Author: Peter Mechen

Orpheus Choir triumphs with the St Matthew Passion

Posted on by Peter Mechen

JS BACH – St. Matthew Passion

Paul McMahon – Evangelist; Michael Leighton-Jones – Jesus; Jenny Wollerman – soprano; Claire Barton – alto; Andrew Grenon – tenor; Daniel O’Connor – bass
Choristers of Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul; Orpheus Choir of Wellington
Douglas Mews – continuo / Robert Oliver – viola da gamba
Vector Wellington Orchestra
Michael Fulcher – conductor

Wellington Town Hall

Sunday, 10th April, 2011, 6.30pm

From a mere listener’s point of view I invariably approach the prospect of attending a performance of Bach’s most monumental undertaking with keen anticipation tempered by feelings of mild anxiety. The work always astonishes with its capacity (as observed by the redoubtable Professor Frederick Page, quoted in the program notes) to furnish “a glimpse into eternity”; though performances can sometimes suggest eternity in more uncomfortably temporal ways, more especially in church settings where the seating seems designed for the infliction of on-going penance upon listeners, ahead of repose and solace. I’m therefore happy to report that this was a performance whose beauties, energies and overall focus made for an enjoyable and involving musical experience throughout.

Michael Fulcher’s direction of the work’s ebb and flow seemed to me a key element – in his hands the music unfolded with a naturalness of utterance that enabled the music’s essential character at any given moment to shine forth to its advantage. There were two or three moments that I felt worked less well than they might, but in the overall scheme so much seemed right, that our engagement in what was being played and sung never faltered. The work’s very opening, ‘Komm, ihr Töchter’, was splendidly launched by both orchestra and choir, Fulcher’s lilting direction enlivening the lines and textures while encouraging from the musicians plenty of pointed phrasing, the sound-picture both focused and beautifully transparent. Only in the difficult Aria for Alto and Chorus ‘Ach! nun ist mein Jesus hin!’ that opens the second part did I catch a sense of things being slightly out-of-sync, the music’s different elements working hard to try and gell, the various dove-tailings of the lines a truly precarious business.

Above all, there’s a story being told by this music, and in this respect the performance delivered splendidly – I thought the Evangelist Paul McMahon excellent in his dramatic focus, so alive to the text’s possibilities and so fluent a technique as to do his interpretation full justice. The other soloists, including several from the body of the choir taking minor but still significant roles, played their part in realizing the drama and pathos of the story. Perhaps not as visceral and graphic as the exchanges in Bach’s other great Passion, that of St.John, these nevertheless came resoundingly alive throughout the recitatives, giving us a real sense of the work’s inexorable progress towards that mystical fusion of death and fulfillment that accompanies godly sacrifice in Christian and non-Christian cultures alike.

Each of the soloists “entered” his or her roles in complete accord with the proceedings – soprano Jenny Wollerman, though over-tremulous of voice in places, brought her dramatic instincts marvellously to bear in episodes such as her recitative ‘Er hat uns allen wohl getan’ and aria ‘Aus Liebe’, whose sequence, together with some beautiful wind-playing at the beginning made a truly affecting impression. I was also much taken with the voice of the alto, Claire Barton, whose bright, slightly plangent tone-quality gave life and meaning to her utterances, despite some slightly ungainly moments in passagework here and there – obviously a voice to listen out for in years to come. Right from her opening recitative ‘Du Lieber Heiland du’, leading into the aria ‘Buß und Reu’, her tones struck the lines squarely and resonantly, to memorable effect, again supported by on-the-spot instrumental duetting and continuo playing (flutes and solo ‘cello).

Of the men, baritone Michael Leighton-Jones, long-time resident in Australia, made a welcome return to Wellington as a sonorous, dignified Jesus, never over-playing the drama (as befits the role’s god-like dignity of utterance), but often touching this listener with the resonant simplicity of his tones, emphasizing the text’s and music’s humanity and vulnerability. Promising performances came from his two younger colleagues, tenor Andrew Grenon, and bass Daniel O’Connor, each of whom had taxing arias to grapple with, and in both cases emerging with considerable credit. Despite the occasionally strained note, Grenon took to his recitative ‘O Schmerz!’ and aria ‘Ich will bei meinem Jesu wachen’ with real commitment, making something truly heartfelt out of ‘Er solo vor fremden Raub bezahlen’, and bringing real “point” to his interaction with the choir throughout both recitative and aria. I loved the vivid “plodding” quality of the accompaniment to Grenon’s recitative ‘Mein Jesus schweigt zu falschen Lügen stille’, the combination of organ and viola da gamba here and throughout the aria most affecting.

Daniel O’Connor did well negotiating Michael Fulcher’s urgent speeds during the bass aria Gerne will ich mich bequemen, after delivering a well-rounded and sonorous recitative ‘Der Heiland fällt vor seinem Vater nieder’; and again survived the bluster of a spanking pace for ‘Gebt mir meinem Jesum wieder!’
He demonstrated a fine feel for line during all of his recitatives, relishing the beautiful Vivaldi-like pictorial writing for both voice and instruments of ‘Am Abend, da es kühle war’ (a kind of Bachian ‘In the cool, cool,cool of the evening…’!), even if both soloist and orchestra struggled a bit with the ensuing aria ‘Mache ditch, mien Herze, rein’, trying to do justice to the syncopated figures and getting a just voice/instrumental balance. Of the solo voices from the choir, special mention needed to be made of Kieran Rayner’s true-toned Pontius Pilate, and Thomas Barker’s angst-ridden Peter, the disciple who denied his Master three times.

True-toned and eagerly responsive throughout, the Orpheus Choir sang like angels, whether divided into two antiphonal groups or en masse, completely at one with Michael Fulcher’s overall conception of the music. At first I thought the more dramatic choral interjections were going to lack sufficient urgency and bite, as with the choir’s contributions to the soprano and alto duet ‘So ist mein Jesus nun gefangen’, but the immediately subsequent ‘Sind Blitze, sind Donner’ had all the vehemence one could want, as did the accusatory cries of ‘Er ist des Todes schuldig!’ in response to Kieran Raynor’s vengeful High Priest. Elsewhere, the voices brought just the right amalgam of radiance and gravitas to the chorales, as exemplified by the wonderful ‘Wie wunderbarlich ist doch diese Strafe!’ in the “Jesus before Pilate” section of the work; and a winning tenderness to the exchanges with the soloists in the penultimate recitative ‘Nun ist der Herr zur Ruh gebracht’. It was fitting that, in tandem with the orchestra, the choir had the last say, delivering the words with the same focus, fervor and vocal splendor with which the same voices had begun the journey a couple of hours before. Contributing with bright, bell-like tones to the choral sonorities as well were the Choristers of Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul, dressed as for a church service, and contrasting as such with the secular severity of the main choir’s black attire.

Yet another bastion of the performance was the Vector Wellington Orchestra, its playing for Michael Fulcher unfailingly stylish and characterful, whether from the groupings of strings spread across two antiphonally-placed orchestras or among the various combination of winds whose tones enlivened many a texture along the way. Further interest was generated by fine solo continuo playing from both ‘cellist Paul Mitchell and viola da gamba specialist Robert Oliver (though the conductor’s rapid tempo for the bass aria ‘Komm, süßes Kreuz’ resulted in Robert Oliver’s viola da gamba accompaniment sounding uncharacteristically breathless). Organist Douglas Mews as well contributed unfailingly secure support in the continuo role. In sum, the performance was of a concerted splendour, with the music-making’s refulgent glow warming hearts and satisfying intellects alike – an achievement of which the Orpheus Choir and its various cohorts can, in my opinion, be justly proud.

