Author: Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington out-performs the fireworks with a stunning “Petrouchka”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents:
PETROUCHKA

TABEA SQUIRE – Colour Lines (commission from Orchestra Wellington)*
CARL NIELSEN – Violin Concerto Op.33
IGOR STRAVINSKY – Petrouchka (Ballet – Revised 1947 Edition)

Arohanui Strings – Sistema Hutt Valley (Alison Eldredge – director)*

Andrew Atkins (conductor)*
Suyeon Kang (violin)
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington,

Saturday 4th November, 2017

Audiences can be curiously unpredictable, on occasions exhilarating and galvanizing masses of energy to be part of, caught up in the excitement of either enthusiastic or rapt responses to some performances, (especially those involving soloists) and then for no apparent reason, every once in a while, strangely under-responsive. Why this sudden out-of-the-blue observation, going a little against the grain of my normally unrelieved positivism as a music reviewer?

It was Saturday’s Orchestra Wellington concert that left me feeling a little bemused, after I’d experienced warmth and enthusiasm aplenty on the part of the audience in response to the efforts, firstly, of the youthful Sistema Strings, playing both a group of demonstration pieces and taking a vital role in composer Tabea Squire’s newly-commissioned work “Colour Lines”, and secondly, violinist Suyeon Kang, in giving us a rapturously beautiful performance of that concert-hall rarity, the Nielsen Violin Concerto, with plenty of tensile strength and winning gossamer-woven lines.

In each of these cases the performers’ energies were accorded the kind of reaction from the listeners that reflected the music-making’s outstanding and warm-hearted qualities. However, I thought that, on the same performance “Richter-scale”, the audience’s reaction to the concert’s second half, a breathtakingly brilliant realisation by orchestra and conductor of Stravinsky’s music for his ballet “Petrouchka”, by rights ought to have been something along the lines of a twenty-minute standing ovation!

That such a stunning realization of the work didn’t seem to me as forthcoming as it fully deserved could have been because (1) there had already been a lot of applause in the concert already, due to the presence of the Sistema students, (2) the remarkable violinist Suyeon Kang had already taken the lion’s share, with her gorgeously elfin-like performance of Nielsen’s Violin Concerto (including a round of spontaneous applause at the first movement’s conclusion) and (3) Petrouchka of course ends not with a Firebird-like bang, but with a subdued whimper, from which listeners have to then re-activate those glowing embers of enthusiasm and get them bursting into flame once more. So the audience response conveyed what I thought W.S.Gilbert might have described as “modified rapture”, instead of conveying (as I and a colleague afterwards were both feeling) a sense of “Did we really hear that? It was mind-blowing!”

Overall, the concert’s trajectory lent itself to a kind of “from seeds to forest giant” progression, with tremulously awakened beginnings demonstrated by the cutest brigade of junior string-players one could imagine, all under the sway of their director, Alison Eldredge. All of these were introduced by Orchestra Wellington Music Director, Marc Taddei, and included OW’s assistant conductor Andrew Atkins (unfortunately not credited in the programme for his efforts with both the Arohanui Strings, in their introductory items, and in directing the combined ensemble in the commissioned piece “Colour Lines” by Tabea Squire).

This was a work whose composer conceived as involving both the student players and the orchestra proper, by using ‘”free-time” notation in places to allow the younger players the means of continuously contributing to the music’s texture. A chorale which appears in various guises during the piece eventually blends with the younger musicians’ efforts. I was struck by the confident orchestrations throughout, a definite character emerging with each of the sequences, making for strongly-etched contrasts (scintillating upper strings are then “cooled’ by the winds near the opening, before a lovely dancing interaction develops between strings and winds beneath warm horn tones, the latter then assuming a ”stopped” out-of-phase effect which kaleidoscopes the music into yet another world of wonderment).

I recall both my Middle-C colleague Rosemary Collier and myself being delighted by Tabea Squire’s work for string quartet “Jet-lag” at a 2014 concert, a piece with something of a similar sharply-etched sense of character, obviously wrought by a composer with an ear for textures and the on-going ambiences. What mischief, and indeed, even danger, was let loose with the burble and ferment generated by the brass in their “hornets’ nest” sequence! – again contrasting with the nobility of the chorale voiced by those same instruments not long after – reminiscent of Hindemith, here, as the strings muscled up to join with the tutti in gestures of satisfying finality, snappy and definite. I thought the music most skillfully and confidently focused and blurred its edges all at once, throughout, as the title suggested it might.

Relatively unknown compared with its Nordic cousin written in 1904 by Sibelius, the slightly later (1911) Violin Concerto of Carl Nielsen’s proved equally as strong and fascinating a work, and certainly as difficult to play, if not more so. Like Sibelius, Nielsen was himself a violinist, though neither composer would have attempted to perform his own concerto, despite Aino Sibelius describing her husband’s playing of the work’s solo part during its composition as “on fire all the time.….he stays awake all night, plays incredibly beautifully,…he has so many ideas it is hard to believe it….”

Nielsen’s work, unlike Sibelius’s, turned away from the standard three-movement concerto form, the composer casting the work in two large movements, each with a slow and quicker section (some commentators alternatively describe the work as having four movements). The music began strongly, dramatic and declamatory, the soloist (South-Korean-born Australian violinist Suyeon Kang) meeting the orchestra’s initial challenge with full-throated recitative-like passages whose striking quality of tensile strength and flexibility of phrasing instantly compelled and held one’s attention throughout. I wondered whether, in the big-boned virtuoso sequences, Kang’s tightly-woven silken tones would fill-out sufficiently to provide a sufficient match for the orchestra’s more assertive gestures – but such was her focused concentration her instrument seemed able to “inhabit” the music’s dynamics in an entirely natural and unselfconscious manner. From these trenchant responses right through to the Elgar-like lyricism of the Praeludium’s final musings, she held us in thrall.

Nor did she shirk the physicality of the jolly “cavalleresco” opening of the allegro, with its vigorous exchanges, rapid running passages, and sudden moments of introspection, all leading to a solo cadenza which mirrors the quixotic moods which have gone before in the music, before dancing back to the allegro’s lively theme. And such was the breathtaking skill with which she swung into the movement’s dancing coda, and traded playful feints and gestures with the orchestra right to the end, that the audience responded with some spontaneous unscheduled applause (to which Marc Taddei, after acknowledging the soloist and the clapping, remarked “But wait! – there’s more!”).

The slow movement featured lovely playing throughout the opening sequences from the winds, joined by the horns, and some beautiful Sibelius-like accompaniments in thirds for the soloist, whose utterances seemed bent on expressing some kind of private sorrow. The horns offered comfort at various points, as did the strings, so that the music’s abrupt recourse to a kind of droll waltz seemed almost Schubertian in its stoic, at times quirky and humourful resignation, the orchestra occasionally launching into moments of mock seriousness, none of which last for very long. One thunderous episode provoked an angular cadenza from the soloist, during which, at one point, she played simultaneously a drone bass, a repeated pizzicato note and some bowed figurations, all most divertingly and unselfconsciously. It was a remarkable performance from all concerned, and fully deserved a response which matched in enthusiasm that given to another Korean musician in the MFC just over a week ago, Joyce Yang, after her Rachmaninov concerto performance with the NZSO.

We reformed after the interval to the sounds of fireworks outside, which were soon well-and-truly put in their place by a performance of Stravinsky’s eponymous ballet “Petrouchka” from Marc Taddei and Orchestra Wellington which I couldn’t imagine bettered in terms of precision, skill, atmosphere and overall theatrical and musical impact. Every sequence, every scene, every tableau came alive, the music-making bringing into being both dance and drama, and forming a kind of triumvirate of successful evocation of artistic achievement. At its conclusion I felt sympathy for Marc Taddei and all the players who deserved to be brought to their feet and given individual acknowledgement – but the trouble was, there were too many of them! Nevertheless I thought that all the winds and all the brass players were simply heroes, and that Andrew Atkins deservedly got his dues after all, for his superb piano-playing. Very great honour, of course, to Marc Taddei and his all-encompassing direction of the score. For all these reasons and more, I could have clapped for much, much longer!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rachmaninov – jubilation and bitterness, but sheer poetry from Joyce Yang

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
RACHMANINOV
Vocalise Op.34 No.14 (transcribed by the composer)
Piano Concerto No.3 in D Minor Op. 30
Symphonic Dances Op.45

Joyce Yang (piano)
Edo de Waart (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday 27th October, 2017

A beautifully put-together programme, this, devoted to the music of Rachmaninov, and in almost every way, superbly delivered! There could be no doubt, however as to who the “star of the show” was – Korean-born American pianist Joyce Yang gave what seemed to me a performance in a thousand of the composer’s fearsome D Minor Concerto, regarded by many as one of the most technically difficult works for piano and orchestra ever written. Earlier, the NZSO and conductor Edo de Waart had breathed into life a deliciously-poised orchestra-only version of the wordless song, Vocalise, in an arrangement devised by the composer. Then, following the concerto, came a performance of Rachmaninov’s very last work, his “Symphonic Dances” , written in 1940, three years before his death. The first two of the dances came off best, here, particularly the first, with its beautifully-played saxophone solo – I confess to being a tad disappointed with the final dance’s performance, feeling that it was wanting in “bite”, and needing more wildness and desperation in its execution.

The Vocalise, which began the programme is one of those pieces which has been arranged or transcribed for a variety of instruments – it began life as a wordless song which concluded the composer’s Op.34 collection, entitled “14 Romances for high voice and piano”, and was written specifically for the voice of the great Russian soprano Antonia Nezhdanova, Rachmaninov wishing to give the singer a vehicle for displaying the beauty of her voice without recourse to words. The composer was to subsequently arrange the work both for voice and orchestra accompaniment, and for orchestra alone, although more recent sources suggest that Rachmaninov originally wrote the work for Nezhdanova to perform with orchestra AFTER the rest of the songs were already written for voice and piano, the Vocalise being subsequently added to the “Romances” collection. Among the various arrangements, the most unusual is probably that for theremin and piano, arranged by Clara Rockmore (nee Reisenberg), who was the electronic instrument’s most well-known exponent during the twentieth century.

This was a gorgeously-played performance (the conductor’s very first of this work, as he tells us in the programme’s introductory note), enabling the NZSO strings to really show their mettle, and delivering all those qualities which bring out the work’s inherent tenderness, lyricism, depth of feeling and range of intensity. The strings at first had the lion’s share of the playing, but they were gradually joined by the winds, firstly seeming to merely echo-phrase-ends, but then to increasingly augment the harmonies of the textures, as well as contributing counterpointing lines. Towards the end the music becomes strongly reminiscent of the slow movement of the composer’s Second Symphony, by dint of a clarinet solo which takes over the theme for a few measures before surrendering it again to the ascending strings.

Though in some ways moving from the Vocalise to the D MInor Piano Concerto seemed like something of a “quantum leap”, the links between the two works were here more than usually stressed by the character of the concerto performance, soloist Joyce Yang giving one of the most poetic and sheerly beautiful realizations of this work I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing!  She and Edo de Waart had played the piece together at least twice before with different orchestras, so the interpretation was “of a piece”, with the give-and take between soloist and orchestra replete with understanding and fluency.

Among what marked out her performance for me from so many others was her conveyance of involvement with every note of the music she played – nothing sounded mechanical or “less important” (as either “fillip” or transitional” sequences), but all had its place in a kind of organically-conceived whole. Another thing was, as I’ve said, her remarkable poeticizing of so much of what she played – never did she seem interested in virtuosity for its own sake. Whatever “display element” was in the solo part was there because of the music, and nothing more.

In addition, neither have I heard another pianist bring out to the same extent the music’s impish, quixotic aspect – she found a spikiness in some of the figurations that I thought equated with Rachmaninov’s contemporaries such as Prokofiev,Ravel and Bartok, and even in places, Gershwin. Humour isn’t often a quality one associates with Rachmaninov’s music, but the way Yang articulated some of the filigree passage-work in places made me smile at the playing’s sheer character – this was no faceless perfection, seamless articulation, bland liquidity or pure decoration on show – every note, as I’ve said, had its own raison d’etre, in this performance.

