Author: Peter Mechen

NZSM Orchestra’s “Triple” celebration with the Te Kōkī Trio

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī New Zealand School Of Music  presents:
Music by Brahms, Beethoven, Debussy and Lilburn

BRAHMS – Tragic Overture
BEETHOVEN – Concerto for ‘cello, violin and piano with orchestra
DEBUSSY – Nocturnes (excerpts) – 1. Nuages  2.Fetes
LILBURN – Suite for Orchestra (1955)

Te Kōkī Trio : Inbal Megiddo (‘cello), Martin Riseley (violin), Jian Liu (piano)
New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

Kenneth Young (conductor)

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

Tuesday, 17th April, 2018

There was palpable excitement among those gathering within the none-too-spacious vistas of  St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church for the most recent concert given by Te Kōkī New Zealand School Of Music’s Orchestra with conductor Kenneth Young, most certainly due to the event’s extra attraction in presenting the fabulous Te Kōkī Trio as guest soloists in Beethoven’s wondrous Triple Concerto! – of course, each of the Trio’s soloists are currently heads of their respective instrumental disciplines at the School of Music in any case, which somehow added to the integral splendour and prestige of the occasion.

Under Kenneth Young’s tutorship this orchestra has seemed to me to gradually develop over the years the skills and confidence needed to tackle works from the standard repertoire which I would have considered ambitious to a fault for student players to even attempt, and proceeded to bring them off with considerable elan. True, the students always appear to have heart-warming support from their various tutors in performance, even when the latter are performing as soloists – we noticed, for example how both Inbal Megiddo (‘cello) and Martin Riseley (violin) from Te Kōkī Trio joined the full orchestra after the interval, in the wake of their Beethoven performance – and I feel certain that Jian Liu (piano) would have done the same had there been a keyboard part for him to play! But there were a number of others, whom the programme rightly named, spread across the various disciplines, whose presence in the band would have been empowering, to say the least!

It’s a scenario which seems to augur well for continued first-class performances by New Zealand orchestral musicians in this country, let alone develop the players’ individual instrumental skills for solo and smaller ensemble work. What we’re all waiting for in Wellington, now, is a venue that’s rather more accommodating spacious than St.Andrew’s  for orchestras such as the NZSM ensemble, without resorting to the capacious vistas of the MFC – which can even dwarf both Orchestra Wellington and the NZSO, depending on the numbers required for particular repertoire. So, how far advanced is the Town Hall’s promised earthquake restoration project, again?

This evening we were given an eclectic programme, each piece a challenge for the players in its different way, as befitted the concert’s purpose. First up was the hoary old Tragic Overture, by Brahms, which I confess I wasn’t heart-thumpingly excited about hearing – possibly because I’ve sat through many an “auto-pilot” performance of this music, seeming to amble through its paces with little “edge” given the attack, phrasings or rhythms, “standard fare” at its worst. Happily, Ken Young and his players obviously had no intentions of the music being made to sound anything other than totally enthralling, right from the first note – the attack of those first two chords was electrifying, the ensuing atmosphere charged with expectation, and the focused trajectories of the music that followed leading urgently and surely towards drama and excitement.

Conductor and players brought about this state of things by keeping the focus the whole time on where the music was headed, and then committing themselves to realising those cadence-points with the utmost concentration and urgency. Consequently, the music became the conduit through which all the efforts of the players passed, the result feeling like a kind of “living entity”, instead of merely a well-polished run-through. The passionate urgencies of the string-playing in the first, agitated section were beautifully contrasted by the poised eloquence of the winds during their more lyrical sequences mid-work, the oboist the most prominent of a number of heroes, here. The winds all made characterful and plangent contributions right up to the heart-warming burst of sunshine from the horns that allowed the violas their generously-phrased moment of glory before handing over to the violins.

There was no let-up, no slackening of tensions right up to the end of the piece, with the strings again squaring up to the conflict and matched by the winds’ and brass’s darkly passionate colourings and the timpani’s steady underpinning of the climaxes. If all performances of this work evoked such a spirit among orchestral players, I would happily change my tune regarding the music – here, the piece was made to bristle and boil, its trenchant sounds recreating a living sense of tragedy.

Having been nicely “primed” by these expressive urgencies, we were all the more expectant of the delights that the next piece of music would bring – Beethoven’s warm-hearted Triple Concerto, which brought to the performing platform the three aforementioned soloists from the Te Kōkī Trio. With a grand piano and two other places for string soloists required in front of the orchestra, the auditorium’s capacities were put under some stress, though with the help of the upstairs balcony, everybody seemed to fit in, just! As well they did, because the performance was of an order that will, I believe, give rise to reminiscences of the “Ah! – you should have been there to hear…” variety from among those present, in years to come.

The opening orchestral tutti is, quite simply, for me, one of those “squirming-with-delight” sequences whose ambience evokes a kind of cosmos eminently receptive to human habitation, a state of potential being amply filled by the arrival of the soloists, one at a time, here, all personalities in their own right, and imbued with interactive skills of all kinds. Inbal Megiddo’s ‘cello was the first to “appear”, brightly-and eloquently-voiced and very much at one with Martin Riseley’s violin, both relishing their triplet figurations that prepared the way for the piano. Jian Liu’s playing straight away had a matching, bright-eyed eagerness which readily gravitated to the mode of enthusiastic exchange that characterised most of this movement.

 

To reproduce all of my scribbled notes regarding this performance (I was, I confess, somewhat carried away by the sheer eloquence of the playing from both soloists and orchestra) would be sheer folly, like comparing prosaic mutterings to Shakespearian poetry – so I will confine myself to comments which somehow convey a sense of the whole. I particularly enjoyed Inbal Megiddo’s playing at the top of her range, with Beethoven making sure the instrument could be heard at nearly all times; and both hers and Martin Riseley’s violin-playing created a teasingly entertaining combination of exchange and unanimity in their passagework, with Jian Liu’s bright-toned piano adding both colour and a multi-voiced aspect of character to the discourse. This reached its first-movement apex both at the climax of the “development” section, and towards the end, with a “sighing” three-note descent leading to the coda, the three soloists scurrying through their firstly upward and then downward scales with great alacrity, amid crashing orchestral chords – so exciting!

The slow movement exuded pure romance at the outset, the orchestral strings’ rapt tones preparing the way for the ‘cello’s singing entry – a treasurable moment! The gently undulating piano followed carrying the melody forward, with violin and piano singing in tandem, before the violin was allowed ITS moment – honour was thus satisfied, the orchestra then essaying a dark and mysterious clarinet-led Weber-like sequence, which brought the soloists in singly by way of arpeggiated musings. Of a sudden, the ‘cello seemed to want to go out and play, and it was all on again, via the finale – though on this occasion I thought Inbal Megiddo’s playing more dutiful-sounding than enthusiastic with her introduction, a beginning that didn’t quite for me, launch things with sufficient “gusto”.  It took the orchestra to really set the polonaise-like rhythms on fire, though once the soloists reached their concerted “racy triplet rhythms” passage, punctuated at the end by the orchestra, things found their “stride” with a will, and there was no looking-back!

In fact the playing of the finale from here on generated tremendous momentum, which was thrilling in its own way, though I ought to register my fondness (excuses, excuses!) for the legendary, but much-maligned Karajan-led EMI recording of the 1970s with its starry lineup of Russian soloists, because of the po-faced “schwung” created in parts of that performance’s finale, particularly those minor-key polonaise-dance sequences. Here, by contrast, it was all thrust and counter-thrust, with those racy triplet-rhythms sounding positively dangerous at the performance’s speed, the risk-taking element inextricably tied up with the music’s joyous quality.

As for the helter-skelter coda (or rather, Coda No.1!), we simply gripped the sides of our seats and held on as Martin Riseley’s violin raced forwards, gathering up both ‘cello and piano, and challenging the orchestra to continue the chase, which they did, most excitingly! After various soloistic ups and downs, the piano introduced “Coda No.2”, a return to the polonaise dance rhythm, punctuated by great chordings from the orchestra and a brief frisson of skittery triplets from the soloists, and we were home, to the accompaniment of deservedly rapturous acclaim from all sides!

We all needed the interval to let off some rhapsodic steam in the direction of anybody else who would listen (most of the others were busy doing the same thing!). Once done, we gradually brought our metabolisms back down to normal from fever pitch, and settled back into our seats for the very different musical offerings of the concert’s second half.

The first of Debussy’s Nocturnes, Nuages (Clouds) began as if the sounds were reconstructing New Zealand poet Dennis Glover’s words in music – “detonated clouds in calm confusion lie”, with winds and strings enabling the phrases and textures confidently yet sensitively, the cor anglais mournfully repeating a motif that practically became a mantra for the scene, while the strings wove diaphanous sounds whose intensity varied as if controlled by unseen magic, the horn calling from a kind of fairy-nymph land of promise, and the winds floating their airborne phrases with great surety, a blip or two of no consequence against the steady evocation of timelessness, here beautifully realised by conductor Young and his players.

As for the second piece, Fêtes (Festivals), it straightaway seized our sensibilities by the ears, with the strings’ joyous clarion-call attack, infectious tarantella rhythms featuring excitable winds and  great brass shouts reinforced by timpani, with a spectacular flourish from the harp and percussion re-igniting the music’s thrust in a different direction – all so visceral and scalp-prickling! After we got further excitable exchanges between winds and strings – the latter barely able to contain their growing excitement – the distant procession’s sounds suddenly fell magically upon our ears from the harp and lower strings (Ottorino Respighi surely had this passage in mind when writing the last of his “Pines of Rome” in 1924), the remote brass calls creating magical vistas as the music moved forward, Ken Young controlling his forces like a general, and his troops marshalling their various forces with a will.  Horns shouted a welcome to the oncoming commotion, and the percussive sounds loomed ever closer (cymbals and side-drum splendidly giving voice) as the procession tumultuously passed through the scene and was eventually swallowed up by it, with ambient echoes resounding, and the festival rounding off its celebrations.

Festive sounds of a different kind were then brought into play for the concert’s finale, Douglas Lilburn’s 1955 Suite for Orchestra, a work written for the then Auckland Junior Symphony Orchestra, whose members must have found its playful angularities something of a challenge at the time. Lilburn composed the work while under the spell of the music of his older American contemporary, Aaron Copland, whose influence can be discerned in places, most noticeably in the finale. (Later, after some less-than-positive contact with the American, and an abortive visit to Tanglewood in the United States, to attempt a meeting with him, Lilburn seemed “cured” of any such further inclinations towards homage in that direction!).

In five shortish movements, Lilburn demonstrated the orchestral mastery he was soon to famously turn his back on, and explore what he called his own “total heritage of sound, meaning all sounds, and not just the narrow segment of them, traditional, imported, that we’ve long regarded as being music….” He meant, of course, an electro-acoustic sound-world, and made good his determination, to the bemusement and bewilderment of those who considered he hadn’t yet finished exploring what he had to say in traditional forms. For now, here was a playfulness and ease of expression worthy of any of his off-shore contemporaries, including the strangely deprecatory Copland – the opening Allegro of the Suite squawks with unashamed delight in places at the joy of setting such sounds into play, raucous, assertive, droll, sentimental and skittery, a “like it or not” spirit very much at large.

