Author: Peter Mechen

A Grand Night for Singing – Voices from California, USA

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand Choral Federation

Association of Choral Directors Inaugural Convention, July 2012 presents:

AMERICAN VOICES

USC Thornton Chamber Singers

Jo-Michael Scheibe (conductor)

ChoEun Lee, Stephen Black, pianists

Brierley Theatre, Wellington College

Thursday, July 12th 2012

After this concert, a pianist friend said to me, at once enthusiastically and (I thought) somewhat resignedly, that “there’s something about the directness of singing that tops everything!” And that was certainly true here, right from the moment at the concert’s beginning when the audience was transfixed by the appearance and solo singing of a beautiful young soprano from the choir by herself on the platform, regaling us with the opening verses of “The Reapers All with Their Sharp Sickles”, a setting of the eighteenth-century American folk-hymn Meditation by Elisha West. The singer was joined by another soloist at the end of the second verse and then by the choir, quietly entering from the aisles and taking up a vocal accompaniment in verse three consisting of cluster harmonies, continuing with verse four and joining in with the last couple of lines with the soloists. The effect was of music gradually spreading through the world, before the first singer again took charge of the vocal line at the end, reminding listeners in the final verse that all shall bring mankind to a day of reckoning with Christ’s Second Coming.

This was how the concert at Wellington College’s Brierley Theatre opened, presented by a choir from the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music. The USC Thornton Chamber Singers group and its conductor Jo-Michael Scheibe were here to give this keynote performance at the July 2012 New Zealand Choral Federation National Conference in Wellington. It was the first of a series of appearances by the group who are undertaking a brief Australasian tour. They’ve since been “across the ditch”, but are flying back from Australia to perform in Auckland at the Holy Trinity Cathedral on Thursday (July 19th), joining the Auckland University Chamber Choir and Choralation (goodness, what a marvellous word!).

Appropriately, the concert was subtitled “American Voices”, indicating much (though not all) of the content as it did the origins of the performers. Two New Zealand works featured, one by David Hamilton, and the other an arrangement of a song Don’t Dream It’s Over by Tim Finn, and other cross-cultural strands included settings of Scottish folk-songs, and anAfro-American spiritual. So there was enormous variety of repertoire and performance style over the evening’s course, which intensified the interest of an audience already held in thrall by the performances alone.

Every item had its own intensely-wrought character, whose contrasts the group seemed to relish and readily communicate to us. Some of the composer’s names were new to me (presumably known to choral “buffs”, though two were those of current choir members, Jordan Nelson and Nolan Frank). A work by Abbie Betinis,  Cedit Hyems, was reminiscent in places of Carl Orff (hardly surprising, considering that part of the setting was of verses from the original Carmina Burana Benedictbeurn) Introduced by a flute solo, the piece brought tightly-worked harmonies at the beginning, which energized into Orff-like rhythms and stimulated engaging physical movement – very syncopated, and dramatically contrasted music. Jordan Nelson’s The Snow I Hated mirrored the text’s “haiku” intensities, tight harmonies, frequent repetitions and magnificently-sculptured chordings (both composition- and performance-wise) – intense “wrong-note” harmonies which conveyed single words such as “away” so vividly.

I loved the evocations of memory stimulated by Dale Warland’s Always Singing, the word “singing” repeated and resonated at the start, as if transporting us trance-like to nostalgic realms, music both of comfort and sadness, the voices’ rich blend reaching into the tonal depths in places, suggesting the roots of human feeling suggested by the composer. And though I can’t really remember when and where I last heard David Hamilton’s Veni, Sancte Spiritus, the music’s beautifully-wrought, deeply underpinned flowering from the beginning, and the frisson of its central cascading episodes straightaway reconnected, carrying the momentums as if on air through the concluding array of amens and alleluias.

Another name known to me was Morten Lauridsen, his Lament for Pasiphae a setting which I didn’t know of Robert Graves’ verses, but relished as one would the company of an old friend. The music powerfully conveys the poet’s anguish of lost love and departed joy, the voices clanging like tocsins, obsessively railing against the “dewless and oppressive cloud” which has blotted out the sun, and imploring what is left of the day’s warmth and light to bring some comfort and resignation. Relief from such angst-ridden sounds was forthcoming with Mack Wilberg’s arrangements of Three Scottish Folk-Songs, the Britten-like “O whistle and I’ll come to ye” canonic-like progressions, underpinned by a lovely four-hand accompaniment, one of the basses from the choir joining Korean pianist ChoEun Lee at the keyboard. The second “My love’s in Germany” outlined a tragic story of a soldier killed in the war and mourned by his sweetheart, the singing a full-blooded lament, the accompaniment haunting; while the third “I’ll aye call in by yon town” whirled us all away on energetic reel-like caperings, voicings and accompaniments enjoying themselves hugely.

Samuel Barber’s dark, Prokofiev-like waltz-song “Under the Willow Tree” from his opera Vanessa was performed by a tenor solo, the emotion ready and heartfelt, the tones full-throated at “Where shall we sleep, my love?”, the piece making a startling foil for Eric Whitacre’s little man in a hurry which followed, almost its antithesis, in fact. Whitacre’s setting of characteristically pithy verses by ee cummings fitted the words like gloves – repetitive, molto perpetuo rhythms and syncopated irruptions, all brought off with wonderful control by the singers – a contrasting, more lyrical section characterizes the “little child” before the piece speeds up with a glissando and dove-tailing syncopations, words and phrases flailing in all directions, the pianist’s turbo-charged energy rocketing the piece to its conclusion.

We next enjoyed a truly revivalist Shenandoah by way of preparing for the choir’s take of Neil Finn’s Don’t Dream It’s Over, stunningly sung and played by Nolan Frank, his “freer” guitarist-vocal style extraordinarily fused with the choir’s concerted accompaniments in a wholly spontaneous-sounding way. Last on the program was the invigorating Ride On King Jesus, an arrangement by Stacy V.Gibbs of a traditional Afro-American spiritual, a tour de force of controlled, energetic singing. In a note Gibbs explained how he wanted the soprano line to exemplify the joy and confidence of faith in “King Jesus” – and some extraordinary stratospheric work from the sopranos towards the end certainly galvanized our sensibilities and uplifted our spirits!

A standing ovation was a “given” in such circumstances, one to which the choir warmly responded with both an encore and a “blessing”, the words of the latter read by the conductor before being sung. It all made for an extraordinarily satisfying and heartening concert of great singing from a wonderful group of musicians.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ben Morrison and friends at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Two Great Piano Trios

BEETHOVEN – Piano Trio in B-flat Op.97 “Archduke”

SCHUBERT – PIano Trio in B-flat D.898

Benjamin Morrison (violin) /  Jane Young (‘cello) / David Vine (piano)

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

Sunday 8th July 2012

It was really Christchurch-born violinist Benjamin Morrison’s show, though, of course he couldn’t have played the “two great piano trios” on his own. So, joining him for this concert and making up what one might call an “ad hoc” group,  were ‘cellist Jane Young, currently principal ‘cello in the Vector Wellington Orchestra, and David Vine, well known Wellington-based pianist, conductor and scholar.  The ensemble had come together primarily for Ben Morrison’s benefit – he’s on a visit “home” from his current studies in Graz, Austria, where he’s completing a Masters degree in Solo Violin and Chamber Music. He’s played a good deal of chamber music while in Europe (and it shows), as well as competing and winning prizes in several competitions – for example, the National Chamber Music of Austria Competition,”Gradus ad Parnassum”.

Throughout the afternoon the three musicians played as their lives depended upon the outcome, with all the attendant thrills and spills one might expect from the circumstances. Of course, given the popularity of each of these wonderful trios, one can too easily take for granted their ever-present difficulties – while the music , in each case, can survive less-than-capable performances and still make an impression, everything properly blossoms and beguiles when, as here, the playing demonstrates a certain level of skill and understanding. There were moments which brought certain individual insecurities, but the ensemble rarely, if ever, faltered, and the essential strength and lyricism of each of the works was conveyed with enthusiasm and commitment.

While St. Andrew’s Church wasn’t filled to bursting, there was a sufficient number present to generate a keen listening atmosphere, with tingling lines connecting the sounds made by the players to their listeners’ ears. In this respect I thought Morrison’s playing in particular outstanding, his tone having a vibrancy at all times that, whether loud or soft, conveyed to us exactly what degree of feeling or colour was required of each phrase. I write this somewhat guiltily, as I’m realizing the extent to which I focused my attentions upon him throughout the concert, probably to the detriment of my registering what the others were doing. But I thought his playing most deservedly compelled such attention throughout.

First up was the Beethoven, marked here by restrained, very “reined-in” playing from pianist David Vine at the outset, obviously taking some time to settle, but nevertheless establishing a pulse which enabled the string players to fill out their lines amply with plenty of inflection and subtle colorings that suggested a conversation of equals. It was good to get the exposition repeat in that respect – twice the pleasure, and filled with interest registering the effects of “experience” upon the music, the interaction between Morrison and ‘cellist Jane Young a particular delight. The players enjoyed the “misterioso” elements of the development’s beginning, as well as relishing the exchanges of pizzicati notes, managing a proper surge of energy taking the music to the reprise of the “big tune”. In other words, the music’s ebb and flow was shaped most satisfyingly throughout.

The scherzo was distinguished by fine rhythmic pointing, apart from a slight hiccup at the top of one of the fugal-like phrases early on. The players made something terrific of the more trenchant passages, burgeoning their tones excitingly during each crescendo, and leaving us expectantly awaiting each subsequent wave of energy. Again, Ben Morrison’s playing projected a real sense of relishing both strivings and outcomes, giving plenty of musical substance to both his colleagues and to the audience. And the slow movement grew from the hymn-like opening throughout its variation movements as flowers gently and gloriously open in the sun, the players giving all the time in the world to the process of integrating a sense of arrival with a feeling of further exploration, thus preparing the way for the finale.