I confess I had to go back all the way to 1993, and Peter Donohoe’s performance of this work with the NZSO under Nicholas Braithwaite, to recall the same wonderment and pleasure at hearing this work “live” – an example of such shared alchemy of interpretation was during that brief, but telling sequence just before the final first-movement reprise of the work’s opening, when the piano gently drifts a repeated bell-like sequence of notes across an ambient crepuscular soundscape enriched by soft horn-chordings – like Donohoe did, Yang drew out this passage exquisitely, once again allowing the notes to speak their character and make an indelible impression upon the listener, however brief and fleeting…..

As for the notorious “virtuoso” elements of this concerto, Yang showed us that she could certainly “finger it” with the greats, as well as match the orchestra in tonal depth when she needed to, putting all of her physical weight into the playing of the heavier chords, such as in the massive first-movement cadenza, and again during the build-up to the final peroration at the work’s very end, and letting her fingers and wrists do the work in the more scintillating passages. People expecting virtuoso thrills got an amazingly musical version of the same from their soloist, one which realized all of the work’s necessary excitement and exhilaration.

No greater contrast with the concerto could have been given to us than what Yang played as an encore – an enchanting performance of one of the most beautiful of Grieg’s “Lyric Pieces”, his “Nocturne” from the “Lyric Suite”. Though it seems heretical to say so, I could have gone home happily after hearing this, feeling as if I had heard a piano articulate all the intrinsic beauty that it was possible for the instrument to express. Of course, I stayed! – lamenting the degradations that have resulted over the last generation of years in visiting artists such as Joyce Yang NOT giving solo recitals in tandem with NZSO appearances, as used to invariably happen in the (good) old days! A modestly-resourced Music Society such as that in Waikanae, which hosts world-class artists such as Alexander Gavrylyuk consistently and successfully organizes piano recitals – why can’t the NZSO do the same with their visiting artists, any more?

Though the first half was a hard act to follow, the orchestra and Edo de Waart did their best with the composer’s compositional swan-song, the “Symphonic Dances”, which appeared in 1940, three years before Rachmaninov’s death. The composer wryly remarked, “I don’t know how it happened – it must have been my last spark!” – but upon closer analysis of the music itself one can hear alongside all the echoes of the past and allusions to previous works, a spirit determined to raise its voice not only in protest at and defiance of the critics who reviled his works, but in bitterness and anger at having lost his homeland and his sources of inspiration. Had Rachmaninov lived for another ten years and been able to work further through these feelings, who knows what else he might have achieved?

The work itself was received with some negativity on all sides – with bewilderment by some of the composer’s “fans”, who were expecting more lyricism and lush orchestrations along the lines of the Third Symphony and the Paganini Rhapsody, and with a good deal of both half-hearted enthusiasm and outright derision by the critics, some of whom by this stage had made Rachmaninov-denigration a kind of “sport” (readers should look up the critical warblings of one Pitts Sanborn for a particularly vicious example of this, in relation to the composer’s Fourth Piano Concerto).

Rachmaninov described himself to an interviewer as “a ghost wandering in a world grown alien”, not being able to either “cast out the old way of writing” or able to “acquire the new”. Despite this assertion, the Dances’ relative toughness, leanness of orchestration and rhythmic asymmetries are nowadays regarded as evidence of the composer’s very apparent awareness of what was happening all around him. This is opposed to the more institutionalized view of Rachmaninov as some sort of nineteenth-century compositional throwback almost right to the end. As Brahms would have said, “any jackass” could hear elements of the old Rachmaninov in places throughout the music, the aching, yearning lyricism, the exciting rhythmic snap of certain figurations, and the oft-quoted “Dies Irae” theme which haunted his work from his First Symphony onwards.

The first two dances were beautifully done, the highlight being the saxophone playing of Simon Brew in the first dance, Rachmaninov writing one of his most beautiful melodies for the instrument, before allowing the strings to take over and repeat the melody, to lump-in-the-throat effect. The whole was framed in sharply-accented, no-nonsense rhythmic fashion by de Waart and his players, who took just as readily to the spooky waltz-rhythms of the second movement, a kind of Russian “Valse Triste”, and gave its melodies a proper “yearning” quality most characteristic of the composer.

Where I craved some more “bite”, a tougher, harsher, more urgent response to the music was in the third dance, whose Stravinsky-like rhythms for me “sat” too heavily – de Waart’s steady-as-she-goes way with the music I thought produced more a feeling of petulance and bad-temper rather than galvanizing, sharply-etched bitterness. With the “Dies Irae” and exerpts from the Russian Orthodox liturgical Chant “Blessed is the Lord” literally “fighting it out” in the music, I wanted more sparks flying, more combustion, more sense of triumph over bitter adversity at the end. Perhaps while on tour with this piece de Waart and the orchestra will push this piece further and further to its limits, and achieve a harder-won but ultimately more cathartic and appropriately triumphal conclusion to an already momentous concert.

At last! Michael Houstoun’s Beethoven recordings for Rattle reach the Diabelli Variations

Posted on by Peter Mechen

 

BEETHOVEN – Diabelli Variations
(33 Variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli Op.120)
Michael Houstoun (piano)

Rattle CD RAT D070 2017

Early in 1819, Anton Diabelli, who was a music publisher in Vienna, and something of a dilettante composer, wrote a waltz, and invited all of the leading composers of the time in and around Vienna to compose a single variation on his work. Diabelli’s intention was to publish the collection as a complete set, planning to raise money for patriotic and humanitarian purposes relating to the recent Napoleonic Wars.

Included among the composers Diabelli approached were Carl Czerny, Franz Schubert, Friedrich Kalkbrenner, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Ignaz Moscheles, Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart , Johann Peter Pixis, Simon Sechter, the Archduke Rudolf, Wenzel Tomaschek , Jan Vorisek and Ludwig Van Beethoven. The young Franz Liszt, though not included in the original list, also contributed a variation, at the insistence of his teacher, Carl Czerny.

Beethoven’s response to the invitation has received fanciful treatment at the hands of his various biographers, with the much-derided Anton Schindler at the forefront of source material for the popular legend – that the composer refused to take part in the project, deriding Diabelli’s waltz as a Schusterfleck, or “Cobbler’s patch”, and only changed his mind when Diabelli offered to pay him handsomely, whereupon Beethoven determined to show Diabelli what he could do by quickly writing not one variation, but thirty-three! It’s now more readily accepted that Beethoven from the very start was interested in the idea, straightaway planning a considerable number of variations. And, contrary to what both Schindler and Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny claimed, Beethoven did not write the complete work “in a merry freak” (Czerny’s words), but worked slowly and fitfully on his sketches, completing twenty-three of the variations by the end of 1819 before laying them aside to finish both the Missa Solemnis and the late piano sonatas, then, early in 1823, returning to the work and completing the set of thirty-three (the mind boggles at the sheer creativity of all of this!).

DIabelli subsequently published Beethoven’s work as Vol.One of a two-volume set grandly titled “Vaterländischer Künstlerverein” (Patriotic Artist’s Association), the second volume of which contained the 50 “other” variations by the remaining composers! Since then the world has all but ignored the efforts of all of these but Beethoven’s, on behalf of the publisher’s modest but fruitful little creation.

Where Schindler did seem to “get it right”, in the view of most commentators, was in his remark that the composition of this work ‘amused Beethoven to a rare degree’, that it was written ‘in a rosy mood’, and that it was ‘bubbling with unusual humour’. Alfred Brendel, whose thoughts concerning the work Michael Houstoun frequently quotes in his fascinating notes reproduced in Rattle’s booklet, elsewhere cites another commentator, Wilhelm Von Lenz, a somewhat more reliable biographer than the enthusiastic but over-imaginative Schindler, Lenz calling Beethoven “the most thoroughly initiated high priest of humour” and the variations “a satire on their theme”.

To Brendel’s assertion that the “Diabellis” are “the greatest of all piano works”, Houstoun responds that he has “no argument” with such a view, and that the only comparable work in keyboard literature could be JS Bach’s “Goldberg Variations”. Houstoun comments further that for him, the “Goldbergs” deal with spiritual certainty, whereas with Beethoven’s work, all such boundaries are challenged. He makes the analogy of Beethoven trying to “punch holes in the very fabric of the cosmos” with this work, which seems to me another way of saying that the composer is taking nothing for granted, and wants to see if there’s something else beyond normal human perception.

The Rattle booklet as well contains Houstoun’s own thoughts on each of the variations, which to me seems an invaluable insight into how the pianist views not only the music as a whole, but the function of each of its parts – we are taken into the workshop of recreation, as it were, and given the chance to experience for ourselves how the interpreter’s thoughts and words relate to his delivery of the music.

To my ears Houstoun succeeds brilliantly in “making the word flesh” so to speak. With playing less “nuanced” throughout than is the case with some pianists’ I’ve heard, he gives his listeners a strongly direct reading of the music, enabling us to get to grips with the notes quickly, rather than us having to first get to grips with the interpreter’s playing of some of them! I think he’s also suggesting that we, as listeners, have to do some work ourselves on the huge range of possibilities the music is giving to us. An active, creative kind of listening rather than a passive, “washing over one” response is required, though Beethoven’s quixotic humour certainly helps keep one in thrall!

Having applied brushstrokes of wit, charm, excitement and thoughtfulness to his realisations of most of the pieces, Houstoun, with wonderful surety, then tackles the radically different world of the final five Variations, opening up realms of intensity which transcend what we’ve so far heard. The first of the group of three C Minor pieces prepares us for what follows, as the music gradually descends to the depths of sorrow and loneliness within a sound-world resembling that of the slow movement of the “Hammerklavier”, the Bach-like No.31 described by the pianist as “a searching lament” and given the title “beacon of sorrow”. After plumbing these depths, Houstoun then electrifies us with his playing of a briliant Handelian double-fugue, NOT, as an applause-garnering conclusion, but a monumental release of energy leading to Beethoven’s greatest “surprise” of all in this work – a finale in the form of a Minuet, here patiently and sublimely realised by the pianist, in his own words, “the perfect endless ending”, the music moving like planets slowly circling the sun, with cosmic, god-like serenity.

If you already have Michael Houstoun’s Rattle set of the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas, you will want this disc as an essential companion – and if you don’t have any of Houstoun’s Beethoven, then what better entry-point could you have than this, arguably the pianist’s finest single Beethoven recording? In a world already replete with recorded performances of this work, Houstoun’s can proudly take its place as one of the most strongly-focused and beautifully recorded – altogether, a most satisfying issue!

Alexander Gavrylyuk – transcendental pianism at Waikanae

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Alexander Gavrylyuk at Waikanae
JS BACH (trans.Busoni) Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
HAYDN – Keyboard Sonata in B Minor (No.47) Hob. XVI:32
CHOPIN – Etudes Op.10 – Nos. 3, 8, 9, 10, 11, & 12
SCRIABIN – Piano Sonata No. 5 Op.53
RACHMANINOV – Preludes Op.23 Nos 1, 5 / Op.32 No.12
RACHMANINOV – Piano Sonata No 2 Op.36 (1931)

Alexander Gavrylyuk (piano)
Memorial Hall, Waikanae

Sunday 22nd October, 2017

I reviewed Alexandre Gavrylyuk’s astounding recital at Waikanae last year, reflecting on that occasion, on the pianist’s ability to enchant his listeners with every note, and in doing so, display a Sviatoslav Richter-like capacity to invest each sound with a kind of “centre of being” which suggests that the interpreter has gotten right to the heart of what the music means. Last time, it was the very first note of the Schubert A Major Sonata D.664 which straightaway held me in thrall (https://middle-c.org/2016/05/11403/May) – this time round, the shock of the first item’s opening was palpable in the hall, Gavrylyuk galvanising sensibilities near and far with the opening of Feruccio Busoni’s transcription of JS Bach’s D Minor Toccata and Fugue BWV 565.

