Author: Peter Mechen

Strumming and fretting en masse at Old St.Paul’s – the N.Z.Guitar Quartet

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Old St.Paul’s Church -Lunchtime Concerts

New Zealand Guitar Quartet

(Owen Moriarty, Tim Wanatabe, Jane Curry and Chris Hill)

Old St.Paul’s Church, Thorndon

Tuesday 21st August 2012

Perhaps it would have all been double the pleasure at Old St. Paul’s for Frederic Chopin, who was reputed to have said “Nothing is more beautiful than a guitar – save, perhaps two!” – no less than the New Zealand Guitar Quartet was here to put the aphorism to the test. A quartet’s worth of guitar players certainly makes a lovely, rich sound, with plenty of opportunities for all of those individual voices, both leading and in the middle, to interact with one another and create such richly-woven tapestries, in fact, small orchestras of sound.

The concert’s venue – Old St.Paul’s – exerted its customary spell over the proceedings, the beauty of the surroundings making up for the lack of adequate sight-lines for any audience member sitting more than a dozen pews back. Some elevation for the performers (as was constructed not so long ago in St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace Church) would certainly help more people to SEE the musicians, and perhaps enhance the sound-projection (the latter, however, seems perfectly adequate for all but the most distant spectators). A few of the softer passages for solo guitar seemed very quiet, but the sound in tutti made, as I’ve already said, a pretty solid, if finely constituted, instrumental ensemble sound.

Attendance at these Old St.Paul’s lunchtime concerts of late (at least the ones I’ve been to) have been surprisingly good, considering (perhaps, because of! ) the inclement weather – and today’s concert was no exception (the attendance AND the weather!). There’s obviously a loyal following for the venture, for all the reasons I’ve mentioned, and in this case the music and the music-making would have contributed greatly to the delight of it all.

The ensemble describes itself in a program note bio as “exciting, dynamic and engaging” – and I’m happy to say that the concert certainly reflected these things. I’ve heard the group play before, and this time around found myself entirely caught up in what was going on, as if everybody’s focus was freshly sharpened and their energies centered right at the music’s heart. Take the opening item, for example, Luigi Boccherini’s Introduction et Fandango, a pleasant though fairly conventional evocation of Spain – or at least one might have previously thought so, until hearing the Quartet’s  full-blooded rendition of the Fandango, digging into the rhythms and accentuating the music’s light-and-dark contrasts. Boccherini? – really?

Jane Curry introduced the next item,a transcription by Owen Moriarty of Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto, drawing listeners’ attention to one of the players’ use of a 7-string guitar, the instrument making for a greater range and sonority. Whatever the difference, the reworking of the music (in true Baroque style) was a great success, the music’s bubbling energy carrying all before it in both the first and third movements (a pity the opportunity wasn’t taken in between these episodes for a bit of extempore “sounding” of things suggested both by what had just happened and what was to come, as sometimes happens in this music’s performance). But particularly in the last movement, the counterpoints joyously tumbled over one another in away that would probably have had old Sebastian Bach tapping his feet in approval.

New Zealand composer Craig Utting drew some of his inspiration from the Baroque world for part of a composition called Onslow Suite, using a kind of passacaglia-form underlining a kind of lyrical exchange. The music provides the contrast of a middle section that spontaneously modulates asymmetrically and somewhat remotely, before returning to the passagcaglia figurations with increased rapture, finishing with a final chord of benediction – a lovely work, originally written for two pianos, but here most satisfyingly reworked for guitars.

The group then turned its attention to a work by Andrew York, former player-member of the American Guitar Quartet, the group for whom the music was written. This was called Quiccan, a closely-knit etude for four guitars, allowing each player to explore melody, harmony, and accompaniment. The piece started jazzily, resembling the sounds of a distant festival, one redolent with Latin American rhythms and textures. A slower section allowed the players some breathing-space and a contrasted vantage-point, towards which the ensemble redirected its energies, with the help of some “percussive” effects -all very engaging and attractive. A sudden “break-off” point resulted in a chord whose single chime froze the gestural actions of the musicians and allowed the sounds to resonate briefly and depart – a kind of musical metaphor for human existence.

More familiar territories were the items by Manuel de Falla, to finish the program – two exerpts, arranged by Owen Moriarty, from Falla’s El amor brujo ballet, firstly, the Danza del Terror, plenty of repeated notes, driving rhythms and strutting flourishes, followed by the even better-known Danza ritual del fuego, a performance which brought out something of the music’s dark, primitive side at the beginning, and gave plenty of point to the cross-rhythmed accents in the piece’s middle section. Only at the end did I feel the need for a bit more abandonment on the part of the players, something slightly more animal and physical. I wonder, too, whether the emphasis on tuning the instruments is entirely appropriate during the course of these two pieces – to my way of thinking, far better to keep the impetus and atmosphere on-going between the two dances and let whatever pitch vagaries occur be part of the sweep and drive, of this primitive, elemental aspect of the music.

But, nevertheless, a great concert, nicely presented and vividly projected.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dancing in the Cathedral – Mozart and Bruckner from Simone Young and the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Cathedrals of Sound – New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

MOZART – Symphony No.36 in C Major K.425 “Linz”

BRUCKNER – Symphony No.5 in B-flat

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Simone Young (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday 17th August, 2012

“A Bruckner Symphony is never just another concert” declared conductor Simone Young, interviewed a few days before her scheduled pair of performances of the Austrian composer’s Fifth Symphony, in Wellington and in Auckland. Not only did she mean that, more especially in this Southern Pacific area of the globe, performances of these symphonies are fewer and further between than in some other parts of the world. It was also an affirmation by a musician who’s already a great interpreter of these works, of their special character, part of which incorporates the power within the music to transform a normal concert experience into something uniquely special and truly memorable. And those qualities were precisely what we got from Bruckner, Simone Young and the NZSO  in Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre on Friday night.

For a number of reasons the appearance of Australian-born Young excited considerable interest – women conductors of orchestras are still very much the exception rather than the norm (though we’ve come some distance, I think, from the once-prevailing attitude voiced by former NZSO conductor-in-chief Franz-Paul Decker, who was once famously quoted as finding women conductors “aesthetically unpleasing”!). Young is, moreover, perhaps the most highly-regarded woman conductor in Europe, with a particularly high profile in Germany, working as she does out of the Hamburg State Opera, and as music Director of the Hamburg Philharmonic.

She’s something of a controversial figure as well, having been “at odds” with a former employer, Australian Opera, over her budgeting demands during her tenure as the company’s artistic director, resulting in her contract not being renewed after only a couple of seasons. As it turned out Australia’s loss was Europe’s gain, as her dual appointments in Hamburg followed soon after – musical director of both the city’s opera and the Philharmonic Orchestra, posts she took up in 2005. Her native country had, by then moved to make some amends for her peremptory dismissal from the Opera, appointing her a Member of the Order of Australia in 2004.

2012 is an important year for her – besides having made her debut with the NZSO, she is bringing to Brisbane the Hamburg Opera and Ballet and the Philharmonic, performing a concert version of Das Rheingold (she is a seasoned Wagnerian with several Ring Cycles to her credit, including a complete recording) and the Mahler “Resurrection” Symphony. New Zealanders who might feel aggrieved that the “Hamburg Invasion” doesn’t include these shores might consider that neither does the venture include Sydney or Melbourne, Queensland wanting “exclusive rights” to the venture – now, why does that have a familiar ring?

With all of these things in mind, expectations were pirouetting on points among the audience awaiting the conductor’s entry to begin the Wellington concert. Diminutive, but authoritative, Young took the podium, and, dispensing with a baton, launched into the concert’s first offering, the Mozart “Linz” Symphony K.425.  Of course, the geographic links with Bruckner (Linz was the latter’s birth-place) made the choice a happy and appropriate one, though there were other possibilities of programming – one being the Fifth Symphony of yet another Austrian composer, Schubert, whom Bruckner is often linked with regarding his symphonic method. I would have been as happy with either.

Thanks to my formative listening experience with the Mozart “Linz” symphony I can’t, even after all these years, get Bruno Walter’s voice on his famous rehearsal recording of this work, out of my head through that opening – “Bahnn – off! Ba-bahnn – off! Ba-bahnn – off! ….” and so on (Walter’s orchestra was having trouble with the note values!). There seemed no such problem, here, the sounds focused, crisp and precise, yet with a warmth (no didactic vibrato-less “authentic” strictures, thank goodness!) and, indeed a glow about the textures throughout the slow introduction, which informed the lovely easeful beginning to the allegro, and made a wonderful contrast with the more bumptious and high-spirited energies to follow.

It was Mozart-playing that reminded me at times of Benjamin Britten’s recordings of some of the symphonies – the same marriage of lyricism and strength, informed by an attention to detail which enriches the music’s context rather than distracts from the flow. Young conducted, it seemed, with every fibre of her being, her fingertips expressing and conveying a kind of whole-body energy which mirrored what the music was doing (as she did later in the evening with the Bruckner), her feet dancing and her knees launching the rest of her body upwards to characterize the “lift” required by the music’s rhythms.

The orchestral playing, though not without some brass “blurps” at two or three cardinal points throughout the slow movement (the players settling in more as the work progressed), produced sounds that seemed an expression of Young’s will, the strings and winds getting a lovely colour, either when “playing out” or with the more softly-lit sequences in the movement’s middle section. As for the bright, vigorous, but still elegant Minuet, Young literally led the opening dance to the audience’s delight, and then got beautifully contrasted characterizations from the winds in the Trio.

The finale again married grace and strength, the players’ articulation clear and crisp at speed, even if Young’s direction slightly “squeezed” the rhythm of the concluding downward arpeggiated figure each time, as if stressing the music’s urgency. Throughout, we enjoyed the prominence accorded the timpani, Laurence Reece encouraged to make the notes tell with just the right amount of emphasis, enhancing both the work’s texture and rhythmic character.

Back from an interval – during which it seemed the conductor’s red shoes (prominent during all those dance steps) were discussed as enthusiastically as her music-making – we settled down to behold the splendors of the Bruckner Symphony. And what splendors they were, in Young’s hands (aided by a baton for this music – doubtless due to a bigger orchestra and music with some rhythmic complexity). The rapt opening of the work recalled Russian conductor Vasily Petrenko’s way with the opening of the “Leningrad” Symphony, almost exactly a year ago in this same hall with the same players – utter concentration upon sounds whose genesis here seemed deeply elemental, like a giant slumberer’s distantly-wrought heartbeat, with those deep pizzicato notes beautifully and sensitively coloured by the upper strings’ arc-lines. What a beginning to a symphony!

