making at once intimate and far-reaching, the composer’s thoughts of his lost love poignantly evoked amid light and shade. Towards the end a shadow briefly cast its effect on the music before fading away amid dulcet wind tones.

A quick march jolted us out of our reverie at the finale’s appearance, with great urgency and excitement impulsively generated, even the soloist racing momentarily ahead with his double-stopped melody, though he was soon gathered in!  To my ears it all sounded slightly hectoring at this pace, especially so in the wake of the previous movement’s easeful  flow – however, relief was at hand with the lullabic episode that followed, Gjelsten’s eloquent tones matched by the clarinet with other winds and the strings eventually floating in their strands of airborne fancy. What then really uplifted the spirits was the appearance of a new episode involving the soloist’s unashamedly yearning treatment given a new melody, which was then repeated as a duet between the ‘cello and the concertmaster’s solo violin. It wasn’t a quote from “the song” itself, this time, but surely indicative (in fact, candidly so) of a kind of longed-for partnership of hearts and souls. A great moment came when the orchestra triumphantly asserted the tune’s suggestion of a consummation of sorts (Gjelsten’s playing fiery and intense, here!), with the brass suddenly announcing a kind of “Promised Land” to view, everything strangely reminiscent of “Parsifal”, an impression to do with perhaps a similar kind of longing……

What followed was given to us with remarkable power and poignancy from all concerned, a kind of thoughtful summation of the concerto’s emotional territory, the ‘cellist musing, winds characteristic-sounding in thirds, and distant trumpets calling the heart home, with solo violin again joining the cello in a brief moment of rapture, one leading to a stab of pain from the winds and a cry of sorrow from the ‘cello – vast expanses of a life, its joys and vicissitudes, all regarded in mere seconds before the ‘cello acknowledged the inevitable and surrendered to the orchestra for the last word.

It was perhaps unfortunate that anything had to follow such a “complete in itself” experience!  Ironic, too, that it was the music of Brahms, one of Dvořák’s staunchest supporters, with which the orchestra had, on one level sensibly, opted to continue the concert, but which exerted an entirely different set of demands. The performance of this, the composer’s Second Symphony, had many good moments, the conductor and players having plenty of success with the long, sinuous lines of the music, with some of the instrumental solos falling most gratefully on the ear throughout. It seemed the chief difficulty experienced by the players came with the tricky rhythmic dovetailings the composer delighted in, resulting in sections every now and then getting “out of sync” with one another, and sometimes in places that one wouldn’t expect to be problematical.

The first movement was nicely shaped by conductor Rachel Hyde, encouraging those long, lyrical lines and dovetailed exchanges between strings and wind which give the music a certain pastoral quality. I thought a certain “robust” rhythmic quality wasn’t pronounced strongly enough in places, with the players allowing the figurations to “hurry” at moments where they should have remained steady and “pointed” – difficult to achieve in music as deceptively benign as this! The movement’s central section caught the growing excitement of the composer’s writing, with great growls from the brasses at appropriate moments, while the concluding section featured a nicely-detailed horn solo, rich string sounds and perky oboe-playing.

The second movement’s declamatory opening from the strings received steady support from winds and brass, the ‘cellos and violas rich and warm in the big, almost Elgarian second-subject melody before handing over to the violins. Here, again, a stormy middle section cast shadows mid-movement, with timpani and brass underpinning the powerful statements, the conductor securely holding the last and most powerful utterances together, and allowing the winds space to solemnly announce the portentous timpani-reinforced coda.

After this we needed some light and warmth, and the perky and playful oboe, supported by flute and clarinet lines, lifted our spirits, as did the strings also, at first, with their skipping figures, the ensemble coming unstuck only at the sequence’s end, when the winds, with their Mendelssohn-like interjections brought order and security once again. The strings managed the “darkening” of the music beautifully, though the energies of the vivace section meant trouble in the playground for a few moments! The oboe called order for the last time, supported by the winds and strings, including the horn, and quiet and calm was restored.

