Author: Peter Mechen

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.

 

 

Orchestra Wellington – a “Golden” beginning to its 2018 season

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents:
GOLDEN CITY – Music by Mozart, Bartok and Dvorak

MOZART – Symphony No. 38 in D major  K.504 “Prague”
BARTOK – Violin Concerto No. 2 (1938)
DVORAK – Symphony No. 5 in F Major B.54

Amalia Hall (violin)
Marc Taddei (conductor)
Orchestra Wellington

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 9th June, 2018

Orchestra Wellington and Marc Taddei got their 2018 season off to an arresting start with a concert of three resplendent-sounding works, one whose effect simply got more and more celebratory and engaging as the evening went on. Aiding and abetting this state of things was the welcome presence of guest Concertmaster Wilma Smith, and a goodly-numbered audience whose support for the orchestra was richly rewarded. First came what I thought an exciting and vital, if in places a tad frenetic, reading of the Mozart “Prague” Symphony, followed by two absolutely stellar performances,  firstly, of Bela Bartok’s Second Violin Concerto, and then of a concert rarity, the Fifth Symphony of Antonin Dvorak.

The inclusion of this latter work is, of course, part of a series featuring the “great” Dvorak symphonies, beginning with this F Major work which Dvorak had written in 1875. It was first performed in 1879 as Op.24, but the publisher, Simrock, wanting to invest the work with increased status to boost sales, brought out the work in 1888 as Op.76, despite Dvorak’s protests. After Dvorak’s death no less than four earlier unpublished symphonies were discovered, necessitating a complete renumbering of the canon – up to that time, and for a long while afterwards, for example, the “New World” Symphony, which we know as No.9, was called No.5. Though worthy of the occasional hearing, the earlier symphonies each have fewer “moments per minute” than do the final five, though there have been many recordings made of the complete set.

Getting the evening off to a vigorous start was a performance of Mozart’s bright and energetic “Prague” Symphony, so-called because of the composer’s happy association with the city over the years, beginning in 1787, when a concert organised for his benefit included this newly-composed Symphony. Prague was, at that time, known as the “Golden City” – Zlatá Praha (Golden Prague in Czech) – due to its many towers and spires, some of which were reputedly covered in gold – hence the concert’s title. Also, Bohemian wind players were regarded as Europe’s best, and Mozart’s exemplary writing for winds in this work was very probably with such players in mind. Another unusual feature of the work for its composer is its three-movement structure, Mozart having always written a Minuet for his Viennese audiences. The likely explanation is that Prague’s musical public were accustomed to the three-movement form, as evidenced by the work of other symphonists whose music was performed there at around that time.

Looking back over my previous impressions of Marc Taddei’s Mozart conducting, I note great enthusiasm regarding a 2014 performance of the late G Minor Symphony, one which brought out the music’s strength and darkness through trenchant and insistent orchestral playing. I was therefore looking forward to his interpretation of the “Prague”, an expectation which was straightaway galvanised by the symphony’s opening, with forceful timpani, winds and brass (foreshadowing the opera “Don Giovanni”) tellingly contrasted with an attractive plaintive quality in the string phrases. The syncopated rhythms of the allegro’s opening swiftly and directly thrust the music forward, the playing having a dynamic character whose nicely-judged balances allowed each section a “voice”. Taddei swept the music’s momentum along through the development section, again beautifully dovetailing the elements of discourse – only a lack of real girth to the string tone in places (too few players for this venue!) prevented the performance from really taking wing.

Mozart cleverly combined slow movement and minuet-like impulse in the middle movement, probably conscious of the Prague audience’s usual fare of three-movement symphonies! Here there was sinuous sweetness in the strings’ chromatic figurations at the opening, answered by strong, purposeful winds, the playing both graceful and forthright. The composer’s awareness of the quality of Prague’s wind players was also reflected in the prominence allowed the winds throughout, a character here readily given sonorous and well-rounded purpose by the Orchestra Wellington players and their conductor.

As for the finale, the deftly-sounded introduction led to a virtual explosion of energies whose exhilaration and excitement, while befitting the presto marking, seemed to me to almost rush the music off its feet in places. The players coped magnificently, but I thought Taddei’s speeds allowed less humour than breathlessness in certain passages (the “cat-and-mouse” passages of the development, for example), and tended to turn the music’s chuckles to excitable babble, which, of course, still made the music “work”, though in a more extreme way to that which I preferred. In fact the big outburst mid-movement here sounded to my ears more angry and terse than I’ve ever previously heard it, though it did make more sense of a remark I encountered made by one commentator, who said that Mozart sounds in places in this movement more like Beethoven than anywhere else in his music. While not convinced wholly, I still took my metaphorical hat off to Taddei and his musicians for their bravery and daring at tackling the music so fearlessly!