During the “Listener” interview previously quoted Young stated that she thought an older school of conductors’ way with Bruckner’s music had contributed to public perception of the works being “overlong”, and that she saw the symphonies as being more direct, theatrical and emotional than they were often played. So, here, the massive brass statements which answered the quiet opening were given with plenty of declamatory force, the playing nicely poised amid pauses for the utmost effect (a magnificent brass response, here, from the orchestra) – and the allegro which followed was swiftly and urgently propelled. Young handled the transitions throughout the numerous changes of tempo in the first movement with the utmost flexibility, moulding the ends of episodes into the silences with beautifully-judged luftpauses. She also seemed ever-ready to allow the music to dance, so that the monumental, cathedral-like aspect of the work was less dominant than is usually the case.

Such was the concentration and energy of the music-making from all concerned that each of the first three movements seemed to be taken on the wing of a single breath. The sometimes problematic opening to the Adagio, with its awkward three-against-two rhythms, here flowed as mellifluously as could be, the music’s innate restlessness perfectly expressed, and the oboe solo’s emotional outpouring simple and direct. The strings’ luscious second-subject theme grew lovely, upward-reaching tendrils of sound, then joined with the brass unforgettably in a snowcapped climactic moment that filled the ensuing silence with magic. And towards the end, with the brass golden and confident, the sound-surges evoked by Young and her players created out of the spaces around us whole mountains and valleys into which the tapestried ambiences etched lonely impulses of wind tones and softly-thrummed silences.

After this came the scherzo, with its outlandish stop-go aspect, and rhythmic sequences alternating between demonic energy and heavy-footed rustic bonhomie, Young and the players (especially the brass) revelling in the quick-fire alternations. If not all of the brass detailing was entirely accurate, what was far more important was capturing the music’s quirkiness and volatility, the textures here in constant and spontaneous effervescence, in places laughter “holding both its sides”, while in others, such as throughout the trio, rustic charm prevailed, the detailing from winds and brass again treasurable (a lovely gurgling upward arpeggio from the clarinet at one point, and beautiful chording from the horns towards the end).

The opening of the finale (a similar hush to that of the symphony’s beginning) was almost spoilt by unfortunate audience coughing – as, earlier in the evening, a flurry of late audience arrivals had interrupted the Mozart Symphony’s slow movement. Fortunately the clarinet’s perky octave jumps (a precursor of the fugue to come) seemed to refocus the attention of the coughers, so that we could all concentrate on the Beethoven-like reintroduction of themes from the symphony’s earlier movements, prior to the fugue’s hugely dramatic first entry-proper. In Young’s hands, as she promised, the music was more lithe and muscular than leviathan-like, making for engaging, closely-worked arguments between voices, and advancing the music’s progress towards a promised climax or sense of fruition.

That came, of course, with those mighty closing brass chorales, which capped off the mountain ranges of music running like a spinal cord through the structures. My first reaction there was to crave a more overtly “grand” manner than Young was directing – she drove the orchestra straight into those mighty statements while keeping the music’s underlying pulse beating, risking a “more of the same” feeling rather than creating an overwhelming sense of arrival and resolution. But what her approach did do was, in the long run, elevate the status of the whole of the finale to that of a truly cosmic dance, the rhythmic drive working hand-in-glove with the “cathedrals of sound” – so that, in the midst of these mighty structures right at the end, we still felt like dancing with the music.

So – it was music-making of one’s dreams from orchestra and conductor, suitably acclaimed by a delighted audience at the end – how long will it be before we can invite Simone Young back again to make more music?

 

 

 

 

Young musicians’ mid-winter warm-up with Mozart and Rachmaninov

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Youth Orchestra Winter Concert

RACHMANINOV – Symphony No.3 in A MInor Op.44

MOZART – Requiem (arr. Maunder)

Amelia Ryman (soprano) / Alison Hodge (contralto)

Cameron Barclay (tenor) / Matthew Landreth (bass)

Wellington Youth Choir (Katie Macfarlane – Music Director)

Wellington Youth Orchestra

Hamish McKeich (conductor)

Wellington Town Hall,

Sunday 12th August, 2012

Aside from the circumstance of this being the THIRD Mozart Requiem performance offered the Wellington concert-going public this year so far (after all, it’s only August!), I thought the program of this concert by its own lights adventurous and challenging. And, regarding the combination of Mozart and Rachmaninov, a well-known French saying – “Vive la différence” can easily put it in an acceptable context.

Looking at things more closely than mere concert listings, one then discovers that, unlike with the first Mozart Requiem performance of the year by the Bach Choir of Wellington, this latest performance did feature an orchestra, and not merely an organ accompaniment. And unlike both of the previous performances (the second one being by the Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir and the Vector Wellington Orchestra), the recent one explored some different musical territories, using an edition prepared in 1986 by the scholar Richard Maunder, which largely dispensed with the attempts of Mozart’s pupil, Franz Süssmayr, to finish the work, uncompleted at the composer’s death.

Maunder’s version, completed in 1986, retains some of Süssmayr’s completions of Mozart’s sketches, but abandons what he feels are the non-Mozart parts, such as the Sanctus and Benedictus. Maunder does retain the Agnus Dei, feeling that the influence of Mozart did guide Süssmayr here more directly. But he recasts the work’s two final movements differently – Lux Aeterna and Cum Sanctis – drawing from material earlier in the Requiem. 

Like others before and since, Maunder considered Süssmayr’s work generally unworthy of Mozart’s, though many music-lovers down the years have had far more cause to thank than revile the unfortunate “johnny-on-the-spot”, given the sheer impossibility of his task. Poor Süssmayr wasn’t exactly a favourite of Mozart’s, either, the composer, in a letter to his wife Constanze, referring to his erstwhile pupil as a “blockhead”, and likening his native intelligence to that of “a duck in a thunderstorm” – but then Mozart was often almost pathologically unkind towards people he considered his inferiors.

From the singers’ point of view (as well as from that of this audience member), the dropping of both the Sanctus and Benedictus might well seem unfortunate, irrespective of considerations of greater “authenticity”. Still, both the on-going conjecture and the various attempts to render the work nearer to what the composer might have “wanted” have kept the music well away from any kind of museum mothballing. In essence, it’s very much a “living classic”, and likely to remain that way, considering that some of the work’s secrets can never be actually told – merely guessed at.

As regards the actual concert, I’ve run ahead of things, here, as the evening began with music from quite a different world. This was the Rachmaninov Third Symphony, a stern test, I would have thought, for a youth orchestra to tackle. Rachmaninov wrote this work late in his composing career, and filled its pages with contrasting and conflicting impulses and emotions. In places, the sounds and themes nostalgically evoke the Imperial Russia of the composer’s boyhood, of Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, particularly the latter composer – Rachmaninov shared some of his older compatriot’s fondness for quasi-oriental themes and orchestral colorings. In other places the music snaps at the heels of contemporary trends, with enough rhythmic and timbral “bite” to suggest Bartok, Prokofiev and Stravinsky.

There are the familiar Rachmaninov trademarks, among them the well-known plainchant “Dies Irae” theme, which pulsates like an electric current through much of the composer’s music (contributing not a little to its deep, prevailing melancholy, and undoubtedly influencing Stravinsky’s famous description of his compatriot as “six feet of Russian gloom”), the brilliance of the orchestration, and the heartfelt beauty of the themes, so candidly and unashamedly expressive. It seems incredible when listening to this work to imagine anybody writing of its effect – “a chewing-over of something that had little importance to start with….” which is what one New York critic wrote after the premiere in 1936. Another, a tad more sympathetically, wrote “Rachmaninov builds palaces with his music in which nobody wants to live any more…”.

Fortunately for those of us in the audience at this concert, conductor Hamish McKeich and his young players (their numbers judiciously augmented by a handful of NZSO members, probably some of the students’ tutors) seemed to pay no heed to such agenda-driven comments, and instead plunged into and appeared to revel in what the music had to offer – a whole-hearted, sharply-etched lyricism, expressed through a brilliant and wide-ranging orchestral palette. Both conductor and orchestra leader Arna Morton seemed to me inspirational by dint of gesture and physical involvement with the music, each readily able to delineate the work’s every mood and movement and show the rest of the players the way.

Arna Morton’s solo playing was nicely turned, as were some of the many wind solos throughout the work – the horn solo at the slow movement’s beginning actually sounded rather “Russian” with an engaging “fruitiness” of tone. Then first the flute and afterwards clarinet (from where I was sitting I couldn’t actually see the soloists) made a lovely job of the third movement’s solo lines leading to the whiplash conclusion of the symphony; while, of the other instruments, Dorothy Raphael’s timpani made something resplendent of the brief but impactful crescendo at the climax of the central movement’s scherzando section.

The richly lyrical moments were what this orchestra did best – the opening soulful “motto” theme, and the movement’s luscious tunes, the second movement’s richly and exotically-wrought archways, and the finale’s dying fall, the melodies and their inspiration spent. In these this orchestra gave its all, bringing a natural, youthful ardor to the shape and intensity of those yearning lines. And the  ceremonial episodes, such as the finale’s opening, had great exuberance, a similar sense of “playing-out” and letting things “sound”. Somewhat predictably, the players found the many treacherous “scherzando” passages in the work difficult, fraught with syncopations and difficult rhythmic dovetailings, as though the bar-lines were booby-trapped and waiting to pounce. To their credit, conductor and players kept going through the squalls, celebrating the triumphs and thrills along the way as readily as coping with the spills – at the end of the day the performance’s overall effect did enough of the work justice for conductor and orchestra to be pleased with its achievement.

Orchestrally, the Mozart was more uniformly impressive, perhaps even too much so in relation to the choir and soloists, whose relative backward placement seemed to put them at a dynamic disadvantage. Of the soloists, soprano Amelia Ryman shone brightly, her lines clear and silvery and always a delight. The others lacked her projection, and sometimes had to force their tone to be heard, stationed as they were just at the foot of the choir. It’s always seemed to me that composers intended soloists’ voices to stand out, rather than be given a “solo voice from the choir” kind of balance; and here for most of the time alto, tenor and bass needed all the help they could get, not necessarily an enthusiastic student orchestra anxious to demonstrate what they could do, to accompany them.

