Author: Peter Mechen

Schubert from Houstoun at Paekakariki – Matching Poesies

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SCHUBERT – Piano Sonata in G Major D.894 / Piano Sonata in B-flat D.960

Michael Houstoun (piano)

Mulled Wine Concert Series / Memorial Hall, Paekakariki

Sunday, July 17th, 2011

Waiting outside the Memorial Hall in a July afternoon’s wintry sunshine at Paekakariki was for me a kind of poetry in itself, colored partly by the expectation of hearing live performances of two of Schubert’s greatest piano sonatas, but also by the ambience of the open spaces, rugged hills to the east, and the beach and distantly lovely Kapiti Island to the west. I’ll doubtless be accused of “event-dropping” here, but I was reminded by all of this of my visit to the Aldeburgh Festival in Suffolk (too many years previously that I care to number!), where one finds a similar “homely” aspect to many of the concert venues, and the same rural outdoor “far-from-the-big-city” atmosphere that gives to the whole enterprise such distinction.

Inside the hall at Paekakariki, the excitement-buzz was palpable, the sense of an occasion somehow made more manifest by the community-hall nature of the venue – a kind of “music is where you find it” spirit that, as I’ve said, heightens the special nature of the event. I was not aware of Michael Houstoun having any previous significant association with the solo piano music of Schubert, and so this for me seemed to add to the concert’s specialness. Naturally, I knew Houstoun had recently performed with tenor Keith Lewis the great “Winterreise” song-cycle, as well as the “Trout” Quintet as part of Chamber Music New Zealand’s “Schubertiade” – so I found myself keenly anticipating the pianist bringing his own unique qualities as a performer to music I’ve loved for much of my listening life.

First up, and I think rightly so, was the G Major Sonata D.894. Like its recital companion, the B-flat Sonata, it’s a work whose first movement alone, when played with the repeat can dwarf in sheer size and scope the movements which follow, especially in the hands of an interpreter who emphasizes the music’s potential for what Robert Schumann famously called its “heavenly length”. Perhaps taking its cue from Schumann’s observation, there’s a school of interpretation that advocates the most spacious of tempi over certain of Schubert’s movements, more pronounced, I think, than with any other classical composer. But as with all great music, there are diametrically opposed notions regarding how it should be played, ranging from those rooted in abstraction and severity of symphonic form, to ideas which advance the feeling that Schubert’s work should all be thought of as subservient to song, since (following this line of thinking) he was a lyricist, and not symphonic in outlook, and that his structures should be regarded as little more than somewhat naively-extended melodies.

Michael Houstoun’s playing of the sonata’s opening suggested a course that took into account both structural awareness and lyrical impulse on the composer’s part. We heard at the outset phrases given plenty of air and space, richly-toned and with leading lines sung out, along with strong, well-focused chordings and clearly-etched melodic patterns, suggesting that the pianist took the idea of Schubert the long-term symphonic thinker seriously, though without, it must be said, going to the extremes of profundity attempted by the likes of pianist Sviatoslav Richter. Houstoun, to my ears, sought from within the movement a judicious balance between profundity and momentum that found the best of both the intellectual and emotional worlds of the music. Throughout the introductory paragraphs he differentiated the different voices with considerable sensitivity, withdrawing his tone for the minor-key utterance, and warming it with slightly more body for its repetition in the major mode – as well, he beautifully energized the music at the point where it consciously begins to pulsate, the melody subtly detailed (a slight finger-slip in the filigree right-handed runs possibly the result of the phrasing being, I felt, a shade too “stiff”, more an etched pattern than a dance), the rhythm given sufficient girth to remain relatively light upon its feet. I thought Houstoun’s observation of the repeat just that wee bit more exploratory and expansive – if, this time round, the filigree runs in the right hand seemed freer and more dance-like, there was also an added hymn-like quality to some of the more chordal utterances, very much a feeling, one could say, of a “song of the earth”.

The rest of the movement was as fine in Houstoun’s hands, with only a touch of “bluntness” at some of the phrase-ends suggesting that there were still a couple of corners of the work he hadn’t yet negotiated with complete ease. Largely his approach to the darker, stormier development was lean and forward-looking, more agitated than tragic in feeling, building up the chordal sequences impressively, but playing with translucent tones that never threatened to crush the music under its own weight. The lead-back to the opening was nicely “breathed”, as was the coda, the music’s “homecoming” aspect given plenty of songful feeling. The slow movement’s first few phrases energized the stasis of the first movement’s conclusion, almost too much so, I thought at first, thinking that those wonderful phrases weren’t being encouraged to “flower” with sufficient poetry – but as the music progressed, so did I warm more to the playing, thanks to the flexibility and subtlety of the pianist’s rubato. The music’s key-change brought a big-boned contrast, but also some beautifully pliant phrasings in the gentler responses – Houstoun actually surprised me with his readiness to yield in places, getting a lot out of the music with his beautifully nuanced contourings.

I liked the Scherzo’s characterful dancings, the pianist bringing out the music’s lilting qualities and playing the grace-notes that punctuate the line with great “point” and care. He illuminated the melodic line of the Trio with nicely-stressed harmonies and counter-lines, enjoying the music’s contrasts as the scherzo’s chords lurched back into the soundscape. As for the finale, the playing had all the rhythmic buoyancy one could have wished for (was there a touch of hesitancy over the transition into the “running” sequence?), with everything nicely pointed and dovetailed; and then, during the stormier minor-key sequences, plenty of invigorating “schwung” to muscle up the interplay and keep the momentum going right through to the opening’s return. After these exertions, the coda was like balm for the senses, a hugely satisfied exhalation which Schubert (and Houstoun) seemed to invite all of us to join in with. At the end of all of this there was general pleasure in demonstrating our appreciation of the performance, though I have to say that Houstoun’s playing of the sonata divided opinion in my party, a situation which always invigorates discussion and sharpens all kinds of critical evaluations, both in the process and its conclusions. A friend whose opinion I respect thought the playing up to this point “all head and no heart”. But I couldn’t agree, as witness what I’ve written so far; and, for myself, I thought it was a truly praiseworthy performance.

Having said this, I had to admit, at the conclusion of the concert’s second half, that the B-flat Sonata demonstrated Houstoun’s interpretative depth and identification with the music to an extent that the G Major’s performance, good though it was, didn’t quite achieve. From first note to last, Schubert’s final and greatest piano sonata brought out what I felt was a powerful and comprehensive understanding on the pianist’s part. Even when I wanted parts of the music played a slightly different way (softer, more yielding paragraphs in one or two places), Houstoun’s conviction regarding what he was doing was such at the time that his interpretation carried all before it, the result being an entirely convincing and marvellously played performance.

Right from the beginning, the music seemed to carry whole worlds of inward feeling, Houstoun’s treatment of the chordal melody sounding and feeling almost Brucknerian in its weighty expansiveness, the vistas opening up to accommodate the tones generated by those big repeated chords which grow beneath the melody’s repetition. Not as nuanced as, and much more insistent than the music for the G major Sonata, these were more direct and forthright sounds, dealing, as Houstoun himself would probably say, in fundamental material – and no more so than at the repeat, where it might seem to the uninitiated listener as though the basic fabric of the music is being threatened by some kind of “horror from the deep” – a critical episode in the work’s discourse, here brought off by the pianist with suitably awe-inspiring power and concentration. The development brought layer upon layer of intensification, leading to what I’ve always regarded as the “stricken” passage, repeated chords sounded underneath a minor-key melody, before the opening theme returns, stalked by its trill ominously rumbling away in the bass. By the time the opening was properly reconstituted, the work had truly become “road music”, the vistas opened right out in Houstoun’s hands, the momentum kept up, the soul inexorably continuing upon its journey, bequeathing us those richly voiced chords at the movement’s end.

What a lovely colour Houstoun gave the opening of the slow movement! – its tolling bell aspect was beautifully and sensitively weighted, equivocally poised between worlds of foreboding and resignation. The music carried easefully into the major-key episode, the pianist’s rhythmic trajectories both focused and flexible throughout. Contrasting with this was the scherzo’s lightness of touch, set around and about an angular trio with Houstoun bringing out some startlingly effective bass-line accents. The playful and propulsive finale also harboured contrasting energies, the explosive mid-stream outbursts very much in keeping with the movement’s volatile character, as were the angular polyphonics leading up to the final energy-gathering pauses, and the torrents of abandonment which concluded the work. And my friend’s reaction to Houstoun’s playing of the B-flat Sonata? – words to the effect of “Well, he really nailed that one!”…..and when all’s said and done, I can’t really sum it up better than that!

Bow at St.Andrews – tightening the strings….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Bow String Ensemble

Musical Director – Rachel Hyde

Concertmaster – Kathryn Maloney

GRIEG – Two Elegiac Melodies Op.34  / GORECKI – Three Pieces in the Old Style

TCHAIKOVSKY – Serenade in C Major for Strings Op.48

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

Sunday, 10th July, 2011

This concert was the Bow String Ensemble’s second outing, following its inaugural concert last October, also at St.Andrew’s. On that occasion the new ensemble made an admirable job of the concert’s first half, but, given the rehearsal time available to amateur players, simply couldn’t do justice to what was practically a full-length program. The result resembled what I thought was very much a concert of two halves, disconcertingly so when setting one against the other. Happily, this time round, a less ambitious, though still demanding program produced a far more consistent and satisfying overall result for all concerned.

