Author: Peter Mechen

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!

 

 

Wonderland in name and deed – Made In New Zealand

Posted on by Peter Mechen

WONDERLAND – MADE IN NEW ZEALAND 2012

CREE BROWN – Celestial Bodies

CRESSWELL – Concerto for Orchestra and String Quartet

WHITEHEAD – Alice

New Zealand String Quartet

Helen Medlyn (mezzo-soprano)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Hamish McKeich (conductor)

Wellington Town Hall

Friday 25th May 2012

This was a “Made In New Zealand” concert which packed a real wallop, featuring three substantial pieces of music by different New Zealand composers – all of whom, incidentally, were present.  While none of the performances on this occasion were premieres, each one seemed to me to freshly unwrap the music, and square up whole-heartedly to the technical and emotional challenges of each of the pieces’ different physical and spiritual worlds.

It seems to me to be important that any orchestra can play and sound as if it “owns” music written by composers who live in the same geographical space, however “global” or “multi-national” an outlook certain forces of darkness seek constantly to try and impose on our lives. And, as Douglas Lilburn was fond of pointing out, there are aspects of the New Zealand experience which even Mozart, for all his music’s greatness and universality, couldn’t express – and an orchestra such as the NZSO which both encourages and can brilliantly play music by local composers that CAN express these things, is, purely and simply, above rubies. At least, in the expert hands of conductor Hamish McKeich, this was certainly the case throughout Friday evening’s concert.

While I’m still convinced of the need for integrating New Zealand music into “normal” concert programs and schedules, rather than treating it as a kind of separate species  confined to its own enclosure (open to the public only at certain times throughout the year!) I’m certain that having a “Made In New Zealand” concert gives additional opportunities for the NZSO to (as orchestra CEO Chris Blake puts it) “support and stimulate the creation and development of a New Zealand symphonic repertoire”.  And it’s fortunate we have conductors such as Hamish McKeich and Kenneth Young who can, when given opportunities to do so, make good that statement of intent with fully-committed advocacy.

Without wanting to “limpet-mine” this review with any suggestion of a subaqueous agenda, I feel nevertheless compelled to mention, quite offhandedly, that one of the greatest (in my opinion) of New Zealand symphonies – David Farquhar’s first, performed in concert in 1960, a year after it was written –  still awaits its SECOND public performance. Ironically, the work has enjoyed two recordings throughout the interim, and thus can’t claim to be completely neglected – but how else would one characterize something that’s had a single public airing in fifty-two years? To my ears the work urgently has a part to play in any such “development of a New Zealand symphonic repertoire”.

Back with the business in hand, I was interested to read that the first work on the evening’s program, Chris Cree Brown’s Celestial Bodies, was first presented in 2005 in Christchurch as an audio-visual collaboration with the artist Julia Morison. It would have been interesting to have experienced something of the composer’s original conception for this work, though previous “Made In New Zealand” concerts which used visual elements encountered a good deal of criticism from concertgoers, myself included, which might have been off-putting for the organizers. However, it must be said that the criticism was directed almost exclusively at instances where visual elements were imposed on existing music, not where it was part of the composer’s own initial scheme.

This accounted for those parts of the work so readily and cheerfully dispensing entirely with the “live” orchestra (the whole of the fourth section “Dark Matter” for example.) Having visual imagery interacting with the taped material would at this point have, I feel sure, removed some of the incongruity for me of having to watch an entire orchestra sitting on a concert platform listening to prerecorded sounds. For the rest I enjoyed the players’ skilful acoustic dovetailing with some of the sounds on the tape throughout (a sign of the times being a reference to an “electroacoustic CD” instead!).

Celestial Bodies is a work in ten sections, the parts named for various phenomena found throughout space, the composer describing them as “overwhelming in their size, awe-inspiring in their diversity and breathtaking in their beauty”. New Zealand composers have written outer space-inspired music before, an example being Edwin Carr’s ‘The Twelve Signs”, though Cree Brown’s work avoided any astrological reference-points. Instead, his pieces unfolded for us, one by one, aspects of the cosmos with titles such as Galaxy, Globular Cluster, Pulsar, Nebula and Supernova, as well as those with a more sinister ambience like Dark Matter and Black Hole.