Colours rich and strange, from the SMP Ensemble

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SMP Ensemble presents: XPΩMATA – Colours

Music by Tristan Carter, Jack Hooker, Carol Shortis, Anton Killin, Iannis Xenakis (Greece), Pauline Oliveros (USA), Michael Norris, Ewan Clark, Robbie Ellis, Andrzej Nowicki

The SMP Ensemble

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

Saturday 9th April 2011

Continuing its work on behalf of classical music’s contemporary voices, the SMP Ensemble produced yet another absorbing and thought-provoking line-up of works from home and abroad with its program XPΩMATA – Colours. Without resorting to mega-anarchic practices, the group seems always to manage (via its own version of an incredible lightness of being) to blow invigorating gusts of fresh air through normal concert procedures and presentations, making each event a unique delight.

Darkness giving some of its space to candlelight set an expectant scene for the opening item, Tohoraha, by Tristan Carter. Away from the program note one might guess the players who had assembled and were delicately activating different acoustical properties of their instruments were concerned with representing either a subaqueous or a stratospheric state of being – these were sounds I reckoned to be outside of my direct biospherical experience! The coalescence of these sounds generated a micro-excitement which prepared the scene for something of a give-away conch-shell set of signals – very spectacular, if irrevocably conjuring up an oceanscape. A cursory knowledge of Te Reo Maori would have by this time alerted most people to an association of the piece with whales, and the connections readily translated into the idea of some kind of “dialogue among higher beings”, here, for all kinds of reasons, acoustical, environmental and emotional, a “transporting of the mind” experience, rich and strange, in any case for this listener.

Jack Hooker’s Field Murmur, ambiently titled, used electroacoustical means to evoke its world, arresting and splendid at the very beginning, as well as disconcerting, with something like a door or cupboard opening and shutting. I imagined animal or bird or even insect activity, though my carefully-constructed soundscape was peremptorily shut off by a revereberation-less halt to the sounds, which was presumably intended, as the effect was repeated with different kinds of evocations – it generated a kind of schizoid response to the medium as opposed to the message, the uncertainty of imminent closure creating its own set of tensions.

Carol Shortis’s The Riddle of Her Flight was a setting for soprano, piano and vibraphone of part of a poem by Mike Johnson. The music readily courted both pictorial and emotional responses, grumbling bass notes on Jonathan Berkahn’s piano at the beginning stimulating shafts of light from deft touches upon the vibraphone criss-crossing the soundscape. The sound of the soprano Olga Gryniewicz’s voice was perhaps siren-like, or maybe that of a wood-nymph’s, haunting and pleading. The singer emphasized the idea of “sanctuary”, aided and abetted by the instrumentalists, Takumi Motokawa’s vibraphone occasionally bowed as well as struck, producing lovely tintinabulations, and stimulating bell-like diction from the singer at the words “You must find the island”. At the end of a richly-extended lyrical episode, the final cadence following a culminating high note felt like a real homecoming. The music couldn’t help but repeatedly take my sensibilities to what seemed like “other realms” associated with Shakespearean fantasy, such as Prospero’s Island, or the Magic Wood of Oberon outside Athens.

Andrzej Nowicki was the clarinettist in tandem with his own pre-recorded playing of fragments from the same work, for composer Anton Killin’s absorbing Absence; Primes. The soloist listened at first to the recorded performance, then began a dialogue with the original, fascinatingly exploring the idea of feedback, discussion and even “second thoughts” regarding one’s own creative impulses. At first ruminative, Nowicki’s “live” clarinet-playing animated the textures, the discussion a “brightly-lit” affair until a brusque declamatory statement brought the dialogue to a sudden end.

The programme’s first “offshore” work was Yannis Xenakis’s Echange, in effect a bass clarinet concerto, bringing the first half of the concert to an end with plenty to engage the thoughts. The composer called the work “terrifying and mysterious”, and indeed, the single-note clarinet opening brings forth a disquieting subterraneous soundworld from trombone (Xenakis wanted a tuba, but…) and bassoon into which the cello oscillates and over the top of which the soloist exuberantly barks – perhaps a European manifestation of Alistair Te Ariki Campbell’s “gods of the middle world” flexing their might and muscle into a colour-change chord irreverently “curdled” by the soloist’s contribution. The clarinet ruminates deeply as its ambient surroundings ring changes of tempo, texture and articulation, creating memorable vignettes of incident – a wonderfully seismic “wobble-chord”  from the ensemble, and a “blues in the night” response from the soloist, very jazzy and lively playing, which, however develops into a kind of ritual of attempted domination on both sides, the impasse declared by implacable brass against whose black tones the soloist slashes and stabs. We fear for the safety of the music itself, at the point of dissolution the sound-world’s resonating voices asking questions we can only numbly acknowledge. A good place for the interval!

We were prepared even less for what was to follow – audience participation! – fortunately, humming was all that was required, the SMP ensemble members walking around the auditorium antiphonally encouraging us to add our unique vocal vibrations to Anton Killin’s realization of Lullaby for Daisy Pauline by the American composer Pauline Oliveros, one of the composer’s “Sonic Meditations” aimed at engendering a focus among listeners on “the intimate reality of sound”. Philosophically, Michael Norris’s work which followed, Blindsight, explored the antithesis of Oliveros’s shared ambient construct, describing his work in a context of fragile individual sensory reality. Norris’s work translated this “process of sensory faith” into a musical work involving strings and winds, with the piano as a kind of intermediary. The winds played chords using halftones, to which the piano and strings responded in a kind of instinctive manner, “feeling” their way towards a kind of kinship with the original sounds. The piano seemed then to take the lead, the winds responding to the instrument’s chords and patterning with characteristic sonorities (a kind of “opening up’ of an essential sound-nature for both groups, the winds sostenuto, the strings oscillating and flurrying melismatically. Whether growing in confidence or in desperation, the responses by both groups to the piano reached a fever-pitch of animation before sinking, exhausted. The piano maintained a dispassionate “devil’s advocate” kind of stance, allowing the winds to blow themselves out, leaving the strings fulminating amongst themselves, then relinquishing their voices with a last sotto-voce gesture – I was given the feeling of micro-processes continuing, after the overt activities had ceased…..

Reversing the program order, Robbie Ellis’s Maeve set recorded voice against solo piano, to the former’s disadvantage, unfortunately, the piano’s declamatory style in places obscuring the speaker’s tones (the loudspeaker would have been better-placed in front of the piano, eliminating the “competitive” aspect which seemed to be set up regarding the soundspace – a pity we were thus distracted, because the piano-part was gorgeous-sounding in places, Debussy-like in its focus and delicacy, while Leila Austin’s story, read by the author, would have filled out its place in the sound-tapestry in a much more balanced and contextual way – a further performance needed, I feel. Following this, Ewan Clark’s Reverie set parts of Alistair Te Ariki Campbell’s Elegy for soprano, clarinet and piano, Olga Gryniewicz’s clear and pure voice making the most of the vocal line’s beauties at “Sweetness to the root – may the tree climb high against the sun”, while Andrzej Nowicki’s clarinet-playing conjured up whole eternities of bird-song underpinned by Jonathan Berkahn’s rich and  resonant piano realization. A lovely performance of a beautiful work, capturing the lonely beauty and desolation of the poet’s evocations.

