Author: Peter Mechen

The Royal NZ Ballet’s Swan Lake – classic and freshly-minted

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Royal New Zealand Ballet presents:

the Vodafone Season of –

TCHAIKOVSKY: Swan Lake – Ballet in Four Acts

Cast: Gillian Murphy as Odette / Karel Cruz as Siegfried

Paul Matthews as Baron von Rothbart / Rory Fairweather-Neylan as The Jester

Laura Jones as The Queen Mother / Sir Jon Trimmer as Wolfgang

Royal New Zealand Ballet Company

New Zealand School of Dance

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra / Conductor: Nigel Gaynor

Choreography: Russell Kerr

Design: Kristian Frederickson

Lighting: John Buswell

St James Theatre, Wellington

Thursday 18th July 2013

This was opening night of the season, and I had not seen a performance of Swan Lake in the theatre for many years – so I was, one might say, on this occasion, energized, expectant and attuned. It was a special occasion in a much wider sense as well – sixty years ago Danish emigre Poul Gnatt, who had been a principal with the Royal Danish Ballet, set up the present New Zealand Company, and actually staged Act Two of Swan Lake in that first season of 1953. So this 2013 Swan Lake was fittingly the Company’s sixtieth anniversary production.

The Company first presented the full ballet in 1985, but in 1996 choreographer Russell Kerr, together with designer Kristian Frederickson, staged a new production, revived for this present season’s celebrations. Happily this “aging, arthritic choreographer” (as Kerr described himself) was able to join the performers on stage for a curtain call at the end, and receive due acclaim from the audience.

The evening’s program as well contained a message dedicating the Wellington performances of this production to the memory of Richard Campion (1923-2013), the founder of the New Zealand Players in the 1950s, and an original trustee of the Ballet Company. All in all, the event carried an impressive assemblage of history and achievement over the Company’s years of existence.

I have to register some surprise and disappointment that more New Zealand-born dancers weren’t used, in both principal and supporting roles, on such an occasion as this. As was also the case with the Opera Company’s recent “Butterfly”, I was left wondering to what extent our own home-based artistic institutions make as a priority the development of our own performers, and, following on from this, our own particular home-grown performance character and standards.

To my mind there’s something lost as well as gained by all too readily “going global” and using off-shore performers as a matter of course (and my concern extends to the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s recruitment trends as well) – can we afford long-term to so markedly take the “New Zealand” out of our performance makeup? I don’t mean to sound isolationist, or anything like that – it’s all a matter of degree – but I think it’s important to have some regular access to what our own performers can offer over a range of artistic endeavors, in tandem with rather than supplanted by artists from overseas.

But back to the performance in hand, and to the immediate joy of having the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in the pit at the St.James. Right at the beginning, I was struck by the wind playing – beginning with the oboe, and continuing with the clarinet, those plaintive instrumental sounds sparked off a welling-up of emotion, one which overwhelms me no matter how often I hear this music – all of it with the curtain still down in the theatre, the raw feeling of the scenario laid bare in pure sound for us to experience for ourselves.

Of course, the “orchestra pit” scale of the band isn’t to be compared with what one hears in the concert-hall or on record, so that the instrumental agitations have rather more of a sharply-focused than an epic quality. But the playing got from the orchestra by Nigel Gaynor made for some sublime sounds.

When the curtain opened on the beginning of Act One, I was transfixed by a feeling of then-and-now, akin to what I felt when watching the Company’s stunning revival of Russell Kerr’s and Raymond Boyce’s production of “Petrushka” a couple of years ago – here, part of me immediately became a small boy once more, taken to a place of youthful enchantment, an exquisitely-detailed and beautifully-lit forest glade.

Siegfried was danced this evening by Karel Cruz, originally from Cuba, and currently a principal dancer with Pacific Northwest Ballet in the USA. Very tall and possessing both incredible grace and astounding cat-like reflexes, he was able to command the stage in the time-honoured manner, though without diminishing the presence or impact of any of the other characters. I thought this “giving to others” quality seemed to come from the complete easefulness and naturalness which he exuded as the Prince.

This allowed the character roles, such as Rory Fairweather-Neylan’s enthusiastic and amusingly gauche Jester, and Sir Jon Trimmer’s affably urbane Wolfgang (the Prince’s tutor) plenty of “leavening-room”, heightening the contrast with the story’s darker, more serious aspect. Yet another dimension, that of the Royal Court, was splendidly highlighted by Laura Jones’s dignified Queen Mother, her character using both the entrance music and regalia in a totally convincing manner. This splendor was thrillingly caught in the mighty Polonaise, whose strains seemed to set the whole theatre dancing – Siegfried and the men matched the music’s energies as characterfully as did the Pas de Trois dancers a sequence or two earlier, expressing the scoring’s exquisite delicacies.

Act Two seemed to be upon us before we knew what was happening, introducing us to the lakeside, the swans and their enchanter, Baron Von Rothbart. But what a wonderfully-contrived entrance of the swans! – perfectly mirroring the composer’s cunningly-written canonical figurations. From their first encounter I thought that Gillian Murphy’s Odette made the perfect foil for Karel Cruz’s Siegfried. Supported by orchestral and solo instrumental playing to die for, both principals seemed to dance right into one another’s characters, registering the tensions and impasses of their situation as much as their yieldings and intertwinings. The cygnets then charmed us with their twinkling synchronizations – I enjoyed the gradual burgeoning of their movements throughout, delicacy eventually becoming overlaid with vigour and “attitude”. And Odette’s final solo of the Act, slow, sensual and tremulous, wrung out oceans of feeling with each movement – a superb performance.

Von Rothbart at the lakeside I confess I couldn’t quite “get”. I thought Paul Matthews danced the role with plenty of energy and focus, though I felt that neither his costume nor the staging throughout this sequence greatly supported what he was trying to convey – especially in a post-Harry Potter world a somewhat drab owl costume isn’t in itself going to help generate any great malevolence or a properly-telling sense of a sinister “creature of the night”. I would have thought something more lurid – either more striking makeup, or a kind of infernal colouring worn underneath the owl’s feathers – would have helped the dancer suggest a force more baleful and dangerous than the “bad-tempered scoutmaster in drag” kind of cameo evoked by the unfortunate bird regalia.

One had, in fact, only to compare, by way of contrast, the same dancer’s properly menacing portrayal of the Baron in Act Three, dressed as a nobleman, and accompanying his daughter to Prince Siegfried’s ball, to get a sense of what could have been suggested at the lakeside as well. Add to this Gillian Murphy’s particularly bright and sharp-edged depiction of the daughter, Odile – made to look like Odette, to deceive Siegfried – and there was evil personified most satisfyingly, by both father and daughter.

Earlier, the third act had burst into life richly and resplendently, the colours of both decor and costumes a burnished gold, befitting the family’s obvious importance. Odile’s and Von Rothbart’s entrance galvanized the party just before the Spanish Dance, throwing the Prince into confusion at the girl’s likeness to Odette. Of the national dances the one I thought came off best was the Neapolitean Dance – we heard some terrific trumpet playing from the pit and enjoyed some spirited dancing from Adrianna Harper and Mehdi Angot.

This, however, was decorative stuff compared with Siegfried’s and Odile’s pas de deux – Gillian Murphy’s freedom and fluidity of movement was incredible, her Odile bringing into bold relief the previous Act’s “imprisoned” state of being suffered by Odette. And all the while Karel Cruz’s Siegfried was captivated, so directly and intensely focused upon his strange new partner. What I thought was the tiniest of forward stumbles right at the end of her concluding solo, from the super-confident Odile, didn’t detract from a fine, tautly-drawn performance. The “real” Odette, on the wrong side of the window and trying to warn Siegfried, was here danced skillfully and plaintively by an unnamed dancer.

Like many symphonic finales, Swan Lake’s final Act goes for broad brush-strokes, with well-worn but effective storybook themes, this one suggesting a kind of “redemption through love” scenario, which in slightly varied forms has served the ballet’s purpose well over the years. Some judiciously-applied mist concealed Odette along with her grief at apparently being betrayed by Siegfried, as the act opened. Again, the beauty of the wind-playing which opened the slow,affecting dance of grief added to the pathos of it all.

As the darkness gathered the lovers decided upon their fate, bringing the vengeful Von Rothbart into the open – back in his owl form he again seemed far less menacing, but the music, via some truly splendid climaxes led the way through the lovers’ sacrificing of their own lives in the waters of the lake and the evil sorcerer’s death – we were left with a striking diagonal array of ex-swans in a “farewell flotilla”, saluting the liberated spirits of the drowned lovers, as the curtain slowly fell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mellifluous flute and piano at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace Lunchtime Concerts presents:

THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY FLUTE WORLD

Music by Georges Hüe, Sigfrid Klarg-Elert, Ian Clarke, Robert Aitken, Alfredo Casella

Hannah Sassman (flute) / Robyn Jaquiery (piano)

St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace

Wednesday, 10th July, 2013

A thoroughly invigorating music-listening experience! – most appropriately for a middle-of-the-day concert, this had an engaging “borne-on-air” quality, as much to do with the playing of two consummate artists as with the instruments and repertoire.

Hannah Sassman plays flute with both the NZSO and Orchestra Wellington as a freelance musician, and teaches the instrument to a number of advanced students. She’s currently a music librarian with RNZ Concert, and recently completed her Master of Music degree at the University of Colorado in Boulder, USA.

Her partner today at the piano, Robyn Jacquiery, is a well-known and highly-regarded accompanist, working with solo singers, instrumentalists and choirs.

Their combination here brought an assemblage of generally little-known repertoire to life for us, beginning with a Fantasie by French composer Georges Hüe, a contemporary of Gounod and Franck, and a winner of the Prix de Rome.

