Author: Peter Mechen

Quintessence on show via youth and experience at Michael Fowler Centre

Posted on by Peter Mechen

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

Posted on by Peter Mechen

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

Posted on by Peter Mechen

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

Posted on by Peter Mechen

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

Posted on by Peter Mechen

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

Posted on by Peter Mechen

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

Posted on by Peter Mechen

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!

The New Zealand String Quartet – a “new look” ensemble….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand String Quartet presents:
Heartland Classics In Wellington

HAYDN – String Quartet in D Op.71 No.2
FARR – Quartet “Te Tai-O-Rehua” (The Tasman Sea)
SCHUBERT – String Quartet in C Minor D.703 “Quartettsatz”
DVORAK – String Quartet in F Op.96 “American”

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

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University of Wellington

Friday, 5th August, 2016

Having gotten so used to the familiar line-up of faces, performing aspects and collaborative interactions which for such a long time “were” the New Zealand String Quartet, one found oneself, to one’s surprise, initially unnerved by the prospect of experiencing a change in the order of things – especially in view of the long-term and all-round excellence of the ensemble. Of course, it stood to reason that the group, having determinedly wrought such standards of achievement, would choose a replacement for second violinist Douglas Beilman worthy of maintaining and enhancing those same standards. The thought was reassuring – one did, after all, TRUST the artistic judgements of these people!

Nevertheless, I could still feel a certain tension amid my expectations, while awaiting the appearance of the players in the Hunter Chamber Auditorium at Wellington’s Victoria University, concerning the change in ensemble which had brought Australian violinist Monique Lapins into the picture. Receptivity to individual styles of music-making is a funny thing – I’ve sometimes found myself at odds with opinions expressed by others regarding what musicians are seen and heard to do, recognising that such an individualisation is part-and-parcel of a real and personal connection with things. One can, of course, admire what a player does without feeling very much engagement or empathy with what is produced. I’d gotten so very used to being so very “engaged” with the NZSQ’s music-making, I found myself feeling anxious that such feelings would continue.

It sounds like a cliché to say that I needn’t have worried, but from the outset of the concert there seemed an uncanny “business as usual” aspect to the playing, which I suppose could partly be attributed to Monique Lapins’ undoubted abilities as an ensemble player – every concerted gesture and individual interaction between her and her colleagues had a confident, and nicely “involved“ aspect that suggested sympathy, accord, rapport – whatever one would like to call it! Naturally, I was giving her contributions more-than-usual attention, and, given that there was probably a fair degree of relief in my observations, was not being particularly dispassionate at that point in time!

So, having gotten those “concerns” off my chest, I feel now as though I can make appropriately delighted noises of welcome regarding Monique Lapins – and, as a Wellingtonian myself, wishing for her not only the enjoyment of many “great cups of Wellington coffee” whenever she gets the chance to spend time in this part of the world, but also for her and the ensemble a fruitful collaboration of many performance successes and satisfactions to come.

To the actual concert, now – and as ‘cellist Rolf Gjelsten made clear in his spoken introduction to the first item on the programme, there was simply no better way to begin an evening of music for string quartet than with a work by the composer “to whom we owe everything – Josef Haydn!”. We heard the second Quartet from the Op. 71 set, written for the composer’s second visit to England after his first had proved such a great success. With these quartets Haydn took care to write more “orchestrally” than previously, as the public performance venues outside Esterhazy (where he had worked for so long) were larger, and required bigger and bolder gestures than in his previous works in the genre – hence the spacious opening chords of this work, played here with a rich, warm sound. And how richly-voiced were the interchanges between all four instruments in the allegro which followed, the music’s high spirits as much generated by the flow between the players as by the themes and rhythms themselves.

The prayerful opening to the Adagio was buoyed along by a dotted rhythm, then floated beguilingly throughout murmuring sequences, with everything shaded so subtly and beautifully, the textures almost orchestral in places as the players dug into their phrases – here, I was particularly enjoying the partnership between first and second violins, Helene Pohl’s bright, eager sounds at once matched by and contrasted with Monique Lapins’ poised, more burnished tones. Then, what delicious fun was conveyed by the players with the brief Minuet, and how much sheer delight made by Helene Pohl of the arpeggiated twist at each phrase-end, something amusingly “thrown off” by all the players at the end of the dance.