The Allegretto was a lovely, angular Waltz, the players tossing their pizzicato notes  across the orchestral platform, as strings and winds shared a serenade that had a whiff of “Old Paint” and its like, amid the rhythmic angularities – in places Lilburn’s almost Bartok-like humour of deconstruction came across splendidly, the lower brass adding a droll “Concerto for Orchestra” touch before the end. The brass began the Andante with slow, rising chords, echoed by the winds, as the strings intoned a plaintive melody, one which build to epiphany-like intensities at the end – a lovely, intensely-felt performance!

In complete contrast was the somewhat skeletal opening of the Moderato which followed, bleak winds and angular timpani giving way to a kind of “road music”, Young and his players firmly establishing those ambiences characteristic of their composer, here “at large” in the midst of landscapes he loved. And what fun everybody had with the concluding Vivace, the playing generating an orchestral energy which swept listeners along with dancing feet – a true Antipodean hoe-down! The sudden changes of atmosphere were breathtaking in their short-lived, but powerfully-focused moments of hymn-like serenity amid the riotous festivities, whose concluding shouts made a celebratory conclusion to a memorable concert!

Inbal Megiddo (‘cello) and Te Kōkī Trio record music for the ages

Posted on by Peter Mechen

DEBUSSY – Two Instrumental Sonatas and a Piano Trio
Violin Sonata in G Minor (1917)
‘Cello Sonata in D Minor (1915)
Piano Trio in G Major (1879)

Te Kōkī Trio: Martin Riseley (violin)
Inbal Megiddo (‘cello), Jian Liu (piano)
Rattle Records 0069 2017

JS BACH – Six Suites for solo ‘Cello BWV 1007-12
Volume One ( Suites 1-3)

Inbal Megiddo (‘cello)

Atoll Records ACD 228

Inbal Megiddo is presently the head of ‘Cello Studies at the New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington, and has appeared in numerous concerts in Wellington both as a soloist and as a member of Te Kōkī Trio, an ensemble in which she is joined by two other faculty members, Martin Riseley, and Jian Liu, the respective heads of violin and piano studies at the school. Her career as a performer and teacher had previously taken her to various places throughout Europe, Asia and America before she came to New Zealand to take up a position at Victoria University’s Music School.

She’s now made recordings for Rattle, the first half of a set of Beethoven’s ‘Cello Sonatas with Jian Liu (the second disc is currently in preparation), and here with Te Kōkī Trio as listed above, in a recording of two of Debussy’s instrumental sonatas and his Piano Trio. She’s also recording for Atoll Records what’s intended to be a complete set of JS Bach’s Suites for Solo ‘Cello, the first disc of which is reviewed here. Prospective buyers may prefer to wait for her integral 2-disc set of these works, though people wanting a sample of her playing of this repertoire will be more than happy with this single CD, as the performances, to my ears, are strongly recommendable.

Recorded a year before the Bach/Atoll CD, the Rattle recording features Te Koki Trio, whose members variously bring together three chamber works by Claude Debussy. There are two instrumental sonatas from the composer’s last years, one for ‘Cello and Piano (1915) and the other for Violin and Piano (1917), the latter being the composer’s last completed work. The trio then comes together for the disc’s final work, an early Piano Trio (1879).

The Violin Sonata begins the concert, here given a strong and atmospheric performance by Martin Riseley (violin) and Jian Liu (piano), the opening, perfectly-poised piano chords straightaway taking us into the composer’s characteristic sound-world of wonderment, joined after a few seconds by the violin’s more questioning voice. As the first movement moves, kaleidoscope-like, through its different realms, the instrumental interactions change from assertion to surrender with easy mastery, all brought off beautifully by the players. The violin’s exotic-sounding inclination to slide between notes in two or three places add to the mystery of the discourse, as do the beautiful balances achieved between the two players in the softest moments, realising the composer’s flights of fancy with intense concentration and focus.

There are a couple of strangely protracted between-movements pauses on this recording, as here, sharpening the listener’s eagerness to engage with the rest of the work! The quixotic second movement then delivers us playing of such impish drollery at the beginning, I found myself smiling (sometimes out loud!) at the po-faced audacity of it all! But what melancholy both Riseley and Liu brought to the music’s lovely middle section! And how easefully they then charted the course as the music moved disconcertingly between humour and wistfulness over the final pages. The final movement opened in a dreamlike manner, before the instruments roused themselves with alacrity, the violin in particular rushing about, rather like a caged bird wanting to break free, and compelling its partner to dance. As everywhere, I liked the performance’s risk-taking with these volatilities, the various figurations delivered by the players with engaging spontaneity rather than mere crystalline perfection. Again, Debussy’s fertile imagination takes the music unexpectedly into sultry, suggestive climes, violinist and pianist relishing the volatility of it all, Liu’s piano suddenly scampering away, with Riseley’s violin in hot pursuit. The music returned to the movement’s opening “caged bird” energies, but then surprised the listener once again, as the violin slowed the note sequences down to become almost childlike in expression. After a final accelerando from the depths and back into the light, the players suddenly and exuberantly threw their notes skyward in a gesture of wry finality.

Where the Violin Sonata began pensively and poetically, the ‘Cello Sonata opened with solemn grandeur and ceremony, the piano preparing the way for the ‘cello to adopt a similar mode, though both players soon relinquished the grandeur for more poetic exchanges, Inbal Megiddo’s instrument singing in beautiful accord with Jian Liu’s well-rounded tones. How excitingly the two instruments then raced together, as if for possession of a hilltop or a favourite hiding-place, before stopping to fully relish the surrounding silent spaces, the soft playing of both cellist and pianist a breath-holding sequence of pleasure at the end!

Something of a “how-de-do” marked the exchanges at the second movement’s opening! –  in pizzicato mode the ‘cello became a kind of conspirator with the piano’s terse utterances. Again in an exotic-sounding setting, the instruments whimsically switched from staccato/pizzicato to legato/arco, while exploring as many timbres in between as fell in with fancy, making for a somewhat hallucinatory ride through a dreamscape! Impulsively, the finale breaks the mood with lively figurations from both instruments, the energies then giving way to introspection throughout a central section, until Megiddo and Liu revitalised the music’s tumbling aspects with almost manic focus, to the point where the music suddenly cried “enough”, and curtly silenced their efforts.

Playing the disc to anybody unfamiliar with the music would probably invite shock and disbelief on the listener’s part upon being told that all three works presented here were by the same composer! As a demonstration of how much distance someone’s creativity can travel in a lifetime, Debussy’s Piano Trio of 1879 makes for a profound listening experience in retrospect, while remaining totally enjoyable on a visceral level. Its first movement is the longest of the four, a graceful Andantino with songful lines for each instrument, the material conventional, but with everything confidently and meticulously wrought. A whimsical Scherzo has an attractively exotic feel to its opening gait, its central Trio section given the right amount of contrasting sentiment and circumspection by the players – while the slow movement’s Andante Espressivo, again beautifully set out for the instruments, charms with its slightly perfumed lyricism, Te Kōkī Trio allowing the music to speak for itself within a salon-like context.

Marked “Appassionato”, the last movement works up an acceptably “charged” level of feeling within the music’s own range and scope, again impressing with its workmanlike construction and level of expression, and indicating something of the boy Debussy’s obvious potential as a creator in years to come. Full credit to Te Kōkī Trio for taking so much trouble with the work, here in Rattle’s crystalline recording, sounding gloriously prodigious, if a tad disconcerting regarding content, in the company of its two more sophisticated “latter-day” siblings!

Turning to the Atoll disc of Inbal Megiddo’s performances of the first three of JS Bach’s ‘Cello Suites, one encounters something of the rarefied world of Debussy’s late Sonatas in terms of the relationship between economy of means and richness of expression. Inbal Megiddo’s playing, recorded by Wayne Laird in the precincts of Stella Maris Chapel, at Seatoun, in Wellington, sounds equally as glorious, her characterful playing captured in all its variety of utterance as a truly lifelike
representation, which I can’t wait to hear again on completing my task of committing these thoughts regarding the disc to the record.

Megiddo’s performances are recorded in numbered order, so I began my listening with the Prelude of the very first Suite, a performance which combined heart and mind, reaching for its emotional points with such surety and purpose, while keeping the music’s structures intact – the figurations were at once surely negotiated and yet imbued with a sense of liberation which empowered the listener to surrender to the music and the playing with the utmost confidence. After a freely-flowing and fanciful Prelude, the Allemande continued the process of unlocking the music, drawing from the player such strength and confidence as to enchant the listener. The Courante combined forthright impulse and purpose with a sense of fun – an unbuttoning of joyful expression, music which here expressed the idea of life’s essential cheerfulness in the face of worldly troubles, rather as Schubert was wont to do in his music. The Sarabande, deeply-felt and long-breathed in its phrasing, was Romeo to the Courante’s Mercutio – the figurations here spoke of imaginings and projections of thoughts and feelings beyond earthly boundaries. The Menuets were properly contrasted, the first confident and eager in its deportment, and the second, contrasting dance its more circumspect side, the opening a descent rather than the upward-leaping figure of the first dance, the legato of the figurations adding to the solemnities. I liked the rustic twang of the repeated opening dance’s final phrase. Dance-like, too was the final gigue, the player vigorous but flexible in her trajectories, impulsiveness hand-in-glove with a teasing flexibility, the sounds of sympathetic strings activated adding to the warmth and bustle..

Suite No.2 begins with D Minor circumspection, the playing expressing a care for solemnity of mood which gave the music the feeling of a soliloquy, one rising to expressive heights with beautifully-phrased ascents towards long-held notes. The Allemande seemed no less serious at the outset, the figurations eloquently speaking with the tones of a philosopher, the repeats nicely hinting at variations in emphasis, setting nothing in stone, but seemingly open to conjecture. Impulsively interrupting the discourse, the Courante burst in, all elbows and knees, proclaiming action rather than thought, clearing the way for the somewhat ceremonial pronouncements of the Sarabande, grand and stately, though Megiddo’s repeat of the opening made one catch one’s breath at its extra “layered” quality, the second time round, the dynamics given more open spaces to explore. Megiddo warmed the music to its task in the second part, sharpening the intensities, while keeping the beautiful shape of the whole. She found positive minor-key purpose in the first Menuet, making the major-key relaxation in Menuet II a joy, and links these nicely to the Gigue in mood, the playing resonantly voiced, and almost peasant-ish, in some places, in its suggestion of a dance-like drone.

