Author: Peter Mechen

Close Encounter with Dvorak – Richard Gill and the NZSO break it down….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Close Encounters – NZSO breaks it down

Richard Gill (conductor and presenter)

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Wellington Town Hall

Friday, August 20th (Dvorak – Symphony No.9 “From the New World”)

(Review also by Julia Wells)

Australian conductor Richard Gill runs a series of educational-cum-entertainment programmes with the Sydney Symphony, called “Discovery”, making classical music more approachable for people who perhaps haven’t had musical backgrounds or previous exposure to what’s commonly called  “classical” music. He recently brought this idea to Wellington, working with the NZSO over two evenings and concentrating on two of the most popular symphonies in the whole of the classical music repertoire, Bethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony on the first night and Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony the following evening. I attended the second of the two evenings, devoted to the Dvorak Symphony, and enjoyed it immensely on a number of counts, the first being that I was re-acquainted with a work I had previously heard so many times I thought I’d gotten tired of the music, and fell in love with it all over again!

Many people will recall those early television programmes featuring Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic presenting a series called “Young People’s Concerts”. Richard Gill’s brief was different in that his presentation was designed for a much greater age-range of people, perhaps more specifically adult- than child-oriented, though his out-going, easeful manner and the direct, uncomplicated style of his delivery made what he was saying readily accessible to children of about ten years and over. Of course, it’s many years since I saw and heard Bernstein’s television broadcasts, so comparisons are even more irrelevant – but without having quite the charisma of Bernstein, I thought Richard Gill a charming, personable and informative guide, one who took pains to emphasise that we were entitled to think what we liked about the music that we heard, and let our own intelligent imaginations work on the sounds and come up with their own valid impressions. For many people I’m sure this would have been something of a revelation, quite a liberating and empowering attitude with which to approach this “thing” called  “classical music”.

Gill had the inestimable advantage of working with the NZSO, whose playing he praised highly at the conclusion of the evening, calling the band a “national treasure” and imploring his audience to support the orchestra “by buying lots of tickets to its concerts”. Throughout the evening the rapport between conductor and players seemed excellent, judging from the quality of the playing, a couple of ensemble slips apart, which could have been put down to the “stop-go” nature of the demonstration – when it came to the performance of entire movements, the playing was of an excellent standard throughout.  I myself would have thought, however, that the music would have been better served had the orchestra played the entire symphony, for people to get the range and sweep of the whole, and for the players to be able to generate something of what was understandably lacking in the performance – a sense of line which would have resulted in greater rhythmic character in places and even better-defined episodes along the way. Overall, the conductor’s stop-go analysis of the work needed, I think, to coalesce into some kind of fruition by the end, and the concert’s format was in many ways the ideal platform on which to do this. However, opinions concerning the purpose and scope of the presentation will vary; and certainly people will have at least come away from Gill’s presentation with a better understanding of the origin and nature of this, one of the most famous of all symphonies.

The true star of the evening was probably the NZSO’s cor anglais principal, Michael Austin; and it was Richard Gill who facilitated the limelight to which he subjected this normally self-effacing player. The conductor began his analysis of the symphony with the Largo (for so many people, the ‘way into”  this symphony), and asked Michael Austin to come forward and take a concerto soloist’s prominence, so that people could watch as well as hear him play. The player’s tone and his phrasing of the famous tune was exemplary, truly lump-in-the-throat stuff for at least one listener; and the orchestral accompaniment had that hushed, concentrated quality that’s so easily given scant attention, but appreciated all the more when, as was done here, broken into its constituent parts and analysed. As anybody knows who tries to play on a piano or any other instrument transcription of a well-known piece of classical music, the art of composition is often one which conceals art; and Gill was able to alert us as to the extent of Dvorak’s artistic achievement in creating those sounds that over-familiarity often leads us to take for granted.

Gill made many interesting and entertaining observations during his presentation – some of which had the orchestra players laughing out loud along with his audience – rounding out the nature and context of Dvorak’s most famous Symphony, talking about the composer’s American connections, the influence of Wagner’s music on the symphony and the ultimate faith Dvorak had in the more “classical” examples for composers set by people such as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.  Gill touched briefly on what I thought was a very important point, one that he could have developed and cited elsewhere in the symphony, the use of recurring motifs throughout the work, a practice that, of course scholars and traditionalists of the time frowned on, as it contravened “the classical rules” – we were told that Dvorak was considered as “showing off” in doing this by the music establishment, which was a nice way of putting it. Gill talked a lot about the music’s “Czech” character, intending to put into perspective the ideas that were held for many years held about this symphony, that the tunes were American Negro or Indian melodies which the composer was either quoting or copying. A pity nothing from the work’s Scherzo was played, a brilliant demonstration of both the composer’s use of national Czech dance-forms and his fondness for cross-rhythms.