Throughout, both the general playing and detailing of individual instrumental lines from the orchestra was of a high standard – a sonorous trombone solo at “Tuba mirum”, majestic strings at “Rex Tremendae”, and secure brass and strings throughout the final “Cum Sanctis” fugue. The choir sang truly, beautifully and accurately, even if there were times when those voices didn’t manage to get across the weight of tone required to properly dominate the sound-picture, such as in the aforementioned fugue. To fill a Town Hall with sound, after all, takes some doing. I would have actually like the soloists closer, so that I could have more readily enjoyed Amelia Ryman’s singing, and got a better sense of the voices of the other three. For each of them, mellifluous moments of singing alternated with sequences where they seemed to struggle to be heard against the orchestra. Tenor Cameron Barclay made the most consistent impression, though his voice seemed not to have quite the same command and attack that was evident when he sang in the Beethoven Missa Solemnis, earlier in the year.

Still, very great credit is due to these young singers and players for what they achieved, and to their “guiding hand” on the night, conductor Hamish McKeich, who was able to bring the different elements together and preside over their fruitful interaction. The efforts he and others inspired made for an enjoyable and heartening evening’s concert.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blistering Brahms, diaphanous Dutilleux and monumental Mozart, from Amici and Diedre Irons

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music

Amici Ensemble with Diedre Irons (piano)

MOZART – Piano Quartet in G MInor K.478

DUTILLEUX – String Quartet “Ainsi la Nuit” (Thus the Night)

BRAHMS – Piano Quintet in F Minor Op.34

Ilott Theatre, Wellington

Sunday, 12th August, 2012

Blame Captain Haddock of the “Tintin” books for my “Blistering Brahms” heading – the other descriptions are more conventional, but no less heartfelt on my part. For this was a magnificent concert, a memorable marriage of great music and music-making, very much a “gentlemen of England now abed.…” scenario if ever there was one, for we lucky people in the audience.

With Mozart in his “G Minor mood” there was drama and dark purpose right from the concert’s beginning, with the composer’s K.478 Piano Quartet. The expression on Diedre Irons’ face, ready to plunge into the opening bars with her ensemble colleagues spoke volumes, really. The musicians relished it all, the major/minor mirrorings of the opening phrases, the piquant asymmetries of the lyrical contrasts and the richly unexpected modulations of the development – all contributed tellingly to a powerful, all-pervading ambivalence of mood throughout the opening movement.

Violinist Donald Armstrong led the ensemble with a will, his tone perhaps a little raw in places, but the sound indicative of the intensity of feeling he was investing with the notes. Mozart’s usual dictum “It should flow like oil” was here augmented with episodes of intense, knife-edged focus. Diedre Irons’ piano took the lead with the development, as always with her playing the tones coloured and inflected with what seemed like a Shakespearean kind of eloquence. In reply, the strings’ long-breathed lines were gorgeous, filled with intense feeling.

The operatic Andante sang out here, melody and counter melody drawing forth lines and accompaniments of great strength, the music never sentimentalized (a beautiful contribution from Julia Joyce’s viola at one point). The finale’s opening seemed a long way from the tragedy of the opening movement’s utterances. We heard such supple, beautifully-placed dovetailing at quite a cracking pace, everything made to “bubble” and generate high spirits, though with some lurches into a darker minor mood in places – the composer obviously saying, “Just to let you know that….” with these sequences.

After these antiquarian tragicomedies, the following work, a String Quartet from 1976 by Henri Dutilleux subtitled Ainsi la nuit (Thus the night)  brought a new earth to view. Donald Amstrong spoke before the work’s performance about its “organized disorganization”, a statement which seemed to characterize most aptly the sonorities and figurations that we encountered throughout. The opening sequences certainly suggested the Nocturne of the title, with haunting repetitions, punctuated by what might be characterized as owl-cries or distant ship-horns at sea. The ambiences seemed layered, so that as skins of texture were discarded others seemed firmly fixed in place underneath. After this, the Miroir d’espace that was Movement Two irrupted with sharp impulses, before the sounds widened spectrally between a haunting violin line and  a near-subterranean cello, creating a yawning vista between, flecked with instrumental incident.

Each of two sections that follow were subtitled Litanies, the first closely-worked and claustrophobic, concerted passages interspersed with instrumental “adventures”, while the second sounded a kind of siren’s song, with elements of a lament, a sort of chromatic welling up from the depths and gathering strands of sharp focus together. I thought the players’ characterizations of these many and widely-contrasted sound-impulses vivid and compelling. Just as focused was the playing in Constellations, rhythmic, spiky and volatile, as if part of the cosmos was in ferment, the music expressing that “disorganized organization” Donald Armstrong talked about.

Such were the mesmeric qualities of the sounds, I found myself drifting into the music quite non-analytically at some points, losing my overview of things in impulses of delight, and then having to regretfully resist further blandishments. Even so, the last two sections of the work remain indissoluble in my mind, the music’s ambient world establishing such a sense of organic flow at this stage in the piece, the divisions were subsumed and everything became as one, a veritable “memory footprint” established by those sounds, one which haunts me even as I write this.

As if these whole-world-entities weren’t enough, after the interval we were given the full high-romantic gamut of emotion, refracted through the Brahmsian end of things. The composer’s great Piano Quintet had to claw its way through two separate gestations – firstly for strings alone, then for two pianos – before emerging in its finished form. I found the comments made by friends of the composer regarding each of these “tryouts” interesting – violinist Joseph Joachim found that the strings-alone version “lacked charm”, and the great conductor Hermann Levi told Brahms that he had turned “a monotonous work for two pianos” into a masterpiece of chamber music. Brahms destroyed the strings-only work, but the two-piano version still exists as the Sonata Op.34b.

What the Piano Quintet version of the music gives us is the work’s structural strength expressed in a “best-of-both-worlds” garb – and these were the musicians to do the music’s strength, colour and lyricism justice. The sombre opening was played in a way that hinted at the turbulence to come – a big, quasi-orchestral sound that reflected the word of the piano concertos, with Diedre Irons’ playing underpinning the grandeur of the music’s range and scope. The give-and-take between instruments had a satisfyingly full-blooded quality – only once did I find the playing of the strings too insistent, a repeated-note sequence towards the end of the development which dominated rather than accompanied the piano’s material. Conversely, I found the ‘cello occasionally not forthright enough in such company, though Rowan Prior’s counterpointing was invariably beautifully voiced and phrased.

Throughout the work the musicians never let the intensity flag, the slow movement enshrining the most passionate lyricism (a beautiful unison from violinist Cristina Vaszilcsin and Julia Joyce shining out at one point, and a plumbing of the depths from Rowan Prior’s ‘cello at another), with everybody else similarly “playing out” and realizing the emotional potentialities of the music. And, what could have been merely high spirits in the scherzo had a supercharged, “possessed” quality – no half-measures! I loved the players’ engagement with it all, the fugal sections swirling up into the festive, swaggering theme, making a great dramatic contrast with the reprise of the opening, after the trio.

What mattered more than the less-than-ideally-pure string intonations at the finale’s beginning was the mood the players evoked, portents of impending tragedy, to which the ‘cello and piano then moved swiftly and hauntedly. With Brahms moving from light to darkness through different sequences the music’s roller-coaster ride was exhilarating, rhythmic poise turning almost without warning to pursuit on occasions. The playing simply kept up its extraordinarily vivid and physical effect right to the end, where the 6/8 Presto whirled our sensibilities away, flinging the music’s last few notes out into oblivion. It was, I thought, afterwards, the kind of music-making that makes life worth living.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Strings and winds – New Zealand School of Music Lunchtime Concerts

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand School of Music Lunchtime Concerts

NZSM String Ensemble (Martin Riseley, conductor)

MENDELSSOHN – String Symphony in C Minor

DVORAK – Serenade for Strings in E Major

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

Wednesday 18th July 2012

NZSM Woodwind Soloists  (Emma Sayers, piano)

Music by Vivaldi, Arnold, Creston, Sancan, Milhaud, Cockcroft

Old St.Paul’s Church

Tuesday 31st July 2012

It’s always a pleasure to attend and write about concerts of music featuring student performers. Somehow, there’s a unique dimension of expression involved, a kind of tremulousness which at different ends of the performance spectrum can either set things a-tingle with wholehearted enthusiasm or else undermine efforts with nervousness.

There are, of course, plenty of nooks and crannies in-between these extremes, into which inexperienced performers can slot themselves – it’s always a fascinating process to observe and experience, but essentially a heart-warming one, listening to youngsters pouring their feelings into sound-vistas suggested by great music and opened up by the performers’ own skills.

I’ve been to two July concerts recently at which students from the NZ School of Music were performing – one on Wednesday 18th, at St.Andrew’s Church, involving a string ensemble playing music by Mendelssohn and Dvorak, and the other on Tuesday 31st, at Old St.Paul’s Church, which featured individual wind instrumentalists making plenty of variety of sounds in music from different composers.

At St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Martin Riseley, violinist extraordinaire, and a tutor at the School of Music, directed the string ensemble. He got a terrific response from the young players right throughout the Mendelssohn work, the String Symphony in C Minor – at the outset the players’ precise attack and focused tones gave us a foretaste of the whole performance’s strength and clarity. Throughout the whole ensemble there seemed a similar full-blooded commitment to giving the music resplendent tones and clear articulation – the lower strings sang their lines and figurations with as much eloquence and finesse as their lighter-toned cousins opposite.

The lunchtime concert time-schedules wouldn’t permit the whole of the work which followed, Dvorak’s Serenade for Strings, so that we had to do without the gorgeous slow movement. For the Dvorak the violin sections “swopped around”, bringing some different faces to the fore for the concert’s second part. Though a lovely work, the Serenade contains many pitfalls of articulation and rhythm, to the despair of amateur orchestras I’ve heard attempt it; and so I was interested as to how these young players would fare.

It began well, the serene opening nicely floated and counterpointed between upper and lower strings, the lines relaxed in flight and with plenty of elbow-room. The second subject I found a bit beefily-played, wanting, I thought, a lighter, more quixotic touch, so as to make a telling contrast with the crescendo, and render that top note in each phrase a bit more wide-eyed with wonderment. But the divisi ‘cellos were lovely, the players able to fill out their tones and fine them down in places most sensitively, as with the movement’s end. The following Waltz-movement was beautifully done, with violas making their presence felt in those all-important middle textures – and the music’s trio-section brought out the dynamic contests with plenty of heartfelt expression.