We got plenty of C Major splendour in Megiddo’s opening of the Third Suite, great, confidently-arched roulades of sound, and with the player not afraid to saturate the music’s tonal palate with richly-wrought repeated arpeggiations, fearlessly and generously generated for our pleasure. After this, the Allemande seemed more-than-usually light on its feet, putting the following Courante even more on its mettle, the energies playful and teasing, the tones adding different kinds of timbral emphases to the narrative, to “spice up” the story. Very free at the outset in the Sarabande, Megiddo gave the music a full-throated voice, before varying the intensity in the repeated passage, expressing the emotion, and then stepping back to re-experience its effect at a distance – in these measured, beautifully controlled sequences she seemed to play both player and listener roles, the music having transfixed both and bound them inextricably together. We then got two Bourees instead of Menuets (these always remind me of sailors’ dances!), the first of which Megiddo gleefully propelled through its figured routine, pausing for reflection throughout the second of the two episodes, and then returning to the more overtly physical of the dances with renewed vigour. But the most unbuttoned exuberance was left to the final Gigue, which here under Megiddo’s fingers swept everything before it in a torrent of unbridled joy and confidence, the music-making compelling in its detailings and infectious in the sheer elan of its execution. (Sustained applause!)

 

 

Jason Bae – an enterprising, exploratory and heroic performer

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī New Zealand School Of Music

A recital by Jason Bae

Debussy – Images oubliées
Esa-Pekka Salonen – Dichotomie (NZ Premiere)
Grieg – Ballade Op.24
Medtner – Piano Sonata No.11 Sonata tragica Op.39 No.5

Jason Bae (piano)

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

Friday, 13th April 2018

Korean-born NZ-adopted pianist Jason Bae made a welcome return a week ago to the Wellington region for a lunchtime recital at the School of Music’s Adam Concert Room, Victoria University. He brought with him a programme he’s taken to a number of venues around the country, one whose content suggested that there would be no compromises on an artistic level, despite the degree of informality and relaxation often associated with a “lunchtime concert”. This was a programme deserving of serious, five-star attention from start to finish, and received playing that fully realised the “serious” intent of the pianist’s enterprising choice of repertoire.

Bae has already made his mark in the world of piano-playing with many prize-giving performances and awards in various places around the world – according to his web-site, his recent activities include performing recitals in Helsinki, Finland and in Seoul, Korea, as well as currently in New Zealand.  The young pianist is also turning his attention to orchestral conducting, making his New Zealand conducting debut with the Westlake Symphony Orchestra in Auckland. He’s obviously one of those multi-talented musicians who has the aptitude to succeed at whatever he turns his hand to.

Judging from the programme we heard Bae perform at the Music School on Friday, there’s no ‘resting on his laurels”, no trotting out well-consolidated warhorses with which to impress audiences. These pieces required his listeners to come some of the way themselves towards the music, itself extremely varied in content and character, rather than simply let it all “wash over” the sensibilities in a generalised way. Perhaps the best-known of these works, albeit in a roundabout fashion, was that of Debussy’s “Images oubliées” (an earlier work than each of the two, better-known sets of “Images”, but one which, for some reason, wasn’t published in the composer’s lifetime). Recently,  though, there has been some recorded attention given both to Medtner’s solo piano works and to Grieg’s hitherto neglected output outside the “Lyric Pieces”. Certainly the remainder of Bae’s programme indicated there were treasures aplenty awaiting more widespread awareness and approval.

The opening of the Debussy work (Lent) brought forth exquisitely-voiced tones from the young pianist, the sounds resembling some kind of ethereal recitative, accompanied by the softest, most velvety of arpeggiations. This accorded with the composer’s own description of the pieces as “not for brilliantly-lit salons…..but rather, conversations between the piano and oneself”. Bae allowed a beautifully-appointed ebb-and-flow of colours and contours, a kind of nature-benediction in sound, allowing the tones at the end to breathtakingly mingle with the silences.

The second piece “Souvenir du Louvre” bore a close relationship with a movement from the composer’s later “Pour le piano”, a rather more fulsome version of what became the Sarabande from the latter work. Again, the pianist’s evocations were meticulously directed towards detailings of wondrous delicacy, with dialogues throughout sounded between the piano’s different registers, sculpted strength set against liquid movement. Debussy’s original was actually written for Yvonne Lerolle, the girl both Degas and Renoir painted at the piano, and for whom the composer described the piece with the words “slow and solemn, even a bit like an old portrait” (hence the title).

The title of the third piece betrays its inspiration even more candidly than does the later work it (only) occasionally resembles – “Jardins sous la pluie” from “Estampes” with its well-known folk-song quotations. Here it is somewhat teasingly called by the composer “Quelques aspects de ‘Nous n’irons plus au bois'” (Aspects of the song “We will not go to the woods”), with the added afterthought, for the benefit of his young dedicatee, “…because the weather is dreadful”…….Bae’s fleet-fingered playing evoked a game of chase through the woods, by turns lightly-brushed and hard-hitting, with some tolling bells sounding towards the end, the piece then disappearing literally into thin air.

By way of introducing the next work on the programme, Bae spent some time talking with us about his relationship with a composer who’s better known as a conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, after which the pianist performed Salonen’s work for solo piano “Dichotomy”. One of a select few of brilliant contemporary performing musicians who significantly compose, Salonen has a number of important works to his credit, for orchestra, two concerti (piano and violin), and a large-scale work for orchestra and chorus, “Karawane”, which premiered in 2014 in Zurich.

Salonen’s work isn’t exactly “hot off the press”, Dichotomie having received its premiere as far back as 2000, in Los Angeles. The composer wanted a short, encore-type piece as a present for a favourite soloist, Gloria Cheng, but, as he discovered, the material he wrote seemed to take on a life of its own,  and expand to proportions bearing little relation to its actual conception. Jason Bae explained to us, along with his account of a serendipitous encounter with Salonen that led to his espousal of the composer’s work, how the music came to be, its two-movement structure representing a relationship between the two “kinds” of music that Salonen seemed to create almost involuntarily. Thus the first movement of this work, Mechanisme, represented machine-like processes, while the second, Organisme, had a more naturalistic way of developing and extending created material. Salonen wanted to explore how these very different styles might, by dint of juxtaposition, “borrow” qualities from one another which could affect their development.

I confess to being fascinated by what I heard, which is a way of paying tribute to Jason Bae’s playing of it as well. The opening of Mechanisme was indeed motoric and Prokofiev-like, the rhythms growing and developing in dynamically varied ways, with different sequences taking on different and unpredictable characters, variously syncopated, symmetrical or angular. Bae’s playing built to almost frighteningly orchestral levels of volume and intensity, before abruptly adopting flowing, legato phrasing that suggested some kind of counter-impulse had been mysteriously, even covertly activated within the work’s being. It preluded a mercurial section where one sensed the creative process was in a kind of ferment of crisis (the machine, perhaps, trying to be human?), with the musical argument appearing to fragment under scrutiny, almost to the point of stasis. A final counter-burst of incendiary energy, notes swirling and figurations exploding in every direction, left the music almost insensible, with only a few legato-phrased, wider-spaced chords holding the centre, and pronouncing the “new order”.

The following Organisme brought forth shimmering, exploratory textures containing reiterating figurations attempting to secure their tentative foot-and finger-holds in the music’s fabric. I thought it Debussy-like in places in a textured sense, the basic materials gradually coalescing and producing a kind of ambient glow, with beautifully voiced fragments of melody floating by on wings of air. The trajectories were passed from hand to hand, thereby suggesting a kind of osmotic continuity of flow, one which inevitably built up tensions of a kind that saw the tones take on increasingly rhythmic and thrustful expression, becoming tumultuous in the sense of a storm, the pianist sending great arabesques of tone shooting upwards and into the ether. Having resisted the temptation to inhabit “the dark side” the music made a flourish of quiet triumph, and the piece ended enigmatically – all told, an enthralling listening experience, thanks in part to Bae’s brilliant advocacy.

Further explorations were furnished by the pianist with his programming of Edvard Grieg’s rarely-heard Ballade Op.24, in my view one of the composer’s greatest works. It was one of the pieces that the tragically short-lived New Zealand pianist Richard Farrell recorded (as part of an all-Grieg recital disc), but has yet to claim a regular place in the concert repertoire. Though part of this is due to the piece’s technical difficulty, my feeling is that Grieg is still regarded by many people as a “miniaturist”, able to turn out  pretty Scandivavian picture-postcards in the form of his numerous “Lyric Pieces”, but lacking the ability to handle larger forms (despite his magnificent Piano Concerto!). Debussy’s well-known swipe at Grieg (“a pink bonbon filled with snow” was his description of one of the latter’s “Elegiec Melodies”) hasn’t helped the latter’s cause – but less well-known is the remark made by Frederick Delius to Maurice Ravel, that “modern French music is simply Grieg, plus the third act of Tristan”, to which Ravel replied, “That is true – we are always unjust to Grieg.”

Justice was certainly done to Grieg by Jason Bae, here a rather more turbo-charged reading in places than that of Richard Farrell’s poetic soundscapings, one underlining the music’s virtuoso aspect, while giving the more ruminative passages enough space in which to breathe Grieg’s bracing air. The work is basically a theme-and-variations treatment of a Norwegian folk-song melody,  “Den Nordlanske Bondestand” (The Northland Peasantry), and ranges from extremely simple elaborations of the theme to full-scale, almost orchestral outbursts of expression, including some forward-looking, even daring excursions into harmonic conflict, particularly during the work’s final cataclysmic section, before the music suddenly dissolves all such conflicts and returns to the melancholy of the original theme. In general, I thought Bae most successfully brought out the music’s brilliance and sharply-etched contrasts, underlining in places the music’s debt towards and kinship with that of Liszt (Variations 11 and 12 are here particularly overwhelming in an orchestral sense!) but also paying ample tribute to Grieg’s own originality. The pianist’s playing of No.9 allowed the composer’s singular gift for melodic piquancy its full effect, while No.10 here vividly captured the music’s characteristic rustic charm and feeling for grass-roots expressions of energy. In the wake of this performance I’m sure Bae would have garnered in many listeners’ minds fresh respect for Grieg as a composer.

The recital concluded with a work from a figure whose music has only recently received the kind of mainstream espousal needed for it to flourish. Russian-born Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951), a younger contemporary of Rachmaninov and Scriabin, received much the same acclaim as a result of his musical studies in Moscow, but then elected to devote himself entirely to composition rather than pursue a career as a pianist. However (and perhaps not surprisingly) the piano figured in practically all of his major compositions, both prior to and after leaving Russia in 1921. Altogether, Medtner completed fourteen piano sonatas, Jason Bae performing for us the eleventh (which the composer subtitled Sonata Tragica, possibly as a reaction to the aftermath of the Russian Revolution) The sonata, incidentally, was one of a set of pieces separately entitled “Forgotten Melodies” (Second Cycle) by the composer. Those who have a taste for idiosyncratic numbering methods of musical compositions will find much to enjoy in Medtner’s own various enumerations of these works.

