Author: Peter Mechen

Miranda Wilson – bringing it back home from Idaho

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Miranda Wilson (‘cello)
Jovanni-Rey de Pedro (piano)

Solo and chamber works
by Pärt, Ginastera, Bloch, Norton and Beethoven

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

Friday, July 17th, 2015

Trying to think of an appropriate heading for the review of this concert presented me with something of a challenge (as I find words do in general). After wrestling inconsequentially  with a number of thoughts, I finally hit upon the idea of celebrating what seemed to me a particularly distinctive Trans-Pacific connection through music, one which had happily resulted in this concert being presented here in Wellington for our very great pleasure.

The “Idaho” link in this case involved both Wellington-born ‘cellist Miranda Wilson, and her musical collaborator for this concert, Filipino-American pianist Jovanni-Rey de Pedro. Both are Assistant Professors of their respective instruments at the University of Idaho, situated mid-state in a city rather wonderfully called Moscow (well, why should the Russians get ALL of the fun?)

I last heard Miranda Wilson perform with the Tasman String Quartet here in Wellington goodness knows how long ago – previously I had heard her as a soloist, playing part of one of the Bach ‘Cello Suites. I remember on that occasion being struck by her “classic cellist” appearance (even though there’s probably no such thing!), a Suggia-like presence (there’s a famous portrait of the latter) and an intense concentration which came across in her playing via a direct and beautifully-focused sound.

Here she was heard both as a soloist and collaborator, bringing those same qualities of presence, focus and intensity to her playing throughout. She was certainly matched in most of these respects when performing with her colleague, pianist Jovanni-Rey de Pedro, even if I found myself somewhat distracted at the concert’s very beginning by the pianists’s constant activating of a computer-screen, presumably taking the place of a printed score, throughout the opening of Arvo Pärt’s haunting Spiegel im Spiegel (“Mirror in the mirror”).

This is a work whose raison d’être involves exchange and enrichment through collaboration –– the combination of instruments beautifully activated the silent spaces, the sound sound waves set a-rippling with piano arpeggios, the vistas widened by the ‘cello’s two-note phrases and deepened with occasional piano bass notes. Once Jovanni-Rey de Pedro had gotten through the opening measures, he kept his left hand largely away from the screen and down at the keyboard, to my great relief – yes, I know, it says very little for my powers of concentration on the music, but nevertheless I couldn’t help being diverted by it in situ!

However, once the composer’s “mirror images” had cast their spell, and the music run its course, Miranda Wilson graciously welcomed us to the concert and introduced her pianist colleague to us. The duo then undertook Ernest Bloch’s “Prayer”, one of three movements from his 1924 work From Jewish Life.

As one might expect from the composer of that wonderfully passionate work Schelomo (also for solo ‘cello, together with orchestra), the music has what Bloch described as the “Hebrew spirit…..the complex, ardent, agitated soul” found in the pages of the Bible, with all its “sorrow….grandeur (and) sensuality”.  All of that was here in spades from both players, ‘cello and piano by turns flamboyantly rhapsodizing, and gently musing, each taking the lead, then acting in accord, right up to the work’s final, generously-held note.

Jovanni-Rey de Pedro then played for us Alberto Ginastera’s flamboyant and exciting Op.22 Piano Sonata. This music was a “discovery” for me, as I had known only Ginastera’s Ballet Suites “Estancia” And “Panambi”, the former a kind of Argentinan version of Copland’s “Rodeo”, the latter owing something of its energies and exoticism to Manuel de Falla. But the Piano Sonata, though bringing to mind in places Ravel’s “Scarbo” from Gaspard de la Nuit, impressed most of all on my mind the idea that its composer knew well the rhythms and movements of his native land, whether driving, forceful and exciting, or gentle and insinuating.

The first movement’s two contrasting ideas were here delivered so characterfully – firstly the high-impact, funkily driven, sharp-contrast sequences of the opening, followed by more lyrically-centred passages, still buoyed along by the  toe-tapping rhythms, but here working a kind of “other-side -of-the-coin” magic with the material. Jovanni-Rey put it all across with tremendous volatility of expression – a mode that in the second movement “went underground”, its “misterioso” marking making for somewhat “Latin Gothic” effects at the beginning, everything bursting out only momentarily from a kind of “organ toccata” texture. The pianist’s exemplary control of dynamics throughout made for an eerily agitated effect, the playing’s obvious brilliance placed at the service of the music’s enigmatic character.

Again, what a contrast with the slow movement! – here, laden, arpeggiated figures loomed out of the mists and disappeared again as mysteriously as they formed. In Jovanni-Rey’s hands it all resembled a bluesy dream-sequence to begin with, the swirling notes then coalescing into bigger, Rachmaninovian statements before retreating into the half-lit ambiences once again, intent upon consolidating gained territories. As for the finale, it seemed like there was a force of nature at work, an overwhelming, fiery pianistic display from this young man, with toccata-like figurations showering sparks in all directions – so very exhilarating!

The programme’s second half opened up an entirely different world of expression, in the form of Bloch’s Third Suite for solo ‘cello. One of three written towards the end of the composer’s life, the music obviously owes a structural debt to Bach, while using twentieth-century harmonies and figurations. Miranda Wilson’s playing allowed plenty of both lyrical expression and rhythmic poise throughout each of the five movements, demonstrating, for example, in the opening Allegro deciso, a lovely “encircling” quality, rhythm taking its turn with line amid touches of volatility and occasional ascents to beautifully-breathed stratospheric places.

But throughout the work, the performance seemed to me to “light from within” the music’s different characters, from the first Andante’s quizzical processional, through the leaping jocularities of the Allegro and the visionary yearnings of the second Andante, to the ritualized “song-and-dance” of the concluding Allegro giocoso movement. The player certainly deserved the sustained applause which followed the Suite’s final movement, brought off here with élan and confidence.

Next, Christopher Norton’s Eastern Preludes and Pacific Preludes, somewhat tongue-in-cheek arrangements of various melodies from different countries, provided a good deal of surface entertainment, especially in Jovann-Rey’s polished renditions. For those familiar with each of the “originals” and their individual geographical contexts there could well have been as many amusing incongruities of style identifiable as there were to Australasian ears in the “Waltzing Matilda” and “Pokarekare Ana” versions – the spirit of Fats Waller seemed to bubble up from within the cracks between the keys during parts of the former, while one was reminded of the wicked sense of fun brought to bear in similar arrangements to that of “Pokarekare” by the late, lamented Larry Pruden.

Appropriately, both musicians featured in the concert’s final item, Beethoven’s Variations on Mozart’s “Bei Männern, welch Liebe fühlen” from The Magic Flute. Beginning with that warmest and richest of musical sounds, the E-flat chord, an exposition-like opening gave way to a more decorated variant with running accompaniments, the pace hotting up in the succeeding variation to edge-of-seat excitement, before the composer dropped a few anchors to get the music’s bearings thus far on the journey. Into the minor mode we were then taken by a wistful piano and a dark-browed ‘cello, the instruments simply being themselves, both played with all the character the musicians could muster.

The piece’s youthful composer obviously being out to show us what he could do, a skipping, syncopated figuration was occasionally made to pick up its skirts and run, to everybody’s bemusement. That established, the musicians relished the melody’s long-breathed cavatina-like treatment, ‘cello joining the piano, and both players treating the lines with that amalgam of freedom and responsibility which indicates true interpretative judgement, as much when to hold as when to let go. The latter moment came with the final variation, a playfully-launched waltz turning into a minor-key display of high spirits, each musician relishing the unbuttoned expression required by the composer – a brief luftpause made the brilliant final flourish go off like a glowing firework.

We loved the music and the duo’s playing of it – very great credit to them both, individually and as a partnership.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brilliance, poetry, power and passion from Trpčeski, Petrenko and the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
POWER AND PASSION

LISZT – Piano Concerto No.2 in A Major
MAHLER – Symphony No.5 in c-sharp Minor

Simon Trpčeski (piano)
Vasily Petrenko (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre
Wellington

Friday 10th July, 2015

Friday evening’s NZSO concert in Wellington promised to fully live up to its hyperbolic “Power and Passion” description, with Macedonian pianist Simon Trpčeski at the keyboard and St.Petersburg-born Vasily Petrenko on the podium. Expectations were high, each musician having made a profound and enduring impression when performing previously (on separate occasions) with the orchestra.

As well, the coupling of Liszt with Mahler was undoubtedly an inspired piece of programming, bringing together works by two of music’s most revolutionary creative spirits, each of whom also found lasting fame as a performer. Something of the flavour of that historic interpretative aura seemed to me to be recreated on this occasion by pianist, conductor and orchestra players – a sense of a unique and distinctive event, rather than “just another concert”.

Each of the works of course had its own distinctive world of expression, both composers sharing a gift for thematic invention and organic transformation – and as a programme-opener in this particular context Franz Liszt’s Second Piano Concerto seemed even more-than-usually startling and original. Vasily Petrenko coaxed characterful, almost rustic-sounding timbres from the opening wind chords, to which Simon Trpčeski’s piano responded with beautiful, upward-floating tones, the music shaped freely and rhapsodically, evoking such poignant feeling!