Being an ex-percussionist rather than a string player myself, I find a certain fascination, even mystique about string playing, all to do with the sound produced by ensembles. Some of the notes and phrases produced by this group in places during the course of the concert were of “sit-up-and-take-notice” quality – and not always in passages where one would expect a mellifluous sound as a certainty. All the “sections” of the ensemble had wonderful moments, places where the tones had unanimity of focus and the phrases either “flowed like oil” or tugged at the heartstrings.

That there was also, especially in the larger work of the concert, the Tchaikovsky Serenade, a rawness of intonation and a few out-of-sync passages could be easily put down to lack of rehearsal time. But, unlike the struggle experienced by the ensemble last year to make the Dvorak Serenade properly “speak”, I felt that, for all the occasional roughnesses we were given a performance of the Tchaikovsky that truly captured the music’s heart. It was more than getting the notes right – I thought the players’ tones conveyed the character of parts of the score so well and whole-heartedly in places, as to suggest that, with more rehearsal time, the group’s potential to realize performances of comparable through-quality would result, to everybody’s enhanced satisfaction.

As with last year’s performance of the “Holberg” Suite, Grieg’s music proved an excellent concert-opener, on this occasion with the Two Elegiac Melodies Op.34. Easily dismissed as “lighter” fare, they’re actually as characteristically heartfelt and richly-layered as any music by the composer, and reward the detailed, sensitively-nuanced playing encouraged by Rachel Hyde with a most attractive and readily-grasped lyricism – they are, of course, transcriptions for strings of two songs by the composer, “Spring” and “Heart Wounds”.

I thought the ensemble’s tones at the outset had a grainy, nostalgic quality, tightly held, with dynamics controlled beautifully throughout, giving the feeling of every note having been “considered”, so that the accompaniments “told” as appropriately as did the leading lines – I also liked the unmoulded sounds made by some of the notes when “leaned into” – they had a marked visceral impact which contrasted well with the “other-worldliness” of some of the more hushed passages. “Heart Wounds” seemed more inward a piece than “Spring”, one that I suspect is more difficult to “sing” because of its chromatically-inflected melody line. This is music which sounds appropriately “cold”, with flecks of sunlight in places like the tiny ‘cello counterpoint, accompanying the melody’s turning to the major key, and clouding over again when the violas introduce the tune’s second-time though. Focusing upon these nicely-realised detailings may seem as if this review might be losing sight of the forest for the trees – but they’re part of what made the performances of this music by the ensemble resonate in the memory long after the last sounds had died away.

In her spoken introduction to the concert conductor Rachel Hyde had described the three Gorecki pieces as being “lovely, but with some really scrunchy sounds in places” – and so it proved, with the last of the trio of pieces transforming an elegiac beginning into a bell-like threnody, some claustrophobic harmonies providing the crunchy bits as promised, relished by musicians and audience alike, as the sounds alternated between outward brazenness and inwardly-sounded echoes. The first two pieces were nicely differentiated, firstly an oscillating, ritual-like processional not unlike parts of the famous Symphony No.3 (“Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”); and then a cheerful folk-dance, very out-of-doors in feeling, richly textured with dynamics that dipped, swooped and soared – the ensemble seemed to take to the different moods of the music like a duck to water.

So the Tchaikovsky Serenade was splendidly prepared for by these goings-on, and the grand, dignified opening – so ceremonial and heart-on-sleeve at one and the same time – didn’t disappoint. The tones may have been close to raw in places as the players again “leaned into” their bowings, but the result was appropriately heartfelt, especially throughout the questioning repetitions leading up to the allegro. The playing brought out the music’s Italianate quality, Rachel Hyde’s tempi and general control perfectly gauged to allow the ‘cellos time to make something of their counterpoints, and the violins and violas elbow-room for their chromatic back-and-forth figurations. The Mozartean exchanges kept their rhythmic poise,though intonation suffered in the exposed dovetailing as the music turned for home just after the pizzicati colorings – the players were much happier with all this the second time round in a lower key (C as opposed to G), a sense of real enjoyment coming though, reflected in the “juiciness” of the playing of the opening’s reprise at the end.

The Waltz, one of Tchaikovsky’s most well-known, was by turns forthright and yielding, again with that attractive “Italianate” quality so well caught by the violins in thirds, though the minor-key episode that followed sounded relatively scrappy – fortunately, amends were made by the warmth of  the major-key recap., the violas having a fine time with their counterpoint (it must be such a joy to play this work!), and the coda brought off most enchantingly by all – the pizzicati ending got a special burst of delighted applause!

I loved the Elegie all over again in this performance – a beautifully “caught” opening, the tones coloured and weighted to perfection, and the last phrase “dug into” most satisfyingly – the following pizzicato sounded a bit “muddy” at first, then cleared, and the violins started the melody confidently, seemed to “lose their nerve” momentarily at the first rallentando, but then pick up again in support of the ‘cellos. Throughout I thought the performance poised, open and nicely charged with feeling – Tchaikovsky’s candidly-open “weeping” towards the end brought out some less-than-ingratiating tones, though the players recovered for the coda, giving us a most atmospheric, “Russian-sounding” final chord.

Straight into the finale, then, songful at the beginning, and with energy and bite to the dance at the allegro (the second violins couldn’t match the confidence of the firsts in the opening exchanges, but the pizzicati leading to the second subject were full of life and bounce!). Though the ‘cellos sounded a little unhappy with their theme, they then dug into the development with gusto, Hyde and the players keeping the momentum going splendidly, the up-and-down scales rocketing with energy just before the grand return to the work’s opening. Most deservedly, conductor and orchestra got a great ovation from the “in-the-round” audience, Hyde inviting comments at the end and getting one or two bravely-delivered contributions!

A quick word regarding Rachel Hyde’s invitation to children present to move around during the performance of the music – while laudable in theory I did find the audience movement distracting during the playing, and wondered whether other people also found that it actually “took” from the concert’s musical ambience – one can be warmly welcoming of children at concerts by way of dispelling a lot of the usual “stuffiness” that people associate with classical music performance, but as this wasn’t anywhere presented as a “young audience” event, I didn’t think that offering people carte blanche of movement was entirely appropriate. Perhaps I’m the one being overly stuffy, now, but I still feel that somewhere there’s middle ground with all of this that can strike a balance at concerts between enjoyment and respect, constraint and comfort – and not just for youthful concertgoers!

Earthly and Heavenly Delights from the Historical Arts Trust

Posted on by Peter Mechen

LA MUSICA – Sacra II

Earthly Delight, Heavenly Respite

The Historical Arts Trust

Music by CORELLI and HANDEL

Pepe Becker (soprano)

Gregory Squire (baroque violin) / Katrin Eickhorst-Squire (baroque ‘cello) / Douglas Mews (harpsichord)

St. Mary of the Angels Church, Wellington

Saturday 2nd July 2011

Formed in 2010, the Historical Arts Trust was set up by a group of enthusiasts involved in the disciplines of early music, theatre and dance, in order to promote interest in Medieval, Renaissance and baroque music, dance and drama in New Zealand. The aim of the Trust is to present concerts and other events such as workshops and demonstrations which showcase these highly distinctive eras, and will encourage wider awareness and involvement on the part of performers and audiences.

Dimitrios Theodoridis, well-known as a versatile singer with period vocal groups, was appointed the Trust’s first Executive Director, and was instrumental in co-ordinating the group’s first workshop, in April 2011, taken with students from both St.Patrick’s and St.Catherine’s Colleges here in Wellington, and featuring also the talents of musicians Robert Oliver, Brendan O’Donnell and Stephen Pickett. The students were able to experience the authentic sounds of renaissance music and its performance, and discuss what they heard with the musicians.

The group’s first concert, Risurrezione, which took place in May,  got the series, “La Musica”, off to an exciting beginning with the music of Biber, JS Bach and Buxtehyde. The considerable instrumental skills of Gregory Squire, Douglas Mews and Robert Oliver each played a vital part supporting the glorious singing of soprano Pepe Becker and bass David Morriss. It all promised well for the events to follow, and special interest accompanied the first of these, which featured two of the Baroque era’s most spectacular composer/performers, Arcangelo Corelli and Georg Friedrich Handel.

Stories of the rivalry between the two composers, arising from their encounters in Rome, have gone into the realms of musical legend, the most well-known one being Handel’s deliberate placement of a high E in a sonata of his that Corelli was due to perform, after the latter had avowed never to write – or perform – such a note. Despite the resulting stand-off causing a never-to-be-healed breach between the two composers, Handel wasn’t slow to recognize the popular appeal of the “Italian style” and thus adopt his own potent realization of it in his own works. The concert thus gave us a chance to further the “cheek-by-jowl” interaction of the two composers’ music, albeit playing to different respective creative “strengths”, Corelli’s with some of his instrumental sonatas, and Handel with his famous set of German Arias for soprano.

How eloquently the instrumentalists stirred the silences into life with the opening of the first of Corelli’s Op.5 Violin Sonatas! – the Grave opening marvellously punctuated by energized irruptions, the tones held and savored by the church’s grateful ambience. Greg Squire’s violin confidently led the dance, while Katrin Eickhorst-Squire’s ‘cello seemed a more “contained” though always reliable consort. In attendance, too was Douglas Mews’ ever-tasteful continuo, finding a just balance between expression and discretion in support of the violin. For a time, the combination jelled more consistently in the slower movements, during which the instrumentalists conjured up exquisitely-voiced and -balanced sounds; whereas the allegros found the string-playing a touch off-centre in intonation and more wispy in tone than was ideal – as the evening progressed, so did the playing focus more truly and consistently.

