Author: Peter Mechen

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!

Madrigals-a-go! defined, declared and delivered by Cantoris with director Thomas Nikora

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Madrigals – \ ˈma-dri-gəlz \ n. Poems set to music, sung a capella for two to eight voices

Cantoris, directed by Thomas Nikora

Music by Mozart, Tallis, Gibbons, Morley, Bruckner, Saint-Saens, Purcell, Rachmaninov, Chris Artley, Manning Sherwin, Billy Joel

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

Wednesday, 6th September, 2017

The programme note was right to describe the evening’s entertainment as “a delightful Spring programme”, even if Wellington hadn’t thus far (and hasn’t since yet) had a weather response worthy of the name! Still, none of this was through want of trying on the part of Cantoris, whose singing at least warmed our insides and gave as good a precursor of the winds of change as any recent general election poll!

First up we were treated to a kind of “surround-sound” presentation of Mozart’s Cantate Domino, a piece of music I’ve not been able to find anything about, and certainly have never heard before – however, Cantoris’ treatment of the piece rendered such detail superfluous in situ, such was the impact of the group’s warm, open-hearted singing.

Beginning with a unison line, the sounds spread around the church’s interior, separating into parts and overlapping like an indoor version of “Forest Murmurs”, reaching a kind of saturation point at which the strands wound into a great unison statement of the opening – I found the effect of it all exhilarating!

Though the beautiful Thomas Tallis anthem/motet “If You Love Me” inevitably brought a reduction of ambient scale to the proceedings, following after such a spectacularly antiphonal opening, it also tightened up the vocal textures of the group to the point where we could register the balances and the different timbres of the voices, the women sounding a tad more secure than did the men, especially at the highest pitches. Towards the end, the overlapping effect of the voices produced a frisson of beauty which memorably coloured the music’s dying resonances of the music.

Orlando Gibbons’ “The Silver Swan” elicited properly silvery tones from the sopranos, with only the highest notes vulnerable to strain, while Thomas Morley’s rather less exposed lines in “Sing We and Chant It” allowed a more relaxed, rhythmically infectious mode, in which the lines found and balanced one another admirably.

Though I was far less familiar with Anton Bruckner’s choral music than with his majestic “symphonic boa constrictors” as Brahms unkindly called his symphonies (which, incidentally, I love!), I was charmed by “Locus Iste” a motet Bruckner wrote for the dedication of a new votive chapel at Linz – the words of the motet go on to translate as “This place was made by God”. Reminiscent of Wagner’s “Tannhauser” in places, the piece built impressively and characteristically, the voices fully relishing the piece’s dynamic range by appropriately “singing out”, while giving passages such as the concluding repetition of “a Deo factus est” a peaceful and serene aspect. I might have even guessed (well, maybe after two or three goes), had I listened “blind”, that the piece had been written by Bruckner.

The second Bruckner item, “Vexilla Regis” (The banners of the king) sounded quite a different kettle of fish – composed “out of a pure impulse of the heart” in 1892, it was the composer’s last completed motet, and demonstrated a markedly transformed style of writing compared to the earlier “Locus Iste”. Characterised by sudden unexpected shifts of harmony, the music recalled passages in the slow movements of Bruckner’s later symphonies (this time, I’m almost certain I would have guessed the composer first up!) How wonderful to hear the choir sing with such a confident sense of line, the voices taking all but the somewhat awkward concluding descent in their stride.

Asked to name composers of madrigals, I wouldn’t have thought to mention Camille Saint-Saens, though Cantoris would have you believe that he wrote at least one, “Calme des Nuits Op.68 No.1”, which we heard this evening (there also exists an Op.68 No.2, “Les fleurs et les arbres”, which one presumes would have been composed along the same lines…..). Anyway, due investigation suggested to me that Saint-Saens probably wrote the texts of both of these choruses himself, and invested them with a depth of feeling that isn’t usually accorded the composer’s music. Here, the “Calm of the Night” unfolded with long-breathed lines, the music freely modulating, the tones then burgeoning impressively for a few imposing measures before falling back again, and taking us to a concluding paragraph featuring some rapt, soulful soprano tones, most sensitively controlled.