After the expectant opening chord, lots of bustle and sotto voce business began the finale, the strings slightly “jumping the starter’s gun” but the race then finding its own joyous striding momentum, the clarinets and supporting splendidly giving notice of some oncoming crossroads, characterised by some shapely and sonorous playing from the lower strings with their contrasting melody. Again the winds steadied and focused the ensemble, their teamwork and detailing a delight, enough for the players to rally towards the end and, encouraged by Rachel Hyde, “let it rip” throughout the coda to exciting and satisfying effect.

In retrospect, whatever the orchestra performed throughout the concert’s second half would have, I think, seemed relatively effortful and hard-won, following such an inspired and beautifully-wrought first-half performance. Incidentally Rolf Gjelsten unobtrusively took his place at the back of the ‘cellos throughout the second half, bringing an appropriate kind of “oneness” to the afternoon’s events, an occasion of whose achievement the orchestra itself could be justly proud.

 

 

NZ Opera’s trans-Tasman “The Elixir of Love ” a corker!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand Opera presents:
THE ELIXIR OF LOVE  (L’Elisir d’amore)
– an opera by Gaetano Donizetti (Italian libretto by Felice Romani)

Cast: Adina – Amina Edris
Nemorino – Pene Pati
Belcore – Morgan Pearse
Dr. Dulcamara – Conal Coad
Giannetta – Natasha Wilson

Director: Simon Phillips
Restage Director: Matthew Barclay
Assistant Director: Jacqueline Coats
Designer: Michael Scott-Mitchell
Lighting Designer: Nick Schlieper
Costume Designer: Gabriela Tylesova

Freemasons New Zealand Opera Chorus
Chorusmaster – Michael Vinten

Orchestra Wellington
Conductor: Wyn Davies

Opera House, Wellington
Saturday, 23rd June 2018

(until Saturday 30th June)

Y’ know wot I reckon, mate? I reckon yer need ter get yerself inter town bloody pronto, if yer ain’t a city slicker (I know a few o’ those geezers as well and they’re not bad blokes, considering…..) and grab a cuppla seats for yusself an’ yer missus or yer sheila or whomever, so youse won’t miss out on the show at the Opera House (she’s actually a cracker of an old place, really) – I took the missus, and we bloody  ‘ad a whale of a time! – – yeah, mate, opera! – bloke called Donny…..Donny, er….Donny  Zetty, or whatever, wrote it! – what? – boring? – no fear, mate – well,  yeah,  I ‘ad me doubts when me missus said “We’re goin!” – but stone the crows, mate, we went in an’ sat down, and it got all dark, and the curtains opened and the music started – tell yer wot, mate, I wuz knocked sideways! – I wuz ‘ooked! Bee-YOU-derful! An’ cripes,  could they play! –  loud an’ clear as a bunch of tuis!  – Wot’s that? – Sing?  Like birds in the bush, mate! – Rosellas? – nah! – not those geezers! – real songbirds, I reckon! Yeah!…….just beaut!

I thought I’d begin my review of the evening’s entertainment in keeping with some of the more colloquial surtitle renderings in, er, “Antipodean English” of the production’s sung Italian – but having thrown myself holus bolus into the idioms, I feared I might start to enjoy the process, to the detriment of the actual content! So I shall desist from any further self-indulgence by tearing myself away from these unfettered subversions, these totally un-PC modes of expression, all of which hearken back to a still-remembered time when air was clean and sex was dirty! However, the above sentiments serve to express a basic amazement and exhilaration which relate (in cleaned-up contemporaneous terms) to the bubbling enthusiasms I met with afterwards from all and sundry concerning this joyous presentation!

