Sweeney Todd – powerful and disturbing theatre at St.James’, Wellington

New Zealand Opera (in association with Victorian Opera) presents:
SWEENEY TODD – The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Music and Lyrics by STEPHEN SONDHEIM
Book by HUGH WHEELER (from a play by Christopher Bond)

Cast: Sweeney Todd – Teddy Tahu Rhodes
Mrs Lovett – Antoinette Halloran
Anthony Hope – James Benjamin Rodgers
Johanna – Amelia Berry
Tobias Ragg – Joel Granger
Judge Turpin – Phillip Rhodes
Beadle Bamford – Andrew Glover
Beggar Woman – Helen Medlyn
Adolfo Pirelli – Robert Tucker
Jonas Fogg – James Ioelu

Ensemble: Cameron Barclay, Stuart Coats, Declan Cudd
Barbara Graham, Elisabeth Harris, David Holmes
Morag McDowell, Chris McRae, Catherine Reaburn
Emma Sloman, Imogen Thirlwall

Conductor: Benjamin Northey
Director: Stuart Maunder
Designer: Roger Kirk
Lighting: Philip Lethlean
Audio: Jim Aitkins
Wardrobe: Elizabeth Whiting

Orchestra Wellington

St.James Theatre, Wellington

Friday 30th September, 2016

Stuart Maunder, New Zealand Opera’s chief, and the director of the company’s current production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd”, showing at Wellington’s St.James Theatre, called the show in a welcome message written in the programme “a meaty night out at the opera”. I admit I took fright for an instant, irrespective of my largely carnivorous food preferences history. It was just that I didn’t really fancy watching a series of lurid, blood-letting encounters served up for the edification of a respectable opera-going audience who might, without warning, transmogrify into a baleful mob calling for the entrails of the next unfortunate Christian thrown into the middle of the Circus Maximus.

However, reason prevailed – and suspecting that my reaction was probably due to a somewhat over-developed imagination, I resolved to bravely gird my loins, and “tough” my way through the predicted carnage!  While I’m not exactly a veteran of many cutting-edge, “anything goes” theatrical productions in the flesh (so to speak) I had seen sufficient examples on film of no-holds-barred ventures into some pretty visceral stuff to know that some present-day forays into the theatre could be pretty harrowing for audiences – so I resigned myself to be ready for anything!

As it turned out, my protective shields soon began to fall away, as, during the course of the drama, I became increasingly involved and/or empathetic with the intricacies, impulses and foibles of the story’s various characters. It was obvious that this production, with its ready and compelling amalgam of colourful Victorian atmosphere and accompanying operatic volatility and tragic darkness at its heart would bring out so much more than merely the notorious examples of violent blood-letting that the subject of “the Demon Barber of Fleet Street” has become renowned for above all other considerations.

I couldn’t help feeling the parallels between Sweeney Todd, the “demon barber”, and one of the most famous of all grand operatic characters, the misshapen jester Rigoletto. Each story has at its heart the darkness of wrong being done and having to be paid for in blood by the main character – Sweeney, the innocent victim of the rapacious desires of a judge who through deportation deprived him of his wife (whom he described as “virtuous”) and daughter; and Rigoletto, the unfortunate victim of his own physical deformity and the unfortunate loss of his wife, (whom he described as “an angel”), and, eventually, his daughter. (There’s actually a posting on the web which takes up this theme and develops it – it can be found on the following link http://dropera.blogspot.co.nz/2014/09/rigoletto-todd-demon-jester-of-mantua.html)

I won’t reiterate the points made by the linked article – but the upshot of Sondheim’s music and librettist Hugh Wheeler’s book is that the original “penny-dreadful” character-creation, Sweeney Todd, is fleshed-out, becoming a man with a “past” who is done a great wrong by society, and is determined to wreak revenge upon those responsible (Sondheim was inspired by Christopher Bond’s eponymous 1970s play, which set the character of Sweeney on the road to a kind of almost heroic status, transcending his former grisly serial-killer populist origins).

Quite frankly I couldn’t imagine the work more effectively realized in broad brush-stroke terms than in the performance we witnessed on opening night here in Wellington – one could perhaps cavil at this and that detail, most of which would anyway be matters of individual taste rather than theatrical and operatic absolutes. I haven’t seen another “Sweeney” live, but looked at several complete performance on you-tube, finding nothing that essentially superseded my memory and appreciation of what I witnessed “live” in the St.James last Friday evening. To me the overall atmosphere, the general plan and specific detailings of the set, the powerfully-focused lighting, the costumes that looked as though they had “grown” on the characters, and the sheer, no-holds-barred identification of each cast member with his or her role made for an overwhelming theatrical experience.

What a gift for a vibrant, energetic chorus this work is! – no mere indiscriminate body of variously-garbed onlookers upon whatever, these people lived their different roles as though their lives depended upon the outcome – often they were the story’s trajectory-makers, recounting and commenting on scenarios and events, almost always with clearly-ennunciated diction, even if some of Sondheim’s contrapuntal efforts resulted in general effect rather than specific detailing. Musical and dramatic force occasionally fused to telling effect, an example being the occasional appearance of the well-known “Dies irae” theme, beloved of Requiem settings by various composers throughout the ages, delivered with chilling, almost apocalyptic focus apposite to the stage action.

I thought one of the chorus’s greatest, and most breathtaking moments came mid-way through the Second Act, when vocalized storytelling power was suddenly and dramatically made flesh as the various members broke ranks and assumed the guises of an asylum’s inmates. The ensemble relished the depictions of chaos before regrouping at the scene’s end to drive the music’s fate-saturated course to the point of combustion with their repeated phrase “city on fire!”, echoing and abetting the various characters’ agitations – all very organically and compellingly advanced, the final reiterations of the “Dies ire” theme in the final chorus suitably cathartic, considering the Shakespearian body-count at the work’s conclusion.

The story-line takes in both dark, life-embittered business and youthful, idealized romance, but, there again, so does Beethoven’s Fidelio – rather than regard the scenes between Sweeney’s daughter, Johanna, and her young lover, Anthony, as lacking in edge, one must welcome their presence as stars determinedly negating the all-enveloping gloom of a night sky. I thought both Amelia Berry and James Benjamin Rodgers a whole-hearted, life-enhancing duo, making the most of their admittedly under-developed opportunities (though both the first appearance and the reprise of their duet “Kiss me!” was a delight, regarding both its singing and the pair’s accompanying interactions!). Each continued that quality of identification displayed in roles I’d previously seen them take, Berry as an attractive and spirited Zerlina in Don Giovanni and Rodgers as a beautifully characterized Goro in Madama Butterfly.

Antitheses of characterization were provided by a different partnership, that of Robert Tucker’s strong and vibrant-cum-sleazy Adfolfo Pirelli, the showman who attempted to blackmail Sweeney with the latter’s secret past, and his young assistant Tobias Ragg, played by Joel Granger, who conveyed with heartfelt ease his character’s almost naive wholeheartedness and loyalty towards his “protector”, the redoubtable Mrs Lovett, Sweeney’s partner in crime. But an extra dimension of character antithesis rolled into one was conveyed most masterfully by Helen Medlyn, whose portrayal as a mysterious, sometimes deranged, occasionally grisette-like, but at moments almost visionary beggar-woman was a kind of tour-de-force of characterization, transcending the almost “Game-of-Thrones” brutality with which she was despatched by the by-then-maniacal Sweeney (which action proved to be his ultimate undoing).

Villainy of interestingly-coloured threads was variously displayed by both Phillip Rhodes’ Judge Turpin, and Andrew Glover’s Beadle Bamford. The judge’s self-flagellation scene (partly confessional, partly self-indulgent airings of his lustful thoughts regarding Johanna, whom he had adopted as his ward after deporting her father to Australia!) I thought an interesting “take” on proverbial Victorian hypocrisy – through no fault of Phillip Rhodes’ I didn’t think it wasn’t entirely convincing, (and those actual whips seemed very “stylized”, almost to a fault!) – though compared with some rather naff fully-clothed equivalent self-flagellations I watched on You Tube which seemed particularly hypocritical, at least this Judge Turpin appeared to be actually punishing his bare flesh – which, I suppose, might have done it for some members of the audience. More importantly, Rhodes’ singing was a joy – characteristically deep, dark and satisfyingly sinister-sounding, and able to adopt more honeyed tones when appropriate.

And I did relish Andrew Glover’s portrayal of the free-wheeling Beadle Bamford, particularly enjoying the contrast between his swaggering First-Act manner and those almost genteel flecks of self-satisfaction he emitted when playing Mrs Lovett’s harmonium and singing a duet with her. Throughout, his calculated interactions with other characters (such as his suggestions to the Judge regarding ways of making the latter appear more attractive to women – “Ladies in their Sensitivities”) most effectively contributed to something of a study of controlled menace, all the more potent in its implications for whatever outcomes might result.

It could be said that one couldn’t have a “Sweeney Todd” without a performer to do the title role justice – but a great Sweeney would be almost nothing without an equally charismatic partner. This was, of course, the pie-shop lady, Mrs Lovett, who knew Sweeney in his previous life, and who told him upon his return from exile her version of what happened to his wife and his daughter. Here, it was the superb Antoinette Halloran, who brought energy, vibrancy, a great singing voice and well-honed acting skills to the role, bringing out all of the character’s charm and humour as well as a toughness and pragmatism necessary for survival in what were, obviously, tough times in a tough environment.

Though different as chalk from cheese to her Sweeney on this occasion, it was, in a sense, a match made in a theatrical heaven, as each character’s particular largesse complemented the other’s, presenting a kind of united front to the world, even if the fatal flaws in their interaction led to their eventual undoing. As Sweeney, Teddy Tahu Rhodes’ imposing figure certainly commanded the stage, his presence as enigmatic as Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, and as deep-browed as Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard. In contrast to Halloran’s flexible instrument, Rhodes’ tones had a rock-steadiness that allowed for little more than a basic variation of emotion, but which was expressive enough to convey grief at the memory of his long-lost wife and child, tender and flexible enough to salute his long-forgotten barber’s tools (“My Friends”) restored to him by the resourceful Mrs Lovett, and characterful enough to be her foil and allow occasional sparks to fly from their intermingling – their quick-fire-rhyming duet, “A Little Priest”, for instance, demonstrating adroit musical reflexes and teamwork, and producing an exhilarating and enjoyable result.

Yes, bucketfuls of blood were indeed spilt, but in almost every case the killings were practically ritualised, indeed, choreographed, sometimes with the music, so as to add a kind of execution-like air to the vengeful Sweeney’s murderous activities. Come-uppances were also the order of the day for most of the major players in the drama, with only the young lovers and the somewhat (by the end) deranged Tobias remaining more-or-less intact regarding life and limb! So the final sequence featured a ghostly parade of victims and perpetrators of violence alike, as the opening music returned and the chorus delivered the “Dies irae” motif amongst the pulsating textures and tones for the last time, with, fittingly, Sweeney and Mrs Lovett giving the audience the show’s final ironic salute just before the superbly-timed blackout.

So, great theatre, supported by brilliant direction from conductor Benjamin Northey, and on-the-spot playing from Orchestra Wellington. Altogether, it made for an  experience which I thought would have given the average opera-goer food for thought regarding the divisions often drawn between musical theatre and opera, ones which the musical genius of Stephen Sondheim seemed often in this work to call to question/

(A reminder: final two performances in Wellington at the St.James Theatre tonight (Tuesday) 4th Oct. at 6pm and Wednesday 5th Oct. at 7:30pm)

High drama, pastoral beauty and symphonic grandeur from the WCO with Michael Vinten

Wellington Chamber Orchestra presents:

MOZART – Overture “Don Giovanni” K.527
MAHLER – Seven Early Songs / Symphonic Movement “Blumine”
BEETHOVEN – Symphony No.3 “Eroica” Op.55

Maaike Christie-Beekman (soprano)
Wellington Chamber Orchestra
Michael Vinten (conductor)

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

Sunday, 25th September, 2016

It’s always fascinating to encounter the efforts of musicians who aren’t full-time professional players literally throwing themselves wholeheartedly at music that’s challenging and difficult, however well-known it might seem. I can claim to having had some limited but nevertheless exhilarating experience as such a player in an amateur orchestra, in another life! – what a pleasure it was, that of being able to listen “from the inside” to various pieces which I thought I knew well until the chance of actually taking part in performances of them came my way. As far as my own appreciation of music and music-listening went, these opportunities were revelatory, and at times challenging – I found myself more and more concerned with looking for answers to the question a friend once posed to me in regard to the quality of a music performance I’d attended: – “What do you mean, “It was good”?”

The above paragraph seemed to type itself, to my surprise, as soon as I began thinking about the recent WCO concert I’d gone to, drawn by the prospect of hearing a “live Eroica”! Wondering whether there would be anybody the least bit interested in my somewhat “small dreams of a scorpion” orchestral-playing experiences, I was sorely tempted at first to draw a veil over my musings and begin again. However, as I’d recently struggled with a couple of my reviewing assignations regarding how to even begin various articles, I thought I wouldn’t on this occasion spurn a spontaneous outpouring – something obviously deep and even perhaps Freudian or Jungian may well have been behind it all, which may well further reveal itself as the review continues…….so, be warned, Middle C reader!