Two madrigals of the “English” variety followed, each by Thomas Morley – the first was something of a workout for the soprano voices, having to sustain demanding exposed lines with support lower down from an answering group, a challenge the voices steadfastedly met, despite a “parched” sequence or two along the way. Rather less demanding was Morley’s “Now is the month of maying”, a jolly fa-la-la romp, with director Thomas Nikora on this occasion electing to sing as well as direct from within the ensemble’s ranks, making for plenty of fun and immediacy of dynamic differentiation!

The first of Purcell’s “madrigals” was, it seemed, a vocal arrangement of an instrumentally-accompanied solo, Fairest Isle, from a stage work “King Arthur”. The soprano solo was ripely-toned and gorgeous, with occasional bell-like qualities lightening the vocal ambiences. Then, with the second item “If Love’s a sweet passion” from “The Fairy Queen” the solo voice, joined in a reprise by the ensemble, brought strength and character to the words, qualities which underlined the music’s theatrical origins.

To finish the programme we were given an attractive bracket of performances with madrigal-like qualities across a spectrum of musical styles, beginning with Sergei Rachmaninov’s “Bogoroditse Devo” from his “All-Night Vigil”, a text known to English speakers as the “Hail Mary”, a gorgeous performance, filled with rapt fervour. New Zealand choral composer Chris Artley’s work “O Magnum Mysterium” resonated richly throughout its opening, towards some beautifully emphasised “Alleluias” and some echo effects between the men’s and women’s voices, before the piece finished with enriched clustered harmonies, beautifully shaped and resonated.

I knew “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” but not the concluding Billy Joel song. In Manning Sherwin’s pre World War Two hit, recorded by the “Forces’ Sweetheart, Vera Lynn”, a wordless vocalising sequence introduced a brief solo line before some flavoursome harmonic shifts tested the voices, who emerged with great credit from the sequences, nicely capturing the song’s atmosphere with plenty of nostalgic feeling.And so it was left to Billy Joel, with a song I thought worthy of the Beatles “And so it goes”, featuring a true-toned male solo voice briefly joined by a single woman’s voice, fetchingly harmonised and attractively resonated. It made a relaxed and good-humoured ending to the concert, one which I think the singers and their inspirational and energising conductor, Thomas Nikora, ought to be well pleased with.

“The Three Altos” – scenes of glory and achievement for the viola here in Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Three Altos – a Viola Spectacular with the NZSO
The 44th International Viola Congress, Wellington, NZ

ROBERT SCHUMANN (arr. Mclean – Marchenbilder Op.113 (world premiere)
Roger Myers (viola)
ROBERTO MOLINELLI – Lady Walton’s Garden (world premiere)
Anna Serova (viola)
BORIS PIGOVAT – Poem of Dawn (New Zealand premiere)
Anna Serova (viola)
WILLIAM WALTON – Concerto for Viola and Orchestra
Roger Benedict (viola)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Hamish McKeich (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Monday, 4th September, 2017

This concert marked the conclusion of the 44th International Viola Congress, one which brought aficionados from everywhere in the world to Wellington for no less than five days of intense viola interaction. Co-hosts for the event were Professor Donald Maurice, and NZSQ violist Gillian Ansell, both distinguished teachers of the viola at the New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington. It was no wonder that, with fifty-plus events scheduled for the five days, the prospect of the Congress was, for Gillian Ansell, “nothing short of viola heaven!”

The concert, featuring three internationally-acclaimed viola soloists performing individually with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, made a fitting conclusion to this five-day whirlwind of meetings, seminars, workshops and chamber concerts. Two of the presentations were world premiere performances – Michael McLean’s orchestral arrangement of Schumann’s Märchenbilder Op.113, and Roberto Molinelli’s Lady Walton’s Garden, a three-movement work whose individual sections are named after plants and flowers from Lady Susana Walton’s garden, La Mortella, on the island of Ishia, near Naples; while a third, Israeli composer Boris Pigovat’s 2013 work Poem of Dawn, here received its New Zealand premiere. Not unfittingly, the fourth work was a viola classic – Sir William Walton’s much acclaimed 1929 Viola Concerto.

We were fronted up to by a couple of speakers before the music got under way, the first being the Hon. Chris Finlayson, who, in introducing himself as a representative of the Government, told us quite categorically (besides welcoming us to the concert and paying tribute to those here in Wellington who had organised the Viola Congress) that one could still be a classical music-lover despite being the Attorney-General! We then were addressed briefly by the newly-appointed Director of the NZSM, Professor Sally Jane Norman, who similarly paid tribute to the organisers of the Congress and the evening’s concert, describing the event as “a strong cultural resonator for Wellington”, and causing wry amusement with her description of the city as “a world famous wind instrument” – a nice touch!