I must admit to regard attempts at “updating” productions of opera with some scepticism – the motivation for these efforts in many cases (all too apparent in the result) seems to come not out of any deep-seated artistic conviction backed by skill and talent, but from strangely wrought and in my view politically suspect reasonings from certain quarters that modern audiences are unwilling or unable to “connect” with any theatrical experience in a setting more than a century old. The fact that both Greek and Elizabethan drama have triumphantly survived centuries of existence on the strength of their originally-conceived guises (give or take a few degrees of occasional discreetly-applied contemporaneous refraction) seems not to have occurred to the pedlars of default-setting “movement with the times” productions. It’s actually an indictment of the post-modern age, a kind of malaise that seems to have gripped certain strands of activity in the performing arts in general of late – one expressed most succinctly by the Australian cartoonist Leunig, in a famous “Love in the Milky Way” essay, calling it the “dumbing down and pumping up process”, where entertainment and titillation rather than provocation and true engagement are the goals.

So, I’m thrilled to report that director Simon Phillips’ resetting of Donizetti’s and Romani’s original in the early part if the twentieth century in the Australian outback works brilliantly, principally because of Phillips’ ability to “think into and through” the original opera’s raison d’etre. How surely he’s able to maintain the original’s theme of a simple fellow’s naivety in believing in a kind of “love potion” pedalled by a con-man revolves around his adroit use of what he terms “ imperialist” forces at work in Australia around the time of the new setting. These are personified by the English army officer marshalling his recruited forces as part of the war effort, and the travelling “Rawleigh’s Man” from the United States, whose activities are here augmented by a kind of piece de resistance – what Phillips calls in his “director’s message” printed in the programme “the ultimate symbol of capitalist colonisation” – enough said at this point, except that it does its work as THE elixir to resounding effect!

Whether in this particular case God or the Devil was in the detail, any number of small but important features played their part in enhancing Phillips’ vision, while keeping alive the essential spirit of the original which the “update” had happily preserved.  The stage settings and atmospheric lighting evoked the vastness of the Outback (“a lyricism of line and colour” as Phillips put it), the rustic surroundings suggested with as much point as the attendant isolation and hint of psychological claustrophobia. Heightening these salient characteristics were the travellers, soldiers and salesmen, whose distant approaches were charmingly and amusingly portrayed in something akin to an early cinematographic technique, again reinforcing time and place so very effectively and disarmingly. The animal effigies, from cattle and sheep (the latter “shorn” to great and amusing effect) and a telegraph line dotted with birds, to the soldiers’ horses and a dog (who featured in a lovely “summonsed” vignette) contributed to the presentation’s general atmosphere and good-humoured theatricality. And, the con-man Dulcamara’s array of goods was winningly displayed, before being trumped (I use the word advisedly) by the subsequent hyped-up presentation of the elixir itself!

Variously pirouetting, stumbling, strutting, and swanking through the situations played out in this scenario were the principal characters in the story – and firstly came the two would-be “lovers”, Adina, played by Amina Edris, and Nemorino, by Pene Pati (the two singers incidentally, wife and husband respectively, in real life!). Both characters were here beautifully contrived and warmly “fleshed out”, with a winning naturalness of manner underpinning their respective assumptions, and avoiding any suggestion of cliché. Each had their own “agent provocateur” in a wider theatrical sense, Adina her “military man” suitor, the dashing Belcore (a “tour de force” realisation by Morgan Pearse) and Nemorino his “saviour” with a magic elixir, Dr. Dulcamara (a similarly “larger then life” characterisation by Conal Coad). Perhaps Morgan Pearse’s patronisingly pompous portrayal (sorry – those three Ps just slipped out!) of a British Army Officer tipped over into occasional caricature, but the silliness of some of his antics didn’t entirely mask the galvanising effect of his intent upon the opera’s real business, which was the eventual unmasking of love’s TRUE elixir.

