Author: Peter Mechen

Orpheus Choir and Wellington Orchestra deliver “good tidings” from Handel

Posted on by Peter Mechen

HANDEL – Messiah

Ana James (soprano) / Helen Medlyn (mezzo-soprano)

Keith Lewis (tenor) / Martin Snell (bass)

Orpheus Choir of Wellington

Vector Wellington Orchestra

Michael Fulcher, conductor

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday, December 4th, 2010

There’s no doubt about it – nothing brings in people quite like the prospect of hearing a “Messiah”. And, as when one goes to something like a rugby test, there’s a parallel sense of occasion, of impending enjoyment, of expectation that the the experience will truly resonate with an amalgam of the familiar and the freshly-minted. So, there, queued up in lines around at least two sides of the Town Hall were, I suspect, many “Messiah veterans” as well as people who would have heard, one way or another, about the “good tidings”, and come to see and hear for themselves just what it was all about.

The last Messiah I heard was given by a different choir, the Tudor Consort, in this same hall two years ago, the differences in style and interpretation between that and the present approach a cause for endless fascination. I remember then actually sitting in the auditorium behind the conductor of the present “Messiah”, Michael Fulcher, for the Tudor Consort’s performance and wondering what his reactions were to Michael Stewart’s extremely  lean, clean-cut and vigorous interpretation of the whole. Of course I was now ideally placed to glean some of those reactions by dint of the present concert, albeit two years afterwards.

So – again a full hall, the same orchestra, a bigger choir than there was in 2008 (a most resplendent-sounding Orpheus Choir), and a very different line-up of soloists. Madeleine Pierard’s vocal beauty and polish easily stole the show on the earlier occasion, but this time the quartet was far more evenly-matched. Ana James was here a silvery-toned soprano, Helen Medlyn the characterful, dramatic mezzo-soprano, Keith Lewis the lyrical, occasionally heroic tenor, and Martin Snell a commanding, richly-toned bass. Conductor Michael Fulcher took a more traditional approach to the work than we heard in Michael Stewart’s hands, with steadier speeds throughout and more “orchestrated” dynamic contrasts in places, which I thought brought out the music’s grandeur and depth of feeling more consistently.

Of course the “swings and roundabouts” syndrome meant that this time round there wasn’t in places the same knife-edged excitement around and about the textures, and one or two of the choruses seemed to play themselves rather than be infused with fresh energies. But these differences were, of course, for the listener part of the meat and drink of the experience, of hearing a familiar work freshly realized, and revelling in the stimulation and resulting discussion that such a new realization gives. As with Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, there doesn’t seem to me to be anything one can “do” to Messiah to blunt its effect – it’s one of those almost archetypal masterpieces of art which form an essential part of one’s understanding of human civilization in general.

To go through the performance and tease out every interpretative nuance would need an excess of world and time – any number of felicities could be cited as giving a sense of the whole, and the occasional frailty a timely reminder of the humanity of the enterprise. The soloists always generate great interest, and each of these performed with particular distinction. First up was, of course, tenor Keith Lewis, with his wonderfully poetic, liberally nuanced, yet still commanding, “Comfort Ye” (sounding not unlike a stylistically aware namesake from an earlier Handelian era, Richard Lewis), the voice opening up splendidly at “The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness”, freely declaiming (some would call it “mannered”) in places, but for me managing to suggest a compelling spontaneity of utterance. Not a heroic performance, then, but a fascinatingly stylish one – later, his voice demonstrated some frailty at the very top, with the cruel upward leaps of “Thou shalt break them” giving him some difficulty, though he had introduced the aria with a beautifully-realised recitative “He that dwelleth in heaven”.

What Helen Medlyn lacked in sheer vocal girth she made up for in both characterful expression and grave beauty of utterance – the capacity to tell a story was always evident in her singing. Her big number, “He was despised” was heartfelt and emotional at the beginning, then vehement and theatrical in the middle section, projecting the text with her articulation rather than any great power. I liked her allowing some melodic decoration at the opening’s reprise, while keeping intact the aria’s essential simplicity. The same went for her  “But who may abide”, her voice assuming an almost Greek-chorus-like solemnity at the beginning, and then using sharply-focused diction to depict the “refiner’s fire”. Though occasionally having to force her tone, as in parts of “Thou art gone up on high”, her duet with Keith Lewis “O death, where is thy sting?” was put across with engaging energy and spirit.

Vocal girth was what Martin Snell’s bass voice had in abundance, but also great agility and splendid focus throughout. His dramatic experience was evident in his word-pointing at the declamatory “Thus saith the Lord”, though it must be said his runs on the word “shake” were more considered than really seismic. Despite the disappointingly bland orchestral introduction at “For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth”, Snell evoked the gloom magnificently, arching his voice vigorously at “glory”, and summoning the light with great surety. I thought “The people that walked” a shade quick, but singer and orchestra really made something of the words “have seen a great light”. For energy and vigour at a crackling pace, singer and orchestra again sparked from off each other at “Why do the Nations?”, while “The trumpet shall sound” has surely never sounded more assertive and assured in the hall as here on this occasion, with stellar playing from trumpeter Barrett Hocking throughout, fully matching the singing’s grandeur of utterance.

Youngest of the soloists, soprano Ana James nevertheless brought plenty of concert and operatic experience to her task, displaying a bright, silvery soprano voice which charmed at her first entrance “There were shepherds…”, quickened the listener’s interest at “And the angel said unto them….”, and brightly and eagerly scintillated at the words “And suddenly there was with the angel…” It was a sound that contrasted well with Helen Medlyn’s warmly involving tones in “Come unto him all ye that labour”, but really blossomed with “How beautiful are the feet”, the orchestra matching their soloist with beguiling instrumental beauty. Inevitably, everybody waits for two moments in Messiah, one of which is “I know that my Redeemer liveth” – here, Ana James spun her line out beautifully, surviving a touch of awkwardness at a breath-taking moment (literally) at “upon the earth” the first time round, and enchanting us with tasteful embellishments at the main theme’s reprise, with a beautiful stepwise ascent on the word “Redeemer”.

Michael Fulcher’s work with the Orpheus Choir made for many richly sonorous moments and some exciting contrasts in places – the “other” moment in the work, of course is “Halleluiah!”, which here was wonderful in every way. I confess that every time I’m taken by surprise when people leap to their feet for this chorus, and on each occasion it’s an exhilarating experience – the sudden irruptions of timpani and brass (trumpeters Barrett Hocking and Tom Moyer, and timpanist Laurence Reese on tiptop form) never fail to raise goosebumps! But conductor and choir made the most of the other big festive numbers as well, glorious soprano sounds in both “And the glory of the Lord” and “And He shall purify”, and all sections relishing their upward-thrusting lines and their concerted acclamations in “For unto us a Child is born”. I didn’t feel quite enough was made of the contrasting sections of “Since by man came death”, beautifully prepared for by the choir’s hushed opening tones, but needing a bit more attack at “by man came also the resurrection…”, though “even so in Christ” did seem sharper and better-focused. And while “The Lord gave the word” seemed to me to have a dogged quality throughout, elsewhere there was a real sense of the music invariably taking the performers and listeners somewhere. I liked, for instance, the building-up of the “Amen” chorus from tones of quiet confidence at the beginning to sounds of the utmost splendor at the end – beautifully and grandly achieved.