Haydn seemed to almost “leg-rope” his players at the finale’s beginning, giving the music a curious “limping” quality, which after due extended consideration suddenly animated into a “proper” allegro, the music energising players and listeners alike as all four instruments were made to scurry into and through a divertingly dovetailed latticework of lines (pardon the alliteration!), here, piling on the textures and pushing out the ambiences as they did so! It was great and engaging music-making from all concerned.

Next on the programme was Gareth Farr’s string quartet Te Tai-o-Rehua (the Tasman Sea). I liked the quote from the composer concerning the quartet – “a really interesting dinner party for four people” – though I can’t remember whether or not Monique Lapins repeated that quote for us in her introduction to the work or whether I read or heard it elsewhere. Still, it seemed entirely appropriate that the Quartet’s new member air her thoughts about the music, given its trans-Tasman associations – Farr had originally written the work for Australia’s Goldner Quartet to play as part of a co-commission between the musicians and Chamber Music New Zealand, to mark the 21st anniversary of the Wellington/Sydney sister-city association in 2013.

At the beginning we heard chant-like patterns from the second violin in tandem with more exotic-sounding elements sounded by the other instruments, mysterious tremolandi and counter-harmonics, with a wide, folksy vibrato coming from the first violin. The viola took over the rhythmic trajectories allowing the others to interact, using angular pizzicati and eerie harmonics. I thought the sonorities conjured up by these configurations and unreservedly delivered to us by the players produced a sometimes startling aural and deeply-felt experience, with the sounds ranging in effect from utmost delight of delicacy to grim and purposeful vehemence. Gareth Farr’s work has always been rhythmically driven, sometimes to the point of obsessiveness – here, in so many places I was struck by the music’s balance between rhythm and colour, and for the composer’s inventive, unpredictable deployment of those sounds, making for whole sequences of incident that lost no time in moving between the pictorial and the emotional. It all made for a darker, more volatile work that I perhaps expected to hear something which excitingly stretched one’s sensibilities.

Having remarked so frequently in the past on the NZSQ’s capacities for bringing a whole-heartedness to whatever it performs, enabling its listeners to really get to grips with the music, I was grateful to once again be transported by the experience, in particular with a work such as this, after all, conceived and written about relatively familiar territories – it was, as Douglas Lilburn once said “music about ourselves”, with as much variety and range of expression as such a quality might bring forth. I thought that, especially in a programme devoted largely to European music, the work served notice that universalities of human emotion can often be expressed just as meaningfully in local accents as in the tones of more standardised and established figures.

Gillian Ansell introduced Schubert’s Quartettsatz (literally, “Quartet-Movement”) written in 1820, after the interval. This music was intended to be part of a larger work, and would have been the first of the composer’s complete “mature” works in this genre – but for some reason – we don’t know why – Schubert abandoned the work after completing just one movement and the first few bars of a slow movement. The music was just too good to be ignored as a “failed attempt” at a complete work and so the Quartettsatz has become an often-played item at string quartet concerts. Schubert did go on to complete three further quartets, including the famous “Death and the Maiden” Quartet. Perhaps the agitated nature of the writing of this quartet movement is a clue to what might have been happening in Schubert’s life at this time. It all seemed to me to be a kind of study depicting the interaction between light and dark, with the light in this case seeming so frail and tentative, vested with a kind of vulnerability in the face of the dark’s onslaught. The tones are spectral, almost “spooked”, as if waiting for the next debilitating outburst.

Need I say more than that the Quartet in characteristic fashion threw themselves at the music, making it an intensely visceral happening. The players unhesitatingly brought out the music’s fierce and brutal contrasts, giving the entire sequence of exchanges an intensely fatalistic character, almost Tchaikovskian in places. The intensities reached such levels that one was left with the feeling at the end that it seemed somewhat voyeuristic to have “enjoyed”music which conveyed so much suffering! Still, perhaps music enables a kind of understanding of such extremes, while recognising that “human kind cannot bear very much reality”.