Having suffused the opening vistas with magic and beguilement, Liszt suddenly shakes and stir us from our reverie with charged impulses from the keyboard, which soon lead to terse exchanges between piano and orchestra, a confrontation whose urgency builds into a fierce orchestral tutti, carried on by the piano. In places taking the lead, and elsewhere responding to and mirroring the orchestral patternings Trpčeski constantly caught our ears with his beautifully dovetailed passagework, awaiting his chances topush out out the melodic and harmonic material, in aid of the composer’s on-going transformation of themes and rhythms into new worlds of feeling.

An example of this came with the ‘cello solo that grew out of one of the music’s luftpauses, here played by section principal Andrew Joyce with such rapt beauty as could perhaps have tempted the other musicians to simply stop and listen! Such is Liszt’s inventiveness throughout this work, it often seemed as though such moments were not so much ‘composed’ as freshly created – certainly Trpčeski’s playing frequently gave that impression (and included an unscheduled and extremely forgiving (almost mischievous) smile from the pianist at one point, flashed in the direction of the audience in response to a mercifully faint but still errant cell-phone ring)……

Anyone expecting or looking for moments of bombast or flashy brilliance of the kind some commentators still take pains to try and besmirch the composer’s work with, would have been disappointed with this performance – both Trpčeski and Petrenko drew playing from piano and orchestra which took no passage or episode of the music for granted – each phrase, sequence or episode was characterized in a way that brought out both its intrinsic effect and its place in the whole scheme of the work.

Liszt manages, for example, to use exactly the same thematic material heard throughout the work’s beautifully-wrought opening in the triumphal, swaggering march-like passages that take us to the work’s final pages. Here, it was the music’s finely-judged  emotional focus which the performers brought out consistently, instead of indulging in any vainglorious striving for effect, and sentimentalizing or making vulgar the music. And thus it was throughout – brilliance there was a-plenty (Trpčeski’s playing of the spectacular glissandi near the work’s end raised the hairs on the back of my neck!), as was poetry frequently in evidence as well (any number of breath-catching moments) – but all was swept up in a purposeful whole by the musicians, who did the music’s innovative, and in places daring character full justice.

Trpčeski was able to display more of his pianistic brilliance in an encore, again featuring the work of Liszt, but with another composer present! – one of Liszt’s many transcriptions of the work of Schubert, the sixth of a set of waltzes, a Valse-Caprice Soirées de Vienne. Here was old-world Schubertian charm allied with the feathery brilliance of execution one always associates with great performances of Liszt’s music.

So it was that we then prepared ourselves for the second of the evening’s two works – Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, written almost fifty years after the Liszt work was revised and first performed. The NZSO is no stranger to the symphony, performing it at least twice in relatively recent times that I can remember. But having previously heard Petrenko at full stretch conducting Shostakovich, another composer renowned for his ‘epic’ symphonic creations for orchestra, we in the audience were brimful with expectation that this performance of the Mahler work would be just as vividly realized as was the Russian composer’s Leningrad Symphony.

And so it began – a lively, though ever-so-slightly throaty trumpet solo got the symphony under way, leading to those crashing, lumbering chords which establish the ‘funeral march’ mood of the movement. As much depth as there was in the lower reaches, I found the full orchestral sound had an ‘edge’, giving the more explosive aspects of the music’s grief a kind of glint, a sharpness, adding to the unease. Contrasting with this was such sweetness from the strings with the melody, singing over the top of the black, menace-laden foot-treads of the brass and percussion.

Petrenko then whipped the precipitous mid-movement turmoil into a frenzy, the brass performing miracles of articulation at speed, the strings and winds galvanizing each other, and the percussion thunderous – not until the tuba called things to order with a wondrously full-girthed solo (ending with a similarly breath-catching diminuendo!) did the mourners recover their poise, and take up the cortege’s journey once again. We heard, to great effect along the way, a bleak rendition of the symphony’s opening from the timpani, and some heartfelt lamenting from the solo violin, with yet another surge of audibly-expressed anguish from the orchestra, before both trumpet and flute returned again to that opening fanfare figure, just before the final, non-negotiable pizzicato note.

Without undue delay the second movement erupted in our faces, the notes hurled straight at us with tremendous force from the players! The music subsided as suddenly as it had begun (echoes of the Second Symphony’s finale), seeming to take up a similarly funereal aspect to that of the slow movement, the strings in tandem with the winds moving forwards in mournful procession once again, but then set upon with as much vehemence as we heard at the opening. Again, these agitations fell away – and Petrenko allowed his ‘cellos what seemed like all the time in the world to give voice to their recitative – so inward, concentrated and heart-stopping, a ‘dark centre’ of emotion, it seemed – an unforgettable moment!

Then came the build-up to the movement’s climax, a magnificent cross-beam of gleaming tones, the symphony’s centerpiece, here magnificently delineated by Petrenko and his players –  a sequence that would return even more triumphantly at the symphony’s end. But there were miles and miles of music still to go before then – a scherzo in the rhythm of a waltz-landler was next, the symphony’s longest movement, in fact, here dancing its way across the composer’s world with wonderful insouciance. Punctuating the dance at certain points were richly-evocative horn-calls, sounding as if they were coming from all directions, from romantic forest vistas at all points of the compass – it all brought forth truly magnificent playing from guest (and former NZSO principal!) horn Samuel Jacobs and his band of cohorts!

The dance having whirled to its exuberant conclusion, the symphony ‘turned a corner’ and took us straight to the most well-known part of the work, the fourth-movement strings-and-harp Adagietto, used by Visconti in the film Death in Venice, and a classical ‘hit’ ever since. As it turned out, this performance stole the show,  Petrenko’s direction inspiring such diaphanously-woven textures as to persuade us that the music was of the air rather than created by man-made instruments. In certain places the textures dressed the drifting phantoms of the opening sequences with enough flesh-and-blood to bring them down to earth, exuding breath and energy in pursuit of love and fulfillment (double-basses so sonorous at the very end!) – a superb performance!

In fact, such was the Adagietto’s focus and intensity, the Rondo-Finale didn’t for me take wing to the extent I was hoping for. It was if the work had ‘peaked’ at that point, making it difficult for the music that was still to follow to grip the attention. Of course, at the level of intensity the Adagietto performance operated on, it would have been impossible, even suicidal, to try and sustain such voltage – but  It seemed, in a sense, the reverse of what took place when Pietari Inkinen conducted the same work a couple of seasons ago with the orchestra, giving a performance that spent two movements trying to truly “find itself” before opening up in the latter stages and culminating in a finale that was truly celebratory in feeling.

Mahler never ‘plays himself’ – and I wanted in places in the finale a bit more bucolic warmth and big-heartedness of manner. Perhaps the players were ‘spooked’ by a rare brief lapse of ensemble among the winds in one of their concerted passages – but whatever the cause the performance seemed to take a while to find the music’s definite character. I didn’t really care for the conductor’s ‘teasing-out’ of one of the lyrical episodes before the end, as it involved a lessening of the momentum that helps to makes this movement such a contrapuntal pleasure. Fortunately, it was a brief aberration – and the coda, in which the second movement’s great ‘cross-beam’ theme reappeared and silenced the chattering voices, was here overwhelming in its impact and splendor, Petrenko and his players then ‘letting their hair down’ over the final pages of joyous orchestral abandonment.

“No wonder they love him in Liverpool!” was the comment regarding Vasily Petrenko made to me afterwards by a friend – there was no doubt in my mind, with Simon Trpčeski’s glittering Liszt concerto performance as an additional treasure in itself, the concert was of a quality which truly enriched one’s store of musical experiences, adding wonderment to life’s meaning and stirring the blood most satisfyingly.

 

Wit, theatricality and food for thought from Affetto, in Lower Hutt

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music Hutt Valley presents:
AFFETTO – early music ensemble
“A Play Upon Words” – settings of texts with music of various kinds…..

Jane Tankersley (soprano), with Polly Sussex (viols, baroque ‘cello),
Rachael Griffiths-Hughes (harpsichord)
Philip Grifin (theorbo/baroque guitar),  Peter Reid (cornetto, baroque trumpet)

St.Mark’s Church, Woburn, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 8th July 2015

An unexpected “bonus” for me, during this enterprising and innovative concert by the early music ensemble Affetto in St.Mark’s Church, Woburn, came midway through – just before the interval, actually – when the ensemble played Henry Purcell’s rousing Lilliburlero. I hadn’t heard the tune for years (the last time was when I went to see Stanley Kubrick’s iconic 1975 film “Barry Lyndon” which used the melody as a rousing ceremonial marching tune). But I remembered it from much earlier days –  from the radio back in my childhood – when it was used as an advertising ditty, to the words, “Make your floors and furniture clean / always use Tanol Polishing Cream!” (see below)…….

I mention this as only one of the many (and varied) delights of the group’s presentation, all of which sprang to life with considerable élan for the enjoyment and pleasure of those of us who had braved the elements to get to the concert. Despite occasional bouts of ambient noise-background from a roof rattling from the southerly wind-gusts, the evening’s “ballads, songs and snatches” came across to us with plenty of feeling, colour and excitement.