These pleasantries having been deftly expressed and duly registered, we settled down to the evening’s music, beginning with the first of the evening’s “premieres”, Robert Schumann’s Märchenbilder Op.113, arranged for viola and orchestra, with soloist Roger Myers, and with Hamish McKeich conducting the NZSO. No composer of my listening experience proclaims his character more readily in his music than does Schumann, the opening Nicht schnell expressing that curiously unique melancholic lyricism so characteristic of the composer which at once gives and conceals, emotes and holds in check, a scenario of unquiet impulses and counter-impulses which, allowed to get the upper hand, as in Schumann’s unfortunate case, can lead to undermining disturbance. Scored for an orchestra these impulses seemed rather less obsessive, if more discursive – but the general effect was attractive, more “comfortable” than the chamber version.

The vigour of the Lebhaft’s march was transformed midway into a skitterish galop, a twisting phrase thrown this way and that by soloist and orchestra, the music’s angularities given plenty of swagger by the players. Then, it was the turn of the following Rasch, which music expended comparable energies, Roger Myers’ finger-fleetness given a workout by the driving triplet rhythms set against a striding orchestral accompaniment.

After these vigorous expenditures, the benediction of the finale cast a dream-like spell over the hall, with Schumann come into his element here as a composer of “the soft note for he who listens secretly” – a quote normally associated with the Op.17 Fantasia for solo piano, but just as applicable to the hushed, inward musings of the viola and the accompanying strands and counterpoints – as if the music’s questing spirit has found its resting-place. In some moods the sounds might be thought of as religious, while in others the music’s lullabic trajectories might evoke deep nostalgia. Roger Myers’ playing and the orchestral support under Hamish McKeich winningly encompassed both possibilities.

In view of the ostensible subject-matter, I was expecting something far more Delian from Roberto Molinelli’s “Lady Walton’s Garden”, but was obviously out-of-synch with both the times and the context – this was no languid, heavily-scented “In a Summer Garden”-like evocation, but a lively, infectiously physical delineation of joyous energies, especially so during the work’s first movement, subtitled gincko biloba (the first of three such names). The new soloist was Anna Serova, and her poised, finely-crafted viola-playing here, suggested, perhaps, an agent provocateur, the conduit through which the garden and its verdant energies were expressed.

The second movement, Victoria Amazonica (the largest of the water-lilies) appropriately conjured up liquid, dreamy harp-coloured textures at the outset, but graduallly burgeoned into a full-blooded exploration, by turns romantic and acerbic, with passing gypsy caravans and angular, 7/4 dance rhythms, the soloist all the while registering and commenting on the order and passing of things. Breaking this exotic spell was the final movemento, a tango, subtitled palo borracho (‘drunken tree”), music with “driven” rhythms suggesting an exotically-set drama, with the soloist a kind of domesticated gypsy fiddler, or even a cafe violinist. Matters came to a head when Serova suddenly set down her violin and whirled into the arms of a tango-dancing partner who, it seemed, had appeared from nowhere! The only problem, review-wise, for me with the violinist exchanging her role of musician for that of dancer, was the ensuing unexpected distraction of having to surrender one’s attention to the sight of a beautiful woman dancing a tango – the music from that point on, was……er – well, it seemed OK!

After the interval had realigned the balance of my critical sensibilities, I was ready to re-encounter Anna Serova as a viola soloist once more, in this instance giving us the New Zealand premiere of a work by Boris Pigovat Poem of Dawn, a work dedicated to the violist. Already known to New Zealand audiences through his searing, no-holds-barred Requiem, performed in Wellington by Donald Maurice and the Vector Wellington Orchestra in 2008, here Russian-born Pigovat, to my surprise, gave us a glimpse of another, less confrontational side to his creative personality, in this radiantly-scored, rhapsodic work, the opening gathering up and engaging our sensibilities as it meant to go on, with raptly meditative solo instrumental lines, supported by touches of ambient magic in the orchestra all of which seemed to constantly evolve, moving us from realm to evocative realm, a tour de force of post-modern romantic orchestral writing! To my unprepared ears the music in places bordered on the schmaltzy in its directly emotional gesturings, albeit extremely high-class schmaltz! I’m certain that my reaction to the piece at the time was coloured by my having a different kind of expectation of what a previously unheard work from its composer would sound like!