None of which is relevant to Jason Bae’s performance of the music, which seemed to me to front up squarely to the piece’s overall character, with its big-boned, declamatory  aspect at the beginning and the war-like march that follows proclaiming a Slavic temperament, with the swirling textures obviously breathing the same air as did Rachmaninov’s music. Bae gave the flowing lyricism which followed plenty of “soul”, allowing the deeper textures to make their mark amid the frequent exchanges between the hands, then gradually building the excitement to almost fever pitch, before strongly arresting the flow of the music with a portentous left-hand, almost fugue-like version of the opening declamation – all very exciting! The pianist’s beautifully wrought filigree finger-work introduced further agitations, the music building inexorably towards a kind of breaking-point (Bae’s left hand performing miracles of transcendent articulation) at the apex of which the sonata’s main theme thundered out at us most resplendently and defiantly! It was music that, in this player’s expert hands, punched well above its own weight, with a bigness of utterance which belied its brief duration!

Very great acclaim greeted the young pianist, at the conclusion of this challenging, and in the event splendidly-achieved presentation of some monumental music.

Thoughtful, enterprising programming from Michael Houstoun performed with conviction and sensitivity

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Hutt Valley Chamber Music presents:
Michael Houstoun at the Lower Hutt Little Theatre

Music by CHOPIN, SATIE and SCHUBERT

CHOPIN – Four Impromptus
SATIE – Three Gymnopedies
SCHUBERT – Piano Sonata in G Major D.894

Michael Houstoun (piano)

Lower Hutt Little Theatre

Thursday, April 12th, 2018

I remember reading somewhere amongst the material advertising this Hutt Valley Chamber Music concert a passage quoting Michael Houstoun as saying he thought the choice of repertoire here had produced “the most perfect recital he had ever put together”. After listening to his strong, deeply considered playing of all three works, I felt bound to concur with his judgement, with each of his choices having some quality that seemed to either complement, disarm or resonate within aspects of the other pieces.

Those items affected most markedly by the juxtapositionings were the recital’s first-half pieces, Houstoun cannily placing each of Satie’s Three Gymnopedies in turn between the four Chopin Impromptus. Not only did this open up the somewhat “moments-per-minute” effect of the Impromptus’ richly-wrought imaginings (the pieces, incidentally, were not composed as a “set”, nor did the composer stipulate any such ordering in performance), but adroitly took the listener away from any superficial feelings of “sameness” between Satie’s delicately-wrought dream-like dances.

It was a masterstroke, really, enabling we in the audience to appreciate each of the seven individual pieces on their own merits, the Satie pieces helping to underlining the uniqueness of each of the very different Chopin works, which in turn gave each of the “Gymnopedies” the chance to refresh our listening-sensibilities in disarmingly different ways.

The overall effect on our reception of the Schubert work which made up the second half was a kind of activation of an open-hearted spirit towards time and space, wrought by the Satie pieces in particular, but also by the freely-ranging traversal of incident characterising parts of the Chopin works. With its long-breathed opening movement, the Schubert Sonata was not an experience to be treated either lightly or with any impatience – and Houstoun’s care for both detail and overall atmosphere throughout the first half had, I think, helped prepare us for the experience of what was to follow.

Beginning with the first Impromptu (Op. 29 in A-flat Major), the pianist got things under way with a whimsically teasing melody sounded over a quiet whirlwind of triplets, leading first to a haunting chromatic “dying fall” sequence like the sighing of the wind, and then to the theme’s excitable but brief ascent, Houstoun easing gracefully into a beautifully weighted chordal middle section before teasing the music back to the opening. In the wake of such frenetic note-spinning, the first of Satie’s “Gymnopedies” took us to “other realms”, the plaintive melody over measured steps drawing us away from “the busy beat of time” and into solitary contemplation.

The following Impromptu (Op.36 in F-sharp Major) warmed and enriched this mood with beautifully crepuscular colourings, and a melody whose decorated contourings led to a Liszt-like passage, almost religious in feeling. Houstoun then beautifully set in motion a quietly-voiced dotted rhythm which gradually  built up both tones and energies, becoming almost warlike, in anticipation of Liszt’s “Funerailles” (which it predated by a decade of years) before disarmingly returning to the opening melody, this time with a triplet accompaniment and swirling decorative impulses. Again I fancied we heard a Lisztian voice (redolent of the Italian Book of “Annees de Pelerinage”) before a couple of emphatic chords finished the piece. The second “Gymnopedie” again allowed our sensibilities some respite, Houstoun’s playing giving the piece’s barely-disturbed stillnesses a hint of human breath, rather than applying a cool, marmoreal finish – a quality which I thought touched on that state we call the “transcendent”, something still living yet elevated to a higher plane – remarkable.

Very much like the previous Impromptu’s F-sharp Major, the third Chopin piece (G-flat Major Op.51) possessed a similar tonal warmth, but rather more fluid movement, Houstoun bringing out the music’s subtleties of light and shade with great surety, and allowing us some almost voluptuous enjoyment of the harmonies at various points.  Such unashamedly indulgent richness of course found its antithesis in the Third Gymnopedie which followed – though, of the three Satie pieces, I’ve always found this one the least “remote”. It’s certainly been the one most often transcribed for different combinations of instruments, including the full orchestra. I thought Houstoun’s reading again imbued the piece with some feeling, even a certain tenderness, despite his own comments in the programme note regarding the music in general as being “definitions of aloneness”.

The fourth of Chopin’s Impromptus is something of a “sport”, being composed much earlier, and published posthumously – as Houstoun remarks in his progamme-note, it scarcely justifies the “Fantasie-Impromptu” title posterity has bestowed on it, but is ironically the most well-known of the four pieces (a flatmate of mine of former times claimed he knew only one classical music “tune” he could play on the piano, it being the melody making up the middle section of the work – admittedly, a tune that’s eminently singable!). Though a mite scornful of the piece on paper, Houstoun gave it as much meticulous attention as he did everything on the programme, capturing the “swirling” character of the outer sections, and playing the famous tune with wonderful eloquence, though I thought the coda’s tricky syncopations almost tripped his fingers up for the merest instant.

So, then, to the Schubert, the first half of the recital having, I felt, primed our sensibilities with plenty of varied expression. I had heard Houstoun play this work at Paekakariki a number of years ago (https://middle-c.org/2011/07/schubert-from-houstoun-at-paekakariki-matching-poesies/), and thought his performance for the most part “truly praiseworthy”, with only some slight reservations bothering me regarding the “stiffness” of some of his phrase-endings during the first movement. This time round I couldn’t say I was bothered by any such quality, the pianist giving the opening chords the spaciousness they needed to fully resound, nicely differentiating major and minor-key utterances, and setting the more animated sections beautifully in motion, allowing the decorative filigree voices plenty of room to fill out their phrases without sounding rushed. As the pianist did actually give us the important first-movement repeat, there were no critical gasps of shock, horror and disbelief from any quarter besmirching the ambiences!

The movement’s development section with its massive minor-key chordings galvanised our sensibilities, as well it ought, Houstoun’s attack here urgent and imposing, though he played the dancing episodes that followed almost defiantly, even cheekily! – the two moods sparred with one another until the onset of those heartbreaking sequences led the music away from the conflict and back to the music’s very opening, by this time seemingly a world away! I thought the pianist’s addressing of the music a shade tougher at the outset, here, stiffened by resolve through conflict, though the movement’s ending featured richly-wrought tones and spacious phrasing which left we listeners in thrall to the range and scope of the music’s journey.

The Andante movement (the description “slow” seems somewhat redundant in the wake of the first movement’s “heavenly length”) was given plenty of light and shade at a tempo which kept things flowing throughout the opening – I found myself thinking while Houstoun was playing that my mother (who was a piano teacher) would have loved what he was doing throughout this sequence in generating a combination of such warmth and clarity. Having charmed our sensibilities thus, Houstoun proceeded to give the music’s central section plenty of real swagger and muscularity at the outset, though still bringing out the lyricism of the minor/major key sequences that followed with real feeling. At its first return Schubert almost cheekily decorates the opening, in places with great finesse, underlining the music’s happiness/anxiety ambivalence, while after a repeat of the agitations, the opening proper reappears, undecorated, but with the melody suddenly taking flight, Houstoun here seeming to surrender to the music in an unguarded moment, giving to the movement’s end some delightfully flowing and lyrical playing, some of the most natural-sounding from him I’ve heard.

That impression continued throughout the Scherzo with its quirkily placed “grace notes”, some flailing about, and others sounding like mere impulses of droll wit. I loved Houstoun’s treatment of these (as I did previously), the pianist taking great care to both “sound” and differentiate their impact on the music, the forthright ones almost abrasive, and the softer ones impish and po-faced in a way that made me chuckle out loud! And what an effect Houstoun’s playing of the Trio wrought – like a sudden sleight-of-hand movement taking the sounds into an almost childlike world of happiness and contentment!

Houstoun launched the finale’s opening with playful-sounding gestures, the composer toying with impulses of energy as if deciding what to do next. Breaking into an infectious jogtrot got the music’s blood pumping, giving rise to those seemingly endless Schubertian sequences, the music modulating freely and joyously. A more sombre theme darkened the music momentarily, Houstoun’s powerful left hand keeping the darkness at bay to almost orchestral effect, before the jog-trot came to the music’s rescue once again, and brought everything back into the sunshine, for the opening sequences to return – Houstoun momentarily brought our hearts into our mouths by turning up the candlepower for the main theme’s sudden upward leap, before settling things back into a state of contentment for the coda’s brief but eloquent farewell.

A profoundly enjoyable and thought-provoking recital – all credit to Michael Houstoun for his inventive programming and his skills as an interpreter in bring his vision to us so successfully.

Rachmaninov’s Vespers richly resound with Inspirare and Mark Stamper at St.Mary of the Angels

Posted on by Peter Mechen

RACHMANINOV – All Night Vigil (Vespers)

Maaike Christie-Beekmann (alto soloist)
Chris McRae (tenor/priest)
Ben Kubiak (bass/deacon)

Inspirare
Lisa Harper-Brown (vocal and language coach)

Mark Stamper (director)

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

Saturday, 7th April

Rachmaninov’s somewhat cumbersome title for this work (The Most Important Hymns of the “All Night Vigil”) though literally accurate, epitomises the composer’s characteristic self-effacing attitude to all of his musical undertakings. Fortunately for its deserved popularity, the piece has come to be commonly known as the “Vespers”, pure and simple (in the manner of Monteverdi’s similarly-titled work), however incorrect as a description – in fact Rachmaninov’s work contains settings of hymns from both Vespers and Matins in the Russian Orthodox Divine Service for the Feast of the Resurrection.

Matters of nomenclature apart (and far more importantly), this work provides a listening experience which touches on a number of fronts – aesthetic, visceral, emotional and devotional are words which come instantly to mind – and whose qualities leave little room or option for anything other than through-and-through involvement, especially in a live performance of this quality. I couldn’t help thinking of a similar kind of transportation of delight and wonderment I’d experienced in this same church with the aforementioned “Vespers” of Monteverdi, when performed in 2010 by home-grown forces, authentic instruments and all! Here, my feeling were replicated by a wondrous evocation of devotional intensity from a set of forces recreating a vastly different time and place, if with similarly mesmerising spiritual and emotional force.