Concluding the generous program was a work by the group’s director, Andrzej Nowicki, appropriately entitled Unknown Realms, the ensemble (strings, organ, piano and winds) conducted by Karlo Margetic. We expected a kind of “road” piece, with much and greatly varied terrain covered, and weren’t disappointed. A nascent, almost tentative piano presence at first addresses only dark organ tones and subterranean bass clarinet sounds – forces of darkness holding sway, almost daring other, brighter impulses to ignite and energize the textures towards the light. The clarinets stimulate the strings’ awakening, the latter holding steadfastly to their notes as the drama unfolds, the clarinets having a “field day” both instigating and repelling various agitations, the organ joining in with weighty presence, provoking the conductor’s patience to breaking-point in the face of such concerted anarchies – a marvellously petulant “Will you stop it!” ejaculation from the podium restores order amid chaos. Great fun, nicely “placed” amid the trials and tribulations.

The group’s director, Andrzej Nowicki was warmly and ceremoniously farewelled by all at the concert’s conclusion, on the eve of overseas explorations – the best of all possible send-offs, one would think, via this musical feast from the SMP Ensemble.

Tudor Consort – Prophetic excellence at Lower Hutt

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Settings to music of prophetic writings throughout the ages

Music by Hildegard von Bingen, Orlando de Lassus, William Byrd, Gustav Holst, Alonso Lobo, Michael Praetorius, Alban Berg, Heinrich Schutz

The Tudor Consort, directed by Michael Stewart (Presented by Chamber Music Hutt Valley)

St.James Church, Lower Hutt

Wednesday, 6th April, 2011

What an inspired idea for a concert! – fascinating to collect together a broad chronological range of composers’ responses to prophetic texts to register any commonalities and enjoy the differences. Not surprisingly, these factors were the two most readily prominent features of the concert, namely the power of the texts to elicit a heartfelt response from every composer, and the sharply varied flavour of each individual setting. The result was an evening replete with strongly heartfelt utterances, expressed with a variety of musical styles and modes – in other words, a “best of both worlds” occasion.

The concert couldn’t have begun more appropriately and strikingly than with Erin King’s beautiful singing of music by the twelfth-century composer, poet, visionary and abbess Hildegarde of Bingen. The otherwise excellent program note didn’t directly indicate that the text of the antiphon O pastor animarum was Hildegarde’s own, though it’s very likely part of her renowned “Symphonia armonie celestial revelationum”, her own collection of poetry and music which she assembled and herself enriched throughout her life.

But the work around which most of the concert’s program was constructed was Orlando de Lassus’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum, a visionary outpouring of highly personalized responses to texts that transported his creative sensibilities towards extraordinary flights of fancy. The texts, attributed to various mystic seers, were largely appropriated from antiquity by the early Christian Church, though it’s thought that Lassus himself wrote the words of the Prologue. The various settings were performed by the Consort in groups of two and three, and interspersed throughout the concert, creating interesting juxtapositionings with the work of twentieth-century composers such as Holst and Berg. Although these composers and others featured in the concert used texts from different sources, the shared intensities of both music and performance fused the varieties of eras and styles into what I felt to be a deeply satisfying whole.

Lassus’s settings featured a kind of chromatic restlessness in places, which, allied to marked flexibility of rhythm and pulse, readily created sound-worlds whose mystical realms seemed somewhat removed from ordinary experience, the texts truly sounding as if from remote times and places. I was reminded in places of Italian madrigals and their volatility of utterance, making for unexpected shifts of harmony, colour and rhythm by way of bringing the texts to life. Michael Stewart, director of the Consort, had introduced the composer and the music, characterizing Lassus’s work as “wonderfully weird” – and the group brought out the music’s varied intensities throughout each of the three groups of Prophetiae before the interval, with beautifully-judged gradations of sound and finely-honed intonation. In the Sybilla Europaea’s Virginis aeternum from the first group of Prophetiae after the resumption I thought the bass lines less well integrated with the whole – the rest soared and whispered across a stunningly varied sound-spectrum, the startling modulations and spooky “sotto voce” ambiences of the piece utterly spell-binding. And again, in the following Verax ipse Deus of the Sybilla Tyburtina the men’s voices again sounded to my ears a shade too nasal in effect, compared with the rest of the choir.

Amends were made with the beautifully-turned final group of Lassus’s Prophetiae, the two settings rather more conventional in effect, I thought, apart from occasional modulations which, though unexpected, we had by now come to expect! As a whole, the work was a perfect foil for the rest, William Byrd’s beautiful Ecce Virgo concipiet seeming like balm to our senses, coming as it did in the midst of all of Lassus’s convoluted chromaticisms. Holst’s Nunc Dimittis, too, seemed more “anchored” harmonically, though the overlapping eight-part opening created a frisson of expectation which built unerringly towards a real cathedral-style apotheosis at the final Gloria. And the Spanish composer Alonso Lobo’s Ave Maria had a gloriously rolling-sound kind of perpetual-motion character (the double choir creating something of an inexhaustible voices effect), all beautifully delivered.

In the second half of the concert we were able to enjoy contrasting settings (separated by three hundred years) of the German Advent Carol Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen, by Michael Praetorius and Alban Berg, the latter here eschewing his Second Viennese School associations for a more late-Romantic tonal setting. Praetorius’s essentially simple, straight-to-the-heart treatment of the words admirably set off Berg’s more extended and somewhat tortured, though still achingly beautiful setting. Concluding what I thought was an evening’s glorious singing was the Teutsch Magnificat of

Heinrich Schütz, set for double choir, and featuring at the outset richly-wrought antiphonal exchanges between the two groups. The composer cleverly varied the word-pointing in places, telescoping the word-pointing and creating a kind of word-excitement which bubbled out of and over the edges of the music – “singing for the joy of singing” was the phrase that came to my mind as I Iistened, caught up in the exuberance and beauty of it all – marvellous!

Eggner Trio wins all hearts

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Eggner Trio

Chamber Music New Zealand Kaleidoscopes Concert Season 2011

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Piano Trio in B-flat Op.11 “Gassenhauer”

IAN MUNRO – Tales of Old Russia

ANTONIN DVORAK – Piano Trio No.3 in F Minor Op.65

Georg Eggner (violin) / Florian Eggner (‘cello) / Christoph Eggner (piano)

Wellington Town Hall

Thursday, 24th March 2011

CMNZ’s 2011 Season couldn’t have gotten off to a better start with the return of the inspirational Eggner Trio from Vienna, being no less than the third visit by the Trio to New Zealand. Good also to read in the program a message of support from Carolyn and Peter Diessl, the latter in his role as Honorary Consul-General for Austria in this country, and as a major supporter of the arts in New Zealand – a kind of connection-making process that other organizations such as the NZSO could pursue more readily on certain occasions (I’m thinking of the orchestra’s Sibelius Festival last year, when there was not one iota of outside Scandinavian “presence” in this country acknowledged or referred to – by contrast, CMNZ was able to place this concert in a wider cultural context with a simple act of acknowledgement). Even closer to home in a sense was Chief Executive of Chamber Music New Zealand Euan Murdoch’s mid-concert spoken message of support from all associated with the organization to the citizens and chamber music-lovers of Christchurch, in the wake of the recent devastation experienced by that city.