However much I thought that the overall approach to the work was a little chaotic in terms of its analysis, my own experiences of getting to know new music bore out Richard Gill’s way with his presentation – often there’s a single idea, either melodic or rhythmic, that for some reason impinges in the memory of the listener, resembling a seed around which the rest of the organism gradually takes shape. After all, the purpose of the evening’s presentation was to facilitate this very process, in fact to fulfil the conductor’s own stated dictum that “this music is abstract art – it isn’t ABOUT anything concrete, but depends entirely for its effect on the listener’s very individual reaction to the sounds used by the composer” – or words to that effect. I was sorry that I’d missed the previous evening’s analysis of the Beethoven symphony, and can only congratulate Richard Gill and the members of the NZSO for giving us such a delightful and resonating musical experience.

As if to further ‘validate” the event’s degree of communication between performers and audience, I asked eighteen year-old Julia Wells, a piano student and first-year tertiary student, who also attended the concert, for her impressions; and received the following evaluation of the experience:

“Overall I found the performance very enjoyable. There was a good balance between Richard Gill’s discussion of the music and the actual performance, although at times I felt like hearing slightly more of the actual piece. My favourite part was his demonstration of the layering of sounds in the orchestra. He brought out the difference of sound when the flute combined with the oboe and the effect of them combining with brass instruments. This was shown most clearly in the second movement, which I thought was the strongest part of the presentation. One thing I would have liked more of was contextual information – Gill’s comments on the work’s reception, and also about Wagner’s influence on Dvorak, were interesting; and I would have appreciated more information about other contemporaries and the musical context, and also about the Czech tradition Dvorak was drawing on.”

This was an NZSO Community Programme, “proudly supported” by The Community Trust of Wellington. It’s something that I think the orchestra could look at doing more often – provided the right person was found for the job. Richard Gill obviously had the necessary communicator’s touch, and the musical skills to demonstrate what he was trying to express with the orchestra. All we need, really, is somebody like him, or else an embryonic Leonard Bernstein…….

Die Fledermaus – quintessential operetta

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington G&S Light Opera

DIE FLEDERMAUS  :  JOHANN STRAUSS Jnr.

Operetta in Three Acts

Director: David Skinner

Cast:  Malinda Di Leva (Adele) /  Helen Lear (Rosalinde) / Jonathan Abernethy (Alfredo) / Chris Berentson (Eisenstein) / Kieran Rayner (Dr Falke) / Kevin O’Kane (Dr.Blind) / Derek Miller (Frank) / Megan McCarthy (Ida) / Alison Hodge (Prince Orlofsky) / John Goddard (Frosch)

WGSLO Chorus and Orchestra

Hugh McMillan (conductor)

Wellington Opera House

Thursday 19th August 2010

Mention the word “operetta” to most members of the theatre- and concert-going public, and probably one of two works will most readily come to mind, either Johann Strauss Jnr’s “Die Fledermaus” (The Bat), or Franz Lehar’s “Die Lustige Witwe” (The Merry Widow). None of the Savoy operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan can match their Viennese counterparts for charm, glamour and romance, and of the French equivalents, only Jacques Offenbach’s “Orphée aux enfers” (Orpheus in the Underworld) has made a comparable impact on the English-speaking world. For general all-round appeal, and an attractive musical style which occasionally suggests “grander” opera, the two Viennese classics are certainly hard to beat.

All credit, then, to the Wellington G&S Light Opera for presenting “Die Fledermaus”, the younger Strauss’s light-hearted and affectionate “take” on the finer points and foibles of Viennese society, a production whose musical virtues carried the day, even if some of the acting and stage business was occasionally somewhat pedestrian (Act One suffered the most in this respect, with the characters often slow to take up their cues, or indulging in too much unfocused movement). Best in terms of dramatic impact was the Second Act, the party at Prince Orlofsky’s, where the chorus work diverted our theatrical sensibilities, and the superbly-projected “presence” of the Orlovsky, mezzo-soprano Alison Hodge, commanded the stage with a worldly-wise delivery of her imperiously droll directive “Chacun au son gout!”. Another star turn (non-singing) was the scene-stealing tipsiness of Frosch, the drunken jailer, played by John Goddard, whose monologues at the beginning of Act Three in the town jail were richly fortified with comic timing and an engaging plausibility.

In general, though, it was the singing and orchestral playing which better-defined the ebb and flow of the story and the interaction between the characters – thus the opening scenes between Helen Lear’s Rosalinde, Jonathan Abernathy’s Alfredo and Malinda Di Leva’s Adele truly sparkled when they were singing, each having the ability to use the energised quality of their voices to give force and complusion to the drama. Helen Lear’s Rosalinde was attractive, and alternately vivacious and winsome, while her would-be lover Jonathan Abernathy used what sounded like a lovely lyric tenor voice to mellifluous effect. And Malinda Di Leva’s Adele made an initially lovely vocal impression during that opening scene (a gorgeously-delivered duet between her and Helen Lear), even if, in the Third Act’s “Talent” aria her tone seemed to slightly harden in places, though she was never less than accurate and musical. Both Chris Berentson as Eisenstein and Kieran Rayner as Dr.Falke, though generally seeming less at ease dramatically, were again able to flesh out their characters via their singing (making a creditable job of their “plotting” duet), even if their dialogue and stage movements didn’t have sufficient liquid flow for the comedy of their intrigue to properly ignite.