Dvorak’s wonderfully out-of-doors manner throughout the third movement was nicely captured, the excitement built up in the opening measures as the melody spread throughout the orchestra, and the melting romance of the music’s descending theme expressed beautifully, especially by the ‘cellos. However, I wanted a bit more emphasis given to those wonderful downwardly leaping intervals at the phrase-ends during the middle section (I think they’re fifths and sevenths) – here they were all “snapped shut” too readily for me, without being properly savoured! But then there was nice work from the violins leading back to the opening “running” section, a real sense of the music riding the crest of a wave in places, even if the string-tone was a bit dogged and scrappy here and there.

Maybe the ensemble ought to have finished with the slow movement instead of the finale, the latter being such a tricky beast to bring off. The rhythms really have to be “felt” rather than “counted” (as Ken Young would have said!) – and the lines are so cruelly exposed. There’s also a lot of near “sotto voce” work which I thought the players found it hard to make into part of a coherent line – I felt we got “going through the motions” playing rather than something with sweep, drive and purpose. Better, surely for these young musicians to have been encouraged to throw themselves into things like the ferment of that famous crescendo, and make something rough but exciting and abandoned of it, rather than produce the somewhat dogged get-the-notes-right impression that we got in places here.

However, we did get a lovely transition back into the return of the work’s very opening (a heart-warming touch from the composer!), and the energetic plunge back into the allegro vivace rounded it all off with honour satisfied. Still, it was the group’s playing of the Mendelssohn which I enjoyed, nay, really took to heart on this occasion – so very engaging and exciting to experience.

 

My second NZSM reviewing assignment was just under a fortnight later at Old St.Paul’s, where a number of wind students presented their “pieces”, the exercise being part of their course requirements, to, I might say, the audience’s pleasure and delight. This concert also brought added value with the wonderful accompaniments (some of them more out-and-out partnerships than accompaniments!) by the School of Music’s Emma Sayers, whose playing invariably adds a new dimension to whatever music she takes part in presenting.

Beginning the program (with a Vivaldi concerto, rather than the Handel the program was suggesting) was Oscar Laven, playing the bassoon. Here was the instrument relishing the role of singer and romancer as well as being a “character”. Oscar Laven’s phrasing of the lyrical episodes was of bel canto quality, to which was added a strong but flexible rhythmic sense, and plenty of virtuoso verve, as withness the rapid runs towards the end of the work. This was followed by Jeewon Um’s performance of Malcolm Arnold’s Fantasy for Solo Flute, the lyrical opening enchanting and the dance-like episodes spectacularly virtuosic.

Saxophonist Sam Jones very “correctly” introduced the Paul Creston Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano, wanting to emphasize for the audience the difficulty of the Sonata’s piano part, and properly acknowledge Emma Sayers’ contribution to the performance. He played brilliantly, with a stunning command of colour and technical agility, crucial in music with as much rhythmic energy as this! As absorbing to listen to was the piano part, the two musicians triumphantly realizing the piece’s tonal variety and underlying dynamism – a great listen!

An almost complete contrast was afforded by flutist Monique Vossen’s choice of Pierre Sancan’s Sonatine, the composer’s best-known work – the opening sequences impressionistic-sounding, rather in the style of Ravel, and with corresponding fairy-tale ambiences and textures. I thought the tuning between instruments wasn’t right in places, here (no tuning of the flute  was done beforehand that we could see), but though it didn’t mask the player’s artistry the pitch discrepancy was occasionally a distraction. In other respects rapport between flute and piano was exemplary, each taking rhythmic and melodic cues from one another, everything done with an enviably light touch and expressive purpose.

Another saxophonist, Reuben Chin, played an exerpt from Milhaud’s Scaramouche, a work whose popularity had resulted in all kinds of arrangements being made of the original piano duo for various instruments, not all of them by the composer. Here, the player exhibited a lovely singing tone as the music moved from dreamscape to graceful dance, the musicians relishing the expressive possibilities of lyrical saxophone and gently rhythmic piano accompaniment. Nothing could have been further from the style of Patrick Hayes’ performance for solo clarinet of Barry Cockcroft’s “Blue Tongue” (the composer simply HAD to be an Australian to write a piece with such a title!). More decomposition than anything else, the piece involved the player gradually dismantling the instrument, while trying to keep the piece going, and unifying the music with an reiterated rhythmic note. In putting it all across, Patrick Hayes demonstrated an entertainer’s gift as well as a musician’s skills in keeping the proceedings alive and buoyant throughout.

Yet another saxophonist, Katherine Macieszac, finished the concert in fine style with the third movement of the same work that Sam Jones had earlier played part of, Paul Creston’s Sonata for Alto Sax and Piano. Bustling 5/4 beginnings and an engaging garrulity swept the opening argument along between the musicians – first we heard the sax singing songs over the piano’s toccata-like drive, then listened to the instruments swap places, the saxophone rolling the rapid-fire notes into a blur agains the piano’s melodic progressions. For respite there were a few lyrical sequences before the 5/4 rhythm reawakened, and the piece drove to its energetic, breathless conclusion.

Fine, virtuosic playing from all concerned throughout the concert, communicating in almost all the items we heard, a real sense of enjoyment in the music-making.

 

 

Jian Liu – pianist in full flight at the Ilott

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music presents

Jian Liu –  a “Fantasia” recital

CPE BACH – Fantasia in C Major W 59/6  / BEETHOVEN – Fantasia in G Minor Op.77

LISZT – Apres une lecture de Dante; fantasia quasi sonata  / MOZART – Fantasia in D Minor K.397

SCHUBERT – Fantasie in C Major “Wanderer” D.760

Jian Liu (piano)

Ilott Theatre, Wellington Town Hall

Sunday 29th July 2012

At the interval, after pianist Jian Liu’s blistering traversal of the Liszt Dante Sonata, I was approached by a piano-fancier friend, whose aspect was one of great excitement and agitation: transfixing me with an intense, fire-flashing gaze, he exclaimed, “I hope you’re going to write up this recital as the greatest Wellington has heard for years!”. Being in a somewhat euphoric state myself, after the Liszt, I nevertheless managed to remember the farmer in one of Carl Sandburg’s dialogue poems, who, in response to the question, “Lived here all your life?” replied with a laconic “Not yit!”. But I still added my two cents’ worth regarding what I’d heard so far to the paeans of praise from others who joined us, to my friend’s momentary, if not complete, satisfaction.

Certainly, Jian Liu’s performance of Liszt’s visionary exploration of the spirit of Dante’s Divine Comedy seemed like an all-encompassing display of both technical brilliance and poetic identification with the music. I had heard Liu relatively recently in recital, playing the same composer’s B Minor Sonata, and thought at the time that his Lisztian credentials were pretty impressive (the review of that concert is also on Middle C). However, in terms of overall effect, Liu’s playing here for me surpassed that earlier performance in almost every aspect. And while my allegiance to Diedre Irons’ Liszt-playing remains unshaken in terms of her incomparable variety of touch and poetry of phrasing, Liu’s more austere way with the pianistic textures was allied to a tremendous intellectual grip of the music’s overall shape and form which at the time swept all before it. It was no wonder my friend was thus transported by it all.

The overall idea of the recital – that of exploring difference composers’ treatment of the idea of “fantasia” – brought forth fascinating results, especially in the first half. In a sense, what threw the Liszt work into bold relief was the relative emptiness of the piece that preceded it, a work by Beethoven, no less, though not one of the master’s greatest compositional efforts. In fact, this Fantasia in G Minor has never seemed to me to bear out the contention that Beethoven was one of the greatest improvisers of his age, one capable of putting every other virtuoso of the time to flight in those “contests” that pianists of the early Romantic era  (and before, remembering Mozart and Clementi) seemed to occasionally take part in. It’s pretty thin stuff, really, with occasional flashes of the “Ludwig Van” of the great sonatas, placed cheek-by-jowl with handfuls of somewhat tiresome show-off stock pianistic figurations.

My feeling is that the “real” Beethoven would have improvised with much greater freedom and contrast than this piece exhibits – perhaps the “writing down” of what was meant, after all, to be a spontaneous recreation of musical thought has spoiled it. One thinks of Lady Bracknell’s description of natural ignorance in “The Importance of Being Earnest” – “Ignorance is like a delicate, exotic fruit. Touch it, and the bloom is gone.” I thought also that the contrast with Mozart’s famous D MInor Fantasia K.397, which Liu played to open the recital’s second half was instructive regarding the compositional methods of each of the composers – Mozart, we are told, tended to “compose in his head” and then write down what he’d worked out, whereas Beethoven’s processes were far more visible in the form of scraps of motifs, figurations and sequences which filled his sketch-books, like a sculptor hewing at an ever-present shape or form, and bringing it into being. In this respect, Mozart’s work seemed finished, whereas Beethoven’s had the feel of a work very much in progress.

The recital opened with a Fantasia by another stormy petrel, CPE Bach, whose music I particularly love for its volatility and its juxtaposition of beauty with angularity. Jian Liu brough out this Fantasia’s capricious spirit with a will – here was a sense of fun at work expressed in delightfully unpredictable ways, even if the composer somewhat over-milked the repeated two-note figure which served as an omni-present watcher on all the other goings-on. Liu showed excellent “evocation” instincts in his playing of this piece, characterizing the different moods strongly and bringing to bear an enviable command of dynamic and keyboard colours. What CPE’s father, the great Johann Sebastien, would have thought of it all, I couldn’t begin to think, though, of course one remembers he was no mean fantasia-writer himself.

So, after these two somewhat frivolous explorations of keyboard capriciousness, the Liszt work hit us like a thunderbolt, and especially in Jian Liu’s hands. While I couldn’t, in the wake of hearing those two Russian women pianists, Sofia Gulyak and Halida Dinova, earlier in the year, award the palm for “the greatest recital in years” to Jian, his playing of the Liszt placed his pianism fully on their level, if from a vastly different tradition. It would be outside the scope of this review to analyze just why Liu’s playing made the impression on me that it did. But in one important respect it had what I felt was slightly lacking in the same pianist’s  earlier recital also featuring Liszt’s music – an all-pervading resonance, a sustenance of tone which here opened up whole vistas of expression, ranging from the blackest oblivion to the most shimmering and scintillating light. In terms of energy and impulse it was playing I’ve rarely heard surpassed by anybody in recital, in places. It was art which largely concealed art, to Jian Liu’s credit – throughout, one felt the presence of both Liszt and of Dante, ahead of that of a pianist making these evocations possible.