These were brilliantly crafted sounds, atmospheric and pictorial, with plenty of variation, and readily suggesting their subject matter in practically every case. They were not for everybody, as I discovered when talking with people, some of whom said they struggled to feel any connection with the music, while admiring the composer’s craft and skill. I felt involved in almost every episode, and particularly enjoyed the orchestra’s interactions with the pre-recorded sounds, a process which I thought set up interesting performance tensions in places and pushed my listening boundaries outwards, towards places that felt quite eerie – the second piece, Globular Cluster, worked on my imagination readily in that respect.

I also enjoyed the pieces’ contrasts, for example, when going to the following piece, Pulsar, and encountering those strongly-etched rhythms pulsating through spaces that had seemed up to this point pleasantly nebulous. Black Hole was another piece whose elemental irruptions gave a real sense of menacing power, thrillingly at odds with one’s accustomed sense of vast stillness when looking at the night sky, the orchestra’s heavy batteries making splendidly frightening noises, complete with a startlingly anarchic chord at the end.

Where I didn’t especially “connect” with Cree Brown’s music was, as I’ve said, with any “pre-recorded only” episodes of any length – the fourth piece, Dark Matter, the most ready example. I’m certain that, had we seen Julia Morison’s images, the sequence would have told more readily and maintained enough interactive tension – perhaps a soloist or group of soloists from the orchestra needed to play ad lib with the pre-record, in the absence of any visuals, to keep the impulses alive and flowing.

Interactive tension was the name of the game with Lyell Cresswell’s Concerto for Orchestra and String Quartet. In one continuous movement, the work spun its listeners excitingly through what seemed like an endless variety of episodes involving interchange between the performers – in this case the New Zealand String Quartet and the orchestra. Although this concerto wasn’t written for the NZSQ, (it was premiered in Scotland by the Yggdrasil Quartet and the Scottish National Orchestra in 1997), Cresswell has written other works specifically for the group, a piano quintet And Every Sparkle Shivering, first given here in 2000 with Michael Houstoun, and a string quartet, Kotetetete, which the NZSQ performed last year in the City of London Festival. Cresswell has described the NZSQ as “a quartet that can play anything”, and felt that whatever demands he made of the players in writing the Quartet, they would relish the challenges.

The group has played the Quartet Concerto before, the first time in 2001 with the BBC Scottish Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Young. From the start, Cresswell wanted to write a piece that was a genuine partnership between quartet and orchestra, and not merely with the latter group providing some sort of “accompaniment”. And neither did he want the piece to be a kind of Concerto for orchestra, with string quartet. On the “genuine partnership” count alone, the work seemed to me a truly egalitarian tour de force – one noted a constant flow of creative happenings between solo instruments, small groups and larger forces, a kind of all-encompassing concerto grosso, with all the attendant tensions and resolutions which one might expect would throw up between such elements.

Cheryl Hollinger’s magically-phrased trumpet-playing, introduced by scintillations of percussion and airborne, ethereal orchestral strings, got the work way to a suitably “storyteller-like” beginning, the theme hinting at a kind of unfolding aspect, as in the best tales. And though the quartet’s viola-led instrument-by-instrument configurings, supported by the orchestra strings and commented upon abruptly by brass punctuations, were carefully terraced by the composer, the effect seemed always natural and organic, never forced or contrived. As with genuine human interaction, the exchanges occasionally flared up excitingly, the music expressing its fair share of marked contrast and volatility, but was then balanced by slower, more reflective and meditative episodes midway through the work. Here, I loved the heartfelt duo lines between various pairings of solo strings from the quartet, seeming to me expressing great beauty against what felt in places like a backdrop of ambient desolation.

There were places throughout the final section during which I wondered whether the writing fell back on itself every now and then, and could have benefitted from some  “tightening” by the composer – but always a succeeding episode would scoop up and whisk away my misgivings, generating so intense an excitement of quicksilver exchanges of texture, colour and rhythmic patterning between quartet and orchestra. Cresswell’s orchestral writing in particular I thought so very virtuosic in places, the music’s occasionally vertiginous momentum creating exhilaration aplenty. The quartet players, as always, gave their all, and each section of the orchestra, directed and balanced with admirable skill by conductor Hamish McKeich, seemed switched-on to razor-sharp mode with the timing and focus of their rapid exchanges.