The Mahler Songs offered on the programme had different attractions, not the least of which was the pleasure of listening to Maaike Christie-Beekman’s singing, which I’ve very much enjoyed in the past. Another significant aspect was that the accompaniments for all seven songs were orchestrations by the concert’s conductor, Michael Vinten –  I would imagine that they had been performed previously, else we would have been told that these were “world premiere performances”. While not having a comprehensive knowledge of the composer’s vocal output I recall being delighted by encountering at some stage a recording of a Mahler recital by Janet Baker (with piano accompaniment), and was hoping that some of the songs I enjoyed on that occasion might be served up once again in their newly-minted orchestral guise. What a remarkable phenomenon the late twentieth-century rise of the music of Mahler has been! – and in the process, the once-frequently-cited and off-putting “heaviness” of the composer’s musical language, in terms of both texture and duration, has gradually become less and less of a difficulty for concert-goers as his work becomes more frequently performed.

Apropos to these versions of the songs was the presence on the podium of the man responsible for the orchestrations, Michael Vinten.  I’ve greatly admired his conducting at various times, as I have  his work over the years as Wellingon Chorus Master for the New Zealand Opera. He’s taken a number of productions for the company on national tours, and I remember with particular pleasure his direction of a “Cosi fan tutti” in the Wellington Opera House a number of years ago, a  work I was delighted to hear him conduct again in 2013 for Days Bay Opera in Wellington. Purely by chance I happened to be speaking to a WCO orchestra player a couple of days before this present concert,  whose response to my enquiry as to how things were going was that “we were being really pushed hard by the conductor!” So with this in mind, I rolled up to St.Andrew’s church on Wellington’s The Terrace, expecting plenty of fireworks of the “thrills -and-spills” variety, but hoping that the “pushed hard” result wouldn’t crowd out the musicality this ensemble had often shown they were capable of.

The concert began with Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” Overture – right from the beginning Michael Vinten directed the players how he meant to go on, insisting on sharply-accentuated, abrupt chordings, swift, impulsive accompaniments and swirling, agitated lines which, ensemble-wise, spun in and out of control. The musicians bent their backs to the task of getting their fingers around the notes, while the strings tried valiantly to listen to one another to integrate their ensemble and establish the “gait” of the music, with the winds occasionally shining through like beacons throwing out guiding light in the midst of a storm. At the reprise of the opening allegro, things had settled in together more consistently, though the agitated sequences, with their tricky syncopations, meant that the players couldn’t relax for a moment. The unfamiliar “concert ending” involved a return to these energetic gestures, which, given the music’s subject matter, gave rise to the thought that there simply seemed no rest here for the wicked and virtuous alike!

But there was relief at hand, in the shape and form of a number of songs of great and distinctive beauty. The young Mahler wrote several of them as a planned cycle as early as 1880, while in thrall to the charms of a local girl, but as the romance waned so did the composer’s inspiration, so that the cycle was never finished. Others were written for a performance of Tirso de Molina’s play “Don Juan” and another, “Hans und Grete”, found its way into the Ländler movement of the composer’s First Symphony. Eventually five of them became Book One of his collection “Lieder und Gesang”, published in 1892, the remaining two being recycled by the composer in his cantata “Das Klagende Lied” – in fact, throughout much of Mahler’s output there exist these kinds of thematic connections between his songs and larger works which greatly enriched his creativity.

Soprano Maaike Christie-Beekman, who I’d heard, incidentally, in that aforemetioned Days Bay performance of “Cosi” conducted by Vinten, brought a rich and variegated tonal palette and a gift for characterisation to these songs which vividly brought out their qualities in every instance. As for the orchestrations, I thought they were miraculously-wrought, readily persuading us that it was the composer’s own voice we were hearing. Mahler’s ready identification with the theme of despair over lost love redolently coloured both “Im Lenz” (In Spring) and “Winterlied” (Winter Song), each of which contained beautiful and atmospheric evocations of nature; while in contrast “Hans und Grete” captured a very Germanic fairy-tale feeling, with some energetic and abandoned whoops of joy fron the singer at each verse’s end. The players did ample justice throughout to their conductor’s orchestral re-imaginings and to his direction of them – the final song, “Frühlingsmorgen” (Spring Morning) featured a rolling, lyrical carpet of orchestral sound on which the voice was able to sail, supported by atmospheric wind interjections, enjoining the sleeper to “….get up!  The sun has risen!”, and giving tongue to naturalistic ambiences such as birdsong at the end. It was, I thought, all a great success, and received by the audience with all due appreciation.

As a kind of adjunct to the songs, we heard the orchestral movement “Blumine”, a piece Mahler composed originally for his First Symphony, before deciding to take it out (it’s every so often re-instated in performances of the Symphony as a kind of “completist” exercise by orchestras and conductors, even though it’s generally agreed that Mahler’s decision to dispense with it was the appropriate one). Here it was given a securely-voiced, beautifully-focused and nicely-played performance, featuring several exposed orchestral solos, not the least of them being the trumpet solo (accurately and atmospherically played by Donald Holborow), with the oboe occasionally prominent as well, to haunting effect.

After the interval came the “Eroica” – and we were instantly galvanised by Michael Vinten’s opening relentlessly driving beat, which immediately brought to my mind that famous quote often attributed to conductor Arturo Toscanini, who, when asked whether he thought of Napoleon Bonaparte when conducting the symphony’s opening movement, retorted impatiently, “Is not-a Napoleon! Is not-a Eroica! Is allegro con brio!”. Here, it sounded to me more like “allegro con furioso!”, an effect which was admittedly exacerbated by the strings’ difficulties in keeping their ensemble sufficiently together whenever the music splintered into separate running figurations. It struck me that Vinten had possibly made things more difficult for his players by dividing his first and second violins to left and right of the orchestra, in aid of their lines’ antiphonal effect. The sections themselves held together, but at that speed and across those vistas, things often came unstuck between them, ensemble-wise.

No such difficulties were experienced by the winds who often steadied the ensemble, as it were, after certain sequences, especially those calling for syncopated dovetailings among the string bodies. While admiring Vinten’s attitude that Beethoven’s published metronome markings were “more-or-less viable”, I felt that he was trying to impose a performance ethic onto an ensemble which simply couldn’t deal with his demands, and therefore required some compromise so as to produce a more musical result. I’d felt something of the same about aspects of Vince Hardaker’s conducting of the WCO in the ensemble’s performance, earlier in the year, of Schubert’s “Great” C Major Symphony.

I realise there’s been something of a fresh, authentic-spirited breeze blowing through all aspects of traditional performance practices in classical music over the last forty years or so. It’s revamped and rehabilitated what we’ve come to call “period performance” styles, and has often involved some none-too-gentle “cleansing” of what are considered by the purists to be inauthentic traditions tacked on by succeeding generations. But it’s sometimes seemed to me that some of the more extreme attempts to “recreate the original” and cast aside all spurious accumulations have resulted in something that’s simply too literal-sounding to be real and properly “alive”, to the point where the actual baby seems to have been thrown out with the bath water.

This review isn’t really an appropriate forum to further expound my own feelings on the topic (the above paragraph just “slipped out” – sorry!), as I merely wanted to pose the question regarding what conductor and orchestra did in order to try and realise in concert both the Mozart and Beethoven items on the programme – how musical was the result? Regarding the first movement of the “Eroica” I thought the conductor put the ensemble (especially the strings) under too much pressure, however laudable in principle were his ideas. Certain passages in the music rang out splendidly, and the instrumental detailing in places was most effective,  the appearance of the “theme from nowhere” on strings and wind straight after those big, tromping chords mid-movement, the famous “false horn” solo (“Damn that horn! – he’s come in too early!” a listener at the first performance supposedly exclaimed!), and the trumpet-led climax (which, very properly, was broken off halfway through, as Beethoven intended – a number of my “older” recordings of the symphony have the trumpet continuing right through!). But the music’s grandeur, for me, was in places compromised by the players’ struggles to keep the ensemble together at the conductor’s extreme, Toscanini-like “allegro con brio”!

The famous “Funeral March” movement fared better, the oboe solo near the beginning striking a proper lament-like quality, supported later by the chorus of winds and strings with more breathing-space in which to phrase the music – though the fugal section gave the strings more ensemble problems (again, I think they found it difficult to actually hear one another when trying to keep together). However, the winds sounded resplendent in places, with the clarinet really singing out! And the concluding, halting and grief-stricken sequences towards the movement’s end were realised with great feeling. Likewise, the Scherzo conveyed, in places, plenty of energetic character, the oboe solo alert, and the “tutti” sequences working well, as did the quick-fire strings-and-winds exchanges, even if the quieter, strings-only passages again had some precarious moments. However, if anything about the performance was truly “heroic” it was the playing of the three horns in the trio – the somewhat crude expression “they nailed it!” was nevertheless truly apposite on this occasion!

Beethoven gives his musicians mountain after mountain to climb in this work, the finale being no exception. There’s an arresting initial flourish, a teasing bass-figure, and a triplet variation (again, I thought Vinten’s tempi just that bit too urgent for his strings to be able to keep it together) leading to that heart-warming “Prometheus” theme on the oboe, taken at a fair old lick, but effectively keeping up the music’s momentum. The minor-key, Hungarian-like dance variation had colour and bite, and the ensemble pulled the strands of the fugue together at the end with gusto, allowing the oboe-led winds to lead the way into the great poco andante section, giving the horns another chance to shine with their judiciously-placed detailing.

Most interestingly, Michael Vinten took the movement’s  coda, marked presto, at a pace that allowed the players to get around their phrasings and fill out their tones – he had outlined in a programme note his investigations of the tempo markings, and considered that the music was well-nigh unplayable if the score’s metronome indications were followed. Believing that a misprint had occurred, he took the passage at a speed which sounded to me eminently musical, not the helter-skelter that we sometimes get from performances which sound as though the players are trying to make sure they catch the last bus home.

Such exacting beasts, these symphonies! But wonderful to hear them played, and experience both thrills and spills in their realisation. I can’t recall who it was who said Beethoven’s music always seemed greater than it could be played (for me that idea could apply to all great music), but hearing it “live” is always, as was the case here, an occasion for plenty of excitement and enjoyment!

Moments in Time – Diedre Irons’ tribute to Judith Clark

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music
Institute of Registered Music Teachers in New Zealand (IRMT)

Judith Clark Memorial Piano Series
Second Recital – Diedre Irons

HAYDN – Sonata Hob.XVI:52 in E-flat Major
DEBUSSY – Suite Bergamasque
LISZT – Sonata in B Minor S.178

Adam Concert Room, NZSM Campus, Victoria University

Sunday, 18th September, 2016

It’s sometimes difficult to imagine Diedre Irons as ever having had another “life” as a person and performing musician, so very much has she become part and parcel of this country’s musical fabric, especially of late in the Wellington region. Now in retirement from her position as Head of Piano Studies at Studies at Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music, a position she held from 2003 to 2012, she regularly appears in concert, mostly as a chamber musician, but occasionally as a soloist with orchestra, and on the recital platform.

Her career as a performing musician and as a teacher extends from her upbringing in Winnipeg, Canada, through her piano performance studies with Rudolf Serkin and Mieczyslaw Horszowski at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, her subsequent invitation by Serkin to join the Curtis faculty at the conclusion of her studies, and her concertising throughout Canada and the United States as a chamber musician and soloist. She came to New Zealand in 1977, working firstly at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch until 2003, and then in Wellington at the NZSM.

Irons has always sought to put the music before the performer (for this reason she avoided the “piano competition circuit” as a young pianist), though she would, I think, consider the honours that have come her way as much a validation of music as a profession as of her own achievements. She was awarded an MBE for services to music in 1989, and in 2007 she was awarded the degree of Doctor of Music (honoris causa) from Brandon University in Manitoba, Canada ‘in recognition of outstanding contributions in the world of music through superlative achievement as a talented, dedicated and passionate pianist.”

Having been a successor to Judith Clark in the position of Head of Piano Studies at the NZSM, Irons seemed an appropriate choice by dint of that circumstance alone for inclusion as a performer in this series dedicated to the former’s memory, quite apart from her eminence as an executant and interpreter. While on this subject I have to say that I was both thrilled at the choice of artists for the recital “lineup” and somewhat disappointed that an additional place in this stellar gallery of pianists wasn’t found for one of Clark’s most brilliant pupils, Emma Sayers, whose recent return to the recital platform after a long absence was noted and welcomed by Middle C (search “Emma Sayers”)

Such additional conjectures aside, here, then, was Diedre Irons standing before us in the Adam Concert Room, about to present what seemed, on paper, something of a dream recital, consisting of three of the most delectable works in the piano repertoire – Haydn’s final Piano Sonata, Debussy’s beloved “Suite Bergamasque”, and Liszt’s era-defining masterpiece, the B-Minor Piano Sonata. Though presented here most satisfyingly in that order I couldn’t help thinking that each of the three works also represented a different life-stage – Debussy’s youthful, delectable Suite (whose on-going popularity he came to resent in later years), Liszt’s towering, fully-fledged testament to Romanticism in art, conceived in his virtuoso prime, and Haydn’s last and arguably greatest keyboard work, perhaps not dating from his final years but representing a kind of testament of creative endeavour in a particular genre.