Leaping forwards over a whole century, the concert then took us to the world of Bartok, in the shape and form of his Second Violin Concerto. The soloist was Amalia Hall, normally the Orchestra’s Concertmaster, which was why Orchestra Wellington had procured the services of Wilma Smith in the role on this occasion, a most distinguished substitute! It was of course Wilma Smith who brought another of the twentieth century’s most significant violin concerti to Orchestra Wellington audiences two years ago (goodness – how time flies!) – which was Alban Berg’s “To the Memory of an Angel” Violin Concerto. Now, courtesy of Amalia Hall (and presided over by Wilma!), it was the turn of Bartok, with a work that was regarded by the composer as his “only” violin concerto, an earlier work (1908) having never been published by the time of the composer’s death.

From the concerto’s richly evocative beginning Amalia Hall seemed to “inhabit” the music’s wide-ranging moods, seeming equally at home with both the work’s evocative beauties and rapid-fire volatilities – she addressed the atmospheric warmth of the opening folk-tune with full-bodied tones, along with plenty of energy and “snap” to her phrasings.  Throughout she seemed to encompass whatever parameters of feeling the music sought to express, in complete accord with conductor and players. And the music was extraordinary in its variety, by turns lyrical, quixotic and whimsical, and grotesque bordering on the savage – the composer’s seemingly endless invention meant that we as listeners were in a constant state of anticipation, ready to “go” with the soloist’s lyrical inwardness, sudden whimsicalities or flashes of brilliance as required. The orchestra, too had plenty of surprises for us, Taddei and his players evocative in their lyrical support of the soloist and brilliant and biting in their more combatative exchanges – some gloriously raucous sounds were produced by the winds and brass at appointed moments!

The slow movement was launched by the solo violin over magically-realised string textures, a beautiful melody eventually taken up briefly but wholeheartedly by the strings in Kodaly-like fashion. Again, the soloist made the themes and their variants throughout the movement her own, rhapsodising over pizzicato strings throughout one sequence, then joining with the winds and the harp to create a stunningly lovely fairyland ambience within another. The more quixotic variations also came off well, also, firstly a slithering theme played by the soloist over uneasily shifting orchestral chords, and then a playful march drawing delicately pointillistic exchanges between violin and orchestra, Hall’s playing throughout beautifully combining poise with real and constant presence.

The orchestra impatiently plunged into the finale’s opening bars, to which assertiveness the soloist replied with a sprightly folk-dance-like figure, the subsequent cross-exchanges leading the orchestra into almost  “road music” for a few glorious measures. Though the music refused to settle on any one mode for too long, Hall and the players rode the wave-crest of its restless spirit, tenderly realising the gentler, soulful evocations while eagerly tackling the more physical interchanges. Some of the orchestral tutti passages seemed to anticipate the “Concerto for Orchestra”, such as a toccata-like passage mid-movement capped off by the brass with infectious enthusiasm. Though not possessing the world’s heftiest tones, Hall addressed the more trenchant passages of her interactions with what seemed like remarkable strength and dexterity, enough to be hailed as a worthy hero by the orchestral brasses, before her final flourishes swept upwards to join the work’s final brass shouts! What an ending, and what a performance!

What would have been, a relatively short while ago, something of a musical curiosity was the final work on the evening’s programme, Dvorak’s Fifth Symphony, now widely accepted as the first of the composer’s nine completed examples of the genre to display his genius consistently throughout. I can recall reading about the work in “Gramophone”, encountering an ecstatic review of conductor Istvan Kertesz’s 1965 recording with the London Symphony, one which contained the words “….the expression of joy so intense it brings tears…..” All these years later, I still share that reaction whenever I get the chance to hear this work, and listening to Orchestra Wellington’s performance with Marc Taddei was certainly no exception.

Right from the beginning we were beguiled by the music’s mellifluous tones, wrought by the work of the orchestra’s clarinettists, whose welcoming calls established the symphony’s breathless beauty and ineffable charm, a quality which was maintained throughout the work by the obvious care and affection bestowed on the music by the conductor and players. Vigorous and dramatic gestures abound throughout the music, though the whole was bound by the captivating strains of that clarinet-led opening. Incidentally, this was clarinettist Moira Hurst’s final concert as section leader in the orchestra, the work a fitting vehicle for demonstrating something of the beauty of her playing – fortunately for us she will continue working with the orchestra as an Emeritus player.

As well as enlarging the work’s range of expression with its sombre opening theme on the lower strings, the slow movement also demonstrated the composer’s growing instrumental and structural mastery – here was evidenced a transparency in the scoring, which, despite the playing’s intensity, maintained a luminous clarity throughout. And hand-in-glove was a rhythmic fluency between the music’s different sections, a graceful dance-like trio lightening the seriousness of the movement’s opening. Taddei and his players brought the two sections together easefully and coherently, adding to our pleasure.