After the interval came intensities of another, more directly human kind, Gillian Whitehead’s setting of poet Fleur Adcock’s retelling in verse of an ancestor’s emigration from Britain to begin a new life in New Zealand in 1909. Twenty-three year-old Alice Adcock, showing symptoms of tuberculosis, and hoping that a change of climate would help effect some kind of cure came to this country from Manchester, to the consternation of her family. She lived for a further fifty years, during which time she lost her husband and was then rejected and dispossessed by his family, having to relocate with her children to another part of New Zealand and start a new life.

Fleur Adcock felt Alice’s story was, in a sense, that of all those who came across the seas to establish a new life, the commonalities having, in her words, “the resonances of a universal myth, known to all of us who live here”. Making the most of the deceptively simple poetry, singing with great power and beauty, and relishing occasional forays into a kind of sprechtgesang, Helen Medlyn here became the heroine, Alice, body and soul, pretty much as she would have done when she “created” the role in 2003 at the premiere performance. She brought out all the different elements of the text – its humor (much talk of lice, using terms like “gentle creepers” and “big crawlers”), positive energy (revelling in the clean air of a new country), unflagging optimism (happiness at finding a man to marry who will take and accept her child) and a sense of loss and grief over deaths of loved ones (father and husband) – but also gave the sung lines plenty of theatrical (even operatic) presence and vibrancy.

No praise is too high for orchestra and conductor, Hamish McKeich, living the different scenarios with Medlyn every inch of the way throughout the story-line, and continuing to deliver, right through the unfortunate contretemps which quietly erupted in the gallery, where an audience member suddenly took seriously ill ten or so minutes before the end of the piece. This, of course, occasioned a flurry of piteous activity (those on the ground floor, along with many of the musicians, largely oblivious to what was going on) – but evidently the revival efforts of those brought to help were successful.

A stimulating and colorful “Made In New Zealand” concert then, with three substantial works whose effect will have won for the orchestra, its conductor, and the special solo performers many plaudits from a delighted audience and from three grateful composers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A magnificent Rigoletto, almost too close for comfort….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Giuseppe VERDI – RIGOLETTO

Production by NBR New Zealand Opera  / Director : Lindy Hume

Cast:  Warwick Fyfe (Rigoletto) /  Emma Pearson (Gilda) / Rafael Rojas (Duke of Mantua)

Ashraf Sewailam (Sparafucile) / Kristin Darragh (Maddalena) / Rodney Macann (Monterone)

Emma Fraser (Countess) / James Clayton (Ceprano) / Wendy Doyle (Giovanna)

Derek Hill (Borsa) / Matthew Landereth (Marullo)

Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus  (Michael Vinten – Chorus Master)

Vector Wellington Orchestra

Wyn Davies (conductor)

St.James Theatre, Wellington

Saturday 19th May 2012

Very much an opera-going experience for our time (and thus ostensibly at the mercy of the “updating” phenomenon which subjects present-day opera-goers to all kinds of directorial mayhem), this latest NBR New Zealand Opera production of “Rigoletto” seemed to me to be a triumph of substance over flash, of intelligence over sensation-mongering.  One goes to the opera these days ready for anything, expecting to be challenged as much as entertained, and in some cases as affronted as much as delighted by what one encounters (and not always merely on stage). One or two semi-gratuitous “blips” aside, I thought this production delivered a well thought-out and properly mind-provoking  set of scenarios which brought the original impulses of Verdi’s inspiration all-too-close for comfort to aspects of the 21stCentury world we live in.

I know a number of opera-lovers who won’t go to contemporary productions any longer because of what they consider to be “violence done to the original” by presentations which seem deliberately to set out to gratuitously either titillate and cheapen, or else  shock and affront audience sensibilities. While there’s nothing wrong in principle with certain of those processes being brought to bear on people’s experiences in the opera house, it’s obviously too much for some people to stomach when a theatrical work’s traditional ethos is jarringly overlaid with elements suggesting imported and irrelevant agendas.