Having gotten our sensibilities properly calmed down during the interval, we felt able to return to our seats for some more music – first up was the delicious D Minor Fantasia by Mozart. I was interested in what Jian Liu would do with this work, as Mozart never finished it, and posthumous editions have “rounded off” the allegro section with a concluding flourish and cadence which I’m afraid sounds worthy but somewhat glib. A recording of this work by the Japanese pianist Mitsuko Uchida adopted what to my ears seemed like a wonderful solution – i.e. to return to the opening arpeggios of the work, modulate in the same way, and then conclude with a final major-key archway which ends quietly in the bass. However, Jian Liu preferred to follow the Breitkopf Gesamtausgabe’s aforementioned “completion” – and his dignified, sensitive playing made the conclusion sound of a piece with the rest. But what a charming and beautiful work it is, the ideas given plenty of “air” by Liu, preserving something of the piece’s spontaneity despite its finished aspect.

The afternoon’s concluding “fantasia” was the renowned “Wanderer Fantasy” by Schubert. Pianists themselves seem divided regarding the legendary technical difficulties accompanying this work – Schubert himself was reputed to have said, upon leaping from the piano after an abortive attempt to play the work in public, “The devil may play it, for I cannot!”. As regards Schubert’s oeuvre for solo piano, it is clearly the most technically demanding, though whether it challenges the executant difficulties of some of the other virtuoso pieces of the Romantic repertoire seems to be a matter of opinion. Called the “Wanderer” Fantasy because of the work’s direct quotation from the theme of Schubert’s own Lied “Der Wanderer” of 1816, the piece has four distinct sections, though is played without a break. It was a favorite of Liszt’s who made a transcription of the piece for piano and orchestra, and who was also inspired by Schubert’s technique of “thematic transformation” to produce works like his own B Minor Sonata.

Straightaway, Jian Liu engaged us physically with the music, making wonderful use of dynamic terracings to give the sounds  plenty of organically-conceived variation – thanks to Liu’s unfailing sense of the music’s direction, the argument always seems to be going somewhere, and never put in a rhythmic or colouristic straitjacket. Though the physical effort of engaging with those notes was made apparent, and one or two of the arpeggiated figurations sounded a bit blurred around the edges, the playing’s essential energy and liveliness carried us joyfully along, eventually bringing us to the edges of a deep, richly-layered region of dark stillness and mystery. Here, the music became all of a sudden hymn-like and entranced, almost religious in feeling (no wonder Liszt couldn’t keep his hands off it!), the initial simplicity of the lied-melody then fragmenting into a hundred eager voices, creating a ferment of activity growing from the textures of the music. Here Liu’s ear for detail meant that the dappled strands of sound impulse were kept flowing and undulating – marvellous playing.

The presto episode again had that sense of boundless energy, some elemental life-force expressing a kind of cosmic joy and high spirits, one whose voltage increased and crackled as the concluding fugue hove into view. So, the pianist might have dropped a few notes here and there! – what was far more important was that the music’s momentum was gloriously maintained, everybody, pianist and listeners caught up in a kind of trajectoried trance whose culminating wave of energy occasioned great scenes of appreciation from an excited audience. Wisely, Jian Liu brought us all back from fever pitch with a transcription of a Richard Strauss song, very Schubert-like, rapt and beautiful, a fitting conclusion to a memorable afternoon of music.

 

 

 

Leonard Bernstein’s CANDIDE – the best of all possible whirls?

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Leonard Bernstein – CANDIDE

Cast: Cameron Barclay (Candide) / Barbara Graham (Cunegonde) / Bianca Andrew (Paquette) / Kieran Rayner (Maximilian / Nick Dunbar (Pangloss/Martin) / Helen Medlyn (Old Lady) / Richard Greager (Grand Inquisitor et al.) / Thomas Atkins (Archbishop et al.)

Narrator: Ray Henwood

The Orpheus Choir of Wellington

The Vector Wellington Orchestra

Conducted by Mark W.Dorrell

Directed by Sara Brodie

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday, 28th July 2012

Pity the poor music-theatre historian charged with the task of drawing together the different strands of creative impulse that have, at various times, produced successive versions of Leonard Bernstein’s amazingly durable stage-work Candide. To read of the different productions and seemingly endless revisions, complete revampings included, is to be made to feel as though one’s head has been spun in a kind of Voltairesque whirl. Forget the fraught operatic gestations and accompanying thrills and spills of works such as Bizet’s Carmen, Verdi’s Don Carlos or Britten’s Gloriana – Lenny’s Candide beats them all!

Basically, the work began its public life in 1956 with Lilian Hellman’s adaptation of Voltaire’s classic novella/satire, and with additional lyrics by luminaries such as Dorothy Parker, all set to music by Bernstein. When the show didn’t last past seventy-odd performances, Hellman’s book bore most of the blame – too serious and weighty, said the critics. It wasn’t until 1973 that another attempt was made with Hal Prince’s idea of a stripped-down, racier version, with an entirely new book written by Hugh Wheeler. A lot of the original music was cut and the orchestration drastically reduced. Though clocking up over seven hundred performances, it just wasn’t the Candide that its composer had originally envisaged, and really wanted to see.

Rehabilitation of the original’s style and spirit came with conductor John Mauceri’s reconstruction (with the composer’s imprimatur) for a 1988 staging in Glasgow, and also with Bernstein’s own 1989 recording, largely of what Mauceri and writer John Wells (of “Yes Minister” fame) had achieved (incidentally, this evening’s conductor Mark Dorrell remembers being involved as repetiteur of the 1988 production at Scottish Opera to which Bernstein came and actually conducted a rehearsal – a treasurable experience!).

So, what we got on Saturday evening was largely this latter version that Bernstein himself recorded, but with further reworkings based on an even later London production, as “authorized” an edition as could be gleaned from the work’s history of comings and goings – the best of all possible solutions, of course! And what a riot, what a firecracker, what a sizzler of a performance we got from conductor, choir and orchestra, and with Ray Henwood’s wonderfully mordant delivery as narrator illuminating every twist and turn of the fantastical array of improbable events.

I thought the Orpheus Choir astonishing wonderful – its members were the out-and-out heroes of the evening, with Mark Dorrell as their inspirational general. Sara Brodie’s direction all but completely transcended any sense of “chorus convention” by treating the choir as a “character” in its own right, one all too willing to express its views of the proceedings by whatever means at its disposal – gesture and movement as well as voices (including a “Mexican wave” at one point, and some wonderfully nonchalant bottom-swaying accompanying the insouciant “What’s the Use” Waltz in Act Two!). It all worked brilliantly, inestimably aided by the choir’s superb diction, delivering the words with focus and energy throughout.

The orchestra was almost as good, strings, winds and percussion particularly nimble-fingered, and with only an occasional sluggishness from the brass in places during Act One to pick up their cues (a bit more spunk needed from them in the overture for example) detracting from an otherwise brilliant evening’s playing. Conductor and players “caught” so well the atmosphere and rhythmic character of episodes like the “Paris Waltz” and the “I Am Easily Assimilated” Tango, even if during the latter Helen Medlyn, like the other soloists most of the time, sounded inexplicably underpowered, leaving the chorus to supply the necessary vocal fabric of the sinuous melody.

Enjoying as we did these instrumental and vocal splendors from orchestra and chorus, it was disappointing to find that almost all the solo singers were hard to hear at various times, rendering the all-important words mostly inaudible – or at least from where I was sitting in the hall. I wasn’t the only “hard-of-hearing” audience member, as a number of people I spoke with both at the interval and subsequent to the show confirmed my impression. What seemed to be needed was either subtitles, or (wash my mouth out with soap and water!) discreet microphonic assistance, perhaps? Considering that the voice of the narrator, Ray Henwood, was resplendently and sonorously miked, it may well have been appropriate for other solo voices to have been thus augmented.

Of the soloists, Richard Greager (as The Grand Inquisitor and a number of other cameo roles) consistently gave much pleasure, putting his words across with the expected verve and focus, something I was also anticipating from Helen Medlyn (whose work I’ve always greatly admired), only to find myself straining to catch what she was singing a lot of the time. Before people start to accuse me of making a meal out of this, I ought to point out that, if ever music-theatre words ought to be heard and savored, those of “Candide” ought to be – and the loss is considerable if they’re not coming across. I should also add that I thought the acting of every one of the singers characterful and engaging, thanks to both their individual talents and director Sara Brodie’s skills at using the semi-staged environment to its best advantage.

As Candide, Cameron Barclay caught the essential sweetness and naivety of the character, his voice clearer in the more lyrical numbers such as “It Must Be So”, beautiful and touching in the “It must be Me” reprise, introduced by the full orchestra. His partnership with the appealing Cunegonde of Barbara Graham brought similar lovely moments, culminating in the almost Mahlerian “Make Our Garden Grow” at the very end of the work. Projecting similar innocence, with touches of characterful pizzazz, Barbara Graham’s much-violated but remarkably enduring heroine displayed plenty of beauty and spunk throughout, her words perhaps not consistently projected with the required focus, but her voice making the most of those displays of coloratura in “Glitter and Be Gay”.

A great moment for both Cunegonde and The Old Lady was their Act Two duet “We Are Women”, Graham and Medlyn both relishing their words, “We’ve necks like swans, and, oh, such sexily legs / We’re so light-footed we could dance on eggs”, and putting across all the sex appeal one could want in the process. Plenty of libidinous impulse was generated also by Bianca Andrew’s sultry servant-girl Paquette, who didn’t have a great deal to sing solo, but whose voice and provocative deportment added inestimably to sequences such as Act One’s “The Best of All Possible Worlds”, and the glorious “What’s the Use?” in Act Two’s casino scene. As with Bianca Andrew, Thomas Atkins, singing the Archbishop and other cameo characters, also had enough vocal heft to make his few solo lines properly tell.