Interspersed throughout the concert with Handel’s seven German Arias we heard two further instrumental sonatas from Corelli’s Op.5 – No.9 in A Major made a nice contrast with its secular dance movements as opposed to the opening work’s more formal “churchy’ structure, longish slow movements set against virtuosic allegros and fugues. Particularly noteworthy (excuse the pun) was the performance of the Gavotte from this sonata, decorated busily with running passagework that kept the players on their toes, although the playing never lost sight of the underlying dance rhythms, the ‘cello and harpsichord working as hard as Gregory Squire’s violin throughout this work.

Fittingly, the most famous of the Op. 5 set was also represented, the D Minor Sonata No.12 being a theme and variations on the well-known La Follia. This was a glittering display of music-making form all concerned, very exciting and physical in effect, with the ‘cello given as much to do, it seemed, as the violin. Corelli’s inventiveness seemed unflagging, including many unpredictable and volatile moments, a world of ebb and flow that these performers took unto themselves without hesitation – though the playing wasn’t absolutely note-perfect, it was the energy and drive of the virtuoso irruptions set against the more poised and dignified episodes that triumphantly carried the listener’s attention throughout.

It made excellent musical sense to ring the changes between instrumental and vocal items throughout the evening. Pepe Becker was in her usual fine vocal fettle, though I couldn’t help thinking that, on this showing, her voice seemed in places somehow less comfortable with this repertoire than with the Renaissance and earlier Baroque works we’d recently heard her perform so magnificently. It’s a voice that floats and fills out melismatic contouring with the utmost beauty, of the kind that abounds in more florid music than this – here, in Handel’s more tightly-conceived figurations I noticed a blurring of the coloratura lines exacerbated by the ample acoustic which took away some of the music’s clarity in quicker passages as well as most of the singer’s consonants! Having said this, Becker made some lovely sounds, the opening Süsse Stille particularly successful, especially in the voice’s combination with the instruments. Apart from some sightly uncomfortable intonation at the end of the the aria’s middle section, the following Singe, Seele, Gott sum Preise just as successfully conveyed the music’s essence, energetic and joyful.

In the next bracket of two arias, Flammende Rose was beautifully shaped by the performers, the structure most satisfyingly “built up” by the composer,and rendered here with appropriately sonorous singing and playing. I thought the opening of Künft’ger Zeiten either Kummer (Vain care of times to come) with its low tessitura difficult for the soprano voice, but the succeeding episode featured some exquisite work, with beautifully-held notes from the singer. Two further arias immediately after the interval featured, firstly, Süsser Blumen Ambraflocken (Ambrosial petal of sweet flowers), the singer making up for somewhat blurred articulation throughout by some shining, stratospheric decoration of the penultimate line “I will soar Heavenward and sing praises”, followed by an oddly sombre and agitated setting of In dem Angenehmen Büschenand (In the pleasant thickets), the music sounding more disturbed than tranquil, with an undertow of unrest even through the more settled tones of “Dann erhebt sich in der Brust” (Then in my breast my contented spirit).

Fortunately, the concluding aria Meine Seele made amends, Becker’s voice taking to its exaltations with buoyancy and openness – a lovely, more circumspect moment at “Horen nur, Hark!” placing Creation’s delight in a more thoughtful, metaphysical context, before returning to the leaping joy of “Alles jauchzet, alles lacht” at the end. Delight in the music,in the singing and playing, and in the beauties of the venue (despite the slightly over-generous ambience already alluded to) gave this concert the kind of distinction which did the Historical Arts Trust’s purposes full justice.

Gilbert and Sullivan double bill a delight…..

Posted on by Peter Mechen

W.S.GILBERT / ARTHUR SULLIVAN – Trial By Jury / H.M.S.Pinafore

Wellington Gilbert and Sullivan Light Opera Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra

Music Director – Matthew Ross / Stage Director – Gillian Jerome

Wellington Opera House

Thursday 30th June 2011

“I do my best to satisfy you all” sings Captain Corcoran to the crew of H.M.S.Pinafore – and we in the audience at Wellington ‘s Opera House could well have, at the end of the evening, echoed the crew’s reply, regarding the production, “And with you we’re quite content!” For this was a rollicking good night in the theatre – the stage spectacle entertaining and colourful, and the music elegant and captivating. To be sure, in the wake of previous encounters with this company, one came fully prepared to make certain allowances regarding the quality of the solo singing and fluency of the stage production, but any such discrepancies had little debilitating effect on the evening’s pleasure and delight. Having heard neither “Trial By Jury” nor “Pinafore” for some time, I was delighted to have my enthusiasm for Sullivan’s music and Gilbert’s elegant and witty satires reawakened so wholeheartedly.

Pivotal to the success of the evening throughout both productions were chorus and orchestra, and in each case there was a strong and secure focus, with many felicitous touches. This was particularly so in “Trial By Jury” where the choruses are positively Greek-like in character, declaiming as one, but with the added strength and persuasion of numbers, and often interacting with individuals as such themselves. Particularly telling were the jurymen’s rapid mood-swings, ranging from utter besottment with the female plaintiff ‘s allure to savage condemnation of her ex-partner the defendant, depending upon whichever protagonist was in their immediate sights. Both jurymen and spectators in the courtroom were, in fact, splendid in every way, the singing and acting strong and purposeful.

In “Pinafore” which followed, both groups, as sailors on board the ship, and as the First Lord of the Admiralty’s accompanying bevy of “sisters, cousins and aunts”, again relished their roles, though I thought the sailors every now and then too static and deck-bound, needing to respond with more energy to what the music was doing, as with the work’s opening chorus, “We sail the ocean blue”. The First Lord, Sir Joseph Porter’s “sister’s, cousins and aunts” were nicely “contained”, bubbling onto the ship’s deck like eager schoolgirls on a Bank Holiday outing, and amusingly irritating their illustrious benefactor and patron with their attentions. Musically, though, each group put across its music with great vim and conviction, and things came together nicely in places such as the “conspirators” scene, at the end of the first act, with stage movement and vocal energy strongly conveying the scene’s power and purpose – an amusing touch was the unexpected despatching of the rogue sailor Dick Deadeye overboard, with a Goon-Show cry of “He’s fallen in the water!”

Throughout, I was much taken with the work of the music director, Matthew Ross, in a role I hadn’t seen him perform before. Apart from a mix-up during “Pinafore” between stage and pit over Sir Joseph Porter’s pointed hesitations for his refrain, “I thought so little – they rewarded me…” this was a nicely spic-and-span orchestral realization, by turns spirited and sensitive throughout both operettas, the playing so often mirroring the theatrical action aptly and vividly. Ross couldn’t keep the solo voices ideally together during the near-polyphonic strains of “A British Tar…” but in tutti things fairly crackled along. I would have insisted on a bigger NOISE from everybody, on-stage and off with each whiplash disturbance of the lovers’ intended flight, allowing the “Goodness me…..why, what was that?” interjections to have more hushed point and menace. But in general things were beautiful judged and nicely paced, the “For he is an Englishman” having plenty of proper Victorian gravitas (with a touch of colonial humor spicing the comparisons – “…or perhaps Aus-tray-li-yan!” which brought a ripple of laughter from the stalls).

The leading roles in both works were all nicely characterized, one or two vocal insufficiencies hardly mattering in the context of the whole, even if one did long for more honeyed tenor tones in places from both lead tenors, Peter King’s somewhat papery-voiced, if charmingly-acted Defendant, and Christopher Berentson’s effortful but commendably whole-hearted Ralph Rackstraw. And David Skinner’s Learned Judge was also notable more for his compelling stage presence than clearly-focused voice production, though his portrayals by turns of bastion of justice, raconteur and opportunist all rolled into one were amusing and convincing. John Goddard as Captain Corcoran survived an awkward first entrance as a prelude to his “My gallant crew! – good morning!” – which was surely written to be declaimed from the top deck, or at the very least, the quarter-deck, instead of from somebody crowded in on the same level as his crew right from the time he opened his cabin door. He seemed more comfortable with the jollier, more robust aspects of his role, though his understanding of the poignancy of his Serenade to the moon was evident enough.

His rapport with Stephanie Gartrell’s Little Buttercup was heartwarming, to say the least. Hers was a rich and beautifully-delivered assumption, warm and sympathetic as her boat-woman character, but able to suggest by gesture and expression sufficient exotic mystery to make good her prophetic words to the Captain, “There is a change in store for you!”. Their duet “Things are seldom what they seem” was a highlight of the evening. Malinda di Leva’s Josephine was suitably bright-toned of voice and nicely poised of aspect, ready to suggest and activate the character’s depth of feeling beneath the reserve – her wholeheartedness made a marvellous contrast with the attractive kittenish vacuity of Lynley Snelling’s dolly-bird Plaintiff in “Trial”, nicely plausible and beautifully sung. Two tenors who each took to the law, with markedly different outcomes, were Kevin O’Kane, eloquent and pleasing as Counsel for the Plaintiff, and in “Pinafore” Colin Eade as the shamelessly opportunistic First Lord of the Admiralty, a colourful and successful portrayal. Derek Miller also impressed right from the outset with his sonorous tones as the Usher in “Trial” and his gift for characterization without caricature as the unfortunate sailor, Dick Deadeye.