For those who think of Rachmaninov’s music as consisting almost wholly of late-romantic throwback gestures belonging to and lamenting the passing of a bygone era, this work would come as a something of a surprise, indicating the extent of the composer’s intrinsic feeling for far older traditions than those of the nineteenth century. In fact the composer’s musical identification with the tradition gives a clue to the individuality of his work as a whole, its aspect of “continuous melody”, the sinuous nature of his themes, and their fervour and volatility. All of these characteristics can be found here interwoven with the actual traditional chant melodies used by the composer in the work, but in a way that results in a seamless exchange between tradition and originality.

The work was written at a time when sacred choral music was enjoying something of a renaissance in Russia – in fact a “New Russian School” of choral composers, including Kastalsky, Gretchaninoff and Chesnokov, inspired by the enthusiasm of the pedagogue and musicologist Stepan Smolensky, had created a new native style of orthodox church-inspired music. The latter had also been Rachmaninov’s tutor at the Moscow Conservatory, and was responsible for introducing him to the beauties of ancient Russian liturgical chant, which inspired the composer to dedicate his Vespers to the memory of Smolensky after completing the work in 1915.

Nine of the fifteen movements in the work are based on actual chant melodies, Rachmaninov drawing from three ancient chant traditions – “Znammemy” (the oldest form), Kiev School and Greek School. For the remaining six, the composer created what he called “conscious counterfeits”, original material based on the style of the existing chants. The text is in “Church Slavonic”, which is the Orthodox Church’s liturgical language. Incredibly the work was finished in the space of two weeks, and performed in 1915 as a benefit concert for war relief. According to my sources, it was performed on a number of further occasions that year, due to its initial success.

Having not heard the work “live” previously, I had recourse to recordings to prepare for this concert, principally to one I’d owned for a number of years, and generally regarded as a “classic” – this was the 1965 Melodiya recording featuring the USSR State Academic Russian Choir directed by Alexander Sveshnikov.  I wondered whether playing my LP repeatedly by way of familiarising myself with the work was going to do my reaction to Wellington’s Inspirare Choir any favours, especially as the Russian recorded performance had several instantly impressive qualities – a marked fervour of utterance expressed by way of an incredible dynamic range and a certain direct “raw” vocal quality which sounded like no other choir I’d heard, along with the deepest and richest sonority I could have imagined, thanks to those incredible Russian bass voices!

Rachmaninov himself made particular reference to these bass sonorities, replying to concerns expressed by the work’s first conductor, Nikolai Danilin, who reportedly told the composer that “such (bass) voices were rare as asparagus at Christmas” – to which Rachmaninov replied that he knew the voices of his countrymen, and that such basses could be found. This exchange was prompted by the fifth of the composer’s settings, one frequently occurring in European church music and known as “Nunc Dimittis”, and here concluding with a slow downward scale finishing on a low pianissimo B-flat. In fact the Inspirare basses at St.Mary’s on Saturday evening gave a creditable account of themselves in this passage, reaching the cavernous depths asked for by the composer, and holding onto their tones tenaciously, if without quite the resonance commanded by my recording’s Russian basses.

For the rest, I thought the performance by the Inspirare choir and the three solo singers truly magnificent, expressing the work’s breadth and depth with a beauty and solidarity of tone that itself paid ample tribute to the quality of the voices involved and the all-embracing direction of Mark Stamper. This was a performance which gave due attention to the ritualistic quality and context of the settings, using two solo voices in turn (deacon and priest) to begin the sequence, and tubular bells to introduce almost every one of the individual movements. And we in the audience were made to feel we shared the same similarly-lit spaces as the voices, which further enhanced the capacities of the performance to draw us into the music.

Besides the sonorous bass voice of Ben Kubiak as the deacon, and  the wondrously plangent tones of tenor Chris McRae, both of whom made various contributions at other places during the work, alto Maaike Christie-Beekman brought to her solos in “Blagoslovi, dushe moya, Gospoda” (Bless the Lord, O My Soul) unwavering, worshipful and warmly-projected tones, confidently mediating the exchanges between the beautiful, wind-blown voices of the women and the deep, almost oceanic undulations from the men.

As for the choir itself, from the very first surge of fervent impulse immediately after the beautifully floated opening “Amin”, with “Priidite Poklonimsya tsarevi nashemu Bogu” (Come, let us worship God, our King), we were drawn into a sense of worshipful communion with the voices, the ebb and flow of their tones gorgeously expressed and finely controlled by Mark Stamper. In the third hymn “Blazhen Muzh” (Blessed in the Man), I loved the growing intensities of the repeated trio of Alleluias, and the radiance of “Slava Otsu I Synu I Svyatomu Dukhu” (Glory to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit) burst out most tellingly at the piece’s climax.

We heard the choir’s basses to telling effect in “Svete tikhyi” (Gladsome Radiance), the hymn introduced by Ben Kubiak’s bass solo, and beginning with high tenor voices, followed by the women, a lovely “layered” effect. The basses then initiated a stunningly low organ-pedal-like note, which then rose to mingle with the other voices  as the solo tenor burst forth fervently with “Poyem Otsa, Syna, I Svyatago Dukha” (We praise the Father, Son and Holy Spirit), Chris McRae’s vibrant timbres having to my ears a touch of authenticity in the context of this work. And how resonantly the choir’s voices held the slowly-devolving lines of the final “Tem zhe mir Tya slavit” (Hence the world glorifies Thee), with the basses making every ounce of breath tell.

Rachmaninov wanted the “Nunc Dimittis” from this work (No.5 – “Nyne Otpushchayeshi”) sung at his own funeral, professing it to be his favourite number from the work. After the tubular bells preluded the hymn, the women’s voices setting up a rocking motion, over which the tenor sang his plaintive melody, in places impassionedly, and to profoundly engaging effect. The basses then began a kind of canonic sequence at “Yezhe yesi utogoval” (Thou hast prepared) which gradually lit up all sections of the choir. After this, the sopranos then beautifully sounded an exposed “Svyet vodtkroveniye” (A light to shine upon…”) before returning, with the rest of the voices, to the rocking motion, and accompanying the tenor throughout his final sequence, the basses making their famous descent to a low B-flat, some actually completing the journey! In experiencing a performance such as this one could hear why Rachmaninov prized the work so much – most sadly his wish to have the work performed at his funeral was unable to be realised.

Sometimes separately performed, the “Ave Maria” (“Bogoroditse Devo, raduisya”) was here floated beautifully into being, the women’s voices effortlessly orbiting in different contrapuntal directions before the rest of the choir opened the choral floodgates and saturated the church with sound. A joyful bell phrase introduced “Slava v vysnikh Bogu” (Glory Be to God), the sopranos decorating the mezzo’s melody with bell-like entries of their own, the sounds gathering into a kind of cascade which dissolved as quickly as it formed, leaving rapt, prayer-like utterances mingling with the ensuing silences.

In the following “Khvalite imya Gospodne” (Praise the Name of the Lord”) I enjoyed the impression of listening to the voices of the Cherubim and Seraphim on high, as below, on earth, the faithful (the remainder of the choir) lift up their hearts with strong, definite statements, punctuating their utterances with Alleluias, the whole concluded by a peaceful, beautifully-rounded and long-breathed cadence. Rather more complex and narrative a structure was “Blagosloven yesi, Gospodi” (Blessed be the Lord), the text an annotated account of Mary Magdalene (unnamed) discovering Jesus’ tomb opened and inhabited by an angel on the first Easter Sunday morning, the music free and spontaneous-sounding, and the performance of both the tenor soloist and the choir filled with voiced wonderment and joy.

“Voskreseniye Khristovo videvshe” (Hymn of the Resurrection) was imbued with a sense of fresh hope, alternated with wonderment and fierce exultation, the performance giving us an abundance of varied intensities, the voices for the most part energetic and thrusting, while in places thoughtful and tremulous. Even more compelling was the following “Velichit dusha moya Gospoda” (Magnificat), which was a miracle of light-and-shade in its performance – the lower voices began the famous prayer  slowly and meditatively, after which the soprano voices here beautifully lifted their tones to the skies describing the “Cherubim and Seraphim-like exultations” with dance-like figurations, enchanting in their effect. Throughout the hymn, these angelic voices alternated with more earth-bound tones, heaven thus seeming to bestow approval to mankind through the Virgin’s prayer – the sequence ended with heavenly voices joining those on earth in quiet, worshipful rapture.

How rich and varied was the “Slavoslovive velikoye” (Gloria in Excelsis) here, with the lower women’s voices beginning the chanting and the soprano voices floating in over the top. The men’s voices continued the prayer at “Sedyai odesnuyu Otsa” (Thou who sits at the right hand of the Father), before the women’s voices took up the chant again after the “Amen”, reaching a lovely point of hiatus at “Budi, Gospodi, milost Tvoya na nas” (Let Thy mercy, O Lord, be upon us), and becoming almost recitative-like over the mesmerising repetitions of “Svyatyi” (Holy), which continued to the end.

Three short hymns brought the work to a close, the first an intense, richly-wrought outpouring, “Dnes spasenye miru” (The Day of Salvation), followed by a questioning bell sequence that seemed to require an answer from the voices! This came with “Voskres iz groba” (Thou didst rise), a serene outpouring of faith and confidence, the singing like a great exhalation of breath, truly depicting the text’s affirming statement “Thou hast given peace to the Universe”, a world drawn by the sopranos’ soaring, steadily-held line and the basses’ deep, rock-bottom tones. Finally,  heralded by an imposing extended bass solo from Ben Kubiak, the women’s voices appropriately took the lead for “Vzbrannoy Voyevode”  (O victorious leader), a Hymn to the Mother of God, the mezzo lines rich and energetic, and the sopranos gleaming, as throughout, richly upholstered by the lower voices, and concluding the whole work with a joyous outpouring of mellifluous tones and tingling energy.

Very, very great credit to all concerned with the venture, to Mark Stamper and his Inspirare singers and cohorts – what a work, and what a performance!

 

Hearty lunchtime fare at St.Andrew’s with Beethoven and Gershwin

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Andrew’s Lunchtime Concert Series presents:
BEETHOVEN – Kreutzer Sonata (Violin Sonata No.9 in A Major Op.47)
GERSHWIN (arr. Heifetz) Summertime / It Ain’t Necessarily So (from “Porgy and Bess”)

Carolyn van Leuven (violin)
Catherine Norton (piano)

St.Andrew’s on-The-Terrace

Wednesday 28th March, 2018

Guest reviewer – Christina Wells

Wednesday’s lunchtime saw a good crowd at St. Andrew’s Church, all looking forward to hearing a performance of the superlative “Kreutzer” Sonata by Beethoven, for violin and piano. We were warned at the outset by violinist Caroline van Leuven that it was “vigorous stuff” and that we were to “hold onto” our hats!

The sonata was delivered with plenty of fire from the violinist and matched in spunk and spirit by pianist Catherine Norton. From the opening strings’ double-stopping, answered by the piano, the expectancy was created, and then the tentativeness shaken off – and so we were away!