I had no such problem with the Walton Viola Concerto that concluded the formal part of the concert. In this work, solo instrument and music deliver a near-perfect match of sound and emotion, the opening movement achieving miracles of a “gradual awakening” of things and their exploration, with both feeling and intellect brought into play. Roger Benedict’s performance with Hamish McKeich caught this tantalising interaction with plenty of whimsy allied to executive brilliance, even if some of the soloist’s energetic double-stopping came slighty adrift intonation-wise amidst the cut-and-thrust exchanges with the orchestra. But how beautifully the players ‘floated’ and then energised the movement’s lyrical main theme, song mingled with dance, as it were, the music leading one’s interest on while keeping up enigmatic appearances. Whether the middle-movement scherzo reveals or further conceals through diversion or entertainment depends on how one views its rumbustious character, as a Janus-faced mask or an ecstasy of brief abandonment! Whatever the case, the music was here given for all its character was worth, the soloist’s material jaunty and insoucient, and the orchestra’s brassily rumbustious episodes joyous and life-enhancing!

But it’s the finale which truly proclaims this music’s greatness, as it did, here – the opening bassoon’s jauntiness was carried along by the other winds and the soloist, the viola alternating rhapsodic inclination (as “English” as the work gets!) with an undertow of restlessness driven by the strings and augmented by the winds. Soloist and orchestra continued this volatile alternation between the two states, Roger Benedict’s viola here delving into the depths with long-breathed lines as readily as charging impulsively forward towards a kind of running skirmish with the orchestra, the music spectacularly expending its energies with a passionately-declaimed phrase capped off by a solo trumpet – splendid stuff! The soloist’s subsequent re-entry, with its gradual upward progression towards “the inverted bowl we call the sky” was lump-in-the-throat stuff, as was the return of the work’s very opening theme, with viola and orchestra each claiming the other as “belonging”, in a deeply satisfying, but still mysterious kind of fusion – we all sat spellbound at the end, in the embrace of the music’s enigmatic concluding silence. I’d always wanted to hear this work “live” and wasn’t disappointed!

Afterwards, the NZSO’s Principal Viola Julia Joyce joined the evening’s three soloists in an arrangement of a Piazzolla Tango, which, as the saying goes, brought the house down, thus, in a suitably festive manner, concluding a similarly festive occasion!

BEETHOVEN – Violin and Piano Sonata Series – a final frolic and a fury, to great acclaim!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BEETHOVEN – The complete Sonatas for Violin-and-Piano
A Lunchtime Series of five concerts from Chamber Music New Zealand

Bella Hristova (violin)
Michael Houstoun (piano)

Concert No.5 – Friday, Ist September, 2017
Violin Sonata No.2 in A Major, Op.12 No.2
Violin Sonata No 7 in C Minor Op.30 No.2

Renouf Foyer, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

The excellently-written programme notes accompanying this series of concerts made reference to the “frolicsome” mood of Beethoven’s A Major Violin Sonata Op.12 No.2, which opened this, the last of the lunchtime series of concerts given by Bella Hristova and Michael Houstoun. The very opening of the work’s Allegro vivace beginning was smile-inducing, the buoyantly-tripping rhythms shared by both instruments, the piano slightly more dominant in this environment (and more so from my seat on the “Town Hall” side of the space this time round, compared with my “other-side” sound picture for the opening concert) – Hristova’s silvery tones were occasionally masked in unison-like passages, though otherwise the discourse was teasingly assured, the po-faced conclusion to the movement particularly so, with its amusing throw-away manner!

Big-boned, seriously-declaimed piano chording opened the second movement, a mood to which the violin responded with silvery, vulnerable-sounding beseechment. After this hint of desolation, the exchanges between the instruments became more consolatory, in a flowing middle section, the piano again sounding more to the fore by dint of the ambience, its sostenuto tones more “supported” than those of the violin. The finale seemed to restore the balance between the two, thanks to some exchanges of wonderfully assertive upwardly-propelled arpeggiated phrases, here matched to perfection by violinist and pianist, Hristova again colouring the gesture by infusing a certain “unfettered” edge to the occasional note, which brought a certain excitement to the sounds.