Amina Edris, as Adina, splendidly conveyed her character’s charm, flirtatiousness and essential goodness with a stage presence that conveyed both allure and a wholesome “girl-next-door” quality, managing to straightaway convey her ambivalence regarding the story she is reading from a book, the legend of Tristan and Isolde – regarding it as a “bizarra l’avventura”, yet allowing herself a degree of wishful thinking regarding the potion’s capabilities. Her easeful and unselfconscious vocal inflections and detailings consistently brought the text to life, enabling her character to vividly come “full circle” from cocquettish tease to committed sweetheart over the course of the opera. I particularly enjoyed her teasing exposé  with Dulcamara of the source of the “true” elixir (at the bogus doctor’s expense, and in the face of which he gallantly admits defeat), though it was all of a piece with her “testing” her lover Nemorino with his army regiment contract in the final scene, flooding her utterances with emotion when he convinces her it is she that he loves.

Though Nemorino is often portrayed on stage as something of a rustic simpleton, Pene Pati instead put his own great-hearted brand of unswerving single-mindedness into the character’s direct and honest makeup. His unrequited intent towards Adina shone through with a disarmingly simple and sometimes even poetic effect, as with his response to her playfully-avowed kinship with the “fickle breeze”, poignantly coming back at her with his idea of a steadfast river seeking its end in the ocean’s embrace. Always vocally elegant, by turns sensitive and forthright in expression, his portrayal also had moments of droll humour, such as his quick-witted consultation of one of Dulcamara’s surtitles, during an exchange when the latter tried to sing with his mouth full! – a moment which further rounded out his character! His big piece, of course, was “Una furtiva lagrima”, a rendition whose spontaneous-sounding utterance and natural shaping was in complete accord with his efforts and eventual success in winning Adina’s heart.

Director Simon Phillips made the point that the opera’s scenario is ultimately about the psychology of want and need, what he terms the “gullibility of humankind and the perverse complexity of emotional manipulation”. Both Belcore, the dashing sergeant in charge of a troop of recruits on their route march, and Dr.Dulcamara, the purveyor of his “elixir of love” are the catalysts for Adina and Nemorino, in their respective processes of  “working-through” these human conditions to discover their real feelings for one another. Each of their “agents” are caricatures of a kind, Belcore, the Sergeant, the embodiment of a military man, dashing and confident, and regarding himself as “God’s gift to women”, waging a “campaign” of sorts to secure Adina’s affections replete with overweening posturing and bravado. Morgan Pearse relished his opportunities, both physical and vocal,  demonstrating considerable physical dexterity in his swashbuckling attempts to render all female hearts a-flutter (with at least one swooning beauty in evidence) – the soldiers’ arrival with Belcore at their head on splendidly-detailed horse effigies was in itself a spectacle!

As for Conal Coad, a familiar figure for all opera-goers in this country, his was a typically sonorous and well-rounded piece of characterisation as Dr. Dulcamara, plying his wares with all the fervour and theatricality of an old-time preacher, dispensing joy and relief to all, and keeping one step ahead of the law in the process – though he obviously relished his updated Antipodean status as having “establishment” connections with big business and its accompanying status! Although he was able to profit, not unkindly, from Nemorino’s desperation, he met his match in Adina, almost running away with his own imagination at one point in describing the power of her elixir-like charms! – “Questa bocca cosi bella e d’amor la spezieria – Si, hai lambicco ed hai fornello….” – (That pretty mouth is love’s apocathery – yes, you have a crucible and a furnace, you little rogue…). Sly, venal and with an instinct for making easy money, Coad’s Dulcamara depicted a loveable rogue, one whose spontaneous “party-piece” with Adina as a rich senator propositioning a boat-girl, translated amusingly as “You are young and I am rich / Wouldn’t you like to get hitched?” – or words to that effect, added fuel to the flames of fun!

As the village girl Giannetta, in the forefront of the chorus, Natasha Wilson sparkled with fun, along with her female cohorts, delightfully flirtatious firstly with Belcore, and later, with Nemorino, upon hearing news of the latter’s inheritance, via a lately-deceased uncle. Under Michael Vinten’s expert guidance, the voices of the Freemasons NZ Opera Chorus delivered poised and sonorous lines of characterful, detailed tones, bringing to life the more communal moments of the story in a seamless dramatic flow. The Picnic at Hanging Rock-like costumes worked a cracker (sorry!), and contributed most effectively to the evocative “look” of the production.