So, with talent enough among the performers to burn, the traditional double-bill was a great success, reminding one of a number of things – the genius of the work’s creators (too readily taken for granted), the renewability of great music (able to enchant at each hearing), the excitement of live performance (with attendant thrills and spills), and the stunning clarity of the Wellington Opera House’s stage acoustic (every word sung with good diction as clear as a bell – such a joy!). The G&S Society can, in my opinion, be proud of their “latest” – moments in time well worth the shared enjoyment!

Romeo and Juliet – beautiful but cool from Inkinen and the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ROMEO AND JULIET – Music by Tchaikovsky, Berlioz and Prokofiev

Pietari Inkinen (conductor) / New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, June 25th, 2011

British comedians Michael Flanders and Donald Swann penned a number called “A Friendly Duet” for their successful 1960s revue At The Drop of Another Hat, a song containing references to various famous pairs of lovers in history and literature – including, of  course, Romeo and Juliet :

No romance, said Juliet,

I haven’t left school yet,

We’re friends – just friends!

Throughout much of the first half of the NZSO’s Romeo and Juliet concert, which featured the music of Tchaikovsky and Berlioz, I couldn’t help thinking of the Flanders-and-Swann song – the clean-cut, beautifully-modulated and expertly-delivered orchestral playing presided over by maestro Pietari Inkinen impressed on a great many counts, but seemed to me to keep at arm’s length what the publicity associated with the concert emphasized as its essential component – that sadly “done-to-death” concept, passion. True, the right instincts seemed to be closely associated with the venture – the programme notes for the concert spoke of “frenetic music” and “burning passion” (Tchaikovsky), and “unbridled energy” (Berlioz),  while Inkinen and the orchestra achieved in both pieces miracles of evocation and atmosphere with certain episodes, passages that took away one’s breath with the beauty and subtlety of the sounds. However, both Tchaikovsky’s and Berlioz’s music, for me, exemplify romantic expression in its totality, where beauty and subtlety vie with full-blooded extremes of feeling – and I didn’t feel those extremities were sufficiently explored. In quoting Flanders and Swann I’ve obviously exaggerated the touches of inhibition throughout the performances, but for whatever reason, the impression remains of emotion contained rather than given sufficient expressive rein.

I must say, at this point, that in the wake of the conductor’s and orchestra’s recent overwhelming performances of the Mahler Sixth Symphony, I was hoping for more along the same lines with Tchaikovsky et al., playing that expressed the music’s innate volatility and passion (that word, again!). Sadly, it didn’t fire on Saturday night in the way that the Mahler did for me – though I’ve been wondering whether Inkinen’s success with the latter work reflected more his (laudable) punctilious care regarding detail and his players’ strict observance of Mahler’s detailed directions in the score, and less any deep-seated emotional connection on his part with the music. If so, it suggests a cerebral approach to music-making – not a bad thing with music whose appeal stems mostly from its structure, logic and precise detailing, but more problematic with works that make their impact via emotional heft. That’s not to say that the thinking interpreter’s Tchaikovsky or Berlioz can’t work – but in place of the searing “muse of fire” there needs to be, in my opinion, equally razor-sharp focus of thought and action, however unromantic. That’s what I felt we got with Inkinen’s Mahler, but, sadly not sufficiently in evidence here.

What did work during the concert’s first half were a number of extremely focused moments – the fine gradations of tone and colour in the opening “Friar Laurence” section of the Tchaikovsky overture, the beautiful blend of strings and cor anglais (Michael Austin) for the first appearance of the famous “love-theme” (winds doing an equally heartfelt job of the tune’s songful repetition), and the strings” full-throated recapitulation of the theme just before the death-throes of the “star-crossed lovers”. But, expertly drilled though the fight music was, I didn’t think the orchestral flare-ups angry and incisive enough, so that the bitterness and hatred between the warring families didn’t sufficiently presage the tragedy. As for the Berlioz, I thought it odd that the selection of orchestral exerpts made here almost completely avoided the two salient themes of the story – the conflict between the families, and the lovers themselves. So instead of Berlioz’s furious and tumultuous introduction, we began with Romeo alone just before the Capulet’s Ball, and ended with one of Berlioz’s most amazing orchestral evocations, the Queen Mab Scherzo. This actually was the performance’s highlight for me, with Inkinen and his players weaving patterns of gossamer magic through which the most delicately-voiced rhythmic impulses darted this way and that, beguiling the senses with the elfin transparency of it all – a treasurable episode of pure orchestral alchemy. And what a telling evocation towards the end of the soldier’s dream of “drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes…” with deep, menacing sounds louring out of the dark! It was playing whose delight all but made amends for what I thought was a somewhat dull Capulet’s Ball, lacking that last ounce of sheer momentum, of youthful exuberance in the performance that would have readily conveyed that “unbridled energy” cited in the program notes.

In general, the Romeo and Juliet of Prokofiev fared better in Inkinen’s hands, even though the famous pungent crescendi and jagged chords introducing the Dance of the Capulet Knights were despatched quickly and sharply, the effect being taut and terse, or short-winded and literal, depending upon your point of view. I liked the savage tread of the Knights during their dance, however, magnificently underpinned by the heavy brass, and in particular the tuba (superbly played by Andrew Jarvis). The contrasting episode had little mystery and atmosphere, though – more a dancer’s than a listener’s performance. Happily, Young Juliet, which followed, was quite lovely, with solo playing to die for from clarinet (Phil Green), flute (Bridget Douglas) and ‘cello (Andrew Joyce). In fact the solo playing throughout the concert was near-impeccable – deft trumpet and oboe solos from Cheryl Hollinger and Robert Orr in the street scenes come readily to mind as do Nancy Luther’s silvery, nostalgic piccolo echoings at the very end. Again, it was the lighter, more graceful and lyrical aspects of the score that inkinen and his players more readily and successfully brought out, whereas The Death of Tybalt, though rumbustious and exciting at a certain level had no real cutting edge – more like children excitedly playing at war rather than the real, deadly thing. And what is the point of music such as this if it doesn’t convey “hurt” in the playing and listening?

Mention of the marvellous work done by the orchestra’s stellar line-up of soloists brings me to the sadness of acknowledging the last appearance on the NZSO platform of one of the greatest of them all – principal horn Ed Allen. He was appropriately farewelled by a speech from orchestral leader Vesa-Matti Leppänen which brought forth tumultuous audience applause accompanying a standing ovation for Allen, a kiss and a bouquet presented by his double-bass player partner Vicki Jones, and an affectionate hug from his conductor Pietari Inkinen. He will be greatly missed.

Diedre Irons – piano pleasures at Waikanae

Posted on by Peter Mechen

DIEDRE IRONS  (piano)

– presented by the Waikanae Music Society Inc.

BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata in C Op.2 No.3

CHOPIN – 2 Nocturnes Op.27 / Fantasy in F Minor

WHITEHEAD – Tūmanako: Journey through an unknown landscape

RAVEL – Le Tombeau de Couperin

Memorial Hall, Waikanae

Sunday 19th June 2011

To describe Diedre Irons’ piano playing as “thoroughly engaging” might seem to some too much of an all-purpose, over-generalized comment, out-of-step with more serious analysis of the kind one associates with a “proper” review. However, I think this quality of engagement is intrinsic to any discussion of a musician’s work as a performer in front of an audience. Irons seems incapable of playing a mechanical or dissociated phrase, so that for me it seems to all flow like life-blood, activating and sustaining for the listener whole worlds of feelings, ideas, impulses and actions.

In my ideal world I would want to hear Diedre Irons play all the Beethoven piano sonatas – I know that the great Rachmaninov once said that he didn’t play many of these works because “the Beethoven sonatas contain everything, and no one pianist can play everything”…..but I’ve often thanked my lucky stars that musicians such as Schnabel, Kempff, Arrau, and Barenboim (and, of course, our own Michael Houstoun), to name but a few, have ignored Rachmaninov’s dictum and performed them all, both in public and on record. Yes, Rachmaninov was right, in the sense that, as Artur Schnabel famously said, “These are works that are better than can ever be played”, and any pianist who essays the complete set of them has to cover an enormous technical, intellectual and emotional range of responses. But it can be done most rewardingly, and on the evidence of Irons’ playing for us the delicious C Major Op.2 No.3 Sonata with what seemed like a comprehensive grasp of the work’s expressive possibilities, I would welcome hearing more from her – in fact, as many as she wants to play.

Within just a few measures of the music’s opening, Irons had generously given us as many shades of expression as would a gifted Shakespearean actor on stage in one of the plays. Each note took on a meaning of its own, the phrases enlivened, the paragraphs taking us on a journey whose course featured many details of continuity and contrast, as befitted the work of a young, and wanting-to-impress composer. Irons brought forth warm, enthusiastic accents rather than overtly muscular contrasts, so that the music often smiled, and the minor-key exertions sallied forth beneath a firm, but elastic touch. Towards the end of the movement, from the recitative-like passages came an adroitly-pedalled foretaste of both the Tempest and Waldstein Sonatas, the pianist bringing out the work’s connections within a more widely-spanned context in a totally natural and unforced way.

The remainder of the sonata similarly enchanted us – a guarded, somewhat understated second-movement opening grew towards a marriage of delicacy and resonance, the right-handed figurations dancing over the step-wise columns rising from the bass regions; while Irons nicely contrasted the third movement’s interplay of mischievous and vertiginous trajectories with those wonderfully rolling arpeggiations in the trio. Contrast was also the order of the day for the finale, the gentle playfulness of Irons’ delivery of the opening a perfect foil for the grand and heroic second subject – a case of humor and delicacy alternating with bigger-boned statements, culminating in a teasing coda and a grand-slam final payoff!