Here, the trajectories were delightfully bucolic, the performance surviving a bumpy patch amidst the tremolando-like pianistic figurations, and keeping its poise right through to the coda, which was excitingly done, the “schwung” of the of the music kept to the fore despite the occasional spills. What was particularly thrilling was the élan with which Ben Morrison threw off those concluding figurations, serving notice of an artistic coming-of-age which we all anticipate enjoying on occasions in the years to come.

After the Beethoven, the Schubert seemed more relaxed, the opening having a “Frei, aber froh” feeling about its forthright energies, not epic, heroic statements here, but still very Schubertian, very “gemächlich” or relaxed, a feeling further underlined by the lyrical second subject. I got the feeling throughout this movement, rightly or wrongly, with Ben Morrison’s playing, that he “sees” the music as if from a great height, and so is able to shape each paragraph of the symphonic argument with great surety, ably supported here by ‘cello and piano. The trio caught the music’s physicality in places, coming through not exactly unbloodied, but definitely triumphant.

The gem of this Trio is, of course, the slow movement, containing one of the composer’s loveliest melodies, and here sung to great effect by all concerned, especially by the violin. Ironically, it was in this movement, during the violin’s chromatic ascent from the central agitations back to the melody’s reprise, and again, briefly with the ascent to the final note, that the player’s intonation uncharacteristically wasn’t spot-on; but the ‘cello’s heavenly accompanying of the violin throughout this section, underpinned by the murmuring piano, banished all thoughts of human fallibility for just a short, treasurable moment in time.

Though I thought the Scherzo took time to settle rhythmically, the players managed the trickily-stressed dovetailing in places with great nimbleness, then relished the “cradle-song” aspect of the Trio for their own and for our pleasure. The cheekily-played opening of the finale had the theme passing from player to player, then adding to the insouciance with a strutting “Hungarian-like” episode, and further flavoring the experience with some ghostly shimmering from the strings – all very discursive, but held together with fine concentration, and a flair for characterization, the violinist demonstrating by turns his accompanying as well as his “leading” skills throughout.

At the piece’s conclusion, the audience was quick to show its appreciation of the performances, and in particular of Ben Morrison’s remarkable talent as a musician.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Triple the pleasure and more at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Orchestra presents:

BEETHOVEN – Triple Concerto, for violin, ‘cello, piano and orchestra Op.56

KENNETH YOUNG – Douce Tristesse

HINDEMITH – Trauermusik for viola and string orchestra

BIZET – L’Arlesienne (Suite No.2)

with Vesa-Matti Leppänen (violin), Andrew Joyce (‘cello), Diedre Irons (piano) and Julia Joyce (viola)

Wellington Chamber Orchestra (leader: Liz Pritchett)

Conducted by Peter van Drimmelen

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

Sunday, 1st July, 2012

Some people know how to celebrate in style, and the Wellington Chamber Orchestra, by way of marking their fortieth year of giving concerts certainly popped a goodly number of musical champagne corks on this truly heartwarming occasion.

Even before conductor Peter van Drimmelen made his delightfully tangental entrance (from the side door of the church) to ascend the podium and begin the concert, there was a sense of something slightly “charged” hovering about the auditorium and amongst the audience – a buzz of excitement and expectation, undoubtedly in view of the programme and the starry line-up of musicians brought together to play some of it with the orchestra.

I was surprised at the number of concerts the conductor told us he had taken with the orchestra over the years, as it was the first occasion on which I had seen him conduct. He told us about his first concert with the orchestra, during which he played Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante K.364, with his wife as the other soloist, and then, surprisingly, after a few other brief reminiscences announced his intention to make the present concert his final one with the ensemble.

So, for a couple of good reasons the concert was something of a milestone event – interestingly, though the programme proclaimed on the cover “WCO in 2012: celebrating 40 years”, nothing was made of this during the actual course of the afternoon. Perhaps the first and/or last concerts of such an anniversary year are the most appropriate occasions to mark such anniversaries, though reminders in between times (such as on the front of the programme) help keep up a sense of something special.

Thus it was that, in truly festive style, the concert began with a kind of birthday present for the orchestra, a work commissioned by Peter van Drimmelen from one of the country’s finest contemporary composers, Kenneth Young. Himself a fine conductor (occasionally of this orchestra, along with a number of others), Young has produced a number of brilliant and energetic orchestral works over the years. For this commission, however, he came up with a beautifully and lyrically-wrought piece, called Douce Tristesse (Sweet Sadness).

The composer’s brief note about his work suggested the piece was something of a valediction – his words “…..like looking at a familiar and fond vista for the last time….” reflected the music’s intense beauty and nostalgic longing, wrought by his adroit use of orchestral colour and texture. I would think that the players loved performing this work as it gave so many of them significant things to do, the wind players particularly in evidence throughout.

The whole orchestra responded to Peter van Drimmelen’s direction with, I thought, considerable sensitivity, the strings especially giving us some lovely soft playing in places. In fact the string-writing had a lovely “wind-blown” ambience during these moments, contrasting appropriately with more juicy lyrical moments such as their exchanges with the harp – the latter instrument was heard also in tandem with winds to beguiling effect.

I couldn’t see the player responsible for the firmly-toned horn solo (a forest of music-stands obscured a whole row of brass-playing faces!), but I could clearly appreciate the work of the orchestral leader, Liz Pritchett, with her solos, which incorporated a sweetly-floated harmonic at one stage of the piece, a lovely effect, as well as her delivering of the piece’s final few notes. At the music’s end, the composer was called to the front to acknowledge some well-earned applause for an attractive orchestral evocation.

The delicacy of Young’s sound-world was thrown into abrupt relief by the opening strains of Bizet’s second L’Arlesienne Suite, with its grandly processional-like opening, weighty and brassy, giving way to some wind interludes featuring the strains of a saxophone, to my delight. Later, the wind playing brought out all the folkish strains of the writing with great gusto.

Saxophone and clarinet gave the second movement an attractive rustic melancholy, while the flute-playing in the following Minuet, was outstanding, first in tandem with the harp and saxophone variously, and then in a beautiful concluding solo, which rightly earned the player the conductor’s and the audience’s special acknowledgement.

The concluding Farandole, taken at a terrific lick once the return of the opening march-tune had done its thing, brought out incredibly exciting playing, one of the players I spoke with afterwards confessing that the orchestra had never done it “that fast” in rehearsal!  There was great work from all concerned, with the percussion having a riotous time towards the end, and the counterpointed tunes roaring out uninhibitedly – I couldn’t help thinking that that devoted Francophile Sir Thomas Beecham would have heartily approved!

It was a concert of contrasts, with these heady festivities followed immediately afterwards by Paul Hindemith’s Trauermusic for solo viola and strings. There was actually a welcome luftpause after the Bizet while players not involved with the Hindemith got themselves off the stage, and a space for the viola soloist was configured. This was Julia Joyce, principal violist of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, a striking platform presence as well as a fine player, transfixing listeners’ ears with tones of intense focus and infinite nuance over the space of her first few notes, following a brief orchestra introduction.

Hindemith wrote the music while visiting London to play the British premiere of his Viola Concerto – after hearing of the death of King George V the composer produced within a day the Trauermusik, a piece for viola and string orchestra, and played this instead of his concerto at the concert. As well as quoting fragments of his own Mathis der Maler Symphony and the temporarily discarded concerto, Hindemith incorporated into the work the melody from a Bach chorale “Here I stand before Thy throne”, which was better-known in England as “The Old 100th”.

Julia Joyce took us unerringly into the work’s intensely lyrical sound-world (at the outset, to my ears not unlike that created by English composers – Tippett, for example, in places in his “Corelli” Fantasia”), moving from the first part’s sorrowing sounds into a brief folkish dance-like interlude, before plunging with the orchestra into another intense, more tightly-wrought, vigorous section, solo instrument and ensemble exchanging strongly-figured lines. These descended into silence, from which grew the chorale, Joyce’s heartfelt viola declamations speaking as an individual soul reaching out towards a kind of ambiently murmuring peace – well-controlled by all, and very moving.

So, onto the Beethoven Triple Concerto, with three more star soloists, two more section leaders (one actually the concertmaster) from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, plus one of New Zealand’s finest pianists. I had heard violinist Vesa Matti Leppänen and ‘cellist Andrew Joyce play together in a concerto during last year’s Brahms Festival, when they played the Double Concerto; and of course our third soloist Diedre Irons had, during the same concert series, given us the titanic B-flat Piano Concerto. With these full-scale, no-holds-barred traversals by the same musicians in mind, I was eagerly awaiting their combination in the Beethoven.

As was often the case in a classical concerto the orchestra set the scene, the playing here bright-toned, lively and spare, the light textures allowing some nice detailing  through, with noticeable ebb and flow, though the violins had an uncharacteristically scrappy moment just before the ‘cello’s first entry. What delight there was here in the discourse, firstly between the stringed instruments, and then including the piano, the orchestra all the while “playing to them” and stimulating even wider discoursings on the part of the three soloists.