Though the occasional violin phrase in the second subject group seemed to my ears masked by the piano’s more overbearing presence, both Hristova and Houstoun dug into the minor/major-key moment of angst with forthright tones, Houstoun then assertively putting the music back on track once again for the last “hurrah”, the rocket-like upward thrusts again splendidly launched by both musicians, each tumbling their notes downwards once again with great glee, the piano cheekily turning a kind of somersault on its own right at the end!

By the time he came to write his Op.30 Sonatas, Beethoven was all too aware of his encroaching deafness, as evidenced by letters written at the time to trusted friends in which he expresses feelings of despair mingled with growing defiance – his oft-quoted words, “I shall take fate by the throat, it shall not overcome me!” come from one of these letters, sentiments which are just as strongly expressed by the music of the C Minor Sonata, the second of the three Op.30 works.

The piano’s terse opening phrase set the scene, the violin taking up the theme over the accompanying keyboard rumblings and grumblings. A couple of brief sparrings between the two led to the second subject’s lighter, more congenial manner, though the rhythms’ initial playfulness soon sharpened its edge as the intensities flared up again at the cadences – both Hristova and Houstoun gave these contrasting episodes plenty of strength and lyricism, driving the music into the dark wood of the development, and bringing out the relentless questing spirit of the journey. After allowing the more lyrical moments some breathing-space, the players pulled out the instrumental stops for the movement’s end, building the textures to almost overwhelmingly orchestral effect.

What relief was afforded by the beautiful Adagio cantabile! – Houstoun’s tones gave it a calm simplicity, while Hristova’s violin was rich and warm in reply, both “breathing” the lines of the music beautifully. A central section arpeggiated the music in winsome archways, both musicians deftly touching the music in, even if some of Hristova’s phrase-ends were lost in places beneath the piano’s more fulsome projections. On a couple of occasions a gently persuasive rhythmic change of trajectory was violently interrupted by keyboard outbursts, which were short-lived as they were unexpected, a combination of gentle pizzicati and long-breathed bowed lines from Hristova over conciliatory gestures from Houstoun concluding the movement.

Deceptively simple at the outset, the scherzo tripped its way along, the instruments exchanging pleasantries until the violin suddenly fixated on a single note and exchanged some brief but stinging crossfire with the piano, before returning to the opening congenialities. The Trio section of the work reminded me a little of the “Russian” melody used by both Beethoven in his String Quartet Op.59 No.2 and Musorgsky in the Coronation Scene of Boris Godunov.

Hristova and Houstoun allowed these episodes a lighter, more relaxed tone than in the finale which followed – a dark, muttered opening called for all kinds of emphatic responses, from furtive scamperings to an engaging sense of “schwung”, with violinist and pianist in determined accord, pushing their instruments along a truly epic kind of musical spectrum! After one of the oft-repeated keyboard mutterings had suddenly led the music into hitherto unchartered modulatory realms, the players straightaway saw their chance for freedom, and “pounced”, driving the rhythms fiercely and determinedly towards a resolution of will that infused the music’s spirit with something indomitable.

It was playing which brought the house down, and earned Hristova and Houstoun a richly-deserved standing ovation, as much for what we had just enjoyed as for the musicians’ stunning achievement over a week’s solid concertising in bringing us the complete cycle of these works – certainly, a landmark musical event whose reception by the audiences indicated enjoyment of a rare order, as well as warm and enduring gratitude.

Camerata’s beguiling “What’s in a name?” concert of Haydn and Mozart

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Camerata, with Diedre Irons (piano)
HAYDN – Symphony No.6 in D Major, Hob. 1:6 “Le Matin”
MOZART – Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat Major, K.271 “Jeunehomme”
Concertmaster: Anne Loeser

Adam Concert Room, NZSM
Victoria University of Wellington

Thursday, 31st August, 2017

Founded in 2015 by the late and lamented Ian Lyons with colleague Liz Pritchett, Camerata is a group of musicians dedicated to the idea of making “high quality, joyful chamber music, accessible to aficionados and newcomers to classical music”. Led by Anne Loeser, a violinist with the NZSO, the group consists of an amalgam of NZSO,Orchestra Wellington and Wellington Chamber Orchestra members, including in this evening’s concert a number of NZSM students and graduates. In accordance with its objective of accessibility, Camerata performs for audiences in return for koha, or voluntary contributions from its listeners.