Chopin’s two Op.27 Nocturnes which followed gave an impression of being two different “takes” of a similar view, a night-and-day contrast, for example, the C-sharp Minor all half-lit suggestiveness under Irons’ fingers, a shade exotic in its lyrical character, the opening sharply brought into focus with urgent toccata-like chordings, whose impulses of energy dissipate almost as rapidly as they rise up, allowing a “homecoming” coda of great beauty to steal in over the final bars. No such exoticisms trouble the second Nocturne in D-flat, whose more overly vocal lines describe an archway of melodic beauty and intensity, echoed by a “dying fall” as affecting in its way as its companion’s. Both works were here brought to life, not only as companions but as entities in themselves.

Insightful programming had the great Fantasy in F Minor placed after the two Nocturnes, with the audience taking up its cue and allowing the pianist an unbroken path towards the new work’s first sounds – the expectant tread of the opening in keeping with the composer’s intention of taking his listeners to the heart of a world of spontaneously-conceived feeling and incident. Very much like a Polish version of the Hungarian “lassu” at the beginning, the Fantasy then sweeps into and through episodes of vivid storytelling, Irons revelling in particular episodes such as the “storm and stress” arpeggiated flourishes, some magical arabesques of transformation, and then a hymn-like, almost devotional rapture, the whole quite Lisztian in its range and scope, though still Chopinesque in accent throughout.

I’d heard Gillian Whitehead’s Tūmanako: Journey through an unknown landscape on a previous occasion, at the “Sounztender” concert in May of last year, played by the same pianist. In a concert with established classics, the piece took on a different “feeling” for me to what it did on the previous occasion when played alongside some of its contemporaries. This time round the music seemed to me more abstract in effect than before, the result, perhaps, of my bringing some kind of expectation to the performance of the “we’ve heard the sounds – now, how well do they cohere?” variety. At the outset there were vast spaces, created as much by wide leaps between resonating notes as by the frequent silences, from which came various impressions of fleeting encounters, cascades of bitter-sweet arpeggiations, chordal evocations, cries of birds and other nature sounds, both tumbling downwards and taking flight. In places I felt a sense of reverence and an awareness of ritual, a feeling advanced by full-throated, bell-like soundings of things paying a kind of homage to a state of being, and an activation of the spirit.

A different kind of evocation came from Ravel in his Le Tombeau de Couperin, a tribute from one French master to the work of another. It took me a while to get onto the performance’s wavelength, to my surprise – although Irons played the Prelude with suitably motoric impulse, the dynamic terracings for me somehow lacked light and shade, the hall’s lack of resonance perhaps to blame for an ambience more clear-eyed than atmospheric. Only with the deliciously bitter-sweet Forlane did I begin to make connections with it all, increasingly beguiled by the changing faces of the music’s droll, but suggestive “revolve”. Irons gave the Rigadoun’s opening plenty of jack-in-the-box energy, nudging the succeeding trio episode along, with its deliciously “limping” rhythms, before the opening orchestrally crashes back. And nowhere was Ravel’s wistful mix of artifice and feeling more beautifully conveyed by Irons than in the Menuet’s astringent strains, the mask hiding the composer’s true feelings never more apparent. I thought the pianist resisted the blandishments of sheer virtuosity with the concluding Toccata, her rhythmic trajectories instead enabling the piece’s tempo fluctuations to grow out of one another and have a cumulative effect of energy and brilliance.

A Debussy piece to finish help return us to our lives – the audience’s appreciation of and regard for Diedre Irons’ playing was, at the end, a pleasure to join in with.

Pangea Piano Project – double the pleasure

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Pangea Piano Project

Ya-Ting Liou and Blas Gonzalez (pianos)

Music for Four Hands and Two Pianos by New Zealand Composers

Kenneth Young, Jack Body, Edwin Carr, John Psathas

The Hunter Concert Series (presented by the NZ School of Music)

Hunter Building, Victoria University of Wellington

Thursday 26th May, 2011

Every concert has its own intrinsic qualities and unique merits; but this one was exceptionally memorable. I found it a life-enhancing experience, and in fact couldn’t trust myself to write a review until I’d returned to earth, somewhat. Now, with feet firmly back on the ground, I’m ready to re-savour the pleasures and excitements of what I heard and saw at the Hunter Building, on a late May evening.

The Pangea Piano Project consists of two gifted young pianists, Ya-Ting Liou from Taiwan and Blas Gonzalez from Argentina, who have joined forces to, in their own words “combine standard piano music with less conventional repertoire for solo, duet and duo”.  The duo has commissioned, premiered and recorded many works by composers from all around the world, and obviously considers the New Zealand repertoire for the piano eminently worthy of attention – in fact “wide and varied”, and characterized by “imaginative innovation”, according to the duo’s programme note.

Works by four New Zealand composers, two of whom were present at the concert, made up the evening’s music, and to my ears readily endorsed the opinions of the duo. The first half featured items for four hands at one piano, by Kenneth Young and Jack Body, while two pianos were brought into play after the interval, for music by Edwin Carr and John Psathas.

Naturally. the performers took advantage of the “composer-presence”, inviting first Ken Young and then Jack Body to speak about their respective pieces. Young’s work, entitled Variations on a Prayer, written in 2010, was inspired by both Beethoven’s and Brahms’ approach to variation form, whereby themes are not just ornamented but transformed – Young likened the process of transformation to “the struggle between faith and doubt”, speaking about how the act of prayer itself is multifaceted in a way that itself suggested variation form. The music’s meditative opening evoked spaces that seemed to encourage self-examination, with mirror-like treble-and-bass interactions. Conversely, the variations make a rhapsodic, almost quixotic impression, with canonic figurations again suggesting self-awareness, the pianists all the while expressing the differing moods beautifully with their keyboard choreographies. More agitated episodes featured a toccata-like hammering above and below intertwining linear themes, and rapid unisons imploding to form a violent waltz, the irruptions gradually lessening as the opening theme returns, beautiful and prayerful, suggesting a kind of processional towards what seems like a state of reassurance – a heartfelt and moving work.

Jack Body’s Three Rhythmics (written in 1986) was commissioned originally by the New Zealand Music Federation, but was pronounced as “too difficult” by the performers who had been assigned to the piece. Body himself ascribed the piece’s difficulties to his own youthful confidence, stressing that he was “a bit younger then”, and  admitting also that “at certain times in one’s life one feels the need to do or create something flashy”. He calls the kind of virtuosity required of the performers “mechanistic rather than Lisztian” , and observed wryly that that even the performers who subsequently tackled the work more-or-less successfully complained about its difficulties. However, he emphasized that the live performances he’s heard of the work have all produced an exhilarating effect – so that demands, after all, perhaps do bring rewards.

He would have been exhilarated all over again by this performance – right from the Stravinsky-like opening of the first movement “Drumming”, with its wonderfully jagged accents and rhythmic patterning, and with the textures spiced by occasional hand-clapping, the duo kept the pulse of the work alive and buoyant. What a change with the “Interlude” movement, in which all notions of conscious time seem to have been dissolved into a Dali-esque “melting-clocks” kind of scenario at the beginning, the duo gradually goading the “parlando” declamations back into metered divisions . And I loved the pair’s choreographic interactions during the final “Ostinato”, enacting for us in sight and sound an almost ritualistic clashing of lines over a dancing bass. We heard left and right figurations occasionally spreading themselves, fragmenting the symmetries with angular accents and dealing with the remorseless bass line as best they could, the argument breaking off boldly and abruptly by way of solving the music’s impasse. Breathtaking playing!

Edwin Carr’s suite of dances from his ballet score “Elektra” represented an earlier era of New Zealand composition, but one whose boldness, vigour and austerity seemed as “contemporary” as any of the other works. This music marked the duo’s switch to the two-piano medium, giving the concert ample variety of texture and spatial ambience. Carr’s work dates from 1955, and his time studying in Italy with composer Goffredo Petrassi, who was an advocate of the neoclassicism whose influence, thanks to the likes of Stravinsky, was very much in vogue. Carr actually took the directorship for a short period of Il Nuovo Balletto d’Italia, who performed his ballet a number of times on tour. This two-piano version of a suite of dances from the score stresses what the programmme notes describe as “vigorous rhythms, percussive piano writing, concise formal design and rugged polytonal chords”. I thought Carr’s music triumphantly spanned the centuries over which the inspiration had cast its shadow, the textures at once lean, spare, and energetic in a modern manner, but also presenting a cold, marbled finish in places that suggested an antiquity of centuries. Each of the four pieces had something of this Janus-faced aspect, the performers ringing out their tones across the two-piano vistas, and evoking a dark and compelling ambience of human interaction and emotion.