As everybody knows, the trio consists of a group of brothers whose upbringing obviously laid the foundations for developing an enviable musical rapport – right from the first few phrases of the opening work on the program one got a sense of total engagement from the participants with both music and their interaction. On the face of things, communication seemed all to flow towards the violinist, Georg Eggner, with both brothers, ‘cellist Florian (his John Belushi-style spectacles bringing a touch of visual free-wheeling glamour to the music-making) and pianist Christoph, readily making eye-contact with their seemingly more circumspect violinist brother. However, proof of the pudding, as my grandmother used to say, was in the eating – and the trio’s demonstration of individual impulse brought together in a unified flow brilliantly exemplified that particular joy of interactive music-making which can make chamber music so rewarding an experience. Any performing group worth its salt can, of course, do this – but the Eggners were equally adept at drawing its audience into the world of the music. We seemed not merely bystanders, but participants in the ebb and flow of things.

All of this has been said before far more eloquently by others at other times and in other places – but I truly felt that this was music-making that didn’t get much better, anywhere. The Beethoven work which began the program was new to me, but it hummed and crackled with it’s composer’s characteristic fingerprints from the outset – an assertive unison statement at the beginning, a remote-key second-subject, at once hushed and full-bodied, a development section whose ideas shouldered and pushed one another about, and a wonderful “false ending” whose forthright final-chord cadence suddenly and unexpectedly turned upon itself and continued for a few more bars – a sequence delightfully brought off by the players. A beautifully-expressed Adagio (magical sounds from each of the instruments both in turn and together) was balanced by a theme-and-variations finale during which the composer’s “popular song” idea came to the fore in varying combinations, ranging in mood from the lyricism of duetting violin and viola, to the rumbustious stamping dance of all three instruments.

I had heard of Ian Munro as a concert pianist, but not as a composer; and was intrigued to discover the extent of his creative activities in this respect. His Piano Trio Tales of Old Russia suggests a fascination with narrative and drama, besides the exotic element which makes Russian art in general so attractive world-wide. Two of the three tales which particularly inspired Munro’s work are well-known – Vassilisa and the Baba Yaga, and the Snow Maiden, both partly by dint of association with other composers and their music. The third, Death and the Soldier, is an oft-repeated theme in European folk-literature, of the “wise fool” whose native cunning outwits the forces of darkness. Having witnessed the Eggner Trio’s capacities for characterization and narrative throughout the Beethoven work, I wasn’t surprised to find the musicians relishing the opportunities for evoking that sense of “a long time ago far away from here” in each of the tales. In particular, the macabre death-dance of the last story was launched with splendidly-controlled menace and ever-growing unease, reminiscent in places of Shostakovich’s “Leningrad” Symphony. The sentimental waltz towards the piece’s conclusion marked the defeat of the devils and a triumph of well-being, the musical laughter of the story’s audience at the end as much from relief as pleasure in entertainment.

The work was a perfect foil for the Dvorak Trio which took up the concert’s second part – if the Eggners had thus far shown they could convey energetic high spirits and humor, the trio proved equally capable of addressing the Czech composer’s passionate outpourings, generating full-blooded responses to the music’s every mood. I thought the group’s fusion of energy and expression utterly compelling throughout, with phrase-ends by turns adroitly tailored to succeeding episodes, or pointing the contrasts for proper musical effect. Just occasionally the violinist reached the highest note of a striving phrase less than cleanly (noticeable against the otherwise technically impeccable playing throughout), though somehow it all added to the expressiveness of the music’s wanting to bring about something worthwhile. After digging into the trenchant moods of the first two movements the Eggners relished the Adagio’s tender moments, though remaining responsive to the osmotic thrustings of swirling energy released by the music in places. The finale returned to the earlier movements’ excitement, a wistful second subject along the way providing some necessary respite before the players brought all the strands together for a noble and rousing finish.

I didn’t catch the name of the film composer who wrote the wildly unbuttoned romp of a piece the Eggners gave us as an encore – it was straight out of a Keystone Cops-type thriller, beginning with a delicious horror-chord, and erupting with high-energy velocities, a brief swooning ‘cello theme allowing us but  a breath or two’s respite before whirling everything back into a vortex of abandonment and sudden oblivion. But it was, though, of a piece with the rest of the concert regarding the group’s all-embracing way with everything that was played, and as such sent us all out into the night simmering with pleasure.

Brahms piano trio and Czech duos at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Breaking free from the Chamber – van der Zee, Mitchell and Mapp

St.Andrew’s on The Terrace Season of Concerts 2011

Janáček – Sonata for Violin and Piano
Martinů – Sonata No.2 for ‘Cello and Piano
Brahms – Piano Trio No.2 in C Minor

Anna van der Zee (violin) / Paul Mitchell (‘cello) / Richard Mapp (piano)

St.Andrew’s on The Terrace, Wellington

Sunday 20th March 2011, 3pm

Many of my most memorable musical experiences come from unexpected encounters with either unfamiliar compositions or stunningly good performances. In Wellington, these days, one expects at most concerts certain levels of musical understanding and technical accomplishment, but that still leaves plenty of stratospheric spaces for performances which take the listener to those out-of-the-ordinary heights that can’t help but enlarge and enrich one’s view of existence in general. This was a concert with many such moments.

I don’t wish to give the idea that these musicians normally don’t impress with their playing, though I have to say that in ‘cellist Paul Mitchell’s case I thought his work on this occasion exceeded in overall terms of accomplishment anything I’d previously heard him do. I’d heard Anna van deer Zee’s work previously as a member of the Tasman String Quartet, and remember enjoying her musicality in that context, somewhat removed from the realm of a virtuoso violin sonata, as here. As for Richard Mapp, I’ve always had the highest regard for his piano-playing in different settings, be it collaborative or soloistic – which is not to say that I’m never surprised and delighted by what he’s able to achieve out of the blue, as it were.

But this, I thought, was a special concert, one in which the musicians infused their material with oceans of appropriate character – fiery energy and deep concentration (Janáček and Martinů) and robust strength and romantic warmth (Brahms). And what a stunning opening to the concert it was, with the Janáček Sonata’s fiery, volatile declamations hurled at us by both violinist and pianist, only for the music to revert to the most confessional and intimate utterances without warning – such tenderness sitting alongside blazing statements and searing lines! I thought the playing simply terrific, encompassing both strength and vulnerability, handling the composer’s characteristic sudden switches into contrasting moods with great aplomb. Van deer Zee and Mapp caught the second movement’s folksy lyricism, swapping melodic lines with wonderful dexterity and, in van deer Zee’s case, beautifully true intonation.

The scherzo-like third movement set an invigorating “stomping” character at the opening against a more heartfelt trio section (these players characterized everything so vividly), while the finale’s epic treatment of tragedy cast the instruments almost as protagonists in places – the violin occasionally savaging the piano’s more long-breathed music with brutal interjections, the music in between time creating a mood of desperate and uncertain yearning for peace and harmony, constantly under threat. The players achieved an intense, heartbreaking flow of feeling at one point, but one which the echoing of the movement’s opening quickly dissolved, as if waking us from a dream and returning us to a harsher reality.