Nowhere did I feel that director Lindy Hume’s setting of Rigoletto’s story within a contemporary scenario of razz-matazz politics did either Victor Hugo’s original story or Verdi’s own conception of his work any disservice. True, a Mediterranean ethos was suggested by things like the overtly demonstrative and masochistic manner of the Duke, the Mafia-like aspect of his henchmen (though the “gorillas-in-suits” phenomenon is a commonplace, these days), and the dubious “imprimatur” of a Catholic cleric in full regalia among the entourage – a cardinal, or monsignor at the very least! But it was actually a way of giving the problematical “curse”,  brought down upon the head of Rigoletto by the wronged nobleman Monterone,  rather more “clout” than is usually the case with modern recastings of the story. No matter how sophisticated, worldly-wise and updated the setting, such dark, forceful utterances of vengeance  for wrongdoing can still pack a primordial punch. And especially in this context  –  an old-world culture beset by superstitions and haunted by gods both ancient and more recent, whose shadows of influence can still come out at night and linger beyond realms of reason.

And it is night and darkness that largely predominate in the opera’s action – only the third Act  suggests “the morning after”, while the other three parts of the story are played out against the dark. It’s a world of concealment (Rigoletto and his daughter, Gilda), of dark business (the courtiers’ abduction of Gilda), of murderous intent (the assassin, Sparafucile), and of secret trysts (the Duke, first of all with Gilda, then with the assassin’s sister, Maddalena). Right from the beginning, there was darkness at the heart of it all – the curtain slowly lifted as the orchestra tuned up, showing Rigoletto sitting alone in a room in the dark, except for a “home theatre” screen which gave us none too naturalistic footage of ravens during the Prelude  (supposedly portentous imagery, but surely the music alone at this point was doing enough!), fortunately uncharacteristic of the production over the span of the evening.

Contrasted with this was the glitter and sparkle of the Duke’s residence, which the preludial scene “morphed” into cleverly, walls and doors lowered, furniture revolved, and  the darkness flooded with light, all done expertly and unobtrusively. The characters were suddenly animated and vibrant, Warwick Fyfe’s Rigoletto breaking his dark reverie to become the Duke’s energetic factotum,  part evil genius, part buffoon, cynical and dismissive of all, seemingly unmoved by his master’s political success of the evening.  As the libertine Duke, Mexican tenor Rafael Rojas (a splendid Canio in last year’s NBR NZ Opera’s Pagliacci) looked and acted the part from the beginning, revelling in the media attention (the group photograph splendidly choreographed to be “captured” at a musical climax) and readily displaying his lascivious impulses (with plenty of noticeably bimbo-ish allurement close at hand throughout).

It’s the Duke’s voice which is the first of all to compel attention with “Questa o quella”,  delivered by Rojas with plenty of insouciance and nicely ringing top notes, his energies and tones echoed by the Vector Wellington Orchestra’s expert accompanying under conductor  Wyn Davies.  The others, including Rigoletto, have mostly one-line declamations and conversational utterances throughout the act, with strong contributions throughout the opening exchanges from Derek Hill’s Borsa, and then from Matthew Landreth’s Marullo, when breaking the news to the “chapter” regarding Rigoletto’s supposed  mistress.  As well, we were given convincing cameos from both Emma Fraser’s glamorous Countess Ceprano and James Clayton as her boorish husband.

It’s not until right at the end of the act that Warwick Fyfe’s vocal mettle as Rigoletto is really tested, with his mocking  response to the tragic entrance and vengeful utterances of Count Monterone, come to denounce the Duke for misusing his daughter. Unfortunately, that fine singer Rodney Macann seemed to me vocally out of sorts on the night, not able to muster up the power and focus needed to make his curse really sting.  If the intention was to convey a man already broken by his daughter’s downfall at the Duke’s hands, then this Monterone certainly succeeded, but in the process the curse’s power was somewhat muted, and made Rigoletto’s horror-struck reaction a shade pantomime-like. To Fyfe’s credit his character steadfastedly maintained an agitated state right into the heart of the Second Act’s opening, convincing us that Monterone’s pronouncements had indeed struck home.

Back to darkness with the beginning of Act Two, out in the street and next to a bus shelter, from which came the assassin (or, in present-day vernacular, the hit-man) Sparafucile, sung by Egyptian-born Ashraf Sewailam, physically threatening and vocally imposing, his exchanges with Rigoletto beautifully underpinned by rich, grainy string playing and voice-of-doom percussion work from the pit.  The whole scene was brilliantly effective, with its urban jungle backdrop of darkness, against which Warwick Fyfe was finally able to open up his soul and bemoan his fate as a misshapen jester, as well as ruminate further upon the curse. A revolve of the stage and we were taken to Rigoletto’s house, and to his daughter Gilda, Emma Pearson’s silvery tones, physical beauty and add-water vulnerability straightaway capturing audience hearts.