Known during his lifetime mainly for his operas and choral works, Hüe wrote this Fantasie in response to a commission by the Paris Conservatoire’s professor of flute, Adolphe Hennebains, to whom the piece is also dedicated.  Originally for flute and piano (which latter part was subsequently orchestrated, according to my researches) it’s a delicate and charming work, with that unique kind of bitter-sweet amalgam of “French Catholic” sentiment and late-romantic astringency that, to my ears haunts French fin-de-siecle music.

As engaging a communicator when talking about the music as when playing it, Hannah Sassman gave us just enough “background” to each piece in a way that nicely complemented the program notes. And with her playing of such things as Karg-Elert’s Chaconne for solo flute, she demonstrated how, in the hands of a gifted performer, music can indeed take up where words leave off – the Chaconne ranged from evocations of meditative calm to episodes of impulsive excitability.

The most recently-written works on the program were Ian Clarke’s Hypnosis and Sunday Morning, pieces which stemmed from the composer’s work in rock groups in the 1990s, the latter piece suggesting to Clarke a connection with Lionel Ritchie’s “Easy like Sunday Morning”, and giving the work a title. Hannah Sassman demonstrated for us some of the special “flute techniques” used by the pieces – things like slides and “timbral trills”.

More esoteric, perhaps, was Canadian composer Robert Aitken’s Icicle, written in 1977, a piece using microtonal techniques and nuances. Parallel to the rigorous intellectual aspects of all of this was the piece’s wonderful atmosphere, its figurations and the instrument’s timbre readily suggesting birdsong.

Music by Italian composer Alfredo Casella concluded the programme – an attractively written Sicilienne et Burlesque dating from 1914, lots of fun to listen to, and obviously, judging from the spirited nature of today’s performance, to play.

I enjoyed the music’s ritual-like opening, with its suggestions of both chant and folk-song, the piano’s graceful, rhythmic progressions creating different ambiences for the flute’s peregrinations.  The time-honoured progression from slow to fast worked brilliantly here, with the energetic Burlesque – in places intense and dark-browed, but in others lightened by an attractive insouciance. Both players handled the many changes of time and tempo with considerable aplomb – we listeners found ourselves caught up in the music’s trajectories, and enjoyed the excitement both musicians generated at the finish. Splendid!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Capital Choir – joys and travails through Solstice and Winter

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Capital Choir presents:
Sing the Measure of Solstice and Winter

BEETHOVEN – Mass in C
A Selection of New Zealand Songs
Felicia Edgecombe (director) / Belinda Behle (piano)

Soloists (Beethoven):
Belinda Behle (soprano) / Ruth Armishaw (alto)
Chris Berentson (tenor) / Rhys Cocker (bass)

Janet Gibbs (organ)

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill Street,

Sunday 7th July 2013

There’s such a lot of pleasure to be had in singing, and especially if one is musical but doesn’t perhaps command any experience or great expertise on an instrument other than the voice.

And for people like myself who can hear music and enjoy it but would seriously baulk at the thought of making individually-exposed sounds themeslves, there’s safety in numbers in the shape and form of membership of a choir.

Recalling my own short-lived but enjoyable experience as a choir member, I’m sure I would have liked singing with this group in repertoire such as we heard throughout the first half of this concert – a collection of songs, some of them written by the choir’s own director, Felicia Edgecombe, and in one instance with the words written by another choir member, author and poet, Rachel McAlpine.

These were, for the most part, simply-conceived songs, featuring a good deal of strong, well-focused unison sounds, with some differentiation between men’s and women’s voices and enough angularities in the lines (plus the occasional harmony) to pose sufficient of a challenge.

I fancy I would also have appreciated the focused, but always flexible direction of the group’s director, Felicia Edgecombe, being made to feel secure and well-rounded in matters of breathing and phrasing by following her visual example.

And as an intensely private pianist myself, I particularly relished the songs’ piano accompaniments, each sounding so beautifully modulated and flexibly phrased (oh, to be able to play like that!) by Belinda Behle – whose name I couldn’t at first see anywhere in the program relating to the first half of the concert, but whose identity was revealed when I saw she was the soprano soloist in the Beethoven Mass as well! – she is, I believe, the choir’s regular accompanist.

I imagine it would have been a source of pride to have sung those items written especially for the choir by Felicia Edgecombe – the “Nation Prayer”, a kind of New Zealand ballad, a lovely setting of a gorgeous Gerard Manly Hopkins poem, complete with a final, affirming “Praise Him!”, and a setting of a poem “Once in a While” by Brian Turner, which featured the choir’s bass voices steadfastly holding their line throughout the first part.

Most interesting of these was, I thought, the setting of Rachel McAlpine’s lines throughout a work entitled “World”, words which the poet herself read before the performance. With bells pealing at the start, the women launched into the setting splendidly, then supported the men’s verse following – perhaps the voices didn’t quite have the “oomph” necessary to bring off the climax of the last verse, though the subsequent upward modulation seemed to give the choir more “heart”, and strengthen everybody’s resolve.

Part of the fascination of singing in a choir was, I remember, marvelling at the confidence and skill with which any soloists present would deliver their lines – so exposed, and yet so focused and purposeful. In this respect the Beethoven Mass would have been a real treat – four very different voices, beginning Beethoven’s “Kyrie” confidently, and shaping their lines throughout the “Gloria” with plenty of musicality.

In general, this was a performance of the Beethoven work by the choir that started strongly, but seemed to lose its choral focus as the work progressed. Throughout the Kyrie and Gloria, my notes contain comments such as “Women very strong – hold their lines well” and “Enthusiastic – a little strained, but nicely shaped” – and at one point where the accompanying organ unaccountably stopped, towards the end of the Gloria, the choir continued as if its life depended the outcome, holding its tone firm and its ensemble truly (I understand the organist was taken ill, hence the momentary lapse).

However, from the Credo on, the performance seemed in places under-parted – in particular, the men were often tentative-sounding, though lack of weight of numbers certainly contributed to the weak, non-upholstered body of choral sound in places.

By dint of having the most resplendent-sounding solo voices the alto Ruth Armishaw and bass Rhys Cocker were able to fill out their tones with ample variation of intensity and colour. Though plainer and more subdued by comparison the sweet-toned soprano of Belinda Behle and Chris Berentson’s true-voiced tenor managed to maintain their respective lines and hold their own in ensemble passages, achieving an attractive blend in places. And towards the end of the Gloria,in that typically Beethovenian build-up of tensions, the singers seemed inspired, led by the soprano, keeping their lines steadfastly to the end.

I would have thundered as loudly as I could at the beginning of the Credo, had I been singing – I felt tempted to join in anyway, as there didn’t seem enough power in those voices at this point. It was left to our soloists to “focus” the music, which they did at “Et incarnatus est” – again both bass and alto shone during their respective solos, at  “Et resurrexit” and “Et in Spiritum Sanctum”  How amazingly like the Missa Solemnis  this music is in places – obviously a kind of preliminary run on the composer’s part!

I don’t think I would have liked to sing the Sanctus, much – all that chromatic writing! But I did wonder as to whether there had been sufficient rehearsal though these sequences, because they sounded to me as though they were being sight-read, here. Again, the soloists came to the rescue in the “Benedictus”, Ruth Armishaw in particular a tower of strength, despite the briefest of stumbling over an ending to “In Nomine Domine” – and, the final lines of the ensemble were simply heavenly!

The choir rallied itself for the final Agnus Dei, achieving the “cry of anguish” at the beginning,and establishing a coherent sense of ebb and flow through to the end. For me, the music had a wonderful kind of dark “Gothic” feeling about it in places, which the choir was able to sustain, and which the soloists were able to work their contrasting “Dona nobis pacem” passages against to good effect.

So – a mixed bag, with the warm, heartfelt choral singing throughout the first half and the work of the soloists during the Beethoven Mass the most notable features. Even the undernourished choral singing during parts of the Mass didn’t for me negate the work’s glory, so, all-in-all, I was grateful to have heard it done, this “little brother” of the great Missa Solemnis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beethoven from Houstoun Concert 4 – recycle plus renewal….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand presents:

Michael Houstoun (piano) – Beethoven ReCycle 2013

Sonata No.20 in G Op.49 No.2 / Sonata No.3 in C Op.2 No.3

Sonata No.24 in F-sharp Op.78 / Sonata No.16 in G Op.31 No.1

Sonata No.23 in F Minor Op.57 “Appassionata”

Town Hall, Wellington,

Sunday 30th June 2013

Those of us who are regular concertgoers can’t really help ourselves – as we get to know the work of certain musicians whom we’ve heard at various times over the years, we form opinions of them as artists and of their work. And, contrary to the popular axiom, if this work is of a consistently high standard, it’s a case of familiarity giving rise to admiration and respect, and invariably to a desire to hear still more from these same people.

Consider, for instance, pianist Michael Houstoun, who’s had thus far a most distinguished career in this country, and who’s presently engaged upon his second complete public performance cycle of the Beethoven piano sonatas. Through these and many other performances and recordings, Houstoun has impressed a positive, strong and clearly-etched artistic profile in the minds of the musical public. He would, I’m certain, be widely regarded as this country’s foremost classical pianist at the present time.

Houstoun has consistently and single-mindedly worked towards the highest standards as a musician – to the point where, some years ago, his intensities contributed to a kind of physical melt-down in the form of focal dystonia, a dysfunctional phenomenon which has, over the last quarter-century, afflicted a number of instrumentalists. It says much for the pianist himself that he was able to work towards a recovery, with the help of a number of skilled specialist practitioners.

So, up to that particular crisis-point in his career, and with stellar achievements under his belt such as two complete Beethoven sonata performance cycles – one in public, the other commercially recorded – his reputation as a pianist had been well-established.  Now he’s come down to us having gone through what he himself has indicated was a redefining set of experiences associated with his debilitating disorder and gradual return to playing health.