Working hand-in-glove with the singers throughout was the Wellington Orchestra, sounding ever stylish and rising magnificently to the occasion of those resplendent moments. There was the occasional moment where I felt the players weren’t being asked for anything special, such as at the beginning of “For, behold…”, which was more dull than gloom-laden; and some people would have thought that the string scintillations at “And suddenly” were workmanlike rather than celestial. But from the opening of Part Two, with the stern focus of the accompaniment at “Behold the Lamb of God” the concentration of the playing was palpable and arresting; and the strings’ accompaniment to “He was despised” beautifully echoed the singer’s pathos and dignity. And for energy and excitement the sizzling orchestral momentum at “Why do the nations?” really delivered the goods, underlining the contrasting grandeur of the playing throughout “Hallelujah” and during those final choruses.

The standing ovation at the end of what was a fairly long haul, was a richly deserved one – a heartfelt response to richly-committed music-making from all concerned.

Delightful Dvorak excites at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

DVORAK – Piano Quintet in A Major Op.81

Cristina Vaszilcsin, Lyndon Taylor (violins) / Peter Garrity, viola

David Chickering, ‘cello / Catherine McKay, piano

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

Wednesday, 1st December 2010

At the end of the first movement of this performance of the Dvorak Piano Quintet I was flabbergasted – here was a group of musicians who had come together just for the occasion performing at a free lunchtime concert in Wellington, giving us playing and interpretation of a stature I was confident I’d not heard previously bettered in this music. I had heard the first violinist, violist and pianist play as a trio before, but within this extended configuration of performers Cristina Vaszilcsin, Peter Garrity and Catherine McKay seemed to me inspired beyond anything previously I’d heard them perform together – obviously the “enhanced” alchemy generated by the presence among the ensemble of Lyndon Taylor and David Chickering (playing violin and ‘cello, respectively) was working brilliantly.

Several things at once registered regarding the group’s playing: – firstly, the beautiful timbral focus of each instrument, at once distinctive and proportioned, each individual line a delight for the ear to follow. Then the unanimity of both attack and of phrasing, five instruments playing as one, yet each seemingly free-spirited, realized both the music’s strength and poetry. Whether one listened to each bar, or a phrase or succession of phrases, one felt the musicians had swallowed the music whole, finding both incidental delight in detail and long-term purpose and strength in the movement’s overview.

So every aspect of the music was given its place – the lyricism of the opening ‘cello-and-piano melody (beguiling tones from David Chickering and Catherine McKay, here), the vigor and point of the response, the depth of colour and texture in the middle voices, the distinctive tone of voices such as the viola’s, and the volatility with which things such as tempi, dynamics and textures would change – but it was the cumulative impact of the whole which truly galvanized our sensibilities as listeners. The quickening of tempi at the movement’s end thus seemed an entirely natural outcome of exuberant release from the energies the playing had built up throughout. Perhaps we in the audience should have forgotten our inhibitions and clapped and cheered at that point – instead we simmered with the excitement of it all, and waited impatiently for the next movement to begin.

The gorgeous viola solos in this work reminded us that the composer himself played the instrument – Peter Garrity’s open-hearted tones were set off beautifully by Catherine Mckay’s piquant piano-playing throughout the slow movement’s opening, one whose melancholy brought out the sunny remembrances of the con moto sections which followed. Here, rhythms were buoyed by enthusiastic pizzicati, with Cristina Vaszilcsin’s and Lyndon Taylor’s silvery violin duetting delightfully recalling happier times, the exuberance marred only by a brief moment of imprecision with the staccato downward phrase at the end. Although viola and violin soulfully revisited the opening, cheerfulness kept on trying to break in – there was a merry dance in whirling triplets begun by the viola, mischievously spiked by the piano in a two-against three game of chase, and a return to the con moto pizzicati impulses, with more cross-rhythms to keep the musicians on their mettle and beguile the listener’s ear – but a stoic sadness seemed to prevail and wander into lonely silence at the end.

As with Schubert’s music, tragedy often sits alongside exuberance and gaiety in Dvorak’s work – and the Scherzo of the Quintet immediately dispelled the previous movement’s sobriety with energies of the most infectious, almost unseemly kind, here brilliantly realized by the players, the “furiant” aspect readily recalling some of the most brilliant of the composer’s Slavonic Dances.  In the middle of it all, a gentle pastoral-like trio played engagingly with rhythms, suggesting a lovely ambiguity of trajection before skipping back into the dash and propulsion of the main dance. At the finale’s onset I thought the tempo a fraction too fast at first; but the players sustained both their articulation and ensemble, Lyndon Taylor’s violin getting a rare chance for its voice to shine alone by leading off the energetic fugal section of the movement, here especially relished by Catherine McKay’s piano-playing. Towards the end, the strings’ arched descent, echoing that of the piano a few bars before, gave regretful notice of the music’s conclusion, the musicians seeming reluctant to release those final graceful stepwise utterances, which grow inexorably into whirling flourishes of brilliance. These last sounds were greeted here with the utmost enthusiasm by a good lunchtime crowd, whose members seemed unanimously of the opinion that they had witnessed some extraordinary music-making.

Festival Singers delight with Rossini’s “Little, Solemn Mass”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ROSSINI – Petite Messe solennelle (for soloists, choir, harmonium and two pianos)

Lesley Graham, soprano / Linden Loader, alto / Jonathan Abernethy, tenor / Roger Wilson, bass

Jonathan Berkhan, Louisa Joblin (pianos) / Thomas Gaynor (harmonium)

Rosemary Russell, musical director

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Hill St., Wellington

Saturday 20th November 2010

“Good God—behold completed this poor little Mass—is it indeed sacred music [la musique sacrée] that I have just written, or merely some damned music [la sacré musique]? You know well, I was born for comic opera. Little science, a little heart, that is all. So may you be blessed, and grant me Paradise!”

With these words Gioachino Rossini prefaced his Petite Messe Solennelle, written in 1863, and called elsewhere by the composer the last of his “pêchés de vieillesse” (sins of old age). Characteristically, the music is neither “petite” nor particularly “solemn” – but there’s little doubt as to the work’s sincerity – an expression of faith and piety from one, in his own words, “born for comic opera”.

One of the most engaging aspects of Rossini’s work is its complete lack of sanctimoniousness – nowhere does one sense a feeling, emotion or impulse that doesn’t spring straight from the composer’s essential nature. As with the Stabat Mater, written in 1842, the music unashamedly evokes the theatre in places, an example being the “Domine Deus” section of the Gloria, which featured a ringing, heroic tenor solo reminiscent of the famous “Cujus animam” aria in the earlier work. Tenor Jonathan Abernethy made an excellent fist of this, singing with flair, accuracy and plenty of dynamic and tonal variation – his work featured some lovely high notes in places such as the concluding “Filius Patris”.

Immediately afterwards, soprano Lesley Graham and alto Linden Loader took us to more sombre realms with “Qui tollis peccata mundi”, piano and harmonium setting the scene with piquant and dramatic utterances (great playing from the instrumentalists throughout) leading to further heartfelt sequences such as beautifully essayed chromatic ascents in thirds by the two singers, and a lovely blend by the two at the haunting “Miserere Nobis”, which developed into some positively theatrical Verdian duetting throughout those same words’ final repetitions.

Always one to relish his opportunities, bass Roger Wilson, in resplendent voice, splendidly delivered the “Quoniam”, at once finding the music’s lyricism and energising the sequences up to “Jesu Christe” with the help of Jonathan Berkahn’s vivid, very orchestral piano-playing. With Louisa Joblin on the second piano deliciously bringing extra “galumph” to the accompanying textures, the choral fugue “Cum Sancto Spiritu” sounded simply glorious, director Rosemary Russell characteristically finding a “tempo giusto” which brought out a polka-like “schwung” to the music that even Smetana might have envied.