What a psychoanalytical field day a modern family therapist would have with Rigoletto’s relationship with his daughter! Perhaps a casualty of the opera’s updating to the present was Rigoletto’s refusal to allow his daughter any sense of her own identity, a situation one imagines any modern child would rebel against and probably have the means to do something about. Of course, whatever the time or place, such parental strictures produce time-bombs, intensities producing like intensities, whose explosions may be delayed, but not denied – and so the case proved with Gilda, her father’s intransigence merely fuelling the underground fires further.

The Duke’s appearance out of the dark which surrounded Rigoletto’s house, and his complicity with the servant Giovanna to gain entry had a “Marriage of Figaro” air about the proceedings, (and Fyfe’s admonishing of Wendy Doyle’s servant by means of a less-than-convincingly-delivered slap in the face was not a great moment). More important were the passionate declarations of promised love between the Duke and Gilda, those breathless figurations at the end of their farewell duet understandable in the circumstances. Then came Gilda’s beautifully introduced “Caro Nome”, orchestral winds catching in advance the character’s purity of utterance and direct and unequivocal wholeheartedness. It took Emma Pearson’s voice a few measures to settle, but then it found its poise, the singer by the end integrating it all so naturally into a most believable stage presence.  And while the aria spoke of visions of love’s delight, the prevailing dark around the edges of the stage relinquished darker purposes – this time the courtiers from the Duke’s palace, who proceeded, with clever use of powerful, blinding torches, to outmanoeuvre Rigoletto, and abduct his daughter.

By this time we had surrendered ourselves to the drama entirely, irrespective of time or place, so focused were the different elements which made up the experience, to the point where the nude figure on the Duke’s couch at the beginning of Act Three scarcely made any lasting impact as the form stood up, re-vested and moved away. More to the point was the Duke’s lament at losing Gilda, as he had found the house empty – Rojas’s pitching of the notes showed some strain, at this point, though his interactions with the spry, well-drilled chorus seemed to refocus his efforts. In the following scene with the chorus, during which Rigoletto reveals that Gilda is not his lover but his daughter, I thought Fyfe extremely fine, terracing his intensities unerringly, and conveying the sense of someone in the grip of a deadly obsession,  vowing after the brief reappearance of the disillusioned and downcast figure of Monterone that he, Rigoletto, shall avenge the wrongdoing of the Duke once and for all.

One doubts whether there exists a more perfectly- and potently-conceived final operatic act than this of “Rigoletto”. It abounds with imaginative touches, such as the wordless chorus intoning in places the moaning of the wind, a haunting, scalp-pricking effect. The music surprises us with things like the Duke’s famous “La Donna e Mobile” aria, and afterwards the wonderful vocal Quartet, an episode which both unites and underlines the barriers between two sets of people, while the situations unpredictably swerve and double back on themselves. Fittingly, the prevailing dark has the last word, as the story’s convolutions lead to the death of Gilda instead of the Duke as the jester intended. As the assassin Sparafucile’s sister, Maddalena, whom the Duke makes love to and who enables his life to be saved, Kristen Darragh exuded a vamp-like allure, along with an ever-burgeoning murderous determination to sacrifice another person for the sake of the life of the Duke, her new lover. Naturally, heartrendingly, the other person is Gilda, the graphic depiction of her despatch, fittingly by Maddalena herself (often not shown onstage), both shocking and piteous, but I thought not inappropriate.

Hence Rigoletto’s moment of intended triumph turns to tragedy, a cruel twist of fate I thought brilliantly, searingly conveyed by Warwick Fyfe, with at first almost public-servant detachment when taking receipt of the body he imagines is the Duke’s, but allowing flashes of anticipation of his revenge’s fulfillment, before cooly gathering his thoughts and energies to focus on the act of despatch – only to hear the Duke’s voice right at that moment of owning his triumph – what devastation, what new anguish followed! As with Shakespeare and other great theatre, we may already know the end, but the situation has the power, as here to move us anew, because we are not as we were – and therefore it touches us in different places every time. Warwick Fyfe and Emma Pearson, as Rigoletto and his dying, transfigured Gilda, their characters borne upwards and onwards as throughout by wonderful orchestral playing from the Wellington Orchestra and conductor Wyn Davies, spoke volumes to us at the end on behalf of all who had contributed to a marvellous production,  with so many things to say – a stunning achievement by Lindy Hume and her entire creative team.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wellington NZ Choral Federation – celebrating 25 years of workshops with the best of ’em!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