I’ve heard him perform on a number of occasions of late – and for me, each experience has persuaded me to rethink my opinions regarding a pianist whose playing I thought I knew well. This latest concert, the fourth in the new “Beethoven ReCycled” series, pushed out the parameters of the pianist’s art for me in a way that was as exhilarating as it was unexpected. It wasn’t a Wordsworth-like scenario of pleasure and understanding recollected in tranquility – this was a here-and-now experience, one which took its time to grow and flourish during the recital’s course, but with its flowers growing cannons towards the end, to overwhelming effect.

For whatever reason we were located in the Town Hall for this particular recital – and the venue I think overawed the musical content of the opening sonata on the programme, the second of the two “student’ sonatas, Op.49, the one in G Major. Houstoun also chose to play the music in a very simple and unprepossessing way, as if his abilities had been marshalled and concentrated for the purposes of simply realizing the score. I could have imagined more character given to each of the movements – the first chatty, even garrulous in places, volatile and explosive in others, and the second homespun, quirky and angular, by turns – but the pianist might have reckoned that such treatment would have overlaid the music’s simplicity. And Houstoun’s playing graciously made me feel that my own feeble attempts at playing the second movement weren’t perhaps altogether worthless!

The C Major, Op. 2 No. 3, was a different story, the irruptions of energy positively orchestral in their impact, though the melodies were kept on a fairly tight rein, as was the right-hand work – more power than “tumbling warmth”, but none the less impressive for that. The slow movement’s opening, with its stepwise left-hand theme and filigree right-hand figuration here beautifully stilled the busy beat of time, making the great mid-movement outbursts all the more telling, Houstoun bringing out almost Goethe-like vistas of huge spaces and great contrasts.

Tumbling warmth there was a-plenty in the scherzo, with the canonic-like voices having a marvellous time, falling head-over-heels together and landing in satisfyingly tangled heaps at the bottom of each descent – by contrast, the trio was all swirling, vertiginous impulse, making the return of the “Jack and Jill” opening a relief, even if the ending did suggest that the Jack indeed “fell down and broke his crown”. And the finale, deceptively graceful in places (and, I thought, quite Schumannesque in the lyrical second subject), released great surges of energy, with a fierce young virtuoso’s joy in the final presentations.

Before the interval we were treated to one of the composer’s loveliest and most distinctive creations, the two-movement Sonata No.24 in F-sharp Op.78, subtitled “For Thérèse”, the dedicatee, Thérèse von Brunswick, being one of those on the “short list” of candidates for the composer’s enigmatic “Immortal Beloved”. The music here had a lovely ceremonial opening, with Houstoun giving the subsequent unfoldings plenty of time and flexibility to allow a sense of something naturally expressed.

Beethoven gives us certain surprises in the form of sudden remote modulations, and a playful whimsicality as the exposition repeats (lovely to hear!), not to mention the abrupt, enigmatic ending. As for the second movement, its sophisticated humour was given just the right amount of insouciance by the pianist, though we did all enjoy those dynamic “lurches” from major to minor and back again, in those toccata-like passages. If the music is indeed something of a “character-study”, Thérèse must have been both a bit of a thinker, and a lot of fun!

Enjoyable though the first half was, I thought Houstoun’s playing really began to spread its wings after the interval, beginning with the exalted playfulness of the first of the Op.31 Sonatas, No.16 in G Major. Gone was much of the severity and brusque treatment of detail found in the pianist’s recording of the first movement of this work, made for Trust Records in the mid-1990s – here was playing still of great virtuosity but tempered by touches of humour. In between the exciting, energetic runs, the syncopations were given time to register their drollery, so that the listener had a sense both of action and reflection, and their give-and-take in the music.

The second movement’s aria-like aspect here properly had a singer’s amplitude, the textures richly and gorgeously upholstered with both trills and related figurations – I liked the “duetting” middle section, a lovely foil for the more ritualized solo lines, while the “coming together” of the simple and decorative at the end was given by the pianist, by turns, a rich ambience and a wistful, open-ended feeling of space. And the fleet-of-finger finale similarly played with contrasts, Houstoun readily and easefully bringing out the music’s expansive, very Schubertian figurations and textures, but adroitly returning us to a Beethoven-like presto at the end, a drawing-together of the discourse’s threads and patches.

And when this was done, Houstoun proceeded to launch into a performance of the “Appassionata” Sonata, No.23 in F Minor, Op.57 – one of the most famous of Beethoven’s works – with an almost frightening sense of purpose and determination. I remember the pianist in an interview describing how his youthful encounter with a gramophone recording of this music all but overwhelmed his sensibilities  – and it seemed that, on this occasion he was able to recapture the essence of that initial impression and convey its full force to those who were present.

No other work by Beethoven expresses a sense of the elemental more insistently, not even the “Grosse Fugue”. The music’s incipient darkness never fully relinquishes its grip, even if there’s some relaxation of tension throughout the “theme-and-variations” form of the middle movement. Houstoun’s powerful playing had all the “grip” this music needed, bringing into play a living and volatile feeling for the piece’s dramatic ebb and flow, great command over a tonal spectrum that gave the piano’s treble plenty of ring and glint and the bass what seemed like oceans of depth, and the enormous reserves of power and stamina needed to do it all justice.

Two things about this performance will abide in my memory long after other details are forgotten – firstly, the sense of the pianist playing that opening phrase, and in doing so somehow enveloping us completely and utterly into the music’s world, as if we were suddenly taken to a vantage-point and could see it all from where we stood at a single glance – by no means removed from the storms but instead placed in the very eye of them! Thus every irruption and every lull swirled around and about our heads, having both an immediacy and an inevitability which stimulated body and mind, emotion and intellect.

When Houstoun observed the finale’s repeat of the development and recapitulation (some pianists don’t, which, for me, always leaves a kind of undressed, bleeding wound in the music at that point!) I had to restrain myself from rising from my seat and thumping the railing in front of me for sheer excitement! I’ve never been able to understand how any pianist with genuinely red blood coursing through his or her arteries could omit this passage, or any analysis could put forward the premise that the repetition is problematical for the movement’s overall structure (significantly, Houstoun also played this particular repeat on his 1995 recording of the work for Trust Records).

The other thing I’m not likely to forget was how Houstoun played the Presto coda of the Sonata’s final movement and what happened straight afterwards. He delivered those opening coda sequences not “as fast as possible” but at a tempo which enabled him to keep the following swirling figurations at a similar pulse, thus avoiding any sense of “slowing down” again, and maintaining the music’s momentum right to the end – such involving, scalp-pricking stuff! And then – the pianist rose from his seat and, amid tumultuous acclaim, seemed almost to scowl at the applause, before turning and practically stalking off the platform, occasionally giving his head a mighty shake, like a lion tossing his mane! He seemed fired up with what he’d just done, and we simply adored him for it! Incredible!

By the time he returned, to renewed applause and a standing ovation, he was ready to smile again! But after a performance such as he gave us of the “Appassionata” he could have made whatever gesture he whatever he wanted, and we would have roared our approval. For myself, I was glad I was there – to see a musician seemingly transported by the emotion of the music he or she is performing so mightily, is certainly something to remember.

 

 

 

 

 

J.S.Bach at Paekakariki

Posted on by Peter Mechen

JS BACH – The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book One

John Chen (piano)

Memorial Hall, Paekakariki

Sunday June 23rd 2013

(based on notes prepared for a review on RNZ Concert’s”Upbeat” with Eva Radich)

I’m certain that Bach would have been highly intrigued and perhaps tickled pink to think of his music being played in a place with the name of Paekakariki!

It is alway a great pleasure to go to Paekakariki to hear music being played. Firstly, the surroundings, especially on a good day, are spectacular – and of course, if the weather isn’t good, there can be spectacle of a different kind, especially as the Memorial Hall, where the concerts are held, is situated almost right on the shoreline, with only the road and the beach separating the music from the ocean, and vice versa. It seems to me that the only thing that might give concern in such a situation is the prospect of a decent-sized tsunami, which would put an end to pretty well everything if it ever happened.

At Paekakariki there’s a concert series called the “Mulled Wine” concerts, organized by local musician and entrepeneur Mary Gow – each audience member receives a cup of mulled wine as part of a kind of “afternoon tea” after each concert. The whole process has a very attractive kind of community feeling about it, which reminds me of my own experiences in Britain going to some of the smaller venues along the Suffolk coast associated with the Aldeburgh Festival. The hall is a pretty ordinary community hall, but its location is picturesque, breathtakingly so on a fine day, with the ocean and the islands on one side and the coastal mountain ranges on the other.

It must be a unique kind of experience to have those images with you when you sit down to listen to some live music.

Yes, it all adds to the sense of occasion, which isn’t, of course, essential to the appreciation of great music, but which helps make one’s particular experience of it in this case distinctive. An extra attraction on this occasion was the presence of art-work on the walls of the hall, paintings and drawings by two of Paekakariki’s most distinguished residents, Sir Jon and Lady Jacqui Trimmer (present at the concert). Besides their extensive activities and experience in dance, both have worked in the visual arts for a number of years, painting, pottery and sculpture. Most of the paintings were by Jon Trimmer, some by his wife, Jacqui – not surprisingly there seemed in his work a preoccupation with the human form, and not merely engaged in dance.

What a wonderful use of artistic and creative resource within a community – now that is surely something which would have added even more distinction to the occasion!