I hope these descriptions of “flow” throughout just one of the work’s many sequences  will give a sense to readers of the music’s dramatic coursings from episode to episode, with  every impulse the seeming result of the composer’s instinct to speak in a language that comes naturally, with nothing contrived or laid on for a generalised effect. I loved the Britten-like energies of the Credo’s opening, vigorously ascending piano figurations answered by the choir, with the soloists’ contributions dancing in and out among the exchanges. Another treat was the almost Wagnerian “descendit de caelis”, outrageously visceral downwardly-rolling sequences for choir and piano, relished with splendid elan by the performers . By contrast, the “Crucifixus” featured Lesley Graham’s soprano movingly evoking with piano and harmonium something of the awe and pity at Christ’s own suffering in sacrificing his own life for all mankind. Although the second fugue, at “Et vitam” was initially less than tidy between voices and instruments, Rosemary Russell and her sopranos pulled things together, with the cries of “Amen” at the end a grand focal point, before a brief hiatus and final shout of “Credo” ended things triumphantly.

What the sleevenotes of my old LPs refer to as a Prélude réligieux followed, played as a piano solo by Jonathan Berkahn (my recording features the harmonium at this point) – a mesmeric fugal keyboard meditation, beginning and ending with imposing, Beethoven-like chords. In its way, it made a telling prelude to the Sanctus, whose interchanges between soloists and choir had a kinetic energy as well as drama, finely sung, with the men in the choir especially strong. Lesley Graham then made the most of O Salutaris, her equivalent operatic “scene” for soprano, a big-boned and lyrical outpouring, whose mirror image was the contralto solo at Agnus Dei, introduced by portentous piano and harmonium tones, and simply and gravely sung by Linden Loader, balancing dignity with moments of theatrical expression – her cries of “miserere”, supported by lovely chorus work, were truly supplicatory, leaving Jonathan Berkahn to complete Rossini’s piquant piano solo farewell at the end – a wry gesture, entirely characteristic of the composer.

Immense pleasure was to be had from all of this, completing a concert and a year the Festival Singers can, I’m certain, be proud of.

Sacred Heart Cathedral Choir sings Victoria – a moment in time

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A Requiem for All Souls

Tomás Luis de Victoria – Mass for the Dead

Sacred Heart Cathedral Choir

Michael Stewart, director

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Saturday, 30th October 2010

I ought to confess right here and now to having a bias towards presentations of liturgical plainchant, as it was very much the kind of church music I grew up with, being a Catholic and a New Zealand child of the 1950s. So, of course, this concert touched so many of my points by dint of sheer content, the effect immeasurably augmented by the general excellence of the singing and the music’s direction throughout. This was a reconstruction by Michael Stewart and the Cathedral Choir of Renaissance Spanish composer Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Mass for the Dead, or Requiem, in a proper liturgical setting – that is, in the context of the Catholic Mass. The placement of Victoria’s beautiful polyphony amidst the plainer and starker liturgical chants worked to the advantage of both, creating a well-nigh unique ambience, one to which the Cathedral surroundings gave even more atmosphere and impact.

Throughout the opening Introit Requiem I got the impression that these choir voices hadn’t been overly-moulded and honed into an excessively homogenous blend, a quality which I liked in this circumstance, as it gave to my ears a plainer, more direct and accessible feeling to the singing, almost as if the music was something one could oneself join in with. Having said this, in no way do I want to give the impression that the singing was anything but beautiful throughout – if the lines were not always ideally pure, they were still in tune; and invariably made up in focus and fervour for what they occasionally lacked in elegance. The middle voices gave consistent pleasure at the outset, with “et lux perpetua luceat eis”, bringing into relief moments such as the sopranos’ strongly-etched “et tibi reddetur” which followed. But most telling was the reprise of Requiem, which had a wonderfully charged devotional quality, an evocation whose intensity set the tone for everything that was to follow, such as the succeeding Kyrie, beautifully blossoming upwards from its first phrase, and contrasting nicely with its hushed, ethereal companion Christe.

Choir and conductor brought out the beauties of the Graduale, with its flourishes at “dona eis Domine” and timelessly-wrought cadences at the word “perpetua”. There was delight at a single soprano voice at “In memoria” being joined by others and reaching full resplendent tones at “mala non timebit”, the latter sequence  all the more wondrous through being “ritualized” by the plainchant exchanges between celebrant and choir. But what really set my pulses racing was the singing of the Dies irae, all eighteen verses of it, each poetic metre of three lines a self-contained meditation or beseechment regarding the Day of Judgement. When I was at school, we sang this alternating verses between small group and larger choir; but here, tonight, this was performed with full choir throughout, each verse given subtle variations of colour and emphasis depending on its content. The last, Lacrimosa, breaks the metre somewhat and features a new melody, which releases the tensions built up by the previous repetitions and their ever-growing emphasis, here realized by Michael Stewart and his choir in a profoundly satisfying way, at once sturdy, resigned and aspiring to the celestial.

And so it all proceeded, ritualistic gestures of exchange alternating with Victoria’s exquisite word-settings, such as those of the Offertorium, allowing us to relish the choir’s surge of emotion at “de poenis inferni”, and the luminous soprano lines at “repraesentet eas in lucem sanctam”, both moments to be treasured. And I enjoyed the celebrant’s intoning of both “Vere dignum et justum est” at the Preface and the Pater Noster, once again losing myself in remembrances of the patterning of the chants and their variants. Alternatively, Victoria’s treatment of the Sanctus put me in mind of Thomas Tallis in places, while the Lux aeterna again featured a nicely-distilled soprano line at the outset, and a properly devotional “quia pius es”, though I did register a touch of “hooted” tone from those same sopranos in the “Requiem aeternam” section. With the Libera me, the Proper of the Mass concluded, Victoria leaving the opening line as plainchant before developing “Quando caeli movendi sunt et terra” into vivid descriptions, tenor, alto and bass lines standing forth at “Tremens factus”, and with the whole choir excitingly igniting the textures at the point of return to the “Dies irae” text. As was fitting, the lovely cadential resolutions at “Requiem aeternam” worked their spell alongside the varied reprise of “Libera me”, extending the music’s mood, colour, declamation and harmony, and leaving the plainchant Antiphon to bring things to a properly poised and dignified end.

Given that my appreciation of this concert was undoubtedly coloured by my own history and experience of the music’s liturgical context, I felt confident nevertheless that my enthusiasm for the singing and conducting, as well as for the overall conception of performance, was well-founded. I’m sure my enjoyment would have been shared by all at the Cathedral that evening.

Chamber Music New Zealand’s Schubertiade at Sixty

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SCHUBERT – Notturno Movement in E-flat D.897

String Quartet No.15 in G D.887

Piano Quintet in A D.667 “Die Forelle” (The Trout)

New Zealand String Quartet (Helene Pohl, Douglas Beilman – violins,

Gillian Ansell – viola, Rolf Gjelsten – ‘cello)

Michael Houstoun (piano), Michael Steer (double bass)

Wellington Town Hall

Thursday 28th October 2010

Sixty years ago in Wellington, in 1950, the ubiquitous “Trout” Quintet was performed by members of the Alex Lindsay String Orchestra with Frederick Page at the piano. This was one of the highlights of the very first season of concerts organised by the New Zealand Federation of Chamber Music Societies that year; and so it seemed more than appropriate that this same work would feature in an anniversary concert this evening devoted to one of the most beloved of composers of chamber music. Called a “Schubertiade”, the concert was a grand celebration of sixty years of fine and auspicious music-making, as indicated by the many world-wide household names appearing among the “historical” lists of contributing artists printed in the programme.