Drawing from music written and well-known during the 17th Century, the programme featured a mixture of vocal and instrumental pieces, the choices designed to show how composers of that time were inspired by ideas stemming from the new art-form of opera, creating word-settings with considerable dramatic and theatrical emphasis to convey specific feelings or paint particular pictures or scenes.

The composers’ names were a mixture of the well-known – Henry Purcell, John Dowland, William Byrd, Jeremiah Clarke, John Blow and the great George Friedrich Handel – along with a number I’d never heard of – Diego Ortiz, Farbritio Caroso de Sermoneta, Andrea Falconieri, and Gaspar Sanz, plus one or two whose names were known to me but whose music I had little idea of – Tarquinio Merula, William Young, and Henry Eccles. And amidst all of “the old” was a “new” piece by New Zealand composer Janet Jennings, a setting of words spoken by Lady Macbeth (in Shakespeare’s “Scottish play”) with the title Exultation.

Well, we were well-and-truly taken upon a journey, one whose many and varied stages were simply too numerous and wide-ranging to catalogue in full, and therefore requiring a certain “highlighting” selection process from me, the hapless critic! That said, it was the variety of presentation which struck me most forcibly and memorably throughout the evening – and a friend whom I’d taken with me to the concert agreed that it was all “rich and strange and ever-changing”!

Central to the enterprise was soprano Jayne Tankersley, well-known to Wellington audiences for her voice’s brilliance and beauty in repertoire such as Monteverdi’s Vespers and his sets of madrigals, as well as Faure’s Requiem. Here she seemed just as truly in her element as a performer, displaying similar qualities of total involvement in the music and engagement with the various texts.

Whether conveying the implaccable arrival of the Day of Judgement with stentorian tones (Awake, awake, O England!), the sweetness and despair of a lover’s sorrow in the guitar-accompanied Dowland song I saw my Lady weep, or the fury and scorn of a drunkard’s wife in Henry Eccles’ Drunken Dialogue (sung as a riotous duet with Philip Grifin), her voice “carried” all of the different qualities needed to make words and music come alive in each case. Only in Henry Purcell’s Bess of Bedlam was the singer’s impact blunted by too far-back a placement on the platform.

So she was able to convey a good deal of Queen Dido’s tragic stature in the character’s final aria from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, the lament forward-moving, dignified and graceful as befits a monarch – some might have felt the performance perhaps a shade TOO forward-moving. But, a few minutes afterwards, she was duetting with cornettist Peter Reid in a rendition of happier music from Purcell, “Sound the Trumpet” from Come Ye Sons of Art – originally for two counter-tenors, the arrangement of voice and cornetto worked splendidly, the “other voice” effectively worked into an instrumental rendition.

An additional delight were the instruments on display by dint of their sounds as well as their appearance – we heard a range of tones and timbres throughout the evening which were far removed from the relatively manicured sounds made by their modern equivalents. I’ve already mentioned the cornetto, a straight, clarinet-length conical-shaped horn, whose notes were made by a combination of finger-holes and lip-pressure (its sound in my mind forever associated with music accompanying performances of Elizabethan drama, Shakespeare first and foremost of them).

Peter Reid also sported a “baroque trumpet”, another instrument relying on lip-pressure exerted by the player, splendid in effect but obviously treacherous to try and play accurately! We enjoyed a cobbled-together assemblage called the “English Trumpet Suite”, including a couple of Baroque “pops” such as the Trumpet Voluntary (long attributed to Purcell, but more recently to Jeremiah Clarke, as The Prince of Denmark’s March), as well as Handel’s stirring “La Rejouissance” from his Royal Fireworks Music. Thrills and spills there were aplenty, but it was a throughly invigorating listening experience.

If the other instruments were less “prominent” it was because their function was largely to support the continuo (figured bass) part of each item, though in some of the instrumental pieces prominence in some sequences was allowed instruments like the harpsichord, the bass viol and the baroque guitar. Philip Grifin, the guitarist, also played the theorbo, a kind of “extended” lute (the instrument was actually made in this country), its extended bass notes needing a fretboard of considerable (and even alarming!) length, the player having to bear in mind the risk of unexpectedly decapitating any of his fellow-musicians who wandered too close during excitable moments!

Together with Polly Sussex’s bass viol and baroque ‘cello, and Rachael Griffiths-Hughes’ harpsichord, the musicians brought their innate grace, charm and vigour to things like the Ciaconna L’Eroica (whose composer, Andrea Falconieri, I’d never head of) with its fascinatingly interlocking lines, and in their interactions with the voice throughout parts of Purcell’s Of All the Instruments – incidentally, I wonder if Jayne Tankersley knows John Bartlett’s Sweete Birdes deprive us never, an “entertainment” for soprano voice and lute that would have “sat” beautifully in this programme…….

A brief word concerning the one piece of contemporary music in the programme, written for the group by Waikato-based Janet Jennings – a work for soprano and ensemble exploring the character of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth. The group performed the opening movement of this five-part work, one depicting Lady Macbeth’s ruthless determination to make her husband King of Scotland. The music’s ceremonial, cornetto-led opening cleverly took our sensibilities back in time, before reflecting the character’s murderous, determined intent with haunting, close-knit harmonies and convolted chromatic lines for both singer and the ensemble, the music chillingly underlining the strength of the text’s concluding statement “We’ll not fail”. On this evidence, what a compelling entertainment the whole work promised to be!

During the interval we were invited to “inspect the goods” at closer quarters, and so had a lovely time examining the intricacies of the theory and the simplicities of the cornet and baroque trumpet, the experience giving more girth to our appreciate of the sounds wrought for us by this talented ensemble. Afterwards, we felt pleased and delighted that the wishes of the group, as expressed in the accompanying notes – to create “a very entertaining program of lively, poignant, and uplifting music” – had been so satisfyingly realized.

P.S. Appendix 1. (I had to search for this, to make sure my memory wasn’t playing me false…….!)

 Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLVIII, 3 March 1913, Page 2

“Wise grocers everywhere stock TANOL – the polish of polishers!
It makes bright homes, happy wives,  and contented husbands. 
Order a tin today! – Liquid 1s, Paste 6d “

 

 

 

Wellington Chamber Orchestra rounds on Beethoven with Mozart

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Orchestra presents
MOZART – Ouvertüre “Die Entführung aus dem Serail”
Symphony No.38 “Prague”
BEETHOVEN – Piano Concerto No.3 in C Minor

Diedre Irons (piano)
Chris van der Zee (conductor)
Wellington Chamber Orchcestra

St Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wellington

Sunday 28th June 2015

This concert got off to one of the most thrilling beginnings of any I’ve seen this year, with a no-holds-barred explosion of percussion erupting and pinning back our ears during the first few bars of Mozart’s famous Il Seraglio Overture, also known by its German title of Die Entführung aus dem Serail.

Played with great precision and plenty of verve, the “Turkish” instruments (bass drum, triangle and cymbals) here simply saturated the airwaves with scintillating noise, as the composer intended. The opera having being set in a Turkish harem, Mozart was giving the public the exotic kinds of sounds that would have been expected from a work with such associations.

The orchestra’s more conventional sections also did their bit to enhance the music’s energy, colour, and high spirits. Conductor and orchestra brought off the contrasts between the music’s “soft and loud” sections with considerable skill throughout. The central “wistful Andante” was played with great tenderness and nicely-pointed oboe phrases, helping to make the return of the “Janissary” (the Turkish element) just as exciting and colourful as before. Altogether the performance was a great success, drawing enthusiastic and committed playing from the orchestra.

More serious business was then addressed by the musicians in the form of Beethoven’s C Minor Piano Concerto, the composer’s third such work. Very properly the programme’s notes referred to Beethoven’s admiration for one of Mozart’s piano concerti in a similar key, K.491, and how this regard was reflected by the similarities of Beethoven’s work to that of the older composer.

I was pleased to also read a reference in the programme to the recordings of these concerti made in 2003 and 2004 by the soloist, Diedre Irons, with the Christchurch Symphony conducted by Marc Taddei, for Trust Records. Available as individual discs or as a set from Trust Records, PO Box 10-143, Wellington, 6143 – or via e-mail at info@trustcds.com, the performances are well worth anybody’s investigation.

Nobody who knew the recordings would have expected anything less than what Diedre Irons gave us that afternoon – a sonorous, well-rounded realization of the solo part, as naturally “integrated” with the orchestra’s contribution as any intelligent conversation between two people, serious of purpose to begin with (first movement), then long-breathed and lyrical of expression over the middle movement’s vistas, before playfully interweaving strands of philosophic utterance with moments of rude vigour and determination throughout the finale, “comedy of a sardonic sort” as the programme-note writer so well put it.

Conductor Chris van der Zee supported his soloist with all the intent he and the orchestra could muster, holding the textures of the instrumental sections together and achieving sonorous and coherent balances – the wind soloists, in particular clarinet, bassoon and flute, had sensitive and eloquent moments of interplay with the piano, and the timpanist was a tower of rhythmic strength and support whenever called upon. The opening tutti set the scene for the grandest possible entry from the soloist, and we in the audience weren’t disappointed.