I was surprised when Helene Pohl told us, by way of introducing the concert’s final item, that, at a Canadian chamber music festival she had recently attended, an “audience-poll” had on that occasion identified none other than Dvorak’s “American” String Quartet as the gathering’s out-and-out favourite piece of chamber music. Having tantalised us with this piece of information, the Quartet proceeded to demonstrate why this was perfectly possible, with a performance that conveyed in the music such love of life and intensity of feeling as to enable us to feel we were hugely enjoying the company of somebody energetic, gregarious and unfailingly warmhearted.

I remember reading, long ago, a remark made by some commentator or other, to the effect that Dvorak’s music was frequently “an expression of joy that brings one close to tears” – given that human responses to art are individual, and of course subjective, I do find myself returning to that remark whenever I hear certain passages in certain works by the composer. The quartet brought out this quality both in their soft playing of the first movement’s second subject, and in some of the beautifully-poised duetting passages of the slow movement, between first and second violins. And what a beautiful sequence shortly after the Scherzo’s beginning, with the two violins in melancholy duet and Rolf Gjelsten’s ‘cello singing in reply, the viola adding a gorgeous “snap” to its rounding-off comment by way of completing the circle.

After all of this, what exhilaration there was to be had from the finale’s opening rhythms! – especially from violist Gillian Ansell’s engaging sense of “schwung” throughout the opening, one taken up readily by the other players, the music’s sense of forward movement seeming to spring from a deep-seated desire to express “this worlde’s joye”. And with what ease and spontaneity the players modulated between completely different territories, taking those measures of veiled retrospection in single, deep-seated breaths before reactivating the opening’s energies and driving the music brilliantly and vigorously onwards to its joyously beckoning conclusion!

After these outpourings of physicality, the composer’s beautiful Cypress No.3 (“When thy sweet glances on me fall”) was like the proverbial balm in places, operatic and passionate in a brief middle section, then rapt and achingly lovely at the end. It was a haunting and dream-like way to finish the concert, leaving us with a kind of fully-engaged contentment with what we’d heard throughout the evening, and, in a troubled world, some reassurance in the continuance of things that are necessary for us to go on living in it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Orchestras Unite” – a brilliant success for youthful Wellington musicians

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Youth Orchestra and
Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music Orchestra
presents:

ORCHESTRAS UNITE!

Lavinnia Rae (‘cello)
Kenneth Young (conductor)
Wellington Youth Orchestra and
Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

MUSORGSKY (arr. Rimsky-Korsakov) – Night on a Bare Mountain
SHOSTAKOVICH – ‘Cello Concerto No.1 in E-flat Op.107
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS – Symphony No.2 – A London Symphony

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Wednesday 3rd August 2016

These days I count myself proudly, if also a little ruefully, among the grey-headed majority who attend classical concerts – of course, these are the people whose loyal and continued support of our various concert series and occasional special events helps to ensure their continuance. Nevertheless it was a refreshing change to find myself sitting in an auditorium for a classical concert with what seemed like hundreds of heads of different shapes and sizes sporting youthful hues and colours of all kinds – egad, it was actually a youthful audience!

Did I say a classical concert? With such a preponderance of young people in attendance, the programme would surely have gone for a kind of “instant appeal” impact – plenty of “wow!” factor, of the kind that would make such an audience want to come back for more, yes? Let’s have a look! – er, what’s this? – Shostakovich? The First ‘Cello Concerto? – Good grief! And Vaughan Williams’ “London” Symphony? Crikey! – That’s a bit of a haul! What’s that?  Musorgsky? – Night on a Bare Mountain? Well, yes, that’ll go down well, but what about the rest?