From the very first ‘cello entry I loved the solo instruments’ different interactive voicings, with hardly a note, it seemed, taken for granted. Given the lead by the composer in most of the instrumental exchanges Andrew Joyce’s ‘cello set the tone, his eloquent phrasing by turns forthright and yielding, constantly “leading into” what his violinist colleague Vesa-Matti Leppänen was doing. In places the latter seemed like Horatio to the ‘cellist’s Hamlet, the violin-playing rather more upright and straightforward (a couple of awry end-of-phrase notes apart), and less inclined to expressive flights of fancy. But both players shared with pianist Diedre Irons a real sense of listening to what was going on both between them and with the orchestra. Diedre Irons’ piano-playing was a joy – bright-toned, and with plenty of tumbling warmth in her phrasing, bringing to the interactions that vital spark of energy which often sets performances alight. Thanks to these different expressions of give-and-take, the performance of the first movement sparkled with interest throughout, leading up to a coda that crackled with honest-to-goodness excitement.

Poetry and song filled the air with the slow movement’s performance – all three soloists responded to the orchestra’s rapt introduction with playing of great beauty – again, we experienced a sense of those musicians playing each others’ as well as their own music, in heart-warming accord.

The introduction to the finale felt like a gathering-up of tiny wisps of energy, each of the soloists adding his or her strand to the line, intensifying the mixture, and then spontaneously allowing the ‘cellist to impulsively take hold of the tendrils and swing into the open. At that point the performance became even more interesting, because the soloists and conductor seemed not to quite agree on a common pulse for the music. We heard the rhythmic strut of the polonaise-like gait richly pointed by the three soloists, but things were then moved along more resolutely, a shade impatiently, I thought in places, by conductor and orchestra.

Consequently, the ensemble had its not-quite-together moments, such as the strings accompanying of the ‘cello’s opening phrases – their droll chuggings were pushed along not quite in accordance with what Andrew Joyce was playing. As well, Peter van Drimmelen seemed not to want to give the loud orchestral chord that capped off a rush of concerted soloistic triplets any rhetorical space, but instead have it played “in tempo”, so that it too in the overall context had a sense of slightly undue haste. Of course, more sensation-mongering commentators would be glorying in the “creative tensions” that these discrepancies set up – but for me the orchestral tuttis didn’t quite have the sense of rhythmic enjoyment that the soloists had very obviously engendered. It was also (and more prosaically) true that any variations of pulse which either stretched out or squeezed the bar-or phrase-spaces were easily dealt with by the musicians.

An interesting hiatus occurred mid-movement when, after the three soloists had been musing on an amalgam of two-note phrases, tossing them back and forward with what seemed like great relish, and relaxing the pulse in doing so, the conductor, waiting to bring the orchestra in, actually turned around on the podium to look at them as if to say, “Well, have you three quite finished? – and can we get on, now?” All very professionally done, of course; and the music continued unabated.

Of course there was no great battle of wills, here, but it did seem that certain musical ideas weren’t quite in accord between those performing this work. I thought the big, A-minor “Polacca” episode didn’t “gell” sufficiently for those rhythms to have the proper “schwung”  Still, Beethoven survived! – and there were things which gave great delight, such as Diedre Irons’ sudden pianistic plunge into the vortex of C Minor, everything black-browed and threatening for a few moments before a reprise of the opening brought things back on an even keel.

Interestingly enough, after giving almost all the important leads to the ‘cello throughout the work, Beethoven used the violin to introduce the finale’s coda (well, perhaps “Stage One” of the coda! – as things go back to “Tempo 1” right at the end!). Here, Vesa-Matti Leppänen threw caution to the proverbial winds and his violin skipped away, leaving the orchestral strings trailing (fortunately, Andrew Joyce allowed them to catch up!) . What a wonderfully “busy” and mischievously garrulous Allegro the three soloists made of it, Diedre Irons keeping an eagle eye on the conductor and orchestra to keep things rhythmically ship-shape at the return of the polonaise-rhythm, and Peter van Drimmelen getting a splendidly buoyant orchestral response right at the end. Those final ascending figurations and pay-off chords were despatched with real élan from all concerned.

Sheer delight at the end, and plaudits for all – in sum, a wonderful concert.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Engaging “Klezmorim” at Ilott Theatre

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music

KUGELTOV KLEZMER QUARTET

with Philip Green (clarinet)

Kugeltov Klezmer: Rebecca Struthers (violin) / Ross Harris (accordion) / Tui Clark (clarinet) / Malcolm Struthers (double bass)

Ilott Theatre, Wellington

Sunday 24th June, 2012

I felt in a bit of a quandary regarding this concert, torn as I was between feelings of unease through wanting someone else to do this review, and curiosity at experiencing some of this “klezmer” music for myself. I did do a little bit of exploratory research – not too much – so that I’d have a notion, however vague, of what I was about to hear. So, I found out that Klezmer music grew from the desire of Jewish communities to provide music at celebratory events, particularly at weddings (I read one droll remark from a commentator that there wasn’t much difference between a Jewish wedding and a burial except that the former had musicians (klezmorim) in attendance!). This music drew from a wide variety of sources, and (as time went on) assimilated elements from different cultures and diverse musical styles.

Interestingly, these “klezmorim”, itinerant Jewish troubadours, were at first regarded as little more than vagrants on the social ladder – in fact, the term “klezmer” was used for a long time as an insult, one akin to being called a criminal – though their usefulness on occasions that seemed to call for music became more and more valued. If one was a klezmer, one was an untrained musician, unable to read music but able to play by ear. As with jazz musicians in the West, the status of the klezmorim has considerably advanced to the extent of their being regarded as true artists, especially with a recent revival worldwide of the genre.

A glance through the programme notes for each of the items gave one a sense of the ease and fluidity with which the music has taken on aspects of different influences from various places, both East and West. Implied as well is the improvisatory element in performance, one which I imagine would enable performers of klezmer music to give personalized expression to their views of and concerns with things in their world.

Here, I didn’t pick up on any such threads of focus in the concert, other than the desire by the performers to present a number of attractive and enjoyable examples of the world of this music. What did come across throughout the afternoon were evocations of ritual, of gatherings of people, and of symbolic gestures. At the concert’s beginning Rebecca Struthers entered strumming the strings of her violin, followed by clarinettists Tui Clark and Phil Green, simulating a kind of processional whose mode was suggested repeatedly by various pieces in the concert. The program notes spoke of wedding ritual, which a number of pieces evoked , three of which were similarly entitled Kale Bazetsn (Seating the Bride), as did Firn di mekhutonim aheym (no translation, but the title suggesting the entry of the bridal couple’s parents).

In a number of instances the emotion of the music was palpable, such as Rebecca Struthers’ violinistic depiction of a near-hysterical bride in the first Kale Bazetsn, with Tui Clark’s clarinet chiming in for good measure, the grotesquerie of it all underlined by Ross Harris’s somewhat manic piece Narish (translated as “Silly”) being played as a kind of add-on (virtuoso playing from all concerned). Rather more dignified, though just as deeply-felt, was the sequence beginning with Vuhin gaitzu? (“Where are you going?) the flattened fifth at the piece’s beginning commented on by Ross Harris as being particularly mournful in effect, and compounded by the unison of violin and clarinet, whose timbres then by turns gave the upper reaches of the melody almost unbearable anguish, the rhythm weighted and infinitely patient in effect.

In the second “Seating of the Bride” item, Bazetsn di Kale, consisting of two transcriptions of traditional tunes by Jale Strom, the music was again a vehicle for displays of bridal weeping, the first, on Rebecca Struthers’ violin sweet and comely, the second on two clarinets raw and raucous – a more animated section toward the end featured skillful work by both clarinetists.

As with “normal” chamber music, as well as jazz, the sense of the musicians enjoying their collaboration was nicely unequivocal – in Sun, a piece adapted by a Polish Klezmer group and borrowed for this occasion, the asymmetrical 7/4 rhythm produced an interaction which had the feel of a “jam session”, the spontaneity of it all underlined by a sudden counting-call of “one-two-three-four!”, at which the piece jumped forwards excitedly, keeping the rhythmic angularity but at a faster pace. Phil Green used, I think, an alto saxophone in this piece, the timbre and colour contributing to the music’s distinctiveness.

At halftime I found myself musing on what I’d heard thus far, amongst other things in regard to the playing of Phil Green and Rebecca and Malcolm Struthers (the latter playing a double-bass), each sounding right into the idiom of this music. It struck me that these musicians were displaying executant skills they would rarely, if ever, be called upon to employ in their “other” musical lives involving membership of the NZSO (and, of course, Tui Clark, the other clarinetist, was no stranger to orchestral work as well). I couldn’t help reflecting how ironic it was that these musicians’ energies and impulses of vital and colorful music-making seemed so overlaid in a normal orchestral setting. It didn’t seem altogether right that these elements should be allowed to sink more-or-less below the closely-monitored oceanic surface of corporate music-making.

But these somewhat contentious thoughts were short-lived, as they were peripheral to the real business in hand – and the concert’s second half gave as much delight as did the first – beginning with the ‘serious fun” of Ross Harris’s own Vaygeshray, an adaptation of a movement from his Four Laments for Solo Clarinet, which I had heard premiered in 2010, and was here played in a two-clarinet version by Phil Green and Tui Clark. This was music coursing through veins as life-blood, and meeting all kinds of stimuli, bringing about both adulteration and purification – focused, and concentrated, and to the point.

It was an interesting foil for the dance that followed – Makonovetski’s Zhok, a traditional Roumanian dance (a “zhok” is a 3/4 dance, similar, we were told, to the Yiddish hora). Compared with the quiet circumspection of Ross Harris’s piece, this throbbed with a kind of dignified emotion, the dance coloured by a kind of “weeping” sound, with a cadenza-like episode for the first clarinet and some recitative-like interaction between the second clarinet and solo violin, before the return of the processional – again, a sense of ritual was predominant.

