Author: Peter Mechen

Sacred Heart Cathedral Choir sings Victoria – a moment in time

Posted on by Peter Mechen

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

Posted on by Peter Mechen

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!

Wellington Community Choir’s 5th Birthday Gala Concert

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Community Choir and Nota Bene Choir, Julian Raphael (director),  also featuring:
Carole Shortis (composer/conductor), John Rae (composer/drummer), Club Ukulele / Marimba Mojo / Djansa Djembe Drummers

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday 18th September, 2010

The printed programme accompanying this rousing and heart-warming event contained a number of enthusiastic testimonials from members of the Wellington Community Choir regarding the group and their activities, one of which I thought beautifully summed up the reason people get involved with music, be they music-makers or listeners:

“…The choir is a place where I found my inner voice. Not only my singing voice, but my real inner voice. When I sing, I feel I can sing my being – I can BE….”

I quote without permission; but though it expresses a kind of metaphysical idea, the sentiment readily puts into simple words the power of music to act upon people, be they performers or listeners – to connect with the spirit and move the deepest emotions, as well as warm towards and bond with others. All of these impulses were triumphantly on display in and throughout the Wellington Town Hall on Saturday night, through the auspices of the Wellington Community Choir and Nota Bene Choir, under the directorship of music educator and inspired conductor Julian Raphael. The Hall was as full as I think I’ve ever seen it, and at times the place simply shimmered with sounds and rocked with rhythms which seemed to engage one and all, musicians and audience.

Along with Julian Raphael and the two choirs, a number of various groups and individuals specifically contributed to the evening’s kaleidoscope of colourful music-making – composers Carole Shortis (Wellington) and John Rae (Scotland) both contributed pieces to the concert, and each took part in the performances, the first as conductor, and the second as the drummer. Instrumental groups such as Club Ukulele (players from within the Community Choir), Marimba Mojo (from Lower Hutt), and the Newtown-based percussion group Djnsa Djembie Drummers added their distinctive and ear-catching timbres to particular pieces, their participation underlining a community spirit pervading the whole, while maintaining a high level of performance expertise which marked the presentation throughout.

Having attended many “classical” concerts of all kinds in the Town Hall I couldn’t help but draw comparisons with some of these past experiences and the present concert, being as I was mightily impressed at the Community Choir’s level of support and the degree of involvement with and enjoyment of the performances by this near-capacity audience. Given that classical music organisations everywhere are concerned with trying to make ends meet, faced with the problems of aging audiences and decreasing numbers of attendees at concerts, I wondered whether there were things to be learned from the success of this present undertaking.

Of course, the “families and friends” factor would have provided a good deal of fuel for the occasion’s popularity, something that professional performing groups don’t generally rely upon to generate good houses. But quite apart from the numbers attending, I thought that what any classical concert organiser would envy here was the out-and-out identification and involvement of those present with what the performers were putting across – in short, those almost palpable lines of connectiveness between performers and listeners.

To be fair, I have to say that I’ve experienced several classical concerts this year which have demonstrated a similar frisson of inter-communication, in one or two cases at events which weren’t particularly well-attended. Sometimes it’s the music itself which generates the initial excitement, as with the recent presentations of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 at St.Mary of the Angels Church in Wellington. Sometimes particular musicians can themselves create in advance powerful and compelling expectations of involvement with what they present, as invariably happens whenever the charismatic New Zealand String Quartet performs (the group’s Schumann-and-Shostakovich concerts, for example). Also, anybody who’s experienced a song recital presented by soprano Margaret Medlyn would readily testify to her all-embracing identification with what she performs and her ability to get it out there in no uncertain terms (in a particular recent case before a resoundingly enthusiastic Hunter Council Chamber audience).

Finally, the Vector Wellington Orchestra regularly presents its concerts with wholehearted enthusiasm from conductor Marc Taddei and with total commitment from its players. In each of these instances, the experience for me was of something out of the ordinary – not a whiff of routine, of stuffiness, of blandness or tired convention. And so it was with this present concert – still, would that such mutual engagement could happen more regularly in the classical music world!