Another transition involved the second and third movements, the former’s initial phrase “summoned” by wind chords and then redeployed as a statement of growth and change, taking us away from seriousness to a prospect of something more positive and engaging – suddenly the scherzo had grabbed us by the hand and was running with us down the hill, through grassy paddocks of pastoral delight, amid laughter and sunshine! As expected, there was also a trio section here, one which the winds led us towards with smiles and enjoinings to “let ourselves go!”, if only for brief moments, until we were back with the boisterous scamperings of the opening, whose bright dream came to an end all too soon.

In a sense the finale lacks some of the spontaneity of the preceding movements, though its structuring “grounds” the work as a symphonic statement, the agitated opening idea developed at length by the composer, before being contrasted by a “sighing” counter-subject. Taddei didn’t leave any room for uncertainty, pushing his players along, while giving ample space for the more lyrical episodes to develop their own character. Dvorak modulates his material amply, before returning to his opening music, but quells the agitations momentarily with a gorgeous oboe solo, as well as allowing strings and winds to reintroduce poignant echoes of the symphony’s very opening. These felicities, so tenderly given voice with some sensitive playing, were then lost to the whirlwind of excitement of the work’s coda, Taddei and his most excellent company “giving it all they had” for a properly grandstand finish! After this we were left in no doubt as to the prospective delights of the Orchestra’s remaining 2018 concerts – roll on, the rest of the Dvorak symphonies!

 

 

 

 

 

Faith and Commitment: Tony Vercoe and the Kiwi-Pacific Records Story

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Kiwi-Pacific Records Story
Tony Vercoe, talking with Tony Martin

Steele Roberts Aotearoa 2017

One doesn’t know whom to thank most heartily regarding the appearance of this book, “The Kiwi-Pacific Records Story” – perhaps the triumvirate of storyteller Tony Vercoe, interviewer Tony Martin and publisher Roger Steele deserves equal shared credit. It’s a book whose subject – the formation and development of a truly homegrown recording company determined to support the work of classical and indigenous composers, musicians, poets, artists and designers within Aotearoa – belongs with other inspirational histories of local artistic endeavours. These include Donald Munro’s Opera Company, Richard Campion’s New Zealand Players and Poul Gnatt’s Ballet Company, ventures which also helped change New Zealand forever during the 1950s.

When long-established publishers AH and AW Reed began Kiwi Records for educational purposes in 1957, the company envisaged certain projects involving music, but lacked any personnel with the experience and expertise to organise any such recordings. The right person in the right place at the right time happened to be Tony Vercoe, at that stage working for the Broadcasting Corporation in Wellington, and whom Reeds approached (on the recommendation of the legendary music scholar and broadcaster John A. Gray, who was also working for Radio) to handle the production of some of their projects on an ad hoc basis.

Vercoe, working in his spare time at first, was able to do this for a brief period until summoned by his Broadcasting bosses and told that his activities represented “a conflict of interests”. When Reeds heard about his predicament, the company offered Vercoe a full-time job, which, after careful consideration with his wife, Mary, he accepted, regarding the new venture as “a challenge and an opportunity”. That he, along with Mary’s unqualified support and assistance, made an enormous success of this venture up to his retirement from the operation in 1989, is the story that this book absorbingly tells.

It does so by reproducing a series of interviews between Vercoe and his nephew, Tony Martin which were begun in 2013. Though specifically concentrating on the story of the Kiwi-Pacific Records involvement, some of the background to the story is also covered, giving Vercoe’s decision to go with Reeds a “context” of previous experience, inclination and interest. Thus the book begins with his post-war years spent in London, his training as a singer at Trinity College and then at the Royal College of Music, and his experiences as a performer, both in the 1951 Festival of Britain and the 1952 Edinburgh Festival, with leading roles in a couple of productions. Mary had come to Britain in 1950 to join him, and they were married in London, and able to enjoy together the plethora of musical and theatrical activity which Vercoe later described as formative and, in retrospect, instructive regarding what he was eventually to become involved in with his management of Kiwi Records.

We learn about the circumstances accompanying the couple’s return to New Zealand at the end of 1953, a decision made upon expecting their first child, though Vercoe had by this time worked successfully, if intermittently, with the Old Vic Company for a period and had just received a singing job offer from the prestigious Sadlers Wells Opera Company. For some reason the narrative’s chapter order relegates the couple’s re-establishment in New Zealand to after a handful of chapters discussing Kiwi’s early Maori, Pacific and Folk and Country ventures – only after these are “done” do we get back into the “swing” of events that led to Vercoe moving from the broadcasting job that he’d taken on returning home, to full-time employment with Reeds Publishers and Kiwi Records. However, the book doesn’t pretend to follow strict overall chronologies, concentrating instead upon beginnings and developments within different individual themes and genres, making it more “accessible” as a reference source to any given vein of activity.