Martinů ‘s second “Cello Sonata, written in the United States after the composer had fled the Nazi invasion of Europe, is a kind of “New World” chamber sonata, containing numerous echoes of his Czech heritage. The first movement has a slightly “haunted” quality, folkish lines punctuated by episodes of great agitation, with textures for both instruments richly wrought. Mitchell and Mapp played into each other’s hands throughout quite masterfully, the focus of the ‘cello line matching and mirroring the piano writing to perfection. Together these musicians made something special out of the funeral-like Largo, recreating a whole world of sorrow and disquiet, galvanized by some virtuoso playing from the pianist leading to a most heartfelt and desperate entry from the ‘cellist – fantastic playing, completely “inside’ the music. The finale’s opening, combatative exchanges between string pizzicati with “attitude” and jagged piano writing, never let up, fusing lyricism with rhythmic energies, the players readily capturing a sense of “flight”, of desperate movement towards a kind of freedom in sadness and anger.

After these heart-on-sleeve utterances, the Brahms Piano Trio seemed at first a model of classical decorum – as well, the composer’s writing (strings often in unison) tended in the opening movement to play down the inherent warmth of this instrumental combination, so that we got an athletic, sinewy sound, focused and lean-textured. Occasionally I found the piano a shade overpowering in this movement, and wondered whether the player or the acoustic was to blame. This wasn’t so pronounced in the subsequent movements, the slow movement’s songful variations bringing the players’ tones together in a beautifully balanced outpouring of melody. The Scherzo’s wonderfully delicate, slightly “spooky” opening tones were beautifully realized, the warmer, more relaxed second subject was given plenty of character by the players, rising to something approaching heroic utterance at its climax, and switching to a Mendelssohnian feeling at the return of the opening, much relished by the musicians.

Hugo Wolf once complained of Brahms, “he can’t exult” – a judgement that this music surely and triumphantly denies. The musicians captured the flow of things right from the start, enjoying the occasional chromaticisms and contrasting them with a more chunky and bucolic character in other places. Richard Mapp’s playing I found terrific, establishing the kind of momentum which swept everything before it, his fellow-players matching the excitement right to the music’s joyous conclusion. Altogether, the concert gave us music-making of a high order, reminding us all over again (if needed) of the depth of talent to be found among our local musicians – such wealth, and at the disposal of our pleasure.

A String Quartet with a difference – the NZGQ

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NEW ZEALAND GUITAR QUARTET

St.Andrew’s on The Terrace Season of Concerts 2011

ANDREW YORK – Lotus Eaters

PETER WARLOCK (arr.Owen Moriarty) – Capriol Suite

KAISA BEECH – The Storm

GEORGES BIZET (arr. Bill Kanengiser) – Carmen Suite

SCOTT TENNANT – Celtic Fare

JS BACH (arr.James Smith) – Brandenburg Concerto No.6

NIKOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (arr.Bill Kanengiser) – Capriccio Espagnol

The New Zealand Guitar Quartet

Jane Curry, Cheryl Grice-Watterson, Owen Moriarty, Christopher Hill

St.Andrew’s on The Terrace, Wellington

Wednesday 16th March 2011

As one can see from the NZGQ’s program, the evening consisted mainly of transcriptions, with a few original compositions. Given that two of these reworkings were of music originally for strings (JS Bach and Warlock) and the other two drew heavily for their original inspiration on music for Spanish guitar, the presentations seemed entirely apposite, and (with one reservation, humbly proffered by this non-guitarist!) were delivered with what seemed plenty of energy, sensitivity and stylistic integrity.

I’ve previously remarked in these pages on the uncanny ability of the guitar to bring its own characterful distinction to music written for other instruments; and the quartet of players certainly brought their skills to the fore, conjuring up and delivering a wide range of colour and dynamics to works whose textures responded well to the presentations. For me the only thing I found problematical (and only in one item, throughout the evening) was the circumstance in the final work, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol, of frequent interruptions to the music for re-tuning – these hiatuses seemed to me to damage the atmosphere and sweep of the whole, and I was left thinking how “out-of-tune” the instruments would actually come to sound if left to their own performance devices for the sake of preserving musical continuity. I wondered whether a group of, say, flamenco guitarists delivering a larger-scale work which generated plenty of atmosphere, coloristic excitement and rhythmic impetus would similarly “sectionalize” the music to re-tune. I know that Rimsky wrote what seemed like “natural breaks” into his original score, but they’ve never seemed to me to be like those between symphonic movements, where there’s the usual concert-hall coughing and shuffling – one wants the music to press on, emphasizing the contrasts of the change of colour and impetus, and so on.

Interestingly enough, this was also the only work on the program in which I felt the performance lacked a bit of grunt in places. I found myself wanting to be more “transported” by it all (perhaps those “tuning breaks” were to blame) – I thought there needed to be more “schwung” to the rhythms during the final Fandango Asturiano, and simply a greater sense towards the end of of risk-taking and red-blooded abandonment (perhaps out-of-tune strings might have actually helped at that point!)…

Still, this is to risk nit-picking in the face of my overall enjoyment of an enterprising program! Delights there were aplenty – Andrew York’s attractive Lotus Eaters could have come out of a film similar to “Zorba the Greek” – I thought of the term “Mediterranean Road Music”, with, as Owen Moriarty reminded us in his spoken postscript, a very “LA” perspective. Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite was sheer delight, the opening Basse-Danse exploiting the antiphonal effects of change and exchange among the ensemble, and the jig-like Tordion featuring beautifully “covered” pizzicato tones, everything dying away to a whisper at the end. The players dug into the final Mattachins, with bristling flourishes of (in places) spiky harmonies, leading up to a satisfying “ole!” at the final chord.

A heart-stopping moment came for a young Wellington composer, Kaisa Beech, whose work The Storm was presented by the quartet, a vividly-presented picture of a passing thunderstorm, encompassing both calm and turmoil with telling impact. Another original work, from presumably a more seasoned composer, Scott Tennant (actually dedicated to guitarist Owen Moriarty’s parents) was Celtic Fare, a work which actually grew out of an arrangement the composer made of another composer’s work, and which formed the inspiration for two further original movements. Irish folk-melodies belled and echoed throughout the first piece, to be contrasted with hoe-down energies in the final movement. Pleasant, somewhat eclectic stuff, nicely turned by the ensemble.

In general, I thought the group gave the Carmen transcription a bit more edge than they did the Rimsky-Korsakov. Each section seemed to go with a swing, the opportunities for “layering” the texture with four instruments beautifully realized and nicely detailed in performance. Occasionally I wondered why the arranger chose to set the melody of a piece an octave lower that I would have expected (with the original orchestration in my mind’s ear), making for a less brilliant and clearly-etched effect than with the original. This happened with the Habanera, and the effect was of the tune being sung by a baritone at the outset – the change to a major key brought the melody up to its accustomed level – but it did seem strange at first, as with the Seguidilla, where the melodic lines sometimes got submerged in the surrounding textures – not the performers’ fault, assuredly! Throughout, the group’s rhythmic pointing caught the snap and lift of the music’s movement so beautifully, a slight rhythmic hiccup at the end of the introduction in the Gypsy Dance mattering not a whit, as the growing physicality of the dance caught up performers and listeners alike in ever-growing excitement.