What better way to open an evening devoted to Schubert’s music than with the adorable Notturno, that mysterious fragment of an uncompleted Piano Trio whose serene beauty has given it a life of its own as a concert piece? Michael Houstoun’s first gently undulating piano notes were the waters on which the beams of light from the strings played, long-breathed and with graceful turns, the music’s shape nicely choreographed by the players’ physical gestures, the string players’ bows delineating the pizzicato notes like rippling, scintillating light-shafts. Throughout, the trio of musicians went to the places that the music did, revelling in the ebb and flow of lyricism and intensity, and characterising the different episodes with, by turns, colourings rich and subtle and rhythmic impulses strong and delicate.

Having confirmed Schubert’s credentials as a lyricist, the musicians realigned their forces for a performance of the greatest of the composer’s string quartets, No.15 in G Major, D.887. This music poses huge interpretative challenges, physical, intellectual and emotional, not the least of which is how to establish a “through-line” across four markedly diverse movements. My feeling was that the New Zealand String Quartet characterised the first three movements wonderfully, but then took a rather lightweight view of the finale, which seemed not to invest the music with enough “demon” at the outset for the drama of the  major/minor key contrasts to tell.  This music shares with the first of the same composer’s D.946 Piano Pieces a series of “dark flight” sequences set against grittily determined major-key pushes towards the light, generating a feeling of unease masking something not far removed in places from fear and desperation. I thought the playing needed more of an edge, such as the NZSQ was able to amply demonstrate during their recent Shostakovich quartet performances – in this instance, for my liking, the music was allowed a little too much respite.

Which was a pity, because the musicians had dug in boldly right at the quartet’s beginning – again, not the most searing of accounts that I’ve heard, but whose control and command in itself created tensions associated with a sense of chaos barely held at bay. Here, and in the almost schizophrenic second movement, the quartet’s workings-out explored every nuance of feeling, every impulse of contrast, the playing very “integrated” and coherent. One was tempted at first to blame the ample acoustic of the Town Hall for what seemed like a certain lack of immediacy – but these same players had in no uncertain terms filled out the comparable vistas of the Church of St Mary of the Angels not long ago with Schumann and Shostakovich; so one’s conclusion was that their response to this music was here being more-or-less truthfully conveyed.

Rightly or wrongly, one tends to associate the historical Schubertiades with more gaiety and conviviality of utterance, than the angst and astringent feeling generated by this quartet. What happened next was far more in accord with this rose-tinted view, with the appearance of baritone Roger Wilson making a dapper figure in cloak and gloves, accompanied by Michael Houstoun, to perform the song that both inspired and gave the eponymous Quintet its name, “The Trout”. Chamber Music Chief Executive Euan Murdoch had seated himself on the stage ready to welcome the singer and his pianist (a few more staged “bodies” gathered to listen would have engendered even more of a Schubertiade atmosphere, methought – but nevertheless the feeling of it was right). Roger Wilson delivered a pleasantly-modulated, if somewhat understated performance of the song, as if he was, surprisingly, a little overawed by the occasion (I’ve heard this singer deliver a number of splendidly characterised performances on the recital platform in the past, and was thus a tad disappointed…) After he had finished and departed. Euan Murdoch welcomed the audience to the concert, spoke briefly about the Society’s sixty years of history, and wished all of us many more years of listening to great chamber music played by more wonderful artists.

For such an occasion, the “Trout” Quintet was an obvious choice – more reconfigurations of personnel saw Douglas Beilman take the leader’s position, Michael Houstoun rejoin the ensemble, and double-bass player Michael Steer, late of the NZSO and currently based in Dunedin for post-graduate study make his first appearance of the evening. I thought the performance was beautifully held together by Michael Houstoun, who proved to be an excellent chamber musician (not always the case with star virtuosi). His contributions surged outwards, or melted into the ensemble at appropriate moments, the rest of the time maintaining the flow and upholding what the other musicians were doing. It wasn’t Michael Steer’s fault that he looked far more impressive than he sounded – the music was obviously written for an amateur performer – but I still felt a bit more temperament in places wouldn’t have gone amiss. The other string players made the most of their opportunities for ensembled give-and-take, though I felt leader Douglas Beilman wasn’t having the happiest of times with some of his ascents on the e-string. I did like his trilling during the Variations movement – these were no caged birds whose song we heard, but sounds that were wild and free.

Despite the ‘chalk-and-cheese” effect of the concert’s two halves, I thought the “Schubertiade” concept was a wonderful idea. The Society’s many supporters made obvious their enjoyment of and delight in the concert in a way that would have heartened those who work to foster the continuance of chamber music in all parts of the country. Birthday congratulations to the Society are definitely in order.

Bow – New string ensemble’s first concert

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BOW – The Inaugural Concert

GRIEG – Holberg Suite / VAUGHAN WILLIAMS – Five Variants of “Dives and Lazarus” / DVORAK – Serenade for Strings

Rachel Hyde (conductor)

Kathryn Maloney (concertmaster)

Bow String Ensemble

St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace

Sunday 17th October 2010

An enterprising venture – a new string ensemble, no less! – this came about thanks to the enthusiasm and efforts of conductor Rachel Hyde, which brought together a goodly number of the capital’s amateur string players to make music, an ensemble, according to an introductory note in the program, “dedicated to the joy of string playing”. As newly-formed orchestras the world over have found, it takes a while for any ensemble to properly “jell”, there being no substitute for actual concert experience as part of that process of putting things together and making them work. The encouraging thing about the concert given by this new group, aptly calling itself “Bow”, was that so much of the playing gave a good deal of pleasure, even if one of the works on the program was, I thought, beyond the group’s grasp at this stage of its existence, brave though the attempt to tackle the music’s difficulties was.

Adding to the concert’s enterprise was the unconventional placement of the orchestra – in the middle of St.Andrew’s Church’s congregation, rather than, as normally is the case, at the chancel end of the interior, with seating for the audience entirely enclosing the players. The intention was to “involve” the orchestra with the audience to a greater degree, and I thought the experiment worked really well for half of the concert – I think the players’ positioning brought out more markedly the sounds of what they were doing, which was, naturally, something of a double-edged sword, highlighting both the felicities and difficulties in the playing throughout.

This degree of immediacy gave the concert’s first half a particular pleasure, with two of the best-loved works for string ensemble chosen. First up was Grieg’s Suite Op.40 From Holberg’s Time, and I thought, upon re-reading my notes, scribbled as the ensemble played the opening Praeludium, that the words described the best of what Bow achieved that afternoon, for the most part throughout the concert’s first half: – “Full, rich sound! – plenty of dynamic range, with strong accents in the right places. Inner parts brought out nicely…..very powerful mid- and lower strings – ensemble good, but just one or two shaky dovetailings in those scherzando-like passages…”. The playing of the subsequent Holberg movements confirmed most of these impressions, a beautiful massed violin sound in the Sarabande movement, a charming “country dance” ambience in the Gavotte and Musette, setting delicacy next to girth, and (best of all) a beautifully-phrased Air whose performance gave the music all the time in the world to express its melancholic character. Only in the concluding Rigaudon did I feel some caution on the part of the players inhibiting their expression, though the first viola’s support of the solo violin’s “dance-tune” episodes was admirable. I would have liked concertmaster Kathryn Maloney to have taken risks here, put aside her “admirable leader’s” example for a few moments, and played her solos a bit more roughly and gutsily, which would have allowed the folkdance element in the music a fuller, rustic flavor.