It all sparkled right from the word go, with conductor Wyn Davies drawing from the Orchestra Wellington players bright and vigorous tones which sang out unimpeded throughout the Wellington Opera House’s grateful acoustic. Whether sensitive lyricism, sparkling effervescence or good-natured buffoonery was called for, Davies and the Orchestra were there as the steadfast and often brilliant consignors of the composer’s magically-wrought score, for our on-going pleasure and delight. All-in-all, I thought this “The Elixir of Love” a most entertaining and richly satisfying production – you might say, if you were so inclined, “a corker!”

Harmony of the Spheres in tandem with life on earth – Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) from Baroque Voices and instrumentalists

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Loemis presents:
A Winter Solstice Offering in Medieval Song and Dance

Harmony of the Spheres
The music of Abbess Hildegard von Bingen

Baroque Voices, directed by Pepe Becker
Pepe Becker, Jane McKinlay, Virginia Warbrick, Milla Dickens, Andrea Cochrane, Alexandra Granville, Toby Gee
Instrumental Ensemble
Warren Warbrick (nga taonga puoro), Pepe Becker (shruti-box), Gregory Squire (medieval fiddle), Robert Oliver (rebec) Laurence Reece (drums, bells, shruti-box)

Hall of Memories, National War Memorial
Buckle St., Mt Cook, Wellington

Sunday 17th June 2018

More of a spiritual/aesthetic experience than merely a “concert” was Baroque Voices’ evocative and atmospheric presentation “Harmony of the Spheres”, triumphantly bringing together singers, instrumentalists and audience to share and delight in the joys of exploration, wonderment and celebration wrought by the music of the twelfth-century Abbess Hildegard of Bingen. No more ambient and timeless sounds than those of Hildegard’s music intermingled with both contemporaneous dance rhythms and the haunting strains of a taonga puoro instrument could have been conceived – and no better venue for such a venture in the capital could have been chosen than the Hall of Memories at the National War Memorial in Mt.Cook’s Buckle St., beneath the Carillon.

Added to this for we listeners was the sense of participation in a living form of ritual – we were encircled by the musicians, the seated instrumentalists in front, and the singers standing at the sides around the auditorium, the latter moving one position clockwise in between each of the sequences and chants, and in doing so enclosing us in a diaphanous web of vocal sounds, almost as if we were part of the choir itself. Of course the nature of such isolated voice-placements resulted in the unison lines acquiring for a number of reasons more of a soft-focused communal roundness throughout, instead of the ensemble’s usual sharply-etched homogeneity of sound. It seemed almost as if we were privy to worship carried out by an actual community of nuns and novices, as bent on connecting with the spiritually expressive content of the words they sang, as concerning themselves with a certain quality of sound.

I had previously heard Hildegard’s work performed in concert, occasionally by Baroque Voices themselves, though invariably in tandem with the work of other composers. Having her music presented with the kind of focus and historical context provided here couldn’t help but make a profound impression on anybody’s sensibilities, a feeling of tapping into some kind of transcendental creative force that simply couldn’t be denied or thwarted by earthly impediments – a notion which was afterwards reinforced by my reading Pepe Becker’s informative programme-notes, which included a brief biography of the composer, of the kind that makes one realise how puny one’s own achievements in life really are!

Included also in the printed programme (which I didn’t get to read until after the concert!) were translations of the original Latin texts of the Hymns, which were also written by Hildegard! What Pepe Becker calls her “expressive and rapturous” imagery in places predates that of the English metaphysical poets writing five hundred years later, in terms of physical and erotic imagery – the Antiphon “Hodie Aparuit”, for example, which speaks of the Virgin’s womb opening only for the Son of God – “from it gleams within the dawn the Virgin Mary’s flower”. The body for Hildegard is at once the holiest and most responsive of sanctuaries, as these words in praise of the third-century Saint Eucharius’s holiness show – “In your mouth Ecclesia (a female personification of the Church) savours the old and the new wine which is the potion of holiness”. There’s an exhilarating freedom about such use of imagery  – “from your womb, O dawn, has come the sun anew!” – which disarms with its wholeheartedness and candour.