This was the second occasion on which I’d heard the group perform, the first being in the very different surroundings of St.Peter’s Church on Willis St., whose resplendent qualities included a rather warmer performing acoustic that what we heard this time round in the Adam Concert Room. Each venue brings its own qualities to a performance, of course, and here the instrumental clarity of the different textures and timbres sang out readily during both the symphony and concerto performances. Considering that Camerata has to “realign” its textural and tonal characteristics for each new concert because of the changes in personnel (I compared the two lists of players in each of the concerts I’ve attended, and there were quite a few different names this time round) I felt gratified that the playing seemed to inherit so many of the previous concert’s positive characteristics – no doubt a tribute to both leadership and consistency.

I can’t help but echo my Middle C colleague Lindis Taylor’s amalgam of delight and concern regarding the presence of some early Haydn symphonies in Camerata’s concerts – if only such a group as this would go on and give all of these early works the expert hearing in public performance they’re not likely to get under the auspices of any other local ensemble! To paraphrase a well-known wartime politician’s words, “Never in the field of human creativity was so much attributed to one (Haydn) who had wrought so many (symphonies) but was known by so few” – and so it remains in concert-going circumstances with these Haydn works!

Camerata’s is a start, of course, and despite the non-appearance (as far as I know) of Nos. 2 and 5 of the composer’s symphonic canon in the group’s presentations, this one – No.6 in D Major, Le Matin (The Morning) is significant, in that it’s the earliest of the composer’s symphonies that ordinary concert-goers are likely to know about, almost certainly because of its nickname! – (Quick Question: Name the earliest of the Haydn Symphonies…..Answer: Easy! No.6 in D Major, Le Matin…..I’ve got a recording of it, along with 7 & 8!)…..so, this is an important factor with these symphonies, as without the suggestive evocative titles these particular ones probably wouldn’t ever be regarded as special: – but ah! – the “Philosopher ” (No.22), “Lamentatione” (No.26), the “Hornsignal” (No.31), “Mercury” (No.43), and “Trauer” (Mourning) No.44 – and these are all before we even reach the famous “Farewell” Symphony (No.45)! What Camerata’s long-term plans regarding these works of Haydn’s are have yet to be revealed, but as Lindis Taylor ruefully remarked, for the group to get through all the symphonies, he would, at the present rate, “need to live till at leat 2050!”

This was the first symphony the twenty-nine year-old Haydn wrote for the Esterhazy court in Eisenstadt, near Vienna, shortly after being appointed the Prince’s Vice-Kapellmeister. It’s not certain from where he derived his inspiration for a triumverate of symphonies on the “morning, noon and night” themes, though his employer, Prince Paul, was known to be fond of programmatic Italian baroque music, and may have requested the scheme of the composer. Whatever the case, the music impresses more by dint of its highlighting the skills of the orchestra’s individual players, rather than the programme element as such. The Prince had recently employed some additional musicians for his orchestra, whom Haydn would have recommended – and so the composer saw to it that their skills were very much to the fore in the new work.

So, a new day dawned, and off we went on our musical journey! Despite the dryness of the acoustic, the playing itself generated plenty of “atmosphere” and stood up well to scrutiny. After the first glimmerings of light turned into fully-formed sunbeams, the flute cheekily began the allegro, filled with gorgeous interchanges between instruments, buoyed along by irrepressible energies. The development modulated the music freely and daringly, and the horn’s cheeky pre-Eroica “early” entry in front of the flute’s “recapitulation” entry broadened the smiles even further!

The slow movement, beginning Adagio, gave us a quietly ascending scale on the strings whose “minor’ inclinations were thwarted by the solo violin’s interruption in the major key! after some soulful duetting between violin and ‘cello, the music began to dance a graceful minuet-like measure, violin and cello exchanging decorative flourishes, both Anne Loeser and cellist Andrew Joyce enjoying themselves hugely! A couple of sforzando chords and the Adagio briefly returned, rich with experience, and more than ready to give way and sink into silence.

The players gave the Minuet a vigorous stride over characterful, held wind notes, straightforward enough until the begining of the Trio, when bassoon and double bass took charge, allowing some comment from a viola to punctuate their quirky exchanges, a kind of get-together of gruff, characterful voices, rather like a favourite uncle’s oft-told “joke” at a family party. By contrast, the flute’s light, airy presence launched the finale with gossamer grace, a gesture immediately imitated by the violin and then thrown into the midst of the orchestra – Haydn has such fun with his different resources, creating such a sense of variety through his use of different textures and timbres, and challenging the skills of the players, none more so than the leader’s, whose playing in this instance was appropriately virtuosic!