I could go on, most tiresomely, in a similar vein, expressing further open-mouthed stupefaction at the makeup of the orchestra and the youthfulness of the soloist in the concerto, none of which has any great relevance to the business in hand, that of reviewing a splendidly-performed concert.  More seriously, what needs far more urgently to be emphasised and approved most enthusiastically is the gesture of the Wellington City Council with support from the NZSO in enabling Wednesday night’s concert at the Michael Fowler Centre to be a FREE event for the public! In my book that’s the kind of support so badly needed by the arts at present, in this case giving young people a golden opportunity to experience some wonderful music-making at first hand and at no cost!

Which is where the “Orchestras Unite!” concept worked so brilliantly in every way. Shostakovich, Vaughan Williams and all, the exercise provided one of the best possible “advertisements” for classical music and music-making that I’ve even witnessed. Under the watchful eye and inspired direction of conductor Kenneth Young, the Wellington Youth Orchestra and the New Zealand School of Music Orchestra came together, plus a number of tutor-players from both the NZSO and Orchestra Wellington, together forming a co-operative ensemble of almost 100 musicians whose amalgamation was itself a positive endorsement of music-making in the capital. With such forces it became more than possible to perform works such as the Vaughan Williams “London” Symphony, the numbers generating the requisite weight of tone which helped the piece really work.

Another motivating energiser in the scheme of things was the presence of ‘cellist Lavinnia Rae, whose performance of the first of Shostakovich’s two ‘Cello Concertos was eagerly anticipated. An NZSO National Youth Orchestra player, and leader of the Wellington Youth Orchestra ‘cello section for the last three years, she had already won numerous awards and scholarships during her studies, and is currently working under the tutorship of Inbal Megiddo at the New Zealand School of Music. Again, having a soloist of Rae’s calibre willing to tackle one of the repertoire’s 20th Century classics contributed inestimably to the programme’s lustre.

In thanking the various people and organisations that had helped get the show “on the road” conductor Ken Young himself made reference to the excitement of having so many players to work with, particularly in relation to the Vaughan Williams symphony. He cited the work as a particularly apt challenge for youthful orchestras as there was, as he put it, “plenty for everybody to do”. He didn’t keep us waiting long, as we had already heard from NZSM boss Euan Murdoch and Orchestra Wellington Music Director Marc Taddei adding their endorsements of the occasion, so after the talk had been dispensed with we were quickly and magically transported to that realm of infernal carousing immortalised world-wide by Russian composer Modest Musorgsky.

As most people will already know, Musorgsky was one of a group of composers (who came to be known as “the Mighty Handful”) who wanted to forge a distinctly “Russian” style of composition free from the somewhat more conservative, German-influenced style espoused by the establishment. Much of Musorgsky’s music was, however, considered somewhat harsh and clumsily written, even by his associates, one of whom, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, took it upon himself, after Musorgsky’s tragic early death, to “improve” and make what he thought would be more acceptable versions to the public of some of his colleague’s well-meaning but outlandish-sounding efforts. These “corrections” of Rimsky’s included an entire opera by Musorgsky (Boris Godunov) and the piece played in the concert this evening, St. John’s Night on a Bald Mountain. The programme note really ought to have read “RE-orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov” as there does exist a fascinating “original” of the piece by Musorgsky, somewhat differently constructed to Rimsky’s, and with a far more abrupt and sardonic ending.

Still, the more familiar revised version which we heard tonight continues to pack plenty of punch in places, and the players seemed to literally throw themselves at the piece’s dramatic and theatrical contrasts as if their lives depended on the outcome. It was all tremendously exciting, and expertly-played – the very opening triplet figure on the violins depicting the arrival of the infernal spirits from out of the air in all directions had a focus and a stinging quality that made the hairs on the back of one’s neck stand up in gruesome delight and anticipation!