VERDI – Requiem Mass

Bryony Williams (soprano) / Margaret Medlyn (m-sop) / Richard Greager (tenor) / Rodney Macann (bass)

NZ Choral Federation May Workshop Choir

Rosemary Russell (assistant director) / Thomas Gaynor (organ and piano)

Michael Fulcher (conductor)

Brass: Danny Kirgan / Chris Clark / Chris Woolley / David Kempton / Matthew Stein (trumpets)

Benjamin Zilber / Ben Robertson / Tim Walsh (trombones)

Percussion (timpani): Brent Stewart

Salvation Army Citadel, Vivian St., Wellington

Saturday 12th May, 2012

Twenty-five years ago this year, Sir David Willcocks, doyen of British choral conductors at the time, came to New Zealand  and took the very first of the New Zealand Choral Federation Wellington workshops. Local  choral conductor John Knox, who had sung in the Bach Choir in London under Willcocks, had formed a friendship with him over time, and invited him to come and conduct choirs in New Zealand (one of which occasions I well remember, that of a performance of the Berlioz Requiem in Wellington in 1986). It was on Willcocks’ third visit here, in 1988, that he took that now-historic first NZCF workshop,  which featured music by one of the Venetian Gabrielis and the North German Samuel Scheidt.

New Zealand’s equivalent to David Willcocks was and is undoubtedly Peter Godfrey, now aged 90, and present at the concert on Saturday evening. Godfrey took over the workshops for the next seven years, returning in 2002 after a break of another seven years (all very Biblical) to direct a workshop featuring this evening’s work, the Verdi Requiem. So there were wheels and circles clicking and circling around and about and coming full circle with tonight’s performance of that same work, the director on this occasion being Michael Fulcher, taking part in his (you’ve guessed it!) seventh workshop for the NZCF.

In all, nine directors have led the workshops over the duration, with Peter Godfrey and Michael Fulcher clocking up the most frequent appearances between them. As well, a goodly proportion of the singers present (requested by chairperson Elizabeth Crayford during her closing speech at the end of the concert, to show their hands) indicated that they were also at various of these earlier occasions – in fact, several indicated that they had attended that very first workshop directed by Willcocks. All of which contributed to the festive atmosphere and undoubted emotion of this, the most recent event, one that was fortunately crowned by a remarkable performance of the Verdi Mass, put together by Michael Fulcher and his assistant director, Rosemary Russell (replacing an indisposed Mark Dorrell), with just two days’ rehearsal for the singers and instrumentalists – “born in fiery hour!” as Robert Schumann would have said.

Actually “two days’ rehearsal” suggests more time than was actually given the performers, as the two hundred and eighty or so choir members met together for the first time on Friday evening, working for two hours from seven until nine o’clock. They began again at nine o’clock on Saturday morning and workshopped it all until five o’clock in the afternoon. The soloists and instrumentalists (pianist, brass players, percussionist) came in on Saturday afternoon. True, some people had done a bit of preparation with their own choirs (eg. the Festival Singers), and some got the music in advance. Most people, however, were issued with their scores on Friday night.

All of which suggests some kind of alchemy on the part of Michael Fulcher and assistant Rosemary Russell, in pulling such a massive work together in such a short time with people in various stages of preparation. But far more than simply getting the music to hold recognizably together, the performance sounded truly inspired – here was one of those instances where enthusiasm and sheer will combined with skill and experience to produce something memorable and satisfying for all concerned.

From the first, opening bars of the work, spare, plaintive-sounding tones from Thomas Gaynor’s piano (with an unexpectedly arpeggiated chord at one point!), followed by the murmured hush of those first “Requiems” from two-hundred-plus voices, the music unfolded with living, breathing surety, our sensibilities all a-tingle at being in the same space as those voices, and almost made to feel each intake of the singers’  breath. Michael Fulcher’s control of the voices’ tonal ebb and flow was masterly, the men’s stentorian “Te decet hymnus” startling by comparison with the ambiently-floated “luceat eis”, and the choir’s variation of dynamics ever leading the ear onwards, and giving us a taste of things to come.