Complementing the vocal performances were the efforts of the instrumentalists whose distinctive tones played their part in evoking the presentation’s duality of medieval ambience and timelessness. An extra dimension of place was wrought by taonga puoro player Warren Warbrick’s plaintive bird-like realisations on the pūtōrino, whose sounds began the presentation proper, then alternated utterances with the voice of Pepe Becker in “O Ignis Spiritus”, and the vocal ensemble in “O Euchari”. Both vocal and pūtōrino timbres drew from one another a common sense of something spiritual and extra-terrestrial, a girdle of sounds whose combination seemed to readily encompass the entirety of the globe.

Earthiness of a different order pervaded the contribution of the remaining instrumentalists, a quality readily conceded by the excellent violinist Gregory Squire, in his note about the presentation’s instruments-only contributions – he remarks that while song was a “constant” in the church, “dance was, more often than not, the preserve of the illiterate rabble”. As well as contributing these sequences the instrumentalists also provided discreet accompaniments to some of the singing, usually in the form of “drone-like” pedal notes from the string instruments, or occasional bell-chimes, with the aforementioned pūtōrino making its voice heard occasionally. There was also a kind of “squeeze-box” called a shruti-box whose delicate whisperings  nevertheless created telling ambiences.

But it was the dance music which made the most enduring impression, the players seemingly drawing from the earth itself the necessary energies and articulations that made this vigorous music “speak”. We heard quick music whose sequences were called Trotto (Latin – trottare – to trot) and Ghaetta (an Italian city’s name, and also Spanish for bagpipes), as well as a more extended sequence called “Lamento di Tristano”, a musical representation of the search for the Holy Grail, which contained various narrative references in the form of different tempi and moods for different parts of the piece. Both Robert Oliver (rebec) and Laurence Reese (drums, bells) hove to with a will in tandem with their violinist, generating as lively and visceral a response in the energetic sequences as, were, in contrast, their contributions to the slower pieces delicate and thoughtful.

Altogether we were transported by the sounds and their realisations to a time and place in keeping with a more natural order of things, our sensibilities delighting in the juxtapositioning of the sacred and profane, and marvelling at the ease and flow of co-existence between the two. It was part of the genius of Pepe Becker and her collaborators that such disparate elements as the creative genius of Hildegard of Bingen, popular medieval dance music and timelessly ambient sounds from Aotearoa were brought together with such memorable and resounding effect.

 

 

 

 

 

Chris Hainsworth – “Perfection of Sound” on the Fernie organ at St.Mary of the Angels

Posted on by Peter Mechen

CHRIS HAINSWORTH ON THE FERNIE ORGAN

A book-prelaunch celebration – “The Perfection of Sound” – the story of the “Fernie Organ” at St.Mary of the Angels Church, Wellington

Music by Franck, Chaminade, Quef, Torres, Bonnet, JS Bach, Gounod, Debussy, Vierne, Lefebure-Wely, Mine, Widor

Chris Hainsworth playing the organ at St.Mary of the Angels Church,
Boulcott St., Wellington

Friday, 15th June, 2018

This, of course, was a concert with a difference, being the occasion of a book pre-launch, though regarding the actual music performed, perhaps to a less idiosyncratic extent for those who, unlike myself, have previously attended one or more of organist Chris Hainsworth’s recitals. Hainsworth has, on previous occasions at the St.Mary of the Angels Church organ, given presentations of a somewhat less-than-highbrow nature, partly due to his well-documented philosophy of avoiding solemnity in his programmes and countering passivity amongst his audiences! – see two previous “Middle C” reviews of the organist’s recitals,  one from 2013 –  https://middle-c.org/2013/02/organ-megalomania-christopher-hainsworth-courtesy-maxwell-fernie/ and the other from 2009 – https://middle-c.org/2009/04/christopher-hainsworth-at-the-organ-of-st-mary-of-the-angels/