Both Kieran Raynor’s Maximilian (the King’s son) and Nick Dunbar’s Dr.Pangloss were characterizations fleshed-out with confident, physically well-projected stage-presence. Kieran Rayner’s words I could hear most of the time (a pity that his “Life Is Happiness Indeed” verse was pushed along a notch or so too speedily for the words to really make their point), but I had the utmost difficulty with Nick Dunbar’s ennunciations – most of his utterances as the Royal Tutor in “The Best of All Possible Worlds” seemed as if too low for him, so that the voice lacked sufficient girth to properly project the words. Again (I hate myself for suggesting this!), in the interests of getting across the message, perhaps microphones (discreetly employed) would have helped?

So, that caveat registered, the rest I thought a marvellous achievement from all concerned – I loved watching Mark Dorrell sitting down at the end on the conductor’s podium, obviously exhausted, having given his all! Above all, very great credit to the Orpheus Choir, its energy and commitment to the presentation surpassing all expectations and producing a truly memorable result.

 

 

 

 

Duo Tapas appetizing at Old St.Paul’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Old St.Paul’s Lunchtime Concert Series

Duo Tapas

Rupa Maitra (violin) / Owen Moriarty (guitar)

Music by PAGANINI, VIVALDI, SENENCA, SARATATE, GRANADOS and IMAMOVIC,

Old St.Paul’s Church, Thorndon

Tuesday July 24th 2012

Every now and then one hear something played at a concert which startles the sensibilities into momentary confusion. As when one turns on the radio and encounters something familiar mid-stream, the thought starts to drum away with the music: – “Now, just what is this?”

The Paganini work, Centone di Sonata No.1 which opened this duo recital sounded at first like a transcription of the beginning of the Mahler Fifth Symphony, played on a solo violin – a one-note “call to arms” dominating the opening. The attractive allegro maestoso which followed featured some fine flourishes and an exciting dynamic range -a more lyrical central section brought some major-key sunshine to the A-minor opening of the work.

Interestingly,  Paganini knew a lot about the guitar, partly perhaps because of having earned to play the mandolin before the violin. He once declared that “The violin is my mistress, but the guitar is my master”, and wrote a lot for the guitar in a chamber-music context, not just accompaniments, but with a virtuosity in places which was admired by his fellow-musicians at the time.

One wonders whether the composer’s interest in the guitar was due to its association with romance – Paganini did have a liaison with a “mystery woman” who played the guitar herself, one who possibly was the composer’s “muse” for a time, considering the number of works he wrote involving the instrument.

This work , and the Vivaldi D Minor Sonata from 1709 that followed, brought out lovely tones from the violinist, Rupa Maitra, and sensitive, perfectly-judged partnering lines from guitarist Owen Moriarty. The violinist’s very focused sound served Vivaldi particularly well, bright, Italianate tones lightening the textures and the wood-grainy, muted surrounding of the church’s interior. The character of both the slow, grave Minuet and the more vigorous finale with its different bowing and dynamic contrasts was nicely presented.

Giovanni Seneca (mis-spelled as”Senenca” in the programme) a Neapolitean guitarist and composer, born in 1967, contributed two works to the recital, Balkan Fantasy and Mazel Tov. I liked the second piece better – the first I thought somewhat filmic, a bit all-purpose, like something one might hear in a bar or restaurant – though some of the double-stopping seemed quite demanding, in places, parts of which sounded a bit strained. More interesting, I thought, was Mazel Tov, a work beginning as a slow dance, the notes “bent” for expressive purposes, with very soft playing at first from both musicians, but fuelling up as the music’s catchiness and energy increasingly took hold, the players bringing off a triumphant finish.

Some indigenous Spanish music followed, by Sarasate and Granados. I enjoyed reading George Bernard Shaw’s comment regarding Sarasate, to the effect that though there were many composers  of music for the violin, there were few of “violin music”, and that Sarasate’s playing (he was a virtuoso violinist as well as a composer) for Shaw “left criticism gasping miles behind him”. His Spanish Dances are popular encore pieces for virtuosi, intended to show off what the performer could do. Rupa Maitra captured the sinuous, haunting quality of “Playera”, the first of the composer’s set of Op.23 Dances. Though intonation wasn’t flawless what mattered as much was the atmosphere and the tonal flavourings of the piece, brought out here strongly.

I thought the famous Dance No.5 from Sarasate’s countryman Granados’s own set of Danzas Españolas which followed took a while to find its “point” here, in the wake of the Sarasate. It seemed to me that the playing could have done with a bit less legato throughout the opening (my ears perhaps too attuned to hearing the piece as a work for solo guitar) and the intonation was again a bit edgy on one or two violin notes – but when it came to the middle section, there was suddenly more distinction, like a lover’s musing upon a memory, the violinist making nice distinctions between registers. And where the guitar takes over the theme and the violin decorates was quite enchanting – lovely, soft arpeggiations. I thought Owen Moriarty mis-hit a chord during the reprise, but the playing recovered its poise to deliver a beautiful concluding note to the piece, a “was it all a dream?” kind of impulse…..

The concert finished with Jovano, Jovanke, a work by Bosnian guitarist and composer Almer Imamovic, an arrangement of an old Macedonian song about two young lovers in a “Romeo and Juliet” scenario. The music reflects the emotional turmoil of the two young people in their situation, soulful at the beginning, angular and rhythmically syncopated , with very Middle-Eastern kind of melodic contourings and flavorings, the music building up to great excitement by the end. Bravo!

 

 

 

 

Views of the NZSO’s epic “Valkyrie”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

WAGNER – Die Walküre

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Pietari Inkinen (conductor)

Cast:  Simon O’Neill (Siegmund) / Edith Haller (Sieglinde) / Jonathan Lemalu (Hunding)

Christine Goerke (Brünnhilde) / John Wegner (Wotan) /  Margaret Medlyn (Fricka)

The Valkyries : Morag Atchison, Amanda Atlas, Sarah Castle, Kristin Darragh,

Wendy Doyle, Lisa Harper-Brown, Anna Pierard, Kate Spence

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Sunday 22nd July, 2012

Antony Brewer – guest reviewer

Wagner wrote works of enormous complexity. They make extraordinary demands on conductor, singers and players especially the music-dramas of Der Ring des Nibelungen. So performing Die Walküre in New Zealand is ambitious to say the least. We certainly have the orchestra and, somewhat to my surprise, the conductor Pietari Inkinen. We also have our own Simon O’Neill, a leading artist at Bayreuth, Covent Garden, La Scala and the New York MET. We have a riveting Fricka in Margaret Medlyn, we have the Walküren (a fabulous team!) and a Hunding of ideal voice in Jonathan Lemalu. Australia provided the (unfortunately indisposed) Wotan, John Wegner, whose efforts to stay the course were  extraordinary considering the demands of the role. The Sieglinde and Brünnhilde were non-antipodeans and also magnificent.

I do not share the belief, expressed in another review, that we should put up a totally Kiwi cast for such an event. If we have the singers, as we did for the Parsifal, we can do so with pride. Already for our size we have had and have New Zealand Wagnerians who can shake the stages of the world. Pushing the wrong voices at the wrong time into Wagner is both unnecessary and damaging.

And what voices we had! Simon O’Neill’s Siegmund rang out with intensity and a touch of real metal in the voice. As do most Siegmunds, he made a bit of a meal of “Wälse, Wälse” but that was easily forgiven when his “Winterstürme” was phrased with such rare beauty. His Sieglinde, Edith Haller , was that operatic rarity, a singer whose singing and acting were outstanding while she also looked the part. It was a wonderful experience to feel convinced at the visual level as well as the aural. Her instrument is not unlike that of classic Sieglinde Leonie Rysanek, a full and beautiful mid-voice with a clarion top register: “O Herstes Wunder” rang out with full and intense tone, supported magnificently by Inkinen and the orchestra.

John Wegner’s indisposition has already been noted. Yet he held the stage as a Wotan should, despite a disappearing voice. He has that special ability to be still without seeming immobile and because of the stillness, movement and expression gain in power when they occur.

Fricka can be a bore if she be more sanctimonious than angry. The great Frickas ( e.g. Elisabeth Höngen, Rita Gorr, Christa Ludwig) always have a more or less imperious outrage barely concealing the painful indignation of a woman scorned by her partner. I admit to being a huge fan of Margaret Medlyn. She was in fine voice and she was Fricka. What an artist she is.

Jonathan Lemalu was HUGE as Hunding. The voice and expression worked superbly, especially his ability to darken the voice and inject it with so much menace.

I’ve left Christine Goerke as Brünnhilde to the end because of the singers she was, for me, the great discovery of the evening. Her stage presence, her facial expressions and her acting in general were quite magnetic: she has that rare ability to draw attention to herself without compromising the other artists, in fact enhancing what they are doing by association. I felt myself involved with Brünnhilde’s dilemma in a way that only the great Brünnhildes manage to convey. Obviously her interpretation will mature; in many ways it is fine and wonderful already.

As to the voice, WOW. Used as I am to the dearth of true hochdramatisch voices available to sing these roles since Nilsson retired, it is amazing to hear not a spinto voice pushed out of it’s natural fach but a richly coloured and powerful dramatic soprano with the top gleaming, the middle darkly tinged and lower register (so crucial, say, in  “War es so schmälich” ) full-toned without that “chesty” quality.

My sense of Pietari Inkinen’s conducting in the past has been of refinement and structural cohesion rather than emotional intensity. Even in the music of Sibelius which he conducts so well, I have experienced a feeling of emotional restraint and even compression of climaxes. He has certainly refused to flirt with brass in full cry and timpani, for example, at levels of ear-thwacking intensity.

Die Walküre is clearly different emotional territory for him. His direction of this performance had all the qualities of his best work and a new frisson of freedom and excitement. The orchestra provided some of the finest climaxes I’ve ever heard in Wagner, along with some exquisite playing in soft passages: the shaping and sifting of the orchestral tracery in the introduction to Siegmund’s “Winterstürme” was simply magical, just as it should be. I’ve seldom heard this wonderful orchestra of ours play with such unanimity and beauty of tone. The strings in their many hushed passages played as if their tone were suspended in mid-air, tangible but of the finest grain.

Inkinen’s decision to seat the orchestra with violas to the right front and cellos behind was inspired. Wagner’s orchestration is masterly and his writing for violas crucial to the “mix”. We heard every detail, while the cellos and basses (who were missing a player I heard later) had plenty of power to be heard perfectly.