So, while not necessarily told in a conventionally “what happened next” kind of way, the thread of Vercoe’s progress from post-war London through those times of burgeoning creative and artistic activity in New Zealand during the 1950s and 1960s to the fully-fledged activities of Kiwi-Pacific Records throughout the 1970s and 1980s, can be found within the chronicles as tautly-wound and finely-tuned as ever, up to his retirement as owner-manager of the company in 1989. One gets the feeling because of this, that for Vercoe, the raison d’etre of the story’s retelling was never HIM, but the company and its different aspects under his stewardship. He reveals enough throughout, regarding his own attitudes and values, to shine forth as a personality, a determined and no-nonsense “mover and shaker” of things, principled and unswerving in his commitment to “the cause”. But we’re constantly being invited to focus on and admire the view, rather than the guide’s exposition of it.

For this reason one is stimulated, rather than disconcerted, by the book’s criss-crossing of general flow with specific detailings, perhaps generating something of the “what happens next?” aspect of the operation’s range and scope. Vercoe himself admitted, both in the book and elsewhere, that he didn’t envisage when taking the job on the extent to which the company would diversify its interest in creative homegrown activities, and that he “learnt by doing” for much of the time. Each of the categories he discusses and elaborates on regarding what took place has in the telling its surprises and unexpected twists and turns – something which Vercoe came to regard as “the territory” and accounting for his unshirking commitment to what Douglas Lilburn referred to as “our musical identities”, and more besides.

Entirely characteristic of Vercoe’s attitude in this respect was the outreach towards the sounds and music of the nearby Pacific Islands, hardly any of which had, if ever, been commercially recorded at that time, culminating in Kiwi Records’ coverage of the various South Pacific Festivals of Arts – an approach which pleased both academics wanting the preservation of traditional material and the general public who responded with obvious enjoyment to the entertainment. Of course, both traditional Maori and early Pakeha folksong material provided rich veins of material for the same reasons, Vercoe utilising the talents of performers as diverse as the great Maori bass Inia te Wiata and folksingers Neil Colquhoun and Phil Garland.  Each of these categories gave rise to the discovery of talents which flourished in other directions – Kiri te Kanawa, for example, made her first recording for Kiwi Records of “Maori Love Duets” with Rotorua tenor Hohepa Mutu; and songwriter/performers Peter Cape, Willow Macky and Ken Avery took New Zealand folksong into a more contemporary realm with the company’s support and espousal.

In the classical field, Kiwi’s first venture, helped by Vercoe’s “connections” with Broadcasting actually used an NZBS recording of Douglas Lilburn’s “Sings Harry”, an EP (extended play 7” disc) which became THE iconic recording, though the first orchestral LP also featured Lilburn’s music, containing as it did “Landfall in Unknown Seas”, with poet Allen Curnow reading his verses. Another iconic recording was that of David Farquhar’s  music for “Ring Round the Moon”, as was the first of Lilburn’s electronic compositions to be recorded, a setting of Alistair Campbell’s poem “The Return”. All of these and other ventures, along with descriptions of Vercoe’s dealings with individuals and groups whose names constitute a “Who’s Who” of New Zealand classical musicians, are described and placed in a context where corresponding activities such as recording steam trains, bird song and pipe bands were also given valuable time and effort.

The story isn’t without its moments of drama and conflict, as with Vercoe’s initiative in arranging with the Russian record label Melodiya access for Kiwi to Russian recordings featuring the top Soviet artists of the day, and even pressing the discs here for distribution, an activity which, at the height of the “Cold War” inevitably earned Kiwi some attention from the SIS, the acency wanting to know about everything that had been discussed with the Russians, fearful of a possible “security risk”. Later than this and more profound in effect was a physical attack on Kiwi Pacific’s premises in Wellington’s Wakefield St. by the henchmen of a developer who wanted to occupy the whole of the building, and took umbrage at the Company’s refusal to give up its lease –  fortunately the damage wasn’t irreversible, and compensation was duly paid.

To anatomise the whole range and scope of the company’s activities as presented here would be pointless – better to read the original and enjoy what Douglas Lilburn’s “definitive interpreter”, pianist Margaret Nielsen, who commented to me on “the interplay between the two Tonys”, described as “like a superb piece of Chamber Music”. All credit, then, to Vercoe’s nephew Tony Martin, whose questionings allowed the process of interaction and flow of information full sway, and to Steele Roberts Publishers for producing a characteristically accessible, attractive and spontaneously-readable book, furthering their ongoing espousal of things which matter here in New Zealand. It’s an issue which I’m sure would have given Tony Vercoe himself immense satisfaction.