The items chosen by the Community Choir for the concert covered an enormous range of human emotion and activity – spiritual, political, cultural and environmental. They were grouped partly for variety’s sake, and partly to allow different performers opportunities to give of their best. The first bracket of songs featured the Choir itself, the singing testifying to both the arranging and conducting skills of the director, Julian Raphael, who unerringly guided his wholly-amateur voices through pieces featuring rich-toned unisons and complex contrapuntal lines alike. His arrangement, for example, of the Shaker melody “Simple Gifts” featured the unadorned tune as a prelude to increasingly complex and interesting variations; while the traditional (though not the commonly heard version of the song) “Amazing Grace” was launched by men’s voices in parts, and joined by women’s voices, the arrangement featuring haunting fourths and lovely, tightly-wrought harmonies.

I also liked the choir’s singing of the “traditional Sotho songs of struggle”, registering the voices’ change of timbre to a striking “ethnic” quality, as well as the muscularity and confidence of their rhythmic syncopations. The final song in the bracket was “Come by Here” from Liberia, performed in this case in memory of the well-known and much-respected Wellington ethnomusicologist Allan Thomas, who had died during the week.

A brief but entertaining trio of items featuring the instrumentalists of “Club Ukulele” featured two Lennon-McCartney songs, one of which prompted some startlingly-focused deliveries from the women’s voices of the phrase “I Wanna Hold Your Hand!”, the climactic interval as resonant as any period ensemble’s singing of a fourteenth-century motet! The Nota Bene Choir were then introduced; and the group rang the changes with a bracket of songs, including an arrangement of “Waltzing Matilda” (by Ruth McCall) that seemed to fuse traditional Aboriginal chant-ambiences with fragments of the well-known tune, concluding with echo effects and “overtone” resonances, the whole creating a properly haunting impression at the end.

I liked also Carol Shortis’s arrangement of “Khutso”, which was described as “a song for Soweto”, one which combined a native African dialect with the Latin words “Agnus Dei”, setting the rhythmic native chant against the more flowing Latin phrase, then alternating fragments of both at the end – extremely haunting and effective. Carol Shortis was both composer and conductor for “People Come and Sing”, written especially for the choir, with this evening’s performance of course a world premiere! A resonant opening, with overlapping lines of declamation led to a unison imperative to “Come and Sing”, the rhythm developing a swinging trajectory whose fervour evoked Gospel-like singing in places, the voices of the choir responding with proper “ownership” to the music.

After the interval the Djansa Djembe Drummers got things away to a stirring restart with rhythms and resonances that reminded me of the last Phoenix football game I attended at the Westpac Stadium (it might well have been the same group performing on that occasion!). Changes of stage lighting added plenty of atmosphere and colour, ambiences that continued throughout the bracket of African songs, with their rhythmic pulsings, in places having a pronounced “protest movement” feel, especially Julian Raphael’s arrangement of “Woyaya”, a song from Ghana.

As colourful and ear-catching was the work of the group Marimba Mojo, whose instruments, besides looking fantastic, produced a great sound, the players performing dance music from Zimbabwe, and inviting audience participation in the dance (a number obliged,and were then invited onto the stage!). Of course the nature of marimba performance itself suggests a specific gestural choreography, with which the group delighted us throughout its bracket of items.

The other major commission for the concert, beside that of Carol Shortis’, came from Scottish composer and jazz drummer John Rae, in this country of late as composer-in-residence at the New Zealand School of Music. His work Ricky, a setting of words by a choir member, Sarah Hughes, was a tribute to his father-in-law, and featured a lovely, leaping choral melody line, the tune’s trajectories mingling a second time round with instrumental colourings creating folkish ambiences, strings, guitar and marimbas contributing to the resonant glowing of the whole, the chorale punctuated with drumming rhythms, and coloured by what sounded like Gaelic chanting. I loved the rhythmic ambiguities of the voices’ interactions with the instruments, creating a “Music from the Spheres” kind of effect, an endless paean of life’s celebration.