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Die Walküre – another review of the Wellington performance, by Peter Mechen

Mention Wagner to the average person in the street, and if you get a response it’s more than likely to be along the lines of something to do with the “Ride of the Valkyries”, one of those pieces of music that have become icons in their own right and perfectly capable of standing alone and being appreciated in splendid isolation. I myself still remember as a musically inexperienced twenty year-old hearing a recording of Die Walküre for the very first time, and being electrified by the beginning of the opera’s third act, which of course opens with those well-known irruptions of orchestral energy that herald the Valkyries’ wild ride.

But as for the other four hours’ worth of music, I was equally captivated, drawn into a fantastic world by the range and scope of Wagner’s creative imagination. I recall on this first occasion late at night playing the opening of the first LP side of the impressively packaged set (the famous Decca recording with Solti conducting) which I’d borrowed from the Palmerston North Public Library, intending to “sample” a few minutes of the music and play the rest in the morning if I liked what I heard. I think it was at about 4:30am or thereabouts that I finally came out of my trance, having ignored sleep and simply kept going to the very end of the opera, all ten LP sides of it – I was unstoppable, and so, it seemed, was Wagner.

On Sunday afternoon at the Michael Fowler Centre just as captivating (and unstoppable) were Pietari Inkinen and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, plunging whole-heartedly into the Prelude from Act One of Die Walküre (which the publicity called “The Valkyrie”) and never relinquishing their grip upon the music throughout, right to the last few strains of the glorious “Magic Fire Music” which concludes the work. What followed was, in my experience, unprecedented, a standing ovation from the MFC audience for all of those performers concerned, a tribute whose enthusiasm truly reflected the efforts of singers and players and conductor to present to us something very special indeed.

This Walküre, though worth the wait, was a long time in coming to Wellington, fifteen years after the groundbreaking concert performances of Das Rheingold which the orchestra had given, also in semi-staged form in the Michael Fowler Centre, under the leadership of its conductor-in-chief at the time, Dr. Franz-Paul Decker. My belief at the time was that the NZSO and Decker were planning to work their way, at various intervals, through the remaining “Ring” operas, making the venture a “first” for this country. Alas, due to sponsorship difficulties, the plan was scuppered, or at least put on indefinite long-term hold.  I greatly admired Decker as a conductor of the Austro-German repertoire, and loved his Rheingold, as I had equally enjoyed his concert-hall performances of Mahler and Richard Strauss. It was a numbing disappointment that we weren’t able to experience any further Wagnerian efforts on this kind of scale from him and the orchestra.

So, it was in this context that I awaited the present Walküre, my excitement at the prospect coloured, I admit, by my previous encounters with the conducting of Pietari Inkinen. I’ve had occasion to admire him greatly in the past as a musician – his technical aplomb, his intellectual grasp of scores and works, and his ability to extract beautiful and accurate playing from the orchestra. But up to now, I had always thought his music-making somewhat inhibited emotionally – to my ears he seemed reluctant to bring out from his players any kind of no-holds-barred realization of what was in the music. It seemed enough that he was getting the orchestra to play beautifully, and at times brilliantly, and thereby avoiding those moments when the music’s expression demanded a darker, deeper, more desperate and urgent approach – when, in fact, beauty and brilliance were simply NOT enough to realize the music’s fuller expression.

Perhaps it took me the whole of the first Act of Walküre to be completely and utterly won over by Inkinen’s conducting – but there were plenty of excitements and intensities along the way. The tempestuously-driven Prelude was a great start to the performance, the string-players bending their backs to the task, and the winds and brass sounding the growing warnings of the storm’s thunderous arrival (the timpani absolutely shattering at the climax). By contrast, the tenderness of the string-playing throughout the first exchanges, sung and unsung, between the fugitive Siegmund (Simon O’Neill) and his long-lost sister, Sieglinde (Edith Haller), was heart-melting, with Andrew Joyce’s ‘cello solo one to literally die for.

I did think the playing of the motif associated with Hunding (Jonathan Lemalu), Sieglinde’s husband, needed more brassy girth, a blacker-toned brutality (Hunding is a particularly nasty customer, after all!). But the bite and impact of the orchestral accompaniment to Siegmund’s account of his earlier encounters with Hunding’s own murderous kinsmen was thrilling projected, as was the trenchant support for Siegmund’s scalp-prickling cries of “Wälse”, desperate invocations of his father’s guiding spirit, underpinned by fierce string tremolandi, and radiant contributions from trumpet and winds pinpointing the presence of the sword in the tree. And there was more orchestral radiance framing Siegmund’s poetic “Winterstürme”, the excitement building within the orchestra surrounding the singers’ exchanges as they ascertain their true brother/sister identities as well as acknowledging their love for one another. The Act’s last couple of pages were a ferment of newly-awakened passion between the lovers and great orchestral excitement, by which time I was convinced this was a different Pietari Inkinen at the orchestral helm to that which I’d encountered before.

If Act One had built gradually to that point of intensity, Act Two was on fire orchestrally right from the beginning – and so it went on with scarcely a falter, right through to the end, Inkinen seeming to revel in the intensities and unleash his players’ capabilities to realize those same impulses. My notes are filled with comments such as “wonderful atmosphere – orchestra terrific!” during the exchange between Wotan (John Wegner) and Fricka (Margaret Medlyn), and “the music’s darkness strongly brought out by Inkinen” when Wotan voices his fear of the Nibelungen, and “terrific vehemence in the orchestra” during Wotan’s grief at “Das Ende”. Tremendous stuff from conductor and players, here, as well as throughout Act Three.

All of which would have gone for very little without the singers, who with one disappointing exception made the most of the wonderfully-wrought orchestral support. To get it out of the way, the disappointment came with German-born Australian John Wegner’s Wotan, the singer developing problems with his throat during the course of Act Two, and having to seriously conserve his voice right throughout the following final Act. As the latter contains some of the character’s most significant and memorable moments of the entire cycle Wegner’s ailment was a blow not only for him but for his Brünnhilde and for the audience – instead of the glorious and heartfelt resolution of father-daughter conflict which makes the third Act so very memorable, we had the admittedly absorbing spectacle of an experienced singer intelligently using what vocal resources he still had to get through an extremely demanding series of episodes. He succeeded creditably, but I thought that there ought to have been some kind of announcement made beforehand concerning his ailment, as is done in opera houses, to put the audience in the picture, as it were.

By way of compensation (one of many), we were able to enjoy American soprano Christine Goerke’s debut as Brünnhilde, an assumption that I found gave so much pleasure for a number of reasons – for a start I loved the SOUND of her voice, rich, warm and flexible, drawing me further into the character she was creating with her whole demeanour. Everything her face and body did seemed to flow from the text and its meaning, giving a natural, organic quality to her impulses towards interaction with the others (generally, the three leading women seemed more at ease than did the men in their use of the narrow stage and their interplay with other characters). But Goerke and John Wegner, despite the latter’s vocal ailments, managed to convey plenty of musical and dramatic ebb and flow between them, especially in their Act Two confrontation over the fate of Siegmund. And Goerke brought the same heartfelt qualities to her interactions with each of the Volsung twins, a gravely beautiful Todesverkündigung (announcement of death) with Siegmund, and great and vigorous compassion for the bereft and defenceless Sieglinde.

As Siegmund Simon O’Neill was truly resplendent of voice, if not quite as easeful and fluent in his gestures and movements as his Act One on-stage partner Edith Haller, who took the role of Sieglinde. The “edge” to O’Neill’s bright, heroic tones I always find takes a bit of getting used to at first – but there’s straightaway also that wonderful freshness of aspect and manner, which gives me the impresion that he’s singing all of his music for the first time and is enchanted by its discovery. By the time O’Neill had reached the point of recounting his adventures to the vengeful Hunding, the voice had relinquished its “bleat” and acquired proper warmth and girth, exemplified by those thrilling cries of “Wälse!” already referred to. His delivery of “Winterstürme” was sheer poetry in its effect, and his wholehearted give-and-take with Sieglinde in their increasingly passionate exchanges towards the end of the Act had just the right amount of animal energy and excitement, singers and orchestra catching fire and conveying the sheer exhilaration of it all to us in no uncertain terms.

As his partner and lover-to-be Sieglinde, Edith Haller looked and sang like an angel. She brought to the performance recent experiences in the role at both Bayreuth and the Vienna State Opera, and thus seemed readily able to turn her uncompromising “acting-space” into a vibrant and believable world of repressed emotion, which was then unleashed by Siegmund’s arrival. Equally telling was her desperation in flight from Hunding with Siegmund, and her fierce joy at the thought of carrying her brother/lover’s child, though she suffered, along with everybody else on the platform, through a lack of strong dramatic direction and vision regarding the actual staging of Siegmund’s death. But her Sieglinde was a joy, an unalloyed delight to encounter.

Besides Simon O’Neill, two more New Zealanders took important roles, Jonathan Lemalu as Hunding, the brutal husband of Sieglinde, and Margaret Medlyn as Fricka, Wotan’s long-suffering wife, and guardian-goddess of marriage. Jonathan Lemalu’s darkly-resonant tones made Hunding sound a truly menacing figure, his singing compensating for a rather too-static stage presence – I couldn’t understand why he and Edith Haller didn’t seem to take any notice of Wagner’s quite explicit music-cues during the sequence when Hunding orders Sieglinde to bed, for example. By contrast Margaret Medlyn as Fricka was able to demonstrate her wonderful stage-instinct throughout her scene with Wotan, conveying both the umbrage of a dishonoured goddess and the frustration of a long-suffering wife. I thought her voice seemed more effortly-produced, and not as resplendent as with her Kundry of a few years ago on the same stage – but she successfully brought the character and her underlying motivations to pulsating life.

There would be no show without the Valkyries, “those noisy girls” as comedienne Anna Russell called them during her famous tongue-in-cheek analysis of the Ring Cycle. Here they were gloriously noisy, mainly due, I think, to their forward placement on the platform, in a “stand-and-deliver” line singing directly at the audience (again, a stage director would have almost certainly effected a more interesting configuration), as opposed to their usual deployment in places around the stage. It was all extremely visceral and thrilling!

Again, the “evening dress” made initially for an incongruous effect (what today’s young Valkyrie is wearing when she rides into battle…), which was soon forgotten in the cut-and-thrust of the singers’ exchanges with one another and with the orchestra. I liked the differentiations between the individual voices, some stronger than others, some differently focused – just like any average group of people – but no-one should be singled out, because each voice played its part in giving the scene its astonishing impact.