Yes, and it all took place quite unostentatiously – no bugles, no drums, as the saying goes – everything was allowed, in a way, to speak for itself. So, there we were, in Paekakariki’s lovely Memorial Hall, the piano situated halfway-down the body of the hall instead of at one end, and the audience sitting in a half-circle around the instrument. One would imagine that in an empty hall the sound would be impossibly reverberant – but with all of us there the sound had a pleasant bloom without being too lively. After being introduced, the pianist spoke to us for a few moments, wanting to share with us just a few of his thoughts about the music he was going to play – which was, of course, Book One of the Well-Tempered Clavier by Johann Sebastian Bach.

I liked very much his spoken characterization of the music’s course over the twenty-four preludes and fugues.  He told us that for him the music has three different aspects interwoven together – physical, emotional and spiritual – and its course represents a person’s lifetime, with the opening few pieces having a fresh, birth-like quality, and the second quarter of pieces filled with the energy and exuberance of youth. The later preludes represent maturity, with the last few spare and visionary, the energy of youth all gone, and a spiritual aspect taking over the sounds.

I know there’s a school of thought that says the artist shouldn’t talk at a concert, but just play the music, and let the composer do the talking, not the performer. What did you think?

In this case, I welcomed hearing what he had to say – it was impressive and even touching to hear such a young man (he’s only twenty-seven) giving voice to such thoughts. He also told a lovely anecdote against himself – he had been approached admiringly by somebody after a concert who marvelled at his playing of the entire First Book of the WTC from memory; but was mindful, in the face of such praise, how he had heard about Fanny Mendelssohn, Felix’s sister, who had memorized BOTH books at the age of 9; and even more astoundingly, about the German pianist Wilhelm Kempff, who also knew both books from memory, but could also play the complete work, every Prelude and Fugue pair in any key, also from memory. He said that he wanted us to have some kind of perspective about what he was going to do that afternoon – that “it wasn’t such an amazing achievement after all!”. I’m sure Chen would have undoubtedly been aware of the great man’s own response to some admirer of his keyboard prowess, which was, “There’s nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.”

Aware of the significance of the journey we were about to be taken upon, we sat, listened attentively, and let the music cast its spell upon us. From the beginning Chen’s playing impressed with its sheer beauty, the well-known opening Prelude sounding freshly-minted in the player’s hands, in fact as if reborn for our benefit. As he played, he gave each of the pieces the space it seemed to need, following the dictum of “where to hold, where to let go”, as fugue followed prelude, and new prelude followed fugue. Whatever the contrasts between the individual pieces, Chen made them work shoulder-to-shoulder, treating the transitions, both gentle and rather more startling, as though they were entirely natural progressions.

Perhaps the key to his success with both the individual pieces and the work as a whole was his “overview of the music’s character” which he spoke about before the recital – he seemed to be able to successfully bring those three aspects together in different proportions at every stage of the journey – firstly and foremost, there was the physical excitement of the music’s momentum, dynamic variations, tonal colorings and melodic contouring. Then there was the intensity of feeling arcing between the music and ourselves as listeners, feeding and stimulating our imaginations. And finally there was the spiritual aspect of the music, the sounds transcending time, place and station and imbuing our sensibilities with abstractions of thought and wonderment, suggesting eternities in and between notes, and through orderings and sequences leading to exalted states of being.

In a work this size, made up of so many extremely concentrated smaller pieces, the demands on both he player and the audience must feel throughout as though they never let up. Did it seem at any time like a long haul at Paekakariki?

I guess the infinite variety of Bach’s invention simply sustains the interest while the work is progressing. Certainly that sense of journeying, as John Chen put it, through a life-span, allows you to “pace” yourself and give yourself the energy required to keep the attention focused – and it must be the same for the performer, as well. The wonder is that over such a long span, the pieces can still stimulate a lot of difference and variety, rather than sound as thought they’re melting into one another. And of course a full-length concert can perhaps be thought of as a life in microcosm – energetic at the start, properly warmed up for the middle sections, where one is at one’s best,and then gradually waning as the energy starts to dissipate.

How did he manage with all of those life-stages? – quite a feat of imagination for someone in their twenties!

Yes, and such a gift to the rest of us, for what the music and the playing stirred within ourselves! What Chen did was to bring his own creativity to that of the composer’s and make it all come alive – so what we heard throughout was a marvelous amalgam of youth and experience, of energy and discipline, of inspiration and skill – I think it’s something of a picture of a person a young man aspires towards, in that respect. So the music, and its making, is confident, energetic, well thought-out, beautifully shaped and most of all, very alive!

Surely no one person performing this work can realize all of its aspects to the point where there is nothing left to say – do you think there were things left unsaid in the music?

Actually there was only one piece in which his playing didn’t really take me anywhere – but this is a bit of a problem piece, as I’ve heard quite a number of pianists who similarly go on a kind of “auto-pilot” as if they’re not quite sure what to do with the music except perhaps let it play itself, as opposed to a handful who have that “gift” – and I think it’s probably no coincidence that they’re all older and more worldly-wise. The piece I’m talking about is the very last Prelude of the set, No.24 in B Minor – I would call it an elusive piece, something almost not of this world, a glimpse into another realm – very much what John Chen was talking about in terms of the music reflecting someone’s lifespan, except that I didn’t feel that his playing of the music had gone there,in that particular instance – compared with everything else he played this seemed to lack a rich character. On the other hand, the fugue which followed the prelude was splendidly performed! This is quite all right – musicians, and artists in general shouldn’t be able to conquer worlds too easily – the achievement is in the journey as much as in the arrival!

Do you think he managed to express this spiritual dimension of the music in other places in the work?

Oh, certainly – I would expect anyway his playing to mirror his own life-stage, anyway, and being thus very true to his own self. So he seemed less in touch with the deeper, more reflective side of things, but able to express that more vigorous,here-and-now kind of transcendental spiritual joy with which Bach writes in some of the pieces. I would imagine John Chen will be playing these pieces at various times throughout the remainder of his life; and I would hope I get the chance to hear him perform them again, at some time.

Brio’s fantastic lunchtime explorations

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Brio Vocal Ensemble Presents:
FANTASIEREISEN  (Fantastic Journeys)

WAGNER – Excerpts from “Das Rheingold”

3 Wesendonck-Lieder

R.STRAUSS – 2 Movements from Five Piano Pieces Op.3

2 Songs: – “Leises Lied” and “Zueignung”

MOZART – Excerpts from “Die Zauberflöte”

Brio: Janey MacKenzie (soprano), Catherine Leining (soprano), Jody Orgias (mezzo-soprano), Mark Bobb (tenor), Justin Pearce (bass)

Special guest appearance – Roger Wilson (bass)

Jonathan Berkahn (piano)

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

Wednesday 19th June, 2013

Fantasiereisen is not, of course, the word for a German bakery, but instead, the title chosen for the most recent of Vocal Ensemble Brio’s enterprising programmes. Presented at St.Andrew’s as part of the Lunchtime Concert Series, it featured music by Wagner, R. Strauss and Mozart, a kind of kaleidoscopic collection of operatic, vocal and instrumental works given this wonderful title (in English, this time) Fantastic Journeys. One or two rough moments put aside, I thought the presentation a great success.

It all began with part of the opening scene from Wagner’s Das Rheingold, here sung (and acted) in concert-hall style, with piano accompaniment (the music truncated here and there, but still allowing us to savour the episode’s principal themes or leitmotifs, as the composer styled them). So, Jonathan Berkahn’s skilled playing unfolded for us the themes associated with nature and with the River Rhine, before the trio of Rhinemaidens burst in on the scene, sung by Catherine Leining, Janey MacKenzie and Jody Orgias. The three sported in the river’s sparkling waters before being suddenly accosted by a dwarf, Alberich, sung here by Justin Pearce.

Of the watery trio of Maidens (I keep thinking about comedienne Anna Russell’s brilliant description of the three as “a sort of aquatic Andrews Sisters”), I thought Janey MacKenzie’s voice stood out when singing solo, her tones, easeful, resplendent and siren-like. When together as a threesome, each voice worked beautifully, their collective energies and impulses well-drilled, and their tones steady and mellifluous. Opposite them, Justin Pearce’s lust-crazed Alberich, though a bit papery-toned in places, was dramatically convincing – he made good use of both voice and “face” when conveying his bitter disappointment at failing to make a capture of any one of the three sisters.

In fact I was enjoying the performance so much, that the excerpt’s abrupt conclusion at that point, just before the appearance of the sun’s rays which light up the Rhinemaidens’ gold, came as an aural shock! Still, I kept my composure, and resolutely avoided causing a scene by jumping to my feet and blustering “But…but…but you can’t stop NOW!….). I did so want to hear the Rhinemaidens’ cries of “Rheingold! Rheingold!”, and especially as everybody seemed to be really getting into their parts and enjoying themselves at this juncture. I suppose, realistically, it had to stop somewhere – but one did feel, particularly at that point, as though one had been from the music “untimely ripp’d!”.

I had to be content with something completely different to follow, two movements from Richard Strauss’s Five Pieces for Piano, here played winningly by Jonathan Berkahn. First was a lovely, song-like Andante, and afterwards an “Allegro-vivace” hunting-song. The latter was music that seemed to want to take its listeners on plenty of wide-ranging adventures, including, by the sounds of things, a couple of tumbles! – all fine, and nobody hurt, save for a few bruises!

Two songs by Richard Strauss followed, both sung by Janey MacKenzie. The first, Lieses Lied, (Gentle Song) was delicately essayed by both voice and piano, the singer readily negotiating the song’s high tessitura, and with only a moment of strain at the top of an ascent, near the end – the rest was a delight. As for the well-known Zueignung (Dedication), the great rolling phrases were beautifully arched, and expansively negotiated, as was the final verse’s climactic high note, thrillingly attacked and attained.