John Psathas’s work, Zeal, from 1992, concluded the concert. The work has five movements, the first, Lulling Imagination to Sleep, beginning with murmuring bass figurations that readily recall his earlier (1988) Waiting for the Aeroplane – there are similarly vast spaces conjured out of the sounds, underlined by the antiphonal placement of the pianos. The music’s ambient capacities gradually build to something of an elemental roar, before retreating as enigmatically throughout a long-breathed epilogue.The following Ghost Hunting is quixotic and fragmentary, featuring tingling exchanges between the instruments with occasional biting sforzandi, the playing by turns whispering, wailing and laughing – one senses ghosts being laid to rest. The title-movement, Zeal, features monumental, pagan-like gestures, energetic and deep-throated, the sounds breaking away and reforming, reinventing themselves in the process, and contrasting markedly with the following Amalgam, a world in which sharp angularities play jabbing, poking games of hide-and-seek in the nocturnal mists. Finally Unstoppable Forces: Immovable Objects brought forth driving, syncopated energies from the tireless pair towards tremendous, Mahlerian outpourings of tone, whose climactic moments Baz Gonzales described in his program notes as “romantic grandeur”. Like all of Psathas’s music, its direct emotional impact is the most striking immediate feature, though deeper layers of impulse driving things like the larger-scale organization of the material make for interesting explorations of one of this country’s most interesting composers.

It would seem that there is a recording of these and other works planned with the duo, for release on the excellent Waiteata Music Press label – in my book, already a sure-fire winner, judging by this remarkable concert’s music-making from the Pangea Piano Project.

Stravinsky from the Royal New Zealand Ballet

Posted on by Peter Mechen

STRAVINSKY SELECTION

ROYAL NEW ZEALAND BALLET

MILAGROS (after Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps”) Choreography – Javier De Frutos

SATISFIED WITH GREAT SUCCESS (after Stravinsky’s “Scenes de ballet”) Choreography – Cameron McMillan

PETROUSHKA – (music by Stravinsky) Choreographer (after Michel Fokine)  Russell Kerr / Designer (after Alexandre Benois) Raymond Boyce

Royal New Zealand Ballet Company

Vector Wellington Orchestra

Marc Taddei, conductor.

St.James Theatre, Wellington

20-21 May 2011

Opportunities both gloriously taken and frustratingly unrealized – that was my immediate reaction to the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s “Stravinsky traversal” during which we saw and heard settings of the music for two of the composer’s ballets, (including the infamous Le Sacre du Printemps) and a full-scale production of Petroushka, both works among the most famous of their kind of all time. Allowing time for my feelings to settle somewhat before writing this review hasn’t greatly altered my reactions, though I’m wanting to point out that I thought the evening’s successes spectacular ones, and that the rest was never less than interesting and absorbing.

Heretical though it may seem to balletomanes, I tend to sympathize with Stravinsky’s reaction to choreographers and dancers who wanted the composer to write music and conduct his scores to suit their needs. The veteran choreographer Russell Kerr, in part of an interview printed in the program, related an incident involving the composer conducting a production of Petroushka in the United States in which Kerr was dancing. “I do not conduct for the dancers; they dance to my music!” the composer retorted, when asked to delay a section of his score to fit in with some stage business. If that attitude seems like the music is put first and foremost, its principle is a welcome corrective to a lot of choreography I’ve encountered which appears to take little notice of aspects of the music to which the dance steps are allegedly set.

I thought it interesting with this idea in mind to compare the opening item on the program with the full production of Petroushka which concluded the evening. The former was Milagros, a work which had been performed before by the Royal New Zealand ballet, on tour of the UK in 2004. It was impressive to read of Javier De Frutos’s award-winning status as a choreographer – certainly his movement scenario seemed brimful with ideas, and in places resulted in powerful and memorable theatrical imaging. Nevertheless, I thought his over-wrought modulations of the dance’s ebb and flow ran counter in many places to the primitive, rawly-focused nature of Stravinsky’s score (played, incidentally from a pianola roll made in the 1920s, one whose tempi had been supervised directly by the composer, and was here realized in a recording by player/pianist Rex Lawson).

It was as though De Frutos was trying to do too much, blunting his moments of connection with the music’s rhythmic thrust with unfocused superfluous movement that, for me, didn’t match the tones and pulsations of what we were hearing. There were times when the archetypal impulses of the music reflected themselves all too tellingly on the stage (some of the interactions I found quite disturbing, in fact – a friend of mine at the interval used the word “misogynistic”, which feeling in places I agreed with, though the occasional savageries were gradually developed in both gender directions). But whatever rituals were being enacted (and some of the imagery was stunningly presented – the head-stacking, for example) I felt it was as if the choreographer had allowed too many echoes of previous settings (his fourth of this music, if the program note is to be believed) to blur the focus. Whatever the theme, setting or prevailing current, the music unequivocally gives all the clues – and these oft-swirling masses of bodies didn’t consistently and coherently hold my sensibilities in a tightly-concerted enough grip throughout.

There was no doubt as to the commitment of the dancers to the work, particularly in the individual characterizations and teamwork of Abigail Boyle and Brendan Bradshaw, with Lucy Balfour contributing an eye-catching solo, all of whom communicated plenty of energetic conviction, however equivocal the expressive results.I’ve heard and read enough opinions regarding the work and its performance to freely admit my own inadequacy of response. I only wish I could testify to my having more connection-points with what I saw.

After this (leaving aside the second work for the moment), I couldn’t help but feel the difference in both focus and intent coming from the stage with Petroushka, which took up the evening’s final performance segment. Suddenly here were dancers who seemed completely energized and driven by the music, just as if they were stunningly-realised visualizations of what Stravinsky’s themes, rhythms and textures were actually doing. In this case the choreography had been supervised by Russell Kerr, following the original dance-plan of Michel Fokine, but of course with the New Zealander’s “take”  on the proceedings. In fact Kerr had first choreographed and designed Petroushka with his colleague Raymond Boyce as long ago as 1964. What I found remarkable was the ability of each of the dancer to “personalize” his or her character on stage, even when acting in concert with others, so that the crowd scenes had a naturalistic quality in parallel with the stylishness of the dancing and movement. It was mightily impressive to look at, and astonishing to reflect on there being not a single trace of self-consciousness in evidence from any movement, gesture or expression.Normally the “character” parts in ballet steal the theatrical thunder, but Sir Jon Trimmer as the Charlatan was by no means acting and moving in a vacuum, in his engrossing portrayal of cynical enslavement of his performing puppets – his character and aura found ready responses from members of the company, as did the dysfunctional antics of his three marionette charges.

As with Russell Kerr’s performing lineage and its links to both Stravinsky and his inspirational impresario Serge Diaghilev, designer Raymond Boyce’s formative experiences were with comparable traditions. He studied at London’s Slade School of Fine Arts, where one of his tutors, Vladimir Polunin, had been a scenery-painter for Diaghilev’s Company, and from him Boyce learnt the Russian scenery-painting style. From 1959 to 1997 Boyce designed productions for the Royal New Zealand Ballet Company, working with the company’s founder, Poul Gnatt, during those early days. In this latest Petroushka the focus of the setting was very much on unity – while the painted sets projected a kind of artificiality very much of their time, the designs served to focus upon the illusory nature of the story-line, reminding one of Lady Macbeth’s reference to a “painted devil”. In only one place I thought more pro-active lighting might have advanced the story’s cause, which was the hallucinatory effect of the charlatan’s picture in Petroushka’s room – more aggressively-focused spot-lighting on the image and momentarily darkened surroundings would have heightened the nightmarish aspect of the moment and imparted some edge to the somewhat naive-art, two-dimensional comic-book reproduction.

Besides Sir Jon’s wonderfully disturbing Charlatan (some of his expressions the stuff of nightmares for susceptible sensibilities), the three principal dancers gave thoroughly absorbing portrayals of their roles, each straddling the worlds of reality and make-believe with disarming alacrity. Medhi Angot’s Petroushka caught all of the character’s awareness of his plight as a puppet with a human heart, conveying for us his tragic despair at his loss of love and life, before reappearing, ghost-like at the end, to tease our sensibilities. Both Tonia Looker as the Ballerina and Qi Huan as the Moor brought plenty of skilful motoric impulse to each of their characters, contrasting their somewhat cardboard cut-out personas with Petroushka’s more complex and vulnerable consciousness.

I’ve left until now my ruminations regarding the middle ballet Satisfied With Great Success because I found it something of a puzzle, as much for what wasn’t done as for what we saw. Firstly I think the expectation created by the advance descriptions of some kind of interaction between historic footage of the composer in New Zealand and live stage action would have, in the event, left some people nonplussed. Whether previous or subsequent performances of this work used more of this much-touted “50 year-old film footage” I’m not sure, but I thought the juxtapositioning between the film and the live performance lame in effect, to say the least. I’m presuming that the film’s (a) slow-motion quality and (b) reverse continuity and imaging (the composer walking backwards through an orchestra whose members were positioned as if in a mirror-image) was in aid of imparting some kind of dream-dance ritualization to the scenes thus caught – well,maybe.  As it turned out (and contrary to my expectations), the film sequences proved to be mere clip-ons, with little or no interactive relationship between the footage and what the ballet actually did – and so, what was the point of it all?

Here was part of a visual record of the twentieth century’s arguably most important composer conducting some of his music in New Zealand – why couldn’t the ballet sequences have played out their “deconstruction, visual imagery and complex relationships” (the choreographer Cameron McMillan’s own words) as a series of connective impulses acknowledging these visuals? – whether fast, slow, forwards, backwards or still-framed, recording a significant aspect of our musical past? As a tribute to Stravinsky what was shown was somewhat less than token, and as a depiction of the composer’s relevance to “today’s world of creation and performance”, well, the exercise for me was practically a non-starter.