I’ve already mentioned the “semi-staged” aspect of the performance – the singers were able to use a narrow space in front of the orchestra and conductor, with entrances and exits on each side. There were no costumes as such, and no props at all, so what was mentioned in the libretto – a sword, a spear, a drink – had to be mimed (Wotan’s plastic drink-bottle which he discreetly brought on during Act Three hardly counted – and it was certainly no drinking-horn!). It all worked sufficiently well to further the drama, even if some of the movements, particularly from both Siegmund and his enemy Hunding seemed too stilted and contrived.

The women, I thought, were at an advantage over the men in the matter of “concert attire”, because they were at least able to dress colourfully and suggest different personalities, while the men were confined to their very formalised tuxedos. This seemed to work against whatever theatricality the singers were trying to generate – Siegmund at the very start looked as if he had just come home from an all-night party somewhat the worse for wear, for example. However, as the work progressed we were able to shift our focus away from what people were wearing, and instead concentrate on what they were doing with their faces, bodies, and, of course, voices.

The other thing I thought could have been given more thought, to the work’s overall advantage as a piece of music-drama, was the lighting. Nothing needed to be distractingly over-the-top – just subtle touches letting the music give the cues, would have, I think, enhanced the feeling of a story being enacted. Who would possibly want to insist that a “concert version” of an opera has nothing that suggests the theatre? I thought the red glow which grew out of the opening strains of the Magic Fire music at the opera’s end was entirely apposite, and thought that there were other places throughout the work where changes of ambient light would have added to the sense of dramatic action initiated by the music.

These criticisms are like thistledown planted on the wind, as Denis Glover’s Harry might say, blown away by the staggering achievement of singers, players and conductor with this presentation of one of the world’s mightiest music-dramas. It joins a small, but significant and ever-promising group of Wagner productions in this country, each of which represented for its time hitherto undreamed-of heights of local performance achievement, and has since become legendary. The NZSO and Pietari Inkinen can be justly proud of what they have done to add to that list of legends.

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The Full Monte – music of love’s distraction, from Baroque Voices

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BAROQUE VOICES PRESENTS THE FULL MONTE (Concert Three)

Claudio Monteverdi – Madrigals : Books 3 (complete) and 7 (excerpts)

Baroque Voices, directed by Pepe Becker

Pepe Becker, Jayne Tankersley (sopranos) / Andrea Cochrane (alto)

Oliver Sewell, Geoffrey Chang (tenors) / David Morriss (bass)

Continuo: Robert Oliver (bass viol) / Stephen Pickett (theorbo and chitarrino)

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Wellington

Monday, 16th July, 2012

The third instalment of Wellington vocal group Baroque Voices’ stupendous traversal of “The Full Monte”, or the complete Madrigals of Claudio Monteverdi, drew forth a vein of riches and delights similar in broad-brush stroke terms to the first two concerts. Artistic director Pepe Becker’s idea of combining books of madrigals from different ends of the spectrum of the composer’s output has made for startling contrasts in performance style and emphasis within single concerts.

One would have thought that, as the gap between the two divergent creative periods lessened, there would be more commonality in evidence – but to my ears, the gulf between the composer’s “Prima Practica” (traditional practice) and “Seconda Practica” (innovative practice) seemed throughout this concert as marked as throughout the first two concerts of the series. Of course, the instrumental accompaniments used by the later books (beginning with the Fifth Book of 1605) markedly change the entire sound-picture of the works, but the vocal writing is different as well – more spontaneous, dramatic and volatile than with many of the earlier works.

I confess to not knowing the music of Monteverdi’s contemporaries sufficiently well to comment on the individuality of his earlier works – still, these concerts do allow the unschooled listener to register differences between music written by the same composer at different stages of his life. And one can glean by association how the music of Monteverdi’s more conservative fellow-composers might have sounded.

I must say that, had Baroque Voices decided to proceed through the madrigals chronologically, I would have been just as enchanted, if less informed, by what I encountered. In context, even in the earlier Monteverdi pieces the music has what seems to my ears an enormous variety of expression. The present concert began with two madrigals from Book Three, works whose sounds represented for me a wonderful marriage of energy and delicacy, the contrasts of pure light and oscillating energies in the writing producing a totally enchanting effect throughout.

The second madrigal, “O come è gran martire” had its stratospheric opening marred by a banging door, but the singers continued undeterred, the music expanding like the light of dawn as the men’s voices joined the women’s at “O soave mio adore”. Pepe Becker’s and Jayne Tankersley’s soprano voices were able to spin their lines in thirds over vistas of great enchantment, to breathtaking effect.

True, the instrumental opening of the first of the Book Seven madrigals which followed immediately threw a startlingly-focused interval of a second at us, its instantaneous resolution heightening the passionate marriage of beauty with tension in a way that the earlier madrigals don’t often explore. This madrigal Romanesca for two soprano voices allowed us to savor the differences between two exceptional singers – Pepe Becker’s voice here sounding to my ears richer and mellower, and Jayne Tankersley’s sharper, more pungent and flavoursome.

Together the voices set one another off beautifully – both singers used the music’s figurations compellingly, their bodies expressing by movement and expression the agitations/excitements/ecstasies suggested by the heartfelt (anonymous) text. I especially liked the way the singers would push their voices past the “beautiful singing” threshold and into a world of expression that occasionally touched raw nerves but in doing so reached those intensities required by both poet and composer in each madrigal.

Monteverdi’s theatrical sense was never far away from these settings, the singers here relishing such interactions, as in Book 7’s Al lume dell stelle (mistakenly listed as from Book 3 in the program), where the men (tenor and bass) begin their invocation to the stars, the lines resembling tendrils of light floating upwards and falling back in a kind of spent ecstasy. Tenor Oliver Sewell and bass David Morriss together brought a fine, surging passion to “O celesti facelle…”, while in reply the two sopranos made something equally tremulous out of “Luci care e serene…” And there were stunning harmonic juxtapositionings with seconds grinding and being resolved to thirds, squeezing every drop of angst and sweet release from the situation.

In the beautiful Se per estremo, the alto voice of Andrea Cochrane led off, firm, sonorous and lovely – with the two tenors the middle voices were able to conjure up wondrous harmonic colorations throughout, the tenors, Oliver Sewell and Jeffrey Chang, essaying some finely-nuanced work in thirds, and judiciously pouring their tones into those ambient harmonies to beguiling effect. What a contrast with the vigorous and impassioned utterances of the following Tornate, the two tenors accompanied by Robert Oliver’s ever-reliable bass viol and Stephen Pickett’s perky chitarrino (renaissance guitar), and with the long-breathed sighings of “Voi de quel dolce” interrupted by hot-blooded exhortations – marvellous!

The evening was further enhanced by the spoken contribution of David Groves, responsible for the English translations of these madrigals, who made an appearance in each half of the concert. He explained briefly the context of the poetry (by Tasso) concerning the enchantress Armida, and her would-be-lover Rinaldo, who has abandoned her. One didn’t really have to understand Italian to catch the reader’s impassioned range of expression, and glean the depth and breadth of emotion in the poetry. So, each of a group of three madrigals had their texts read, and then sung by the Voices. The results were astonishing, especially in the first two of the three pieces. The singers vividly evoked the enchantress’s fury and despair at her abandonment – some of the lines stung and burnt with astonishing candor – and the dying fall of the music at “Hor qui manco lo spirto a la dolente” was almost Wagnerian in its impact.

In the third of these, Poi ch’ella (When she came to herself), both soprano voices sounded, I thought, a bit strained (not surprisingly, considering what and how they had sung throughout the first half of the concert) – this was music of resignation, though again impassioned at the end as Armida bemoans her abandonment. The alto and tenors kept the middle lines alive, and the sopranos overcame their vocal discomfiture to manage the final cadence convincingly.

As with the other concerts in the series there were in the programme so many delights to be had that it would take as long as the concert took to both mention and read about all of them! My notes contain exclamations written at the time such as “excellent teamwork between the two sopranos….making something amazingly expressive out of the final line” for the Book 7 O come sei gentile (How gracious you are), and in the following Book 3 Chi’o non t’ami (That I might not love you), “Hymn-like, beautifully modulated…..alto and tenor 2 beautifully amalgamate their tones at “Come poss’io lasciarti e non morire”…..”.

David Groves returned to read us the poems (again by Tasso) describing the anguish of Tancredi, who has killed his disguised lover, Clorinda, in armed combat, and looks for her body in the darkness. (Monteverdi also set an account of the battle between the two, in the “Combattimento” , found in Book 8 of the madrigals.) My overriding on-the-spot comment regarding the performance of the trio of settings was that “the intensity simply keeps coming in waves from all of the singers”. Despite Pepe Becker obviously having some kind of cough, she was still able to deliver those astonishing stratospheric notes needed for “Ma dove o lasso?”, a sombre processional of growing grief, culminating in the cries of “Ahi, sfortunato!…” Certainly no-one would have felt emotionally short-changed in any way in the face of such knife-edged feeling throughout these performances.

One of my favorites from the many splendid things we heard throughout the concert’s second half was the Book 7 Ecco vicine, sung by the soprano 2, Jayne Tankersley and alto Andrea Cochrane. The playing of the continuo, especially Robert Oliver’s bass viol, beautifully underpinned this Book 7 madrigal’s somewhat hyper-expressive outpourings. The words, so important for the composer throughout his entire oeuvre, exotically describe the “beloved” as a “fair Tigress”, and entertain the conceit that wherever the beloved goes, through all kinds of different geographies and under foreign skies, the lover will follow her, with a “lover’s heart”.

Monteverdi boldly renders these words and ideas in his music, great urgency at “Fuggimi pur con sempiterno orrore”, and lovely, spare, al fresco writing about the valleys, rocks, and mountains where the beloved’s footprints are found – lots of air and space in the textures.Then comes music of great and certain devotion: “Ch’andrei la dove spire e dove passi…..bacciando l’aria e adorando i passi……” Wonderful performances by all of such characterful music!

Very great credit to Baroque Voices and their intrepid instrumentalists! We were an extremely appreciative audience on this occasion, but not a large one – whatever it takes to get more people interested in the splendors of this music and its performance here in Wellington, needs to be done before the next of these concerts (the date for “The Full Monte 4” is yet to be finalized). The music is searingly beautiful, the accompanying emotions and responses are eminently accessible, and the performances are often spellbinding. What more could one ask for?