I had heard Busoni’s transcription of this work before in concert, and remember being disappointed on that occasion by what seemed to be the limited range and scope of Busoni’s realisation compared with the original – such wasn’t the case here, as Gavrylyuk’s playing seemed to take us as far as was physically possible on the piano towards the sheer impact of the organ’s power and majesty. An organist friend of mine afterwards said that it wasn’t quite the same as experiencing the thrill of those massive organ sonorities – to which I was tempted to respond (but thought better of it!) with the remark that what the pianist was missing was a cloak and a mask covering half of his face! On reflection, though, I’m glad I stuck to musical considerations!

Truth to tell, Gavrylyuk needed neither cloak nor mask to convey the music’s splendour – and (perhaps because I wasn’t an organist) I didn’t think he even needed the organ! Certainly I was thrilled to at last encounter a performance that realised something of the transcription’s evocation of the original’s glory. In fact Gavrylyuk’s playing gave us ample sense of the music’s huge sonorities in pianistic terms, while achieving a transparency of articulation often clouded by the organ’s resonances. The pianist seemed to put all of his physical weight into the Prelude’s concluding chords, and hang onto the resulting resonances for dear life, keeping us transfixed by his and the music’s alchemic power.

He then began the fugue quietly and serenely – as if a vision had appeared in the midst of the tumult. The fugal voices took on such character, each voice having a kind of eloquence suggesting the transcriber’s complete identification with the spirit of the original. Each of the sequences had both momentum and flexibility, with the pianist’s through-line giving us a real sense of “journeying”, at once taking in every detail while keeping a sense of purpose about the whole. I thought the dynamic range employed by Gavrylyuk along the journey astonishing – thunderous footsteps set against sonorous whisperings, and a gamut of eloquence in between. The whole was built up to a peroration of extraordinary power and elaboration, concluding the work with huge, properly “crashing’ chords, whose lingering aftermath stunned our responses for some time to come.

What better antidote (for all the right reasons) to such massiveness was the music of Haydn, which Gavrylyuk slyly and mischievously then set into play, rather like letting a mouse loose to scamper around and over the body of a now-sleeping elephant! Such was the pianist’s focus, we were soon transported into this new creature’s sound-world, the music of this B Minor Sonata slowly but surely adjusting its size-scale, moving from sly mischief to playfulness with the warmer, confident major chordings mid-exposition, the whole reinforced by the repeat. We then heard from the pianist in the development a miracle of fluidity between assertive and meltingly beautiful playing, Haydn’s genius being recreated for us by another like-minded genius of the keyboard. Nowhere was Gavrylyuk afraid to differently emphasise detail when revisited, reinforcing a sense of the music being created for us there and then, for our pleasure.

The Menuet was at first all exquisute grace and sensibiity, the pianist weaving gossamer threads into a pattern,taking care not to break any of the strands – then, with the Trio things became darker and more robust, geniality of a more forthright kind, with a dissonant sound or three thrown in for good measure (the right-hand ostinati clashing with the left-hand figurations), a mood which lightened once again at the opening’s return. The finale’s Presto marking brought playing from Gavrylyuk one associates with those pianola rolls made by “greats” such as Josef Lhevinne, Leopold Godowsky, Sergei Rachmaninov and Moritz Rosenthal – all feathery brilliance and rapid-fire octaves, before plunging back into a repeat! Then, after wowing us with this “do you want to see that again?” gesture, the pianist suddenly drew the music back, and with a few knowing looks and quiet gestures, packed it all away in a box – and it was all over! – one imagined the shade of Haydn allowing the ghost of a smile to warm its features at both Gavrylyuk’s playing and our bemusement.

I’d recently been listening to some recordings of Chopin’s etudes, so was more than usually ‘attuned” to them on this occasion – Gavrylyuk had chosen six from the composer’s first of two sets, his Op.10, begin with No.3 in E Major, a piece whose opening melody has been used innumerable times in different arrangements over the years – to my surprise the pianist played the melody “straight”, without any broadening at the climaxes first time through, then began the middle section softly, building up its intensities with ever-increasing power, before playing the lead-back to the beginning with the same simplicity as was delivered the opening. This time Gavrylyuk allowed the famous melody more space and ambience, drawing more poetry from it without ever resorting to sentimentality.

The pianist’s wonderful fleet-of-finger skills dazzled us in the F Major No.8 Etude, the right hand the elusive butterfly, the left hand the sober, serious plodder trying vainly to maintain contact on ground level, everything played with wonderful freedom and independence of hands. Such filigree brilliance played no part in the F Minor Study No.9 that followed – here the energies were intense and driven by the pianist, a throbbing, agitated base pursuing a fugitive melody, one which occasionally sent up beacons of light as signals of distress, urgently-repeated notes which eventually fell back into the midst of a frisson of quietly-despairing figurations.

No.10 in A-flat Major, despite looking and sounding fiendishly difficult, was given a compelling ebb and flow of feeling and tension, Gavrylyuk proving he was human after all by dropping a couple of right-hand notes in the flurry of decoration at the end of the middle section. However, it seemed that, whatever the music’s diffculties, the pianist seemed to relish the prospect of engaging with every note of it – both here and in the opening of Etude No 11 in E-flat Major Gavrylyuk conveyed both a sense of rapturous anticipation and intoxicated delight at doing what he was doing, the E-flat Major’s arpeggiations exquisitely timed and beautifully varied in emphasis and shading. And so to the notorious C Minor “Revolutionary” Etude, the last of the set, with its right-handed thematic lacerations (every phrase like a dagger plunged into a beating heart) yoked with the left hand’s rapid runs and frequent turns, a rushing, agitated torrent, but here given frequent changes of emphasis and colour by way of a narrative, one involving conflict, heroism and, at the piece’s conclusion, defiance even in defeat and disillusionment.

If what we’d heard thus far was ample food for thought, our capacities were fully extended by the recital’s second half, Gavrylyuk giving us in broadbrush-stroke terms as beautifully-contrived an assemblage here, with similar kinds of ebb-and-flow. As with the Bach transcription in the first half, the Scriabin Sonata’s opening straightaway sent an electric thrill through the hall, the pianist’s physical attack riveting our sensibilities and holding us in thrall for all that was to follow. The composer called this, his Fifth Sonata, “a big poem for piano”, and we certainly got from Gavrylyuk a most dramatic reading of its essential qualities – demonic energies set against withdrawn mysticism, physical bravado contrasted with intensely poetic feeling, and grinding dissonance relieved by moments of intense, simple loveliness. Gavrylyuk’s astonishing technique took us on the music’s somewhat hair-raising rife to the abyss’s edge, before suddenly returning us to a state of wide-eyed wonderment at some intense fragility, some passing embodiment of beauty. Always was a sense conveyed of the music trying to reach out to something ineffable, either through beauty of utterance or madcap humour or physicality marked by extremes of exhilaration/desperation. Where we were being taken to through the composer’s assemblage of self -absorbed enchantments was anybody’s guess until the music’s final declamations, Gavrylyuk gathering up all of his energies, and hurtling up the keyboard towards a zenith of spent realisation, marked with a flamboyant gesture of finality – we loved him for it!

At first it would seem that the music of Scriabin’s exact contemporary Rachmaninov might here, in comparison, pale in impact and eloquence – but Gavrylyuk’s scheme of following something cataclysmic with its antithesis worked beautifully, here, with his playing of the first of the latter composer’s Op.23 Preludes, music that powerfully spoke of simple, deep-seated emotions, bringing us down-to-earth once more in the wake of Scriabin’s cosmic galivantings! The pianist opened up the music’s vistas unerringly towards what Rachmaninov called in every piece of music “the point”, that moment to which all before it led and from which all fell away from, for him a defining characteristic in both his own playing and his composing. Gavrylyuk seemed to understand this, taking us to such a moment where the piece’s obsessive figurations reached their “moment” before allowing the tensions to slowly unwind, taking their time as part of the experience.

The well-known No.5 in G Minor, marked “Alla marcia” was played by Gavrylyuk less as a march and more of a scherzo-like dance, with occasional impulsive thrusts both of dynamics and phrasings, a volatile, even “dangerous” reading, not unlike the composer’s own. The “trio” section featured dark, swirling waters, with both treble and “alto” melodies strongly-etched, and darkly counterpointed – the reprise of the opening rhythm was built up with rapid purpose, the music growing more and more menace-laden with every phrase – so orchestral in effect! At the end I was glad that Gavrylyuk played the composer’s original throwaway ending, without the emphatic G minor chord that he later added (and recorded!).

From Rachmaninov’s later (Op.32) set of Preludes, Gavrylyuk gave us No.12 in the more remote key of G-sharp Minor. This was music which scintillated sharply and coldly at the outset, the pianist displaying razor-sharp responses to the bleakly-atmospheric texures, and the unforgiving, almost Dante-esque fatalism of the music, the theme a declamation of something like a Slavic equivalent of the portal-phrase “Abandon hope all ye who enter here”, grim and gloom-laden music.

Right from the beginning of the recital’s final work, Rachmaninov’s Second PIano Sonata in B-flat Op.36, it seemed as if a “battle of the titans” was being enacted in Alexander Gavrylyuk’s hands, between Rachmaninov’s and Scriabin’s music – the Sonata’s opening threw down a jagged and confrontational Sonata’s earlier with the Scriabin – however such considerations were soon put aside as we became caught up in the web and waft of the music’s progress, here majestic and monumnetal, there volatile and angular, and working with the same building-blocks of sound shaped and moulded in countless different ways. Before the lyrical second subject arrived we heard it resounding in the figurations, growing out of the previous material – Gavrylyuk played it so touchingly, like a thing of great fragility – “A world in a grain of sand” as William Blake wrote. After flowering and rhapsodising, it was taken along with a tremendous rhythmic thrust towards a more agitated, scherzo-like world, Gavrylyuk building up the agitations to the strength of cascading church bells – fantastic! The pianist gave the music all the time in the world to breathe, its extension of the lyrical material so tender, filled with the composer’s characteristic “endless melody” , here and there reminiscent of Enrique Granados’s “The Lover and The Nightingale” in places.

But with what explosive energies the music came to life with in Gavrylyuk’s hands once again – the pianist took the music’s raw power and flung it across the vistas, varying strength with dizzying dexterity in places, then, going with the work’s amazing all-encompassing variations of mood, again bringing out a more lyrical and ruminative sequence before returning to the attack – how much more this music is “conflicted” than Rachmaninov’s large-scale works of the previous decade, the Third Piano Concerto and the Second Symphony. Gavrylyuk took us through the conficts and agitations towards the grandeur of the work’s last few pages with the ardour of a foot soldier and the surety of a general. It was as stunning a display of all-encompassing musicianship as any I’ve ever had the good fortune to witness.

NZ Opera’s Kátya Kabanová packs a punch at the St.James in Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand Opera presents:
KÁTYA KABANOVÁ
Opera in Three Acts by Leoš Janáček

Cast: Kátya Kabanová – Dina Kuznetsova
Boris – Angus Wood
Dikój – Conal Coad
Kabanicha – Margaret Medlyn
Tichon – Andrew Glover
Kudrjas – James Benjamin Rodgers
Varvara – Hayley Sugars
Kuligin – Robert Tucker
Glasha – Emma Sloman
Feklusha – Linden Loader

Conductor: Wyn Davies
Director: Patrick Nolan
Assistant Director : Jacqueline Coats
Designer: Genevieve Blanchett
Lighting: Mark Howett
Chorus Director: Michael Vinten

Freemasons Chorus
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

St.James Theatre, Wellington
Saturday 7th October, 2017

(from Thursday 12th to Saturday 14th October)

Janáček wrote to his long-time, would-be amour Kamila Stösslova about his leading character in the new opera he was planning, in 1920 – “The main character there is a woman, so gentle by nature…..a breeze would carry her away, let alone the storm that breaks over her….” This was Kátya Kabanová, or Káťa Kabanová as the Czech spelling has it, the first of three operas whereby the composer sublimated his passion for Stösslova, a young married woman thirty-eight years his junior, portraying her in different idealised ways in each work. Here as Kátya, she was a woman possessed by “great measureless love”, while in The Cunning Little Vixen, the heroine was a resourceful and self-sacrificing wife and mother – and lastly, in The Makropoulos Affair she was a glamorous 300 year-old woman in the grip of an enchantment which had brought her many lovers, but whose spell was about to lose its power and bring her life to its end, resigning her to her fate.