At the Kyrie it was the soloists’ turn, each a distinctive and characterful voice, feeing their way into the performance’s particular terrain – tenor Richard Greager heroic and Italianate, the vibrato pronounced at forceful moments, but the singing stylish as always, followed by bass Rodney Macann’s imposing and expansively-phrased utterances (his conductor flashing him the first of a few “hurry-along” glances which added interest to the evening). Then there were the women, both soprano Bryony Williams and mezzo-soprano Margaret Medlyn investing their tones and phrases with theatrical intensity,  the four singers working hand-in-glove to blend their tones and achieve a balance between devotional and dramatic focus. Mention must be made of the choir’s beautiful final “Christe eleision”, Michael Fulcher securing precise and secure attack on those ethereal notes.

When the “Dies Irae” started  I wrestled with the idea of jumping the audience parapet and rushing to the unattended bass drum to deliver a few much-needed thwacks and rolls to join in with the mayhem, as I could see that timpanist Brent Stewart wasn’t going to budge from his timpani throughout. I was told afterwards that the drum was never going to be part of the scheme, and that it was put on the stage merely by rote by the organizers. Oh, it was tantalizing! – but a pity, too, because the brass ensemble punched their whiplash chords and baleful cries out with great gusto, giving the chorus plenty of ambient terror in which to hurl their frightened cries of “Dies irae, dies illa” – all we needed to complete the picture was that abyss opening up beneath, via a few cavernous rolls at the bottom of the textures, something the timpani simply didn’t have a deep enough voice for.

Still, the brass played their hearts out at the “Tuba mirum”, the offstage trumpet surviving a shaky moment to join in with the mounting awe and terror in great style. Rodney Macann’s wonderfully rhetorical delivery of “Mors stupebit” needed a bigger, blacker noise in support that the timps could give, as well, and Michael Fulcher, playing the piano at this point, and moving things along, caught his timpanist on the hop for the latter’s first entry – though Brent Stewart soon caught up. Margaret Medlyn’s “Liber scriptus” sounded as though written for her – she gave it terrific thrust at “Unde mundus judicetur”, though for some reason there was no brass just before “Judex ergo cum sedebit”, and Medlyn also had to skip a beat to accommodate her pianist at one point – a true case of “Nil inultum remanebit” indeed.

The choir was again superb with their ensuing “Dies Irae” reprise, Fulcher adroitly juggling his pianist’s and conductor’s role at this point, before the “Quid sum miser”, with soprano, mezzo and tenor blending their tones again beautifully and Bryony Williams impressing with a shining soprano ascent towards the end, nicely assured. I wanted more sheer noise from everybody (sensationalist that I am) at the beginning of “Rex tremendae” on the opening word “Rex”, though the choir’s “Salva Me’s” at the end were terrific, achieving real supplicatory grandeur! And Margaret Medlyn’s blending with Bryony Williams throughout the lovely, tender “Quarens me” and into the dramatic interchanges of “Ante diem rationis” satisfied on all counts.

I’m uncomfortably aware, at this point in the review, that to go on indulging in “writing up” my great pleasure in all aspects of the performance would produce something whose volume would be akin to ballast for an ocean-going liner! Suffice to say that the soloists continued throughout as they began, Richard Greager soothing our sensibilities in places throughout “Qui Marian absolvisti” (though he had only just enough breath for his final “Statuens in parte dextra”), and Rodney Macann properly apocalyptic in his  “Confutatis maledictis”, his phrasing again rhetorical and measured in places (he chose a lower option instead of his final ascent with “Gere curium mei finis”). In the final “Lacrymosa” Margaret Medlyn again hit the emotional spot with a searing “Huic ergo parce Deus”, before counterpointing Rodney Macann’s reprise of the melody. Choir and soloists combined to great effect, Bryony Williams soaring aloft, her supplications piercing the heart. A beautiful blending of the individual voices at “Pie Jesu, Domine” followed, then some dark-and-light exchanges between mens and women’s voices in the choir eventually came together for a heartfelt “Amen”.