I couldn’t help but feel for Jody Orgias, singing three of Wagner’s Wesendonck-Lieder in the wake of the resonances of Margaret Medlyn’s stunning performance of the whole set just recently – her feeling for the music was evident, but I felt the songs needed more, here, lacking the ambient Tristan-esque charge that both orchestra and a more focused vocal outpouring was able to generate at that NZSM concert. I thought the singer was elsewhere able to display her abilities far more readily in the operatic excerpts, where her unfailing sense of the stage and of how words and situations interact was evident. The Magic Flute excerpts which concluded the concert found her, I thought, much more at ease.

Throughout the concert Jonathan Berkahn’s piano playing had given us considerable pleasure thus far – unfortunately his somewhat untidy playing of an unfinished Mozart sonata-movement made a less-than-positive impression. The intention was partly to demonstrate an instance of the composer’s occasional forays into uncharacteristically stormier territories – but even when stormy and stressful Mozart’s music requires a kind of elegance and sense of proportion (it’s part of what makes his music so terribly difficult to get right, and especially on a modern piano, where the music’s figurations and textures are often made to sound ungainly).

Happily the Magic Flute exerpts seemed to right these very few wrongs, and provide a suitably fantastic, as well as heart-warming finish to the presentation. For the first exerpt, which was the duet “Bei Mannern”, featuring Papageno, the bird-catcher, and Pamina, the captive princess, bass Roger Wilson stepped into the breach to replace an ailing performer at short notice, partnering Janey MacKenzie, the give-and-take between the two remarkable throughout, even if I felt the piece’s basic tempo was too quick to allow the singers time to properly “round off” their phrase-ends – Pamina’s lovely arching line right at the end, for example, here sounding a shade fettered, and wanting just a little more freedom.

Finally came the “padlocked mouth” quintet, with Justin Pearce reclaiming the character of Papageno and enjoying his “Hm-hm-hm-hm”s, and tenor Mark Bobb giving us a small-voiced but elegant Tamino (the prince in pursuit of Pamina – perhaps it was his eagerness which contributed to the men’s music being rushed ever so slightly) –  still, the voices blended nicely in the ensembles, nowhere more beautifully than in the “Three Boys” sequences (surely some of the most sublime music written by anybody!) sung by both the trio of women and the Tamino/Papageno duo, before the final “Lebt wohl” exchanges at the end.

All in all, a pleasure to report that these journeyings through fantastic lands were well worth the making.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Valedictions from the Tokyo Quartet

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand presents:

The Toyko Quartet – Farewell Tour

MOZART – String Quartet “Hoffmeister” K.499: BARTOK – String Quartet No.6

BRAHMS – String Quartet No.1 Op.51 No.1

Tokyo String Quartet

Town Hall, Wellington

Saturday 15th June 2013

Going to hear practically any concert is a kind of privilege for the listener – especially when one thinks about the “coming together” of the different things that contribute to a live performance. The “here-and-now” of it all has its own kind of spontaneously-charged electricity. Somehow, it doesn’t feel quite the same when listening to the same music played on a recording, and not even when the performers are the same as one has heard ‘”live”.

Having said this, there are concerts and concerts – and certain occasions do have a greater sense of “charge” than others, generated either in anticipation, or during the course of the performance, by the listener. One such occasion, on both counts, was the recent appearance in Wellington by the esteemed Tokyo Quartet, nearing the end of this, their “farewell” tour.

The group is disbanding after a 43-year-long career, one which has seen a number of changes of personnel, leaving one surviving original member to stay the course, violist Kazuhide Isomura. A second member of the group, violinist Kikuei Ikeda, joined the quartet just four years after their inauguration, which made him the next best thing an honorary foundation member – the other two quartet members, leader Martin Beaver and ‘cellist Clive Greensmith, joined the group in 2002 and 1999, respectively.

Despite the changes in personnel over the years, the group has maintained the highest standards of quartet-playing, winning critical acclaim for both their concertizing and their recordings, the latest (and, unfortunately, the last) of which features works by Dvorak and Smetana. Among previous recordings are integral sets of the Beethoven, Brahms and Bartok Quartets, along with single discs featuring a wide range of repertoire.

Here, tonight, it was Mozart, Bartok and Brahms whose music carried the Quartet’s valedictory sounds to us – I confess I would have preferred hearing some of their Beethoven to the Brahms – but that feeling wasn’t shared by people I spoke with after the concert. And it was interesting to experience the latter’s music in particular played by a group whose sounds were among the most refined and focused of any quartet’s I’d previously heard – interesting, because even with such advocacy I still found the Brahms quartet hard going, in particular the first two movements.

But ah! – the Mozart! The group’s playing reminded me a little of an account give by Artur Rubinstein of his hearing Sviatoslav Richter “live” for the first time: “It wasn’t anything special or out of the ordinary (recalled Rubinstein)……then at some point I noticed my eyes growing moist, and tears began rolling down my cheeks”. That wasn’t exactly what happened to me, but the effect of the Quartet’s playing took a similar course – a little way into the first movement I realized that I had actually lost myself in the music.  I felt I had been drawn in by the composer’s “world in a grain of sand” way with what sounded like the simplest of means having the utmost effect.

This was the “Hoffmeister’ Quartet K.499, given its name in honour of the work’s publisher, Franz Anton Hoffmeister, a friend of the composer’s and a fellow Freemason. Hoffmeister wrote in an advertisement regarding the work that it was “composed with an ingenuity…..that one not infrequently finds wanting in other compositions”. That “ingenuity” expressed itself in graceful ease throughout the first movement, the players here able to turn the music’s phrases in such a way that sweetness and energy worked hand-in-glove, with nothing forced or contrived. Everything had such focus, such purposeful strength, including the quietest, most delicate moments, so that the music’s argument seemed like a living, pulsating discourse.

I liked the delicate whisper of the development’s beginning and the surges of energy that followed, the players again with unfailing elegance delineating the ebb and flow of things – the movement’s “false” ending was delightfully brought off, giving its proper conclusion a kind of augmented satisfaction. The minuet provided a richly-uphostered tonal contrast, throwing into amusing relief the canonical chicken-like “cheepings” of the trio: while the slow movement demonstrated the group’s skill at sustaining long-breathed cantabile lines, with the solo violin “taking off” like a skylark towards the end.

As for the finale, the players again demonstrated their ability to delicately touch in detail at high speed, the music anticipating at some points the young Beethoven’s similarly questioning figures in the finale of his first Op.18 quartet. I loved the cellist’s delicious playing of his elevator-like runs, his elfin energies very much of a piece with what the other players were doing. In fact, so evanescent was the players’ articulation in places that the effect was almost impressionistic, though the lines and trajectories never lost their focus – Mozart was always Mozart!

It was with Bartok’s music that the original Tokyo Quartet made its mark internationally, and this performance of the Sixth Quartet reaffirmed the group’s position as among the foremost interpreters of these works. Even if I hadn’t know about this previous association, I could have assumed, from its Mozart-playing, that the Quartet would have similar affinities with Bartok’s charged sensibilities and the resulting range of expression in this particular work.

What an extraordinary work this last quartet is! – Bartok’s idea of presenting a theme at the very outset and a variant of the same at the beginning of each subsequent movement gives the work an amazing multi-faceted quality. The theme and its variations knit the structure together, but conversely provide a springboard for explorations of staggering variety across the movements. In a sense it was an entirely appropriate work for the quartet to play by way of a “leave-taking” – and the players’ extraordinary poise and controlled energy brought out the composer’s sharply-focused distillation of both his sorrow and resignation in the face of the difficulties that beset his final years.

After the interval, it was Brahms, the group giving us the first of the composer’s three String Quartets. I was hoping that, in light of the lucid, sweet-toned textures conjured up in many places by the Tokyo Quartet throughout the first half, that this would be the group that would “convert” me to these works. Alas, I continued to struggle with what I thought were the composer’s over-wrought textures, especially throughout the first two movements. There were times I felt “hectored” by the unremitting onslaught of the figurations, and frustrated at the composer’s own muddying of his own thematic lines. The fault is obviously mine – as with the Austrian Emperor who was famously supposed to have told Mozart that there were “too many notes” in his new opera “Il Seraglio”. People I spoke with at the concert’s end were enchanted with the music and the quartet’s playing of it.

Amidst the opaqueness of the Brahmsian textures I did discern certain lovelinesses – the opening of the slow movement, for example, conjured up in my mind fairy-tale scenes from the German forests, that is, before the first violin’s line, to my ears, began to over-fill the textures. I did enjoy the third movement’s romantic sense of disquiet, the music’s movement, underpinned by repeated notes from the ‘cello, engendering a feeling of unease, perhaps even of flight – the players brought out all the music’s drawing-room grace and elegance, and the Trio’s waltz had a folkish air of simplicity, with attractive, ear-catching pizzicati at certain points, making the return to the opening’s unease all the more telling.

The finale started with a searing unison, the Quartet then digging splendidly into the music’s forward-driving mood, occasionally bringing the opening unison’s figuration into the argument, but leavening the seriousness of it all with some lyrical song-bird harmonizing. The “turn for home” brought out even more trenchant energies and a forceful, unequivocal conclusion. Nevertheless, I was so pleased that the players felt sufficiently moved by the audience’s reception to offer a movement from a Haydn quartet as an encore – a Minuet from one of the “Apponyi” quartets (I think Op.74 No.1) – being, as the quartet leader Martin Beaver put it, “a return to where it all began” in string-quartet terms.

It seemed to me that here was quintessential quartet-playing – the music by turns called for great rhythmic character and energetic attack, followed by relaxed yet sharply-pointed detailing as the moods changed between main dance and trio, with an infinite variety of tones appropriate for each flicker of mood. As far as we in the audience were concerned, no better “goodbye” could have been spoken – a true privilege for the listener, indeed.