Perhaps the humour was rather less overtly-expressed this time round, the programme contents themselves at first giving little outward cause for eyebrow-raising, sorting themselves dutifully into theme-groups such as the opening “A Suite of Carols for Midwinter”. I did wonder how Hainsworth then came to characterise a pairing of a Serenade by Charles Gounod and an arrangement of Debussy’s much-played “La fille aux cheveux de lin” as “A Baptism and a Funeral” – (shades of Ravel’s “Pavane pour une Infante defunte” perhaps?)

However, this mystery paled into insignificance when compared with the organist’s wonderful title for his last bracket of pieces – “A Fake New Symphony”. My Middle C colleague, Rosemary Collier, with whom I was sitting, leaned over and commented – “Well, he’s come up trumps with this one!” Four diverse pieces from different composers’ organ symphonies were followed by an improvisation-finale in the best virtuoso-composer tradition, one based on “Personent Hodie” a Christmas Carol originating from Scandinavia in the Middle Ages.

Obviously a lot of thought had gone into Hainsworth’s choices of music, each piece played during the evening having some kind of connection with the man to whom the organ in St.Mary of the Angels’ Church owes its unique existence, distinctiveness and reputation, organist, choirmaster and visionary, Maxwell Fernie (1910-1999). However, it was some time before the actual musical side of things got going, as part of the evening’s business was to officially announce the projected appearance of a book, “The Perfection of Sound” – the history of the St.Mary’s organ with all the correspondence between Max, the organ builder, the pipe makers and the parish priest.

The Parish Priest of St.Mary’s Church, Father Kevin Conroy SM, welcomed what was a goodly Friday evening audience to the concert, before inviting James Young, the current organist at the church, to introduce a number of speakers with something to tell us regarding their association with Max Fernie, with the organ, and/or with the forthcoming book, to be published by Steele Roberts at the year’s end.

It fell to Roger Steele to begin by telling us about the book project and enjoining those present to avail themselves of the chance to gain first-hand knowledge of the organ’s genesis in its present form. After Fernie’s widow, Greta inherited all her husband’s papers and the correspondence associated with the organ’s rebuilding, she thought such detailed documentation would constitute a unique story if gathered together and edited to make a book. Alan Simpson, who had been a pupil of Max’s and was also interested in technical aspects of organ specifications, edited the bulk of the material, including correspondence and interviews; while another former student Ros Johnston drew from a 1996 interview with Max by journalist Anna Smith, writing a substantial introduction to the correspondence in the context of Max’s career. The whole will be curated by Roger Steele for eventual publication.

Two further speakers were firstly John Hargraves, an organ-builder and director of the South Island Organ Company, who worked with Fernie from 1979 on the organ’s completion and subsequent refurbishments. He elaborated on Max’s insistence at developing specific tonal characteristics in the organ, adding a reminiscence of his involvement with Max in the 1985 restoration of the Wellington Town Hall organ. The final address came from Elizabeth Kerr, arts administrator, who talked about her experiences of Max as a teacher, with whom she had singing lessons as a chorister and a soloist, and as a “compelling” interpreter and conductor of the music he loved.

Introductions, documentations and reminiscences then made way for the sounds of the organ in question, Chris Hainsworth duly welcomed and introduced, and beginning his concert with music by Cesar Franck, a “Grand Choeur”. This was stirring stuff commencing with the “Noel” tune, grand and imposing, and continuing with a sprightly march with lots of dotted rhythms, the music employing a variety of timbres and building up to a series of contrasts between grandeur and energetic excitement to great effect.