Of the others, Kevin O’Kane acquitted himself with appropriate bluster and energy as the incompetent lawyer Dr. Blind, while Derek Miller’s jail governor Frank spoke, sang and acted with spirit and character (the energetic “leave-taking” trio was superbly sung by the bogus husband, distracted wife and bemused prison governor!) Again, the stage business, both dramatic and technical, didn’t have the sweep and elan to match the singing – the “farewell kiss” was somewhat inconsequential, and the end-of-act curtain was much too slow in falling! Things improved markedly during Act Two, as the Chorus provided a well-rounded focus with their singing and deportment, and the principals taking part in the opening exchanges gave their characters plenty of energy and projection – great acting from both Malinda Di Leva and Megan McCarthy as none-too-affectionate sisters at a society party, got the Act away to a spirited start, and of course Alison Hodge as Orlovsky was a tower of strength. As well, Adele’s famous “Laughing Song” was delivered by Malinda Di Leva with just the right amount of corresponding control and panache – a nice perfomance.

I did think Helen Lear less characterful as the “Hungarian Countess” both singing and acting-wise, than in the First Act, which surprised me – I thought she might have brought more theatrical sultriness to the deception, instead of the relative inertia which overtook both her and Chris Berentson in the watch-seduction scene, one that needed far more life and sparkle between the characters. Fortunately, there was plenty of spirit in the salute to the efficacies of King Champagne, with both Adele and Eisenstein bringing energy and gaiety to their contributions; while Kieran Rayner’s Falke came into his own with a confident, and tenderly-phrased “Brother dear, and Sister sweet”, the ensemble bringing some lovely nuances and colourings to their delivery of the vocal lines.

Act Three’s opening was very properly dominated by John Goddard’s comical Frosch, the drunken jailer. Malinda di Leva, despite a touch of stridency here and there, made a fine job of Adele’s “talent” song, and, as the characters arrived in various states of compromise, both Helen Lear’s Rosalinde and Chris Berentson’s Eisenstein moved up dramatic notches from the Second Act in the denouments of each deception which followed. Spirited singing from the company brought the show to a proper whirlwind of a conclusion.

Despite the occasional unevennesses of pace, moments of non-synchronised theatrical interaction, and some lack of polish to detail, there was sufficient impetus generated on stage for the story to hold together, generated largely by singing and orchestral playing that provided a focus and an undertow of movement which helped energise people. Director David Skinner may not have replicated quite the frisson of theatrical delight he witnessed in Vienna in 1970 (a well-told story among the programme notes), but he was able to generate plenty of enthusiasm among his company, which, along with energy and purpose from the orchestral players and conductor Hugh McMillan, was enough for the show to be an evening’s worthwhile entertainment.

Bowing and blowing – Orchestral Concert from NZSM Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NZSM Orchestra Series – Concert Five

Strings, Winds and Brass

MOZART – Divertimento for Strings in D Major / JS BACH (arr. REED) – My Heart is Filled with Longing / REED – First Suite for Wind Band

ROSSINI (arr.BRITTEN) – Soirées Musicales / TCHAIKOVSKY – Serenade for Strings in C Major

New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

Conductors: Martin Riseley (Mozart, Tchaikovsky)

Kenneth Young (JS Bach, Reed, Rossini arr.Britten)

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

Tuesday 17th August 2010

A lovely concert – framed by two adorable works for string orchestra, with centres spliced by plenty of tangy wind-band textures. One of those tangy centres was a work I had not heard for some years, Britten’s Soirées Musicales (orchestrations of Rossini’s music), and never as a work for winds only, as here (the arrangement made by the composer). Another work, the Tchaikovsky Serenade, I had never actually heard live in concert (hard to believe, really, especially considering how well I know it!). So, there was plenty of interest there for me, and, I would have thought, for others, though, alas, not so!  It’s true that Tuesday evening tends not to be a popular concert-going night; but Wellingtonians were more-than-usually conspicuous by their absence from St.Andrew’s Church, which would have been disappointing for the concert’s organisers. I can only repeat Henry V’s words from Shakespeare, by way of admonishing people for their non-attendance at such an attractive-sounding and enjoyably musical affair – “And gentlemen of England now a-bed shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here” (pace Shakespeare, I would amend the admonition to include BOTH sexes, together or separately!).