Regarding the ballet itself, there were some lovely moments, both solo and concerted (I liked the diagonal lines of bodies moving in accord, as well as various manifestations of strong duo work) but I thought some of what was presented only intermittently in accord with Stravinsky’s music (Scenes de Ballet). An example was a glorious Copland-like orchestral outburst of intense emotion at one point, superbly delivered by Marc Taddei and the Wellington Orchestra – but for all the reaction on stage, the music may as well have not been there – as was the actual case with another episode, where the dancers stepped intriguingly through uncannily silent vistas. Even more than with Milagros I had difficulty discerning an overall choreographic focus to Satisfied with Great Success, and wondered what the composer might have thought of his title-quote applied to the work in hand.

Back to the evening’s “Great Successes” – the overall conception and realization of Petroushka, the amazing sonic impact of that  pianola recording of Le Sacre du Printemps, the few glimpses we got on film of Stravinsky here in New Zealand, the musical direction of Marc Taddei and the playing of the Wellington Orchestra for the second and third ballets (a few brass “blips” here and there in Petroushka notwithstanding), and the chance to experience at first hand something of the excitement and commitment of those early ventures into ballet production via the presence and efforts of Russell Kerr and Raymond Boyce – for me THIS was the most telling manifestation of (I quote the program notes once again) “the relationship between past and present through 21st century eyes”. For that alone, thank you, Royal New Zealand Ballet.

Made in New Zealand – Enchanted Islands

Posted on by Peter Mechen

MADE IN NEW ZEALAND – ENCHANTED ISLANDS

Music by Ross HARRIS, Anthony RITCHIE, Douglas LIBURN, Lyell CRESSWELL,
Gareth FARR, Chris GENDALL

Stephen de Pledge (piano)
Kirsten Morrell (soprano)
Tama Waipara (baritone)
Hamish McKeich (conductor)
The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Wellington Town Hall

Friday 13th May 2011

In a real sense this concert epitomized what a “Made in New Zealand ” concert ought to be about – presenting its listeners with plenty of excitement, frustration, argument and satisfaction, putting life alongside art in fine style. Everybody will, of course, make up their own cocktail mix from the aforementioned ingredients when recalling the concert and its afterglow (some will add other things, while others will make do with less, or even with none of the above). But I thought there was a palpable buzz within the audience at the start (a peculiarly “Town Hall” phenomenon, it seems to me) followed by plenty of effervescent discussion at the interval in the wake of a first half of colourful composition and splendid music-making. Even at this stage of the proceedings there was excitement aplenty, all that one could wish of a contemporary music concert’s effect upon an audience.

As for the frustration, I’m sure there will be people, like myself, with their own list of favorite, neglected pieces of New Zealand music hoping for the same to be given an airing via these concerts – perhaps next year, or the year after? It could be that we listeners don’t drop enough hints to those who are the musicmongers that sort out the catch brought in by those trawling the creative currents in this particular ocean – maybe I need to tell twenty times the number of people I already do how much of a crime I think it is that some of our “founding symphonic documents” are unaccountably ignored by our orchestras year after year after year. If I mention David Farquhar’s First Symphony in particular (no public performance since its premiere in 1959!), I’m equally determined that I’ll be fair and report back to these pages any response, written or verbal, to my piece of opinionated partiality, so that others can have their say as well about what they might like to hear in subsequent “Made in New Zealand” concerts.

I mentioned argument as an ingredient of the occasion; and conversations at the concert’s end seemed to have a different tenor to those during the interval, largely thanks to Gareth Farr’s Sonnets, settings for two singers and orchestra of a number of Shakespeare’s eponymous poems. This work divided opinions I heard into not just two camps, but a number of sub-groups, with discussions freely flowing. For myself, I thought the piece didn’t work well within the normal concert-hall setting that was imposed upon it – as if the musicians were trying to perform something like Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Given that both singers (soprano Kirsten Morrell and baritone Tama Waipara) were “miked” because neither seemed to have the vocal “heft” to compete acoustically with the orchestra, I thought the concert’s organizers ought to have taken their cue accordingly and emphasized the piece’s rather more mainstream popular-music-genre. I would have liked the singers not only in their own performing-space away from the conductor and players (even perhaps individually separated for antiphonal/visual effect and spotlit with appropriate lighting), but also have them given properly-modulated microphones that would enable their voices to be actually HEARD. With the precedent in mind of last year’s “Made in New Zealand” concert with its spectacular, if somewhat ill-conceived, visual imagery accompanying most of the music, I would have imagined such a recreation to be perfectly possible this time round.

What’s ultimately most important, however, is the degree of satisfaction given by the music and the music-making – and despite these diverse ingredients, or perhaps because of them, the concert gave to us the feeling as though it had indeed satisfied by the end. It started with a wonderful wallop, courtesy of Ross Harris’s Fanfare for the Southern Cross, a work for brass ensemble whose sombre, almost Brucknerian opening blossomed spectacularly into a brilliant toccata-like display. The music seemed to scintillate like a comet crossing the night sky, before disappearing, much too quickly! – would that it were a prelude to a suite of movements, or something, so that our pleasure at the composer’s exuberant mastery of those radiant textures could be enjoyed for longer!

I took great pleasure also in Anthony Ritchie’s A Shakespeare Overture, a thirty year-old work from the composer’s student days receiving its first-ever performance (with revised touches). I found myself admiring the young Ritchie’s exuberant orchestral writing and sure sense of balance between passages of chamber-like delicacy and piquancy, often involving winds, which were set against more heavily-scored strings-and-brass episodes, occasionally rhythmically spiked with percussion. My notes contain phrases such as “colourful scoring”, “energizing percussion”, and “beautifully dovetailed motifs leading the ear onwards” – besides such detail, I had a sure sense of the piece being well-organized throughout, so that the orchestral forces at the end were able to unerringly build things towards a thrilling climax, a grand exposition of sounds. In all, I thought the piece a worthy addition to this country’s home-grown concert repertoire.

Has any performance of Lilburn’s Four Canzonas featured more beautiful string-playing than what we heard on this occasion? – I doubt it, even if I thought Hamish McKeich’s tempo for the Willow Song (Canzona No.2) a tad quick, Donald Armstrong’s lovely solo playing for me not quite “laden” enough with foreboding at this speed, as befits the work’s original inspiration.I was struck anew by how Sibelius-like the third Canzona sounded, like something out of the latter’s Rakastava, certainly Nordic, rather than Shakespearean in atmosphere. But these were certainly very beautiful performances.

With Lyell Cresswell’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (significantly, not entitled a “piano concerto”) the evening’s music-making lurched well-and-truly into relatively unknown territories, soundscapes of the heart and soul, it seemed, considering the circumstances under which the music was written. The work was commissioned by that generous patron of the local arts, Jack Richards, for pianist Stephen de Pledge to play at this concert, so that the performance was a world premiere. It seemed that Lyell Cresswell wanted more of a concertante than a concerto-like work, and this was shown in the extent to which the orchestra reflected and extended what the piano did, very much a concourse rather than a contest.

The work commemorates the memory of a friend of the composer, who actually died while the piece was being written, but whose terminal illness overshadowed the work’s entire conception. No wonder, then, at the extent to which both piano and orchestra gave voice during the work to harsh, jagged outpourings, in grief and anger at a friendship’s loss. Even so, Cresswell found plenty of scope for expression of episodes whose eerie beauty astonished the ear, by way of both recollection of times past and resigned reflection in the wake of death. The work’s seven movements had an intensely volatile quality, indicating parallel strands of feelings and instincts as likely to be in violent opposition as in an uneasy accord. I scribbled phrases like “jagged defiance” and “tolling pulses” while listening to the opening Funeral March, then “bird-song piano figurations” and “ethereal string ambiences” during Adagio 1. And I noted the savagery of the brass attack and the dominance of the heavy artillery throughout Scherzo 1, all the while marvelling at the compositional virtuosity of Cresswell’s writing for orchestra.

The work’s centre, Addolorato (meaning upset or distressed), was the work’s emotional core, expressing both quiet and violent grief by turns, while throughout the following movements variants of the relationship between head and heart were further explored – a characteristic contouring might feature the piano playing the visionary, creating a rapt, magical atmosphere more of the mind than of the world, echoed by Ligeti-like string chords before being splintered by vitriolic brass with toccata-like textures that curdle without warning into amazing air-raid siren-like sonorities. Some of the orchestral figurations might well have owed something to Messiaen’s similarly visionary sound-worlds, but in this case one felt the tones and textures were exploring a very real emotional context of their own. Again my scribblings attempted to capture aspects of this incredible set of soundscapes – “maniacal instrumental energies in a ferment”, or “brass cackle like hooting harridans”, or even “strings become swirling stinging bees”…..all of which hopefully serves to give the reader an idea of the range and scope of sounds created by the piano/orchestra combination. The final presto, though flung at the listener almost peremptorily was able to link briefly with the opening in the midst of its toccata-like tagging, indicating (as the program notes suggested) that from questions can come still more questions rather than answers.

Wanting to earn my keep as a critic, naturally enough, but struggling to offer any comment of sufficient worth in a critical sense about the piece, all I could think of saying was that the music did seem to me to begin to overwork the material towards the end – but then the composer would confound my reaction by producing yet another magical sonority which opened up a fresh vista of wonderment – and despite my occasional instinctive feeling of there having been enough said, I couldn’t bear the thought of any of those sounds being excised! I hope someone moves to have Stephen de Pledge record this work before too long, so that we can get to know it by hearing it often and gradually unlocking at least some of its secrets. I thought it a very great work indeed.