If Grieg’s music gave the ensemble the chance to revel in festive, out-of-doors goings-on, the following work in the program brought a deeper, more introspective vein of feeling to the proceedings – Vaughan Williams, who spent a lifetime acquainting himself with the beauties of English folk-song, wrote this work in 1939 for strings and harp, taking a tune he first encountered in 1893, the folk-song Dives and Lazarus, as a starting-point, and composing a set of variations of astonishing beauty. Rachel Hyde asked the players (apart from the ‘cellos) to stand while performing this work, which may have been a factor in the degree of intensity and warmth of tone produced by the ensemble. I very much liked the performance, particularly the waltz-like variation, with its limpid harp-tones nicely integrated with the ensemble, and the strong, chordal variant with answering triplet phrases – full and forthright tones, with only some of the more circumspect phrases occasionally making a less confident impression. Both the penultimate folk-dance variation, with its lively step and spring, and the full-throated final variation’s opening, dying away on cello and upper strings, inspired playing that caught the character of the composer’s different views of the lovely tune.

Buoyed by the pleasures of the concert’s first half, I perhaps expected too much from the ensemble in tackling the Dvorak Serenade after the interval. It’s a work whose difficulties lie in the degree of exposure of melodic lines (unlike the far more “supported” harmonic lyricism of both the Grieg and the Vaughan Williams works), and the often treacherous rhythmic syncopations in the accompanying figures. Those long-breathed first-movement lyrical phrases gave the musicians frequent tuning problems, the melodic lines mercilessly “out on their own” in this music, though the players managed the second movement Tempo di Valse rather more securely, especially at the outset. Best of all was probably the third movement Scherzo, attacked confidently, and with plenty of energy, especially in the lower strings’ accompaniments in the trio section. The opening phrases of the Larghetto sounded well, though the rapid tempo of the contrasting episodes seemed to un-nerve the players and undermine their poise; while the finale, again beginning well, came to grief over the running figurations and frequent syncopations and angularities of the music.

I would expect that, once Bow “gets used” to itself as an ensemble by playing a few more concerts and tackling slightly less ambitious and extended repertoire in the interim, it will produce far more confident and polished playing, and be well able to tackle more of those wonderful, if perennially demanding, pieces from the string ensemble repertoire that concertgoers know and love. I wish the group well.

Sweet Dreams from The Song Company

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Song Company – Chamber Music New Zealand

English and Italian Madrigals: William Byrd, John Wilbye, Thomas Weelkes,

Thomas Vautour, Claudio Monteverdi

Horatio Vecchi – A Night in Siena

Peter Sculthorpe – Maranoa Lullaby

Jack Body – Five Lullabies/Three Dreams and A Nightmare

Anon. – Israeli Lullaby

The Song Company, directed by Roland Peelman

Anna Fraser, Louise Prickett – sopranos / Lanneke Wallace-Wells – mezzo-soprano / Richard Black – tenor / Mark Donnelly – baritone / Clive Birch – bass

Town Hall, Wellington

Saturday 16th October, 2010

I spent the first part of this concert luxuriating in some glorious madrigal singing from the talented Australian vocal ensemble The Song Company, touring the country under the auspices of Chamber Music New Zealand. The ensemble’s programming enabling me to enjoy and marvel at both the similarities and differences between the English and Italian schools of renaissance vocal composition. The English group, which began the programme, contained some exquisite gems, from the heartfelt immediacy and world-within-a-flower simplicity of John Wilbye’s Draw On, Sweet Night, to the virtuoso inventiveness of Thomas Weelkes’ Thule, the period of cosmography, the group encompassing and beautifully expressing both kinds of intensities and fluidities. Wilbye’s major-minor colourings and antiphonal dynamic variations were most sensitively given, readily evoking the chiaroscuro of both outer and inner worlds commented on in the excellent programme notes. By contrast, Thomas Weelkes’ writing suffused the soundscape with intricate dovetailings and overlappings of tones and rhythms, beguiling one’s ear with echo and contrast, the unbridled mock-satire of Ha!Ha!This world doth pass a kind of Dionysian jest on the opposite end of the see-saw from the idiosyncratic philosophy of Thule. And I loved the sharp-etched character of Sweet Suffolk Owl, with its “te whit, te whoo-ings”, the group’s articulation and dynamism making the most of Thomas Vautour’s vivid portraiture of an iconic bird.

It’s probably too simplistic to declare that the main difference between the two madrigal schools seems to be the actual sound of each language; but the liquidity and sonority of those Italian vowels seemed straightaway to add a whole tonal dimension to the music – a different kind of intensity, rather less subtle, but richer and darker-toned seemed to me to come across almost straight away. The gloriously declamatory Sfogava con le stelle, with its evocation of the beauties of the night sky, milks the rhetoric to stunning effect, the singers full-toned and committed throughout. No less heartfelt was the following Si, ch’io vorei morire (the text’s erotic suggestiveness adding to the emotional charge), ascending sequences and repetitions in thirds heightening the expressive power of it all. Momentary relief was at hand from the weather and its interplay with the rest of Creation, with Zefiro torna, though the initial gaiety and playfulness of the nature-descriptions suddenly gave way to darkness and despair as poet and composer bemoaned the loss of the beloved amid Springtime’s felicities – the setting’s final line stretched the music’s expressivity almost to its limit before the heart-stopping final resolution. Mercifully, Oimè, se tanto amate and Amorosa pupilletta were better-humoured, the first giving rise to amusement with its repeated mock-serious “Oh my!”s, and the second featuring a drum accompaniment and wordless Swingle Singers-like “do-do-do-dos” providing a rhythmic carriage for a sombre dance of longing, beginning with a solo, then a duet, and then the ensemble, the singing keeping the impulses of feeling nicely ebbing and flowing throughout.

The group’s director Roland Peelman introduced Horatio Vecchi’s entertainment A Night in Siena, composed in 1604, a kind of musical catalogue of instructions for people to follow a game of mimicry – as the programme note puts it, “a 16th-Century version of musical theatre-sports”. I found the spoken introduction difficult to properly hear, so the programme note and texts of the songs were life-savers. The sequences were most entertaining, poking gentle (and, topically, probably not-so-gentle) fun at different types of people, be they travellers from other lands or simple girls from the country. One didn’t have to “read between the lines” to glean prevailing native attitudes towards these people, the German imitation taking us remarkably close to Basil Fawlty’s “Don’t Mention the War!” by the end, and the introduction to the exotic Spaniard persona making naughty reference to his abilities “as a very cunning linguist”. It was all tremendously good-humoured fun, the quasi-Spanish “effects” to finish rousing the participants (and their audience) to great enthusiasm, and a warm reception at the end.

After the interval the focus shifted from nocturnal entertainments both amatory and theatrical to the earnest business of sleep itself, by way of lullabies, dreams and nightmares. Peter Sculthorpe’s arresting Maranoa Lullaby fully exploited the spacious ambiences of the Town Hall, with the singers stationed at various points around the gallery. Dramatic lighting heightened the impact of each voice, the opening single-voiced bell-accompanied lullaby (originally an indigenous melody collected in Queensland during the 1930s) counterpointed by the other voices, all taking turns to add their melodic strands to the tapestry. A plaintive, strident episode caught up these strands and pulled them tightly together, focusing and hardening the harmonies, before bringing the work back to the unison theme once again. The whole sequence created a dream-like inner world which, despite its short duration, cast a powerful and evocative spell.