Kátya was based on a play by the Russian Alexander Ostrovsky, The Thunderstorm, which Janáček himself had not seen performed, but being an ardent Russophile was an admirer of writers such as Gogol and Tolstoy (and had already used the work of each of these as inspiration for his own compositions). He was particularly attracted to the character of Katerina in the play, a woman who embodied exceptional goodness of spirit and sensitivity, but was locked into loveless circumstances from which she struggled to escape, a conflict which eventually claimed her own life through guilt and remorse resulting from her own actions. Powerful stuff!

Though not highlighted as such by Janáček, the storm scene that gave Ostrovsky’s play its name was suitably apocalyptic in the opera as well – here, it marked Kátya ‘s breakdown as, overwhelmed by her sense of having irrevocably sinned, she despairingly confesses to her adultery in front of her husband and family and the townspeople, at the thunderstorm’s height. Kátya does have allies, Varvara, her younger sister-in-law (though a foster-child), and the latter’s lover, Kudrjas, a neighbour, though both are simply too preoccupied with one another to give her proper support. But while the domineering Kabanicha (her mother-in-law) is unkindly disposed towards Kátya, and both Tichon her husband and Boris her lover are weak, vacillating men (Tichon subservient to his mother and Boris to his uncle, the merchant Dikój), Kátya’s ultimate undoing is her own sensibility and its fatal interaction with religion-induced guilt and small-town hypocrisies – a world that a contemporary critic had called, in Ostrovsky’s original work, the “realm of darkness”.

At the outset I thought this NZ Opera production’s setting, in rural America (this was a production imported from Seattle Opera), somewhat incongruous in tandem with the sounds of the Czech language being sung, and found the prominently-displayed “stars-and-stripes” and the stage-dominating archetypal white picket fence almost crude and repellent (was the former a none-too-subliminal “Make NZ Opera great again!” message?) – but, in view of those recent populist-driven events in the United States, all too indicative of the upsurge of a contemporary “realm of darkness” as dangerous as any in the past, it all began to make sense as the net began to tighten its inexorable grip on the heroine, putting her salvation beyond earthly reach.

With the opera’s advancement the production seemed to me to shed its parochial blatancies and take us more undistractedly into universal human behaviours, though of the characters only Kátya seemed to grow as a human being – even Kurdrjas’s and Varvara’s decision to elope, made at the height of Kátya’s torment is treated lightly by the couple, more like a holiday than a radical change of direction – “Here’s to a new life, then – and fun!” sings Varvara (and I’m almost certain I heard Kudrjas sing “V Moskvu matičku?” (To Moscow, then?) – though to be fair, it might have been the name of a similar-sounding American city, sung with a Czech accent!).

For the rest, life goes on – Kátya’s husband Tichon remains in thrall to his unrepentant mother, the Kabanicha; and her lover, Boris, having abandoned Kátya to her fate, is sent out of sight and out of mind by his tyrannical, God-fearing uncle, Dikój, (in Janáček’s libretto, to work in Siberia! – though I wasn’t paying enough attention to the surtitles to pick up any further geographical incongruity!). Only Kátya is truly affected, in fact transfigured – but at the cost of her own life. For her, a happy release, perhaps – but for we in the audience, a disturbing human tragedy.

As Kátya, Russian-American soprano Dina Kuznetsova grew on me – at the very beginning she seemed disconcertingly middle-aged, even matronly in appearance, an impression which confused my expectation of her being as a “young wife” to Tichon, her husband. However, as the scenes unfolded, Kuznetsova’s portrayal gathered more and more youthful energy – her impulsive fancies, which she at first expressed to Varvara as wanting freedom to “fly like a bird”, were skilfully metamorphosed into candid revelations of suppressed sexual desires – her descriptions of someone whispering to her at night in her dreams, “like a dove cooing” were very beautifully and tremulously released, conveying desire and guilt at one and the same time with a convincing amalgam of confusion, ecstasy and compulsiveness.

With her husband, Tichon, about to leave on a business trip, her pleas for assurance and strength of response from him were pitiful in their desperation, accentuated by Tichon’s bewilderment at her emotional display, and his dismissive, ineffectual responses, to the point where Kátya’s “goodbye” to him had the air of a kind of death-knell to their marriage. By this time, Kuznetsova had fully “brought us in” to the heroine’s desperate state of being, so that we were practically “willing” her to take up the equally impulsive Varvara’s “setting up” of Dikój’s nephew Boris, by her giving Katya a spare key to the house, allowing her free access to her would-be swain!

Janáček’s music in the subsequent scene for two sets of lovers beautifully contrasted Kátya’s depth of emotion in the throes of her desperation with that written for Kudrjas and Varvara, the younger pair’s exchanges more “folksy” and carefree (echoes of Puccini’s “La Boheme” in places!). For me, this was, as well, the scene where the production “threw open” the opera’s vistas, with backdrops of stars and naturalistic ambiences giving the human interactions a universality all the more telling for its delayed release.

Act Three featured the thunderstorm and Kátya’s subsequent confession, transfiguration and death – throughout, Dina Kunetsova demonstrated just why her performance was a must-see, in every way imbuing the repressed character presented in the opera’s opening scene with desperate, recklessly courageous and open-hearted honesty of expression. The grim, tight-lipped responses of everybody else to the situation and its outcomes were thus exposed as caricatures of human behaviour, and the characters themselves also as casualties of existence, in a completely different way.

Kátya’s allies, Kudrjas and Varvara, were splendidly brought to life by James Benjamin Rodgers and Hayley Sugars, each capturing a distinctive interpretative quality in voice and manner, Kudrjas both a nature-poet, marvelling at the beauties of the passing river, and a man of science, explaining to the bullish merchant Dikój about lightning-rods during the storm – and then Varvara, the Kabanov’s “foster-child” (Ostrovsky’s play had her as Tichon’s sister), and therefore a kind of “outsider”who’s obviously something of a “free” spirit, judging by her encouragement of Kátya to pursue her affair with Boris, and her ready acquiescence with Kudrjas’s “elopement” plan!

Angus Wood as the attractive but self-absorbed Boris conveyed just the right mix of bravado and self-pity regarding his situation to his friend Kudrjas at the work’s beginning, leaving us ambivalent regarding how “true” and “constant” his feelings for Kátya might prove. An ardent lover of Kátya during their garden scene, his protestations were nullified by his subsequent passive, weak-willed reactions to her overwhelming distress, his farewell words to her “What sorrow parting is! – What sorrow for me!” underlining his self-centredness.

On the face of things, the ghoulish pair of the Kabanicha (Kátya’s mother-in-law, played by Margaret Medlyn), and her weak, hen-pecked son, Tichon (Andrew Glover) was largely responsible for Kátya’s life being such a misery, the Kabanicha demanding absolute loyalty and affection from her son at her daughter-in-law’s expense, while expecting the latter to know her place and be subservient to her husband and family. Margaret Medlyn continued her success with the composer’s operatic characters begun in Jenufa with the role of the Kostelnicka, and continued here with the still more odious Kabanicha (a good thing she has in other repertoire undertaken more likeable characters!). Here she epitomised utter ruthlessness, as exemplified by her final cynical dismissal of the onlookers after Kátya’s body is recovered from the river. Her near-complete absorbtion of her son Tichon’s affections is grotesquely echoed in her holding in thrall the otherwise dominating bully Dikój, like a duchess exercising control over her fiefdom!

Where Andrew Glover’s Tichon brilliantly epitomised emasculation with uncomfortable veracity, Conal Coad’s convincingly larger-than-life Dikój was all outward macho aggressiveness (except in the presence of the Kabanicha, who became like his “confessor”). Each of these three characters made up a chilling component of that “realm of darkness” previously referred to, which Kátya sacrificed her life in trying to escape. The other players in the drama, Glasha (Emma Sloman), Kuligin (Robert Tucker), and Felushka (Linden Loader) nicely characterised their brief pre-ordained roles as pieces in this same rigorously-wrought social structure, as did the various members of the Freemasons’ Chorus with their on-the-spot presence in the drama’s framing scenes.

It’s Janáček’s music as much as the dramatic action and the stage characterisations which make the opera such a vivid experience, though – and Music Director Wyn Davies and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra demonstrated with great skill and sure dramatic instinct the score’s powerfully-wrought amalgam of lyricism and dramatic force. From the opera’s Prelude it was Kátya’s music that dominated, all the other characters to an extent drawn into her phrases and themes in a way that reflected their interaction. Whether impulsive (Kátya’s confession to Varvara of sexual longings), repressive (the Kabanicha’s bullying of Kátya via her son Tichon), or despairing (Kátya’s confessing of her “sins” to the whole company), the character of the music held sway, the composer managing to encompass both voices and instruments in a full-blooded panoply of intensities that wrung out the emotions in no uncertain terms – and the players of the NZSO were more than up to the task of rendering their part in the whole with distinction.

As I’ve previously indicated, it was a production that, to me, made increasing sense and gathered weight and pace as it progressed – from Act Two’s Garden scene, and right throughout Act Three, with its thunderstorm, Kátya’s final meeting with Boris, and her suicide, the atmosphere seemed at once to throw open the vistas while tightening the dramatic grip almost to breaking-point – those starlit skies of Kátya’s vision alternated with images of the river’s brooding menace in the wake of the frightening thunderstorm served the drama well, and paid tribute to the abilities of the creative team, director Patrick Nolan and his assistant, Jacqueline Coats, along with designer Genevieve Blanchett and the skilfully-applied lighting of Mark Howett.

Kátya Kabanová has but two days to run at Wellington’s St.James Theatre at the time of my writing this review – it’s great music and theatre, which this production delivers with compelling force and surety.

China/New Zealand Ode to the Moon concert with a radiant Aroha Quartet

Posted on by Peter Mechen

China Cultural Centre in New Zealand presents:
ODE TO THE MOON
Celebration of the 2017 Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival

Music by A.Ke-Jian, Zheng De-Ren, Ding Shan-De, David Farquhar,
Zhou Long, Bao Yuan-Kai, Huang Kiao Zhi, Anthony Ritchie,
Shi Yong-Kang and Zu Jian-Er

The Aroha Quartet
Haihong Lu and Ursula Evans (violins)
Zhongxian Jin (viola), Robert Ibell (‘cello)

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

Sunday October 1st, 2017

This was one of those concerts that, had I been an ordinary audience member I would have looked forward to immensely! However, being a reviewer and facing the prospect of commenting on a genre of music about which I knew very little, I felt a mixture of excitement and trepidation about what I might encounter! As it turned out I need not have worried, as the music written and arranged by the Chinese composers listed above possessed strength, energy and beauty as I could easily relate to – the sounds communicated to my ears something essentially meaningful, however “unfamiliar” the actual pieces themselves might have been.

Of course the music was refracted here through the medium of the string quartet, one wholly familiar and identifiable to my ears. Having said this, I was amazed by the extent to which the instrumental timbres were made by the players to sound exotic, especially those conjured up by the quartet’s leader, violinist Haihong Lu, whose instrument at times sounded thoroughly “folk-traditional”, not at all like the tones and timbres of a conventional violin.

The programme began with an adaptation of a folk-melody by composer A Ke-Jian and jazz musician Zheng De-Ren into a Song of Emancipation given the title “Fan Shen Dao Qing”, here a forthright and energetic statement of bold intent, its direct and vigorous manner not unlike that of Dvorak in some of his chamber pieces. The piece included a contrasting “slow” middle section, notable for the instruments’ used of “slides” between notes, creating to my ears a wondrously exotic character, while the return to a more vigorous manner included a lovely “dancing on tip-toe” effect, and a brief valedictory sequence with folksy violin to the fore once again, the whole concluding with an exciting stretto.