After the interval we were treated to a performance of Mozart’s first “big” piano concerto, and an acknowledged masterpiece, the so-called “Jeunehomme” Piano Concerto, No. 9 in E-flat Major K.271 – the work’s nickname, though apparently incorrectly spelt, refers to the young girl who first played this concerto, Victoire Jenamy. Alongside a “named” Haydn symphony, the concerto’s title seemed more than appropriate for this concert.

Diedre Irons, whose Mozart playing I’ve long admired, was the eagerly-awaited soloist for Camerata on this occasion. Possibly, some kind of technical hitch with her “tablet” from which she played the score caused a breakdown just after she’d re-entered the discourse after the opening orchestral tutti. Whatever the case, it was one which she duly sorted, realigned with the orchestra, and began again from just befor her re-entry, with no glitches the second time round.

Once we’d weathered the break in transmission and all been reconnected, we were able to turn our attention to the actual music-making, which had a quality of “presence” I can only put down to the immediacy of the venue and the smaller-than-usual number of instrumentalists. These conditions meant that, whatever even a single player in the ensemble did, the effect was noticeable, giving everything that “happened” a specific and meaningful focus, as opposed to the often generalised feeling which can take away the “edge” from normal-sized orchestral performances. Added to this was the pianist’s life-like inflection of the piano part, enabling the notes to speak with real feeling – listening to her playing put me in mind of encountering a warm-hearted and insightful conversationalist, as responsive to others as she herself was engaging and thoughtful.

The slow movement immediately reminded me for a time of the parallel movement in K.364, the Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola. The musicians evoked a remarkable depth of feeling via their exchanges, the ensemble contributing its darkly-based string-tones and beseeching winds, and the piano its theatrically tragic recitative-like manner. The cadenza-like solo took these feelings to even greater depths, evoking what seemed almost like late-Romantic gesturings in its explorations of sorrow, and drawing a demonstrative reaction from the ensemble in response.

All of which was swept away in the finale’s spring tide of joyous energy which gambolled, chattered and tumbled every which way from the pianist’s fingers through and over the orchestral players, the music irrepressible in its bubbling and chatting character, sweeping all before it – as befits, of course, a release from darkness and strife! Irons showed her mastery of articulation in marrying recitative with the music’s trajectory of abandonment, before plunging into a transitional flourish which led the music to a world of gorgeous incongruity, pizzicato strings and all, in the shape and form of a minuet. Again she impressed with the timing of her articulation in gathering up our sensibilities before we knew what was happening, and giving our exuberances their heads in company with the music, taking us all to the final flourishes of the music’s brilliant conclusion. Bravo!

Very great credit to the Camerata players and those who help keep this particular ship afloat – already a group generating much interest, the ensemble will, I’m sure, grow and prosper artistically. Repertoire-wise there’s plenty of potential, and I’ll be interested to see in what direction the group inclines – doing something a bit different is often scary, but with whole-heartedness and the skills to back the ventures up, Camerata is likely to go places!

P.S. (from September 5th) – a message just to hand from Camerata’s Liz Pritchett has answered my queries regarding earlier Haydn symphonies and the ensemble’s plans for more: – Symphony No.2 appeared in Camerata’s very first concert programme, in April 2015 (unfortunately not reviewed).  Symphony No.5 hasn’t yet been played by the ensemble, but there are plans to do more of the earlier symphonies – hopefully the “missing link” will eventually get its dues, also!  (Many thanks to Liz Pritchett!)

BEETHOVEN Violin and Piano Sonata Series – a feast for Wellingtonians!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BEETHOVEN – The complete Sonatas for Violin-and-Piano
A Lunchtime Series of five concerts from Chamber Music New Zealand

Bella Hristova (violin)
Michael Houstoun (piano)

Concert No.1 – Monday, 28th August, 2017
Violin Sonata No.1 in D Major, Op.12 No.1
Violin Sonata No 6 in A Major Op.30 No.1

Renouf Foyer, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Beethoven’s Violin Sonatas don’t span the composer’s creative output as imposingly as do his efforts in some of the other genres – within the short space of six years (between 1797 and 1803) he was to write nine out of the ten completed works for violin and piano, and the final single work a decade later. However, he had attempted a work for the two instruments as a fledgling composer; and he was also to produce both a set of Variations on “Se vuol ballare” from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and a Rondo in G WoO.41 before the publication in 1799 of his first sonata for the genre. So he wasn’t exactly a beginner at the duo-writing task when he tackled this exuberant D Major work, the first of his three Op.12 sonatas.