With weighty percussion providing plenty of bangs and crashes, the brass chiming in with portentous fanfares, and the winds creating a suitably “eerie” atmosphere, the music built up through its various episodes to a suitably orgiastic ferment, at which point somebody sitting towards the back of the orchestra dropped something on the floor with a clatter, to add to the general sense of chaos and abandonment! To the rescue came the orchestral bells signalling the first indications of morning light and the gradual dispersement of the spirits into the air from whence they came. Here, the strings and winds drifted and oscillated beautifully, supporting beautiful solos from firstly the clarinet and then the flute. It was all presented most beautifully and serenely, even though the ending wasn’t Musorgsky at all, the whole of the final morning-bell-tolling sequence being that man Rimsky-Korsakov’s invention!

Lavinnia Rae’s entrance and deportment gave an initial impression of a David (the ‘cellist) pitted against something of a Goliath (the orchestra), which the music’s opening measures seemed to confirm – the ‘cello, repeating a variant of the composer’s own DSCH motif, seemed to be trying to lighten the mood, while the orchestra seemed to want to keep the soloist firmly in check. Lavinnia Rae spun her line most resolutely throughout, perhaps wanting a touch more girth with some of her more assertive figurations, but keeping her music buoyant at all times. She interacted magnificently with the solo horn, leaving the winds wailing as the music trotted away with the soloist, and leaving them to manage only a brief, petulant outburst before the movement came to a sudden end.

The slow movement was one of Shostakovich’s angst-ridden affairs, with the solo horn adding to the strings’ anguish, the mood warmed by the ‘cello’s entry – apart from a brief intonation lapse, some gorgeous playing, here, from the soloist, matched a few moments later by the strings’ chilly beauty. So many moments-per-minute in this music! – we were able to experience at first hand why the soloist in her programme note nominated this as the music from the work she felt the most emotionally connected to….the solo horn posed its question and the soloist mused on the answer amidst haunting harmonics-coloured exchanges with the celeste, the music absolutely rapt and beautiful.

The remarkable cadenza-like third movement also held us in thrall with Lavinnia Rae’s playing, a heartfelt outpouring which gradually articulated more and more freely and urgently, quoting the opening four-note theme amid the agitations, and then suddenly striding out and beckoning the orchestra to follow – keystone cops chasings, headstrong waltz-rhythms, and giant-like rhythmic angularities led to a full reconciliation with the DSCH theme, which, pushed enthusiastically along by the ‘cello’s repeated notes, blared out triumphantly on the winds at the end. What a work and what a performance!

All this, and Vaughan Williams’ “London” Symphony to follow after the interval! – as with the Musorgsky work, one felt a satisfying “weight” of tone register as the “London” began and unfolded, the fruit of having such a numbers of players, and of the composer’s scoring emphasising the potential for depth and richness of sonority. Ken Young and his players caught the music’s “living stillness” at the work’s outset, and the sense of something hanging in the early morning air about to be awakened. The Big Ben chime gradually roused the music from its slumber, leading from a crescendo to a harsh, strident outburst which seemed, on the face of things, unduly forceful and discordant a note to strike by way of introducing a great and much-beloved city – still, as other parts of the work were to demonstrate, the composer was definitely not about to regard the “flower of all cities” through rose-tinted spectacles in this work!

In the past I’ve often regarded Ken Young as a particularly no-nonsense interpreter of whatever music he conducts, sometimes to a fault in music where I’ve felt the need for a touch more spaciousness and breadth in the playing. Here, by contrast, there was time and space aplenty – and the playing of the young musicians blossomed, I thought, as a result! Every phrase, every figuration had room to sing and unfold as it should, while every surge and diminuendo of tone had the freedom to mix spontaneity with obviously well-rehearsed gestures, making for what sounded like a particularly rich and deeply-felt interpretation. The final crescendo leading up to the movement’s end was simply terrific in impact.

The slow movement was another vivid evocation, with conductor and players allowing the music all the time and space in the world to paint and colour the music’s hues and round and shape their lines and contourings, all the time giving rise to such intensities of feeling – the composer’s description “Bloomsbury Square on a November afternoon” begs the question of the music’s deeper intent – things like the superbly-played trumpet solo, and the instrumental detailings accompanying the gently-jingling carriage harness sounds were, I thought, preludial to something deeply melancholic about the work as a whole – my notes read at this point, “such passionate climaxes!”, ones which seem to suggest as much tragedy as any other kind of feeling as the bottom emotional line. This was reflected in places, too, by sensitive instrumental detailing as tellingly as red-blooded climaxes – a beautiful viola solo, for example, at the movement’s end was as richly-wrought a gesture as any in the work.