To mention all the pieces would be to write tiresomely for pages and pages, though there were things that couldn’t be passed over completely – the almost schizophrenic contrast between the madap Voglenish (Wandering) and the following Melancolia, for example. Both were written by Ross Harris, the first delightfully Keystone-Cops-like, with lovely “bending” and “curdling” of tones from both clarinet and violin, and finishing unexpectedly with a witty snipped-off ascending phrase from the violin; and the second a kind of “sad clown” portrait, the music and playing filled with bemusement and pathetic gesturing.

The final bracket of pieces featured some virtuso playing from all concerned, the rapid-fire Breaza ca pe Arges (the names of two towns in Roumania) demanding energy and agility from both clarinets, a short, sharp and exciting Hora-Staccato-like Rukhelleh, and a full-on, closely-meshed piece Loz’n Gang (translated as “To set off”) requiring great precision and poise, and finishing with a quiet disappearing phrase. The audience was, however, merciless in its appreciation, and demanded an encore, which was forthcoming. Its title I didn’t get, but it certainly turned out to be a whirling dervish of a dance, driven by modulatory swerves from the accordion in places, and winding up with a satisfyingly concerted flourish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wellington Orchestra’s musical haggis

Posted on by Peter Mechen

VENI, VENI EMMANUEL – Vector Wellington Orchestra

DEBUSSY – Marche écossaise sur un thème populaire

MacMILLAN – Veni, veni, Emmanuel

MENDELSSOHN – Symphony No.3 “Scottish”

City of Wellington Pipe Band

Wellington East Girls’ Cantala Treble Choir (director – Brent Stewart)

Claire Edwardes (percussion)

Vector Wellington Orchestra

Marc Taddei (conductor)

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday 23rd June 2012

There’s no doubt about the ability of a set of bagpipes – or, more profoundly, a Highland pipe band – to make an impression on people – I was going to say “set the blood racing”, but I know some people for whom the sound of bagpipes has the opposite effect as regards the movement of blood! I love the sound in reasonably digestible doses and I’m sure most people in the Town Hall on Saturday night got a real thrill at the beginning of the Wellington Orchestra’s concert when the pipes began. Those of us sitting downstairs couldn’t see whether it was one, two or a hundred pipers – but of course, we could certainly hear the skirl of those plangent strains! It was as if the music presented at the concert was the haggis that was being piped in for all of us to enjoy.

It was a characteristic gesture on the part of the organizers of the concert and I thought it worked beautifully. Of course it was designated a “Scottish” programme, with repertoire combining the familiar (Mendelssohn) with the not-so-familiar (Debussy) and the excitingly contemporary (MacMillan). I thought this was fair enough, by dint of the last-named composer’s nationality, even if the work had almost nothing whatever to do with Scotland, being a meditation for percussion and orchestra upon the coming of Christ to the world. So, it was a concert planned and brought off with a lot of flair.

There remained the curious affair of Debussy writing a specifically Scottish work, a circumstance I’m certain I knew about but had tucked away in the recesses of my store of encyclopedic knowledge, never expecting to have to take it out and dust it off and actually look at it. The printed programme notes, which I thought were very good in the case of each of the works, told the popularly accepted story pretty comprehensively – that Debussy wrote the work in response to a commission from a certain Scottish military officer, General Meredith Reid. The latter wanted the composer to arrange and orchestrate a march using popular Scottish tunes generally associated with the General’s ancestors, the ancient Earls of Ross, who were also known as  “The Lords of the Isles”.

According to certain accounts, the General called unannounced upon the composer, at his humble lodgings, and handed him his visiting-card. Apparently, as neither could speak the other’s language, composer and general decided, via expression and gesture, to seek help in a local tavern, where an interpreter was found, and the General’s purpose made clear. Debussy set to work on the march, arranging it initially for piano for four hands – the original title of the piece was Marche des anciens Comtes de Ross  or “March of the ancient Counts of Ross”.

Perhaps it needs to be pointed out that Debussy, though still a young composer, and grateful for any commissions that came his way, wasn’t exactly a raw beginner by the time the incident took place, in 1891. The year before, he had written his most popular single piece of music – “Clair de lune” from the Suite Bergamasque for solo piano – and had completed various other works, including songs, other solo piano pieces, a Petite Suite for piano, four hands, and a Fantasie for piano and orchestra. Some accounts have “romanced” the General as well – he was, in fact John Meredith Read, an American diplomat and lawyer of Scottish descent, who had been the United States Consul-General for France for several years during the 1870s. Perhaps his French was a little rusty by the time he called on Debussy, but he surely would have been able to converse with the composer – and the story’s “translator”, the writer Alphonse Allais, would probably have been present in the tavern merely as a drinking companion.

Anyway, once Debussy had completed the four-hand keyboard version of the March, he took his time to orchestrate the piece, and didn’t finish the job until 1908. The result, if not the greatest of his works, is charming, and has more than a whiff of Scotland about it. Here, at the concert, it made a splendid overture for what was to follow; and the orchestra played the music with plenty of sensitivity and panache in the appropriate places.

Next on the programme was the work by James McMillan, the percussion concerto Veni, Veni Emmanuel. The Debussy piece had put all of us in an excellent humour, ready to be entertained by the spectacle of seeing an energetic percussionist dashing madly around and about the concert platform, going from instrument group to instrument group, and creating some wondrously ear-catching sounds in the process – this is what I remembered of seeing and hearing Scottish percussionist Colin Currie performing this work in Wellington almost two years ago.  But there was a surprise in store for us –  the soloist Claire Edwardes had come onto the stage and received her introductory applause, and gone over to her first “station”, when two groups of young women suddenly stood up in lines on either side of the upstairs auditorium. They began singing a plainchant version of the Hymn Veni, Veni Emmanuel, from which composer James MacMillan had received his initial inspiration for his work. The surround-effect was lovely to begin with, but then entered magical realms in verse three, where the two groups sang in close-knit canon, the result sounding like the “opening up” of some kind of enormous reverberation and enlargement of the space in which we were listening. So evocative – and so enchanting – again, indicative of flair and imagination in presenting a concert.

The choir was mentioned in the printed programme, but only if one read the acknowledgements page at the back did one pick this up – there was no indication of any such group present on the “programme list” page, the intention (so the group’s conductor, Brent Stewart, told me, afterwards) being to give the audience a surprise. It turned out that the two groups were members of the Wellington East Girls Cantala Treble Choir.  When they had finished singing, I thought the orchestra might have most dramatically begun straight away with the opening of the concerto – but instead, conductor Marc Taddei led the applause for the choir and conductor, which, of course we heartily joined in with.

Reflecting on the differences between Claire Edwardes’ performance of Veni, Veni Emmanuel and that by Colin Currie, as I remembered it, they weren’t so much in what the soloists did, but in the spaces and contexts of each occasion. Most people would, I think, agree with me that, if the same work is performed first in the Michael Fowler Centre and then in the Town Hall, it’s an utterly different experience being in the audience. Colin Currie’s performance in the Michael Fowler Centre seemed more like a ritual, more contained and prescribed, more elevated and removed from his audience. Everything seemed (was) further away, so that it was all more dreamlike, less immediate – and so was the sound, or sounds, because of a very different acoustic. Thus I was far more easily able to relate the different musical episodes to what the composer was trying to express during the earlier performance, because the distancing of everything abstracted the performing experience. I still remember, at the time, feeling that the constant movement of the soloist between stations of percussion drew the observer’s attention perhaps distractingly to what the player was doing and how he or she was doing it, rather than focusing on the sound that was being made and its expressive or symbolic effect in the overall scheme. However, at the time, there was this sense of the player’s progressing between percussion stations, suggesting some kind of journey towards a goal – so there was this ritualistic aspect, culminating in the sense of fulfillment with the tubular bells played high up at the back of the orchestra.

There was no doubting Claire Edwardes’ incredible virtuosity – an astonishing tour de force of percussion playing, no doubt about it. But in the Town Hall, in that confined space and very immediate acoustic, the soloist and what she was doing was all much more physically palpable – and her sounds very “present” – so that the element of display came across, I thought, far more strongly than any sense of larger ritual, of following some kind of poetic or spiritual ideal. Claire Edwardes had, like Evelyn Glennie (whom I saw a few years ago playing a John Psathas Percussion Concerto), a very engaging physical presence which drew our attention to everything that she was doing. For me, at any rate, the music’s programmatic significance was swamped in a series of waves of there-and-then enjoyment – a bit like the news presented as entertainment on television – somehow the actual information gets a bit lost in the razz-matazz.

The part of the work which did allow me to refocus on the composer’s spiritual expression of an idea came with the coda of the work, entitled Easter, where the heartbeats representing Christ in the human soul are pounded out between the soloist and the orchestral timpanist (the sight-lines weren’t the best and so Edwardes and timpanist Larry Reese had trouble keeping their whacks absolutely together, but the effect remained strong and telling) following which came Edwardes’ symbolic ascent to the tubular bells, which rang out hymn-like amid a scintillating sea of tintinnabulation.  Every string player softly activated a triangle suspended from his or her music-stand, while the bells rang and sank back into silence.

For performances to successfully achieve a realization of the composer’s program or scheme for an audience seems to me problematical, considering the distraction of the display element – the soloist’s movement between stations and often frenetic activity in creating the sounds was akin to what I would imagine that of a honey bee in a beehive. In both performances (more so with this latter one) I tended to get taken up with that process, fascinated by the array of skills on display and enjoying the different sounds. But I would also imagine that, as one grows more familiar with the work, its message would gradually begin to coalesce – there were certainly moments amid the beaverings and squirrelings that suggested something beyond what was going on in front of one’s eyes.

Interestingly, I had the opportunity to listen to some of the concerto’s performance via a recording, which I was able to use during an RNZ Concert review – away from the visual aspect, the sounds immediately took on a more abstracted and transcendent purpose, so that I found myself as a listener thinking of the piece’s meaning, as the composer surely had intended. Food for thought, I would think (so to speak)…..