A by-product of the orchestra’s very forward placement in the church, to the front of the “chancel” area, meant that the piano was placed so far forward as to render the soloist invisible to everybody sitting upstairs in the organ gallery save those in the first row of seats. Being one of those people held up by unexpected traffic, I found myself upstairs, and without a “view” of the keyboard. Fortunately, my experience at the London “Proms”, where one often found oneself standing for the entire concert, was helpful at this point, taking as I did a vantage point to the side and remaining on my feet so I could see the pianist.

Of course I could have merely settled back in my seat and enjoyed the sound of Diedre Irons’ playing – but she’s one of those pianists who communicates such a great deal with deportment, expression and gesture at the keyboard, so that the experience of “hearing” her live seems incomplete unless these things can be observed. What comes across is a kind of totality, which in a broadcast or recording of music is left to the imagination to supply – the expressions, the gesturings, the physical means used to create the musical sounds. Here, from my somewhat “birds-eye” view I saw the performance’s world and was drawn into its absorbing plethora of attitudes, moods and feelings.

After the interval I could resume my seat (a few leanings-forward in places notwithstanding) and enjoy the rather more contained aspect of a well-known classical symphony, in this case Mozart’s work known as the “Prague”, Symphony No.38 in D major K.504. In the space of three movements only, Mozart treats us to one of the happiest and most festive of his large-scale symphonic works, the nickname “Prague” referring to the success the symphony experienced when performed in that city. The orchestra, here, though seemingly reluctant in places throughout the opening to really “attack” the opening notes of their phrases and thus establish a strong rhythm, seemed to move up a notch in the first movement’s development section, hitting their stride with confidence, getting sonorous support from the horns, and making sure the “payoff” points of the work came across well (the timpani again strong and reliable at such times).

Better-focused overall was the slow movement, kept moving nicely and lightly by the conductor, and registering the often markedly-detailed dynamics – the winds as an ensemble did particularly well, here, I thought, the oboes especially doing a lovely “middle textures” job of it. The music generated oceans of warmth and poise by turns, thanks to the sensitivity and style of the playing.

Just as enjoyable was the finale, the opening eager and bustling, the players seemingly “onto it” – a lovely, chattering aspect from the winds brought theatrical characters to our minds and accompanying smiles to our faces as the different personalities came and went. The music’s sometimes abrupt dynamic shifts were exuberantly sounded, all the sections dovetailing their parts then “breaking out” with great élan. I thought the strings played with much more confidence, here, adroitly crisscrossing their lines and building the lines towards places where the horns could underline the music’s festive aspect with plenty of spirit.

So, the concert ended as it had begun – with Mozart’s music completing the circle, the playing rounding the afternoon’s music-making off with a good deal of panache and some well-deserved accompanying audience enjoyment.

Jack Body – lightning leaping from the pages

Posted on by Peter Mechen

JACK! – celebrating Jack Body, composer
edited by Jennifer Shennan, Gillian Whitehead & Scilla Askew
published by Steele Roberts, Aotearoa, 2015

Available from:
Steele Roberts Publishers,
Box 9321, Wellington, Aotearoa, New Zealand
e-mail: info@steeleroberts

Wednesday 10th June 2015

This beautifully-prepared and richly-annotated volume contains a remarkable array of testaments of love and regard for a man whose life and work deeply touched not only immediate friends and colleagues, but many people involved with music in New Zealand, throughout South-East Asia and around the world.

Happily, it appeared while its subject, Jack Body, was still very much alive, by all accounts – an acknowledgement is made by the editors to the composer’s “stamina and concentration” in making every effort to assist with the work. Hence the opening pages proudly carry the dedication “To Jack and Yono, with love” (Yono Soekarno being Jack’s long-term partner).

Appropriately heading the list of names on a subsequent “Acknowledgements” page is another Jack – a long-time friend and supporter of Body’s, and much-esteemed arts patron Jack C.Richards, recipient of the 2014 Arts Foundation Award for Patronage, and whose support for this project made the book’s publication possible.

A feature stemming directly from the attitude of the book’s subject to biography is its avoidance of what one of the editors, Jennifer Shennan, calls “conventional ordering”. In citing Body’s “low tolerance for boredom, cliche and comfort zones”, she relishes all the more his initial response to the project – “Oh, I don’t need a book – better to have a concert!” – before recording the composer’s inevitable “day-follows-night” movement towards interest and enthusiasm for it all.

It follows that the finished work is, like its subject, a unique phenomenon, inviting no comparisons and following no formulae – it assuredly won’t be the last word on Jack (other biographers will see to that!) but his proximity to its “making” gives it all extraordinary resonance, his presence almost talismanic throughout its many adroitly-woven parallel strands which cluster around and about “pools” (well, oceanic lakes, really!) of deep-currented osmotic activity.

The composer’s actual biographical details can be found amid these different contexts, both via a section of its own called “Beginnings: family and music” (significantly, NOT at the book’s very beginning!) and a transcript of a landmark interview of Body’s with Elizabeth Kerr, as part of Radio NZ Concert’s “Composer of the Week” Series during 2014.

So, Jack himself tells some of his own story, but by far the bulk of the observations regarding his life, activities and achievements are made by the hundred-plus people whose contributions (mostly the written word, but also photographic and musical) give the reader something of the true measure of the man’s manifold accomplishments regarding his own and other people’s music, his range and scope of things in those areas alone being positively Lisztian!

One would think that the impression made by such and so many laudatory statements would begin to pall upon a reading-through of them – but Jack’s net of contact with people was obviously cast so widely and deeply (and cross-culturally), that one is struck as much by the variety of response as by its positive consistency. As individuals recorded their responses so must they have been encouraged from the start by Jack’s openness and warmth to be themselves with him deeply and utterly – so what comes across is a rich diversity and vibrancy of response that simply encourages one to read more – and more……..

There are more gems of individuality among the tributes than I can list, but I offer a few, nevertheless – “musical spark-plug” – “a true rangatira” – “visionary nation-builder” – “bottomless bounteousness” – “a great “zhi yin” (bosom friend) of Chinese music” – “the song-catcher” – “totally subversive” – “gift of a man” – “changed my life by 180 degrees” – “wonderful Body-parts”……one senses that Jack’s inspiration often gave rise to creative impulses of affection and admiration for which music was only the starting-point.

Speaking of starting-points, one such is the direct initial impression made by the publication, a volume without a dust-jacket but still nevertheless eye-catching in appearance with its gold-leaf title “Jack” embossed upon an (appropriately?) burgundy-hued cover containing also a white-pencil sketch of the composer’s face, featuring the characteristic moustache. Inside, the paper is pleasing to the touch, and the fonts with their few variants are attractive and clearly set, invariably on white backgrounds, and never against colours or hues which clash with and obscure the letters.

The words having been given their dues, the accompanying graphics are telling and vivid throughout – each of the sections features an introductory title page bedecked with designs or motifs characteristic of and readily suggesting its subject, and almost every contributor is represented by a photograph, colour, sepia and/or black-and-white. Some bring a smile, while others raise the eyebrows with a start – a particular favorite of mine features Body as a mad, google-eyed gamelan player delightedly unnerving two hapless members of the ensemble.

In short, it’s a book which to my mind has considerable visceral appeal, even before one begins reading – one enjoys the ready “chaos of delight” of colours and textures which blaze forth, but is then drawn into the “mix and mingle” to find method in the tumbling warmth of it all, the strands encircling the different pools and resonating with the sounds of voices and music suggested by the words.

Cleverly, we’re taken to each of the different areas of exploration and activity Body involved himself in and with, beginning the process with a section devoted to Indonesia, the first of the composer’s “exotic” explorations, and here subtitled “discovering a new sensuality”. As well as warm and grateful tributes from his indonesian mentors and students, there’s a detailed appreciation of his work from a fellow-ethnomusicologist, who did work for the Smithsonian “Folkways” set of recordings from the USA. This was inspired by Jack’s recordings of the country’s ethnic music, his American colleague admiring the “integrity” of his gathered material and his methods.

And so the book proceeds through the various “theatres” of Body’s work, by way of similar sections devoted to China and to Cambodia, as well as activities and projects back in New Zealand and elsewhere.  In the “China” chapter, events of vital significance to this country’s cultural heritage, such as the premiere of Jack’s opera “Alley”, are highlighted. The premiere’s conductor Peter Walls thoughtfully and beautifully equates the genesis and societal context of the work with that of Monteverdi’s “Orfeo” in seventeenth-century Italy. Another section, “In performance – embracing the world”, brings into focus Jack’s relationship with groups such as the Kronos Quartet, for whom he wrote a number of works that have since been performed in places far removed from New Zealand.

Running alongside and through these sections is the inspirational Radio NZ Concert interview with Body, conducted with insight and sensitivity by Elizabeth Kerr – again, no mere retelling of a life’s minutae, but one furnishing so many insights per minute (rather than the other way round!). I found most illuminating the sections where the composer outlines and explores his compulsions to firstly explore material and then use, or (as he puts it) “reinterpret it”. He goes on to confess, openly and modestly, that the music is transformed through his actions  to reveal something of himself, with all his limitations.