The life of Hua Yan-Jun, or “A-Bing” as he was known to his family, seems like the stuff of racy novels, albeit with a tragic, premature conclusion due to ill health. Regarded as one of the most important Chinese musicians of the 20th Century, his legacy includes a work for erhu (a Chinese two-stringed fiddle) “Reflection of the moon in the Er-quan spring”, which has become one of the most-loved pieces of Chinese music, arranged for many combinations of instruments. The Aroha played a quartet arrangment made by Ding Shan-De, a prominent composer and pianist who studied at the Paris Conservatoire and afterwards taught at the Shanghai Conservatory.

The arrangement by Ding Shan-De gave all of the instruments opportunities to express their characteristics, the violins playing very much in the Chinese style, a mournfully affecting, lump-in-the throat-inducing effect, as befitted the music’s nature, for me – a kind of lament / prayer / invocation expressing in music the beauties of the moon’s interaction with the waters of a spring amid life’s joys and tragedies.

Though whole worlds apart in style and content, David Farquhar’s “Ring Round the Moon” music seemed to fit like a glove in this company. As was the previous piece to its composer, Hua Yan-Jun, Farquhar’s is easily his best-known work, its genesis a commission by the New Zealand Players for their 1953 production of Jean Anouilh/Christopher Fry’s play “Ring Round the Moon”. Though what the quartet played for us was described as a “Waltz Suite” only two of the three movements could have been characterised thus, as the concluding “finale” was a boisterous galop! Each of the other movements was also “quick”, which denied us an effective contrast during the course of this otherwise attractive music – a pity we weren’t treated to at least one of the two beautiful slow waltzes from the full work. Incidentally I’ve not been able to find details of which movements Farquhar used in his versions of either the complete “Waltz Suite” or in his transcription for strings commissioned by Nova Strings in 1989.

Evoking reminiscences of Anatoly Liadov’s “Eight Russian Folk Songs”, the next item gave us a comparable overview of Chinese folk-music from the composer Zhou Long, in the form of his “Eight Chinese Folk Songs”, published in 2002. Having completed both traditional Chinese and formal music studies at Beijing University the composer then relocated to the United States, there continuing to write and arrange music in the traditional Chinese style for both folk- and western instruments, and promoting performances of this repertoire. He currently works as Professor of Composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

I was taken by the emotional range of this music, almost Janacek-like in places in its direct, heartfelt use of the instruments’ full capacities, the opening of the first song “Lan hua-hua” demonstrating the sweep of feeling across vistas of anxiety, loneliness and grim determination, the original work concerning a girl escaping from an arranged marriage to be with the man she really loves.

Each of the song arrangements delivered a similar kind of strength and focus, while covering a wide range of human activity. The music abounded both in exquisite detailings as well as broader sweeping gestures – the second song, “Driving the mule team”, demonstrated, for instance, the composer’s exceptional ear for evocative rhythms in its combination of arco and pizzicato scoring, the resulting textures mimicking the sounds of the team’s harness bells.
The third song “The flowing stream” readily depicted a watery delicacy as a backdrop to what was originally a love song, while the fourth song “Jasmine flower”contrasted the rhythm of the dance with the performer’s awareness of the jasmine’s scent in the music’s more contemplative sequences. The remaining four songs continued with these kinds of evocations, mingling the ordinary with the fabulous in delightful and sometimes unexpected ways, as witness the hearty shouts of the quartet members-cum-herdsmen in the final jaunty “A horseherd’s mountain song”.

The programme’s second half again judiciously presented a New Zealand work amid music by Chinese composers, with the same resonantly positive outcomes. Three arrangements of traditional songs from various parts of China came first, followed by a depiction of an iconic New Zealand landscape via the music of Anthony Ritchie, a work evoking the countryside around Lake Wakatipu. The scheuled programme then concluded with an arrangement of music from a work called “The White-Haired Girl” – music originally cast in operatic form in 1945 before being reworked as a ballet, in which guise it has achieved the most popularity. This adaptation was the work of Shi Yong-Kang and Zhu Jian-Er, completed in 1972 at the time of American President Richard Nixon’s ground-breaking visit to China.

The three folk-song arrangements were played without a break – the first, poignantly called ‘Little Cabbage” actually enshrined a pitiable lament of a child (some sources say a girl, others a boy) who was ill-treated by her/his stepmother, and longed to be reunited with her/his mother. The music was appropriately wistful and played with great feeling (beautiful solos for both violin and viola) with an exquisite passage in thirds for both violins, with pizzicato accompaniment from the lower instruments. The second, “Camel Bell”, featured a great variety of exchange and dovetailing between the instruments to a jogtrot rhythm, in places freely modulating, the effect rather like a rapid-fire theme and variations treatment – as promised by the group’s second violinist, Ursula Evans, who introduced the group of pieces, we heard the actual “camel bell” at the end played softly on her instrument. The final song, “Happy Harvest” delivered what its title promised, after a “ready – steady – go!” kind of beginning – headlong tempi, real hoedown stuff, contrast brought about by an almost sentimental, more reflective section, in which the gestures reminded me of ritualistic happenings, with the instruments having turns to lead, and sliding notes of the most expressive kind figuring largely. A return to the stamping rhythms then brought about an appropriately bountiful conclusion!

Anthony Ritchie’s work “Whakatipua” came next, a single-movement work whose slow-fast-slow structure set the scene at the piece’s beginning – music of open, isolated spaces, with an almost lullabic character conveying a sense of nostalgia. Rather more matter-of-fact by contrast was a descending phrase heard at the outset and then returned to, suggesting a certain degree of depth and solidity, something enduring over time. A more active, urgent spirit awoke within the music, throbbing viola notes bringing ready responses from the other instruments, outdoor, angular figurations breathing copious draughts of fresh air, the sounds not unlike Douglas Lilburn’s “Drysdale” Overture in overall feeling. After the running exchanges between instruments had worked off some of the music’s energies, I liked the way in which everything gradually settled back into the serenity and spaciousness of the landscape, re-establishing a sense of isolation and distance (was that a hint of the erhu in one of Haihong Liu’s phrases?), the long-held notes at the end gradually dissolving into memory.

The final work on the programme carried with it something of a history, having been first set as an opera, then adapted to being a ballet, and in that form achieving classic status in China. This was a piece titled “The White-Haired Girl”, the story depicting the bravery and fortitude of a young girl who triumphs over adversity in difficult times. The music shared some thematic material with the folk-melody, “Little Cabbage”, which we heard earlier in the concert, and which link was demonstrated by one of the players.

A strong, forceful opening, achieved by vigorous bowing from the quartet members, opened the piece, followed almost immediately by a lyrical romantic theme, perhaps one which characterised the girl in the story, Xi’er. It was but one of many attractive, lyrical themes which provided a foil for subsequent sequences depicting conflict and struggle, the music making determined efforts to win through adversity through vigorous action – all very like Tchaikovsky in its heart-on-sleeve emotion, and requiring full-blooded responses from all four musicians! None were found wanting, as the piece took both players and audience through a gamut of feeling, the music freely ranging from hushed expectation to grand declamation at the piece’s end, rounded off by a brilliant running finish!

As if the players hadn’t given their all, they chose to entertain us with a stunningly brilliant encore which, to my ears sounded like gypsy music with eastern influences, something which I thought somebody like the Roumanian composer Enescu might have written, inspired by folk-themes depicting the utmost in visceral excitement. I subsequently found out that the piece (called Sa Li Ha, a girl’s name) was connected with Kazakhstan ethnic groups of the Xingjiang Uyghur Autonymous Region in northwest China. My informant told me I had been on the right track, but needed to go a little further eastwards! Still, the most important thing was what I thought of it all as music – to which I could reply unequivocally, “What a piece, and what a performance!”

Orpheus Choir sets Wellington Cathedral alight with vibrancy, in Mozart and Faure

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Orpheus Choir of Wellington presents:
MOZART – Mass in C Major KV 220 (196b)*
FAURE – Requiem Op.48

Lisa Harper-Brown (soprano)
Alexandra Woodhouse Appleby (alto)*
Giancarlo Lisi (tenor)*
James Clayton (bass)

Richard Apperley (organ)
Orpheus Choir of Wellington
Brent Stewart (Music Director)

Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul
Molesworth St., Wellington

Saturday, 30th September, 2017

Orpheus Choir Music Director Brent Stewart announced at the concert’s beginning that the evening’s performances were dedicated by the choir to the memory of Professor Peter Godfrey, who had died a couple of days previously on September 28th. Regarded by many as the”father” of New Zealand choral music, Godfrey was closely associated with both Wellington Cathedral as Director of Music during the years 1983-89, and with the Orpheus Choir as its Director from 1984 to 1991.

Appropriate though the Faure Requiem turned out to be for such an occasion, the work would have been something of a drawcard for concertgoers in any case, the organisers having enjoyed the great satisfaction of declaring the concert a “sell-out” a day or so before. But of course, this distinction was genuinely deserved, as the Requiem is one of the world’s most beautiful and best-loved choral works. Its companion on this occasion was a Mozart Mass intriguingly titled the “Sparrow Mass” on account of its chirping accompaniments during parts of the Sanctus.

Brent Stewart got a delighted reaction from his listeners when he made the declaration that we in the Cathedral made up “the largest audience EVER to witness a performance of Mozart’s “Sparrow Mass” in public”. Interestingly, the work was one I knew well, as I’d sung in a performance in Palmerston North as a student, many years ago (I found myself humming the bass parts of the “Sanctus” as the music tripped along, and marvelling how I seemed to remember them in particular as the music unfolded). Though I didn’t remember much of the rest of the work in the same hands-on manner, I thought this performance brought out the singers’ engagement with the notes and texts, the opening “Kyrie eleison” most satisfyingly stirring the blood with the choir’s beautifully-graded dynamic levels most richly and directly explored.

I didn’t remember from that previous experience of the work the cantor-like openings of both the “Gloria” and the “Credo”, with bass-baritone James Clayton filling the role in both instances. In the Gloria, it was difficult to clearly hear the soloists, as if the single voices were still battling to be heard amid lingering resonances from the full choir. I sadly fear that those resonances were the building’s own, and they couldn’t help but colour and refract both large and small interactions between voices. Having little idea as to where the soloists would be placed beforehand I chose from the spaces available to sit on the right-hand side of the auditorium, reasonably close to the front – alas, the four soloists stood on the opposite side, with the alto, on the end, seeming very far away! Given that each had material to sing of some significance, one would have thought they would have been given a central, forward position as a counter to the “rapacious maw” of that acoustic!

What I gleaned from the solo voices’ delivery of passages such as the “Laudamus te” from the Gloria, was that their singing was in each case accurate and focused, though varying in impact. Of the tenor and alto, I thought the former, Giancarlo Lisi, had the better chance to be heard due to the tessitura of each singer’s line, the alto’s part seeming to give Alexandra Woodhouse Appleby fewer chances to “sing out”. Both soprano Lisa Harper-Brown and bass-baritone James Clayton had stronger voices applied to brightly-registered solo lines, each able to invest their individual lines with greater clarity.

GIven the “generalising’ effects of such an acoustic, I thought that Brent Stewart and his choir produced amazingly varied dynamics and vocal textures throughout both works. Though Mozart’s work was styled as a “Missa Brevis”, there was nothing limited or small-scale about the music’s emotional range in places. A particularly telling example was during the “Et Incarnatus est” sections of the Credo, where conductor and voices conveyed such mystery and inwardness of mood compared with the outburst of joy that galvanised our sensibilities at “Et Resurrexit”.

Where the soloists were allowed greater space in which to properly “sound” their voices was in the lovely “Benedictus” part of the “Sanctus” – begun by the soprano, the dovetailing of the separate lines was winningly achieved by all, though Lisa Harper-Brown’s voice was particularly radiant. I enjoyed the voices’ rich and secure blending, marvelling as I did so how anybody could (as has been the case regarding this music) consider this to be the work of any composer other than Mozart – it seemed to me to have his unique “voice”, most especially during this beautiful interlude.

The “Agnus Dei” further demonstrated the musicians’ control of atmosphere and mood, the voices stressing the words “peccata mundi”, unequivocally depicting humanity’s self-proclaimed guilt in the throes of sin, and desperate urgency in the act of seeking forgiveness. From these dark moments came radiant hope in the form of a joyously energetic “Dona nobis pacem” – a splendid finish!