And so to the Mendelssohn “Scottish” Symphony, which took up the second half of the program, an absolutely gorgeous piece of music – as Marc Taddei said, one of the first examples of great nineteenth century romanticism in music. I thought the first three movements of the work came across splendidly, with many fine things. The very opening of the work was beautifully played, first of all by the winds, with the oboe very prominent – for me, perhaps because of the “bagpipes” association, there’s something about the timbre of an oboe that suggests a similar ambience – and then the strings, whose tonal sheen was, I thought, utterly beguiling, and whose line was so eloquent – what beautiful playing Marc Taddei got from his orchestra! I thought the playing captured the atmosphere that Mendelssohn himself talked about when he said he found the beginnings of his “Scottish Symphony” in the ambiences of the rooms at Holyrood Palace where the lover of Mary Queen of Scots, the courtier David Rizzio was murdered by Mary’s enemies, and the chapel where Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. This romantic, historical aspect which inspired the composer was brought out beautifully in the first part of this performance.

Only the finale I found somewhat problematical – and I admired what Marc Taddei and the orchestra were trying to do with it, but I don’t think it quite came off. There’s a slightly pompous and bombastic element in the work which comes to the fore in this movement with the work’s coda – a kind of grand processional, in which a version of the main theme of the opening movement is brought back, but this time in a major key. Conductor and orchestra were, I think, trying to remove its pomposity, and make it more integrated with the rest of the finale, which is an energetic Scottish dance. What happened, though, was that the finale was started at such a terrific lick that the performance almost had nowhere to go by the end, and things were steaming along to the point of everything being a bit of a gabble. I think the tempi were just too quick all through for the players to properly articulate the music – the strings had trouble pointing the “Scottish snap” at the very beginning at Marc Taddei’s tempo, and there was certainly no grandeur at all in the coda – and I think there should be some kind of sense of summing up, true, without pomposity, but with a sense of arrival. For me, here, the baby was thrown out with the bathwater – but I must say in fairness to all concerned I spoke with a friend afterwards who thought it was all tremendously exciting!

So each of us listens to these things with wonderfully subjective ears! What was also interesting was a slight hiatus at the beginning of the clarinet solo almost at the end of the work, where it seemed as though either the clarinettist Moira Hurst started her solo too early or else Marc Taddei brought her in too early – just the matter of a bar or so – she stopped, and quickly started playing again, and no harm was done. But it was significant that, whatever the case, the conductor singled her out for some extra plaudits at the conclusion of the performance – and, quite apart from the slight “blip” of the uncertain moment, the focus on the player was richly deserved.

I shouldn’t nominate favorites, as a critic – but I couldn’t help capitulating completely to the second movement, the scherzo, as played here – and with good reason. One perhaps can never play a Mendelssohn scherzo too fast, to get that fairy-like aspect, and this performance cracked along with some marvellous playing from all concerned – some wonderfully soft, bustling elfin-like delicacy in places, and then some rumbustious, give-it-all-you’ve-got hell-for-leather exuberance from the players by way of contrast, leading up to the climax. That movement alone gave me enormous pleasure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sergey Malov and Michael Houstoun – capturing the ebb and flow

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music Hutt Valley presents:

SERGEY MALOV (violin/viola) and MICHAEL HOUSTOUN (piano)

SCHUBERT – Sonata in A Minor “Arpeggione” D.821 / JS BACH – Violincello Suite No.3 in C Major

SCHUMANN – Violon Sonata No.1 in A MInor Op.105 / PAGANINI – “La Campanella” (finale of Violin Concerto No.2)

Little Theatre, Lower Hutt

Friday 22nd June 2012

Rarely does a concert begin more poetically than when Schubert’s music is involved – or so it always seems at the time. The opening exchanges between piano and, in this case, viola, of the intriguingly-named “Arpeggione” Sonata brought their own resonance and warmth to the somewhat ungrateful acoustic of the Lower Hutt Little Theatre, thanks to both pianist Michael Houstoun’s and violist Sergey Malov’s lyrical, deeply-felt playing.

Schubert’s “Arpeggione” Sonata was so-called because of the music’s original commission for the so-named six-stringed instrument, one rather like a viola da gamba but fretted like a guitar. Its repertoire is today nearly always played on either a viola or ‘cello, though I have heard of moves afoot to reintroduce the beast for our interest and, hopefully, pleasure.

In particular, Malov’s viola sound had that quality shared by the playing of all great instrumentalists, at once a rich, mellow quality, but one that would sharpen its focus at moments along the musical line, indicating the strength of the thought behind the music-making. And no better a chamber-music partner here, than Michael Houstoun, whose sensitive, yet equally-focused playing seemed a perfect mirror for Malov’s intensities.

What struck me in particular was the intimacy of the musical discourse in places, the readiness of both players to draw their listeners in – but never self-consciously. One always felt the sensation of a composer’s thoughts and dreams flooding the places we were taken, a full gamut of expression, with nothing denied the chance to have its say. My notes are filled with comments such as “so spontaneous-sounding” and “wondrous flexibility of phrasing”, folllowed by “dreaming and introspective” and “communicating sheer enjoyment” – all impressions that defy analysis, but were foremost for me in the concert’s experience.

Following the Schubert, the Bartok Solo Violin Sonata was scheduled, but to our surprise Sergey Malov re-entered still carrying his viola. He asked the audience’s pardon, but said that he thought, after consultation with Michael Houstoun, that the hall’s sound with such a near-capacity audience would not serve the Bartok well, and so he proposed to play for us instead one of JS Bach’s solo ‘Cello Suites on his viola. Having enjoyed the Schubert, I was glad to have more of the viola’s attractively mellow voice, and agreeably pleased to hear how eloquently the instrument in Malov’s hands traversed the figurations of one of these works – in fact the Third Suite in C Major.

This was music-making which underlined the idea that, in Baroque music, the instrumental timbres and colours for different works seemed to matter far less than the player’s basic musicianship in bringing these things to life. At no point did I find myself thinking, “Oh, that comes off better on the ‘cello”, due to such care regarding note-values and overall phrasing being taken throughout by the player. Not that the approach was a literal “cross every “t” and dot every “i”, as Malov’s playing had a strongly-projected sense of freedom and spontaneity with whatever he did. Predominantly rhythmic movements were deliciously and pliably pointed (I enjoyed the occasional ambiguity of the music’s propulsion in the third movement), and Malov relished the near-strident “pulling the cat’s tail” couple of notes which Bach uses to induce tension during the last of the movements.

For the second half we moved slightly upwards in our listening, to the violin – Malov gave us Schumann’s First Sonata in A minor, a lovely performance from both violinist and pianist, rich, dark, agitated and unquiet throughout the ever-striving opening. Schumann writes such passionate melodies that often remain open-ended, heightening the longing for fulfillment, a super-sensitivity, but expressed in an entirely human way. Again I was taken with Michael Houstoun’s sensitive playing, ever alive to what his partner was doing and acting and reacting accordingly.

Though there’s lyrical warmth aplenty throughout certain moments, other episodes In Schumann’s chamber music can sound somewhat dour, with near-obessive repetition risking monotony. Such wasn’t the case here, as violinist and pianist brought so much light and shade to their voicing and interactive phrasings. And they brought out all the Allegretto second movement’s whimsical qualities, taking time to allow the brief German forest-echo sequence some resonance, before the opening’s reprise. The finale, though serious and purposeful, was kept nimble and buoyant, the dialogues between violin and piano beautiful synchronized, with the players bringing out singing lines in the midst of great energies.

The programme’s final listed item was Paganini’s “La Campanella”, taken from the finale of the composer’s Second Violin Concerto. This was a kind of extra-musical treat, with the composer most obviously out to entertain, delight, astonish, stupefy and generally gobsmack his audiences by requiring all kinds of instrumental pyrotechnics from his soloist. Occasionally there was some music, the famous theme, no less! – but it tended to be forgotten amid the breathholding double-stopped harmonics, the left-handed pizzicati, and the double-stopped legato phrasings ascending and descending. Michael Houstoun orchestrated his part wonderfully in places, but generally provided a solid foundation for Malov’s (and Paganini’s) violinistic flights of fancy.

After these heady entertainments, Sergey Malov seemed to rethink in part his decision to not attempt the Bartok Sonata, because as an encore he played part of the work, which, after the technical coruscations of the Paganini, actually fell more gratefully that one might have expected on our ears. I think this was perhaps because he had by this time “played in” both himself and his audience, to the point where he felt he could give us anything – our listening had been ‘fine-tuned” most satisfactorily, or so it seemed.

The exerpt from the sonata had a furtive, “pursued” aspect at the start, with the violinist having to jump back and forth between registers in places. When muted, the strings took on an even more shadowy, haunted character, a compelling world of sound thrown into relief by the soulful, pleading mute-removed lines which vie with the scampering music at the end. By the time he had finished we all wished he had in fact played the whole Bartok work after all – in retrospect, at the end of the concert would have been an ideal place because of that “playing-in” phenomenon which would have worked similar wonders with any demanding piece of modern or near-contemporary music.

So – a wonderful concert, one I will enjoy for ages to come, long after those actual sounds have died away. How marvellous to have heard a string player of such calibre, and with a pianist who brought his customary focus and beautifully appointed technical finish to a partnership of equals.