To conclude, Nota Bene’s voices took the stage again for an entertaining “dialogue” song from Mexico (arranged by Mike Brewer), the choir establishing the music’s infectious rhythmic carriage, and with soloists from the choir interlacing their conversational/confrontational singing lines with wonderful elan. Some heartfelt tributes paid by choir members to Julian Raphael, and a couple of audience-participation songs later, the Choir’s Fifth Birthday Gala Concert was over – on the face of things quite a haul, but with energies from performers and enthusiasm from the audience seemingly undimmed to the end, a tribute to all concerned!

From darkness to light – soundscapes of the mind from the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BRITTEN – Four Sea Interludes from “Peter Grimes”

MacMILLAN – Veni, Veni, Emmanuel

RAVEL – Pavane for a Dead Princess

R.STRAUSS – Death and Transfiguration

Colin Currie (percussion)

Alexander Shelley (conductor)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 18th September

I liked this programme because it broke the mould – it didn’t follow the concert format which the NZSO seems to visit more often than not, to the detriment of pieces such as Ravel’s enchanting Pavane pour une Infanta défunte (or, Pavane for a Dead Princess). The common concert layout (overture, concerto, interval,  symphonic-type work) is obviously favoured by orchestral managements because it provides variety over the course of an evening, and enables the appearance of a prominent soloist in the concerto, who will hopefully bring in the crowds. But to repeat this formula almost ad nauseam is counter-productive, as it negates in the longer term the variety that a single concert seeks to provide, as well as reducing the opportunity for concertgoers to hear “live” many delectable orchestral pieces of only moderate length. The present concert, perhaps due to its matinee status certainly had its “star soloist” in the first half, but then featured two shorter works after the interval, the aforementioned Ravel and a tone-poem by Richard Strauss, Tod und Verklarung (Death and Transfiguration).  Ravel and Strauss certainly provided a contrast, though I wonder how many people would agree with me that some music “feels” better if heard in the evening, as opposed to the morning or afternoon? – somehow, Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration seemed diminished by the daytime ambience, whereas the Ravel was perfect – perhaps more of the same composer’s music would have been preferable, the gorgeous ballet Ma Mere L’Oye (Mother Goose) immediately coming to mind as a different kind of darkness-to-light experience.

I was interested to hear Alexander Shelley conduct, being the son of one of my favourite pianists, Howard Shelley (such connections, made helpfully or otherwise, always add interest to a performer’s aura and music-making abilities). An extremely elegant-looking young man, he brought a brisk, certain focus to his music-making throughout, beginning with the first of Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, a Dawn whose streaks of light across the sky and answering shimmers of reflection from the water were clearly and bracingly articulated in this performance, precise rather than long-breathed and atmospheric. Surprisingly, I fancied the strings’ off-beat syncopations weren’t as clear as I thought they might be at the outset of Sunday Morning, the rhythms taking a while to “settle”; but amends were made with the next piece Moonlight, the playing catching the piece’s deep-toned “hymn to the night” aspect splendidly and sonorously. The concluding Storm’s fury burst upon us vehemently, with properly baleful brass and wonderful tuba notes, though I felt the side-drum a bit glib-sounding (not enough “flail” to really sting); and though the “running frightened” scherzandi passages towards the end had plenty of energy, I wanted more tension in the build-up towards the apocalyptic downward cascade that concludes the piece. So, a good performance, but I thought a trifle wanting more of the knife-edge in places (perhaps more difficult to achieve during the afternoon!).

James MacMillan’s Veni, Veni, Emmanuel is, in effect, a percussion concerto, able to stand as an abstract piece of music in its own right, but illuminated from within by the composer’s intention for the work to represent “the human presence of Christ” and the accompanying liberation of humankind “from fear, anguish and oppression”. Its title forms a direct link with the 15th Century French plainchant of the same name, regularly sung by choirs during the Christian season of Advent. In fact, the composer apparently began working on the piece on the first Sunday of Advent, and completed it on Easter Sunday of the following year, dedicating the work to his parents.