Having praised the interpretation’s spaciousness I must admit to feeling, in places in the scherzo, that the music could have done with a bit more ginger in its step – a hypercritical thing to say, perhaps, in view of my enjoyment of the whole. The players certainly caught the music’s “gait” – and the short, canonical “church-bell-like” section for strings came across with great verve and “schwung”. However, I did feel the brief Trio section hung fire ever-so-slightly at its beginning, even if the more flowing tempo suited the strings’ warmth when they took up the tune just before the return to the scherzo proper. Still, one was prepared to forgive Ken Young almost everything after experiencing the visionary power of what he and the musicians were able to do with the eerie, throbbing pulsations at the movement’s end – another instance of the composer hinting at a darker side of things beneath the surface gaiety.

That “darker side of things” was certainly given full rein at various places in the work’s final movement, not least of all right at the beginning! An almost Mahlerian cry of despair flashes across the face of the orchestra, not once, but twice, before the music settles down grimly to what some commentators have called the “March of the Unemployed”, though the composer was rather less specific when characterising the music’s inspiration. Here, Ken Young and his musicians seemed to emphasise the music’s purposeful and positive energy, with playing that unleashed the magnificence of the composer’s orchestral writing, grand and ceremonial.

After this the musicians galvanised the allegro section, awakening tremendous energies marked by surging strings, roaring winds and flailing percussion, energies which  embedded themselves in the textures of the “march” theme’s return, and literally conflagrated the music – what baleful, menacing, utterly overwhelming playing! One was left wondering how a city’s image could possibly survive such savage treatment!

The answer came with the work’s epilogue, which in its turn brought out some of the evening’s most heartfelt and moving playing from the two orchestras. Vaughan Williams characterised the symphony’s ending by quoting a passage from a novel by H.G.Wells in which the writer describes in allegorical terms the passing of things as we know them via a voyage down a river – “the river passes, London passes, England passes…..” Here, it was all so moving, so heartbreaking and yet so filled with wonderment and magic – the playing caught the music’s timelessness and inevitability, its beauty and its tragedy – the somewhat Wagnerian two-note cry which began the finale was sounded once again on muted trumpets, signifying much the same kind of dissolution (albeit in a less incendiary manner) as the minor-key version of the Rheingold motif from Götterdämmerung.

Very great work from all concerned, and to those people, for all of it much gratitude and appreciation.

Oleg Marshev – pianistic pleasures at Waikanae

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Waikanae Music Society presents:
Oleg Marshev (piano)

BRAHMS – Piano Sonata No.3 in F Minor Op.5
RAVEL – Valses nobles et Sentimentales
Gaspard de la nuit

Memorial Hall, Waikanae

Sunday, 31st July 2016

This was the sort of programme that, on paper, would quicken the pulse of anybody interested in the romantic piano repertoire in general – and with Oleg Marchev’s name attached to the enterprise, would settle the issue for the majority of piano-fanciers, myself among them. And while I might not have put Brahms’ name forward as a composer whose music I would have liked to hear Marshev play ahead of people such as Liszt, Rachmaninov and Prokofiev, I confess was eagerly anticipating the chance to hear in recital that seldom-played titan among piano sonatas, Brahms’ Op.5 in F Minor.

Is there a more confrontational, cheek-by-jowl, eyeballing opening to a piece of solo piano music in the romantic repertoire than the beginning of this work? My first-ever live encounter with this music was at the hands of the great Peter Donohoe (until recently, well-known to New Zealand audiences), on a never-to-be-forgotten occasion I witnessed in a Midlands English town twenty years ago, when he too began his recital with the piece. There I felt as if the piano was in danger of coming apart out of sheer strain generated by the power and physicality of the playing! – and even with Marshev’s slightly more controlled responses to the music, I still got the impression of a fist being shaken at the heavens, though with rather more nervous energy and urgency than sheer, granite-like power and muscle.