Revolutionary Beethoven from the NZSQ

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NEW ZEALAND STRING QUARTET

BEETHOVEN – “Revolution” – The Middle Quartets

String Quartets Op.59 No.3 in C Major “Razumovsky”

Op.74 in E-flat “Harp” / Op.95 in F Minor “Serioso”

New Zealand String Quartet :  Helene Pohl, Douglas Beilman (violins)

Gillian Ansell (viola) / Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

Genesis Energy Theatre, Classical Expressions, Upper Hutt

Monday, 11th June 2012

This was the second in a two-concert presentation by the New Zealand String Quartet of what are popularly thought of as Beethoven’s “middle period” string quartets. The first concert had featured the opening two of the set of three “Razumovsky” Quartets Op.59, which the group had taken to various venues around the country – as they had done earlier in the year with the Op.18 “Early” Quartets. This time round we got the third “Razumovsky”, followed by Op.74 “the Harp”, and Op.95, the “Serioso” quartets – riches indeed!

The printed program for the concert didn’t on this occasion carry the NZSQ’s own defining subtitle “Revolution” for their “middle quartets” traversal, which was surprising – the name certainly suited aspects of each of the works we heard, and especially so throughout these rigorously-conceived, and utterly absorbing readings. True to form, the NZSQ seemed to leave none of Beethoven’s compositional stones unturned throughout its search for the essence of this music’s greatness.

Of course, this isn’t the first time the quartet has played these works, though it’s been over ten years since their previous Beethoven “project” in which they played the whole cycle – they recorded just two of the “Razumovsky” Quartets shortly afterwards, but unfortunately there have been no more. Perhaps this current undertaking, again featuring all of the Beethovens, will inspire a further round of recordings (at the very least Op.130, please, with both of its finales!) – one would imagine concertgoers in the wake of these performances up and down the land wanting to relive the excitements and pleasures of such vital and inspired music-making!

So, my task in the course of this review is to try and come to grips with just what is it that made this quartet’s playing for me so distinctive and compelling in these works. By what alchemic means could these players, over the space of three very different Beethoven quartets, so readily take themselves and their listeners into what seemed like the pulsing heart of both the music and its composer?

In the first place, nothing got in the way of those sounds for us – at the outset, the clarity and corresponding lack of resonance in the theatre might have disconcerted at first, but then increasingly delighted one’s sensibilities as the music proceeded.. And the stage’s empty, though evocatively-lit spaces reminded one of photographs of 1950s and 60s Bayreuth productions by Wieland Wagner – creating a similarly timeless and open backdrop against which music and performance could speak their own truths without distraction.

The opening sounds of the “Harp” Quartet Op.74 provided another clue – the hymn-like harmonies were voiced by the players with attractively grainy tones, drawing attention to the separate voices as much as to to their blended sound. Here, and throughout the slow movement, the melodic lines had a “throaty” quality, the players’ sounds never bland or expressing beauty for its own sakes’, but always characterful. I liked how, in the second movement, the melodic lines were “sung’ by everyone in a democratic spirit, the differently-voiced impulses, as before, both blending and maintaining their individuality.

Beethoven’s well-known dictum of the idea counting more than its execution often came into play, with the players spiralling their whirling individual and concerted lines in the first movement with tremendous verve, their articulation appropriately vertiginous, more dangerous- than clean-sounding in two or three places.

Then again in the scherzo, the chunkiness of the players’ rhythm contrasted tellingly with the furious pace in the trio sections, the effect properly exhilarating, and giving the music a driven, possessed quality. By contrast, the final variation movement brought from the players both good-humoured interactions (jog-trot and cantering sequences) and solo singing (some duskily attractive viola tones), and a growing physical excitement which overflowed from the bubbling textures and raced the music to a nicely abrupt ending.

Op. 95 in F Minor, the “Serioso” followed, a work regarded by its composer as “one for connoisseurs…..never to be performed in public”. Though Beethoven presumably meant what he said at the time, modern listeners can readily enjoy the composer’s “experiment” as a precursor of the quartets that were to follow – still, the work remains a tough nut to crack in performance, packing a great deal into a condensed framework.

The NZSQ engaged with the work’s terse, energetic opening on a thrillingly visceral level, without ever suggesting mere virtuosic display – pin-point concerted attack, great explosions of energised tones, trenchant growlings from the lower instruments – all served to throw into relief the discourse’s somewhat anxious and unsettled lyrical episodes. Just as focused, here, and satisfyingly contrasted, was the group’s playing of the slow movement, with its spacious, exploratory fugal episodes, and solemn ‘cello-led processionals to and from sequences of great beauty.

All was peremptorily cast aside by the scherzo’s impatient calls for attention, the composer allowing no let-up of intensity, and the players complying with interest. And my notes record as well the group’s wonderfully organic lurching into the somewhat stricken waltz-theme of the finale, and the feel of those bows biting into the strings throughout those storm-beset scrubbings which erupted from the music’s textures.

Of course, Beethoven trumps all of these things with an almost maniacally-conceived coda, whose on-the-face-of-things incongruity has exercised many a critical mind and pen over the years, and which had here a properly quixotic effect on many listeners. I wondered whether the composer was, consciously or otherwise, simply following the dictum of life being a tragedy to the heart and a comedy to the intellect – whatever the case, the NZSQ presented the music’s volte-face with all the gusto and energy that it required.

After a welcome luftpause we all awaited the third of the Op.59 Razumovsky Quartets, with those wonderfully unresolved chordings at the beginning, which the group here recreated as a kind of frozen sound-world of unfulfilled impulses – the stillness made the sudden spark of momentum all the more telling, again, like tragedy turned to comedy, or stasis suddenly galvanised as pure energy, underlined by the players’ full-bodied but sharp-edged responses to the music.

The sheer exuberance of the Allegro Vivace of this movement fully vindicated another aspect of the Quartet’s performances which I’ve appreciated so much over the years, the physical choreography of having three of the quartet players standing while playing (except, of course, the ‘cellist, though he rarely sits perfectly still, having to cover a good deal of physical instrumental “ground”). Being able to express the music with one’s whole body (in a sense, “making the Word Flesh”, so to speak) must have some effect upon the sound that body produces. And, for me, the visual effect is that the music is choreographed in an abstracted but still meaningful and relevant way, almost another form of reading music, if you like (perhaps that’s why, being a non-scorereader, I like it so much).

Lovely pizzicato notes from the ‘cello began the slow movement, helping project the sombre mood, one which the composer so engagingly drew back to allow the sunlight in for those few measures of major-key relief. And though the ‘cello took us by the hand and gently returned us to those darker realms once again, the memory of the sunlight kept returning, one which the solo violin stretched towards so eloquently – and oh! – those encircling pizzicato notes from the ‘cello, which kept the music on its orbit, despite the occasional irruption, so soft and inwardly resonant!

An “old-fashioned” Minuet charmed us with its grace and elegance, though the players then seemed to relish all the more the Trio’s angular fanfares with their off-the-beat accents. With the dance ended, the ‘cello took the lead in the direction of what appeared at first to be a twilight zone, but whose unsmiling mask couldn’t hold in check for more than a few measures such a joyous eruption of energy and movement as to sweep away all previous darkness and trouble.

It was a finale in which we heard “laughter holding both his sides” as a manifestation of creative heroism, the players lining up with the composer in pushing themselves to the edges of abandonment with the proverbial skin-and-hair flying, and we in the audience right on the edges of our seats. And that was, finally, the pudding’s proof – that we were all bundled up and transported by the same energy-source as were these musicians into realms of delight and awareness of the importance of certain things.

So – something special and memorable, here, its essence worth trying to convey in words, however much this writer is conscious of falling short of doing. But as much as I can imagine any composer’s spirit being caught in performance, this was a concert of music-making which, in its potent mix of skilful execution and vivid characterisation, for me did just that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

STROMA – Percussion/Action in small but compelling doses

Posted on by Peter Mechen

STROMA – Soundbytes III

Works by Beat Furrer, Manuela Meier, Andrew Ford and Toru Takemitsu

Lenny Sakofsky / Jeremy Fitzsimmons / Bruce McKinnon (percussion)

Adam Auditorium, City Gallery, Wellington

Saturday 2nd June 2012

Stroma’s 2012 concert formats are taking in both larger, standardized happenings called “Headliners”, which feature well-known performers and works by established composers, and briefer, concentrated concerts of less than an hour’s duration called “Soundbytes” – the group’s publicity referred to these events as “aural degustations”, a term which had me reaching for my dictionary, illiterate peasant that I am, to be summarily enlightened – and yes, these in this “Soundbyte” under consideration, were tasty sound-snacks indeed!

New to me, though open since 2009 (where has this reviewer been, of late?) was the venue, a space called the “Adam Auditorium” located on the ground floor of the Wellington City Gallery. I loved being in the space, and thought the acoustic and ambience served the music-making well, marrying sound and sight with pleasing directness. Because of the pronounced auditorium “rake” almost everybody in the audience could clearly see what the players were doing to conjure up their panoply of sounds, giving the concert something of a specific gestural, or even choreographic, element.

Being a determined advocate for the audio-only listening experience, I’m surprised to find myself stressing this aspect of the presentation, though the relative novelty (when compared to one’s normal concert-going experiences) of encountering percussion ensembles means that one is more than usually interested in what is actually happening on the concert platform. Our three percussionists on this occasion didn’t disappoint, with plenty of variety of sound and movement served up for our delight by way of whirling us through four very distinctive musical experiences in an all-too-brief concert.

Actually, I thought the brevity of this “Soundbyte” experience had the positive effect of leaving us with appetites sharpened for more, which the “degustation” definition certainly implies. I confess to not really coming to grips with the first of the items, however, finding Beat Furrer’s sound-world a mystery, one which gently repulsed any kind of construct or attitude I strove to place around the sounds I heard along the way (I was pleased to read in the program afterwards of the composer’s “predilection for refinement and restraint”, qualities I found in the music almost to a fault!).