A complete contrast in mood was wrought by Cecile Chaminade’s beautiful and nostalgic “Pastorale pour la Nuit de Noel”, gentle dotted rhythms and mellifluous tones contrasting with more plaintive reed-like sounds at the end. It made a fine contrast with little-known composer Charles Quef’s “Noel Parisien” with its rattling toccata-like passages and celebratory themes.

Hainsworth’s selection certainly played up the contrasts, with Eduardo Torres’s “Lullaby for the Holy Infant” again applying balm to our stimulated sensibilities with appropriately soothing and utterly charming “piping” timbres, a kind of “trio” section affording some contrasts of texture before returning to the opening. The suite’s finale was Joseph Bonnet’s “Rhapsodie Catalane”, music that brought out a pronounced virtuosic element, specifically with the use of the pedals, whole cadenzas in fact! After the relatively restrained music we’d heard thus far, this piece seemed to open up the instrument’s latent power and brilliance to spectacular effect, the pedal sounds almost seismic in their visceral impact. Based on two Catalan carols, the music’s second section featured even more spectacular pedal virtuosity in places which, when the hands joined in, produced easily the grandest sounds of the evening thus far.

Respite, if needed, from these all-out expressions of grandeur was given by the music of JS Bach, in the form of two Chorale Preludes, the first being the beatific, timeless-sounding  “Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier”, while the second was a somewhat more anxious and insistent “Ich ruf zu dir”. These certainties of faith were followed by a curiously-titled pairing of pieces by Gounod and Debussy – “A Baptism and a Funeral”. I got the “Baptism”concept without too much trouble, Gounod’s “Serenade” offering a suitably attractive nascent quality not unlike parts of Faure’s “Dolly” Suite – but, as already stated, I struggled when equating an organ transcript of Debussy’s piano Prelude “La fille aux cheveux de lin” with a funereal kind of association. When listening to this much-played piece, I thought how much more exciting it would have been to hear a different prelude of Debussy’s served up on the organ, one appropriate to the surroundings – La Cathédrale engloutie (The Submerged Cathedral) – though perhaps there might not of course have been a connection with Max that justified such an inclusion.

The concert’s finale was the “trumped-up” – sorry! – the “Fake New Symphony”, with Hainsworth inventively bringing four existing movements from other “organ symphonies” together, along with an improvised finale. This form was developed almost exclusively by French composers inspired by the new sonic capabilities and growing sophistication of organs built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll during the nineteenth century. The first “movement” was supplied by Louis Vierne, taken from his own “Organ Symphony No.2”, one with an attention-grabbing opening and a gentler, major-key second subject, the development alternating the music’s sterner and more lyrical aspects, until the symphony’s opening returned with even more strength and expressive power, its conclusion grand and definite.

After this Alfred Lefebure-Wely’s Andante sounded very small beer indeed (“A lot of rubbish!” sniffed somebody sitting alongside where I was) – yes, it was mawkish-sounding, complete with “cooing doves” effects in places, but I thought the effect at the very least delightful, and certainly no more insipid than a rather trite scherzo contributed next by one Joseph Mine, a composer from the period in France regarded by music historians as “barren” – between Rameau and Berlioz – rather like Mozart’s self-mocking “Kaiser Song”, replete with empty fanfare-like gestures.

I liked how Hainsworth then eschewed the “obvious” finale from the genre, firstly taking from its composer, Charles-Marie Widor, the Adagio movement (a pleasant piece, pure and serene) from that very same Symphony No. 5, and then finishing with the organist’s own improvisation, based on the previously-mentioned Christmas Carol “Personent Hodie”. It rounded off an extraordinary, and appropriately flamboyant concert, and provided a sonorous demonstration of the fruits of Max Fernie’s labours in the shape and form of the present St.Mary of the Angels’ Church organ.

For those interested in the whole story the proposed book promises to be enthralling reading. To find out further information, or to place an order, go to Steele Roberts Aotearoa Ltd – http://steeleroberts.co.nz/contact/, or send an e-mail to Roger Steele at  info@steeleroberts.co.nz.