The soloists had further opportunities throughout the “Offertorium”, blending beautifully and making the most of individual moments (Richard Greager unexpectedly more forthright than prayerful at “Hostias”, and Rodney Macann phrasing a little too fulsomely in places, prompting further “encouragement” by Michael Fulcher, but still making something memorable of his “Quam Olim Abrahae” utterances). Bryony Williams negotiated her treacherous but celestial evocation of St.Michael nicely, floating her notes securely downwards from on high. Throughout, the ensemble handled Verdi’s amalgam of prayerfulness and dramatic impulse with aplomb, with Fulchers’s direction vital and focused, and keeping things on the move.

Then it was the chorus’s turn with the “Sanctus” to shine, the brass splendidly festive at the beginning, the voices exuberant in reply. At Fulcher’s steady tempo the lines danced and glowed throughout, the voices having plenty of tonal variation at “Pleni sun coeli”, and wonderful attack at the bell-like “Hosannas” at the end. And the instrumentalists were spot-on with their outlandish, syncopated ascents leading to the final joyous cries to finish – a riot of energy, colour and exuberance.

No greater contrast to it all was there than that of the “Agnus Dei” – firstly, soprano and mezzo in “octave-unison”, accents and timbres well-matched, the choir intense, but warm and supplicatory in response; then a minor-key version from the same soloists, beautifully accompanied by the organ, with the soranos an octave higher in response this time – a lovely sound!  How other-worldly by comparison the “Lux aeterna” sounds! – Margaret Medlyn sounding a trifle unsteady with one of her entries, but still conveying a sense of celestial light shining forth to confront the darkness of Rodney Macann’s grim-voiced “Requiem aeternam” – the ensembled trio (with tenor Richard Greager) again mellifluously blended throughout (I missed the composer’s creepy downward chromatic wind lines at “Cum sanctis tuis”, but the singing provided ample compensation).

And so to the dramatic “Libera me”. Verdi’s original contribution to a planned requiem to honor Rossini, a project that didn’t “make it” during the composer’s lifetime (in fact, not until 1988, when a belated performance was mounted in Stuttgart). The “Libera me” is as dramatic in its own way as the “Dies Irae” part of the work, though featuring only the soprano from the quartet of soloists, along with the chorus and orchestra. It’s a wonderful showcase for both soloist and chorus, and both here were well up to the composer’s demands, supported by dexterous piano playing and closely-worked direction from Michael Fulcher. From the beginning Bryony Williams fully engaged with the music, urgent and searing at “Dum veneris judicare speculum per ignem” – though the piano didn’t match the wonderfully ghoulish bassoon tones of the original at this point, the fear and horror in Williams’ voice was palpable enough, contrasting with the choir’s previously hushed, awe-struck “Libera me, Dominum”.

The return of the “Dies Irae” blazed anew, with powerful work from chorus and brass, then some wonderfully sepulchral exchanges between the men’s voices, baleful trombones and ghostly organ tones paved the way for Bryony Williams’ haunting reprise, with the choir in attendance, of the work’s opening “Requiem” music, concluding with the soloist’s cruelly-exposed octave ascent, here triumphantly realized. But what volatility this music has! – over a “Devil’s Interval” tremolando (difficult to achieve on a piano) the soprano reiterates the fearful opening text “Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna” and awakens the fugue, which has always sounded to my ears the work’s most exacting and fearsome challenge for the chorus.

Michael Fulcher kept it “steady as she goes”, enabling the voices to negotiate even the densest figurations, as well as integrate the soloist’s adding to the textures at several points (Bryony Williams crying mercy for all humanity, here), but also building the excitement of the surging ascents of the women’s voices, before the men take their turn to initiate the forward thrust, with “Veneris, judicare, speculum….” leading up to the brass-and-timpani-supported cataclysmic climax that lacked only the bass drum for its impact to raise the roof of the Citadel. It remained for soprano and chorus to reiterate the words “Libera me”, and allow the silences that followed to proclaim the end.

For a performance such as we had just heard to come from less than two full days of workshop and rehearsal seemed near to miraculous. Very great credit to conductor Michael Fulcher and assistant director Rosemary Russell, for inspiring singers and instrumentalists to give what I imagine would have been their best endeavours, something of great value for performers and listeners alike. For everybody involved with or connected to the Choral Federation in any way, it all would have been a wonderful twenty-fifth birthday present at the end of what must have felt like an exhilarating couple of days!