Not that I was overly worried about indulging myself in enjoyment of the sounds, but afterwards wondered how I could convey something of the experience of Beat Furrer’s Music for Mallets in words – it felt as if a patient, gradually unfolding soundscape grew from the first few minutes of the work, with sudden impulses of tone precursors of more frequent irruptions of energy which enlivened the textures somewhat, even if the music’s pulsing spent a lot of the work “underground”. A freer, more volatile episode followed, rapid glissandi and other figurations, staking out the land, though the sense of something restrained, evanescent and mysterious remained, embedded in the music’s character, and making a lasting impression.

By contrast, Stroma administrator Manuela Meier’s 2012 work Cada bristled with movement and impulse, throughout, the antiphonal exchanges between the two percussionists a delight to the senses. Again, the seating configuration allowing us to really “get involved” with the players’ physical gesturing and form a relationship between different sounds’ cause and effect. The composer treated us to a plethora of timbres and colours and what seemed to our “insectified” ears like a stunning range of dynamics, from the whisperings of wood against a smooth metal edge to the harsh complaints of friction-making textured metal surfaces worked upon by the same hard sticks. It all had the feeling of some kind of inner reality, akin to the flowing of blood, impulsings of a nervous system or an intelligence network processing sensory responses. This was the piece’s first-ever performance in public.

Andrew Ford’s Composition in blue, grey and pink for solo percussionist gave Lenny Sakofsky a chance to demonstrate his considerable performance skills. Taken from a larger work for flute and percussion and arranged as a stand-alone movement, it places the performer at a kind of drum-kit arrangement as if in control of the flight-deck of an enormous flying machine. Content-wise, the piece is extremely theatrical in its soliloquy-like structure, completely in accordance with a certain improvisatory air (intended by the composer, who leaves certain decisions to the player, such as the choice of drumsticks, and the dynamics throughout).

The opening episode is almost like a jumble of thoughts, as if emotion is trying to sort out an order of saying or a coherent overall shape – so we get fast and chatty sequences, but within a fragmented discourse. Slow and sinister follows, a different view of the material, or else a change in its ambient surroundings, contrasting with a sequence of brittle scintillations, whose short, questioning coda concludes with a final flourish. Both sounds and the player’s choreography of performance were totally absorbing, with never a void moment.

One doesn’t have to be a camp follower of percussion concerts to encounter the music of Toru Takemitsu, as this same work, Rain Tree, was heard during a concert given by the NZSO Soloists in March of this year (the same concert which featured Shchedrin’s entertaining, reworked and re-orchestrated take on Bizet’s Carmen). On that occasion I remember the music being somewhat marred by excessively-projected lighting of each instrumentalist – the systematic spotlighting was meant to synchronize with the music, but for me it was all too visually “loud”, and thus proved a fatal distraction. Significantly, Takemitsu himself is on record as having supervised a performance of his work with similar lighting, but then commenting afterwards that he found the effect “too distracting”.

Here, most thankfully, there were no such lighting manipulations, the musical impulses allowed to speak for themselves throughout the piece. Again, the characteristics of the auditorium enabled us to connect directly with the three players and their instrumental gesturings – Takemitsu’s title for the piece, Rain Tree refers to a tree described in a novel by Japanese author Kenzaburo Oe The Ingenious Rain Tree, one which, because of the thickness of its foliage “stores” water from rain and continues to water the ground long after the rain itself has ceased. The work reflects this process, the raindrops depicted by use of the crotales (antique cymbals) build up towards a cascade, with the marimbas alternating the whole while, and the vibraphone providing a kind of underlying foundation. Some of these were gorgeous sounds, both when isolated (the crotales) and when interactive – the marimbas woody and solidly ambient, the vibraphone all air and water.

The evening’s music and its performance, along with the venue and its warmly attractive ambience, all came together beautifully to make this Stroma concert yet another one to remember with great pleasure.

 

 

 

Romance with elegance – Jian Liu plays Schumann and Liszt

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand School of Music

Jian Liu (piano) in concert

SCHUMANN – Carnaval, Op.9 / LISZT – Piano Sonata in B Minor

Adam Concert Room, NZSM Kelburn

Wednesday 30th May 2012

What a delight for piano-fanciers! – here at the Adam Concert Room was a free recital featuring two of the cornerstone works of Romantic piano literature served up for us by pianist Jian Liu, currently the co-ordinator of classical piano studies at the New Zealand School of Music. Both works fully tested the player, producing in each instance a strongly-etched interpretation from an obviously well-equipped musician who possessed an abundance of skill, endurance and creative imagination.

On the face of things pairing Schumann’s and Liszt’s music made a logical enough coupling of works, though their close proximity here highlighted the nineteenth century’s most significant musical controversy – the conflict between tradition and innovation which burst into open conflagration between the conservatives, who clung to classical ideals and the progressives, who wanted to explore new ways of doing things. As so often happens, the debate became excessively nasty at times, with casualties on both sides, though at the time, more so on the part of the progressives such as Liszt, whose music, was systematically trashed by mouthpieces of the conservative establishment, such as the influential critic Eduard Hanslick (though the latter greatly admired Liszt as a pianist).

Schumann and Liszt were in fact good friends at first, but the differences which developed between them unfortunately turned into issues, exacerbated by people such as Schumann’s wife, pianist Clara Wieck, who disapproved of what she called Liszt’s “empty, vulgar compositions”. Despite all of this, Liszt in 1854 dedicated his Piano Sonata to Schumann, certainly in return for the latter’s earlier dedication to Liszt of his wonderful Op.17 C Major Fantasia, and perhaps also in a spirit of reconciliation – though by this time Schumann was beyond reach, having become increasingly beset by the mental instability which was to contribute to his death in 1856 at a mere forty-six years old.

So we were presented with two very different but equally potent and wholly characteristic manifestations of musical romanticism – though the conflicts and animosities which flowed between the worlds represented by these two pieces continue to this day to divide opinion and polarize musical sensibilities. At the recital I sat next to and talked with two people, one an enthusiastic admirer of Liszt and his music, and the other who, when the Sonata was finished, said “I made myself stay to listen to Jian play – but oh! – how awful that music is!”. Evidently, the spirit of the disapproving Clara Wieck lives on in today’s world.

One of the recurring characteristics of Jian Liu’s playing throughout both works was the generous flexibility of his phrasing, giving the notes space in which to breathe at all times, so that nothing seemed hurried or sounded incoherent – within these spaces his sensitive detailing, never fussy or contrived, was always accompanied by the feeling that he was drawing out from the notes themselves what sounded like an infinite variety of voicing, shadings and colorings. So, it was no surprise that he was able to constantly entertain and charm our imaginations with his portrayals of Schumann’s moods and characterizations throughout the composer’s richly-conceived parade of personalities, “Carnaval”.

Right at the beginning the opening fanfares had just enough rhetoric to arrest the attention without losing the declamation’s urgency and excitement, the following animato building up its energy and exuberance, before breaking off and beginning the whimsical procession of characters and emotions that give the work its never-ending fascination. From so many finely-drawn characterizations, I thought Liu’s Pierrot particularly vivid, the phrasing free rather than metrical, and with some lovely, subtle voicing, the repeat emphasizing the dreamy, self-communing aspect of it all, with even the emphatic repeated three-note phrase drawn into the world of wonderment. The Valse Noble enabled us to hear how Liu’s left hand beautifully varied its emphasis, the different voicings bringing a strand of meaning to the music far above that of mere accompaniment.

Spontaneity in performance is a risky business (Liu’s Papillons, though exciting, was a bit of a scramble, as were some of the left-hand figurations in the treacherous Paganini), but that sense of throwing caution aside was so worthwhile, so imbued with spirit and impulse as to drive away any sense of routine. And with that spirit applied to the work as a whole, Liu was able to present the music to us as sounding freshly-improvised – Chopin, for example, coming across here as a spontaneous-sounding tribute from one romantic to another, the music seeming to almost lose itself in its own reverie, here, towards the piece’s conclusion.

So, there was poetry and elegance aplenty; and excitement, too, with the right-handed repeated-note scintillations of Reconnaissance followed by the agitations of Pantalon et Colombine, energies shared across both hands in the latter to stunning effect. The final March of the League of David against the Philistines had plenty of swagger, and the ensuing stretta swept our sensibilities along towards the final triumphant if battle-scarred chords. Liu’s playing again caught a sense of the occasion, of the composer’s Don Quixote-like questing spirit, complete with fully-imagined triumph at the end.

But what of Liszt and the B Minor Sonata? Side-by-side with Schumann and with Jian Liu’s finely-honed sensibility brought to bear on the music, the work’s visionary scope and searing focus seemed as if newly-wrought for this occasion, with nothing about the performance left to “play itself” or convey anything of Clara Wieck’s charges of emptiness or vulgarity.

Liszt-lovers like myself are all too aware of the abyss of disapproval mined by all those nineteenth-century conservatives beneath the composer’s feet – and carried onwards in the twentieth century by agenda-ridden character assassins such as Ernest Newman. No other major composer, with perhaps the exception of Wagner, has had to endure, both throughout his lifetime and posthumously, such torrents of criticism and outright hostility regarding his music (let alone his grossly-distended reputation for extra-musical exploits). Fortunately, the advocacy of musicians such as Louis Kentner, Alfred Brendel, John Ogdon and Georges Cziffra, and a host of present-day pianistic giants, among them the redoubtable Leslie Howard with his staggering survey of the composer’s keyboard output for Hyperion Records, has effectively given the lie to the Clara Wiecks of this world regarding the music’s interest and worth.