“Ages of man” idea or not, Irons simply plunged into the world of each work on its own terms, her music-making as is always the case bristling with characterful connection to the sounds wrought from diverse worlds .  Straightaway, the excitement came with the way she played the first chord of the Haydn Sonata – we were instantly saturated in the warm glow of what seemed at the time like the mother of all E-flat chords, one which instantly anticipated all of those Beethovenian resonances (the “Eroica” Symphony and Variations, the “Emperor” Concerto, and the Fourth Piano Sonata among others), but then, without further ado, took our sensibilities on a truly unique Haydnesque journey – the strength of the pianist’s of flourishes contrasted so tellingly with those playful/wistful sequences that left one open-mouthed at the composer’s seemingly boundless invention, even when following conventions such as the “music-box” mode of the movement’s second theme.

Always a particular delight of Irons’ playing for me has been her all-pervading spontaneity, fuelling an approach which seems to imbue the themes, textures and rhythms of whatever she plays with the feeling of “on-the-spot” creation on the part of both composer and performer – and when that composer, as here, is Haydn, then the “making it up as one goes along” sense of discourse is more than usually heightened. Of course, there are powerful overall creative forces at work behind the scenes, both compositionally and interpretatively, but these were here given such immediacy and theatricality, that we were caught up with the feeling of being present at some kind of fresh exposé, and able to renew our own responses to the music in the process.

I don’t wish to try the reader’s patience by giving a blow-by-blow account of my impressions of Irons’ playing of every phrase (though if I were a piano student I would ponder her sounding of practically every single note, not to produce an imitative effect, but to reflect on her making each phrase, each impulse, each episode “live” in relation to the character of the moment and the effect of the same on the whole….). For my own part I relished her own enjoyment of sequences such as Haydn’s outlandish modulations throughout the movement’s second half – both the reintroduction, in a remote key, of the “music box” sequence, and the harmonic wanderings which led to a disconcerting “luftpause” just before the payoff – what a guy!

In the slow movement, Irons’ filling out of a markedly vocal line seemed to me beautifully shaped and moulded, the “strummed” chords giving the music a minstrel-like, almost bardic character – like a good storyteller would with words, she made us hang upon every one of the composer’s notes. I’d never before noticed quite so strongly how the music seemed to anticipate (again!) Beethoven, in particular his “Tempest” Sonata, with firstly stentorian bass sounds and then distant, echoing resonances at the end.

Irons was certainly one for the teasing repeated-note opening of the finale, and the answering scamperings and somersaultings – she timed the music’s pauses to perfection, setting circumspection against an engaging headstrong energy, keeping us on the edges of our seats with the precarious dancings and unpredictable volatilities of the music, and then transfixing us with the eloquence of the mid-movement declamations, before returning us to the indefatigable energies that whirled the music to its joyous conclusion.

After this, the opening of Debussy’s “Suite Bergamasque” seemed even more rich and expansive than was usual, partly due to Irons’ bringing out the music’s amplitude, giving our imaginations so much space in which to range around and about. The succeeding episode made a wistful contrast with the strength and purpose of the opening, while newly-sounded distant echoes fetched up by Irons like new impulses from an old remembrance led to a resplendent return of the opening, each upward surge of tone presenting us with something rich and memorable.

The following Menuet questioned rather than danced its way forwards, its whimsical enquiries gentle rather than insistent, the music’s ambience seemingly intent on gathering up every fragment of tone as it proceeded, the playing emphasising the resonances as strongly as the music’s stately pulsings – what a rich and redolent world of dream-like impressions! Irons alternated rich chordings with glittering flourishes, before gathering up the threads and returning to the music’s processional aspect, gradually allowing the tones and textures to grow in girth and expectation – and then, with an adroitly-placed cadence dissolved the music in wraith-like fashion.

As I’m presently ham-fistedly learning to play “Clair de lune” myself I’m not able to give a dispassionate opinion of Irons’ interpretation, except to say that her playing of the opening’s return after all the central swirling agitations had a lovely “spent” quality which I found very moving, as I did the half-completed reminiscences of the swirling music at the end – too precious to be revisited, but merely acknowledged and then let go. I thought the whole movement jewel-like in its beauty, here, but also “owned”, as one might recall a memory of a lost love or youthful impulse.

Very rarely do I find myself at odds with anything Irons does at the keyboard – so it was a surprise that, in places during the concluding “Passepied”, I found myself wanting more sense of forward momentum, in places, however delicious and insouciant she sometimes made the dance rhythms sound. In line with her playing of the rest of the suite she seemed to me to realise the music more as a memory than a here-and-now experience, and I wondered if her view of the music was, in fact a little too valedictory in certain places, missing a certain impish delight in momentum for its own sake. I was, come to think of it, reminded by her playing here of the conducting style of Sir John Barbirolli (one of my musical heroes), who realised all the music he directed with great warmth and love and care for detail, to the point where, at certain times for the listener, the trees might seem to obscure the sense of a greater forest……..of course, all of this is subjective and valid unto oneself alone (a friend sitting alongside me, for example, was entranced by it all without reservation). At the end we were grateful to Irons for taking us so very unequivocally and magically into her own realm of enchantment.

Having said all of this, what does one then write about the performance of the Liszt Sonata which followed? Afraid of generalising my impressions of it all I scribbled a number of things down as the music’s journey unfolded, which, when reading back, brought forcibly forward the sense of something realised in direct, unreserved, and wholehearted terms – though anybody familiar with Irons’ playing over the years could have written the above, possibly without even attending the concert! But again, from the outset, we felt ourselves thrust into the music’s seething, pulsating body, those portentous bass notes and the alternating descending figures serving notice of the composer’s  intention to explore even the darkest and most forbidding places on this musical journey.

As is well known, Liszt’s scheme with this music was to announce his basic material in no uncertain terms at the work’s beginning before spreading before us an incredible panoply of characterised sequences all of which were derived from these opening motifs. Irons played these basic motifs with richly-focused eloquence, giving them enough room to expand and resonate without compromising their dramatic or theatrical qualities. Then as the motifs were reiterated in their transformed state, each one extending the composer’s range and scope of vision over the widest possible span, she took to these far-flung variants and fleshed them out with the kind of committed advocacy that made Liszt’s grand design come alive, relating and contrasting the disparate thematic elements within a convincing and satisfying whole.

Whatever the prevailing character of the sequence Irons was playing, she was its committed advocate – how beautifully, for instance, she realised the alchemic transformation of the ominous repeated note theme of the opening into what was perhaps the work’s loveliest lyrical melody, complete with what seemed like a nightingale’s song rounding off each declamation. Against this, the volatility of her plunge into the agitations which followed was breathtaking, edge-of-the-seat stuff, designed to give the precarious, hair-raising effect of living dangerously and courting imminent ruin, a process arrested only by the onset of those massive, orchestrally-conceived chords to which she brought all of her strength and amplitude, to monumental effect.

For those who like to think of the work as a manifestation of the Faust legend, the sequence which immediately followed the above could be construed as the scene in the garden between Faust and Gretchen (or Marguerite, if one is thinking of Gounod, of course!).  Irons relished the beautiful lyricism of the recitatives between the lovers, set against the underlying sardonic comments from the watching Mephistopheles, the whole sequence so operatic and theatrical, and yet drawn with such on-going inevitability and over-riding sense of Fate as to heighten one’s sense of tragedy, however much one relishes this brief respite! So when Irons returned to the great chordal theme which seemed to span the work’s structure at that point like a vast, dominating crossbeam, we were alerted as to the transitory nature of youth and beauty and their associated delights, and reminded of the omnipresence of a greater, more resounding and inevitable state of things.

What a task for the pianist, controlling and regulating the ebb and flow of such a resounding and far-reaching musical structure! For here was a reprise of the opening suddenly stealing in and activating a fugue, one which in Iron’s hands gathered momentum and tightened its grip on the music almost to the point of frenzy – a couple of dropped notes and a slight hiatus at one point in the discourse after the fugal lines revert to chordal figurations in the discourse mattered not a whit amid the excitement and tumult generated by her playing! Those transformed motifs having then reappeared and spent their energies, the music’s course was all but run, Irons conveying its exhaustion, desperation, tremulousness, and resignation, as all of the music’s human endeavour seemed to be mocked by Fate (in the person of the Prince of Darkness?) with the return of the work’s sombre opening. But then, those beautiful, chordal pin-pricks of light at the end were played by Irons with such tremulous hope and longing, that one felt salvation of sorts might be possible after all!

Forgive all of these words! – far more important was that sense of something rich and wonderful having been given to us by Diedre Irons’ radiant and heartfelt playing!

 

Quintessence on show via youth and experience at Michael Fowler Centre

Chamber Music New Zealand presents
QUINTESSENCE

String Quintets by Mozart and Brahms
(with Salina Fisher (b.1993) – Tōrino: echoes on pūtōrino improvisations by Rob Thorne)

The Pettman Players
The New Zealand String Quartet
James Dunham (viola)

Concert One: MOZART – String Quintets: No.3 in C Major K.515 / No.6 in E-flat Major K.614
The Pettman Players:
Shauno Isomura, Benedict Lim (violins), Julie Park, Caroline Norman (violas), Martin Roberts (‘cello)

Concert Two:
MOZART – String Quintet No 5 in D Major K.593 / BRAHMS – String Quintet No.1 in F Major Op.88 (“Spring”)

Concert Three:
MOZART – String Quintet No.4 in G Minor K.516 / SALINA FISHER – String Quartet Tōrino: echoes on pūtōrino improvisations by Rob Thorne / BRAHMS – String Quintet No.2 in G Major Op.111

The New Zealand String Quartet:
Helene Pohl, Monique Lapins (violins), Gillian Ansell (viola), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)
with James Dunham (viola)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 17th September, 2016
(Concerts 1 and 3 reviewed below)

What a lovely idea,  arranging a day of performances of quintets for strings, and then giving the arrangement the name “quintessence” – and I must confess to not previously knowing the origin of the term in classical and medieval philosophy, of the “fifth” element or essence, a substance said to comprise the makeup of the celestial bodies, no less! In relation to Chamber Music New Zealand’s event, Quintessence was having both the New Zealand String Quartet join forces with the eminent American violist, James Dunham in concert, as well as a talented youth ensemble, The Pettman Players, whose members were associated either currently or formerly with the Pettman National Junior Academy of Music, an organisation based both in Auckland and in Christchurch.

Over the course of  a single day, Wellington concertgoers were able to hear in the morning the Pettmans in two of Mozart’s String Quintets (No.3 in C Major K.515, and No.6 in E-flat Major K.614), and then luxuriate in both an afternoon and an evening concert given by the New Zealand String Quartet with guest violist James Dunham. Each of these latter concerts featured a Mozart Quintet (No.5 in D Major K.593 in the afternoon, and No.4 in G Minor K.516 in the evening) along with a String Quintet by Brahms (No.1 in F Major Op.88 “Spring” in the afternoon, and No.2 in G Major Op.111, in the evening). As well, the evening concert contained a Chamber Music New Zealand commissioned work by local composer Salina Fisher, Tōrino: echoes on pūtōrino improvisations by Rob Thorne.

I wasn’t able to attend all three concerts, but I managed to get to the first and third of them, relishing the opportunity to enjoy (and nonchalantly compare) the playing of two different ensembles.  I was, naturally enough, prepared to make allowances for the youthful aspect of the Players, as my understanding was that the musicians would all currently be students at the Pettman Academy, either in Christchurch or in Auckland. While the programme notes tell us that the ensemble consisted of both present and past members of the academy, we weren’t told who was specifically who in that respect. No matter, as the playing of the group members was of such a uniformly high standard it wasn’t really relevant as to who was up to which stage in his or her studies – this was music-making of a remarkably accomplished level as regards both individual and ensemble skills, these players able to realise the beauties and intricacies of the music with great aplomb and sensitivity.

The group opened their concert with the C Major Quintet K.515, one of the grandest of Mozart’s chamber works, and beginning with an extended dialogue between violin and ‘cello, the exchanges fluent and focused. Both players had finely-spun tonal qualities, the first violin, Shauno Isamura, able to beautifully “inflect” his line even at speed, the figurations handled with a deftness whose detailing seemed rich and full. As for the cellist, Martin Roberts, his responses to his leader were at once whole-hearted and finely graded to match the volinist’s declamations. Throughout, the teamwork of the ensemble was exemplary, the violas’ passages in thirds having a rich, velvety sound, the players (Julie Park and Caroline Norman) taking great care with one another’s sound-worlds so as to make their dovetailings coherent.