 

 

 

Antipodean stargazing and planetwatching from the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents

MUSIC FOR MATARIKI

EVE DE CASTRO-ROBINSON – The Glittering Hosts of Heaven

GUSTAV HOLST – The Planets

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Pietari Inkinen (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday, 14th June, 2013

“Matariki” – the “eyes of god”, are said to be the stars belonging to a cluster (known elsewhere as the “Pleiades”) which were formed by the fierce God of the Winds, Tāwhirimātea, who tore his eyes out and threw them into the heavens in anger at the separation of his parents the Earth and Sky.

Somewhat less overtly savage is the account in Greek mythology of the seven daughters of Atlas, the Titan, who were pursued by the hunter, Orion, and saved (presumably from a fate worse than death) by Zeus who placed them in the sky. And, yes, there are seven stars, and in both of the mythologies quoted here, each star is given its own name and character.

Only after the concert did I go looking for these definitions and explanations – and I was both delighted and amazed by how these archetypal depictions and metaphorical interpretations of the particular stars in question seemed to particularly resonate with my memories of Eve de Castro-Robinson’s wonderful “Glittering Hosts” music, which was the first music we heard during the evening.

This work was a new commission by the orchestra, and I thought one that most successfully threw wide open its composer’s particular gifts of evocation, along with an ear for near-inexhaustible detail and an unerring sense of structure. De Castro-Robinson’s arresting story-like rhetorical gestures and vivid instrumental characterizations kept us transfixed, like some sultan of antiquity in thrall to his Scheherazade, as she related tales of wonder and excitement.

I liked how the piece began, not with far-away, nebulous murmurings divorcing us by dint of sheer distance from the firmament and its activities, but with in-the-face insistent, spiky, here-and-now happenings, the deep strings and percussion opening up the vistas only after we ourselves had become caught up with some of the scintillations. So, the vastness of the territory was indeed evoked, but so were its relative immediacies, with three of the seven instrumental soloists, flute, clarinet and trombone, drawing us into their opening interplay as part of the overhead galactic goings-on .

The piece seemed very “layered”, with frequent ostinati delineating patterns of orbital and rotating movement, bursts of shimmering detail evoking both individual and “clustered” stars, and more long-breathed lines (usually from the strings) suggesting the mystery of great distances. Details came and went more by osmosis than chance, leaving resonances in their wake, a cantabile figure from the solo ‘cello taken up by the strings, and a trombone solo sounding part-clarion-call part-lament. And across the larger picture, orchestral percussion gradually added their weight and colour to a kind of processional sequence which generated great warmth and colour, almost Straussian in its impact.

After this, the sounds deepened and darkened once again as though some kind of “event’ had occurred, leaving far-reaching resonances, and the soloists all gingered-up with impulse-gestures, angular figures bouncing between one another and different orchestral groups! The solo ‘cello, high in its register, brought forth a deep, double-bass and timpani response, as the flute “sounded breath” against a solo viola’s romantic inclinations, and the percussion trickled in strands of ambient warmth, taking little notice of the larger concerns of gleaming brass and scintillating winds.

The vastness of physical territory was matched by the piece’s far-flung moods – out of the sounds’ passive objectivity at the beginning gradually evolved what sounded to me like a baleful oppressiveness, challenging the solo violin’s lyrical warmth and generating energies throughout the orchestral textures which rose up in a kind of madness, the laughter chromatic in accent and mocking in tone, a kind of display of awesome power dwarfing any human aspiration. The solo trombone’s flatulent-textured comments gave ready rise to similarly pithy responses from among the other soloists, almost an “enter-the-clowns” scenario, one which both entertained and disturbed with its implications for we earthly mortals.

All of these interactions seemed to me in the overall grip of some wonderful kind of axial trajectory whose volatility of detail and surety of progress seemed to mirror, in a star-crossed way, human affairs on earth. I could fill paragraphs with minute-to-minute impressions of the journey taken by the music, but such an undertaking would be out of the scope (orbit?) of this review. Enough to say that the whole was rounded off by the seven soloists’ adroit dovetailing of their lines and fusing of their ever-waning tones and textures with those of the orchestral winds, into a deep silence at the end.

As homage to the splendour of the night skies, I found De Castro-Robinson’s work compelling and satisfying. While it may never challenge its companion concert piece this evening in the popularity stakes, it’s a work which, I think, will reward repeated hearings, and – what would be best of all to happen – a recording. Certainly it’s a handsome tribute by the composer to her “beloved parents”, one of whom (her father) was able to be present at the performance (I understand, somewhat hair-raisingly, after having his scheduled flight to Wellington cancelled earlier in the day!) – it was obviously “in the stars” that he was able to eventually make it!

Having had our terrestrial selves already somewhat borne aloft by contact with the “glittering hosts” of Matariki, we were more than ready for some closer-to-home interplanetary explorations in the form of Gustav Holst’s well-known seven-movement suite “The Planets”. Despite its great popularity, it’s an elusive piece, terribly difficult to get “right” all the way through, due to its wide-ranging moods and compositional styles over the seven parts, not to mention the sheer virtuoso instrumental demands upon the players. Surveys by commentators of recordings which have been made over the years haven’t turned up a single performance by one conductor and orchestra which is reckoned to have “nailed” the piece through and through – though,of course, the same could be said of many, many works, both on record and in concert.

So, how did Holst’s brilliant series of astrological character-studies come across here, throughout the evening? Generally, I felt that Pietari Inkinen and his players were happiest when the music took them to realms furthest from the heat of the sun (with the exception of Venus, more of which in a moment). In fact the final three movements were, I thought, superbly delivered, not least of all the composer’s own favorite movement, Saturn (the Bringer of Old Age), which was cold and unremitting at the outset, with the music’s growing disquiet built to a terrifying central climax (such scalp-pricking trumpets!), before slowly and inexorably turning the music’s despair to resignation and acceptance. Uranus (the Magician, and a favorite of mine) I thought a riot of colour, energy and scarily-directed impulse (the music should sound, as here, just as dangerous (baleful brass and shrieking winds!) as it does funny (galumphing timpani and wheezy contra-bassoon!).

And the enigmatic Neptune (the Mystic) demonstrated such endless reserves of sustained tonal control from all concerned (including the wordless off-stage choir), that we sat for what seemed almost like an age in eerie silence at the end, lost in our own wonderment at the spell cast by those beautifully-distant voices. Earlier in the suite , the cool, chaste, and determinedly virginal charms of Venus (the Bringer of Peace) were of course as much Holst’s doing as anybody’s – and this performance from Inkinen and his players was no exception, with peerlessly pure horn-playing from Samuel Jacobs and matching tones from the winds, as well as Vesa-Matti Leppanen’s violin and the rest of the strings (apart from a not-quite-true attack on their soft final chord, obviously difficult to achieve).

Interestingly, I found myself talking with an old friend at the concert’s interval (before the Holst work was played) – this was an extremely experienced concert-goer friend who enthusiastically praised Pietari Inkinen’s recent work with the orchestra (much of which he said I was heartily agreeing with!) – he then said something like “…and such elegant music-making! – never a vulgar or ill-conceived sound from the orchestra…”. Again I was able to agree, though as I was about to opinion that with some music, this conductor’s encouragement of elegant, and unfailingly mellifluous orchestral textures didn’t for me take some things in the music far enough, the “resuming-bell” sounded, and that was the end of the discussion.

So as I listened to each of the remaining pieces, I found myself recalling my friend’s words – Mars (the Bringer of War) was first up, with everything expertly played by the band, and including some wonderful individual moments – a big-boned, sonorous euphonium solo, for instance! – but the playing for me, though brilliant, didn’t really disturb or truly alarm. One of Holst’s own books on astrology had the following description of the planet: “Mars is cruel,has blood-red eyes and is prone to anger”. Here, it all seemed not quite brutal- or harsh-sounding enough – while at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, I thought Jupiter (the Bringer of Jollity) lacked real humour and bucolic energy. In a sense, each characterization needed more sheer abandonment, towards ugliness in “Mars” and vulgarity in “Jupiter” – and this is probably the rub!

Finally, Mercury (the Winger Messenger) featured skilled, precisely-timed playing, but was it all mercurial enough? – was this the speed of thought? My own thought processes, perhaps – but then I’m a flat-footed, somewhat pedestrian thinker, lacking in true wit and real spark. There are wings on the feet of visual depictions of Mercury that l’ve encountered, but this performance’s sounds didn’t accord with those images in my head. Alas, Mercury here remained earth-bound!

So, in the fine old tradition of performances of this work, some of the planets on Friday evening shone more brightly than others. Those that really glowed did so most effulgently – and conductor, orchestra and choir can be especially and justly proud of that unforgettable moment at the end of Neptune’s performance when it seemed in the hall that the whole of the Universe had stopped for a few seconds just to listen to the music’s silences…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mozart ‘s take on Handel – warmth more than refiner’s fire

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Choirs Aotearoa New Zealand Trust presents:

HANDEL’S MESSIAH as arranged by MOZART

Morag Atchison (soprano) / Bianca Andrew (mezzo-soprano)

Henry Choo (tenor) / James Clayton (bass)

Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir

Orchestra Wellington

Tecwyn Evans (conductor)

Town Hall, Wellington

Sunday 2nd June 2013

Being a bit of a “Messiah-buff” I was, I must admit, excited at the prospect of attending this concert, as I had never heard the famed Mozart “arrangement” of the music. I was naturally intrigued as to how it all would sound, and if and to what extent Mozart might have done the equivalent for his time of what Hamilton Harty in the 1920s and Eugene Goosens in the 1950s did with their arrangements of some of Handel’s music.