Martin Riseley, in the relatively unfamiliar role of conductor (at any rate for Wellington audiences), directed the School of Music’s strings in a performance of one of Mozart’s utterly delightful Divertimenti of 1772. written during the composer’s Salzburg years. One would never know from the music that the composer was under the baleful jurisdiction of the autocratic Archbishop Colloredo, who had very little regard for musicians and their works. This particular work, in the sunny key of D major, simply bubbles with infectious energy and gaiety in its outer movements, framing an Italienate operatic-like slow movement featuring one of the composer’s loveliest tunes. Altogether it’s an attractive, if deceptively fluent-sounding work, the opening of which the NZSM string students addressed with bright, rich tones and fluent dynamic shadings. Some of the quicker articulations were a bit blurred, though the music’s inner voicings remained nicely discernable, even if the occasional worried looks on some of the players’ faces while addressing Mozart’s running figurations betrayed the ensemble’s intermittent unease. Generally, the Andante’s slower music brought forth a more sonorous, true-toned response, a lovely violin ascent in thirds characterising the generally sensitive playing throughout. The feathery touch at the beginning of the finale was also beautifully brushed in, and the more brilliant running passages that followed were splendid. The first-time-round six-note ascents in thirds were a shade untidy, the ensemble making a much neater job of the same passage later in the movement, and rounding the exhilarations of the music off with some sharp chording at the end.

Strings made way for winds, including brass and percussion, for the next bracket of items, along with a change of conductor, Kenneth Young for Martin Riseley. Two of the pieces were arranged or written by Alfred Reed, a name new to me, but well-known in the United States for his composing activities, primarily for wind ensembles. Reed’s arrangement of JS Bach’s Organ Prelude BWV 727 “Herzlich tut mich Verlangen” (My Heart is filled with Longing) for wind band brought out a beautiful liquid-toned sound, with enough of a plaintive edge to the tone to give it a most attractive plangency, a very clarinet/saxophone-coloured sound throughout the first refrain. An added array of flutes gave the tune a light, frothy descant the second time through, one or two stumbles of little matter; while the timpani and brass which subsequently joined in sounded amazing! – almost too much so, in those confined St.Andrew’s spaces, which, however, after the deluge of sounds had quietened, imparted a glowing ambience to the hushed postlude.  Reed’s First Suite for Wind Band followed, the four movements vividly played and characterised by the ensemble – the opening march had real bite, everything skirling and stirring, with saxophones adding jazzy impulses, while by contrast the following Melody movement relied on colour and atmosphere to set off the various lyrical solo instrumental lines, with beautiful contributions from horn, oboe and euphonium. Both the Rag and the Gallop were tremendous fun, with some droll percussion touches in the former’s trio section, and Young encouraging his players to abandon caution and go for it in the crackling finale, the building’s spaces rattling and resonating with the riotous sounds.

But for me the real delight from the wind band’s contribution to the concert was Britten’s Soirées Musicales, Kenneth Young communicating to and bringing out a real sense of enjoyment of the music from his players – to begin with, a snappy, cheeky March, with nicely articulated solos, spiced by delightful contributions from piccolo and xylophone, among others. Then came a sweetly-sung Canzonetta, a pastorale with a “yodelling” figure reminiscent of Walton’s”Facade”, with the trumpet adding to the gorgeously sentimental flavour, one which the subsequent “Tirolese” number sought to cheer up with hearty beer-hall oom-pahs, gurgling chuckles and irruptions of semi-intoxicated “frohlichkeit”, impulses that one expects would come naturally to most music students worth their salt. The half-ghostly Bolero, with its opening Schumannesque figures wove a sultry spell, its sinuous exotic strains beautifully ritualised by deftly-applied touches from the percussion; while the concluding Tarantella whirled vertiginously and deliriously – perhaps a trifle too fast for the dance-triplets to properly “tell”? But overall, there were transports of delight for this listener, and reactions along those lines at the piece’s end from others present as well.

Finally, strings again for the Tchaikovsky Serenade; which began with a lovely, rich and full-blooded opening chord from the players, conductor Martin Riseley encouraging a string sound with plenty of body, which eminently suited the work. The allegro wasn’t pushed, giving the music plenty of room to point and phrase, the ‘cello’s articulations particularly eloquent. I thought the playing had an attractive out-of-doors feel to it, the players  “tightening up”, and losing their tone and ensemble only when a degree of anxiety pushed the tempo along a bit too much. The second-movement Waltz sounded gorgeous at the beginning, the music nicely maintaining its poise until those repeated Italienate ascents in thirds were reached, when the ensemble became unstuck – however, the ‘cellos and violas sounded rich and full in their repeat of the big tune shortly afterwards. The beautiful Elegy featured songful violin lines over pizzicati accompaniment, a touch of strain from all departments during the violin’s descant over the lower strings, but a sonorous coming-together for the big tune afterwards, the pleasure disturbed only by a slight scrappiness at the tops of phrases in the movement’s coda. That out-of-doors ambience returned for the finale’s introduction, even if the atmosphere of expectation was slightly sabotaged by players and conductor having to turn over a page of score just before the beginning of the allegro (grins all round from both musicians and listeners). The players generated plenty of energy, their finish a bit raw in places, but perhaps appropriately “pesante” – again, the lower strings shone with the beautiful second subject, encouraging matching fervent tones from the violins. The coda caught the sense of festive closure exactly – Martin Riseley would surely have been pleased with his players’ warmth and energy in realising such an enjoyable performance of the work.