But I couldn’t praise too highly the group’s realization of the sixth of JS Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti. In true Baroque fashion, the music translated into the new instrumental medium as if fitting a perfectly-tailored glove – and the ensemble’s rendition of the individual lines brought so many deliciously-phrased strands of delight together with impeccable balance and osmotic teamwork.  The best performances of Bach have a certain feel of a living organism simply doing its thing, expressing its existence in its own unique, multifaceted way – and such was the case with the playing of the ensemble throughout the concerto – a performance that gave the very deepest of pleasure. Especially (and surprisingly) good was the slow movement, where the songful lines expressed an even more poignant quality than usual, perhaps through the notes being plucked instead of bowed, and therefore more subject to decay, as with all things to do with this worlds joye…….

The group gave an encore, occasioning a bit of “musical malapropism” on my part, thinking as I did that I’d heard it introduced as “Surrey Overnight” – however,  I found out later that its correct name was “Sarajevo Nights”. I fear my resulting abashment inhibited my critical faculties somewhat regarding this piece, as I can’t seem to remember much about it, except that it had an attractive calypso-like feeling, like a sort of jazzy chaconne. I’ve added my slip of hearing to my own private list of musical howlers……..

Diabolically fine fiddling from Martin Riseley

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Andrew’s on The Terrace Season of Concerts 2011

Martin Riseley (violin)

JS BACH – Sonata in C BWV 1005

PAGANINI – Introduction and Variations on Nel cor più non mi sento (from Paisello’s La molinara)

YSAŸE – L’Aurore

BARTOK – Sonata for Solo Violin (1944)

St.Andrew’s on The Terrace, Wellington

Sunday 13th March 2011

The trouble with the kind of jaw-dropping musical virtuosity demonstrated by the likes of Martin Riseley is that it can for some people obscure the actual substance of what’s being performed – since the time of the master-fiddler, Paganini himself, this “circus entertainment” aspect demonstrated by skilled executants has frequently bedeviled their musical efforts. Paganini recounted how, on one occasion, he was approached by a gentleman who claimed to have discovered his “secret”……

One individual…affirmed that he saw nothing surprising in my performance, for he had

distinctly seen, while I was playing my variations, the devil at my elbow

directing my arm and guiding my bow.  My resemblance to him was a proof of my

origin.  He was clothed in red–had horns on his head–and carried his tail

between his legs.  After so minute a description, you will understand, sir,

it was impossible to doubt the fact–hence, many concluded they had

discovered the secret of what they termed wonderful feats.”

It may come as a disappointment to some readers of this review that I’m not going to swear to having seen a similar apparition at Martin Riseley’s shoulder during his St.Andrew’s on The Terrace recital – but there was nevertheless plenty of sulphurous wizardry about his playing, albeit placed entirely at the service of the music throughout. When one encounters, as here, a fusion of virtuoso skill and musical sensibility, the results can be overwhelming. The programming judiciously underlined this marriage of technique with substance – and I recall being delighted by a previous solo violin recital of Riseley’s in which he presented the complete Paganini Caprices as a set of musical treasures, not mere virtuoso show-off pieces.

Riseley began his recital with an unprogrammed item, an Elegy by Stravinsky, to pay tribute to the people of Christchurch in the wake of the disastrous earthquake of February 22nd of this year. The violinist, himself a native of Christchurch, had already announced that he was donating his fee for the concert to the city’s relief fund. His playing of the music appropriately realized the elegiac nature of the piece, bringing to the textures a sombre, viola-like quality which made one imagine in places that the larger instrument was being used. Riseley requested that there be no applause at the end.

Strong, tensile, detailed and expressive – these words came to my mind as I listened to Riseley begin the Adagio which begins the Bach C Major Sonata BWV 1005. By the end he had managed to give us something both monumental and beautifully crafted at one and the same time. The Fugue astonished, as should be its wont, for the same reason, the player’s mastery evident in his ability to relate such a myriad of detail to a coherent structural argument – a feast for the intellect as well as for the ears. After such far-flung magnificence the Largo was bound to seem almost cowed at first, but the violinist’s lightness of touch found the essential contrast of mood, preparing us for the fleet-fingered concluding Allegro. Riseley told us at the end that he last performed the work in Christchurch’s ill-fated Cathedral, thus investing what we’d just heard with a thoughtful retrospective.

True to expectation, the introduction to Paganini’s Variations on a theme of Paisiello’s (the aria “Nel core più non mi sento”) generated flinted sparks and similar coruscations, after which the actual theme of Paisiello’s was subjected to all kinds of virtuoso “tricks”, including left-hand pizzicati. Paganini never actually published this work, for fear of his techniques being stolen by others – so posterity has had to rely on transcriptions by other people – in this case one Karl Gurh – to convey a sense of what the little wizard did with the hapless Paisiello’s theme. Throughout, Riseley’s playing properly titillated our capacities for sheer pyrotechnic enjoyment, while drawing attention occasionally to the charm and poignancy of this or that poetic turn of phrase. The virtuoso fireworks were properly put in context at the very end of the work by a deliciously throwaway ending, whose creative insouciance and deftness of touch were very much appreciated.

I liked, too, Ysaye’s L’Aurore, an evocation of dawn which gently eased us back into the fray after the interval. The work’s long-breathed lines paralleled plenty of accompanying incident, such as pizzicati and double-stopped figurations. It was as if through great lyrical archways all kinds of ambient detail scampered, the changing moods of the piece including a dance-sequence at the end, the human element in concourse with nature.

Before beginning the Bartok sonata, Riseley talked about the music’s performance difficulties, with reference to the work’s early interpreters, who were faced with what seemed like near-impossible challenges, and contrasted those endeavors with modern-day virtuosi whose technical prowess can seem just as misapplied in a completely different way when the music is made to sound almost “easy”. If the music didn’t sound “easy” under Riseley’s fingers, it was through no lack of skill on the violinist’s part. In the first movement one got the feeling of the lines being pushed to the utmost limits of physical expression, while the Fugue managed to combine ideas whose beauty, angularity and sharply-etched focus create what Riseley called in his programme-note a “tour de force” of concentrated composition. Though the Adagio chartered vastly different contourings, its concentrated mood readily found affinities with what had gone before – Riseley’s playing generated an amazing sense of extra-terrestrial traversal, those long lines and melismatic scale-fingerings together creating an unworldly effect, rich and strange.

As for the finale, Riseley characterized the music’s contrasting modes splendidly, the haunted “flight” music of the opening giving way to folk-idioms suggesting both dance and song, the melodic fragments stretched and intensified, and ever more closely juxtaposed with the urgent scherzando mood of the opening, a fragment of which seemed to become the final upward flourish of the work.

Its triumphant realization by the violinist brought to an end a truly splendid concert, one which amply served to demonstrate the wonder and privilege of having an instrumentalist of Martin Riseley’s talents close at hand to perform such music for our pleasure.