What’s refreshing is the candor of the man, a composer who doesn’t hesitate to express his creative angst of having to fill emptiness, and therefore turning with relief to something that’s already there and refashioning it “nearer to the heart’s desire”. And what about any associated “crises of confidence”? – in the same utterance they’re characterized as “no bad thing” for a composer, which is remarkable as a metaphor for strength of will overcoming self-doubt. It’s also part of the demystification processes which Jack Body saw as central to his particular “heart’s desire”. And this book gives us many such instances of the essence of Body’s particular no-holds-barred brand of creativity.

The most complimentary thing I can think of saying about the book is that it’s enabled me to feel as though I now know Jack Body a whole lot better than I did. People who knew him well will be far less surprised by what’s covered here, but to others like myself whose contact with him consisted of meeting occasionally at concerts, registering, however briefly, his warmth and friendliness, and who know some of his music through live performances and recordings, the sheer range and depth of his activities here presented is nothing short of revelatory – as fellow-composer Helen Bowater said about meeting him for the first time, it’s like “being struck by lightning – never the same again!”.

Editors Jennifer Shennan, Gillian Whitehead and Scilla Askew can, I think be extremely proud of the result of their labours, in tandem with Steele Roberts Publishers. Together they have done for Jack what he himself repeatedly did in his own work – expressed essential and enduring things, which his friends already knew, but which people such as myself can now discover and realize more fully for ourselves throughout these lively, warm-hearted and inspiring pages.

 

 

 

 

Ensembled delights from the NZSM Saxophones at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Andrews Lunchtime Concert Series 2015
Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music Saxophone Orchestra

The players:
Ryan Hall, Reuben Chin (soprano sax)
Genevieve Davidson, Laura Brown (alto sax)
Giles Reid, Elizabeth Hocking, Nick Walshe (tenor sax)
Graham Hanify, Kim Hunter, Simon Brew (Baritone sax)
Director – Debbie Rawson

The music:

ASTOR PIAZZOLLA – Tango Suite for Saxophone Quartet
ROGER MAY – Sax Circus for Saxophone Orchestra
PHILIP BUTTALL – Eclogue for Saxophone Orchestra
ANTONIN DVORAK (arr. Doug. O’Connor)

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

 Wednesday 27th May 2015

There’s more “classical” music written for the saxophone than you might think exists – after all the instrument has been around since 1846, and as such is more “established ” than its twentieth-century prominence in jazz might suggest. Still, there remains an “exoticism” about the instrurment’s particular sound for classically-attuned ears such as mine(!), and one which I find particularly exciting whenever I hear it, be it solo, in a chamber ensemble or in an orchestral context.

So, I found myself looking forward to the NZ School of Music’s Saxophone Orchestra presentation at St.Andrew’s. I wasn’t REALLY expecting to hear my favourite pieces for the instrument, Eric Coates’s Saxo-Rhapsody, and the opening movement of Sergei Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances, with its haunting middle  section “owned” by the instrument – both, after all, have orchestral accompaniment. But I was hoping for something comparably luscious, albeit on a smaller scale.

The concert began with Astor Piazzolla’s Tango Suite, played by a sax quartet, two movements of Latin “soul”, at the outset with lovely, distinctive timbres, particularly the lower echelons – a gentle melancholy, wistful in character, the music embroiled in what sounded like some private emotion. The players balanced everything beautifully, allowing the middle voices their easeful, engaging trajectories, the phrasings never having to be forced or over-cooked to make the music’s point.

Though hearing Debbie Rawson’s spoken introductions  was a difficulty in the venue with a microphone that was a “sometimes thing”, I did register the programmme rearrangement from what was printed – so that we got Roger May’s madcap Sax Circus next, three additional players appearing like Cheshire Cats for the performance, and immediately making their mark with a kind of jolly circus opening to the music.

Enormous fun was generated on both sides of the performer/listener divide, poking huge holes in the gauze through which the sounds galloped and romped and our appreciation (I’m sure) registered. Our popcorn was forgotten as we were regaled by a baritone sax kick-starting a rumbustious gallop, which divertingly morphed into subsidiary episodes, as far-removed as elephantine ploddings, but returned us to the energies of the opening by the end.

Philip Buttall’s Eclogue restored our sonic equilibriums with the piece’s patiently-unfolding, almost ceremonial tapestries of sound, giving the soprano sax the melody atop beautifully-balanced osmotic harmonies. Then it was the alto saxes’ turn with the tune, as the sopranos counterpointed with high-wire variants – all very beautiful and deeply-felt.

To conclude the programme came an arrangement of the Dvorak Serenade for Winds, the work of somebody called Doug O’Connor – and even more players turned up for this item! So it was a very merry company indeed, which began the work, led by Debbie Rawson, the opening Tempo di Marcia barely able to contain itself in the excitement of the occasion. Amid all the thrusting energies I did feel it all needed a bit more “Moderato”, as something of the music’s bucolic swagger was sacrificed at such an insistent tempo. With the movement’s coda came the breadth that I was hanging out for, a glow settling over the playing, the musicians given the elbow-room to voice their phrases beautifully, right to the end.

The following Minuetto had all the grace and charm necessary for the music to bloom, the ensemble creating some lovely colours, and beautifully droll accompaniments, readily evoking the dance – but wow! – at what a lick the music’s “trio” section was taken! – hats off to the players for managing their notes without falling off the musical tightrope! Exciting, but for me just a bit of a blur, more breathless than truly exhilarating – to my mind relying a little too much on sheer speed rather than rhythmic “pointing” to be truly delicious!

This arrangement having omitted the original work’s Andante con moto movement, the players went straight into the Allegro molto finale – here most thankfully not rushed off its feet, but at a tempo that gave the players time to articulate their phrases with a sense of fun, rather than sheer desperation – the main tune was jolly and rumbustiously delivered, and the “gurgling” accompaniments were a delight! I was reminded of the story I heard of a wind player’s remark about playing Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe, that “you just waggle your fingers and hope for the best!”. But these young players seemed to have no such fears, so exuberant and whole-hearted were their own finger-wagglings!

Dvorak’s marvellous finale has as well, of course, a delicious accelerando passage, a quasi-pompous return to the work’s opening, and an exciting coda, complete with stirring fanfares, all of which were delivered with great élan. So, it was pretty wonderful stuff from the ensemble, the student musicians having obviously, from this showing, been expertly schooled, and thus made ready to take their instruments and make a great and pleasing noise in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NZSM Piano Students impress at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Andrews Lunchtime Concert Series 2015
Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music Piano Students

Joy Sun – BEETHOVEN : Piano Sonata No.18 in E-flat Op.31 No.3 (Ist Mvt.)
SCHUMANN-LISZT – Widmung

Choong Park – RACHMANINOV – Piano Sonata No.2  (Ist.Mvt.)

Hana Kim – SCHUBERT – Impromptu Op.90 No.2 in E-flat

Nicole Ting – BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata No.30 in E Op.109 (Mvts. I and II)
CHOPIN – Scherzo No.2 Op.31

Xing Wang – DEBUSSY – Children’s Corner (Suite)

(NZSM Piano tutor: Jian Liu)

St Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wellington

Tuesday 26th May 2015

What a pianistic feast this was! – more appropriately so for a lunchtime concert, with nothing given us that was too large-scale or difficult to digest easily. Which is not to suggest that the repertoire chosen by the students was anything less than challenging, both technically and interpretatively.

Each of the performers impressed with their intense involvement in the music-making – I felt they all to a creditable extent made music from “inside” their particular pieces, and conveyed a sense both of enjoyment of detail and awareness of the music’s overall “reach”, allowing each quality to readily speak.In every instance the music’s “character” was to some degree conveyed most readily.

I was unaccountably hampered during the concert by not having a pen that worked, and was thus unable to make notes as “reminders” for later – my apologies if my remarks seem not as detailed as is usually the case. Fortunately each of the students had a distinct “way” with his or her playing, which I found helpful as well as refreshing and exciting.

Joy Sun began the concert with a sympathetic and sensitive reading of the first movement of Beethoven’s Op.18 E-flat Sonata. She shaped the music beautifully, giving the impression of “going with” the work’s explorations as much as driving the music’s course herself – nothing was unduly forced, and her aspect at the keyboard was fluid and organic.

I was similarly impressed with her shaping of Liszt’s equally loved-as-maligned transcription of Schumann’s song “Widmung”, stressing the poetry and lyricism ahead of the music’s more obviously virtuoso aspects, especially in the latter stages. Her building up towards the “grand manner” from the central episode’s gentleness was nicely managed, as was the work’s quietly-ecstatic conclusion.

More poetry, this time of a brooding, Slavic kind came from the expert fingers of Choong Park, playing the opening allegro agitato from Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Sonata. It all came to life in this performance most vividly, from the opening downward plunge, through the gentler D Major episodes, before building up to the tremendous evocations of churchbells that were a trademark of the composer. Choong Park seemed completely at home in the work’s textures, and his patient unfolding of the music suited the piece’s improvisatory aspect, allowing it to unfold as night follows day.