In places it was a bit of a rough-round-the-edges ride, with the violin’s intonation not always completely secure, especially in the instrument’s upper reaches – nevertheless this was more than made up for in intensity and physicality of expression. We heard various instances of rapt stillness in places in the first movement, the ghostly withdrawn passages coming off with a particular depth of feeling – and at the other end of the spectrum, we enjoyed the stylish elan of the pizzicato playing to match the showy piano displays. Overall the violin part was resplendently delivered and caught the spirit of the piece, while Catherine Norton’s playing was strong and sensitive by turns throughout, delivering cascades of sound and colour.

The piano-only introduction to the second movement was notable for the care with which every note was sculptured and “placed” by Norton, the phrasing strongly-focused and sensitively shaped. This introduction formed the basis for a set of variations to follow. The first was playful, while the second featured a quirky jog-trot rhythm, each rendition, while not entirely tidily delivered, giving pleasure in its characterisation. Then came a lovely variation in a minor key with beautifully weighted question-and- answer exchanges. Both pianist and violinist exhibited a winsome feeling for the thoughtful mood of the sequence, giving us in places some singing tones and beautifully-sustained sounds.

The violinist was occasionally challenged by the difficulty of the rapid figurations in other places, but sustained the grander moments with conviction, aided by the steadfastness of her partner. Beethoven’s volatile invention took us from jollity to playfulness through wonderment and deep sonority. With such roistering physicality created by the players’ exchanges, this became a true partnership sonata.

The third and last movement carried this style forward, with scampering violin passage work matched by demanding, deftly-played piano figurations. Phrase was answered by phrase, with a whole world of expression created by the composer, here sensitive and suggestive, and in other places bold and boisterous. We marvelled at the energy and drive of it all, the thrills and spills of the execution matched by the obvious impression that the performers “knew how the music should go”. It felt like a true achievement, and the audience responded with enthusiasm and approval when all was done.

The Gershwin was a change of pace entirely, the first piece “Summertime” delivered with a suggestive and ladened style of a blues violinist. The playing was sultry, languid and expansive, and took the instrumentalists’ sounds into entirely new regions. Catherine Norton’s accompaniment was suitably slow-breathed and patiently controlled, in tandem with her partner.

“It Ain’t Necessarily So” was also delivered with plenty of awareness of the original’s atmosphere and context. Sleazy and insinuating at first, the music caught us up in the rapid-fire middle section. here delivered with plenty of volatility. Both musicians seemed to occasionally have to jump through hoops in their pursuit of the transcriptions’ Janus-faced depictions of both messenger and message, but each carried it off right to the end.

Brilliance and feeling from the Mazzoli Trio at Lower Hutt

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music Hutt Valley presents:

MAZZOLI STRING TRIO

Julie Park (viola), Sally Kim (‘cello), Shauno Isomura (violin)

SCHUBERT –  Trio in B-flat Major D.471
A. RITCHIE – Spring String Trio (2013)
FRANCAIX – String Trio (1933)
MISSY MAZZOLI – Lies You Can Believe In (2006)
HAYDN – Trio in G Major Op.53/1
DOHNANYI – Serenade Op.10

Lower Hutt Little Theatre,

Monday, 26th March 2018

Formed in 2015 by students from the University of Auckland and the Pettman National Junior Academy of Music, the Mazzoli Trio, so the story goes, took its name from that of a composer of a piece of music which was one of the first the trio of musicians had prepared. They had fallen in love with the piece, one called “Lies You Can Believe In”, written by up-and-coming New York composer Missy Mazzoli, and thereupon contacted her to ask if she would allow the Trio to use her name, as well as perform her music. And so a new and vital ensemble was born, with its first major assignment in public an invitation to perform at a concert at the 2nd International Pacific Alliance of Music Schools’ Summit in Beijing, China, an occasion which brought them much acclaim regarding both their playing and the repertoire chosen.

Monday evening’s concert at the Lower Hutt Little Theatre was one of a number of appearances by the Trio throughout the North Island organised by Chamber Music New Zealand. The programme seemed a judiciously chosen selection of works both familiar and intriguing, with the Trio’s “signature work”, by Missy Mazzoli, promising to be one of the evening’s particular fascinations. Interestingly, both halves of the concert had their order as per programme changed, which left me to wonder whether there had been a simple misunderstanding between the musicians and the printers, or, alternatively represented a significant rethink by the musicians of a previously existing order. Whatever the case, it made not the slightest difference to our anticipated enjoyment and receptivity of the concert.

So, instead of beginning the evening’s music with Anthony Ritchie’s “Spring String Trio”, we heard instead Schubert’s B-flat Major Trio D.471, a work in a single movement, which was played with such freshness and simplicity of wide-eyed wonderment that our hearts were instantly captured. What struck me instantly about the playing was that, despite the Trio’s obvious youth the music-making was imbued with such character. Part of this came from the players’ awareness of the interactiveness of the different instruments, each ready to assert and then give way, beautifully dovetailing the various musical arguments, and delighting the ear in doing so. We enjoyed the “shape” of the piece, its vivid contourings through the opening’s lyricism and contrasting dynamism, and the music’s intensification throughout the development, before the eventual “unravelling” of these tensions, instigated by the opening’s reprise via its warmth and familiarity. I thought the playing most importantly caught that unique Schubertian mix of charm, sunniness and tension which characterises his music.

I must admit to being intrigued at Anthony Ritchie’s work having been, according to the programme, the result of a commission concerning none other than (Sir) Robert Jones, somebody about whom I have very few positive feelings – however, I suppose composers have to earn a living! Banishing all thoughts of the association from my mind I settled down to enjoy the music, and was straightaway drawn into a dark-browed world of almost Shostakovich-like angst, a kind of “charged calmness”, out of which grew structured, contrapuntal exchanges almost baroque-like in their ordering, with everything creating a real sense of expectation, both in a formal and emotional sense.

This feeling bore fruit with the players’ energetic launching of vigorous, almost hoe-down-like passages, which in places either “took to the road” or drew from the irresistible momentum of a steam train (the music’s motoric quality not surprising in a composer with avowed admiration for Shostakovich’s music), a sequence which, after taking us places most exhilaratingly suddenly ceased its physicalities and became thoughtful and even melancholic. By this time, I was completely at the mercy of the music-making, drawn in by these musicians’ concentration and focus, the instrumental tones here given increasing weight and strength as to achieve a splendid kind of apotheosis, with the composer seemingly bringing the work’s essential elements triumphantly together at the conclusion, before cheekily throwing the last bars to the four winds! – great stuff!

Even cheekier entertainment was provided by French composer Jean Francaix (1912-1997), whose music was described most aptly in the programme as having “wit, lightness and a conversational interplay”. Writing his first pieces at the age of six, he once remarked that he was “constantly composing” and over the course of his long life wrote over two hundred pieces in a variety of styles and genres. His String Trio of 1933 began with hide-and-seek scamperings expressed in largely will-o’the-wisp tones, the instruments occasionally showing their faces and striking attitudes in mock-seriousness, before grinning impudently and skipping out of reach once more, the movement finishing on a po-faced pizzicato note.

The Scherzo presented itself as a wild, lurching waltz, replete with impish mischief and surprising orchestral-like effects, such as sharp-edged pizzicati that made one jump! The musicians entered into the music’s spirit with great relish, bringing out both the contrasting episodes of melancholy hand-in-glove with their humorous undersides – at one stage the sounds resembled instruments duelling with pizzicato notes – “Take that! – and that! – and THAT!”. The Andante which followed made a wistful, melancholic impression, with the violinist’s instrument singing disconsolately, while being rocked and comforted by the viola and ‘cello.  The melody was taken over by the cello and counterpointed by the viola, giving rise to sounds and feelings of a great loveliness – for whatever reason I was put in mind of Vaughan Williams’ music, by way of imagining the music written with the viola as the leading voice.

The Rondo finale, marked “Vivo”, wasted no time in making its presence felt, with great dynamics at the outset, and the composer’s singular invention regarding the accompanying rhythms leaving us wondering what to expect and where to be taken next! A bout of upper-register exploration left the music momentarily frightened by its own angsts, before emerging, albeit a little cautiously, from its own melt-down, the viola taking the initiative and restoring control and morale, leading the music into and through a mock-march of triumph, with (one senses) no prisoners being taken!

After the interval, we were told of another “running order” change to the programme, the last being made first this time round, with the piece written by the Trio’s namesake, Missy Mazzoli, divertingly called “Lies You Can Believe In”, beginning the concert’s second half. Called by its composer “An improvisatory tale”, the music draws from what the composer calls “the violence, energy and rare calm one finds in a city”. Written in 2006 for a Milwaukee-based ensemble, Present Music, the piece seems to throw everything within reach at the listener by way of introduction, the rhythms fierce, driving and syncopated, the lines both focusing and blurring the laser-like unisons, which disconcert by unexpectedly melting into warm and fruity expressions of melancholy. The Trio’s total involvement with this material swept our sensibilities up into its maelstrom of variety, with all the aforementioned characteristics the composer required of the piece’s presentation.

In tandem with the driving rhythms and spiky accents come lyrical instrumental solos – one for the ‘cello at first and then another for the viola – contributing to the music’s volatility and echoing the ambiguities of the piece’s title. There’s even a “twilight-zone” sequence of eerie, other-worldly harmonics, as the instruments move the music through a kind of wasteland, one which suddenly explodes into life with “Grosse Fugue-like” driving syncopations, the cello playing a sinuously exotic, decadently sliding theme as its companions push the repeated notes along. In characteristic fashion it all comes to an end as the rhythms become disjointed and break up, taking their leave of us with a rhythmically curt unison gesture. Whether we’d made sense of what we’d been through suddenly seemed less to matter than the experience itself, as Alan Jay Lerner put it in “My Fair Lady”, a heady sample of “humanity’s mad, inhuman noise”.

Perhaps some eighteenth-century sensibilities thought much the same of some of Josef Haydn’s more original manifestations of creativity, such as with his String Trio Op.53 No.1 (actually a transcription of the Piano Sonata Hob.XV1:40/1). At the outset the music breathes out-of-doors country pleasures, the aristocracy amusing themselves at play, though the music’s minor-key change midway the first movement readily suggests “trouble at mill”, with its range of outward emotion, the players here making the most of the contrast between whole-hearted expressiveness and near-furtive withdrawal of tones. When the graceful dance returned I thought the cellist so very expressive in her music-making gestures, bringing it all so vividly to life, as did her companions during the music’s precipitious return to the previous agitations, and the gentle gathering-up of fraught sensibilities – wonderfully soft playing from all concerned!

The second movement’s scampering presto immediately reminded me of the finale of the composer’s C-Major ‘Cello Concerto, the musicians’ soft, rapid playing a tantalising joy! Of course these would have been brilliantly effective on the keyboard as well, but the extra colour and textural contrasts afforded by the trio brought special delight, with the rhythmic syncopations deliciously underlined. In this way, the work was brought to a rousing conclusion which we in the audience thoroughly relished.

There remained of this well-stocked programme a work by Ernst von Dohnanyi, best-known to an earlier generation by his work for piano and orchestra “Variations on a Nursery Theme”, but more recently for his chamber music. Feted as a virtuoso pianist in his youth, Dohnanyi soon took up composition, influenced mostly by the work of Brahms and the German romantics, though he was to promote the music and activities of his fellow Hungarian composers, Bartok and Kodaly while teaching at the Budapest Academy. Differences with both pre- and post-War regimes in Hungary forced him into exile, firstly in Argentina, and then in the United States, where he took out citizenship and remained for the rest of his life.