Mention must be made at this point of the superb organ-playing of Richard Apperley, here in complete control of an instrument that, despite its diminutive size seemed to pack plenty of punch, especially in its lower regions. (Most people will be aware of the Cathedral’s recent problems with its regular organ due to damage to the pipes caused by the November 2016 earthquake.) I recalled a chamber orchestra accompanying us in that performance I was involved in, all those years hence, though it didn’t seem to my ears as though much was “lost” in having an organ instead, thanks to the nimbleness and strength of the organist’s efforts throughout the first half.

I’d previously heard the Faure Requiem in concert with both organ and orchestra as the respective accompaniments, preferring the orchestra because of the colour and visceral impact given the music both in general and by various particular instruments. Coincidentally enough, I had a “performing” history with this work as well, this time as a timpanist, which of course partly explains my bias towards orchestral accompaniment! Faure himself never sanctioned an organ-only accompaniment, initially scoring the work’s instrumental forces to include harp, timpani, organ and strings, and in later amendations adding firstly horns, trumpets and bassoon, and finally a near-full complement of winds plus trombones!. He reportedly complained of a later performance that the orchestra had been “too small”, clearly wanting those colours and timbres to be heard.

In most instances involving performances of this work the prohibitive cost of hiring orchestral players would prevent choirs from programming the Requiem at all, I expect – but with organists of the calibre of Richard Apperley and Douglas Mews in Wellington, the prohibitive becomes possible with the use of organ accompaniment. As with the Mozart work, Richard Apperley’s organ-playing seemed at first to fully compensate for the orchestra’s absence, though as with other performances I’ve heard, the “Sanctus” didn’t quite come off as it always does with those wonderful, scalp-prickling horn-calls introducing the choir’s cries of “Hosanna in excelsis!”. I’ve always wanted organists to really “pull out the stops” at that point, and have never really been transported with the delight that I’m expecting, when the horns are absent. Faure was also insistent that the violins “sing out” their counterpointed melody to the choir’s opening phrases of “Sanctus” (he significantly amended the “solo violin” of the original version to a group of violins in later versions), though here, as with most of the movement’s detailings I thought the phrasings of the player amply represented the composer’s intentions.

Brent Stewart’s direction of his voices inclined more towards urgency than spaciousness in places throughout the work, creating a parallel undercurrent of tension alongside the “faith in eternal rest” and the “happy deliverance” of Faure’s own expressed intentions. The near-anguished full-throatedness of the singing in places such as “Exaudi orationem meam” kept us mindful of the intensities of human aspiration towards God, giving what I thought was a proper “edge” to the listening experience; and this fully-dynamic response to both text and music throughout made the performance a living, breathing one. This “squaring up to” the work’s occasional sequences of near-dissonant anxiety again enlivened the music at “Christe eleison”, and contrasted well with those moments of relief and relative calm in places such as the movement’s end.

I enjoyed the organ timbres – so ecclesiastically reedy and evocative! – during the introduction to the Offertory, preparing us for a series of invocations (“O Domine, Jesu Christe, Rex Gloriae”) from the choir, each more intense than the last, and superbly built up by conductor and voices! I thought the admirable James Clayton’s baritonal timbres at the “Hostias” somewhat inhibited-sounding at first (the singer was on that “other side” of the platform, which may have accounted for this, though once again I felt the acoustic “lost” some of the voice’s resonance in general), but his soft-singing towards the end was lovely. The re-entry of the choir with a repeat of “O Domine” seemed, along with the soloist’s quiet beseechings, to fully capture a sense of a plea from humanity for mercy.

When discussing the “Sanctus” above I neglected to mention a sudden lighting backdrop change, one suggesting to me some sort of of transcendent movement, a “bringing closer to God” kind of ambient progression towards a purer, more intense state of awareness, one that, if none too subtly applied, at least indicated that the music was taking us somewhere different. This continued throughout the sublime “Pie Jesu” sequence, with Lisa Harper-Brown’s truthful and accurate singing penetrating to the music’s core. I thought at first her voice not entirely “pure”, but became more and more convinced as she progressed, and especially with that “grain of humanity” which coloured her utterances entirely appropriately (more so here, in my view, than the ethereal tones of a boy soprano, which was what Faure originally had in mind, constrained by ecclesiastical edicts forbidding female singers!). Here, I thought hers a lovely, insightful performance.

From blue, the backdrops were suffused with orange, with the beginning of the “Agnus Dei” (somebody may, at some stage, explain to me the rationale, here!) – again, Brett Stewart moved the music with some urgency, voices and organ, after a lyrical opening, darkening the textures with deep, heartfelt tones, giving great and resonating emphasis to the “miserere nobis” (Have mercy on us) sentiments. After this came that remarkable sequence of downward modulations at “Lux aeterna, luceat eis”, music that seemed to come straight out of Wagner’s “Die Walkure” (Wotan’s sleep-inducing kiss on the forehead of his daughter, Brunnhilde), followed by a return to the opening “Requiem”, organ leading into the choir’s entry with strong and assertive declamations, and the choir excitingly raising its collective voice at “Et lux perpetua”, leaving the organ to finish as the movement began.

James Clayton’s singing of the portentous “Libera Me” kept something in reserve for his forceful delivery of “Dum veneris judicare” (When thou shalt come to judge), the choir’s tremulous realisation of “Tremens factus” (I tremble with fear) then leading up to the “Dies illa, dies irae” passages – the only part of Faure’s conception that approaches Verdi’s own “Requiem” in its agitation and vehemence. Here, organ and voices flung their sounds at us splendidly, the tones falling away in terror and uncertainty towards the reprise of the “Libera Me”, firstly by the choir, with an outburst of blazing supplication at “Dum veneris judicare”, then quietly pleading, along with the baritione voice, at the movement’s end.

After these projected tribulations and terrors, the balm of Faure’s overall vision reasserted itself with the concluding “In Paradisum”. Though the organ wasn’t quite as “pipy” as I would have liked, the playing kept the textures elevated, and the sopranos’ voices were simply to die for, here, with their radiant, angelic tones – so too were the richly-wrought harmonies of the remaining voices reinforcing those ethereal beauties at the very end, the choir repeating the word “Requiem” to lump-in-the-throat inducing effect.

Need I add, an appropriately sublime performance!

Breaths of fresh air – the Imani Winds hit Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand presents:
IMANI WINDS
Valerie Coleman (flute) / Toyin Spellman-Diaz (oboe)
Mark Dover (clarinet) / Jeff Scott (horn) /Monica Ellis (bassoon)

VALERIE COLEMAN – Red Clay and Mississippi Delta
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (arr. Jonathan Russell) – Scheherazade
PIAZZOLLA (arr.Jeff Scott) – Contrabajissimo
NATALIE HUNT – Snapshots (CMNZ Commission)
PAQUITO D’RIVIERA – A Farewell Mambo
SIMON SHAHEEN (arr. Jeff Scott) – Dance Mediterranea

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington,

Monday 26th September 2017

This was the New York-based ensemble Imani Winds’ first concert in New Zealand as part of a 10-venue tour organised by CMNZ. Every member of the group during their introductions for each of the concert’s items conveyed considerable pleasure and excitement at being part of this inaugural visit by the ensemble to New Zealand. They’ve come with something of a reputation for being innovative and adventurous in their programming, as well as devoting considerable energies in developing outreach and education programmes, one of which makes up part of their touring schedule in Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin, a special “Musical Journey Around the World” concert.

The ensemble has two recognised composers in its ranks, flutist Valerie Coleman and horn-player Jeff Scott, both of whose efforts figured on this evening’s programme, an original work by Valerie Coleman, “Red Clay and Mississippi Delta”, and two arrangements by Jeff Scott, firstly of Astor Piazzolla’s “Contrabajissimo” (originally a work for double-bass and jazz ensemble, here recast for bassoon and winds), and then of Simon Shaleen’s “Dance Mediterranea”. Whether originally written for an ensemble featuring the oud, a short-necked lute-like instrument, Middle-Eastern in origin, which Shaheen learned to play in his youth, or for the violin (an instrument the composer later took up as well), it’s unclear – Scott’s arrangement here gives the opening solo passage to the flute, before sharing the material between the other instruments – I particularly liked the oboe’s exotic-sounding pitch-bending sequence at one point in the dance.

Another avowed commitment of the ensemble’s is to new music, of particular interest being works by composers of diverse backgrounds, part of Imani’s interest in bringing together European, American, African and Latin music traditions. In keeping with this philosophy the ensemble programmed a new work by New Zealand composer Natalie Hunt, a commission by Professor Jack Richards – itself something of a cross-cultural work, a three-part piece called “Snapshots” containing impressions of the composer’s first visit to Africa.

Mention must be made of a curiosity which the Imanis served up for us – composer/arranger and horn player Jeff Scott during the course of the evening had bemoaned to us the fact that the wind ensemble repertoire simply couldn’t compare with that for string ensembles in terms of quality and variety, and that ensembles therefore had turned to arrangements for winds of various pieces for “other” instruments, an example being an “arrangement” of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” for winds by a London-based clarinettist, conductor, composer and arranger Jonathan Russell. From the point of view of cleverness of adaptation, the exercise would, for some, have had its merits and its interest, but in my opinion the adaptation all but destroyed the original work through extensive cutting of the material, removing much of the narrative aspect and severely reducing the dramatic range and emotional scope of the music, and its ability to deliver. There must be any number of shorter pieces “out there” (some by Rimsky himself, come to think of it), which could have served the purpose just as well, and able to have been played more-or-less in full, rather than bowdlerised so savagely, as here. Yes, I’m missing the point of the exercise, I know – but even despite the presence of a few incidental delights of adaptation, I didn’t REALLY enjoy hearing one of my favourite pieces of orchestral music mutilated thus in public!

Enough of my tub-thumping! – time to turn to the other individual pieces in the concert! The Imanis began with the wind version of a hiss and a roar, Valerie Coleman’s work, “Red Clay and Mississippi Delta” opening with wild, raunchy declamations which then settled into a swinging, sultry rhythm, one that allowed lots of melismatic detailings within a relaxed pulse. There were forthright virtuoso clarinet irruptions, rapidly-fingered and skilfully-tongued bassoon passages, and numerous sly detailings from flute, oboe and horn, all with distinctive and ear-catching instrumental timbres. We were even invited to join in at one stage of the piece during a finger-clicking sequence, the composer turning to us and saying “You can help!” as the music insinuated its way forwards, our “cool” aspect by turns backed up with atmospheric solos, and colourfully decorated by sequences of riotous, swirling activity.

Astor Piazzolla’s “Contrabajissimo” was introduced by horn player Jeff Scott who had arranged the piece for wind quintet. He outlined the piece’s original genesis for us, how Piazzolla had been asked by the bass player in his quintet to write a piece that, for a change, gave his instrument some of the “limelight” instead of being relegated to its usual accompanying role, and how the composer wrote a work that he came to regard as his favourite – in fact “Contrabajissimo” was the only music played at the composer’s funeral! There was no doubt, Scott told us, that the only wind instrument capable of doing a string bass justice was the bassoon! Judging from the opening bars alone, with the bassoon immediately taking the soloist’s role in a kind of free-ranging dialogue with the clarinet, the work would have taxed Piazzolla’s double-bass player to the utmost! The dance that followed slyly and suggestively pushed the syncopated rhythms along and encouraged more and more excitement until the flute spearheaded a rallying call to which everyone was suddenly listening, and wanting to contribute. When the mischievous rhythms resumed I like the way the bassoon “spoke” to the rest of the ensemble via the player, Monica Ellis, who pointed her instrument every which way when she played her solos, like someone obviously wanting their voice to be heard, be it in tones of poetic wistfulness or with sharp bursts or assertive vigour!