Though a long work, the C Major Quintet’s sequences seemed to fly by under these players’ fingers – I thought their corporate command of nuance and phrasing, especially so in the transition passages which so often depend on split-second timing, was astonishingly good. The Minuet engaged us from the start with its characterful sequences, a rising figure dominating the opening measures, while a Trio diverted our sensibilities with a leap of a seventh and a chromatic swerve – the players gave the chromatic figure plenty of “misterioso” by way of contrast with the physicality elsewhere. A hymn-like Andante featured heartfelt exchanges between the first violin and the first viola, everything distinctively and strongly focused, every note and associated phrase given its due. Then, the finale’s high spirits rounded the work off in a suitably celebratory fashion, the players relishing the occasional accents and beautifully colouring the moments of modulatory exploration before bringing it all to a joyous conclusion.

I knew the E-flat Major Quintet well, as it was a work featured on my very first recording of these pieces. To my intense pleasure these players took a no-holds-barred approach to the music, the two violas bringing out the hunting-horn character of the opening with terrific elan, then richly and excitingly interacting with the ‘cello through both energetic and more subtly-nuanced passages. The playing certainly brought out the music’s orchestral quality, no more so than at the movement’s end where the violins add their fanfares to the galloping rhythms of the lower strings – most exhilarating!

The Andante featured some lovely work by the pair of violins in tandem, a rare and brief moment of not-quite-matching intonation at the beginning of one of the melody’s variants apart – it detracted not a whit from the sense of easeful communion between the players, and the beauties of their shared phrasings. Again in the Minuet there were lovely cascading thirds from the “violin duo” (second violinist Benedict Lim matching his leader all the way in refinement and in energy) for us to relish, and a sense of the players’ delight in sweeping the dance steps along during the Trio. The finale’s Haydn-ish bustle carried everything before it in these players’ hands, Mozart’s fugal writing engendering a real sense of fun and freedom, the lines brilliantly nuanced by the players and brought together at the end with tremendous verve. What a tribute to Edith Salzmann, the artistic Director of the Pettman Academy, to have fostered and encouraged such talent as we witnessed here with these young players!

Back again to the MFC in the evening, this time for a more varied programme of Mozart and Brahms with the New Zealand String Quartet and violist James Dunham, and a newly-commissioned work for string quartet from New Zealand composer Selina Fisher. A measure of the quality of the Pettman Academy Group’s playing earlier in the day was that we weren’t made to feeli n the evening that “here, at last, was the real thing” with these adult performers – it was, instead, a different kind of musical experience, the players of the NZSQ reflecting their own by now familiar performing ethos of one of the country’s finest music ensembles.

Beginning with Mozart’s G Minor Quintet K.516, the music immediately took on a dark, theatrical “Don Giovanni-like” aspect, heightened by the “layered” sonorities of firstly three instruments, then including two more, making for a dramatic “burgeoning” of the tones and textures. I thought violist James Dunham’s playing most interesting, his tones more assertive than what I’ve been accustomed to with Gillian Ansell’s playing, his playing “tighter” and for me far less easeful. The music here certainly lent itself to dark, terse statements of intent throughout, concluding with some heartfelt downward sighs colouring the mood of the coda.

Again, with the Menuetto,  the mood remained terse and sombre, wonderfully downwardly spiralling runs meeting great sforzandi – dramatic stuff! The players relaxed into the trio, the two violas enjoying a moment of concerted lyricism, the surrounding ambiences easeful and grateful for some respite! Mozart anticipates Beethoven in the Adagio’s opening, music of such a rarefied state, almost above human emotion – the players made just as much of the movement’s contrasting sequences, a running accompaniment ushering in a descending major-key figure. And then there was the finale’s beginning, a heavy-footed trudge through stricken cadences, the two violins bearing the expressive burden , and keeping us guessing as to outcomes, before dancing into the sunniness of G major. We delighted in the players’ teamwork throughout the contrasting episodes, the hints of gypsy-like music adding touches of temperament to the Elysian happiness of it all.

Salina Fisher’s newly-commissioned work for Chamber Music New Zealand was then given by the NZSQ – this was an exploration by the composer of the similarities between the traditional Maori instrument the pūtōrino (similar to a trumpet or a flute in its function) and string instruments, particularly in its ability to equate with the human voice in terms of pitch, vocal timbres and different registers.  The instrument itself can produce deep mournful voices , male in character, and the more female, lighter, more erie and agile voice – as well, a more breathy sound can be produced by blowing across the instrument’s opening. Salina Fisher’s work was an exploration of these effects, inspired by the work of the pūtōrino’s foremost present exponent, Rob Thorne, who’s taken up the mantle of guardian of this taonga from legendary figures of the past such as Hirini Melbourne and Richard Nunns.

Quintessence ended with a work by Brahms, a revelation to me! – my experiences of these works by Brahms haven’t been altogether positive in the past, to the effect that I was disappointed that this series of Quintets didn’t include all six works by Mozart and have done with it! Well, I must have either been listening to the wrong recordings, or been in a peculiar frame of mind when encountering these works in the past, and specifically this G Major Quintet. The NZSQ with their visiting colleague James Dunham made the work such a life-enhancing experience for me, I listened open-mouthed right through the work and forgot to take any notes on the performance!

Thinking about how I had regarded this music on previous (and long-distant) hearings, I fished up from my memory unflattering terms like “opaque”, “weighty”, “academic”, and “self-consciously contrapuntal”. As I listened to the playing, those epithets dropped away, one by one, like scales falling from my eyes so that for the first time I could clearly see.  Right from the joyous opening, in which I could hear bells pealing and activating the surrounding ambiences (not unlike the beginning of Schumann’s great “Rhenish” Symphony) I was transfixed on several counts, by the beauty of the opening ‘cello solo and the duetting violas making their response, by the rapt sequences in the music’s development, and the reawakening of energies ,and the light and shade of the different levels of intensity right up to the music’s coda (so reminiscent of the Second Piano Concerto). The Adagio began with deep, melancholic footsteps, but varied its gait throughout between introspection and full-blooded feeling, while the mischievous Scherzo, marked Un poco Allegretto, gave one the impression of the composer chuckling to himself over the music’s enigmatic textures.

The finale certainly gave the impression of “going somewhere”, at times sounding a bit like a mystery adventure (again I thought there were parallels with the Second Piano Concerto),  with quasi-Hungarian impulses in its gait and Viennese café gestures in its mood! Hugo Wolf once wrote that “Brahms can’t exult!”, but he too may have heard performances which didn’t do the music sufficient justice as to its character and general attitude – I thought the players built up throughout the movement a terrific sense of energy, dashing and vibrant in its abandonment! It was music-making which carried all before it and throughout the final bars most appropriately brought out the joyousness of the work  – a case, as far as I was concerned, of a composer certainly having the last laugh, one which I couldn’t begrudge him in the face of such resplendent writing!

NZ Trio with Xia Jing – violin, ‘cello, piano and guzheng

NZ Trio with Xia Jing – Fa (“Open up”)

ZHOU LONG (China/USA) – Spirit of Chimes
XIA JING (China) – composition for Guzheng
JEROEN SPEAK (NZ) – Serendipity Fields (World premiere)
DYLAN LARDELLI (NZ) – Shells (World premiere)
DOROTHY KER (NZ) – String Taxonomy (World Premiere)
GAO PING (China) – Feng Zheng (World premiere – commissioned by the NZ Trio and dedicated to Jack Body)

NZ Trio
Justine Cormack (violin) / Ashley Brown (‘cello) / Sarah Watkins (piano)
with
Xia Jing (solo guzheng)

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

Friday 16th September, 2016

This concert was part of Victoria University Confucious Institute’s China/New Zealand Musical Exchange programme, and sponsored jointly by the Confucious Institute and the China Cultural Centre in New Zealand, with support from both the Asia New Zealand Foundation and Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music.

A special feature of the concert was the presence of Xia Jing, one of the foremost exponents of the guzheng – a kind of Chinese zither or dulcimer, whose documented use dates back over two thousand years. The instrument is growing in popularity in modern times, and is frequently used in popular and modern classical music, as either a solo or chamber music instrument. As one of the concert’s items Xia Jing played one of her own compositions for solo instrument, one which enabled us to experience at first hand the guzheng’s unique tonal and timbral characteristics.

Also on the programme was a work for piano trio, and four other pieces for the ensemble with guzheng, which were world premiere performances. The work for Piano Trio was written by Chinese/American composer Zhou Long and was called Spirit of Chimes, while Chinese composer Gao Ping contributed a piece commissioned by the NZ Trio and dedicated to the memory of New Zealand composer Jack Body, which was called Feng Zheng. And no fewer than three New Zealand composers  wrote works for the Trio to be performed at this concert – so the event represented a kind of feast of creativity come to the table to be savoured and enjoyed.

Zhou Long’s Spirit of Chimes opened the programme, the composer telling us in a written note that his inspiration came from “the sounds of chime-stones, bone-whistle and chime bells from ancient China”, though he additionally confided in us that, because of the disappearance of early pre-Tang Dynastic Chinese music, he had to imagine in his head the “real sound” of such ancient instruments when composing for the piano trio.

Beginning with soft, mournful sliding notes on the ‘cello, echoed by the piano and joined by the violin with its delicate sliding figurations, the music before too long took on a kind of processional aspect, as if bringing to us from the past the different sound-characters that could unlock our appreciation of these ancient gestures and tones. The strings interacted warmly and readily, firstly in full-blooded vocal terms, and then in a more folksy, homely, throw-away manner – the piano joined them, partly to support the interaction and partly to push things on, to plant and then to till elsewhere.  This seemed to provoke division in the ranks as the cello broke away from the discourse of three and disrupted the dovetailed interactions –  suddenly the musical exchanges were volatile and angular, with the different lines and timbres of the instruments colliding and opposing one another as much as they were colluding and intertwining. Though a measure of calm was restored  we got the feeling that those same disruptive elements were waiting for their chance to strike again, something that an enormous tam-tam stroke more-or-less- confirmed.

I enjoyed the “danse macabre” sequences which followed, the piano instigating the dry-bones manner and enjoining the strings to take part, which they did, adding weight and extending the motif to a six-note tattoo, which got all kinds of treatment. As if in payment for pleasure, the music irrupted again, almost vengefully, as if a veritable battery of physical assault, characterised by savage trills and tremolandi………did we want to be there? But what amazing sonorities!

Strings mused on the quiet that followed, the cello occasionally bursting out, more in sorrow than in anger, the other instruments following suit, and, it seemed to me,  transforming by osmosis the mood to one of great longing, almost to the point of weeping! The piano’s ambient colourings were left, pushing out the spaces and leaving us drifting, contemplating a certain “tragedy to the heart and a comedy to the intellect” ambivalence……whatever my stance I was left contemplating the startling presence with which the players enabled the voices of those “ancient chimes” to speak to me, whether real or imagined……

‘Cellist Ashley Brown then introduced the guzheng player, Xia Jing, who demonstrated to us by way of some kind of improvised solo, what her instrument could do. Sitting flat at the instrument like one might at a Western dulcimer or Japanese koto,  Xia Jing plucked the strings with her right hand and pressed the strings down with her left hand at certain points to produce pitch variations and different kinds of vibrato. Her hands seemed to alternate between melody and accompaniment, producing timbres not dissimilar to a balanaika or a cimbalon. I was astonished at the degree of energy she seemed to be able to produce, in terms of both strength and excitement.  She brought the music’s energy down to a more ritualistic level,  finishing her piece with a beautiful kind of postscript or epilogue.

Justine Cormack, the Trio’s violinist,  told us briefly about the four pieces especially composed for the trio in collaboration with the guzheng, inviting us to enjoy the pieces on their own terms as well as relishing the differences between them.  For me to try and repeat the kind of “gesture-by-gesture” commentary I noted down throughout the course of the first piece, would, I think, run the risk of depleting both my vocabulary and the number of people prepared to stay the course in any case!  The first three pieces of this group seemed to me to reflect certain philosophical attitudes towards “sound content”, though Jeroen Speak’s work Serendipity fields I thought more inclined towards out-front expression than was the case with the relative reticence of the other works, each displaying a reluctance to “resound”. Both Dylan Lardelli’s Shells and Dorothy Ker’s String Taxonomy seemed in fact more like physical choreography than sound generation, each composer stressing the importance for their piece of “semblance” (Lardelli) and “shared gestures” (Ker), ahead of creating tones from notation, a more oblique, almost “underbellied” manifestation of things.

Serendipity fields made each instrument say its name at the music’s beginning with terse but characterful impulses, which I liked, the guzheng dalicate and lyrical, the piano percussive and the strings angular and sinewy – then tossed these characteristics about, resulting in the music veering from vehement, through whimsical to wraith-like……Speak’s music had an extremely volatile inclination allied to an interior quality whose character seemed furtive and inward, setting up situations where the sounds seemed to “goad” one another, and build up sequences whose textures and ambiences produce what sounded like some kind of “chaos of delight”. Any semblance of permanence was short-lived, as the instruments swooped, burgeoned and withdrew their tones as required and then as quickly disapeared, with a final, characteristically short-breathed pair of impulses. What teamwork there was between the players in the realisation of these scenarios!