The Sonata’s opening movement was an excellent way for violinist Bella Hristova and pianist Michael Houstoun to begin their traversal of the cycle – we were treated to a heady plunge into a vein of buoyant energy and confidently-wrought lyricism, the lines of communication between violinist and pianist here clearly outlined in a somewhat dry acoustic, happily emphasising the rapport between the two, via the music’s beautifully-dovetailed sequences of ebb and flow.

After enjoying Hristova’s and Houstoun’s playful assertiveness throughout the opening, I liked the touches of mystery they encouraged with their phrasings of the development’s music, the piano weaving long, sinuously running lines and the violin more elusively reiterating its opening figure in tandem with the piano, after which, by way of some beguiling exchanges the instruments re-explored the opening territories, Hristova playfully emphasising a visceral quality in her phrasing in places along the way which added to the music’s excitement.

The slow movement’s enchanting cantabile theme, heard firstly on the piano, and then reiterated by the violin, was given some inventive variation treatment by the composer, including a lovely gambolling sequence, the violin’s running lines deliciously augmented by the piano’s gurgling arpeggios, followed by an assertive, dramatic treatment involving both players digging into their notes and releasing irruptions of energy. A final variation took the music into more fanciful territories, each instrument appearing to occasionally stop and listen to the other’s increasingly discursive variant on what had gone before, the sounds seeming to pay little heed to time and place outside the realms created by the music.

As for the finale, its infectious energies immediately reawakened my earliest memories of discovery involving these works, Houstoun’s rhythmic trajectories giving the music tremendous elan, and thus encouraging from Hristova a similarly charged feeling of excitement, throughout. Both players relished the composer’s teasingly divergent modulation near the end, which airily ascends back up to the home key after its ear-catching harmonic adventure, with great self-satisfaction and aplomb – for Hristova and Houstoun, then, a dream start to their cycle!

With the Sixth Sonata, Op.30 No.1, Hristova and Houstoun moved into different territories of musical expression from a composer whose world had shifted to a state of ongoing existential crisis, one dominated by acute awareness of his growing deafness. Consequently, the music moves through its varying moods with a curious mixture of studied self-awareness and spontaneous exploration, a mood whose volatility was here beautifully realised by both musicians.

Hristova and Houstoun seemed to be able to “go with the flow” while dealing with interactions between the instruments which appeared in a kind of conflict/challenge with the other, assertive flourishes often met with questioning, withdrawn phrases, each speaking the phrase “what then?” Each player seemed acutely responsive to what the other was doing, balancing and co-ordinating sparkle and surge with introspectiveness in a way that led the listener’s ear continually on – a frisson of rapt intensity just before the recapitulation sounded particularly heartfelt and characteristic, as did the movement’s final flourish, with its quiet concluding rejoiner.

What a beautiful slow movment this work has! – the pianist’s gently rocking dotted rhythm supported the violinist’s cantabile line, before the instruments changed thematic roles, before the music took a breath-catching modulatory turn in a new direction, one filled with musings, spontaneous impulses of energy and thoughtful redirectionings, all of which were delivered in an entirely spontaneous and recreative way by the musicians.

Again, Beethoven took a by now familiar recourse to variation form for the finale, the resulting sequences characterised by the programme’s note-writer as “ranging from waggish to whimsical”. Certainly the expressive modes seem at times almost like cryptic clues for concealed messages, the musical flow alternating between great fluency and terse encodings! I particularly enjoyed the “hide-and-seek” variation mid-way, which set the whispered against the emphatic with po-faced theatricality, as well as the final capering energies of the concluding variation, whose winding-down meanderings towards the end kept us in thrall right up to the re-energised concluding gestures. What teamwork! – what timing! – and what a sense of identification with a composer’s world! It all augurs well for further instalments of the Hristova/Houstoun combination – a feast for Wellingtonians!