We then heard the music of New Zealand composer Natalie Hunt, winner of the NZSO/Todd Foundation Young Composer Award in 2009, and the recipient of various commissions from groups such as the New Zealand String Quartet and The Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson. This was a work called “Snapshots”, commissioned by CMNZ for the Imani’s New Zealand tour, and written by the composer while travelling through Africa last year. In three parts, each of the individual pieces sought to capture the aspect and mood of a specific place, the first, Namib, evoking for us the Namibian Desert, where, in the composer’s words, “the landscape creeps and morphs, the rocks glow in the evening sun, and the night sky is brilliantly clear”. This first piece was, for me, the most focused of the three, its precision of detail and beautifully-contoured shape placing us vividly in a specific and spell-binding soundscape. The other two pieces seemed not quite on this level of focus, with details (the “extra” instruments) seeming to me appropriately ambient, but not having the same instinctive surety of placement I experienced throughout the opening piece.

In “Mosi-oya-Tunya” (presumably Swahili for “The Smoke Which Thunders”, the African name for the Victoria Falls) we heard the exotic sounds of the “thunder drum” (a brightly-decorated drum with a kind of rachet-tail, able to make a surprising amount of deep noise) and the “rain stick” (a hollow tube which contains rice or some such grain, or else small stones, and which can be turned on its end or otherwise moved to produce a kind of white ambient noise) adding their disparate tones to the ensemble’s wind roulades and the oboe’s splendidly isolated solo line – something of the awe and mystery of the place was conveyed to us by the ensemble, despite moments where I thought the players of the “special” instruments seemed a little uncertain of their dynamics or durations.

The third part, “Delta Dreams” I thought a kind of African “road music” , going somewhere in an engaging fashion, via syncopated rhythms and angular melodies. Jeff Scott forwent his horn in this movement to “play” a wine glass, supporting ostinati by clarinet and oboe, as the flute improvised, the players rolling the sounds jazzily and euphorically towards a “point” where the experience seemed to breast a peak and die away, with only the sound of the thunder drum left, a kind of resonance of departure, again I thought, a detail that would be stronger with some “firming up” of its actual place in the scheme of things.

Clarinettist Mark Dover described the next piece, “A Farewell Mambo (to Willy)” by Pasquito D’Riviera, as a kind of “melting-pot” of local ethnic and established classical traditions. D’Riviera is both a jazz- and Latin-music-performer (his autobiography sports the engaging title, “My Sax Life”) and his piece reflected these disparate, yet interactive strands of his creativity – I was reminded of Hindemith’s music in places by the droll, quasi-academism of some of the instrumental interactions within the framework of those mambo rhythms. The music allowed the instrumental timbres to ring out in places – we heard things like piccolo and clarinet arguing over primacy before the latter plunged into a riff-like kind of apoplexy, reducing the basssoon and horn to a kind of awed accompanying ostinato. The music resembled to my ears interaction between strong-willed individuals vying for their voices to be heard in getting across a particular aspect of the eponymous tribute “to Willy” (Guillermo Alvarez Guedes, a singer, stand-up comedian and record procducer, and obviously an iconic figure in the world of Latin American culture).

Concluding the programmed part of the concert was the aforementioned work “Dance Mediterranea”, by Palestinian-born American composer Simon Shaheen, in an arrangement by Jeff Scott for wind quintet. Shaheen himself plays the violin on a Facebook clip of a version of the “Dance Mediterranea”, showing the violin taking the lead in the work’s introduction, which was here given to the solo flute. Shaheen wanted a synthesis of styles from different parts of the Mediterranean world, hence the piece’s title (something of an “Arab Spring” in music!). After a sultry, evocative opening, the music gathered momentum and brought the other instruments into the picture, to sometimes volatile effect – there are lines with bending pitches, swirling melismas, whispered concourses and sudden sforzandi – these wild expressions of freedom came together most excitingly in a kind of amalgam of riotous energies at the piece’s conclusion.

We were sent home with the strains of a Negro Spiritual resounding in our ears, “Go, tell it on the mountain”, the music laid back at its very beginning, touching on different stylish references along the way (even Klezmer-like at one point), and then with everybody increasingly “playing out” towards the culminative “Yes, Lord! Alleluiah!” kind of gesture, without which salvation might not seem assured! Here, there was simply no doubt!

A whole lot more than the girl next door – Ali Harper as Doris Day at Circa in Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Ali Harper – A Doris Day Special
Written by and starring Ali Harper
Voiceover Actors – Michael Keir-Morrissey, Ravil Atlas, Tom Trevella,
Stephanie McKellar-Smith, Phil Vaughan

Director – Stephanie McKellar-Smith
Musical Director – Rodger Fox
Musical Arrangements – Michael Bell
Set Design – Brendan Albrey/Richard Van der Berg
Technical Operator – Deb McGuire

Circa Theatre, Wellington
Saturday, 16th September 2017

(until October 14th)

To my surprise, a friend I was recently speaking to about my theatre-going plans said, “Doris Day? Why would you want to go to a show about her?” It was a generational thing, I suspect – I counted myself lucky to have “caught” Doris Day at the end of her active career during the 1960s, whereas my friend, a dozen years younger, thought herself fortunate – obviously by heresay –  that she’d missed out on nearly all of it. What Ali Harper’s one-woman show at Circa Theatre makes quite clear is that Doris the performer was a veritable force to be reckoned with, somebody who turned to gold practically everything she touched by dint of her blazing singing talent, natural and unspoiled loveliness, and unflagging determination to succeed at whatever she did. Ali Harper, in fact, for an hour and twenty minutes on the Circa TheatreStage, for me WAS Doris Day!

Since I’ve never seen Doris Day perform live, and don’t claim to have seen all of her films or listened to all of her songs, one might think my claim for Harper’s stunning characterisation of the star is a questionable one. But, as I noted during the previous stage appearance of Harper’s I’d experienced featuring her characterisation of a number of great female singers, Legendary Divas, she has that indefinable but overwhelming star quality which seems to fuse with whatever song she is singing, and whatever persona she is presenting. Even in one or two places in this latest show, A Doris Day Special, where her inspiration as a scriptwriter for me seemed to strike the occasional fitful patch, she was able to carry the theatrical “charge” of the singer’s character through the hiatuses and back into the juicy, blood-pumping stuff once again.

The Show’s presented as a “live” television special, complete with audience (us), cameras, a film/television screen (used most effectively in places), a sizeable wardrobe gracing a voluminously groaning clothes-stand, the voice of an unseen director, the occasional barking of a pet dog, and of course, the star herself, freely moving between the apple-pie naturalness of the “real” person, and the various “characters” projected with each song by the polished performer. Harper and her director, Stephanie McKellar-Smith used the songs mostly chronologically, and almost always incrementally, letting the music build onto what had gone before, what was being talked about or what was about to come.

Particularly moving in this respect was Harper’s singing of “Make Someone Happy” as an adjunct to her alter ego’s disastrous loss of her earnings at one point at the hands of her husband/manager, the star’s qualifying comment being “There’s more to life than money”, a sequence whose essence I thought the song most fittingly expressed. Its homespun equivalent was the song “Powder your face with Sunshine”, which grew from the compliments Day received early in her career regarding her “natural beauty” and her possible “secret” – which Harper then steered in the direction of a kind of “commercial break” during which we were treated to Doris advertising Vaseline – “This is how I protect my skin” – I’m not sure whether the ad was genuine or not!

Whether clearly connected (Day’s first big hit “Sentimental Journey” featured Harper’s singing alongside a black-and-white film of a steam train making its trek across America’s vast spaces to towns in the middle of nowhere, a sequence I thought worked brilliantly well) or merely providing entertainment (the extremely silly but entertaining song “I said my pyjamas”), the music sat so well in each instance’s context. For that reason I though it a pity that Harper’s “leading men gallery” (a veritable galaxy of talent, incidentally!) was so under-characterised, for me, the weakest and most static part of the show – instead of a “whirl” of jaw-dropping names and images, everything becalmed as the faces appeared, none with any particular or distinctive context – Harper sang “You do something to me” as the images came up, but I would have preferred to see at the very least “stills” from each of the films showing interaction between the actress and the men who were “doing something” to her. The film/television screen was ideally placed for us to enjoy a recap of these scenes (incidentally, nothing from “The Pyjama Game”, which I thought was an opportunity missed) – I wonder if there were copyright issues which might have prevented Harper from doing something like this?

Apart from this, the “show” sizzled and zinged as it ought to have done – I was divided regarding the use of an obviously “miked” voice for Harper throughout – initially it did give the presentation an illusion of a television broadcast, but long-term I found the effect a little wearying. What I really did like (and wished we had had more with some of the other songs) was Harper’s synchronising of her singing with the Rodger Fox Big Band on the television screen – absolutely brilliant in effect, especially the dovetailing of the band members’ vocalisations with the singer’s (the bantering “dig it” responses from the players came over splendidly!). A pity we didn’t have a similar scenario for the “Choo-choo Train” song, intead of the (for me) faintly, but stll embarrassingly infantile cartoon-like realisation we were given on the screen – “Chacun en son gout”, as the French say!

As well as providing entertainment, Harper’s show gave us an understandably once-over-lightly, but still welcome resume of the life of the phenomenon called at birth Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff! – we were told of her early car accident which effectively changed her career trajectory from dancer to singer, and then how the name “Doris Day” originated, complete with a performance of the life-changing song “Day after Day”; we caught glimpses of her versatility – her performance of just one instance of this quality, the song “I just blew in from the Windy City” was a tour de force for both the performer and her subject, (another example of the fusion between the two that we experienced); and we got a sense of the intense rapport between Day and at least one of her leading men, Rock Hudson – again, some sequential film images would have captured our stardust-prone receptivities even more readily (the recent “Jacindarella effect” nonwithstanding!). Then, not least of all (and helped by some sequences enacted behind the clothes-rack involving canine noises and soothing-owner blandishments!) we were given a sense of the star’s life-long love for animals, reinforced amusingly by her involvement in a dog-food commercial, but more profoundly, by references to her later involvement with animal welfare.

Linked with those “There’s more to life than money” sequences already referred to, were the moments in which Harper conveyed, deeply and warmly, the singer’s love for her only child, Terry Melcher. The latter’s disturbing initial involvement with and narrow escape from the attentions of the psychopathic killer Charles Manson and his “family” I didn’t know anything about beforehand, which couldn’t help for me give this part of Harper’s show an added edge of shock. Of course celebrity murder ought to be no more horrifying that that of any “unknown” person, but there was no denying the dramatic and theatrical tensions generated by the bizarre connections between forces of light and darkness.

Though not quite as consistently focused or realised by Harper as was I thought her “Legendary Divas” show, she resolutely got the “Doris Day magic” working to a sufficiently engaging and involving pitch. There were moments when an exra notch or two of momentum and vigour could have been injected – I wondered at times whether another onstage presence, a music- or show director, or even a wardrobe mistress-cum-confidant might have given Harper a kind of character foil against which to bounce and resound, providing her with some synergy, as it every now and then seemed something of a lonely haul. Alternatively, a more dynamic and varied use of the film/television screen could have helped to project even further the Doris Day that Harper was living out for us so passionately and with such energy and commitment.

Those comments aside, I enjoyed being, once again, “galvanised” by Ali Harper, by turns basking in and further energising the fulsomeness of her commitment as a performer and communicating that same energy to her fortunate audiences. Obviously, the world was, and still is, a better place for the presence of Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff, ninety-five years young, still, at the time of writing, and better known to us as Doris Day – and Ali Harper put across that same conviction with life-enhancing certainty.

Playing with fire – music that sears and burns, from the New Zealand String Quartet

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The NZSQ’s Dangerous Liasions Tour 2017 – programme 2 (Wellington)
JANACEK – String Quartet No.2 “Intimate Letters”
JACK BODY – Saetas
MENDELSSOHN – String Quartet No.2 in A Minor Op.13

Helene Pohl, Monique Lapins (violins)
Gillian Ansell (viola), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University of Wellington

Sunday, 10th September, 2017

The NZSQ’s 30th anniversary “Dangerous Liasons” national tour featured two programmes of works which encapsulated so much of what the ensemble has already achieved throughout its existence, including world-class presentations of some of the core string quartet repertoire, both in concert and on recordings, and an on-going committment to New Zealand music. Works by Beethoven, Bartok, Schumann and Mendelssohn have been given much-acclaimed performances in all parts of the country, and recordings of complete cycles of quartets by Bartok and Mendelssohn have internationally enhanced the group’s reputation. I would truly welcome a completed recorded cycle by the group of the Beethoven Quartets, to parallel Michael Houstoun’s already-completed recordings of the composer’s piano sonatas, for the sake of directly preserving the sheer quality of an achievement we’ve similarly acclaimed.