VECTOR WELLINGTON ORCHESTRA – whatever the weather……

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Vector Wellington Orchestra Summer Concert

Soloists: Aivale Cole (soprano) / Benjamin Makisi (tenor)

Footnote Dance Company

Kate Mead (Radio New Zealand Concert) – presenter

Marc Taddei (conductor)

Vector Wellington Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Sunday 6th March, 2011

As comedian Michael Flanders, of “At the Drop of a Hat” fame, might have said, “If the gods had intended us to listen to music outdoors, they would never have given us weather!”. Such was the case on the weekend, when, to the intense disappointment of all concerned, the Vector Wellington Orchestra’s annual family concert sortie to the grounds of Government House had to be relocated to the Michael Fowler Centre. The smaller indoor venue meant that many ticketholders had to get their money refunded, although those of us who were lucky enough to have a transferable seat found ourselves still able to collect our picnic hamper, whose contents we sampled while pretending to be enjoying a beautiful day, sitting on dry grass, in the sun or under trees, watching the rest of the company doing the same. The ritual enabled something of the occasion to be salvaged (everything incredibly well-organised, I thought), while the wonderful music-making generated by singers, orchestra and conductor did the rest. So, despite the privations, it was a great success.

Again the Wellington orchestra’s management was able to demonstrate that, when something special was required to fit an occasion, it was delivered with aplomb (by contrast with some of the promotional efforts from the “other” orchestra in town, whose energies seem hardly to spill over from concert platform activities), inviting the Governor-General and the Wellington Mayor to speak at the concert, and properly “place” the event , albeit in its amended form. There might, actually, have been one speech too many, at the start, with the event’s raison d’être – the music – being, as it were, kept waiting in the wings a little too long. But the show’s compere, Kate Mead, of Radio New Zealand Concert, quickly put us at our ease and prepared each item with whimsical descriptions of the music’s contexts, and “humanizing” figures like the all-too-fallible Antonio Vivaldi of the “Four Seasons” fame, with stories of his being censored by his superiors for his “unpriestly” activities (some things never change…..).

Concerts such as these tend to go for the “instant appeal” repertoire, of which, naturally, there’s a marvellous store, especially in opera – interesting, really, that so many people regard the latter as a relatively “closed-book” kind of art-form, yet hugely enjoy the “great moments” upon contact. But also, making a world of difference here, were the singers, soprano Aivale Cole and tenor Benjamin Makisi, both in fine voice and having a wonderful theatrical ease and spontaneity on the stage, separately and together. As for the support from orchestra and conductor, the accompaniments were of a piece, by turns full-throated and exquisitely atmospheric – a particular joy was Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma”, with Makisi’s nicely-focused tones borne aloft on diaphanous veils of floating instrumental sound, everything deliciously delicate and wind-blown. Perhaps the orchestra’s reduced numbers helped, here (I counted just four ‘cellists, for example), of a scale comparable with that of the average orchestral band in the “pit” of an opera house. What these players achieved with conductor Marc Taddei in places was spell-binding, considering they were in the same space as the singers, rather than in the recesses of “the womb of Gaia” (as Wagner called the orchestral pit). Admittedly, the reduced sound-scale didn’t help things like Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours”, which seriously lacked “grunt” during the final Galop, but fortunately this wasn’t typical.

It was a nice idea to run the three “La Boheme” exerpts together from Act One (again, the “big moments” – two arias and a duet, with the only unimportant casualties being the interjections of the offstage Bohemians), allowing Cole and Makisi plenty of theatrical as well as musical expression – while they were both impressive, I thought Cole freer, more easeful vocally, and still with something in reserve, even with the cries of “Amor!” at the end – fortunately, the largely non-opera-going audience broke off their premature applause to allow the singers these final off-stage vocal ecstasies! Earlier, Aivale Cole had demonstrated her versatility in Gareth Farr’s “Aoraki”, contributing a soaring vocal line to the largely traditional ambiences of karanga, were and putatara, supported by a typically rhythmic orchestral background. Apart from one audible Michael Laws-like comment from an audience member at the very end, not far from where I was sitting, this work got an enthusiastic reception, as did the same composer’s “Sea Gongs”, later in the program. Well, as American baseball coach Connie Mack once said, “You can’t win ’em all!”.

Dancers from the Footnote Dance Company contributed to two items. They performed rather more effectively to Tchaikovsky’s lovely Waltz from the opera “Eugen Onegin”, where the ‘ballroom swirling” was nicely captured, than for Vivaldi’s “Summer” from the “Four Seasons” (a brilliantly-played solo from concertmaster Matthew Ross), their movements I thought somewhat out-of-sync. with the music in places. The orchestra generated much more fire with Berlioz’s “Le Carnival Romain” (a nicely-phrased cor-anglais solo) than with Ponchielli, the players inspired by Taddei to produce surges of tone and flashes of brilliance as required. Again, the singers shone, Aivale Cole capturing the magic of a couple more famous operatic moments, Catalani’s “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana” from “La Wally”,  and “Vissi d’arte” from Puccini’s “Tosca”; while Benjamin Makisi brought the caddish aspect of the Duke of Mantua from Verdi’s “Rigoletto” to life, tickling the sensibilities of the audience to perfection with his insinuations. And if Cole didn’t quite “nail” the fiendishly difficult penultimate note of the same composer’s “Sempre libera” from “La Traviata”, she could take comfort from knowing that many famous sopranos have also failed to totally convince at that point.  The “Brindisi” (Drinking Song) from the same opera brought the full-throated best out of both singers, a few impromptu waltz-steps from Cole and Makisi throughout the “chorus bits” again delighting the audience, and bringing an immediacy to the music’s context.

It remained for the old warhorse, Tchaikovsky’s Overture “1812”, to round the music off, which was done in quite spectacular, if unintentional fashion, when the second bass-drum player (brought in to simulate the cannon-fire at the piece’s climax) lost his grip on the drumstick at his first thunderous whack, sending it spinning across the back of the orchestral platform, to the risible delight of the audience! Wisely, I think, Marc Taddei had removed the repetitions of some of the music’s material in the middle of the piece, so that the actual battle came sooner than was expected. What astonished me was the weight of tone that the orchestra produced in places, so that nowhere did we feel sonically compromised or sold short in excitement. And the hapless percussionist who had lost his stick made up for the couple of entries he had missed while retrieving his implement by thundering away with extra vim and vigor at the height of the victory celebrations, earning himself a special accolade for his efforts at the music’s conclusion!

Menage a Trio – relishing the contrasts…

Posted on by Peter Mechen

CONTRASTS

Aram Khachaturian – Trio (Ist Movement) / Bela Bartok – Contrasts

Charles Ives – Largo / Paul Schoenfield – Trio

Menage a Trio : Julia Flint (violin) / Anna Coleman (clarinet) / Chris Lian-Lloyd (piano)

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University, Wellington

Saturday 5th March, 2011

Menage a Trio’s combination of violin, clarinet and piano vividly and triumphantly presented both contrast and fusion throughout an enterprising program. This was the Australian group’s second Wellington outing, a little better attended than the first the previous evening. A pity, as such playing as we heard on the Saturday evening deserved far more widespread appreciation.

Beginning with just a single movement of the Khachaturian Trio, the group straightaway established the music’s exotic colour and flavor, those evocative chordal clusters on the piano bringing forth a soulful response from the clarinet and a beautiful sinuous line from the violin, capturing the work’s opening ebb-and-flow character. And how beautifully the players reversed the roles of clarinet and violin, the clarinet quixotic and decorative in its figurations and the violin soulful and intense. The Trio readily brought out the music’s volatile undercurrents besides relishing its heartfelt, folky atmosphere.