As important as these moments were the contrasting lyrical sequences, which Marshev presented in beautifully-appointed paragraphs, building the ensuing surges of tone up into noble climaxes. What the playing might have lacked in raw visceral impact, it gained in cumulative effect, Marshev’s control excitingly let off its leash at the development’s opening, the pianistic textures jagged and attention-grabbing, leaving our sensibilities exhausted and gratefully receptive to whatever solace the music brought us in the aftermath. A noble, golden-toned major-key version of the opening reassured us for a few moments before the music plunged back into the opening, everything once again magnificently orchestrated and awe-inspiring. How wonderful it was to be again relieved by Marshev’s way with those poignantly contrasted, rolling lyrical paragraphs once again, persuading us that life’s storms are to be stoically endured rather than suffered without any hope or consolation.

The second movement of this work, Andante expressivo, has frequently provided ammunition for commentators mindful of the conflict between rival musical factions in the latter part of the 19th Century. A war of bitter acrimony sprang up between the conservatives, who upheld Brahms as their champion, and the supporters of the “New German School”, who promoted the music of people such as Liszt, Wagner and Bruckner. The reactionary critic Eduard Hanslick was a particularly virulent opponent of the latter group and their ideals, in particular the idea of “programme music”.

Hanslick at one stage famously declared that “music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.” However, here was Brahms, the darling of the conservatives, prefacing a movement in one of his works with three lines of poetry from the work of the poet Sternau: – “The twilight falls, the moonlight gleams, two hearts in love unite, embraced in rapture.” It didn’t go unnoticed in some quarters that Hanslick was strangely silent concerning this “self-indulgence” on the part of his young champion!

Leaving aside Brahms’s use of poetic imagery as inspiration, I’ve always thought a separate irony regarding this music was that it sounded so much like Liszt in places! Marshev sang it all so beautifully, seeming to echo the legendary pianist Claudio Arrau’s words, “..the most beautiful love-music after Tristan – and the most erotic”, building the piece’s amplitude to majestic proportions at the climax, and rounding off the resonances with properly bardic tones at the end. Then, again, with the mighty Scherzo that followed, bursting in on the tranquility of the Andante’s aftermath, Marshev gave the “motorcycle kick-start” aspect of the music plenty of muscle and flair without making an absolute meal of it, keeping the waltz-rhythm poised throughout, and taking care to preserve the slightly creepy, almost spectral aspect of those descending arpeggio figures.

If the Andante enshrined a kind of love-tryst, the fourth-movement Intermezzo (subtitled Rückblick -“backward glance”) seemed to negate the former’s sentiments, giving us sorrowing descending figurations and fraught declamations of despair punctuated by muffled drum-beats – again, to my ears, the shade of Liszt flitted among the music’s textures, Brahms’s utterances echoing gestures found in places in the older composer’s Annees de Pelerinage collections. As for the finale, Marshev nicely energized the angular, whimsical opening, enjoying the contrasts of the instrument’s different registers, and pointing the contrast with the warmly-flowing second subject, bringing out the cascading accompaniments and the beguiling mix of elfin playfulness and portentous gesturings which whirl the different episodes through to the celebratory coda, as festive and exultant anybody would wish for.

Despite all of these felicities, I found myself struck by the feeling, when Marchev came out after the interval and began the first few measures of Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales, that here was the music this man was born to play – those first sounds had a kind of insouciance which felt so right, a glowing kind of poise which instantly captured the listener’s attention and enchanted the ear. Here was a cool, spacious, limpid, completely malleable sound-world recreated before us by a master musician, completely at one with the music’s composer and his particular vein of magic.