I thought that I’d previously encountered the first of Leos Janacek’s two string quartets as performed by the NZSQ at some stage – but a search of Middle C failed to turn up a review. Though I couldn’t specifically recall a previous hearing of either of the quartets I knew what to expect from the composer, having been variously excited and bewildered by my first encounters with his music (the Sinfonietta, plus a rhapsodic and volatile orchestral work called Taras Bulba), and sufficiently engaged by it all to explore further – piano pieces (Along an Overgrown Path, In the Mist), chamber works (Capriccio, Concertino) and opera (The Cunning Little Vixen).

Janacek (1854-1928), a native of Moravia, was one of music’s most remarkable “late bloomers”, producing in his 60s and 70s most of the works that would carry his name throughout the twentieth century and into the present day as one of the most original and innovative composers of his time. At an age when most people had long since sowed their wild oats and settled down to enjoy what has endured in their lives and would “see them out”, Janacek was experiencing a remarkable renaissance of activity and emotion normally associated with people in their twenties, through meeting a married woman, Kamila Stösslová, 37 years his junior, and falling deeply in love with her.

Both Janacek’s wife and Kamila’s husband “tolerated” the affair, largely because Kamila, though flattered by Janacek’s attentions, seemed outwardly unresponsive, as well as showing little interest in his music. But the composer was undeterred, writing hundreds of letters to her of a passionate and at times intimate nature. Kamila was obviously the driving force for his rejuvenated creativity, even if Janacek was to specifically enshrine his affair with her in just one particular work, his Second String Quartet “Intimate Letters”, writing to her and telling her that the music represented “all the dear things that we’ve experienced together”, and adding, “You stand behind every note, you, living, forceful, loving”.

The NZSQ’s ‘cellist, Rolf Gjelsten introduced the work for us at this afternoon’s concert, quoting another passage from Janacek’s writings to Stösslová, which referred to the Quartet’s music as having been “carved out of human flesh”. The words seemed to make for the composer the ultimate claim on the woman that he loved, to thus write her into his music.

Surely the music that followed was a portrait not of Stösslová per se, but of Janacek himself, and his projected emotions towards his paramour – everything that came after the striving, heartfelt opening declamation was sounded impulse, here whispered intensity, and there obsessive ostinati-like passages, the fulsomeness of the gestures heightened by extremities of dynamics and “unvarnished” string timbres. Lyrical sequences found themselves suddenly grappling with heightened, overbearing figurations, or with gradually sharpening focus, an extended solo for Monique Lapins’ violin arching at one point into intensely passionate exchanges which threatened to become orgasmic in places – a beautiful viola solo from Gillian Ansell similarly succumbed to the pull of the cataclysmic surges, swallowed and digested by the music’s ongoing default-setting intensities.

These descriptions, of course, stem directly from the NZSQ’s fiercely-committed playing as much as from the composer’s music – having heard and seen the ensemble perform many times over the years I’ve come to expect a kind of base-line intensity brought to whatever they play, which invariably makes for thrilling results – here, it seemed to me that Janacek’s creative spirit had been spontaneously re-ignited in performance, engulfing us in a veritable tide of raw emotion , which was surely what the composer intended! To similarly anatomise the way the NZSQ delivered the remaining movements of the Janacek would be to go overboard in terms of review space and reader time – enough to say that the second movement took us on a rhapsodically obsessive roller-coaster ride, Janacek subjecting the opening viola melody to all kinds of expressive extremes, rather like a manic lover reiterating the same words in endlessly inventive ways. The third movement, too, opened with melancholic declamations and easeful rhythmic trajectories which soon found themselves under siege from extremes of rhythm and timbral projection, Helene Pohl’s violin emoting almost to stratospheric breaking-point over several anguished sequences!

The finale’s near-manic folk-dance opening had an almost nightmarish gaiety, the atmosphere to all and intents and purposes “spooked” by what had gone before and its still-to-come possibilities. What incredible energy and focus these players seemed to draw on, to put across what seemed like a barrage of unsolicited chunks of reconstituted emotion! Whatever dancings that were left were punctuated with feral, animal-like scamperings and frighteningly vicious tremolandi – T.S.Eliot wrote somewhere that “human kind cannot bear very much reality”, and it seemed to me that these musicians had taken us perilously near to something like those realms of disturbance and disintegration via this extraordinary music.

After cheek-by-jowling with these full frontal intensities one wanted something removed from such hot-house emotions – Jack Body’s Saetas, while no less focused and involved with its subject matter, seemed to signal a throwing open of windows to let in air and light, following on as it did from Janacek’s somewhat claustrophobic series of confessional outpourings.

Gillian Ansell introduced us to Body’s work, which was commissioned by the Quartet as long ago as 2002, and which had come from the composer’s explorations of music associated with the Spanish flamenco tradition. Body had been researching material for a work, Carmen Dances, whose central character was the then iconic Wellington-based figure of Carmen Rupe, a transexual strip-club owner, who had also run as a mayoral candidate. Saetas (a word meaning “arrow” or “dart”) was composed as a separate project, with Body focusing particularly on music associated with religious feasts held in Spain during Holy Week – saeta are semi-improvised, highly ornamented flamenco songs, many of which were transcribed from different sources by the composer for his material.

Gillian Ansell talked about the quejío, or lament, aspect of these songs, sung by penitents as statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary are carried through the streets in the processionals. The first and last pieces featured the musicians exclaiming such a cry of lament at the very beginning. As well, in the opening bars of the first piece the composer quoted excerpts from both Tchaikovsky’s “Pathetique” Symphony, and a Hugo Wolf song from his work “The Spanish Songbook”, which, together with the quejío constituted a kind of effervescing “cocktail mix” of diverse but still intensely-focused emotion in line with the fervour normally generated by the occasion.

Body’s transcriptions also featured strong drum pulses, which were here represented by additional instruments in the performance, a drum and an accordion, played by Rolf Gjelsten, who demonstrated to us aspects of what these instruments would sound like before the group began the work. After playing the ‘cello during the first piece, he swopped instruments, taking up the accordion for the remaining three pieces.

The upward-rushing figurations at the music’s beginning actually made me think of Wagner as much as Tchaikovsky! The lyrical declamations were played “folkishly”, the instruments readily exploring timbres associated with raw, direct emotion, characterful and unvarnished. Most of the music moved slowly and processionally, a dirge of tightly-knit intensities (the violins directed to play as if their notes were “searing beams of light”), both focused and atmospheric!

Rolf Gjelsten having swapped his instruments, the second saeta began, with single jabbed staccato notes to which the viola replied with a sombre melodic line, the accordion adding its harmonium-like tones besides contributing a rhythmic “crunching” accompaniment, viola and violins repeating the mournful thematic material in different registers. The third movement’s source material is not strictly a saeta (rather, a fourteenth century song “O sad life of the flesh!”) but the subject and general mood of the piece certainly accorded with the rest, and began with a quejio which linked it to the tradition. We heard dense clusters of accordion notes at the outset vying with flurrying string rhythms, which begin to alternate gypsy-like running figures and searing single held notes – gradually the piece’s agitations and divergent threads were bound together, the strings playing in unison at the end over a long-breathed accordion figure.

The fourth and last Saeta opened with another vocalisation (marked “with anguished fervour”) from the quartet players, reinforced by drum-and footbeats in a great “Bolero-like” crescendo to the final thunderous thump immediately after the strings finished their lines and reached their cadence. Leading up to this cataclysm were swirling maelstroms of sound from the instruments, creating an overwhelming effect of a specific, yet universally human kind of life-force.

In my mind arose the question – was Mendelssohn’s music going to make any impression upon us in cheek-by-jowl company with such raw extrusions of attention-grabbing emotion? Ought his contribution to the evening’s music have been put in a less assailable comparative position in relation to the rest? Well, in a concert of surprises this music’s ability to hold its ground and create its own culture of intense feeling was among my afternoon’s most noteworthy discoveries.

The NZSQ has, of course not long since completed a recording project for Naxos involving the composer’s complete works in this genre, a venture I’ve yet to catch up with – but on the basis of what I heard the players do with this particular quartet (No.2 in A Minor, Op.13), I would be very keen to seek their recordings out, and get to know the music better, especially so when, as here at this concert, it’s presented in what seems to me the best possible light. Having encountered such playing and interpretation of this order “live”, I would want to encourage as many people as possible to explore more of Mendelssohn via the efforts of the NZSQ on their recordings.

Monique Lapins, the ensemble’s second violinist, introduced the work, which was actually Mendelssohn’s first “mature” string quartet (composed in 1827) despite its later Opus number than the so-called String Quartet No.1 in E-flat Major, Op.12 (written two years AFTER No.2! – classical music would, of course, be the poorer without such mind-tickling anomalies!). She quoted the words of a song “Frage”, written and composed by the precocious 18-year-old during the same year as the “second” quartet, a song whose opening words “Is it true?” appear throughout the quartet as a three-note motif (incidentally, both Liszt and Brahms used a similar 3-note phrase, each in a solo piano work).

A slow, richly-voiced introduction began the Quartet’s performance of the work, the three-note motif derived from the song occurring at the end of the opening paragraph, just prior to the players’ precipitous plunge into the movement’s allegro, during which I readily took in the playing’s strength and gutsiness, imbuing the music with a greater and more satisfying degree of those qualities than I would have expected. After some intense duetting between the first and second violins in the development, the reprise brought back those first urgencies, engaging our sensibilites at a white-heat rate which again I found exhilarating.

The slow movement’s rich, hymn-like melody, so very characteristic of the composer, came with surety and strength in performance. The mid-movement fugue, modelled after Beethoven’s example in the latter’s Op.95 (despite his father’s disapproval, the young Felix idolised Beethoven’s quartets), was put through its somewhat volatile, though always characterful, paces by the players before the lovely return of the hymn-like opening music, at the movement’s end.

I loved the limpid poise and gossamer grace of the third-movement Intermezzo, a dance that was a kind of antique gavotte at the outset, replete with lovely instrumental interchanges and dovetailed melodic figures. A scherzo-like change which came over the music brought deft, rhythmically ambiguous gossamer scamperings in a kind of “hide-and-seek” scenario, almost Schumannesque in its “merry pranks” aspect, before the music returned to the opening solemnities – a coda glanced fleetingly and mischievously back at the “merry pranks” episode before smiling, and disappearing!

Not unlike what Schubert does at the beginning of his Octet’s finale, Mendelssohn presented us with chaos and disorder in a tempestuous opening, the first violin beating its breast over agitations wrought by the tremolo accompaniments . However, Mendelssohn’s ensuing allegro wasn’t as genial as Schubert’s, the NZSQ players here pushing expectantly towards points of intensity with exciting unisons and horse-galloping sequences. Gillian Ansell’s viola called for clear-headedness by revoicing the fugato of the second movement, but soon became caught up with the ensemble’s rebuilding of the lines towards a return of the allegro and thence to the movement’s tremulous opening. Keeping us on the seat’s edge, the composer fetched up a disconsolate solo, sung with oceans of feeling by Helene Pohl’s volin, quoting the fugato before taking final refuge with the others in the quartet’s opening – and the requoting of Mendelsson’s three-note figure was like balm for the soul! – it was caressed and embraced by the players, to the point where we in the audience were made to feel as if we ourselves were young lovers all over again! – a treasurable experience!

Pleasure of a “return to our lives” kind was then afforded by the players doing a “swop-around of instruments for a klezmer encore, written, I think, by Ross Harris, Rolf Gjelsten back on the accordion, and Helene Pohl in the ‘cellist’s seat for a change, while Gillian Ansell and Monique Lapins also did an exchange – wot larks! No more madcap scenario was evoked, and no enjoyment was more relished than by these talented musicians sharing their fun and games with us, and afterwards, sending us home replete!