Compared with Jereon Speak’s engaging ‘serendipities”, the impression left by Dylan Lardelli’s Shells was dry and taciturn, which underlined the appositeness of the piece’s title. Whatever “substance” gave rise to these gestures, whatever fleshed-out intentions that once perhaps spoke their names, had long since disappeared, leaving only encasements and frameworks, like a luggage-room filled with empty suitcases and leaving behind little more than spaces for conjecture.  Pianist Sarah Watkins used her hands to resonate the piano’s “box” rather than any actual tones, apart from occasional single, transfixing notes, while the string-players pursued a kind of “silent music” course – for someone as sleep-deprived as I was just at that time, the effect was hallucinatory, filling my half-lit consciousness with surreal light and dumb-show gesturings, a narrative at which I felt I was little more than a mute spectator.  Dorothy Ker’s String Taxonomy seemed to me less of an “inward” experience, the movements of the players more out-going and exploratory than in Lardelli’s mutescape, vis-à-vis the use of knitting needles by both the ‘cellist and violinist, making for a dry, metallic effect involving little or no flesh-and-blood. The pianist activated the strings inside the box, the three string-players joining in with the effect through brushing or scraping, creating what the composer styled as “a sonic alchemy”, an interaction of which worked on my sensibilities to produce a kind of looking-glass-land effect – a language of meaning through gesture rather than its conventional result, counter-intuitive when it came to making sense of it all.

Again, one had to marvel at the sounds that were conceived by such original means, right from the outset, with its “knitting pattern” exchanges and determinedly non-pitched language – furious irruptions of energy biting and snapping and resonating from the stringed instruments were followed by their antitheses – coded whisperings took the place of shouted or semaphored riddles. Together these sequences gave the impression of some kind of dynamic coagulation which could surely have blossomed forth in a kind of “transfigured night” synthesis of gesture and melismatic fruition – but apart from a startlingly brilliant metallic scintillation, the work’s conclusion was as enigmatic in its effect as was the whole.

To Gao Ping’s work Feng Zheng we then came, to conclude the concert, the piece’s title transliterating into English as “Wind Kite”, as fitting an image as any for a work dedicated to the recently-departed Jack Body, a friend of Gao Ping as well as a fellow-composer. A Chinese tradition was to fly kites during the time of Qingming, when the living pay respect to their deceased ancestors by way of the kites bearing their thoughts and feelings to the realms of the departed.  Here, the music was divided into four sections: – (1) Still Clouds, (2) The Breeze, (3) Breaking the Air, (4) Broken Line. Gao Ping underlined the connection of the music with his late friend by devising a motif from his name (jACk BoDy) used at the beginning and end of the piece.

The opening “Still Clouds” captured the ‘calm magnificence” of the sky, and the wonderment of those still earthbound beneath its splendour – the music’s resonant, drifting textures suggested a peace and order away from earthly conflict – string pizzicati spiked these ambiences, attempting to disrupt the undulating tones of the guzheng and piano, violin and ‘cello irruptions tumbling over themselves before being borne away on the piano’s “wind-borne drift” of tones to which the strings contributed tremolandi and the guzheng mesmeric repeated notes.  The instruments seemed to rise from out of the music’s layered textures and then submerge again, the argument growing more and more involved – a kind of “communion of impulse”, one which brought forth some heartfelt responses from the players, such as Sarah Watkins’ exciting, toccata-like irruptions from the piano. The music developed real “schwung” with what I presumed was its “Breaking the Air” sequences, everything propulsive and exhilarating, with emphasis on the ensemble rather than individual strands, reaching a kind of crisis-point of function with trenchant tremolandi from the strings, the  weight of sound becoming more and more stratospheric, abetted by echo-chamber effects from the guzheng, almost like voices humming off-stage! It seemed very much a valedictory point, one which the composer, by some alchemic means, was able to suggest to me a “here-and-now” feeling not unlike that which infuses the final song “I Remember” in Lilburn’s settings of Denis Glover’s “Sings Harry” verses – something that could have taken place nowhere else but here – something one knew, by dint of awareness and experience. The musicians played out this mood with a deep sense of having travelled and of, at the end of it, returning home.

The Chinese title “Fa” and its associated character for this concert suggested the English words “open up” – which, it seemed to me, the NZ Trio, Xia Jing, and the composers and their music encouraged our imaginations to do here most rewardingly.

Tony Chen Lin – piano evocations, visions and premonitions at St.Andrew’s

Wellington Chamber Music Sunday Concerts

TONY CHEN LIN (piano)

BARTOK – Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs Op.20
JS BACH – French Suite No.5 in G Major BWV 816
GAO PING – Distant Voices (1999)
TONY CHEN LIN – Digression (2016)
SCHUBERT – Piano Sonata in B-flat D.960

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

Sunday, 11th September, 2016

Tony Chen Lin was one of two supremely gifted young Christchurch-based pianists (the other was Jun Bouterey-Ishido) who “slugged it out” for first prize at the 2008 Kerikeri International Piano Competition, an event which I had the good fortune to attend. The adjudicator, Australian pianist Ian Munro, awarded Jun Bouterey-Ishido the first prize by what he acknowledged was the narrowest of margins, a decision I was glad I didn’t have to make, as I remember not being able to fault either of them, performance-wise, at the time. Both have gone on to significantly further their pianistic and musical careers, this afternoon’s recitalist Tony Lin completing his Master of Music at the Hochschule für Music in Freiburg in 2013, as well as recently performing as both pianist and conductor in Germany (Freiburg and Stuttgart) and in Switzerland (at the Semaine Internationale de Piano et de Musique de Chambre), at which he’s appearing this year once again, as a conductor.

Coincidentally each of these two young pianists has appeared as a performer on concert and recital platforms in Wellington this year, Jun Bouterey-Ishido as the pianist in the Calvino Trio, which played here in July, and Tony Lin with this solo recital a week or so ago. Unfortunately I was prevented by circumstances from hearing the Trio, which made me all the more determined to partly counter my loss by “making good” at the other pianist’s concert. (I will, in time, get to the point where I can mention one of these musicians by name without having to cite what the other is, or has been doing! – your patience, gentle reader!).

I thought Lin’s recital programme fascinating – the choices suggested that the pianist enjoyed making connections and drawing attention to influences and cross-references. Both the Bartok and the Gao Ping works featured the use of folk-melodies from the composers’ respective homelands as starting-points for improvisations. The pianist’s own’s programme notes underlined the importance for each composer of maintaining the integrity of his original source material, Bartok regarding the melodies “as motifs to be surrounded by the results of their working” and Gao Ping exploring “the rich, microtonal palette of the folk tradition”. Each composer’s “workings” resulted in a distinctively flavoured sound-world that one could readily associate with those uniquely characterful regions.

Separating the two sets of improvisations was JS Bach’s French Suite No.5, a bright and cheerful collection of baroque dances in G major, presenting a more stylised and courtly mode of expression which contrasted surprisingly well with the more earthy/exotic source material of the two works on either side. Then, in the second half, we heard a piece by the pianist himself, a brief, improvisatory meditation-cum-declamation called, appropriately enough, Digression, and whose dying sounds led straight into the concert’s largest-scale work, Schubert’s final Piano Sonata in B-flat, D.960.

The recital began with Bartok, his Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs Op.20, a work which progressed from simple harmonisation of melody to manipulation of their shape, rhythmic patterns and harmonic associations – in effect, the composer gradually “took over” the potentialities of the material, transforming them to meet his own compositional needs while still preserving their basic idiomatic spirit. Tony Lin conveyed something of this spirit amid the volatile rhythms and favoursome harmonies and dissonances of the second song, and the “Night Piece” aspect of the third, with its quicksilver responses in the midst of the gloom, delivered here with razor-sharp reflexes and a powerfully-wrought sense of atmosphere. I particularly liked his “thinking on his feet”-like playing of the sixth improvisation, with its spontaneous series of knockabout “turns”as if from a clown, the music leaping from the black to the white keys and then back again! And, how poignant were those moments of wistful reflection in between the drolleries and caperings!

The Bach French Suite seemed, under Lin’s hands, wrought of some kind of elfin magic in places – gossamer-like threads of musical lines that were woven freely and then tweaked and pulled into place, the playing always flexible yet mindful of the music’s overall shape. Following the opening, minstrel-like Allemande, the Courante resembled a merry brook bubbling over stones, with the occasional refraction caused by natural attrition from the play of light and the ceaseless flow of water. The beautiful Sarabande’s dignified contourings put me into some of the music’s “spaces” most beguilingly, from which the pianist’s quixotic delivery of the Gavotte’s opening gently brought me back, alerted to the movement of the dance-steps and the even more energising garrulity of the Bourée!

Though more circumspect in manner, the Louré had a beautiful spring in its step, Lin allowing the figuration plenty of freedom while keeping the music’s pulse – he seemed to be able to un-regiment the most rigorous of the music’s rhythms. Then, his delivery of the Gigue was a marvel of clarity,  demonstrating a keen instinct for allowing voicings sufficient weight and momentum. I particularly enjoyed the second part’s more deeply-registered explorations, whose working-out seemed to acquire an almost orchestra sonority in places, amid the player’s varied command of colours and timbres.

Gao Ping’s Distant Voices demonstrated the composer’s use of Chinese folk melodies as “points of departure”, as did Bartok with his Hungarian Peasant Songs. The first reflection, Nostalgia, drew from a melody belonging to Inner Mongolia, Gao Ping employing “neighbouring” notes to the existing melody, and creating depth, resonance and tension from all registers of the keyboard, both delicate and full-throated. The playing brought out the composer’s “opening up” of spaces, recalling in places Ravel-like sonorities and delicacies. The second evocation, Love-Song from Kangdin, is apparently one of China’s most well-known melodies, from the composer’s own Sichuan region – here were haunting “echo” effects, sonorous melodic lines resounding and filling their own ambiences, enhanced by occasional impulses that suggested bird-song or air-and-water nature-patterns.

Gao Ping’s third realisation, given the title Blue Flower, used a melody from  the Shanbei region to evoke the dynamism and exuberance of dancing and drumming, the sounds reaching to the lowest piano-pitches for added resonance and weight, and opening up the sound-world of the music in an orchestral way. The rhythms drove the music through “little dancings” sequences vividly ccontrasted in Lin’s performance with great swirls of repetitive and dynamic energy, featuring primitive pulsatings set alongside cluster-tines and multicoloured harmonies. At one point the music recalled themes from the two previous movements, intertwining the worlds and regions, and pausing for the reminiscences to take effect before the toccata-rhythm again took the reins, finishing as a scintillation whose energy tapered away to silence – all beautifully realised by the pianist.

After an interval, Tony Lin retumed to the keyboard to fascinate and absorb us with his own piece, called Digression, inspired partly by the pianist’s involvement with Schumann’s Humoreske, and partly as a result of Lin’s own self-confessed inclinations to digress during scheduled practice sessions! The pianist called the work a mere diversion from “the main, more important subjects”, but its value for him was its marking a reawakening of his urge to compose. Between shivers of scintillation, claustrophobic chordings and single-note declamations looking for the light, the piece sounded like a true diversionary exploration, one that, somewhat unexpectedly, led straight into the opening chords of the final work on the programme!

This, of course, was the Schubert B-flat Sonata D 960, one of three such works written during the last few months of the composer’s life, music which was destined to languish in relative obscurity until the mid-twentieth century. It’s always seemed to me astonishing, for instance, that one of the greatest of all pianists, Sergei Rachmaninov, reputedly confessed to not knowing anything of the existence of these or any other Schubert sonatas – but performances of them were rare until the renowned Artur Schnabel’s advanced their cause around the time of the centenial of the  composer’s death, in 1928. They are now, of course, considered in some quarters to be on the same level of achievement as the very different late sonatas of Beethoven.

Lin brought a highly-wrought degree of sensitivity to the work’s opening – gentle, dream-like nudgings of the melody were underpinned by a murmuring accompaniment, and “ghosted” by rumbling trills in the bass, indicating a kind of “darkenss” waiting in the wings. Then the return of the opening theme burgeoned out of repeated lead-in chords and flooded our sound-vistas with torrents of tone, which continued right up to the sudden, dramatic hush of the second subject. This was played lightly and swiftly, giving the music an “elusive” character which a series of recitative-like question-and-answer phrases attempted to explain, until shouldered aside by the most wonderful, if  disturbing irruptions – those angular gestures signalling the onset of the first movement repeat, that ominous bass trill mentioned above here roaring from below like some baleful subterranean Minotaur waiting for its prey. (Of course, the presence of this repeat has been a recurring bone of contention amongst performers and commentators, one with which Lin took himself, in my humble opinion, onto the side of the angels by playing it!).

When the development did come it seemed to take on an almost spine-chilling aspect, as if the pianist was reluctant to go there! – a brave face saw him through the initial hesitations, and the rich, comforting warmth of parts of the central section emboldened his resolve! But as the music began to climb out of these warmer regions the chill returned and began to exert its grip, with a desolate, minor-key repetition of the opening theme, accompanied by the ominous trill – we felt the growing unease as the ways seemed to close in on us, and present to us nothing but oncoming darkness.