I prepared myself for all possibilities, anything ranging from either a full-blown makeover, bewildering in its complexity, to a far more subtle, “spot-the-difference” scenario. I deliberately held back from reading-up beforehand on what Mozart had or hadn’t done, thinking the impact of it all would be all the greater for me through having an element of surprise.

Hearing it all for the first time left me with a curious mixture of feelings. The experience actually brought to mind my first-ever encounter with Ravel’s orchestration of Musorgsky’s “Pictures from an exhibition”, particularly as I had by sheer chance become familiar with Musorgsky’s piano solo original long before I heard Ravel’s revamp for full orchestra. As then, I found myself torn anew between admiration, enjoyment, surprise and dismay at what had been done. Here, I certainly admired and enjoyed many a felicitous Mozartean detail, but was equally taken aback at a number of changes I thought quite wrong-headed. Why, I thought, would a composer change something in another composer’s music that worked so well just as it was?

So, I decided to read about the background to what Mozart had done, and it all began to make sense – as well as, incidentally, having a number of parallels with what Ravel did regarding Musorgsky’s work, and why. Both operations had been planned as “rescue jobs”, and each was the brainchild of a third person. In Musorgsky’s and Ravel’s case, the instigator was the conductor Serge Koussevitsky, while Mozart’s arrangement of Handel’s work was commissioned by one Gottfried van Swieten, a diplomat, patron of the arts, and at the time the Imperial Librarian and a Minister in the Emperor Joseph II’s government.

Van Swieten, though an enthusiast for Baroque music, thought that Handel’s work needed bringing”up-to-date” for contemporary tastes. Although a mere 48 years separated the premiere of Messiah and Mozart’s arrangement of the work, the musical world had changed almost beyond recognition during that time. The baroque style had gone, and people were thoroughly accustomed to the more textured and varied tonal colours of the classical orchestras. Messiah was actually the second of four commissions Mozart received from Van Swieten relating to Handel’s music, the others being the masque Acis and Galatea, and the cantatas Ode for St.Cecilia’s Day and Alexander’s Feast. Mozart’s brief was to “modernize” the music, which idea makes an interesting variant upon present-day thinking regarding authentic performance practice.

That Mozart’s work was regarded as successful can be gauged by contemporary reports of the premiere of what was known as Der Messias staged by van Swieten in Vienna in March 1789, with Mozart himself conducting the performance. One review stated that Mozart had “exercised the greatest delicacy by touching nothing that transcends the style of his time….the choral sections are left as Handel wrote them and are only amplified cautiously now and again by wind instruments”. Which wasn’t strictly true, as Mozart recast the openings of several of the Part One choruses for the soloists’ voices – and the “cautiously” comment regarding the wind instruments was something of an understatement. There’s a significant amount of wind writing added to the score – clarinets, flutes, and horns, with extra writing for oboes and bassoons, away from simple accompaniment.

The writing for brass was also augmented, with the high trumpet parts shared (more “taken over!”, really) by the french horn, particularly noticeable during the bass aria “The trumpet shall sound”. Trombones (a wonderful sound!) were also very much in evidence, supporting and enriching (often darkening) the lower lines. In all, the effect for me was a Mozartean “fleshing-out” of Handelian muscle and bones, the wind parts through the instruments’ textures and timbres bringing colour and warmth to much of the music. At first these things seemed alien to the relative austerity I was accustomed to hearing, with the effect somewhat fussy – but after a while my ear began to expect a “warming-up” of those textures, and a more varied colour-spectrum along many of the lines. In this way, Mozart was able to shed new and varied light on the old most successfully.

I was far less convinced by the recasting of the chorus openings for solo voices – mercifully, throughout Parts Two and Three, Mozart himself seemed less inclined to press the idea, and left most of the remaining choruses intact, though allowing the soloists to join in. But the magic frisson of some of those quieter original choral beginnings, such as “And he shall purify” and “For unto us” were lost here, and the effect to my ears coarsened by crude interchanges between the soloists and the choir. Unlike with the wind and brass additions, nowhere did I think Mozart improved on Handel’s treatment of his voices, either solo or choral. Incidentally, Mozart used a German translation of the words – but here, we had the original English (odd to think of the work being sung in any other language – maybe that sentiment’s a tad ethnocentric….).

So, there we all were, on the first winter Sunday of the year, gathered in the Town Hall in Wellington (soon to be closed for earthquake-protection strengthening). Though the weather obligingly underlined the change of season, many hardy souls braved wind and rain to make up a creditable attendance. On hand to reward such resolve was the Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir, attended by members of Orchestra Wellington and four solo singers, the ensemble directed by Tecwyn Evans.

Listening to and thinking about the work and its performance on this occasion was an interesting experience in itself, as I would find myself switching modes, first analyst and then critic, registering by turns what was happening and how it was being performed. Straight away, one registered the grander, darker sound of trombones in the Overture, and the warmer colourings of the winds in various other places. A mixed blessing, as I’ve said – I thought Mozart unduly reduced the stark impact of the aria “He was despised” by adding winds, but his writing of creepily chromatic descents for the instruments in “The people who walked” gave the darkness an almost infernal, Don Giovanni-like aspect. Conversely, the wind parts during the “Pastoral Symphony”, augmented by spit-spot choral singing, caused the music to positively scintillate in places, entirely appropriately.

Though their impact upon the performance was reduced throughout Part One by Mozart’s changes, the Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir sang superbly, throughout, coping well with some of the idiosyncrasies of the arrangement (odd accented phrasings in “All we like sheep” at the words “..have-GONE-a-STRAA-aa-AA-aa-AA…” – like someone trying to sing while being vigorously shaken!), but elsewhere displaying agility, strength, ease and wonderful variation of tone. For example, in “Surely He hath borne our griefs” I could feel the physical impact of the men’s singing of the words “bruised for our iniquities” , while a glorious outpouring of tones from the women’s voices at one point during the “Amen” chorus actually gave me goosebumps! I would have liked to have heard those same voices singing the openings of the choruses that Mozart gave to the soloists as well; but there was more than enough left for them to make a rich and indelible mark upon the proceedings.

I thought the soloists were for the most part splendid, each presenting their lines with energy and fullness of tone, and bringing to their utterances a distinctive and readily-communicating character. Though a shade tremulous at the top, soprano Morag Atchison’s voice otherwise enchanted, giving a lovely, committed performance with an engaging sense of great feeling, in the first Part capturing the excitement of the heavenly host’s appearance at “And suddenly…”. Also, she didn’t sentimentalize “I know that my Redeemer liveth”, but gave strength and emphasis to the words and put across the figurations with flair and energy.

Truest-toned of the quartet was mezzo Bianca Andrew, singing as always with the greatest of elegance, even when finding (as mezzos do) the tessitura of both “O Thou that tellest” and “He was despised” simply too low in places for comfort of projection. I’ve mentioned that Mozart’s wind additions seemed to me to blunt the latter aria’s tragic impact somewhat, and, in fact, give the music a human warmth that aligns it more with the world of the Countess from “Figaro”.

I liked tenor Henry Choo’s whole-hearted “Comfort Ye”, his voice also tremulous under pressure on top, but still heroic and bright. He thoroughly enjoyed his “bonus” aria “Rejoice greatly”, and made as good a fist as most singers I’ve heard of the so-o-o awkward “Thou shalt break them”, with its terrifyingly exposed leaps. Alongside him on the platform, fellow-Australian James Clayton put across an arresting, old-style prophet-like  “Thus saith the Lord”, though I found his softer singing seemed to lose some of the voice’s presence, resembling in places a rather-too-disembodied effect.  He brought plenty of energy and bluster to “Why do the nations”, though one of his grandest numbers, “The trumpet shall sound”, was here well-and-truly scuppered by Mozart, who reduced the aria to its opening, removing both the middle section and its da capo repeat.

Very great credit is due to conductor Tecwyn Evans, who entered into and realized the spirit of Mozart’s “rejuvenation” with some insightful and in places exciting direction, getting a committed response from choir and orchestra alike. On a couple of occasions I thought his tempi too quick for words and music to properly cohere (both “O Thou that tellest”, and the soloists-led “His yoke is easy” had what felt for me like a kind of driven, “take no prisoners” aspect). But in general his direction brought out both the older composer’s music-for-the-ages essence and the younger one’s delighted creative response to that same greatness.

 

 

Heavyweight opera composer-contenders put through their paces

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music presents:  WAGNER : VERDI (1813-2013)

Giuseppe VERDI (1813-1901)

Overture – La forza del destino / Il corsaro – “Non so le tetre immagini” (Daniela-Rosa Cepeda)

Rigoletto – “Questa o quella” (Oliver Sewell) / Don Carlo – “O don fatale” (Elizabeth Harris)

Aida – Triumphal March from Act Two / Un ballo in maschera “Alla vita che t’arride” (Christian Thurston)

Il corsaro – Duet (Gulnara and Seid) from Act Three (Christina Orgias and Freddie Jones)

Il trovatore – “Tacea la notte” (Isabella Moore)

Richard WAGNER (1813-1883)

Overture – Die Meistersinger / 5 Wesendonck-Lieder (Margaret Medlyn)

Das Rheingold – Donner’s Thunderclap / Entry of the Gods into Valhalla

Lohengrin – Prelude to Act Three (encore)

New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

Kenneth Young (conductor)

Town Hall, Wellington

Tuesday 28th May, 2013

I remember recently reading a “rant” (oops! – pardon my alliteration!) from a columnist in some record magazine (which I don’t have enough money to subscribe to and therefore don’t have to hand, having probably borrowed the public library copy). The diatribe was against the “mad-headed observance” of composer anniversaries, of which there are a number falling within this year of grace 2013.