A welcome antidote to such intensities was provided by the sparking, rippling performance by Hana Kim of Schubert’s delectable Impromptu Op.90 No.2 in E-flat. One or two tiny hesitations apart, the pianist kept the “spin” of the piece going most beguilingly throughout. She allowed the more declamatory “trio” section enough heft and space to point the contrasts before gliding, gossamer-like back into the reprise of the diaphanously-woven opening.

As with the recital’s first two items, the contrast with the next pianist and repertoire (Beethoven’s Op.109) was almost palpable. Nicole Ting was a “big” player with grandly-conceived gestures, some of which provided thrills and spills of an almost palpable order, though nothing unremarkable in the context of the pianist requiring the music to achieve its fantastic, virtuoso character. What inaccuracies and breakdowns there were in her playing could have been attributed to nerves as much as a “throwing caution to the winds” aspect (which I really enjoyed), and certainly didn’t conceal the fact that she “knew” how the music ought to go, even if she occasionally snatched at phrases in the Op.109’s second movement. I relished the wholeheartedness of her playing amid all of the thrills and spills.

And the Chopin Scherzo which followed was a tour de force – here was a young player already “tagging” these classic pieces of music as if wanting to create a brave new world of her own. Once more I felt invigorated by her approach, being put in touch by her with the piece’s originality and power and inherent danger. Of course, one can achieve these things with a lower attrition rate than here, and I would hope she would be able to eventually achieve even more “finish” in her presentations – though ideally, not at the expense of those qualities which enable the listener to sit up and take notice of what the music is actually trying to say.

Finally, fluent, and sparking playing of a high order was given us by Xing Wang, with Debussy’s delectable “Children’s Corner” Suite. Apart from a tendency to rush the music in places (she made, for me, a little too much of the “mechanus” aspect of “Dr.Gradus ad Parnassum” and could have entrusted the effect more to the tongue-in-cheek aspect of the music’s natural “spin”, rather than to speed) she evoked these childhood vignettes with real feeling,  dreaming sweet dreams with Jimbo, for example, and also dancing exuberantly with the snowflakes.

Again, I thought Golliwog’s Cakewalk a bit too mechanical – there’s a delicious drollery to be found in these rhythms which she will one day take the risk and put her trust in, and not perhaps feel the need to crank the piece along quite so much, which includes more playfulness in the piece’s ending.

Piano tutor Jian Liu expressed his pleasure to me at the recital’s end in working with these students – he was obviously proud of what they’d achieved, and of what they’d be able to go on and do, just as surely. The students’ enjoyment of and imaginative individual approach to what they played, was, I thought, a great and nicely-realised tribute to his tutorship and own example.

 

 

 

 

An evening’s enjoyment of wonderful things in Lower Hutt

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Hutt Valley Chamber Music presents:
Vesa-Matti Leppänen (violin)
Julia Joyce (viola)
Andrew Joyce (‘cello)
Diedre Irons (piano)

HAYDN – String Trio in G Major Op.53 No.1
FRANCK – Sonata for Violin and Piano (1886)
BRAHMS – Piano Quartet in C Minor Op.60

Little Theatre, Lower Hutt

Monday 25th May, 2015

The programme devised for this concert certainly made the most of the music and the performers, as well as pleasing the audience no end – having works for variously two, three and four musicians provided plenty of variety, while the performances established and maintained levels of skill, intensity, beauty and enjoyment that would have graced a recital platform anywhere in the world.

On the face of things, hardest-working of the quartet of musicians was violinist Vesa-Matti Leppänen, usually concertmaster of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, but here as fully involved in duo, trio and quartet partnerships, his playing a common and unifying thread throughout the evening’s music.

And what colleagues he had! – two of his orchestral colleagues, both (like Vesa-Matti) leaders of their particular sections in the NZSO, violist Julia Joyce and ‘cellist Andrew Joyce (partners in real life, of course), and the incomparable Diedre Irons at the piano – all, incidentally, local musicians!

The Haydn Trio began with a variation movement, lovely, lilting phrases, the dance firmly, but also winningly characterized – the composer again and again showed his inventiveness in creating delightful discourses from such deceptively simple material, with each instrument getting its chance to cheekily counterpoint the basic, unprepossessing theme. Then in the second and final movement, the pace quickened to a scamper, punctuated by pauses and dynamic contrasts – now tender and touching, now brilliant and decorative, the trio’s teamwork exemplary.

A good thing I’ve never grown tired of hearing Cesar Franck’s deservedly well-loved Violin Sonata – because, despite its technical difficulties and emotional “stretches” it regularly comes up in recital programs. Here, for me, the most fascinating aspect of the performance was the interaction of what might have seemed like two temperamentally different musicians, charged by cosmic circumstance with bringing the work to life.

While admiring the elegance and skill of Vesa-Matti Leppänen’s violin playing on the occasions I’ve heard him demonstrate his art, I’ve always though of him as a cool, somewhat detached and “contained” player – different sorts of qualities one would expect of an ideal interpreter of this work. And now, here he was, about to perform it with a colleague whom I’ve long regarded as one of music’s greatest and warmest communicators, pianist Diedre Irons.

As it turned out, each player was a near-perfect “foil” for the other in this music – and in any case the composer’s history as a “young virtuoso lion” of the keyboard meant that the writing’s focus often swung towards the pianist – no mere “violin with accompaniment” with this work! This fusion of styles I thought enriched the performance, with whole episodes seemingly given over to each player’s strengths and beautifully weighted by both in overall terms.

What did delight me the most, however, was hearing the violinist respond to his partner’s red-blooded manner at appropriate places – so full measure was given to the exhilaration of the second movement’s concluding measures, as well as the “deeply-dug” recitatives and the inwardness of the introspections in the slow movement. And I loved Vesa-Matti’s “full-bow” treatment of the return of that movement’s “big tune” in the finale – which moment, of course, Diedre Irons’ playing magnificently orchestrated, before scampering back down the hills towards the more circumspect undulations of the opening, and the ritual of its final canonic dance.

All hands came upon deck for the evening’s final work, Brahms’ epic C Minor Piano Quartet. Though this was the third such work written by the composer, and with a later opus number than its companions, the three quartets were sketched out at the same time – the C Minor work reflects Brahms’ involvement with the Schumanns, Robert and Clara, from the time that Robert had been committed to the asylum.

Brahms took twenty years to work through his various and contradictory feelings regarding what the music was trying to express. Originally set in C#Minor, the work’s key was changed to C Minor, Brahms developing his feelings from those of a hopeless lover (C#Minor was E.T.A.Hoffman’s famous character Kreisler, one whose influence on Schumann was evident in his piano suite “Kreisleriana”), to heroism amid struggle (exemplified by Beethoven’s frequent use of C Minor). These two feelings make themselves known, cheek-to-jowl, right at the pieces’ beginning, with the piano’s octaves (forceful expression) and the string’s “dying fall” motif perhaps representing characters in the drama to follow.

Drama it certainly was here, in huge shovelfuls, with powerful outbursts of concerted energy having their say, before giving way to a beautifully-extended and lyrical second group, weaving the opening descending figure into the argument in both minor and major modes, as well as contrasting the tragic with the heroic. The players, together and separately, conjured up massive trenchant utterances in contrast to the tenderness they also found in more lyrical moments, a beautiful exchange between viola and violin causing the piano to sing with the utmost pleasure in response.

The piano leapt first into the scherzo’s fray before the others took the plunge – though the music seemed uncertain whether to exult or snarl in places, the group roller-coastered all of us up and over the movement’s formidable hill-crests in exhilarating style. And no sooner had we regained our breath than the loveliest ‘cello-playing one could imagine was upon our ears courtesy of Andrew Joyce, introducing the slow movement with sounds that fell as gratefully as sunbeams on previously storm-tossed flowers of the fields.

Vesa-Matti Leppänen’s violin then added to our pleasure with its own voice  extending the melody in duet with the ‘cello. Not to be left out, the viola deftly and mellifluously duetted with each of its string-partners, Julia Joyce’s tones as transparent as a violin’s in places, and as mellow and mysterious as a cello’s in others. And Diedre Irons surely and sweetly marked the  piano’s place in the movement’s “continuous melody” by a tenderly-phrased reprise of the melody as sensitive and atmospheric as any.

Urgency and anxiety drove the ensemble at the finale’s beginning, the piano’s “perpetuo mobile” breaking off only momentarily for some hymn-like chords from the strings which were picked up and swept away once again in the maelstrom of it all. The players caught the “throes” of the music at its heart, by turns skittish and impulsive, with the sinuous lines frequently losing their momentum and having to regroup their energies – what intensities were carried through by the drive of the piano figurations and the sonorous string utterances!