The return of the opening theme relieved our immediate anxiety – but there seemed a frailty about the proceedings, an almost “tenderised” aspect, the spirit somewhat undermined by the privations of the journey. And the pianist seemed to suddenly tire as well, losing a couple of notes to an ungainly turn of the music, though with the declamatory sequences at the exposition’s end he rallied, and brought about a beautifully-poised lead-in to the coda – in all, it was quite a journey!

The slow movement’s opening confronted us once again with that world of desolation and imminent darkness. The throbbing rhythmic figurations had a heavy, overburdened gait beneath a theme whose upwardly thrusting supplication to the firmament had an anguished magnificence. Lin’s playing had such incredible “hurt”, making the occasional short-lived recourse by the composer to some sweet previous memory so very moving.

After this, the scherzo’s rapid, almost manic energies seemed blurred at the edges, as though things were slightly out of focus – it was though the pianist was suddenly almost running on a kind of “empty”, and trusting in little else except his instincts. The Trio was angular and heavily accented, almost dysfunctional in its presentation, redolent of a kind of recklessness, or devil-may care attitude. Against which the finale’s opening bell-strike sounded a warning-note, from which the music tried to steer away, the major-key sequences attempting to establish a brave face, but being repeatedly reminded of darker realities – Lin attacked the heavy chords mid-sequence savagely, but the music then steered the mood back to a kind of resigned acceptance, the bell-strike once again “centering” the focus and dictating the terms. What a kaleidoscopic array of emotion was here! – with the pianist having to steer a course between hope, and despair, happiness and anger. After another outburst, followed by a curious variant of what Schubert wrote in its wake, Lin marshalled his resources and set the music stampeding to its destiny – “thus though we cannot make our sun / stand still, yet we will make him run”, wrote a poet in an entirely different context, but in a poignant way just as applicable here.

Rather than leaving us amid such a bleak and cheerless scenario, Lin played as an encore for us a Bartok transcription of a folksong, whose words described a poor boy’s wish for a starry night so that he may find his way back home to his beloved – it was played with great spontaneity and quietly-expressed feeling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Houstoun’s tribute to Judith Clark – a feast of Bach

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music
Institute of Registered Music Teachers in New Zealand (IRMT)

Judith Clark Memorial Piano Series

Opening Concert: Michael Houstoun
JS BACH – The Well-Tempered Klavier Bk.2 BWV 870-93

Adam Concert Room, NZSM Campus, Victoria University

Sunday, 21st August, 2016

A brief preamble: Judith Clark (1931-2014) was a much-respected piano pedagogue and former Head of Piano Studies at Victoria University’s School of Music in Wellington. Her years of prominence in this latter role were before my time in the capital, but I certainly remember her in retirement as an abiding presence at many a concert and recital, having the air of a “grand dame” whose attendance at whatever performance might have seemed to those who knew her to give each occasion a kind of telepathic approbation. I never got to know her or talk with her to any great extent, and it was obviously my loss – since her death I’ve come to realise the extent of her influence and importance as a teacher, mentor and administrator in the capital’s musical life. So, the instigation of this series, featuring recitals given by no less than four of the country’s leading pianists, is no mean tribute to a significant, and already almost legendary figure.

Michael Houstoun’s choice of music to begin the series certainly invested the occasion with a distinction of its own – having been captivated throughout his musical life by a number of Preludes and Fugues from Book Two of JS Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, he resolved to master those others that he didn’t know and had never played, and perform the entire set of twenty-four! In the concert’s programme notes Houstoun recounted for us how he had played some of the composer’s Goldberg Variations for Judith Clark on the last occasion that he saw her, remarking that “she loved this music”. So his choice of the music was by way of remembering and commemorating her fondness for Bach, and at the same time realising his wish to play the whole of the WTC’s Second Book.

Interesting that Bach himself never called Part Two of the work “The Well-Tempered Clavier”, but instead “New Preludes and Fugues”. Though the collection is reckoned by commentators as less satisfying an entity than is Part One, the “infinite variety” of its different characters, preludes and fugues alike, makes for as compelling a listening experience as the more “organic” earlier Book. I must say that Houstoun surprised and even delighted me no end with his brief but thoughtful annotations accompanying each prelude and fugue, printed in the programme accompanying the recital. It’s not unlike what, firstly Hans Von Bulow, and then Alfred Cortot, did by way of “prefacing” each of the 24 Preludes of Chopin, though the pianist himself cites the example of Debussy providing titles for his Piano Preludes. I’m almost certain a younger Michael Houstoun wouldn’t for a moment have considered such an undertaking – but his remarks concerning the music in an interview I heard just prior to the concert indicated in no uncertain terms his awareness of, and willingness to share his thoughts regarding the “character” of each of the individual pieces.

So, in the programme, alongside each of the preludes and fugues alike, we were given a brief (often single-word) impression of what the music suggested to the pianist. Houstoun himself alluded to the “slippery ground” that such an exercise might place beneath any interpreter’s or listener’s feet, particularly those of either a suggestible or a literal-minded bent, due to Bach’s leaving so much of the “interpretation” to the individual performer (practically no dynamic or tempo markings, for instance). What it all confirmed for me was the essential uniqueness of individual responses to art, and the validity of those responses both across the board and down the ages. Bach was obviously happy for posterity to make what it might of his music, within the cosmic embrace, of course, of his unquenchable faith in God. This remarkably unselfconscious quality is one that’s proven to be one of the music’s greatest and most enduring strengths.

Faced with Houstoun’s playing of twenty-four Preludes and Fugues, I thought I’d forego a detailed, piece-by-piece analysis of the pianist’s performance, one which would sorely try the patience of even the most avid reader of “Middle C”. Instead, I’d touch on places in the concert which would indicate the general range and scope of Houstoun’s astounding playing throughout    a kind of “as the twig is bent, so the tree’s inclined” approach. I must admit that, perhaps somewhat churlishly, I didn’t look at the pianist’s piece-by-piece annotations until he’d finished playing each one or a group of them – I wanted to form my own impressions of what he was enabling the music to do at the time of its sounding, and then “compare notes” so to speak.

Houstoun arranged the sequence of the pieces in four “blocks” – what he called “a feast in four bites” – placing two five minute breaks at the halfway stage of each of the concert’s halves (are you still with me?), making for what could be called in another context “comfort stops”! For me it gave what seemed like a mighty processional of pieces and associated fugues at once more overall shape and some space in which various individual delights of the cavalcade could be better savoured. Were I to choose one prelude/fugue sequence from each of these segments of the concert, the following are the ones I would single out for special comment.

The Sixth Prelude and Fugue in D Minor comes in the wake of the previous D Major pair, whose wonderful “processional fanfare” aspect at the start was a feeling regarding the music that I obviously shared with the pianist, and whose fugue seemed to me to reflect a  kind of reflection in tranquillity upon the previous outward display, a more intimate evocation of shared well-being. By contrast, the D minor pairing expressed a grimmer, more single-minded purpose, the ”real business” concerned with goals and outcomes rather than processes and posturings. Houstoun’s fleet-of-finger playing most excitingly drove the argument forward in a torrent of energy, brooking no interference. How whimsical, then, was the fugue, with its sly, deconstructionist gestures, the chromatic descents following each of the upward-thrusting figurations as deftly undoing the constructs as each were proposed – extraordinarily satisfying!

The Ninth of the set, in E major, featured a Prelude whose contourings seemed as if shaped by unearthly hands, its serenities of movement and phrasing beautifully “voiced” by Houstoun, as if in communion with other-worldly forces – a kind of “music of the spheres”, realising processes that had their own age-old logic and purpose. Its Fugue was one which grew from patiently unfolding steps ascending and expanding with a kind of inevitability and strength which, here and elsewhere, makes one marvel at the music’s (and its composer’s) visionary capacities, which the pianist brought to us with all the grandeur he could muster! Interesting, then, to read his “Angelic benediction” description of the Prelude, along with the “Holy, holy, holy” appellation for the Fugue.

Moving to the second half, I was particularly taken with the urgently-paced, attention-grabbing G-sharp Minor Prelude, its figurations having something of a relentless aspect, redeemed by a frequently-repeated three-note motif. The outlines are sufficiently varied and exploratory for the music to take on a kind of narrative quality, which Houstoun shaped and coloured as would a good story-teller, keeping our interest simmering throughout. My ear took a few measures to get the rhythmic “gait” of the fugue (three, as opposed to four, at the start!), but the music made for a fascinating journey into, through and out of different states of feeling and being, to hypnotic effect, the pianist’s concentration and far-seeing purpose never seeming to flag, and, in fact, gathering weight and strength as it proceeded, leaving nothing in its wake.

Though not the  final one in the set, I made an asterisk beside my notes for the A minor Prelude and Fugue at the time,  thinking I would want to dwell upon it further afterwards. It seemed to me to exemplify what Bach could do with the simplest building materials, in this case in the Prelude with simple alternating chromatic and “normal” scale passages, interspersed with simple intervals that move disconcertingly in and out of shadows, creating from these simple elements what sounds like a complex web of interactions (Houstoun’s annotation for this movement reads, somewhat divertingly, “Maybe….maybe not”. The Prelude’s second half seems to lift the music more into the light, which seems not only to further illuminate but also to intensify its complex workings.

As for the fugue, its big-boned gestures and massive trajectories  moved easily and majestically alongside more urgent and quicksilver gesturings as if demonstrating a kind of all-pervading pulse governing all manner of movements and actions, cerebral and emotional, structural and decorative,  cosmic and individual. The “wow!” that appeared in my notes at the end of Houstoun’s playing of the piece seemed to appear of its own volition – exactly how it got there I couldn’t even begin to imagine, let alone understand. Some things are best left to metaphysics – and it seemed fitting to leave undisturbed such a spontaneously-wrought tribute to an integral part of an occasion which will be long-remembered by those who  attended.

One of Judith Clark’s successors at the  School of Music,  Diedre Irons, will next offer a programme featuring the music of Haydn, Debussy and Liszt, to be performed at the Adam Concert Room on Sunday 18th September. The remaining two concerts will be given on Sundays in 2017, on March 26th by Richard Mapp, and on May 7th by Jian Liu, currently Head of Piano at Victoria. It’s a cause for oceans of gratitude to be given by all piano-fanciers to the organisers of the concerts, to the artists themselves, and, of course to the late Judith Clark, first and foremost, whose inspiration it was which brought about the idea for this series. Incidentally, this opening  concert was sold out beforehand, so people who are interested ought to act quickly to be sure of their places at the oncoming one.

The Don rides out again – Eternity Opera’s “other” Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni – Eternity Opera’s “understudy” cast

Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte
English Translation by Edward Dent

Alex Galvin (director)
Simon Romanos (music director)
Sandra Malesic (producer)

Cast:
Leoporello – Nino Raphael
Don Giovanni – Orene Tiai
Donna Anna – Amanda Barclay
Commendatore/Statue – Derek Miller
Don Ottavio – Chris Berentson
Donna Elvira – Hannah Catrin Jones
Zerlina – Emily Mwila
Masetto – Charles Wilson

Dancers and Chorus: Taryn Baxter, Minto Fung,
India Loveday, Sarah Munn, Jessica Short

Orchestra:
Douglas Beilman (concertmaster),
Anna van der Zee (violin) Victoria Janëcke (viola),
Inbal Meggido (‘cello) Victoria Jones (double-bass),
Timothy Jenkin (flute) Merran Cooke (oboe),
Mark Cookson, Moira Hurst (clarinet),
Ed Allen (horn),
 Christopher Hill (guitars),
Josh Crump (trumpet),
Andrew Yorkstone, Mark Davey (alto trombone),
Hannah Neman (timpani)

Hannah Playhouse, Wellington

Wednesday 24th August, 2016

What a delight to be able to enjoy, within the space of a few days, a second, almost entirely different cast performing the same operatic production! Eternity Opera’s Don Giovanni had opened on the previous Saturday (reviewed by Middle C, below) and this was the single chance for the “understudy cast” members to demonstrate what they could do in public – with the exception of the Zerlina, Emily Mwila, for whom there was no understudy, and whose performance was a great pleasure to see again, in any case!). So this evening’s performance was a tantalizing mixture of deja vu with fresh, new faces and voices and characterizations, as interesting to compare with the “other” as to enjoy for its own qualities. I confess that I’m inclined towards the latter approach, though I may let the occasional counter-impression slip through the net by accident, as it were.