Without wishing to increase the readership of this person’s views by their wholesale repetition here (mercifully, I’ve forgotten some of the convolutions of the argument, in any case), I can nevertheless repeat (predictably) the basic point of the rant: why make a fuss of the birth/death of a composer whose music is already popular and doesn’t need extra exposure? – and why take the trouble of dredging up an anniversary of a lesser composer whose music is lesser-known because it probably deserves to be?

Now I know there’s a vein of human sensibility “out there” whose more extreme adherents blanch at the thought of observance of any kind of anniversary, birthdays, religious feasts, public holidays, the lot! It’s a point of view, and it obviously resonates to a greater or lesser extent within and along the connective tissues of certain people. But as Hamlet told Horatio in so many words, there’s more to anything than what any one person (or by extrapolation, any one group of people) thinks.

As far as composer-anniversaries go, many music-lovers welcome the focus on particular figures, especially if they happen to be favourite ones. As well, pieces of music aren’t supposed to be museum exhibits, static, inert, locked away, relating only to another time. Surely the point of a composer having written a body of music is to have it played and heard by other people! Aren’t anniversaries the perfect excuse for examining these works and the person who wrote them a little more closely and meaningfully?

A recent case in point was Schumann, whose orchestral works aren’t heard as often as I would like to hear them performed “live” (yes, I know the symphonies in particular are jolly difficult to do well, but…..?). So, what did the NZSO do during the recent (well, 2010) Schumann birth bicentenary year? – all of the Schumann symphonies? Wrong! – but for some reason the following year we got all of the Brahms Symphonies and Concertos!  Am I complaining? – No, but I was disappointed that the chance wasn’t taken by the NZSO to present Schumann’s far more innovative (if occasionally problematical) symphonic works to the public as well, the year before.

But wait! – before I begin inflicting pulpit-like polemic protestations of my own concerning this issue on unsuspecting readers, let me assure you that I’m all the time thinking of the Verdi/Wagner concert review I must write and needs must get on with THAT. Still, I don’t want anybody else spoiling my enjoyment of things in which I take great delight – and that includes hearing the music I want to listen to. So, as far as I’m concerned, bring on the anniversaries! – and DO something interesting relating to those composers and their music!

 

Here beginneth the review:

What excitement at the prospect of hearing the NZSM students tackling the music of two of the nineteenth century’s out-and-out “heavyweight” composers, Verdi and Wagner! “Chalk and cheese” might be the reaction of some people to the arrangement, but the composers were similar in that the work of each mirrored the other’s in terms of influence and impact upon both contemporary and future musical trends.

Of course their respective spheres of activity encompassed two markedly different musical traditions – Verdi’s was that of bel canto, while Wagner’s was largely instrumental – Verdi’s in song and melody, Wagner’s in the interaction between words and music. Wagner set about changing the image of opera as he saw it into his own likeness, a fusion of music, theatre and philosophy; whereas Verdi kept a human naturalness to the forefront in his works, tailoring his emotions and those of his characters to human feelings and their expression to sung melody.

How did the concert presented by the NZSM reflect the differences between the two composers and their music? One instantly apparent contrast was that the voice students sang only Verdi’s music. For youthful voices, Wagner’s vocal music has always been regarded as a danger-zone, with several brilliant but short-lived singing careers rueful testimony to any such reckless and ill-advised junge Sängerin explorations.

So, the evening’s Wagner singing was left to one of the best and most experienced in the business in this part of the world, NZSM’s Head of Classical Voice studies, Margaret Medlyn. I don’t remember when the composer’s Wesendonck-Lieder were last performed in Wellington, but the songs couldn’t have been more powerfully or sensitively presented than as here – though the orchestral playing under Kenneth Young had one or two slightly unsteady patches of ensemble (at the very end of the second song Stehe Still, for instance), its general feeling and spirit were of a piece with what the singer was doing at all times.

Only throughout  the opening measures of Im Treibhaus did I think the orchestral playing too insistent – the words speak of silence, mute-witness and barren emptiness, and the textures, I thought, needed more delicacy for the strange, ghostly world of the hothouse to have its full effect. Then, as the music unfolded and the singer’s voice evoked more of the enclosed ambience, the rapt stillness gradually came, drawing its veil over the playing. As for Margaret Medlyn, her phrasings beautifully pointed sequences such as that leading up to the words “Unsre Heimat ist nicht hier!”. So did her smile in the voice throughout the final “Träume” (Dreams) illuminate a sense of beauty and wonder in the music, supported by some lovely instrumental sounds.

The second half was all Wagner, beginning with the overture to Die Meistersinger, and finishing with the stirring Act Three Prelude to Lohengrin, music which always makes me think of footage of the Battle of Britain, with Spitfires and Hurricanes swooping, rolling and climbing throughout cloudy skies. The Meistersinger Prelude I thought a shade too businesslike and insufficiently “enjoyed” – Young’s very flowing tempo seemed to me to flatten out some of the textures and give the players insufficient space to make their phrases really “speak”, though he allowed the brass a nice rounded “moment” just before the first quiet string interlude, and did give the tuba enough space to relish his post-contrapuntal “trill”.

As well as the Lohengrin Prelude, into which the orchestra launched most excitingly at the concert’s end, there were a couple of exerpts (famously called “bleeding chunks” because they have to be “untimely ripp’d” from Wagner’s characteristic through-composed musical fabric) from the first of the “Ring” operas, Das Rheingold. The sequence began with the “Donner’s Thunderclap” music, here distinguished by what sounded like a real hammer striking a rock, and an overwhelmingly thunderous timpani roll from Larry Reese, who must have thought all his birthdays had come at once, being allowed to let rip like that!

Afterwards, came the resplendent rainbow bridge, before the scalpel predictably cut to the Rhinemaidens’ lament at losing their gold (one so misses the voices! – sorry – that just  slipped out!), and the ensuing grand processional of the Gods into Valhalla. Opportunities for orchestral players to take part in opera-house performances of this music are few – so one indulges the “bleeding chunks” idea for the sake of hearing Wagner’s music performed “live”, and for the pleasure of picking up on the enjoyment of the players.

The concert’s first half was a different world, one of bel canto mixed with volatile theatrical cut-and-thrust, trademarks of Giuseppe Verdi, Wagner’s Italian counterpart. The overture La forza del destino graphically illustrated the salient aspects of the Italian composer’s style – swift, terse dramatic strokes set alongside melodies crafted for human voices to sing in the time-honored manner, the whole integrated, interwoven and interactive. Though the performance could have had more of a “coiled spring” aspect at the start, the playing was alert and accurate throughout – and as the music proceeded everybody warmed to the task, the volcanic energies released and the big tunes given plenty of juice.

Seven of the NZSM’s voice-students presented arias or duets from a range of Verdi’s operas, beginning with an aria “Non so le tetre imagine” from the early work Il corsaro, due to be presented in full later in the year by the NZSM Opera. Here, the aria was sung by Daniela-Rosa Cepeda, with a bright, “feeling” voice, somewhat tremulous at the outset (perhaps partly due to nerves), but settling down and able to decorate the line on its reprise with some spirit. She was nicely supported by Ken Young and the orchestra, with passionate strings at the outset, and a beautifully-floated harp-led waltz-rhythm. Next was Oliver Sewell, with the well-known “Questa o quella” from Rigoletto, a stylish, agile performance, a bit breathless at the phrase-ends, but “knowing” of aspect and totally believable. Elizabeth Harris was next, with Eboli’s aria “O don fatale” from Don Carlo – strong singing, the line clearly focused, if a shade awkward in places. Her high notes were attacked with gusto, and if ungainly in effect, it all demonstrated she obviously had a sense of the whole and what was required.

For variety’s sakes we then heard an orchestral item (a “bleeding chunk”, no less, from a Verdi opera! ) – the Triumphal March from Aida. I am, truly, a great fan of Ken Young’s conducting, even if, occasionally, as here, I do find his direction very linear, almost to a fault at times (as also with the Meistersinger Prelude) – it seemed to me that everything here was subjected to a kind of onward flow, with almost no rhetorical underlinings or accentings of detail. While that approach really works well for some things, it does for me rob some music of a certain character, almost to the point of blandness at times. Thus here, I couldn’t help feeling we were being hustled along, and those brassy shouts and glorious ceremonial crashes went almost for nought amid the flow. I missed a sense of grandeur and spectacle about it all, despite the expert brass playing – the solo trumpets were terrific! – though what a pity that, for the famous “tune” the answering player wasn’t stationed somewhere else in the hall for an antiphonal effect…..just a thought…..

The singing took up again with Christian Thurston’s stylish and engaging performance of “Alla vita che t’arride” from Un ballo in maschera,  followed by a return to Il corsaro, with a duet from Act Three, sung by Christina Orgias and Freddie Jones. It didn’t seem to me very fair upon the soprano, as the duet’s weight seemed mostly shouldered by the baritone, throughout. Freddie Jones made the most of his opportunities with focused elegant tones at the start, though I felt his voice began to fray a little around its edges as time went on. I felt sorry for Christina Orgias as she seemed to have very little to do other than one-liner responses and a moment of briefly-extended expression of feeling towards the finish. Despite all, the singers creditably held the stage to the very end (odd, nevertheless, that this was the single duet in the programme).

Regarding the proceedings, it was a good thing that Isabella Moore’s stylish and confidently-projected “Tacea la notte” was placed last as it concluded the first half’s vocal contributions in grand style, the singer giving us sustained, emotion-filled soaring lines at the beginning, and then plenty of infectious energy and agility in the following cabaletta – a grand performance that fully deserved its accolades.

The concert represented, I thought, an impressive achievement from all concerned, but especially on the part of the student musicians – there were enough full-blooded, “heavyweight” challenges to test anybody’s mettle, and the musicians’ youthful energies and well-honed skills came splendidly to the fore,  for our considerable enjoyment.