With Bartok’s Contrasts, the work that gave the concert its name, the players again took us right into the music’s world, the opening pizzicato blues of the Verbukos (the so-called “recruiting dance”) with its near-cabaret rhythms, piano tintinabulations and splendid clarinet cadenza acquainting us well with the character of the instrumental interactions. Bartok’s title for the work reflected the composer’s attitude that the instruments didn’t really belong together – he wrote the piece for two prominent instrumentalists, clarinettist Benny Goodman and violinist Josef Szigeti, each part emphasizing great virtuosity, while underlining the differences between the instruments – hence the title “Contrasts”. Even so, the first few minutes of the Pihenö (relaxation) movement features beautifully interactive instrumental textures, evoking one of the composer’s nocturnal scenes with the surest of touches, the playing here etching the sounds onto the aural scenario with the utmost sensitivity.

The last movement was something else, complete with a mid-music change of violin, the composer directing that at the start of the movement the violin’s lower string be raised half-a-tone to G# and the top string lowered to E-flat, creating a tuning effect known as scordatura, one common in European modal folk-music. The player reverts to a normally-tuned instrument after thirty or so bars; but the effect at the outset was striking, not unlike the opening of the second movement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with a fiddle tuned higher than usual. It launched a proper “Danse Macabre”, with a whirling dervish aspect, conveyed with plenty of visceral impact by these musicians (echoes of the “Concerto for Orchestra” in places). A wistful, folk-flavoured central episode gradually took on a hallucinatory fire-siren aspect, out of which sprang madcap gallopings, a full-blooded violin cadenza, and exuberant shrieks from all participants, the players and their instruments dashing towards the music’s destiny amid exhilarating swirls of sound, the Bulgarian folk-rhythms adding to the excitement of it all.

Charles Ives’s Largo survived its transition from an intended, then rejected violin sonata movement to enchant us in these musicians’ hands – a dreamy, contemplative opening allowed firstly the solo violin ample opportunity to rhapsodize (difficult passagework giving rise to a strained touch in places), and then the clarinet, the latter proving a galvanizing force, goading the music into various volatile juxtapositionings, until the violin returned to call things to order and draw forth processional chordings from the piano, the dying fall of the music sweet and valedictory – a lovely performance.

The “dark horse” of the program for me was a work by the American-Jewish composer Paul Schoenfield – a Trio for Violin, Clarinet and Piano. Inspired largely by Hassidic worship, the composer wanted the music to reflect the celebratory nature of Hassidic gatherings, as well as generate an exotic appeal to classical audiences. Though drawing from the work of Klezmer Bands, the music’s high-octane energies and cutting edges impart a somewhat frenetic performance aspect that might well have left most traditionalists reeling. Right from the galloping opening, punctuated at the pauses by heartfelt glissandi and rumbustious pianistic energies, the music never let up, the first movement’s closely-argued convolutions tightening all the more throughout a final breathless accelerando, again very excitingly played. A portentous march-like opening to the second movement featured a mournful, almost drunken clarinet supported by equally doleful violin-playing, the piano, with flailing arpeggiations keeping the beat going, the players seeming to relish the grotesqueries, screeches, slurs and all – totally absorbing.

The atmospheric Nigun movement, the most meditative part of the work, was set in motion by the clarinet alone, the violin’s answering figurations rather like the impulses of two landmarks in a desolate landscape, with the piano supplying the Bartok-like night-sounds. Without a break the players plunged into the exhilarations of the finale, whose beating heart drove the music into and through celebratory rituals of both circumspection and abandonment, the last couple of pages releasing surges of energy – altogether, a demanding work, but one which these young Australian instrumentalists excitingly made their own throughout.

Winterreise at Waikanae

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SCHUBERT – Winterreise D.911

Keith Lewis (tenor)

Michael Houstoun (piano)

Waikanae Music Society

Memorial Hall,

Sunday 13th February 2011

The last five songs of this performance in Waikanae by Keith Lewis and Michael Houstoun of Schubert’s song-cycle Winterreise brought us right to the heart of this great work – that numbed, essential bleakness of spirit was tellingly conveyed by both singer and pianist, not with histrionics or gloom-laden darknesses of tone, but with a kind of other-worldliness symbolized by the traveller’s “passing-over” into the realm of the ghostly organ-grinder, a state of being completely removed from “this worlde’s joye”.

Such was the focus and concentration of singer and pianist that the performance even transcended intrusive rumblings from a nearby train, noises whose elongations did their best to spoil Im Dorfe (In the Village), shortly after the interval. But by the time Der Wegweiser (The Signpost) was reached, we listeners in the hall had ourselves gone into those “grey havens” where earthly considerations seemed no longer to matter. Lewis and Houstoun caught this particular song’s almost pre-ordained fatalism, every utterance and every note suggesting the individual’s progression from that bitterness of heart to a numbed resignation in the face of what must be.

From the start this wasn’t a reading of the cycle that sought to plumb the depths or wring out the emotions too early – Houstoun’s chordal introduction to the opening Gute Nacht (Good Night) moved at an easy, almost brisk pace, and Lewis’s singing, if strongly-declaimed in places, kept feelings on an even keel, though with sufficient tender contrast at the major-key change for the last verse’s opening, to make the moment of farewell sufficiently heart-rending.

For all that the emotions were never over-wrought in this performance, the cumulative effect of such an approach had a magical effect upon irruptions of light among the prevailing gloom, such as the sweet remembrances of happiness prompted by Der Lindenbaum (The Linden Tree). Houstoun’s introduction to the song rippled, but the echoes had little resonant warmth, in keeping with the simple, ballad-like treatment of the first verse – however, the interplay between singer and pianist throughout Verse Two, with its minor-key modulations and care-worn accompanying figurations, was most affecting, as was the recalling at the end by the singer of the leaves’ rustling, with the words “Du fändest Ruhe dort” (There you would find rest).

The following song, Wasserflut (Torrent), though in places underlining the singer’s unsteadiness on sustained notes, featured an even more heartfelt and theatrical realization, Houstoun capturing the “tolling bell” aspect to perfection, and Lewis coloring his voice exquisitely in places, nowhere more beautifully than when addressing the snow, at “Schnee, du weisst von meinem Sehnen” (Snow, you know my longing), then rising to a passionate declamation with the final “Da ist meiner Liebster Haus” (There will be my beloved’s house).

Though there were too many other instances in this performance of these kinds of interpretative insights to do justice to, here, what delighted me were the unexpected moments of frisson – such as in the deceptively straightforward-sounding Die Post, which usually trips along almost vacuously, as if the composer felt the need to lighten the prevailing gloom of the journey at this point. Lewis and Houstoun, by dint of their awareness of possibilities for contrasts of colour and rhythmic impulse, made the “scene” into a miniature tone-poem, setting the traveller’s immediate exhilaration of encountering the sound of the posthorn against a more ruminative and inward world of past remembrance, beautifully pointed for maximum effect. And if the transcendent nature of the music over the last five songs cast, as here, a mesmeric spell over both musical and metaphorical elements, there were sufficient  moments of breath-catching beauty and arresting power throughout for the performance to constantly lead the ear of the listener onwards, giving a palpable sense of Schubert’s and his poet Müller’s visionary journey.

All credit to the Waikanae Music Society for organizing such a splendid concert. A well-appointed printed programme, including texts and translations of the songs, added to our pleasure, even if it meant that the “rustle of page-turning” in places was more than palpable – though sensibly, none of the texts were printed in a way that caused a mid-music irruption – such things, albeit very briefly, were left to the Railways!