One felt at the end a kind of “haunted relief” in the music, besides some Brahmsian exultation – ironically, the kind of ambivalence that Schumann would have recognized, as befitted his own struggles with life and art. A great and moving performance, then, of stirring, deeply-etched music, part of a rich and variegated evening’s enjoyment of wonderful things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Storms, remonstrations and resolutions from the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
INTO THE STORM
Music by Britten and Sibelius

BRITTEN – Four Sea Interludes from “Peter Grimes” Op.33a
– Violin Concerto Op.15
SIBELIUS – Symphony No.2 in D  Op.43

(at the concert’s beginning, the orchestra played a short piece written by Jack Body, the New Zealand composer who died the previous Sunday, in Wellington – this was the fifth movement Non posso altra figura immaginarmi  of Body’s Meditations on Michelangelo for violin and strings.

Anthony Marwood (violin)
Thomas Søndergård (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 16th May 2015

Everything seemed to fall into place throughout this concert, one of the most finely-planned and beautifully-realised evenings of orchestral music-making I’ve ever heard from the NZSO.

Central to its success was the degree of rapport I felt coursing between the players and conductor throughout. Thomas Søndergård, making his debut with the orchestra, secured playing at once clearly focused, finely proportioned and satisfyingly expressive in each of the works presented.

To begin, the orchestra paid a tribute to composer Jack Body, who had recently died. The piece chosen was hardly elegiac, but had instead an appropriate vigour and energy, just as Body himself would most likely want to be remembered. This was an exerpt from a work for strings and violin Meditations on Michelangelo, the fifth movement Non posso altra figura immaginarmi (I cannot imagine another figure) – marvellously scored music, with overlapping figurations, dynamics and timbres giving the listener plenty of antiphonal and textural excitement.

A more sombre note was struck immediately by the opening measures of Benjamin Britten’s first “Sea Interlude” from the opera Peter Grimes, a sequence depicting Dawn, but with the ocean as the chief protagonist, with beautifully-projected surface detailings, underpinned by ominous swellings of oceanic power. Sunday Morning introduced a human element to the scenario, with church bells rhythmically counterpointing various people’s to-and-fro movements in between irruptions of of clamorous activity – a particularly sonorous church bell here sounded a somewhat menacing note towards the piece’s end.

I thought the conductor’s tempo at the beginning of the third Interlude Moonlight a shade brisk at the outset, taking a while to capture a nocturnal version of the opening Dawn seascape, but succeeding in delivering a sense of that oceanic power again waiting to swell up in anger and crush anything caught in its mesh of unbridled fury. This of course came with the final Interlude, the Storm, here a savage unleashing of the forces suggested in places by the previous sequences, Søndergård properly challenging the players at a frenetic, no-holds-barred tempo. From the trumpet’s shrill clamour to the tuba’s tummy-wobbling pedal point blasts, the brass timbres “spoke” with terrific presence and excitement, assisted readily by the timpani – those contrasting moments of exhausted stillness just before the final onslaught made all the greater an impression in the midst of such elemental ferocity.

What a richly-wrought work the same composer’s Violin Concerto is! – the first movement was presented here as a bitter-sweet journey into realms of great beauty and nostalgia, everything held together by the opening motif played on the timpani. I immediately thought of Walton’s music with the entry of the strings, the writing having a similar bitter-sweet quality, as with the soloist’s first “endless melody” cantilena. Though Anthony Marwood’s tone wasn’t as richly-upholstered as I was perhaps expecting, his focus and purity of line was something to savor throughout. I loved the Ravel-like fanfares played first by the violin and then, following an exhilarating downward plunge by the strings, taken up by the brass, as if a character from the composer’s ballet “The Prince of the Pagodas” was about to arrive.

How beautifully Marwood played the languorous solo that followed, gorgeously accompanied by the orchestral ambiences, leading to a deeply-throated ritualistic march, the strings soaring and the soloist playing the opening timpani motif – so atmospheric, so delicate and tremulous as the music stole to the movement’s end. And what an exhilarating change we were plunged into with the scherzo, the soloist’s Prokofiev-like ascending solo line danced over scampering rhythms, towards a “trio” section, orchestral hammer-blows leading to a more circumspect “trio” section featuring discourses between the solo violin and the winds, followed by a breath-catching cadenza, here quite superbly voiced by the soloist, and  evocatively leading into the final movement’s Passacaglia.

We were quite literally spell-bound as the theme began deeply and softly on the trombones beneath the solo violin’s rhapsodizing, then spread like the rays of a rising sun throughout the rest of the orchestra, the structures shaped like ranges of mountains. The music was, by turns stern and dark (brass and timpani), then warm and yielding (strings and oboe), a sense of ritual becoming more and more apparent, energized in places by things like rapid solo violin triplets (excitingly done!) and rapid variants of upward scales, the different sections exhilaratingly counterpointing their rising and falling lines. Having been impressed by the music’s grandeur and solemnity, we were then taken to more valedictory realms by the concluding Andante lento sequence, the solo violin rhapsodizing both sorrowfully and stoically over muted brass and wind chords whose resonances seemed to stretch forwards into the unknown – I thought the performers “held” this elegiac quality with utmost concentration and skill right into and through those heartfelt silences.

Having thus been emotionally wrung-out by the Britten, we were able to replenish our oxygen supplies at the interval in time to square up to Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’s epic Second Symphony. In conductor Thomas Søndergård’s hands the music balanced this long-breathed character with plenty of rhythmic verve and a good deal of sensitive lyricism. The first movement, notable for a kind of “hide-and-seek” game which the composer plays with his own rhythmic and lyrical fragments, was here beautifully realized, the different figurations adroitly juxtaposed, contrasted and then mellifluously brought together, making for a pastoral scenario depicting both sparkling detail and more rugged, far-flung spaces. I thought the players’ detailings of these scenarios were everywhere exemplary.

The sterner, altogether more tragic ambiences of the second movement were allowed plenty of space to unfold – the dramatic pauses that abounded in this music helped build the tension and uncertainty regarding the narrative’s direction. Sibelius was apparently inspired by the legendary Don Juan when writing this music, though the dark, foreboding moods created by some of the episodes evoked a rugged landscape as readily as a swashbuckling hero’s premonition of death. The ambiences swung from brooding uncertainty and looming tragedy to calmer, more settled ambiences and then back again. All of this was splendidly realized by Søndergård and his players, the dynamic contrasts, antiphonal figures and and rhythmic variants delivered with flair and sensitivity – in fact a single brief brass “fluff” was the only mishap I noticed throughout the music’s volatile and complex journeyings.

I enjoyed the “bristling and spilling over” aspect of the scherzo, Søndergård encouraging his strings to throw themselves and their instruments at the music and take risks by way of conveying near-uncontrollable excitement – and what a contrast was provided by the trio, with gorgeous, lyrical sounds coming from the winds and reinforced by the strings, before the sudden reprise of the scherzo’s opening shattered the repose, with the brass  this time taking the lead. Søndergård excitably pushed along the “transition music” leading towards the finale, then drove both string and brass ostinati figures stirringly towards the first of the movement’s two “big tunes”, here delivered muscularly and full-throatedly on the strings. The counter-melody, at first “teased out” of string murmurings on the winds was here rolled along splendidly, giving way firstly to some hymn-like utterances and then a fugato-ish figure begun by the ‘cellos, and building up with growing energy and force through the entire orchestra until bursting forth on the strings (wonderful horn accompaniments!) as a reprise of the first big tune! I loved it – such a splendid and pivotal moment!

But, of course, it wasn’t the work’s conclusion – and Søndergård became like a man possessed, driving his forces with even more of a will, firstly through the counter-melody’s almost Bolero-like repetitions to its revelatory minor/major key change, and then into the coda and the return of the first “big tune”, the entire orchestra here playing its collective heart out, and giving its all with its conductor and for the composer – if not the most grandly epic performance I’ve heard, it was certainly one of the most exciting ones! What really endured in my memory was the playing’s focus, its unerring direction, and the “sheen” on the sound of every instrumental section throughout the whole concert – performances that one imagines would have had the composers’ shades nodding with contented approval.

 

 

Halida Dinova – quintessentially romantic pianism

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Classical Expressions Upper Hutt presents:
Halida Dinova (piano)
A recital of words by Rachmaninov, Chopin, Beethoven, Scriabin and Liszt

RACHMANINOV – Morceaux de Fantasie Op.3 Nos.1,2,4
CHOPIN – Fantasie in F Minor Op.49
BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata No.14 in C-sharp Minor Op.27 No.2 “Moonlight”
SCRIABIN – Etude Op.8 No.12 / Nocturne for the Left Hand Op.9 No.2
LISZT – Piano Sonata in B Minor

Halida Dinova (piano)

Genesis Energy Theatre, Upper Hutt

Monday 27th April, 2014

I was thrilled to learn that Russian-born Halida Dinova had returned to New Zealand to give more concerts, as I’d been bowled over by her playing on the occasion of her last visit two years ago. On that occasion she played in Lower Hutt at the Little Theatre on a piano that had been pronounced “past its expiry date” and made it sound like one of the world’s most mellifluous instruments, giving us, among other things, particularly memorable readings of Balakirev’s “Islamey” and the complete Chopin Preludes. (For further detailing regarding this previous recital, go to my review at  https://middle-c.org/2012/05/halida-dinova-russian-soul-from-tatarstan/)

One of the things that struck me so forcibly about her playing the previous time round was Dinova’s amazing conveyance of physical engagement with the music, and specifically with the composer’s sound-world in almost every instance – I think I may have felt that one of the Debussy pieces worked less well for me, though there was another from the same set of pieces which the pianist seemed completely to “own”. I remember how Dinova’s playing at the time gave me an insight into British pianist Peter Donohoe’s remark made when I interviewed him some years ago, regarding Debussy’s music, to the effect that he adored “every note”.