More complex and discursive, but with comparable subconscious explorations in places was the clever fusion of two works by Jack Body, the older (1989) Five Lullabies now interspersed with the freshly-commissioned Three Dreams and a Nightmare. The “invented” word-sounds of each of the lullabies demonstrated the composer’s interest in different folk-idioms and traditions relating to chant, while the dream/nightmare sequences explored the subconscious realms of sleep itself, using poetry by authors such as Shakespeare and ee cummings set with marvellously-wrought accompaniments, both vocal and instrumental – I loved the wordless exhilaration of the first Dream, Flying, with its vertiginous lurching and gong-like tintinnabulations, the singers occasionally sounding warning sirens in close proximity to reefs on treacherous sea-coasts. This was followed by the impulsive and volatile Brain worm, involving endlessly inventive vocalisings, layered, multi-harmonied and seemingly tireless. Throughout, the Lullabies gave a continuing “fled is that music?” ambience to the work’s progressions, rather like arias between recitatives, so that the saucy eroticism of ee cummings’ poem may I feel had an extra element of fantasy which for me gave those somewhat outrageous Rochester-like physicalities a more poignant, escapist connection (then again, perhaps I was simply feeling my age!)….still, those glass harmonica-like sounds, together with the volatile seduction-vocalisings made the whole Erotique episode properly suggestive and delightful.

The Nightmare pulsated and palpitated appropriately, the performance virtuoso in its control of detail and atmosphere, with drums and woodblocks beating out obsessive rhythms, threatening inescapable and intransient anarchic realms familiar to all who have experienced such disturbances – the poetry, well-known from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, evoked that wondrous imagery of “the cloud-capp’d towers” yoked with the stuff of dreams, the ensuing vocal writing suggesting a similar wonderment at the words’ fusion of the timeless and the ephemeral. Interesting that a composer would come back to an existing work and augment it thus – though there was a lot going on both in an immediate and a cumulative way, the contrasts had the effect of refocusing the listeners’ attentions and drawing them ever onwards.

Both the anonymous Israeli lullaby which followed, and the Eurythmics-inspired encore, brought us back from the labyrinth-passages of the subconscious sufficiently to enable us to properly and whole-heartedly register our approval at the end of the concert – the Song Company gave us “Sweet Dreams” which were entertaining, enchanting and inspirational.

Heartfelt Russian Song from Joanna Heslop

Posted on by Peter Mechen

RUSSIAN SONG RECITAL

JOANNA HESLOP – soprano

RCHARD MAPP – piano

Songs Inspired by Nature

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV, TCHAIKOVSKY, RACHMANINOV

Settings of Poetry by Pushkin

CUI, RIMSKY-KORSAKOV, BALAKIREV

Satires

SHOSTAKOVICH

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

Wednesday 13th October 2010

I heard the lark’s song from afar as I dashed towards St.Andrew’s Church and eased myself through the doors, just as the singer was coming to the end of what sounded like a tiny Slavic frisson of avian abandonment – so, thanks to my lateness I had all but missed the first item, Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Sound of the Lark’s Singing. Which wouldn’t have been too much of a tragedy, were it not for the realisation which gradually overtook me that here at this somewhat humble lunchtime concert was something special and precious being enacted, a singer fully immersed in both sound and sense of what she was performing, and with sufficient vocal technique to bring out all the music’s beauty, emotion and excitement, working hand-in-glove with similarly-committed piano playing. Rather like with Margaret Medlyn’s and Bruce Greenfield’s July concert at Victoria University, soprano Joanna Heslop and pianist Richard Mapp triumphantly demonstrated the power of art-song to delight, to move and to thrill listeners who’ve been sadly unaccustomed of late to hearing such repertoire regularly performed by both local and visiting musicians.

As with piano recitals and their repertoire, neglect of song-recitals by promotors and organisations because of what might be thought of as a falling-away of interest is little short of tragic – it means that concertgoers will be deprived of hearing “live” some of the Western world’s greatest and most significant music. To take Rachmaninov as an example, people who know the often-played concertos but don’t get the chance to hear the songs, two of which were performed in this concert, can’t really claim to “know” the composer’s music in any great depth. Joanna Heslop’s performance of Lilacs, one of Rachmaninov’s most beautiful songs, gave her audience such rapt, breath-catching moments of heartfelt loveliness as to dispel for the moment all thoughts of glittering, gallery-pleasing piano concertos, and ask for more of what we had just heard. The following Daisies took us elsewhere, at a different, more profusely energetic and exuberant time of the day, the song’s melody able to soar, melt, burn and exult. Lilacs, by contrast, had inhabited more delicate, deeper-toned realms, the music’s emotion beautifully gradated towards the composer’s point of release, and with the same surety of touch dissolved into the silences at the end.

One had only to listen to the final song in the “Inspired by Nature” bracket, Tchaikovsky’s Why Do I Love You, Bright Night?, to make connections with Rachmaninov’s music, the two composers sharing a like melodic gift and “charged” emotional capacity, Joanna Heslop proving herself as a marvellous storyteller, with Richard Mapp strumming and arpeggiating his accompaniment in truly bardic fashion. Such lovely shaping of phrases! – with both musicians seeming instinctively to know how and when to build intensities and when to let them go. And though we were probably not an audience filled with fluent Russian speakers, the singer’s heartfelt articulations nevertheless allowed us to experience a powerful sense of the emotion conveyed by the texts throughout.

The settings of verses by Aleksandr Pushkin which followed had a similar communicative focus – simplest and most direct were the two songs by Cesar Cui, the second, I loved you and perhaps still do beginning almost disarmingly before briefly “opening up” to great effect in the second verse, then returning to a quieter manner most effectively at the end. Rimsky-Korsakov figured again with On the Hills of Georgia, a fervent recollection of delight and nostalgia, the ambience wonderfully evoked by singer and pianist; while Balakirev’s rather more self-consciously operatic setting of the variously titled Do Not Sing Your Sad Georgian Songs (Rachmaninov’s setting of the same text is usually translated as O Never Sing to Me Again) continued the Georgian theme, Joanna Heslop fearlessly tackling the opening high notes, and skilfully encompassing the song’s contrasts between lyrical and powerful, impassioned episodes.

The third and final section of this all-too-brief recital presented Dmitri Shostakovich’s Satires, a setting of five poems by Alekzandr Glikberg (1880-1932) who wrote satirical verses under the name of Sasha Chorny, and whose writings Shostakovich greatly admired. Satirically subtitled “Five Romances”, the cycle was premiered by Galina Vishnevskaya in 1961. Poet and composer set about savaging both literary and musical pretensions, the first one appositely titled To the critic, the mocking reference to beards causing this writer to quizzically scratch his chin! Spring Awakens presents a determinedly unromantic and non-sentimental catalogue of seasonal activity, while Descendants makes light of the demands of posterity. The two final songs were mirror-images, the first, Misunderstanding, an ill-advised attempt at seduction involving the gulf between fantasy and reality, and the last, Kreutzer Sonata, turns the Tolstoyan short-story drama on its ear via an unlikely and delightful liason between opposites! All of this was meat and drink to a singing actress of Joanna Heslop’s talents, both musicians able to vividly convey both writer’s and composer’s delight in lampooning the self-appointed, the pre-conceived and the sentimental, currents of impulse which, of course, continue to bedevil our lives to this day.

Bravo Joanna Heslop! – we hope to hear more of you!