His five-movement Serenade for String Trio, dating from 1902/3, was one of the first works in which Dohnanyi felt his own voice had properly sounded, rather less in thrall to late-Romantic models, and with touches of the “real” Hungarian folk-music influence that Bartok and Kodaly would soon begin to explore in earnest. Right at the beginning of the opening March, the music sounded like a Hungarian Brahms, with rather more of the former than the latter, flavoursome folk-fiddle treatment of the material from violin and ‘cello, and a drone-accompaniment from the viola. A soft pizzicato dance accompanied a beautifully folkish, Kodaly-like melody from the viola, the instrument then accompanying its companions’ heartfelt dialogues with evocative arpeggio-like figurations  resembling those of the solo viola in Berlioz’s “Harold in Italy”.

Mischievous fugal-like scurryings of different lines from all three instruments began the scherzo, which occasionally brought the voices together in fierce unisons. The trio section’s graceful, song-like measures, reminiscent of Schubert’s music for “Rosamunde” in places featured some affectionately-sounded dovetailings, reflecting the music-making’s warmly co-operative aspect.

In the slow movement’s Theme and Variations, the opening was presented to us as “a special moment gone somehow wrong”, the melody attempting to keep its poise and grace, but darkening in mood at its end. The variations exhibited plenty of character and differently-focused purpose, seemingly running the emotional gamut from agitation and fright to tremulous melancholy. After these angsts we needed the jollity of the finale’s opening to return us to our lives – and here the playing brought out both the girth and the grace of the dancers, as well as excitingly varying the pulse and pace of the music. Eventually the sounds cycled all the way back to the work’s richly Magyar opening, thus binding the work and its singular ambiences of unique expression together. What playing from these people! – so very youthful and energetic, while commanding responses to the music of such warmth and understanding and character.

 

Camerata’s “Haydn in the Church” series throws open the leadlights

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Camerata presents:

HAYDN IN THE CHURCH
HAYDN – Symphony No.7 in C Major Hob:1/7 “Le Midi” (Noon)
DVORAK – Serenade in E Major for String Orchestra Op.22

Camerata
(Leader, Anne Loeser)

St Mary of the Angels Church, Wellington

Friday 23rd March 2018

Venues for concerts are obviously part-and-parcel of the experience of listening to and enjoying live music. They can be relatively unobtrusive, allowing the audience’s attention to focus primarily on the musicians and their playing of the music; or they can provide “added value” to the experience, either visually or acoustically – in the happiest of cases both the concert’s sight and sound are positively enhanced by the surroundings.

These musings were inspired by my attending the latest concert presented by Camerata, which took place in the recently refurbished church of St.Mary of the Angels in Wellington. Since its formation in 2015, Camerata has mostly alternated performances between different churches, as befitted its “Haydn in the Church” Series featuring the rarely-performed early Haydn Symphonies. I’ve previously attended the ensemble’s St.Peters-on-Willis concert in 2016, at which the delicious Symphony No.3 in G Hob:1/3 was given, in what sounded to my ears like an ideal performing environment for this music. I was disappointed not to be assigned by “Middle C” the task of reviewing the group’s next concert, in the same venue the following year, as much for the repertoire (including Haydn’s Symphony No.4 in D Major Hob:1/4) as for its performance and its
attendant ambiences.

Still, I did get to hear Camerata’s “take” on Symphony No. 6 in D Major Hob:1/6 “Le Matin” (Morning), later in 2017 – I assumed that the concert didn’t have a “Haydn in the Church” subtitle this time round  because of the venue chosen (the Adam Concert Room at Victoria University’s NZ School of Music), due to the programming of a Mozart piano concerto, which required an instrument not readily available in most churches. However, the series had its subtitle restored for the ensemble’s most recent concert, featuring Haydn’s Symphony No.7 in C Major Hob:1/7, whose nickname “Le Midi” (Midday) carries the “day” theme forward from the previous work’s  “Le Matin” (Morning). And the venue was the aforementioned St.Mary of the Angels church in Boulcott St.

I’d heard, pre-concert, that the group was looking forward to the occasion because of what was called the “stunning” acoustics of the venue evident at rehearsal – certainly the opening chords of the Haydn Symphony which began the concert had a warmth and bloom which arrested the ear, and these same things were carried over to most of what followed. I will, however, risk sacrilege (appropriately) by saying that I thought the St. Mary’s acoustic a shade TOO ample for some of the quicker music’s clarity to come through, and that I did prefer, by a whisker, the sound that I heard at the St.Peter’s-on-Willis venue, with its greater immediacy (players and audience much closer together there, as well).

Having gotten that nit-picking and admittedly subjective remark off my chest, I can proceed with a clear conscience, reporting that the instruments throughout the work’s introduction sounded fabulous, horns rich and rounded, winds very open-air, and strings warm and resonant. The ensuing quicker music did bring out the spaces’ reverberation, but not excessively so – the playing’s dynamics still came across as varied and impactful, with the sound in tutti having splendid girth.

For the slow movement, Recitativo/Adagio, the horns were supplanted (if that’s the right word!) by flutes, whose colourings took on a kind of celestial resonance in places, the acoustic’s generosity here working to the music’s advantage. Leader Anne Loeser’s solo violin was kept busy throughout with expressive oboe-supported recitatives, alternating at one point with uncannily Vivaldi-like passages from the strings, and then taking up some heartfelt duetting with the solo cello (lovely work from both Loeser and Ken Ichinose) – the music alternating moments of enchantment with more vigorous and determined purpose, as if telling a kind of story with descriptive asides.

As befitted the vigorous, out-of-doors aspect of the music, the horns returned for the Minuet, the opening having a splendid muscular “strut” befitting a dance, while the horns’ “echo” phrases, together with the oboes, gave the vistas plenty of spacious ambience. The Trio of the work gave particular pleasure due to the magnificent playing of the double bass soloist, Matthew Cave, who, accompanied discreetly by strings and oboes, and later, the horns, exhibited both technical dexterity and a singular feel for the shape and flow of his sometimes angular figurations.

The finale was launched most spiritedly by a pair of violins, exchanging phrases with the whole ensemble, and then handing over to the flutist, who had rejoined the band, and who, hardly able to believe her luck, executed several most exuberant-sounding runs before being “caught up” by the ensemble. The music was filled with wit and fun, amid several dynamic and textural surprises, horns and oboes having turns to shine with their pairings in thirds, and the flute (Karen Batten in sparkling form) in places quite irrepressible! After the repeats had given us great delight all over again, the strings finally took control, amid whooping horns and piping winds whirling the music to its conclusion!

From Haydn to Dvorak there’s a hundred-plus years of profound political, social and artistic change, which one might think would engender a chalk-and-cheese kind of difference in their music. But both composers could summons up a bracing, out-of-doors kind of expressive mode alongside their more formal structural inclinations, which gave some commonality of spirit to both the symphony we’d just heard, and Dvorak’s lovely, and in places wonderfully air-borne Serenade for Strings.

Dvorak wrote the work during a particularly happy period of his life, and the music displays this contentment in no uncertain terms – at the very beginning of the work the players ”enabled” rather than began the work, it seemed, with the acoustic both helping to fill out the more full-throated phrases and imparting a mystical halo of sound to the softer sequences. The gently-dancing second subject had grace and poise, varying the trajectories sufficiently for the return of the opening to be a most winning moment.  By contrast with all of this, the second movement was a Waltz, one whose first section was quizzically constructed of five-bar phrases, though containing nothing that any dancers would trip or stumble over – the playing readily evoked the exhilarating swirl of bodies in partnership, with the high string notes always sweet, never strident. A more conventionally-paced Trio section inspired some tenderly-phrased and nicely gradated playing, the sequences beautifully “nudged” in places for a more impulsive effect.

The ‘cellos excitingly hit the ground running with their opening notes of the Scherzo, whose “terraced” scoring created different spaces and vistas between the music’s lines, while the playing’s more circumspect treatment of the second subject imparted a lovely lilt to the music along with a tinge of regret. In the Trio, with its broader phrases, I would have liked more elbow-room allowed those downward intervals at the phrase-ends, instead of the “snap” treatment they were given – to my ears the effect was rather severe, instead of the feeling of poignant regret a gentler descent each time would have imparted. I did, however, note that the composer’s instructions were for the trio’s music to be played without any lessening of tempo…… (“Bah! – composers! – what do they know?” I sometimes find myself thinking at moments like these!).

I thought the slow movement’s opening lines very Tchaikovsky-like, so very beautiful – and especially so here, with the music’s heartfelt reaching towards the tops of the phrases, followed by their dying fall. The cellos take up the melody’s reprise so very eloquently, after which the violins “prepare” for their final ascent with focused, and finely-gradated purpose, before singing the great arched-over contourings for all they’re worth! – a wonderful moment! After this the gentle final undulations concluded the movement with a simple gravitas all of their own.

The “snap” of the opening kicked in the finale’s music excitingly, despite the instruments being not quite together, to my ears, the first time round (amends were naturally made a second time!) Anne Loeser had told us in her introductory remarks that the composer was fond of trains for practically all of his life – and perhaps in this movement it’s possible to imagine that the sequences of repeated rhythmic figures which build excitingly over a repeated droning note towards a rip-snorting climax might be mimicking the sounds of an approaching steam engine. Whatever the case, the ensemble bent their backs towards giving both this passage and the syncopated rhythms of the second subject group plenty of “grunt” –  the glow imparted by the excitement gave the reprise of the work’s very opening a melting homecoming quality, at once drenched with sentiment and perfectly poised. It enabling the coda proper to burst in and carry away our sensibilities in a flurry of energetic excitement and exhilaration – “an expression of happiness so intense it sometimes brings tears”, as a commentator whose words I once read long ago said of one of Dvorak’s pieces. It was that kind of intensity that helped to make Camerata’s playing throughout this concert such a memorable experience.

Switzerland – Circa Theatre’s absorbing “life and art” thriller

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Circa Theatre presents:

SWITZERLAND by Joanna Murray-Smith

Cast:
Catherine Downes  –  Patricia Highsmith
Simon Leary            –   Edward Ridgeway

Susan Wilson – director
Tony De Goldi – set designer
Marcus McShane – lighting
Sheila Horton – costumes
Gareth Farr – music

Circa Two,
Circa Theatre, Taranaki St, Wellington

Tuesday, 20th March, 2018

Playwright Joanna Murray-Smith remembers her mother reading American author Patricia Highsmith’s novels “voraciously”, and with an intensity of concentration that left a deep impression upon her. She was to find herself in turn similarly “drawn in” by Highsmith’s writing, in particular by what she termed her “utterly fearless curiosity about the darkness of the human psyche”. Subsequently, in her play “Switzerland”, where Murray-Smith depicts the author, in self-imposed exile, seemingly on the verge of creating a new novel featuring her most successful fictional character, Tom Ripley, there’s a remarkable sense of a subconscious rebirth of Highsmith’s legendary gamut of irreconcilable antagonisms in the writing, which the present production relishes in a no-holds-barred fashion.