This concert featured percussionist Colin Currie, like his fellow-Scot Evelyn Glennie (who premiered this work) one of the world’s foremost instrumentalists, who’s helped to develop amongst both audiences and composers a new appreciation of percussion and its expressive potential. Very much on show throughout this piece, Currie revelled in the diversity of sounds which colour the opening sequences of exchange – amid orchestral fanfares all the percussion families were introduced, the soloist underlining the variety of texture, colour and spatial depth of sound by physical movement whose fluidity and energy defined the spaces between the instruments and suggested a journey paralleling the course of the music. Then there’s a “heartbeat” section, where pulses of varying metricality play, propelling and colouring the music, the soloist’s patternings punctuated with sharp, coruscating comments from the orchestra. After building towards frenetic rhythmic passages which suggested we’d reached the “Dance” section of the work, Colin Currie was able to show us a more deeply-felt, poetic aspect to his musicianship with the central “Gaude” section (the title taken from the refrain of the plainsong) – marimba figurations gently danced over prayer-like murmurings from the orchestra, as if revealing for listeners the spiritual calm at the centre of a believer’s universe.

There was more dancing, brilliantly characterised by a virtuoso stint from the soloist on the vibraphone, great chorale-like fanfares from the brass, and antiphonal percussion effects, with the timpanist matching the soloist and the orchestral musicians producing triangles, spreading the scintillations throughout the soundscape (a pity about the noisy children in the gallery!). And what wonderful resonances Currie achieved with the tubular bells at the end, the resonances seeming to last for an eternity (I didn’t think the sounds of burbling children at that point entirely inappropriate – wasn’t it Christ who said “Suffer the little children to come unto me, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven”, or words to that effect? – but some people who spoke to me during the interval were very angry about the disturbance!).

Fortunately, not one extraneous post-interval warble from the auditorium spoiled the limpid beauty of Ravel’s homage to the painter Velázquez, Pavane pour une Infante Défunte (in the printed programme both attempts at reproducing the French title came unstuck). The composer’s point about the music being an evocation of a dance rather than a funeral lament was nicely realised by conductor and players. Before the Strauss work, Death and Transfiguration, Alexander Shelley spoke to the audience concerning the programme of the music, explaining the composer’s intentions and tracing the music’s course throughout – so we were fully prepared for the fray, as it were, though some of the audience would have been at last year’s performance of the same work by the Wellington Orchestra, so it wouldn’t exactly have been an unknown quantity. On that occasion I thought the Wellington Orchestra surpassed themselves, with committed, full-toned and fiery playing under Marc Taddei’s direction; so I was interested to hear what the NZSO would make of it, albeit in a different venue and with another conductor.

Only with the first arrival of the “Transfigured” theme did I markedly prefer the earlier performance – somehow (and probably aided by a more ample and resonant acoustic in the Town Hall) Taddei and his orchestra managed to “fashion” the theme from those preparatory gesturings more convincingly and organically, as if it was all the time growing into the shape and form of its first appearance; whereas with Shelley and the NZSO the warmth and radiance of it all seemed like a new idea, fetched up from somewhere else. Perhaps it was that Taddei’s reading seemed longer-breathed than Shelley’s, just that bit more boldly and deeply conceived; though in other respects, the NZSO’s playing for Shelly sounded truly resplendent in all departments, the winds in particular covering themselves with glory. The performance certainly had a sheen and burnished splendour of its own, the NZSO’s greater weight and refinement of tone imparting, if not the whole truth, a Brucknerian radiance at the very end that was well worth the waiting for.