Aroha Quartet at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

MOZART – String Quartet in D Major K.499 “Hoffmeister”

ZHU JIAN-ER & SHI YONGKANG – Bai-Mao-Nu (White haired Girl)

TCHAIKOVSKY  – String Quartet No.3 in E-flat Minor Op.30

Aroha String Quartet: Haihong Liu, Anne Loeser, violins / Zhongxian Jin, viola / Robert Ibell, ‘cello

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

Saturday 9th October 2010

Like New Yorkers have done with their numbered streets and avenues, one does get used to numberings in classical music, however bewildering and daunting it may seem for a beginner listener to register titles like Symphony No.97, String Quartet No.79, Piano Concerto No.27, or Piano Sonata No. 32. It’s probably one of the reasons that descriptive names, often nothing to do with the composer, have been so freely appended to pieces of music. These nicknames work invariably to the music’s advantage, however much the purist may scoff at the superficiality of the exercise. And especially if a composer has a reasonably sizeable body of work, such names can help people readily identify specific pieces otherwise buried anonymously in catalogues of numbers – for example, many of Haydn’s 100-plus symphonies owe their popularity to either individual titles or to names given to sets of works, such as the “Paris” or “London” Symphonies. One wonders at times whether these numbers really do register in peoples’ minds – as with the lovely story of the music student who was asked how many Beethoven symphonies there were, and who replied, “Three – the “Eroica”, the “Pastoral” – and the Ninth!”

Lest readers begin thinking that this reviewer has REALLY lost the plot on this occasion, I hasten to point out that the above remarks were prompted by my profound enjoyment of the Aroha Quartet’s playing of Mozart’s “Hoffmeister” String Quartet at St.Andrew’s Church on Saturday evening. I hadn’t heard this work for some time, but after experiencing this group’s warm, mellow playing and beautifully natural sense of ensembled give-and-take throughout, I’m certain that I’ll associate this “named” quartet for a long time to come with what was here an extremely pleasurable listening experience. It’s true that Haydn is regarded as the “father” of the string quartet, but on the evidence of works such as this one Mozart brought to the genre his own sublimity and distinction. From the outset, the Aroha Quartet brought a mellow warmth to the music, with a beautiful blend of distinctive tones, at once characterful and responsive in the interests of a larger expression, the players readily able to vary their dynamics as one with with plenty of energy and volatility, throughout the first movement.  A full-bodied, colourful and exuberant minuet followed, the players digging into the music and in places almost bursting the dance at its seams – the minor-key triplet variants of the theme, tossed around among the instruments, provided a more circumspect contrast.

I liked also the tender, eloquent opening of the adagio, the playing very “giving” and interactive, almost theatrical in its thematic and instrumental exchanges. And the finale also engaged for different reasons, the players generating a lot of excitement with spectacular runs from violin and ‘cello over stuttering accompanying figures, with energy levels dancing near the tops of their gauges, and elements of surprise and contrast very much to the fore. One imagines Herr Hoffmeister listening to the work’s first performance and beaming with delight at the thought of his name being carried forward in musical history by this marvellous piece.

The leader of the quartet, Haihong Liu, welcomed the modestly-sized audience to the concert before introducing the next piece, from China, an arrangement for string quartet of a ballet Baimao Nu (in English, White-Haired Girl) by the composers Zhu Jian-er and Shi Yongkang. The story is based on the documented life-histories of half-a-dozen women from different periods of Chinese history, from the late Qing Dynasty to the 1930s, and existed and was performed as an opera before the Communist takeover in China in 1949, which resulted in later adaptations for ballet and film having some political propaganda input, changing some aspects of the story, and becoming a “modern Chinese classic”. A strong unison statement, like the opening of a curtain, began the work, whose lyrical, flowing manner, flecked with little folk-touches of portamento, created an attractive, if somewhat filmic impression. The narrative style was emphasised by frequent changes of metre and contrasting episodes, alternating wistful single-instrument lines with concerted, orchestral-like crescendi culminating in dramatic minor-key plunges – attractive, colourful music, obviously intended to entertain and uplift rather than ponder any fundamental tenet of existence that could be called to question. The Aroha Quartet players delivered it all with the sort of commitment and level of skill one would expect the players to bring to much greater music, but without ever over-inflating the range and scope of the piece.

A work that certainly required full-blooded treatment was Tchaikovsky’s Third String Quartet from 1876, a work for too long overshadowed (like the Second Quartet) by the first of the composer’s essays in this medium five years previously, with its celebrated Andante Cantabile movement. I thought this deeply-felt performance took us right to the heart of the music, the first movement, after a beautifully-breathed opening and a deep, rocking melancholy underpinned by pizzicati, fixing on a working-out of the themes with energetic and persistent drive and focus – tense, tortured stuff. It was possible to think that, in places, the mood of the playing might perhaps have been even a little too dogged and unyielding, with no hint of pathos or rhetoric at cadence-points – but it was indeniably involving and exciting. The second movement’s elfin and energetic brilliance had a surety of touch that encompassed both the music’s playful aspect and the more explosive accents and emphases, also making the most of the trio section’s droll, droning bass, with snatches of the allegro re-energising the music – lovely playing!

Tchaikovsky wrote the quartet as a tribute to a violinist friend who had died the previous year, and the grief of his loss was made manifest with the slow movement’s andante funebre marking. Here, the Aroha’s compelling focus brought us right to the edge of the music’s well of deep emotion, giving those opening discords and dolorous chanting figurations plenty of weight and emphasis, before allowing the more rhapsodic second subject group some remembrance of happier times. However, darkness soon overtook the music once again, a sombre processional becoming trenchant and threatening, before the chanting sequences beautifully and hauntingly returned at the end. After this, the finale plunged into an energetic “life goes on” dance, the spirit of it all reminiscent of the composer’s Fourth Symphony, the quartet enjoying the music’s physicality as well as registering the more delicate, elfin-like aspects of the discourse. A brief reminiscence of the previous movement’s solemnities became the prelude to a dancing coda, thrown off here with plenty of excitement.

Our enthusiasm for and appreciation of the music-making was rewarded by the Quartet’s playing of an encore – a piece that, for all the world sounded Central European, with soulful folk-themes, czardas-like dance-rituals at the beginning and brilliant accelerandi to finish. But it was, according to Quartet leader Haihong Liu, a Saliha, from the Silk Road region of China, which might well account for what sounded like gypsy-like tunes, rhythms and structures. It made a rousing conclusion to a most enjoyable concert.

William Green (piano) on The Enchanted Island

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand and other solo piano music

The Enchanted Island: music by J S BACH, FRANK HUTCHENS, ERNEST JENNER, DOUGLAS LILBURN, ROBERT BURCH, ALFRED HILL, SAMUEL BARBER, WILLIAM GREEN, GEORGE GERSHWIN, JENNY McLEOD, JACK BODY, HELEN BOWATER, MICHAEL NORRIS, RICHARD WAGNER (arr.FRANZ LISZT)
(A Caprice Arts Trust Concert)

William Green (piano)

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

Friday, 24th September 2010

This was a recital that had more than a whiff of magic, mystery and atmosphere about it, thanks in part to a tempestuous Wellington spring wind that roared around and about St. Andrew’s Church throughout the evening, activating creaks, groans and occasional muffled bumpings and rumblings. It was as if an army of musical ghosts had congregated amid the rafters of the church and were making their presence felt none too silently (shades of the composers, perhaps, come to hear their music given an all too seldom public airing in many instances).