Whether Jian Liu aligns himself with the believers or the skeptics in the matter of Liszt’s music, he plays it with the care and commitment of a true advocate, with no detail left to chance or unexplored. As with his playing of Carnaval, I was taken by the extent to which his piano-playing speaks across the hands, with what I had previously thought of as mere accompanying figures having something interesting and significant to say. Of course, the Sonata, with its amazingly-layered reworking of the principal themes needs a player alive to those different voices and their characters, and Liu didn’t disappoint, investing every episode with a kind of organic flow that constantly led the ear of the listener onwards. Even during the couple of instances where the music’s complexities momentarily clouded his bearings, he was able to seize upon the severed strands and quickly pull them together and continue – heart-stopping moments, indeed, but their resolution further evidence of the player’s quality.

For me one of the highlights of Liu’s performance was his playing of the fugue – Elgar’s description “a devil of a fugue” relating to his own Introduction and Allegro for Strings would as well apply to LIszt’s diabolically-conceived lines, the latter’s use of the work’s themes demonstrating compositional mastery of an almost indecent kind! Here, these were set in motion by the pianist as part of an ever-burgeoning torrent of impulse whose progress evoked a kind of demonic pursuit through the mind’s most shadowy and sulphurous realms of fancy. By contrast, and perhaps fittingly enough, another moment of magic was generated by Liu over the work’s last few pages, with whole worlds created between the hands, and as beautifully-timed a final low B as I’ve ever heard.

All I wanted during the performance of the Liszt was (should I be ashamed of admitting to this?) a touch more rhetoric in places, mostly in the form of bigger, more resonant tones at one or two cadence-points. Liu’s playing treated the music entirely on its own merits throughout, and was as faithful an account of the score as given by any other pianist I’ve heard – but everything I’ve read of Liszt’s playing indicates that he was no literalist, and that he wouldn’t hesitate to “heighten” whatever mood or feeling the composer indicated (accounts suggest that Liszt and his contemporaries had a more “creative” attitude to the printed score than we ourselves allow performers in this day and age).

Unlike that of his great contemporary, Chopin, the music of Liszt has a “larger-than-life” aspect which, in some instances invites performer-involvement of a kind that reflects the spirit of the work rather than one slavishly following the letter of the score. Without adding notes or radically changing tempi or dynamic markings, I feel it’s still possible to convey something of that “beyond the notes” feeling that marks a truly great and visionary performance of this repertoire. Jian Liu had for me something of this quality in his soft, inward-sounding playing – had he allowed a few more degrees of lingering romantic resonance in the bigger moments the performance as a whole would then have utterly knocked me sideways.

 

 

 

 

 

Rhapsodic strains from the NZSM Orchestra with Kenneth Young

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Rhapsodie

New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

Saxophone : Deborah Rawson

Conductor: Kenneth Young

Sam Logan – Lost Island  / Maurice Ravel – Suite “Ma Mère L’Oye”

Claude Debussy – Rhapsody for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra

Witold Lutoslawski – Concerto for Orchestra

St.Andrew’s-on-the-Terrace, Welington

Tuesday, 29th May, 2012

Every NZSM Orchestra concert I go to seems to surpass the previous one in some respect or other, to the extent that I now expect to encounter on each new concert occasion a stimulating and innovative programme and a high standard of performance skills from all concerned. This latest one was certainly no exception, with conductor Ken Young at the orchestral helm securing from the students (and some of their NZSO tutors, swelling the band’s numbers) plenty of impressively-wrought playing, which shaped up well to the programme’s considerable demands.

As well as playing skills, also on show was a new piece evocatively titled Lost Island, written by an NZSM student, Sam Logan, a recipient of the David Farquhar Prize in Composition. Describing his work as “an episode of escapism”, Sam Logan freely acknowledged in his program note the piece’s debt to the composers he likes – one would think, for a young composer eager to learn, an excellent springboard for creativity, especially as this was a “first” for him in writing for a full orchestra.

In seven or so minutes, his work progressed confidently through a number of atmospheric episodes – to begin with, an attractively languid opening nicely launched and floated exotic fragments of melody, the music gradually building in intensity towards a full-blooded roar and a quixotic change of key (brass glissandi and heavy percussion contrasting their voicings with a lovely violin solo). Then, with rhythms nudging the textures more and more insistently, the Lost Island scenario came into focus, bringing tropical-flavoured pulsings not unlike Gershwin with a dash of Jamaican Rhumba, all of which sounded easy on the ear and great fun to play.

Haunting chimes sounding over string tremolandi gave the music a mysterious “Shangri-la” aspect, with an ascending motif prominent, one which worked through trenchant orchestral textures and determined ostinati, creating waves of attractively La Mer-ish sea-swellings (uh-oh! – a tautology?) – but I thought at some stage the episode needed a bit of thematic interest or character to sharpen the listener’s focus (a solo instrumental line? – perhaps more from the violin, whose voice was heard to great advantage earlier). So, hardly a distinctive voice, but there was some well-crafted orchestral writing from the young composer, to go with discernible character in some of the sections of the piece, enough for its hearing to be an enjoyable audience experience.

Further delight was to be had from the performance of Ravel’s suite from his ballet Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose), our anticipations sharpened by the entrance onto the platform of additional players, among them a contra-bassoonist (very visible!). This music is, of course, both a gift and a challenge for any orchestra, simple figurations tempered with exacting refinements throughout. We got a piquant blend of winds throughout the Sleeping Beauty’s Pavane, dynamics not perhaps perfectly gradated, but each player’s sounds winningly wholehearted. More finely-honed was Petit Poucet (Tom Thumb), with lovely strings and melancholy oboe to begin with, and a meltingly beautiful cor anglais solo – the strings gave us a fine surge of emotion at the climax, as did the cor anglais’s return; while Kate Oswin’s violin cheekily led the chorus of birds mocking the lost wanderer.

Laidronette, Empress of the Pagodas, one of Ravel’s happiest creations, here splashed and scintillated with joy, the winds in fine fettle, and the horns resonant and atmospheric. The xylophone’s pentatonic tinklings, tentative the first time round, were brilliantly nailed by the player on the repeat, ably supported by the rest of the percussion at the climax. No greater contrast could be imagined than with Beauty and the Beast, clarinet and strings depicting the girl’s loveliness, set against the grotesquerie of the contrabasson’s rasping tones (great playing by Hayley Roud), backed up by suitably growly percussion! The strings admirably portrayed Beauty’s initial disquiet and confusion, before Kate Oswin’s silken-sweet violin tones brought about the Beast’s magical transformation.

The suite’s final number,The Enchanted Garden, completed the magic, the strings encouraged to play with plenty of warmth by Ken Young right at the start, and the solo violin again lovely, if not always steady, joining in with the great rocking rhythms, horns chiming, strings singing and percussion sizzling, in celebration of the day’s sun-drenched awakening of a garden’s beauties.

This was the first time I had heard the Debussy Saxophone Rhapsody, and was highly entertained by the account of its history and its composer’s dilatory attempts at composing the piece, as set out by the program note. Its title suggests precisely what the piece sounds like – not a concerto, but a rhapsody with a prominent solo instrument part. And Deborah Rawson played it exactly like that, her tones always beautifully rounded, but often meditative, blending in with the orchestral discourse rather than seeking to dominate or over-ride the textures.

It all sounded like a civilized discourse between equals, though a more robust and forthright episode towards the end brought forth more energy and rhythmic intensity. Whether or not the composer was himself properly convinced of the work’s efficacy is open to conjecture – certainly Debussy’s coyness regarding his relinquishing of the work’s orchestral sketches for publication suggests an equivocal attitude – but Deborah Rawson and the orchestra certainly gave the piece every chance to shimmer and glow with this finely-played performance.

I had not heard the Lutoslawski Concerto for Orchestra in concert since, I think, 1972, which was when Vaclav Smetacek directed a performance with the then NZBC Symphony in the Wellington Town Hall. The piece knocked me sideways then, and did so again here, Kenneth Young inspiring his student players to dig into the textures and relish the earthiness of the orchestral writing throughout the first movement. We got searing strings, soulful winds and pin-point brass fronting up with trenchant rhythms and rolling maelstroms of sound, contrasting with gentler, more folksy episodes involving winds and a solo violin, with the celeste sounding a kind of stricken aftermath at the end, a solo flute and clusters of strings picking over the salvageable remnants.

How well I remembered the skeletal eeriness of the second movement’s opening, everything dryly dancing and scampering, a real sense of musical sleight-of-hand, with both wisps of ghostly illusion and breaths of human warmth whisked away alike in a trice! What music, and what playing from this young orchestra! Brass interruptions led to a percussive hammering whose sounds reached breaking-point and exploded, leaving a mourning flute over grumbling strings. And in the aftermath the disquiet took up again, the dovetailing of lines at speed expertly done to the end. Exhilarating stuff!

As for the third-movement Passacaglia, launching a longer movement than the other two put together, it all proved an epic journey, beginning solemnly, with pizzicato strings bringing out a wonderful solo from the cor anglais and inspiring further wind-and-string interchanges. There were brass shouts and percussion onslaughts momentarily obliterating all other voices, ruling by force, though winds and strings reasserted themselves with a chorale-like theme, the strings sounding like a heavenly aftermath of angels. And the toccata-like irruptions from the brass – terrific playing! – spearheaded an even more brutal assault, against which the winds sang a kind of “coming through” theme, like lifelines stretching over an abyss.

Under Young’s direction the orchestral forces throughout all of these contrasting calms and storms scarcely faltered, with only a single episode of less-than-unanimous playing that I noticed – the accelerando passage towards the end in which the players took a few bars to “find” one another. The ensuing cataclysmic chorale grew magnificently out of the ferment of orchestral activity, and Young whipped the players into a final frenzy for the skitterish payoff at the end. Had I been completely new to this work I might have been writing at this point “I knowed no more that evening…..” For all concerned, a stunning achievement!