Marshev brought out in places the links with the composer’s own orchestral work La Valse, which appeared nine years afterwards. We got a teasing foretaste of the latter in the fourth waltz, Assez animé, and again in the ninth piece, Moins vif, whose halting, hesitant steps at the beginning gradually coalesced into the most outrageous and unequivocal of dance-gestures, beautifully and commandingly brought into being. The final waltz, Épilogue, lent, was all magical, nostalgic driftings, forms delicately shaped, and colours wondrously subtle, making for a heart-rending, lump-in-the-throat experience. It was all a rare evocation of creative mastery, spread out before us like W.B.Yeats’ Cloths of Heaven – “Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams”.

Ravel himself regarded the Valses as “…le plaisis délicieux et toujours nouveau d’une occupation inutile” (“the delicious and ever-fresh pleasure of a useless occupation”) – but his 1908 work Gaspard de la Nuit by contrast seemed to have engaged his sensibilities to an unprecedented degree. A group of poems, notable for their preoccupation with the surreal world of dreams written by the French Romantic Poet Aloysius Bertrand (1807-41) and published under the title Gaspard de la Nuit provided the composer with his inspiration – Ravel chose three from a set called La nuit et ses prestiges (“The Night and its Distinctions”), the first being the poet’s version of the age-old story of Ondine, the water-sprite who falls in love with a mortal.

Having said that he wanted “to say with notes what a poet says with words”, Ravel did precisely that, evoking the world of the mischievous nymph teasing and tantalising the sleeper with a dream of delight which at the end dissolves in a shower of waterdrops flung against the “resonant panes” through which shone the moonlight. Oleg Marshev was this music’s ideal interpreter here, magically evoking the liquid playfulness of the nymph’s appearance. His playing of those repeated notes and floated arpeggiations conjured up a beguiling world of enchantment, holding us in thrall to the apparition’s beauty and beguilement before bringing dream and reality together in a frisson of alarm and confusion as the nymph mocked her would-be mortal lover and vanished – the pianist caught, in those moments immediately afterwards, those vast spaces between dream and consciousness, echoing with hints of distant laughter and/or weeping.

Just as evocative was the second piece Le gibet, after Bertrand’s bleak depiction of a corpse hanging from a scaffold in the reddening light of the setting sun. Marshev caught the mood of utter desolation with his spacious, patient unfolding of the grisly scene, his playing of the tolling bell’s ostinato pitiless and inexorable in its effect. I have heard those eerie, descending chords played even more creepily than here, somehow “prepared” even before being sounded, held back fractionally so that there’s a sense of a kind of horror whose depiction is about to take its toll on both player and listener, a feeling which Marshev’s cool and dispassionate reading didn’t explore. Instead I felt the playing had a disconsolate feeling of finality, the ending superbly wrought, with the bass notes shrouding everything in gloom.
Ravel apparently wanted the last of the three pieces, Scarbo, to surpass in difficulty Balakirev’s tone-poem for piano Islamey, thinking in terms of an orchestral transcription for the piano. Here was menace aplenty, the composer’s depiction of a demonic goblin-like nocturnal visitor, the “Scarbo” of Bertrand’s poem. Marshev’s playing conjured up real “glint” amid the gloom, bringing out the music’s volatility and unpredictablilty as per the character, and infusing the Hispanic dance-rhythms with tremendous elan. He got that “frightening nothingness behind the curtain” feeling in the music’s quieter, more louring sequences, and then magnificently orchestrated the creeping chromatic sequences that brought the piece to its overwhelming climax and enigmatic, sotto voce conclusion – “his (Scarbo’s) face pales like the wax of a candle-end – and suddenly he is extinguished…..”
As if we all needed some “normality” at the conclusion of such flights of fancy, Oleg Marshev generously gave us two encores, a beautifully-graded Chopin Prelude (No.4 of Op/28 in E Minor), and Rachmaninov’s Op.23 no 5 G Minor Prelude, the latter featuring the occasional volatile rhythm-surge in the march’s accompaniment, and some beautiful counter-voicings in the trio. Perhaps if we’re lucky enough to get a return visit we might hear from Marshev some more Rachmaninov – one of the sonatas, perhaps, or the unjustly-neglected Corelli Variations which, admittedly, I heard him play on a previous visit – but I would love to hear him play the work again…….