Other things contributed to the magic of the occasion, not the least of which was William Green’s playing. An Auckland-based musician who gives frequent recitals exploring the surprisingly rich legacy of New Zealand piano music, Green was here making his Wellington debut as a solo recitalist. He brought with him a programme whose substance and presentation deserved far greater support than the paltry numbers who did attend the concert were able to generate, appreciative though the audience was of the pianist’s efforts. Whether the sparse attendance (no more than thirty people) could be attributed to lack of advertising, the pianist’s and the repertoire’s largely “unfamiliar” status, the recital’s injudicious timing or the less-than-salubrious weather, the response remained disappointing and reflected less than positively on the capital’s reputation as a centre for arts and culture.

But what magic there was in the music as well! – in the Caprice Arts Trust’s advertising preamble, William Green referred to the programme as focused “on the small and the lyrical – often clothed in the unusual!”. Most of the works were written by New Zealand composers, many of which pieces were new to me; and the pianist’s own work, a set of three Rags Without Riches was given its world premiere performance (he also played an exerpt from another of his compositions, No.5 from Five Miniatures). The idea of including in the recital works by JS Bach, Samuel Barber, George Gershwin (three song arrangements, fascinatingly different treatments) and Richard Wagner (Liszt’s famed transcription of the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde) certainly “placed” the home-grown pieces in wider contexts of both time and space, and not at all to their detriment.

Not inappropriately, the recital’s “anchor-stone” whose opening tones readily suggested a sense of “something rich and strange” was a Busoni transcription of JS Bach’s Nun Komm der Heiland, the music’s deep-throated, solemn stride evoking at once the mystery of unfathomable being and the beauty of ritual, a recipe for gentle bewitchment if ever there was one. The piece which gave the recital its name followed, Frank Hutchens’ The Enchanted Isle, atmospheric, impressionistic music, figurations beneath which sang a sonorous melody, and awakenings of echoes and distant voicings, the pianist’s ultra-sensitivity presiding over a beguiling harmonic kaleidoscope of colour-change. Wilder and more energetic was the same composer’s Sea Music, a kind of pianistic “jeux de vagues”, rippling figurations concerned with playful, impulsive dialogue between melody and counter-melody, nothing too adventurous harmonically, but with the occasional guileful twist. And Ernest Jenner’s Foxglove Bells, though hinting at touches of the exotic with some of the opening harmonies, was a gentle, pictorial English pastorale, the bells at the mercy of the breezes across the meadow, their tones rising at the piece’s lovely, questioning ending.

Terser, more enigmatic fare was Douglas Lilburn’s Piece ’81, a piece whose soulful, upward-arching impulses gave themselves and their resonances plenty of air and light, contrast and distance generated by almost sepulchral bass notes that opened up the textures, the pianist allowing the music plenty of room for thought, then gently nudging a couple more upward impulses into the silences. A contemporary of Lilburn’s was Robert Burch, respected as a fine horn-player as well as a composer – William Green played the third of Burch’s set of Four Bagatelles, a piece redolent of tolling bells, with an inquiring, angular figure that walked backwards and forwards across the soundscape, leaving the bells to carry on with an ever-diminishing dialogue, the pianist beautifully controlling the resonantly receding ending. Rather more salon-like was Alfred Hill’s Come Again, Summer, a welcome song in the manner of Cecile Chaminade, though with some telling harmonic shifts in places, especially towards the end.

Green next figured as a transcriber of a bracket of Samuel Barber’s songs, including an aria from the composer’s opera Vanessa. A powerfully bleak, almost Messiaen-like The Crucifixion, complete with birdsong, was succeeded by the well-known, warmly resonant Sure on that Shining Night , rolling and romantic in style; and the group was concluded with the tightly-focused, theatrically interactive To Leave, to Break, the interchanges between bass and treble voices suggesting the piece’s stage origins. Another set of transcriptions, later in the programme, were of George Gershwin’s songs, this time by three different transcribers, each of which had something distinctive to offer, the first, Love walked In, featuring for instance Percy Grainger’s “woggle” (the composer’s irreverent name for a tremolando).

To conclude the recital’s first half, Green played us his new work, Rags Without Riches, three cleverly-written, almost pastiche-like dances paying homage to different New Zealand locations, the first, Starvation Bluff, beginning with what seemed like a pianistic cry of pain, the dying fall as pathetic in effect as the tortured opening. The music evoked hard times and bitter disillusionment, occasional bright-eyed utterances exposing their shadow side, the ghostly ascents taking us into tonal realms where warmth was stripped to the bone and feeling bleached to the point of numbness. Then came Poverty Bay Shuffle, music beginning with droll rumblings and upward rollings, the rhythmic energies projecting a laconic, weathered sensibility, again without warmth or illusion, a structure liable to disintegrate without warning, occasioning desperate gestures such as Grainger-like hand-clustered chords, hollowed-out exchanges of melodic fragments and a final, cursory downward slide. The final Poor Knight’s Rag took on a manic aspect, cluttered, insistent and claustrophobic, a “Singing Detective-like” musical hallucination which recklessly ran itself headlong into the waiting clutches of oblivion. And then it was, as Tom Lehrer would have remarked, more than forty years ago, time for a cancer!

Apart from the Gershwin transcriptions, and Liszt’s well-known keyboard traversal of Wagner’s Liebestod from Tristan, the rest was New Zealand music – William Green gave us two beautiful Tone Clock Pieces by Jenny McLeod, the first (No.2) tolling its notes and enjoying its own ambiences, then exploring antiphonal voices and various resonating reflections, ending with deep, rich soundings; while the second (No.4) rolled, spun and orbited its arpeggiated figures, registering fragments of echoings and chordal replies, rather like a meeting of two disparate elements. Jack Body’s classic Five Melodies was represented by the fifth piece of the set, the oscillation of the notes very beautiful and haunting, the figurations “travelling”, as does sunlight upon water-surfaces, spontaneously recreating the scenario’s basic patternings. Another “Piece No.5” was William’ Green’s own composition, from 5 Miniatures, a lovely, open-textured piece whose explorations of space and becalmed ambiences had to compete with a considerable amount of wind-noise from various parts of the building – the performance nevertheless beautifully sustained by the composer-pianist. By contrast, Helen Bowater’s rapid-fire, high-energy tribute to an Asian housemate’s attempts at communicable language No Problem From Little Bit bubbled with excitability and joy at the prospect of being understood. The pendulum swung back to circumspection for Michael Norris’s Amato, a Caprice Arts Trust commission, here receiving only its second public performance – music whose stillness suggested worlds of frozen time, repeated right-hand water-droplet notes a constant while the left hand tentatively explored middle and bass registers. Clustered etchings of sound began to fill up the piece’s spaces, the pauses defining the dimensions tellingly before being made to resonate with rich tones – some marvellous sounds from the pianist and his instrument! To finish, quiet,firm-voiced declamations, and gentle scintillations of light, everything judiciously controlled and beautifully-breathed.

The Wagner transcription became a “back to the world” undertaking, a piece whose quiet but rapidly burgeoning insistence can produce an overwhelming effect, even in keyboard guise, thanks to the genius of Liszt. William Green’s playing unlocked most of its its magic here, even if I wanted somewhat longer-breathed phrasings at the beginning and a touch more rhetoric at “the” climax, rabid sensationalist that I am! Our over-saturated sensibilities at the conclusion were then refurbished by a “cleansing” encore from the pianist, another of Frank Hutchens’ pieces, called “Two Little Birds”, one whose sounds and realisation expressed exactly what the title said the piece would do – in terms of the recital’s avowed pursuit of “the small and lyrical”, a perfect way to end. And hats off to William Green and Caprice Arts for their splendid enterprise!