Firstly, though, there were the constants between the two performances – the joy of listening all over again, for example, to Mozart’s score brought forward and sharpened in focus as conducted with great energy and commitment by Simon Romanos, and expertly played by the first-rate ensemble. I was seated in a different place in the auditorium this time round, in front of the singers and further away from the orchestra, and didn’t get the “edge” of the instrumental attack to the same extent, the music seeming to having a more rounded and integrated-with-the-stage sound. I noticed a couple of dropped notes in places in the solo lines, which could be put down to fatigue, but registered just as strongly the support the players gave to one another and to the singers – at the risk of singling out certain players, I delighted all over again, for example, in cellist Inbal Meggido’s obbligato accompaniment of Zerlina’s “You are cruel, dear Masetto” (“Batti, batti o bel Masetto”), the playing at once so deliciously insouciant and having great tensile strength, signifying the encirclement and breaking-down of her jealous lover Masetto’s defences with her abundant, coquettish charms.

Of course that was just one of many felicitous detailings which we were able to enjoy, aspects of the sterling work done by the entire quintet of string players throughout. Another delight was guitarist Christopher Hill’s accompanying of Don Giovanni’s serenade to Donna Elvira, following on of course from the player’s unfailingly sensitive recitative accompaniments, which I thought worked surprisingly well. The various winds, including the horn, aided and abetted the singing throughout with gorgeously-phrased melodic introductions, counterpoints and resonating harmonies – and I loved the impact made by the introduction of those extra brass and the timpani for the Second Act’s “statue” scenes.

I was grateful to director Alex Galvin for his decision to present the show in period costume and with stage settings that reflected the composer’s time, enabling the full flavour of Mozart’s and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte’s partnership to play freely in a more-or-less “intended” context. The use of English greatly benefitted these interactions, the point as I saw it being not to “update” but to illuminate the story. I thought Galvin’s conception of the staging nicely took the wind out of the sails of those who ceaselessly contend that opera needs to be contextually “modernised” for today’s audiences to “connect” with. And the response of a young friend of mine who also saw the show on this particular evening was, at the end, to excitedly ask when the company would be staging its next production!

Of course, reproducing what one imagines would be anything like the settings and atmospheres prevalent in the composer’s own era is an art-form in itself, even using the libretto’s detailing as source-material. I liked very much Alex Galvin’s opting for black backdrops which couched the production in more-or-less constant darkness, one that for most of the time connects with the story’s time-of-day frame and its rather Goya-esque settings. Having said that, I thought the opening needed to be made even darker, the characters (Leporello, Donna Anna and Don Giovanni) too viscerally identifiable during the latter’s attempted violation of Donna Anna. Conversely, there were a couple of moments where the oppressiveness of the gloom might for the sake of theatrical contrast have been momentarily brightened, such as the Act One scene where Zerlina and Masetto are celebrating their marriage with their friends, and even, a little later, the meeting of Don Giovanni with Donna Anna, the woman he had attempted to seduce the night before. However, the production’s instinctive and on-going evocation of darkness served the story and its various themes well.

What colour we experienced came largely from the costumes which in nearly all cases in both performances eloquently “spoke” for their particular characters, with only the first-choice Donna Elvira (Kate Lineham) being, I thought, made to look a touch too matronly. The rest of both casts inhabited their various garments readily and easefully, allowing the essential personalities to shine forth – perhaps in the cemetery scene, the “Darth Vader” (from the film “Star Wars”) aspect of the Statue, a memorial to the Commendatore, slain by Don Giovanni, looked somewhat incongruous at first, but the apparition’s supernatural aspect logically gave its appearance a kind of “carte blanche”, stimulating, to say the least!

So, what of the cast this time round? Away from the “comparison” aspect of putting the two ensembles together role-by-role, I would say that each of the singers had something unique and tantalizing to bring to their individual parts. In some cases stage deportments and voices took time to warm up and properly activate, but in almost every case were firing and exuding energies and resonances by the opera’s end. A case in point was Giovanni’s servant Leporello, portrayed by Nino Raphael, whom I thought somewhat indolent, both physically and vocally, at the start, adopting a passive, arguably too nonchalant-sounding aspect when viewing his master’s would-be amorous exploits, and in doing so for me making his character seem uninvolved almost to a fault. As the story proceeded he seemed to gradually wake his Leporello up and bring out a sparkle more readily in both word and deed, until by the end he seemed in much greater possession of the part, or vice versa.

Something of the same languidity hung about the well-developed shoulders of the Don, Orene Tiai – his aspect seemed more happy-go-lucky than intense and predatory, an “easy-come-easy-go” attitude which didn’t develop any pronounced “edge” normally associated with the character’s efforts to pursue sexual adventures. He did at certain times convey a mode which suggested he was accustomed to getting his way, but he rarely gave a sense of having that unquenchable appetite for women which he admitted to at one point in the opera, despite the impressive statistics proffered by Leporello concerning his master’s amorous activities. His voice was by turns charming and sonorous in his set numbers, more alive and purposeful there, I thought, than in recitative, where he tended to “sing-song” rather than “point” his delivery of the lines. Still, he did well to move the action on at the beginning when “confronted” by the Commendatore, the latter either missing or failing to properly emphasise a movement or gestural cue or a vocal challenge to fight, so that the Don had to propel the action on unprovoked – or so it seemed!

The great ensemble finale at the end of the first act was a true galvanising point, which seemed from the new act’s beginning to give everybody’s stage personae more intensity – a kind of edge was raised which, in the Don’s case, carried him on something of a tide towards his confrontation with the Statue in the cemetery and fuelled their final encounter at the conclusion of Giovanni’s supper scene. Derek Miller’s Statue seemed fortunately to be able to generate more heft and power than he managed to find as the ineffectual Commendatore, which set the scene for the Don’s final despatch at the hands of a group of infernal cohorts of Hell – all women, incidentally, which seemed properly meet and just.

As for the women who were the objects of the Don’s somewhat haphazard attentions at various stages of the evening, all conveyed a distinction of character which enhanced their place in the drama – Amanda Barclay’s Donna Anna fiery and volatile, Hannah Catrin Jones’s Donna Elvira upright and dignified, mingling constraint with moments of deeply-felt grief and desire, and Emily Mwila’s Zerlina, pert, vivacious and totally winning. I did feel a little startled at the immediacy of some of Amanda Barclay’s expressions of blood-lust made in her “vengeance” duet with her hapless fiancee, Don Ottavio, but otherwise responded to her obvious involvment with the character and the story. Hannah Catrin Jones, in comparison, was more controlled in both deportment and vocal expression, wanting, I thought something of Amanda Barclay’s impulsiveness and spontaneity in her expression, but not too much! Both singers gave pleasure when shaping their longer lyrical lines with beauty and sensitivity, and not having their voices subjected to pressure from the strictures of the composer’s more intensely-wrought vocal figurations.

Victims, too, by proxy, of the Don’s predatory activities, were the men involved with these women, such as Don Ottavio, who seemed here, to all intents and purposes, practically neutered by Giovanni’s near-violation of his fiancee, Donna Anna. At the best of times, long on declamatory intent and short on effective action, Don Ottavio (sung by Chris Berentson) made a noble-hearted and dutiful, if somewhat emasculated impression as per his character. Berentson’s acting was consistent and reliable, as was his ensemble singing, but his voice needed more heft and juice when heard solo. Da Ponte and Mozart certainly got it right in ascribing desperate marriage-delaying tactics to poor Donna Anna, faced with the deadening prospect of eking out her days with a dutiful but lacklustre husband.

On the other hand, Masetto (here portrayed by Charles Wilson), the peasant lad betrothed to the pretty and vivacious Zerlina, whom the Don took a shine to in the first act, readily displayed his displeasure at the situation, railing against his partner’s coquettish behaviour and causing her great remorse, leading to some delicious interplay between the characters as Zerlina exerted her well-nigh irresistible charms upon her aggrieved sweetheart, and achieved the desired result. Though arguably not appearing robust and rustic enough for a peasant lad, Wilson’s sense of character made it work, singing and acting alongside Emily Mwila’s Zerlina with heartwarming involvement.

In both productions the chorus work sparkled (in the wedding and festive scenes) and resounded with doom-laden tones (in the opera’s final scene, where the Don is dragged down to Hell by the femme fatales turned demons!). Whatever the scene the deployment of people on stage created atmosphere, colour and excitement, and advanced the drama.

While the performance by-and-large confirmed the choice of principals for the “first” cast the performances described here enshrined for the most part viable alternatives whose realisation worked in each case, enabling the show “to go on”. I thought doing both an excellent idea, especially considering the number of people I saw who, like myself had attended the other production as well.

One is left with more-than-ample feelings of enthusiasm and goodwill towards the company and its director, with a hopeful view to there being further operatic worlds for them to conquer – on its own, the audience attendance and its response to the performances would have been heartening. The production certainly demonstrated that, if there’s sufficient energy, commitment and feeling for the art-form, it’s so very worthwhile and rewarding to have opera done in almost any performance scale, if the resources to do so can be found.

I can only echo the sentiments expressed in the final sentence of my review of the “first cast” performance in wishing Alex Galvin and Eternity Opera every future success.

Opera with energy and excitement – Eternity Opera Company’s Don Giovanni at the Hannah Playhouse

Eternity Opera Company presents:
DON GIOVANNI

Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte
English Translation by Edward Dent

Alex Galvin (director)
Simon Romanos (music director)
Sandra Malesic (producer)

Cast: Leporello – Jamie Henare
        Don Giovanni – Mark Bobb
        Donna Anna – Barbara Paterson
        Commendatore/Statue – Roger Wilson
        Don Ottavio – Jamie Young
        Donna Elvira – Kate Lineham
        Zerlina – Emily Mwila
        Masetto – Laurence Walls
        Dancers and Chorus: Taryn Baxter, Minto Fung, India Loveday
        Sarah Munn, Jessica Short

Orchestra: Douglas Beilman (concertmaster), Anna van der Zee (violin)
                Victoria Janëcke (viola), Inbal Meggido (‘cello)
                Victoria Jones (double-bass), Timothy Jenkin (flute)
                Merran Cooke (oboe), Mark Cookson, Moira Hurst (clarinet)
                Leni Mäckle, Peter Lamb (bassoon), Ed Allen (horn)
                Christopher Hill (guitars), Josh Crump (trumpet)
                Andrew Yorkstone, Mark Davey (alto trombone)
                Hannah Neman (timpani)
                   
Hannah Playhouse, Wellington

20-27th August, 2016

The name “Eternity Opera” is itself a splendid gauntlet-brandishing gesture, an assertive declaration of overall purpose and intent, reinforced by a note in the programme for Saturday night’s opening of the new company’s season of “Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”–  firstly, “to stage productions that are exciting and accessible to anyone” and, just as importantly, “to support the many talented singers and musicians in the Wellington region”. Judging by what the opening night’s performance managed to achieve in terms of immediacy and intensity, there was plenty of excitement and involvement for the audience in Wellington’s Hannah Playhouse, strange though it might have seemed for those of us familiar with the venue’s history to see opera performed there.

Whatever misgivings one might have felt beforehand along these lines, particularly regarding the venue’s relatively limited performing space for both singers and orchestra, were immediately blown away by the impact of the Overture’s opening.  The immediacy of it all seemed to me to bring one far closer to the “inner life” of the music than the somewhat distanced effect of having the performers on a vast stage and in a sunken orchestral pit. Instead, here they all were, almost, it seemed, within touching distance! The effect was, I thought, electric and energising, right throughout the work.

With the Overture at the beginning, one relished the instrumental playing’s focus, energy and infinite variety of colour and nuance. It all “clicked” as, amid the gloom, my eyes began to “pick out”, one by one, the faces of some of Wellington’s top musicians. Conductor Simon Romanos readily found the “tempo giusto” for both the music’s monumental opening and the allegro which followed, pointing up for us the opera’s Janus-faced aspect – what the composer himself styled as both a “dramma giocoso” (a mix of drama and comedy), and, in his own catalogue of compositions, an “opera buffa” (comic opera).

The performance used Edward Dent’s English translation, which came across well in the theatre’s intimate spaces. First to appear on the stage was Leporello, the Don’s servant, sung by Jamie Henare with wry, Sancho Panza-like humour throughout, understandably taking a little time to warm up his voice’s energies in this opening scene, but, a little later, making the most of the famous “Catalogue aria”, singing and characterising the words with obvious relish. Servant and master played off one another along the way with plenty of complementary panache and mordant wit, a highlight being Leporello’s “Mr.Bean cut down to size” transformation at the hands of his master, when being disguised as the latter for further nefarious purposes.

As for the redoubtable Don Giovanni himself, Mark Bobb made a personable hero/villain, conveying both the energy and underlying world-weariness of the habitual seducer – reflected, of course in the character’s almost total lack of success with the sexual conquests he pursued in the course of the opera. While his voice had its limits, such as insufficient “top” with which to clinch the hedonistic splendour of his “Champagne aria”,  his singing early on in the piece wasn’t without charm, in the first act convincingly and seductively all but completely breaking down the defences of the peasant girl, Zerlina, about to be married, and, in the second act, mockingly serenading firstly his jilted lover Donna Elvira, who’d come to town in pursuit of him and to make life as difficult for him as possible, and then switching his focus to her maid.