As for Gareth Farr’s Sonnets, somebody I spoke with briefly at the end of the concert said that the performance of the Farr work seemed to them a pale shadow of the music’s previous incarnation as The Holy Fire of Love, which on that occasion featured the vocal talents of Rima Te Wiata and Kristian Lavercombe. It would seem from the reviews I’ve read that these singer/actors projected the songs rather more successfully and theatrically than happened with the fatally straight-laced quasi-classical treatment accorded the words and music on Friday evening in the Wellington Town Hall. To me it seemed all so wrong-headedly presented, to the extent that to comment any further would, I think, be to do the composer and his music an injustice.

Finally in the concert, one of the country’s most exciting younger composers, Chris Gendall, was represented with a work that in a sense was a foil for the Lyell Cresswell concerto in the first half – this later work Gravitas was tough, uncompromising and unyielding, abstracting orchestral sounds and their meaning where the older composer sought direct, straight-from-the-shoulder emotional engagement from his audience with his instrumental tones. I thought that Gendall had written some kind of Etude for Orchestra here, an idea emphasized by the composer’s own note about the music, describing the relationship between a piece’s construction and its most audible elements. Less cerebrally-minded listeners, such as myself, would probably register and enjoy more readily the sharply visceral aspects of the music, its cutting-edge accents set against both deep-throated sonorities and troughs of pregnant silence, its obsessiveness with repeated notes and an interval of a third, and the feeling of these and other notes eventually breaking free of such hegemony and enjoying episodes such as “chaos of delight” pizzicati passages and volatile hide-and-seek scamperings across the orchestral blocks.

As with many a “tough” piece I’ve come to enjoy, it’s necessary to live with the music for a while and get used to the sharp edges – I hope Chris Gendall’s piece gets its chance to be heard rather more often than has been the case with other works I’ve mentioned from time to time, one of them (David Farquhar’s First Symphony) earlier in this review. Gravitas certainly played its part in helping to make the occasion one of the best and most interesting “Made in New Zealand” Concerts of recent years. All credit to conductor Hamish McKeich, to pianist Stephen de Pledge, and to the orchestral musicians, for giving us such magnificent playing throughout the evening.

Alexa Still and Diedre Irons – irresistible duo

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ALEXA STILL (flute) and DIEDRE IRONS (piano)

Chamber Music Hutt Valley

Music by POULENC, BOYD, PROKOFIEV and BORNE (flute and piano)

DICK and MARAIS (flute solo)

CHOPIN (piano solo)

Little Theatre, Lower Hutt

Thursday 5th May 2011

Mistakenly thinking the concert was being held in nearby St.James’ Church, I wasted several precious minutes retracing steps and re-aligning my destination, finally being led by the sound of Alexa Still’s silvery flute tones to the entranceway of Lower Hutt’s Little Theatre. I thus missed the opening Allegro malinconico part of Poulenc’s Sonata for flute and piano, but was charmed, by way of compensation, both by the friendliness of my reception at the door, and the full, rich and impassioned playing from both Alexa Still and Diedre Irons which continued throughout the Cantilena second movement.

In the past I hadn’t much liked visiting this venue on account of what I thought I remembered was a dry, boxy acoustic, but these musicians were managing to fill the ambiences with plenty of rich, golden tones as to make the spaces seem positively resonant. Alexa Still’s tonal mastery was evident throughout Poulenc’s kaleidoscopic changes of focus and emphasis throughout the finale – the music’s character cheeky, heroic, profound and mock-serious by turns, requiring stellar command of control and reserves of energy! With pianist Diedre Irons displaying her characteristic ebullience and quicksilver reflexes, both players brought out the music’s constant flux in mood and manner, delivering to we listeners a veritable chaos of charm and delight right to the end.

Alexa Still introduced the flute items, interesting us with her remarks about the music and her experience of playing the works previously – she obviously has an extremely wide repertoire and musical sympathies to match, judging by the range and scope of this concert. A piece by American composer Anne Boyd was next, Goldfish through Summer Rain, a work which uses exotic colors and pointilistic techniques. The piano caught the effect of raindrops, while the long, languid lines of the flute made the perfect foil for the piano, creating something of the same floating effect as in Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun. I thought the whole work imbued with a kind of longing for a world of beauty, wishful of bringing into creative being an order of things – what a friend of mine would describe as “very Zen”!

Prokofiev’s Sonata I knew in a version for violin and piano, so I was surprised and delighted to find a familiar piece of music in what was for me a new and exciting guise – in fact its original form! – and sounding here as though it thoroughly belonged to the flute-and-piano repertoire. Like many great composers, Prokofiev wrote music whose identity with its creator is evident within a couple of bars’ hearing, no matter how unfamiliar. Straightaway there’s that characteristic astringent flavour to the melody and its harmony, and an accompanying volatility of textures and dynamics which “spikes” the composer’s best work. Something of a neoclassicist as well as a revolutionary, Prokofiev drew these elements beautifully together in works such as this sonata – we so enjoyed the first movement’s clean-cut melodic contourings and their beautifully-crafted symmetries, elements of the music to which both Still and Irons brought their capacities for articulating volatile detail within a larger framework, returning us richly and surely to the opening mood at the movement’s end.

The quirky Scherzo “bucking-broncoed” our imaginations most energetically, the performance putting plenty of élan and glint into the vertiginous figurations, before  pulling everything momentarily to order for a lovely, somewhat melancholy trio section, one which the composer nevertheless keeps on its toes with occasional skyrocketting irrruptions. Still and Irons had a fine time with the “big tune” at its return, tossing its angularities about with fine style, before dispatching the music at the end with a deft gesture wrought of magic. After this the slow movement amply demonstrated Prokofiev’s way of conjuring melody and feeling from grey matter –  beautiful in places but essentially austere, a feeling which the jolly, heavy-footed dance that opened the finale was able to rescue us from most thankfully. As well as plenty of lusty energy, Still and Irons brought granite-like strength to the “building-blocks” episodes, and just the right amount of circumspection to the movement’s lyrical centre, before seamlessly reinvigorating the figurations with the energies needed to lead the music back into the dance – a heart-warming performance.

We were warned by Alexa Still, before playing the first item after the interval, for flute solo, that she might be making some strange sounds, and these were entirely on purpose! The work was one I’d heard her play at a previously concert, Fish are Jumping, for flute alone, by the American flutist and composer Robert Dick. This was a languid, lazy and bluesy piece, not, as one might expect, a variation on Gershwin’s Summertime tune but a realization equally as atmospheric, with flourishes of energy in places. Still’s technical facility astonished, here – her uncanny ability to play “chords” (two notes simultaneously, with what sounded like accompanying overtones) made for a distinctly exotic and unworldly impression, making the whole a kind of “transport of delight” to the enchantment of other realms. A comparable distancing, in time, was achieved by Still with Marin Marais’ Le Folies d’Espagne, with the inestimable help of a wooden mouthpiece, to achieve a more authentic timbre for this piece – a sombre theme at the outset, but with variations that had a wider range of expression that I expected from this composer.I’d always thought of Marais as a kind of French equivalent to John Dowland, he of the “semper Dowland, semper dolens” reputation – as the French say, l’air ne fait pas la chanson…..

Came pianist Diedre Irons’ turn for a solo, and she gave us Chopin’s F Minor Fantasy, her playing exhibiting that alchemic mixture of clear-sighted discipline and far-flung and fantastical imagination, so that we, as the composer intended, appear to be witnessing a spontaneous creation of the spirit, the music both taking and being taken throughout fanciful realms. The pianist’s mastery of rubato married strength and spontaneity in a wonderfully osmotic way; and the strength of her playing negated the venue’s tendency to dryness, instead filling the vistas with surges of tone and proper “glint” at the tops of the figurations. Regarding the piece’s freedom I’ve always tended to regard the Fantasy as a kind of subconscious homage on Chopin’s part to Liszt, his colleague/rival, with the brilliance of some of the piano writing balanced by the almost Faustian character of some of the darker episodes, only with more equivocal treatment in places of the virtuoso keyboard writing – the music occasionally stopping as if to listen to its own voice, in places. I thought the piece’s essential character captured here so well in this respect, so that, in Diedre Irons’ hands Chopin was still always Chopin.

After this, I’m afraid, the gaucheries of Francois Borne’s Fantasy on themes from Bizet’s “Carmen” sounded more than embarrassingly hollow, though both musicians characteristically gave it their all – perhaps if we had taken up Alexa Still’s invitation to us to “sing along with the bits you recognize”, the work could have had at least some point. This all sounds very snobbish on my part, but I’m aware of there being a number of brilliantly-constructed, rather more “organically” conceived fantasy-like “reminiscences” of Bizet’s eponymous opera, written for various instruments – if this is the flute’s only representative relating to the work, then it’s a pity Still herself hasn’t thought about bringing her musical intelligence and virtuosic skills to producing something for her instrument making use of those glorious tunes that hangs together more convincingly than this – all that spectacular fingering and tonguing, all those beautiful tones (maybe if Sarasate had played the flute…….).

An encore written by Ravel – a Habanera, but not from Rapsodie Espagnole – was sufficient balm for the senses, in the wake of the previous item’s lurid horrors – here we had worlds of evocative gesture and tonal ravishment from both instruments over a few short minutes, a display of mastery, all in all, on the part of composer and musicians alike. It was a heart-warming way to conclude a brilliant musical evening.