Resplendent Monteverdi at St Mary of the Angels

Posted on by Peter Mechen

MONTEVERDI  – Vespers 1610

Baroque Voices / St.Mary of the Angels Choir /  Academia Sancta Mariae Ensemble

Robert Oliver (director)

St. Mary of the Angels Church

Boulcott St., Wellington

Saturday August 14th 2010

No work has inspired more disagreements among both scholars and musicians regarding both its history and performance practice than Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610. The British musicologist Denis Arnold once wrote about the work, “To perform it is to court disaster. To write about it is to alienate some of one’s best friends”. Happily for Wellington audiences, no such strictures seemed to hang over the head of Musica Sacra concert series director Robert Oliver, who organised and directed two performances of the work in the splendidly atmospheric precincts of St Mary of the Angels Church, marking the 400th anniversary of the music’s publication in Venice. Oliver took what some people still considered to be a courageous step by performing the work with ten solo singers, one to a part, drawn from Pepe Becker’s Baroque Voices group, and accompanied by an ensemble of baroque strings, cornets and sackbuts, two organs and two theorbos. I was told by one of the singers that a friend’s reaction to the “one-singer-to-a-part” idea was expressed in tones of sympathetic disbelief. However Oliver’s faith in his “virtuoso singers and players with a brilliant command of all the instruments and techniques” (a quote from the programme notes) was richly vindicated by the splendours of the ensuing performance.

Oliver had directed a version of the work previously in Wellington a number of years ago with a choir of nearly thirty singers and a mixture of baroque and modern instruments, but felt that, with the advantages of more recent research into Monteverdi’s original intentions, plus the increased skills of early instrument players, the time was nigh to tackle the work afresh with up-to-date knowledge and performance practices. The aim was to reproduce more closely the sound that Monteverdi was believed to have had in mind for the work. The result was, in a word, stunning – singers and instrumentalists surpassed themselves in evoking a sound-world that seemed at one and the same time of the period and timeless, casting a potent spell over the  imaginations and sensibilities of the audience members throughout the evening. Such occasional roughnesses as there were seemed so infrequent as to be of little consequence when set against the sweep and power of the whole, qualities which continually transcended the earthly and invoked the divine.

The church’s antiphonal potentialities were nicely realised right from the beginning, the St Mary of the Angels’ tenor choir voices intoning the opening “Deus in adiutorium” from the choir-loft at the rear of the church, to which the full ensemble of singers and instrumentalists replied from the front across the spaces, investing the words “Domine ad adiuvandum me festina” (Lord, make haste to help me) with truly age-old fervour and exotic colour. From this moment on the performance never flagged, the solo singers confident and nearly always accurate and secure with both their soaring lines and their often treacherously decorative impulses of melismatic energy, and the instrumental playing lustrously-toned and scalp-tinglingly characterful. Having solo voices gave the vocal lines such creative character, in the slower polyphonies the strands both blending and activating each other’s timbral differences, while in the quicker music the flavours and colours of the combinations produced occasionally an almost kaleidoscopic effect.

Sopranos Pepe Becker and Jayne Tankersley relished both their duet-style combinations and the more antiphonally-placed exchanges, their very different voices producing a real frisson of interaction, very marked, naturally enough, in their big duet Pulchra es, whose music I thought had a wonderfully charged eroticism. Pepe Becker floated her voice gloriously at “Averte oculos”, and Jayne Tankersley, so physically expressive by way of response, brought a sense of urgency to “Me avolare fecerunt”, her body appearing to physically choreograph the intensities of what her voice was doing in an extremely involving way. In other places, such as during Psalm 112’s Laudate Pueri Dominum (beautifully-sustained tones from both singers at “Ut collocet eum cum principibus”) and also throughout Lauda Jerusalem (Psalm 147), the antiphonal interactions and dovetailings of the sopranos made for a wholly sensual sound-effect, in fact highlighting what the rest of the ensemble was also doing so delightfully. Altos Andrea Cochrane and Christopher Warwick had fewer exposed lines, but made the most of their opportunities, most notably in the Hymn Ave Maris Stella, where each sang a verse most mellifluously, and also within the concluding Magnificat, where their steady, sustained tones provided a perfect foil for the more energetic and decorative lines of the tenors and basses.