Duo Tapas – exotic lunchtime fare at Old St.Paul’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Duo Tapas

Rupa Maitra (violin) / Owen Moriarty (guitar)

de FALLA –  Cinco Canciones Populares Espanolas / IMAMOVIC – Sarajevo Nights : Jamilla’s Dance   PIAZZOLLA – Histoire du Tango / KROUSE- Da Chara

Old St.Paul’s Lunchtime Concert Series

Tuesday, 7th September, 2010

Something about the splendid ornateness of the interior of Old St.Paul’s Church, if not especially Moorish or Iberian, suited the exoticism of parts of the programme presented by violinist Rupa Maitra and guitarist Owen Moriarty on Tuesday at lunchtime, part of an excellent series of concerts organised for performance at the church. Ever approximate, I arrived late for the concert’s beginning, picking up what I thought was the third piece, Cancion, of the Cinco Canciones populares Espanolas by Falla, an entry-point which immersed me into a world of dark, sultry atmospheres and insinuations, a mournful melody expressed in lovely, earthy accents and tones . A central section took a more cheerful major-key aspect, the transition further demonstrating the rapport of interplay and balance between violinist and guitarist. Both played with a nice touch of “pesante” impulsiveness, textures and rhythms brought to life.

They then played what I figured was Asturiana, a slow, langurous violin melody, soaring over an octave ostinato for guitar, beautifully sustained by both musicians. Finally came Polo, the violin giving voice to passionate declamations over driving guitar rhythms, quintessentially Spanish, and realised with lots of life and colour.

Owen Moriarty inroduced the next item, two pieces by the Los Angeles-based composer Almer Imamovic which, if not exactly Spanish, had an exoticism of their own. Originally written for flute and guitar, their character was appropriately realised by the violin’s range of colour and timbre – the first, Sarajevo Nights, danced a sinuous, melancholy melody with asymmetrical rhythms, both instruments creating tensions with tremolando passages, and the guitarist augmenting the music’s trajectories by knocking his instrument’s body with his hand. The second piece, Jamilla’s Dance, began with cimbalon-like tones from the guitarist and pesante-like slides and colours from the violin, all extremely evocative and colourful. Beginning like the traditional Jewish hora, the dance slowly and suggestively stepped out, increased gradually in vigour and excitement, but suddenly releasing surges of energy, rather like a Hungarian czardas. The musicians recreated the piece’s pent-up excitement with verve and enjoyment.

Famed South American composer Astor Piazzolla was next, with his suite of pieces Histoire du Tango. Listed as a four-movement work, I could discern only three sections, though maybe Rupa Maitra did allude to this in her soft-spoken introduction to the performance, the words of which I had trouble catching. The first section, entitled Bordel – 1900, is a kind of picture of Buenos Aires at the turn of the century, a work expressing the composer’s playful, more sunnily-disposed side, indulging himself occasionally with a sultry swerve into a different episode, but generally keeping things light and evenly-poised, the violin catching the piece’s light and shade, and the guitarist keeping the rhythms going using both strings and percussion effects. The second piece, Cafe – 1930 gave us the true tango, Piazzolla-style, darker and more pensive, a guitar solo filled with dreamy melancholy, and the violin really digging into a melody laden with feeling, the tone tight and focused, carrying as much weight as it needs and no more. A major-key episode lightened both colour and rhythm, before the music again gathered and wrapped all around in more sultry atmospheres. The third piece, Nightclub – 1960, was mentioned, but not listed as played – instead we seemed to get Concert d’aujourd’hui (Contemporary concert), a piece featuring off-beat harmonies and angular melodies of the garrulous and gossipy type, a kind of “up-dating” by the composer regarding his more developed style of writing, and that of the tango itself, influenced greatly by jazz. A fascinating work, skilfully presented.

Finishing the programme with a piece by American composer Ian Krouse, Owen Moriarty assured us that this was one of the easier Krouse pieces to play – its title Da Chara, is Gaelic for “Two Friends”, and was, like the pieces by Almer Imamovic, written originally for flute and guitar. Its ostensible “Gaelic” character could be discerned in the free and airy opening melodic phrasings from the violin, with their occasional rhythmic snap, the guitar taking over with a solo, then joined by the violin to repeat the opening melody – very attractive ‘filmic” kind of music and skilfully realised. The guitar began a march-rhythm, joined by the violin, the players further energising the music with a wild, reel-like dance, the players letting their hair down in great style, Rupa Maitra catching the folk-fiddle aspect of the music nicely, and Owen Moriarty generating surges of energy from his instrument.