Here at Upper Hutt’s Classical Expressions, though having the use of a far superior instrument, Dinova’s playing didn’t grip my imagination quite so insistently as before – though there were still whole sequences of the magnificence that I remembered. The repertoire may have had a part to play, here, as I sensed a tad less involvement on the pianist’s part with parts of the Beethoven Sonata compared with the remainder of the programme; and Dinova herself told me afterwards that she was still “exploring” the Liszt Sonata, having begun working on it less than a year ago.

I did think that, for all its excellences as a concert-hall, the Upper Hutt venue “distanced” us from Dinova’s playing as the Lower Hutt Little Theatre didn’t do at all – my chief irritation was the canned piano music which was heard in the auditorium up to a few minutes before Dinova herself came on to play. Surely one goes to a “live” music event to hear only “live music”? – and ought there not to be at least SOME aural “space” before a concert by way of preparation for the music about to be played? I would want, at best, no pre-recorded music at all before a concert, and at the very least a fifteen-minute period before the beginning where one hears nothing else clamouring for attention. If this is an overseas trend being brought here, then in my opinion, it  ought to be strangled and quietly disposed of. For me it was simply “musak” and it had the effect of reducing the impact of the concert’s actual music and the pianist’s playing of it.

Fortunately, such was the “pull” of Dinova’s presence and focus upon the music that she was able to quickly dispel all such annoyances and take us, in this case, into the nineteenth-century world of the young Rachmaninov, with three of his Op.3 Morceau de Fantasie.  Beginning with the Elegie, her very first notes explored a depth of sound, a resonance which, underpinned by a ‘tolling bell” effect in the left hand, conjured up a kind of feeling for the effect that those particular sonorities evidently had on the impressionable composer. The more agitated central Lisztian sequences excitingly took over the entire keyboard, before Dinova’s exquisite sense of atmosphere and innate timing gradually allowed the silences to “surge softly backwards”, placing the piece’s pair of final notes with bitter-sweet resignation.

Then came THE Prelude, richly-wrought, varied in utterance (how can one play those three portentous notes? – let me count the ways….) and redolent with expectation, left hand anticipating the right at every possible opportunity (something else I noticed during her previous recital at Lower Hutt), a journey which seemed to unfold rather than fall into preconceived places – amazing, tumultuous central agitations, and a properly “awed” concluding series of chords, each a world of unpredictable sensibility. After this, what better way to philosophise than to introduce the figure of Polichinelle to the discourse? – based on the well-known Commedia dell’arte character (Pulcinella, in Italian), this knock-about comedian restored our stricken sensibilities with his antics, though taking time out to savour a few moments of romantic ardour in the piece’s middle section. Dinova’s enjoyment of the character was obvious, as much through her quicksilver fingerwork as from her wry smile at the throwaway ending.

Chopin’s F Minor Fantasie brought out the “no holds barred” aspects of Dinova’s pianism to thrilling effect – a deep, rich sonority at the beginning, posing a question to which came the lyrical reply, the drama and ceremony of interchange, the spin of the storyteller, the “strut” of the processional. Out of this grew those wonderful improvisatory flourishes building up the tensions towards action, everything played with wonderful fluidity, the triplets dancing along excitedly, turning in places to little “marches”, and in other places to more declamatory utterances. The piece’s “still heart” is the prayerful central interlude which Dinova more breathed than played, voiced so inwardly and beautifully. Afterwards, the reprise of the first section was fiercely tackled, Dinova’s playing plunging the music headlong into renewed conflict, with  thrills and spills adding to the excitement.  And just as compelling was the tenderness of the poetic reminiscence at the piece’s end, that final upward gossamer run and concluding chords the stuff of storytelling.

After this I thought the first two movement of the well-known Moonlight Sonata less remarkable – all darkly and solemnly played (here, with the right hand often anticipating the left!), but still, with the pianist seeming to be an observer rather than a participant in the drama. Dinova played the second movement in a completely unexaggerated way, bringing out some beautiful dynamic variation, and in places subtly emphasizing the left hand. But the finale was something else – incredible “attack”, a strong left hand driving the trajectories and the right hand creating great roulades of sound. Here nature took a hand in the proceedings, with torrential rain drumming an accompaniment on the concert hall roof throughout the last few tumultuous measures!

Two contrasting pieces by Scriabin followed the interval, the first a favourite of the great Vladimir Horowitz, the Etude Op.8 No.12, entitled Patetico (Pathetique).  Dinova took to the music in the manner born, allowing the piece’s build-in momentum to grow and the agitations to rise like a wind from the steppes, though allowing a lovely lyricism in the Rachmaninov-like gentler middle sequences, But with the return of the opening idea, Dinova opened her the floodgates, the left hand leaping dangerously across the keys, the repeated notes growing increasingly frenzied, and the deep bells more and more clangorous, until the whole suddenly whirled upwards to a heaven-storming climax – what a great virtuoso display! After this, the gentle lyricism of the Left-Hand Nocturne from a set of two pieces Op.9 was balm to the senses, the evening’s most poetic and melting playing,the pianist’s left hand brilliantly encompassing both virtuoso and lyrical elements in a breath-taking display.

I was fortunate enough to hear Dinova play some of the items on the evening’s program twice, among them Liszt’s B Minor Piano Sonata, the second time at a house concert on an upright piano, a couple of days afterwards! Inevitably, my reactions to her playing of the pieces have criss-crossed to some extent between the occasions – but the cumulative effect is the thing, and especially with a work as all-encompassing as the Liszt. Before proceeding, I must say that I was sorry that the concert’s programme-note-writer, one whose work I normally greatly admire, made a passing reference via the work to Liszt’s “deplorable” morals, thereby reinforcing the surely-by-now-discredited legend that the composer bedded almost every female who threw herself at him – anyone who’s read Alan Walker’s up-to-date and incredibly detailed biography of Liszt will be appalled at the extent (outlined by Walker) of the “hatchet-job” done on the composer’s reputation and integrity in the past by people such as Ernest Newman, with no real evidence to back up claims of unbridled licentious behaviour other than prejudicial heresay – as Walker remarks, a case of fame and success giving rise to intense jealousy, and resulting mischief on the part of others.

Let the music speak for the man on this occasion – and one remembers Wagner (no great supporter of other people’s creative efforts) equating the man with his music, writing to Liszt after hearing the sonata for the first time with the words, “the sonata is beautiful beyond compare, great, sweet, deep and noble, sublime as you are yourself…..” Dinova’s playing of the work, while not completely “under the fingers” (on each occasion she had to break off in the midst of a piece of tumultuous passagework – in a different place each time, incidentally – and re-align her trajectories) caught the piece’s multi-faceted character – a brilliantly-conceived structure, a vivid and theatrical recreation of the “Faust” legend, a deeply-moving expression of conflicting personal emotions, a pianistic tour-de-force. Structurally, she gave the piece all the time it needed to speak, and all the urgency its figurations required to create the work’s overall shape. And her characterization of the characters and episodes pertaining to the “Faust” legend were vividly-drawn and theatrically-contrasted.

Dinova’s playing seemed to me to demonstrate a kind of innate sense of what each section of the music required as the music advanced – a powerful bringing-together of spontaneity and inevitability. She seemed incapable of playing a routine or a mechanical phrase, as every note had its own kind of quality, its own particular strength of purpose and relationship with the others. One didn’t know what she was going to do next with the music, how she was going to “voice” a particular passage, or distribute the emphasis between the hands. Her conjuring up of the music’s central nocturnal scene (Faust in the garden with Marguerite?) was as entrancing as the succeeding fugue was tense and electric – despite a dropped note or two the cumulative excitement was palpable, and the climax of the sequence sent glinting figurations skyrocketing upwards between fusillades of repeated notes. In the house concert the fugue momentarily came adrift, whereas here it was during the amazingly orchestral writing leading to the big heroic theme’s final statement when things were momentarily derailed. Neither hiatus was a fatal error – the music was picked up and driven onwards as excitingly as before.

Perhaps when Halida Dinova comes back to this country once again she will bring the work with her as a fully-fledged falcon, soaring aloft while taking in the whole of the terrain at a single glance (as somebody said once of another great Russian pianist, Sviatoslav Richter). She did enough here to reaffirm her status as a romantic pianist of outstanding quality. I managed to get a CD she’d made for the Doremi label of Scriabin’s music, which I can’t wait to listen to and which I’ll look forward also to reviewing. Meanwhile I shall cherish the memory of playing whose immediacy and excitement continue to give pleasure long after the recital’s last notes have been sounded.