The last-mentioned played their part as well, with the tenor parts particularly prominent. Both John Beaglehole and John Fraser contributed strong, sonorous tones to the many ensembles, and fearlessly tackled their various solos, most of which were resplendent with decorative detail. John Beaglehole made a strong beginning to the motet Nigra Sum, his voice confidently projected and nicely focused, surviving an uncomfortable patch of intonation at “Flores apparuerunt” to recover his poise somewhat for “Tempus putationis advenit”. Beaglehole and Fraser brought the two questioning Seraphims beautifully to life at ‘Duo Seraphim” before being joined by a third tenor, Philip Roderick, for the affirmation of the Blessed Trinity in heaven. And in the Motet Audi Coelum Beaglehole’s ecstatic phrases praising Mary, Mother of God, were echoed by Fraser off-stage to evocative effect amid tumultuous interjections by half-a-dozen of the soloists with continuo (it sounded as though there were more), beginning at the word “Omnes”, and continuing to the end, including the gentler “Benedicta es”, sung here with richly-focused tones and finely-honed ensemble. If basses David Morriss and Chris Burcin, along with baritone Dimitrios Theodoridis, had less spectacularly exposed material to sing, they still registered a powerful presence, blending beautifully in Dixit Dominus (Psalm 109) at “Judicabit in nationibus”, and contributing strongly-etched lines to Laudate Pueri Dominum (Psalm 112) as well as displaying some thrilling muscularity at “Quia fecit” in the concluding Magnificat.

With true-toned contributions during the Antiphons from the St.Mary of the Angels Choir, directed by Stephen Rowley, a feast of resplendent singing was dished up for our delight throughout, happily matched by the burnished splendour of the instrumental playing from the Academia Sanctae Mariae ensemble, and associated players. Earlier in the year at a Te Papa concert which featured Renaissance madrigals we’d had a taste of Peter Reid’s evocative cornetto playing – but here, with two other cornetto players, as well as sackbuts, recorders and theorbos (enormous lute-like fretted instruments), along with strings and two organs, the potential for instrumental colour and visceral excitement seemed almost too good to be true. The standing ovation which greeted the performers at the end of Saturday evening’s performance well-represented the audience’s astonishment and delight and deep enjoyment at the stellar efforts of singers and players alike. Musica Sacra concert series director Robert Oliver brought to bear his enormous skill and experience in this repertoire with vision and intensity, and in doing so inspired a performance of this legendary work which will surely be talked about in Wellington for years to come.

Birthday presents from Stroma in Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Stroma – Living Toys  (10th Anniversary Concert 2010)

Thomas Adės – Living Toys (1994) / Peter Scholes – Relic (2010) / Alexandra Hay – An Island Doesn’t Either (2010) / Jeroen Speak – Silk Dialogue (VI) (2009) / Iannis Xenakis – Thalleïn (1984)

Stroma: Paula Rae (fl/pc), Peter Dykes (ob/ca), Richard Haynes (cl/bcl), Phil Green (cl), Ben Hoadley (bsn/cbsn), Ed Allen (hn), Mark Carter (tpt), Dave Bremner (tbn), Claire Harris (pf), Thomas Guldborg, Jeremy Fitzsimons (perc), Vesa-Matti Leppanen, Rebecca Struthers, Emma Barron, Kristina Zelinska (vlns), Andrew Thomas (vla), Rowan Prior (vc), Victoria Jones, Matt Cave (db), Su Yi (hps)

Hamish McKeich (conductor)

Ilott Theatre, Wellington

Thursday 12th August 2010

Wellington-based contemporary music group Stroma couldn’t have chosen a more engaging and demonstrably virtuosic ensemble piece than British composer Thomas Adės’ work Living Toys, with which to commence the celebrations marking their tenth anniversary as a performing ensemble. As well as beginning the concert, the piece also gave the evening its truly apposite title, one which seemed to express something of the character of each of the works chosen by the group, an alchemic sense of something having been created in each case which then evolved a life of its own – a metaphor, of course for all artistic creation, but particularly suited to the abstract medium of music. In other ways the sense of occasion regarding the anniversary wasn’t exactly writ-large or over-inflated by the group – the printed programme sweetly featured a modest image of a single burning birthday candle, accompanied by a “thank you” note to the group’s supporters for their encouragement and attendance at concerts over the years. It was the music that did the talking and the ensemble that brought it all to life – an anniversary celebration that proclaimed that Stroma meant to go on as it had begun, the implication being an intention to deliver at least ten more years of exhilarating chamber music.

One of a number of things that was pleasing about the concert was the programming of both New Zealand and overseas works – of course the “double whammy” of such an arrangement was the tacit proclamation that (a) home-grown works could stand alongside pieces by iconic composers such as Thomas Adės and Iannis Xenakis, and (b) local musicians had the skills and interpretative capacities to tackle the best of the contemporary crop, both from home and off-shore. The New Zealand works were freshly-minted, two of them world premieres ( Peter Scholes’ Relic and Alexandra Hay’s An Island Doesn’t Either), and a third, Jeroen Speak’s Silk Dialogue VI, receiving its New Zealand premiere at this concert. Incidentally, two of the musicians in the ensemble played in the world premiere of this work in Australia last year, clarinettist Richard Haynes (for whom the work was written), and flutist Paula Rae, from Melbourne. Rae had to be flown in from Australia on the day before the concert to deputise for Bridget Douglas, Stroma’s regular flute-player, but alas, flu-ridden and temporarily out of action.