Though amply recognised in Europe as a writer, and enjoying fame with Alfred Hitchcock’s screen adaptation of her first major novel, “Strangers on a Train”, Highsmith considered she had been shunned by the “dead, white American male” literary elite  – we hear some of the novelist’s candid opinions of the worth of some of these well-known figures expressed in no uncertain terms during the play – and her withdrawal to Switzerland represented both defiance and disillusionment as regards her homeland (she was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1921). Besides the Hitchcock film, she became well-known for her “Ripley” novels, creating one of literature’s most fascinating characters, the “charming psychopath” Tom Ripley.

Highsmith’s downright Swiftian attitudes towards humanity received plenty of colourful fleshing-out in Murray-Smith’s work – actor Catherine Downes’ feisty, acid-humoured portrayal flung her character’s manifold prejudices and bigotries in all directions most convincingly, amid lashings of vitriolic splendour, one-liners which blazed like short-lived fireworks across our vistas – “Happiness? Happy people simply don’t ask enough questions!” We were treated to a piecemeal, but essentially confessional resume of Highsmith’s traumatic childhood – “Childhood! – one big repository of terror!”- as well as being acquainted in no uncertain terms with various updated preoccupations, her fondness for guns and knives, her penchant for “show tunes” and her New Year resolutions, such as “Drink more!”

What’s most tellingly and even creepily revealed, however, is the novelist’s inward, but gradually-burgeoning fascination and empathy with one of her own characters, that of Tom Ripley. Murray-Smith brings this idea into bold physical relief by introducing the fictional figure of Edward Ridgeway at the play’s outset, a young man sent by Highsmith’s New York publishers to help persuade the writer to produce another “Tom Ripley” novel, something that would, as the young man tremulously puts it to her, bring back into focus her greatest achievement, the revitalisation of her most memorable character. Despite her initial refusal and caustic and demeaning manner towards the messenger, he persists, in the process gradually shedding his awkwardness; and so it is that he brings into play a two-handed game of “cat and mouse” between them, one whose outcome we might guess at but about which we can never be absolutely sure.

Simon Leary’s finely-gradated portrayal of the mysterious stranger from the publishing firm is the perfect foil at the outset for Downes’ free-wheeling, determinedly disagreeable Highsmith. His persistence, at first seemingly naïve, and insufficiently robust, doesn’t take long to develop a kind of “edge” of its own, so that we become less and less certain of where his character is actually coming from or, in fact, going towards. As he breaks down her resistance to the idea of a new “Ripley” he gathers surety and displays occasional bravado – while Highsmith see-saws the process at her end, promising to sign a new contract if he will come up with a scenario for her concerning the fate of a rich old lady in the new story.

Each of the play’s three run-together scenes bolsters the young man’s strength and confidence, and in parallel appears to weaken or dissipate the writer’s defences – the pair’s interaction takes on a Pinter-esque quality as she talks about a childhood memory of a man she once saw and has been “chasing” ever since, and he subsequently answers her telephone in her temporary absence, to (shockingly) “Mr Edward Ridgeway of New York”. By this time we’re uncertain of just which character’s dream we’ve been taken into – it’s almost as though Murray-Smith might be thinking of the “Liebestod” from Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde”, here, with Highsmith similarly transported at the thought of a mystical Isolde-like union with her dream-lover, the “man she has been chasing”. Anyway, to go further than this would spoil the story’s ending and the frisson of the unexpected that Murray-Smith so tantalisingly creates.

Susan Wilson’s direction of this at once larger-than-life and intensely “interior”psychological tale beautifully oversees the playwright’s colourful ebb-and-flow of the characters’ intentions and interactions, orchestrating the acerbity of Highsmith into a creative symphonic flow of interaction with her increasingly provocative and catalytic antagonist. Her actors are terrific, both Downes and Leary seemingly attuned to that same idea of alternating give-and-take with random spikings, and playing into one another’s hands accordingly.

Tony De Goldi’s set initially puts us disconcertingly at ease, apart from the wall display of weaponry, which Marcus McShane’s lighting brings in and out of prominence as required. And Sheila Horton’s dressing of the young man over three scenes deftly underpins his growing assertiveness and dominance within the relationship, while firmly anchoring Highsmith’s general appearance in the garb of a long-time solitary and cranky bohemian, outwardly expressing a contempt for convention.

Adding a distinctive flavour to the theatrical ambience of the sort that I always thought Jack Body’s music used to do for the local tv series “Close to Home” was Gareth Farr’s beautiful and evocative music – the opening 5/4 marimba pulsings were nicely equivocal, as a contrast to  the creepily menacing bass tread underpinning eerily modulating chords accompanying the first scene transition, And equally disquieting was the deep throbbing of percussion and piano accompanying the lead-up sequence to Highsmith signing the contract, the 5/4 marimba music returning to temporarily pour water on troubled oils! The final scene I thought had some exquisitely beautiful scoring, Farr’s music perfectly complementing the scene’s visionary-like ambiences, and by contrast making the reappearance at the very end of the strains of “Happy Talk” from “South Pacific” at once valedictory and joyous, almost Mahlerian in its bathos.

This production is the New Zealand premiere of the work, one that runs until the 14th of April. It seems to me a must-see for so many reasons – as well as being suspenseful entertainment, it’s a mover and shaker of a piece, and a purposeful boundaries-pusher, one that poses questions about both art and fantasy and their interaction with and relevance to everyday life.

Circa Two until April 14th 2018

 

 

Anderson and Roe Piano Duo – a compelling and invigorating mix of gravitas and glitter!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Anderson and Roe Piano Duo

Arrangements for two pianos/four hands of music by Leonard Bernstein, John Adams, Leonard Cohen, Paul McCartney, Christoph Willibald Gluck and Georges Bizet

Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe (pianos)

Presented by Chamber Music New Zealand

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 17th March, 2018

Duo pianists Anderson and Roe are very much the products of the millennial age, two accomplished graduates from the Juilliard School of Music who make music together out of a shared vision of wanting “to strengthen and make more relevant the place of classical music in the new millennium”. They’ve been playing as a duo for fourteen years, now, and intend to continue to do so, along with keeping their own solo careers ticking over. Despite some of their extremely physical duo-pianistic interactions on stage, they’re not real-life partners (Greg Anderson is married, but to someone else, while Elizabeth Joy Roe is unmarried).  However, they both enjoy the physical choreography and intimacy of four-hands at one piano as much as their two-piano work, and don’t ever stint on the intensity and overt emotionalism and sensuality of the music they play together. In Roe’s own words,“This whole partnership arose out of a pure desire to have a joyful time together, to try new things and just to keep exploring what’s possible with presentation and execution.”

I must confess to some initial hesitation regarding reviewing the concert, prior to finding out anything about the pair’s performance and musical philosophies, and reading only the usual “hype springs eternal” publicity blurb. I thought that the experience might involve spending an evening enduring a relentless onslaught of  empty and facile double-pianistic note-spinning arrangements – something to which I have a definite aversion, particularly those “display” concerti that proliferated during the nineteenth century, which enabled performers to “show off” their virtuosic skills over endless sequences of brilliant-sounding nothings! Happily Anderson and Roe’s playing bore out the many positive reports I was able to read from different sources, indicating that their partnership was something definitely out of the ordinary.

These feelings were certainly reinforced by my finding out details of the actual repertoire they were going to perform for us, a programme which appeared to alternate the virtuosic element with the profound and poetic. Thus we in the audience were able to gauge their abilities over a wider spectrum than was perhaps expected. True, there were no “big” duo-pianist works such as any by Schubert or Rachmaninov in the concert, which I counted as an opportunity missed. However there was sufficient gravitas and depth in what they played acting as a counterweight to the equally enjoyable arrangements of “popular” music which emphasised humour and brilliance.

They had what I think is an overall philosophy of performing, which they were able to apply to everything they did – this was to throw themselves entirely into each of the item’s particular world of expression,  and adopt ways of bringing out the essentials of whatever piece. However, in doing this they became chameleon-like in their different kinds of treatment of each of the works, so that we in the audience felt transported to each “space” inhabited by the composer of the original music. I got the feeling that they wanted to pay homage to each of these creative acts by bringing out the individual “character” of the pieces – in the event, most successfully.

Throughout the concert both musicians attached particular importance to talking with us, taking it in turn to introduce the pieces, bring out salient points and underline any significant and illuminating association the pair might have previously had with any parts of the programme.

Of course, the visual aspect of a piano duo or duet  (the pair played two pianos simultaneously, and occasionally a four-handed duo on a single piano, changing instruments and seating positions for each of the items) wasn’t neglected, and there were plenty of virtuoso thrills and the occasional amusing antic involving intertwining arms and bodies to reach the keys – but these were entertainment incidentals rather than essences, which didn’t divert them from the more serious purpose of doing the music justice. In short, I felt they made sure the concert was primarily about the music, rather than about them, and I loved their playing all the more for that.

Obviously the pair’s virtuosity was a key component in the presentation of the more serious music as well, and came to the fore in the nonchalance with which they threw off some of the difficulties of things like the opening Prelude, Fugue and Riffs by Leonard Bernstein, as well as the ease with which they set in motion the ebb and flow of the different sequences from the same composer’s “West Side Story” at the second half’s beginning (they even got us joining in with the shouts of “Mambo” during the first section of that work – our first unison attempt was a bit ragged, but with Roe’s expert semaphoring as a guide, the second shout of “Mambo!” we delivered was one to die for!).

That “character” which the pair imbued in every piece they played came to the fore in heartfelt fashion during the first half’s sequence of arrangements using material with a kind of Gospel-song ethos, from John Adams’ “Halleluiah Junction”, through the treatment accorded Leonard Cohen’s “Halleluiah”, and finishing with a redemptive-like take on Paul McCartney’s inspirational “Let it be”. Regarding the last of those items, Roe had set the tone for our listening by inviting us to join in with her singing of McCartney’s opening melody and words (her voice extremely lovely in its own right), before the two pianists opened up the vistas (the accompanying note used the phrase “duelling Gospel pianists”!), powerfully suggesting a revivalist kind of fervour to illuminate the music’s message.

Another highlight for me was the deeply-felt and serenely spell-binding performance of Gluck’s “Dance of the Blessed Spirits” from the composer’s opera “Orphee et Euridice”, which, significantly, the pair chose to resent as a four-hands duet at one keyboard rather than use the bigger two-piano sonorities. That kind of wide-screen sound was restored for the concert’s final scheduled item, the pair’s own exploration of themes and sequences from Bizet’s opera “Carmen”, here given with all the sensuous atmosphere, colour and rhythmic swagger and excitement that we all associate with Bizet’s score. There were several encores afterwards, but Bizet’s music made an appropriately brilliant climax to the programme, which had the audience clapping and bravo-ing for more, the pair generous in response, and leaving us replete with a sense of occasion.