Sparks were effectively struck by Giovanni’s encounters with the Commendatore, the father of Donna Anna, the latter another of the Don’s would-be conquests. Both the first-act duel between the two men, and the return of the murdered Commendatore as a statue to take revenge on the reprobate worked up plenty of dramatic and musical steam. Throughout these escapades, Mark Bobb’s portrayal veered convincingly between bravado and dissipation, strongly conveying at the end both his character’s defiance of heavenly retribution for his crimes of excess, and his grim acceptance of the fate in store for him.

Roger Wilson brought sonorous authority to the Commendatore/Statue role, using his powerful voice to great effect, though thanks to his costume his “Statue” persona for me more readily evoked “Darth Vader” (of “Star Wars” fame) than anything else. Nevertheless, he and Giovanni really made something of their supernatural confrontation, building up to the “mark of doom” moment when their hands clasped, here most excitingly realized.

Don Giovanni is certainly an opera that puts relationships to the sword, as witness the ardent but largely ineffectual peregrinations of Don Ottavio, who’s Donna Anna’s betrothed and who seemed destined to remain so indefinitely, on account of his beloved’s grief at her father’s death. Jamie Young enacted what can be a thankless part, with plenty of palpable feeling for his sweetheart, best expressed in recitative, dialogue and ensembles set-pieces rather than in full-scale arias, where his voice seemed to lose its quality under pressure.

Another victim was Masetto, one of the villagers, along with his to-be-partner, Zerlina, whom the Don had already lost no time in making the focus of his attentions for a while. I always saw (or heard) Mazetto as someone essentially rustic, a “salt-of-the-earth” character with a few rough edges, which the elegant, modulated portrayal of Laurence Walls seemed to have knocked off and smoothed around, making the character appear in manner and voice more poet and philosopher than country boy. Still, his interaction with Emily Mwila’s Zerlina, his sweetheart, had a lovely innocence, beautifully delineated during her singing of “Batti, batti” (Beat me, beat me), by way of winning back his ruffled affections in the wake of her “dalliance” with the Don.

Turning to the women, the first we encountered was Donna Anna, daughter of the Commendatore and betrothed of Don Ottavio, but who had somehow aroused the interest and attentions of Giovanni – Barbara Paterson’s portrayal of Anna captured, I think, much of the character’s ambivalence regarding her attempted seduction by the Don, thus “awakening” aspects of her as a woman which the dutiful Don Ottavio might well have left undisturbed. A certain “edge” to her voice sharpened the vibrant intensity of her character, one which became almost too incisive at certain pressure-points. Still, there was no doubting her dramatic commitment and the willingness to interact with others – a well-honed sequence was the “vengeance” vow demanded of Ottavio by Anna immediately following the discovery of her murdered father’s corpse, Barbara Paterson and Jamie Young between them generating and conveying plenty of force and weight.

By contrast Giovanni’s rejected sweetheart, Donna Elvira, beautifully realized by Kate Lineham, mingled intensity of feeling for her treacherous ex-lover with anger, scorn, and despair on one hand and frustration and determination on the other. Hers was a voice that, apart from the occasional moment of pressure affecting the singing line’s trajectory, filled out the melodic contours with such beauty as to produce moments of glowing warm amidst the gloom. Her Elvira was, it seemed, a character ready to forgive and reconcile with any wrongs done by others, imparting a human dimension to the drama whose privations engaged our sympathy.

Where both Anna and Elvira were sophisticated society women, the third female role was Zerlina, whose delightfully coquettish portrayal by Emily Mwila was one of the show’s highlights, and who exuded both rude, rustic health and artfully-wound persuasive charm right from the start. Helped by a beautifully-modulated and flexibly adept voice she “owned” both music and character and brought them together with an ease and fluency that suggested here was a “natural” at what she did on the musical stage – I’ve already mentioned her winning “Batti batti” in tandem with Laurence Walls’ Masetto, and altogether enjoyed her work immensely.

Though the set couldn’t be described in any way as “lavish”, its darkness matched the atmosphere of most of the opera’s scenes, with the exception, perhaps of the first garden scene, during which Zerlina and Mazettto were to be married. The remainder framed the spherical settings with black curtains, underlining the darkness at the centre of the Don’s self-destructive impulses and the despair/fear felt by those attempting to keep in tabs on him. Costumes were more-than-usually striking against the black  backdrops, generally mirroring what we were able to glean of each character, with a few unexpected stimulations, such as the space-age statue in the cemetery scene!

In terms of purpose and intent one could safely declare that this production of “Don Giovanni” did excellently well, making what I thought were all the right gestures for encouragement of further production activities, given that, unlike the way pursued by the opera’s eponymous hero, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, for fledgling artistic ventures. One can only wish director Alex Galvin and his company every success, while at the same time encouraging enthusiasts and interested parties to get behind them with all the support an artistic community sympathetic to such a venture can muster.

Lunchtime gatherings of delight, adventure and enchantment with pianist Ya-Ting Liou

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Lunchtime Concert Series presents:
YA-TING LIOU (piano)

RAMEAU – Le rappel des oiseaux (“The Conference of Birds”)
SCHUMANN – Davidsbündlertänz Op.6
LIGETI – Piano Etude No.10 (Der Zauberlehrling – “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”)

Wednesday 17th August, 2016

Lunchtime concerts are strange beasties, compared with more conventionally-presented evening concerts – they’re almost always shorter, and because of their mid-day aspect catch people who attend in an entirely different frame of mind to that which would surround an evening concert. Of course many people who are there have retired from working or have a differently consitituted agenda to someone who’s midway through a working day. But nevertheless it’s still a different experience for anybody, compared with that of a concert in the evening.

As it most likely is for the artist or artists as well – one imagines any performer might well be fresher and more energetic at around noon than at the end of a normal day’s activities (though this could depend, I suppose, on the individual’s predisposition towards being either an “early bird” or a “night owl”). Still, in such matters, how a performer’s or listener’s experience might vary can be reconciled in most cases by the well-known expression “Viva la difference!”

To be honest, for me, the main difference is the concert’s length – and the reduced time-frame of the lunchtime concert means that whatever both performers and audiences do to establish lines of communication has to happen quickly, and not be gradually and patiently eased into, as with an evening concert. Of course, whatever “instant combustion” does take place, it can still feel, in many instances, at the concert’s end as if we’ve had only the first half!

I was definitely feeling these “first-half blues” at the end of Taiwanese pianist Ya-ting Liou’s recent St.Andrew’s lunchtime recital, even though the programme was tightly-packed with the kind of fully-focused performance-and-repertoire engagement which was guaranteed to give the utmost pleasure to listeners. In fact I heard a gentleman just in front of me turn to his companion at the recital’s end and say “Well, you can’t get much better than that!”, which served as a kind of “instant imprimatur” of appreciation!

The trouble was that, against all reason, I wanted more, having heard Ya-Ting previously play a full recital (which I reviewed on Middle C, here : https://middle-c.org/2013/11/ya-ting-liou-delight-and-triumph-amid-near-empty-spaces/), while knowing, of course, that my “had we but world enough and time” expectation was in this case a fatuous exercise, a kind of “conceit” of the sort practised by metaphysical poets.

But what a programme she gave to us! – on the face of things a bit of a hotchpotch, one might think, consisting of music by Rameau, Schubert and Ligeti! What on earth would make such an assemblage from far-flung eras, of disparate styles and with chalk-and-cheese intentions work together in concert? In fact the composers’ names and the music’s titles simply didn’t convey anything of the unities and affinities these pieces proclaimed when heard in close proximity.

It’s long been customary for pianists to explore in single recitals music from different eras, irrespective of how the various styles of playing and the different instruments for which the music would have been first written might have (but not in all cases!) required completely different responses from the player. One commonly hears music by any of those three Baroque giants, JS Bach, Handel and Scarlatti played on a concert grand, and often not by “baroque specialists”. Sometimes one encounters a work by Purcell, or one of the English virginalists, Byrd, Tallis or Gibbons et al. But I think this was the first occasion on which I’d ever heard a keyboard work by Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) played in a non-specialist keyboard recital.

Le rappel des oiseaux (freely translated as “The Conference of Birds”) appeared in the French composer’s second collection of harpsichord pieces in 1724, consisting of two suites. This celebration and imitation of an aspect of nature isn’t merely a collection of decorative twitterings – in Ya-Ting’s hands the sounds had an ethereal quality or ritual, like a kind of other-world enactment of exchange between wild creatures in a language removed from human comprehension. The phrases were here beautifully articulated, most delightfully so when left and right hands rapidly alternated, conveying a sense of true concourse. Something of Charles Darwin’s “chaos of delight” description of New Zealand’s native birdsong was captured by Ya-Ting’s playing, in accord with the composer’s vision of such an avian conference.

Robert Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänz Op.6 was also written to evoke a gathering, one imagined by the composer, featuring the presence of wayward and eccentric but purposeful individuals (the “Davidsbündler”) determined to carry out certain artistic principles dear to the composer’s heart. The music was inextricably bound up with Schumann’s love for Clara Wieck, whom he told that the work “contained many wedding thoughts”, including a Polterabend (a traditional German wedding-eve party, during which old crockery is smashed to bring good luck to the new marriage). Despite calling the collection “dances” Schumann wrote the music as a set of exchanges between the opposite sides of his own persona, Florestan and Eusebius, the one impetuous and passionate, the other poetic and dreamy.

Ya-Ting Liou seemed to make every one of these pieces her own, her playing seeming to soar over the entire soundscape of these eighteen pieces with complete assurance, yet take us into the visceral and emotional world of each one. Her passagework, ever articulate and flexible, combined crystal clarity with resonant warmth, never emphasising one at the expense of the other. She captured that “questioning” aspect of the music so common in Schumann’s writing (No.2 “Innig”), evoking for us a sense of the romantic artist pondering the mysteries of existence in solitude, yet was able to drive the music forward with incredible momentum and weight (Nos. 4 “Ungeduldig”, and 6 (“Sehr rasch und in sich hinein”).

Describing what I heard in Ya-Ting’s playing over each of the eighteen pieces would push the reader’s patience overmuch with my reviewer’s flights of fancy! However I must beg people’s indulgence in allowing me to at least describe the effect of her playing of a couple of “groups” of pieces. The third of the dances was given the title “Mit humor”, which the pianist presented as bluff and Teutonic at the outset, before becoming lighter and more impish in the middle section – the deftness of her touch allowed her left hand to “gurgle” with contentment at the right hand’s playfulness. Then the following “Ungeduldig” was all agitation and strife which just as abruptly changed into the graceful poetic mood of ‘Einfach” – how beautifully and delicately were Ya-Ting’s delineations between her hands, of limpid pools from which the melodic lines traced their archways.

More rumbustions were let loose with “Sehr rasch”, the playing having a tremendous physicality which belied the pianist’s diminutive appearance, the music lacking neither weight nor power in its expression. Against this came the enigmatic, improvisatory-sounding “Nicht schnell, a kind of mind-stretch, with the music seemingly wanting to grasp something just beyond reach. Each upward impulse created a beautifully-voiced roulade of sound, a marked contrast to the robust energies of the following “Frisch”, whose impetuosities were reinforced by some delightfully “grunty” left-hand rhythms – such vivid characterisations!

The seventeenth piece was titled “Wie aus der Ferne”, the music “floated” in and out of the sound-picture, Ya-Ting employing exquisite varieties of tones and colours to seductive effect. We were retuned with some poignancy to the “questioning” No.2 before the mood built up to an intense, swirling climax, our sensibilities “rescued” by the player and allowed to calm down and re-enter a pensive mood once again. Ya-Ting’s constantly shifting colour-palate made the final “Nicht schnell” a kind of “home is where the heart is”, the gentle, concluding melodic undulation having a heart-easing quality which bore out the composer’s own commentary via the words of Eusebius, who “expressed much pleasure with his eyes”. We got the feeling here of being taken right into the deep heart of things finally at rest, the “Davidsbündler” here having certainly given its all.

Perhaps it was wise of Ya-Ting to conclude her programme with something rather less other-worldly, else we might all have drifted out of St.Andrew’s under a Schumannesque kind of spell and walked into lamp-posts or through nearby shop windows or even under a bus or two! Waking us from our Eusebian reverie called for strong measures, and one of György Ligeti’s Etudes certainly did the trick. It was something of a magical transformation to boot, as the piece’s title (assigned by the composer) was “Der Zauberlehring” (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice).

Here, we wondered at and delighted in compositional and pianistic sleight-of-hand working their alchemic spells in tandem, conjuring up configurations of notes whose colours and rhythms changed bewilderingly before our very ears, galaxies of light and sensation cascading all about, the sounds sinking into a vortex-like cleft of bass-note darkness, and then magically reappearing at the keyboard’s other end, directing and steering the scintillations this way and that in a joyful cosmic dance, before dismissing the laughing, bubbling impulses with a peremptory gesture. Incredible mastery, involving both control and freedom, a sense of complete ease with either a larger order or larger anarchy in our best of all possible worlds – Ya Ting’s playing trickled, danced, and drove through it all, leaving us breathless with delight and completely refreshed. And, as I’ve already noted, I thought that the gentleman in front of me, whose remark of appreciation I overheard, couldn’t have said it better!