Thomas Adės’ 1993 work Living Toys is a kind of chamber symphony in a single movement, but with clearly-defined, often insinuating narrative episodes (a detailed note by the composer was reproduced in the programme). The piece seemed to resemble a continuous interaction of confrontation and persuasion, the sounds alternating rapidly between the two states, with the sharp bite of some of the writing a perfect foil for the lullabyic character of the contrasting episodes, befitting the work’s prefaced programme – a somewhat elliptical account of a child’s dream-fantasies that blurs the divide between sleeping and waking. The raucous squeals of delight right at the work’s beginning quickly moved into narrative mode, with arabesques rolling around a bardic horn solo, the music going on to depict a kind of subconscious Jungian unfolding of imagery involving angels, extinct bison and space-age computers (the iconic H.A.L. from the film 2001 A Space Odyssey even makes an appearance!). Then there were connecting sequences whose anagram-style titles both helped to connect and further complicated the scenario. While it might seem invidious to single out single players in a performance of such a complex ensemble work, one must particularly mention Mark Carter’s brilliant trumpet-playing during the “militia men” sequence of the piece. Conductor Hamish McKeich directed with both energy and patience, steering the players through both concerted and fractured frenzies, and the equally compelling ghostings of timbre and colour that propelled and intensified the work’s course.

On the face of things, any music following Adės’ cornucopian inventiveness might seem to have a hard time making any kind of impression; but both Peter Scholes’ Relic and Alexandra Hay’s An Island Doesn’t Either provided soundscapes of such a different and distinctive order that one’s ear was straightaway led to contemporary equivalents of Schumann’s “different realms” of expression. Scholes’ relatively tonal style evoked a certain exotic element in his work’s colourings and an underlying suggestion of ancient ritual in its rhythmic character. The composer indicated in a programme note a certain fascination with Middle Eastern antiquity and its manifestations, stimulated by a visit to Egypt and the prospect of working with Arabic musicians, the harp-and-drum combination that opened the piece presiding over age-old processionals, then goading the ensemble into a lively primitive-sounding dance. Interestingly, Scholes cites the Locrian mode as the dance’s melodic “key”, emulating twentieth-century composers as diverse as Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Sibelius and Britten in his use of this exotic-sounding sequence (a minor scale with the second and fifth notes lowered a semitone). I enjoyed the music’s concurrent states of mystery and clarity, judiciously worked by the composer.

Alexandra Hay’s An Island Doesn’t Either was a piece whose sounds were more hinted and suggested in effect than articulated, but as one moved into her aural world the many subtleties of timbre and colour brought innumerable impulses of delight to the careful listener. Verses written by the composer gave clues here and there as to the music’s direction, with phrases such as “chance unions are framed in watery free fall” hinting as much, one suspects, at the piece’s creative philosophical impulse as suggesting a poetic description. That tone and pitch were pared away almost to nothing created worlds of burgeoning potential involving gestures and timbres which were as likely to dissolve as coalesce, those “chance unions” given their freedom and charged with expectation at one and the same time. I enjoyed the feel of the underlying tensions which to my delight occasionally irrupted as scintillations, whose “ripples-on-a-pond” effect create resonances very much at the mercy of the same random impulses that influence our lives, whose grip upon existence on “the warm surface on this limb of archipelago” is of course as evanescent as each breath exhaled by the music that we heard. A bold and compelling work, realised by the ensemble with considerable sensitivity.

Jeroen Speak’s Silk Dialogue VI, composed in 2009, was written for and dedicated to the Australian clarinettist Richard Haynes, whom I had heard play with Stroma previously to stunning effect. This performance, more concertante- than concerto-like in effect was nevertheless astonishing in its virtuosity and sensitivity. The music reflected Speak’s current activity in both China and Taiwan, where he has worked since 2004, among other activities studying ancient Chinese music notation systems with a view to reviving some of the traditions in “new approaches to contemporary notation, instrumentation and tonality”. A feature of the new work was the use of snare drums by each player in addition to his or her own instrument, the resulting activation of percussion adding a theatrical element linked by the composer to traditional Chinese opera, as well as delineating the flow of time throughout the work. From the beginning, the music pulsed outwards and upwards, each individual burst of energy an almost systolic-like impulse countered by a gentler exhalation. These alternations gave rise to the idea of the sounds seeking light and space, inclined as they were towards buoyancy rather than weight, and accompanied by a gradual emptying-out of tonal and colouristic elements in the music. Speak’s researches into a particular aspect of Chinese notation involving a traditional instrument called the guqin (a kind of zither) emphasised his interest in the gestural aspects of the music-making, and suggested a certain kinship across centuries with independently-conceived soundscapes like those of Alexander Hay in the previous work. But the added theatricality of Speak’s music made a powerful individual impression, especially the clarinet’s increasingly desperate attempts to give voice to the growing abstractions, before resigning itself to seeming incoherencies, its gestures at the work’s end indicating a hard-wrought transition towards an even subtler language.

In attempting to sum up ten years’ worth of contemporary music performance Stroma very appropriately turned to the work of an iconic figure, Iannis Xenakis, often described as a true renaissance man because of the range and scope of his interests and activities both in music and other associated areas. His works touched every media, from acoustic, through electro-acoustic to multi-media; and his interests took in mathematics, experimental engineering, architecture and education. His work Thalleḯn for fourteen instrumentalists dates from 1984, one whose Greek title suggests growth or germination leading to organic evolution, except that the composer stipulated the exclusion of all human gesture and expression in performance, thus denying conventional musical rhetoric and emphasising “a more impersonal sound-utterance” (for instance, Xenakis wrote on the front page of the score “vibrato is not permitted”). Theoretically, the plan sounds impervious, except for its realization via the same human element in performance, which sets up all kinds of creative tensions as different attitudes on the part of both musicians and audiences kick in. Be the approach one of acceptance or denial of the composer’s visionary directives, confrontations were bound to occur between participants in the exercise – not everybody would, I expect, want to buy into the composer’s “purification of the spirit” idea as a pre-requisite to understanding or enjoying the music. There was no question as to the music’s raw power, or its ability to engage with its listeners, as the opening “no holds barred” paragraphs demonstrated. Perhaps the composer might have found Stroma’s full-blooded performance manner too engaging, too expressive, as the players certainly seemed to put their energies on the line within the instrumental “blocks” and confront one another without reserve. As with the Adės work, the soundscape was occasionally saturated, the music’s intensely physical aspect at those times both imbued with and going beyond what the programme note (Xenakis’s own?) called “the heat of the human world”. My own reaction to the music was ambivalent – such unidentifiable realms as the composer’s sounds hinted at I felt both drawn towards and repelled by almost by turns, possibly reacting to the inevitable process of recognising such gestures as the players were visibly making, and then struggling to equate my expectations with what I heard, and drawing back in search of more solid ground on which to put my feet. My enduring memory of the work is a sense of a mid-life melt-down crisis (contrasting markedly with the feeling of things thrusting upward suggested by Jeroen Speak’s work), followed by energised reawakenings of those same instrumental blocks registered earlier and their incorporation into a march-like processional, whose short-lived but unashamed theatricality occasioned brassy shouts, percussive roarings, shimmering strings and trilling winds. What was Xenakis thinking of? Drama and interaction such as this surely tends to stimulate, not eliminate, “human” gesture.

Presumably, reactions such as the above keeps the skin of music porous and moist and stimulates the heart still beating within (more human imagery? – what is this reviewer thinking of?). At the concert’s end the enthusiasm of the audience for the performances, the programming and the occasion must have gladdened the sensibilities of Stroma’s players and administrators. It struck me that people at the concert who regularly go to hear the NZSO wouldn’t have failed to register familiar faces from orchestral ranks among the ensemble’s personnel, suggesting lines of connection between what’s considered “establishment” and the newest music, and helping to break down the “that” and “this” divide which puts art in pigeonholes, to everybody’s long-term disadvantage. On that count, Stroma represents a powerful force for new music across a wider spectrum than its own performance schedules. But considering simply the ensemble itself, one looks expectantly towards the next ten years and wishes the group a similarly fruitful and richly constituted twentieth anniversary celebration.

Ludwig Treviranus – Piano Recital at Expressions Upper Hutt’s Expressions

Posted on by Peter Mechen

HAYDN – Piano Sonata in F Major Hob.XV!:23

PROKOFIEV – Three Movements from “Romeo and Juliet”

CHOPIN – Four Ballades

Ludwig Treviranus (piano)

Genesis Energy Theatre

Expressions Arts and Entertainment Centre, Upper Hutt

Sunday 1st August 2010

Upper Hutt-born pianist Ludwig Treviranus, back in New Zealand on a visit from his current study activities in the United States, gave a home-town recital on Sunday at the Expressions Centre, to the delight of a near-capacity audience. After completing earlier studies with Rae de Lisle in Auckland for a Masters Degree in piano performance he went to Florida to take up a Doctorate in piano with Read Gainsford at Florida State University. He’s been a finalist in various piano competitions recently, most notably in both Florida and Tenessee, the latter at the Memphis Beethoven Piano Sonata International Piano Competition. Presently he’s engaged along with his study, in doing an assistantship at the University playing for opera students, giving him, as he says, valuable practice and experience with singers, and widening his focus as a performing musician.

His programme, if standard recital fare for a pianist, provided plenty of scope for his mettle to be tested, both as an interpreter and a virtuoso. Each of the three works brought out significant things in his playing, and indicated that his was a talent with already strongly-etched characteristics, and the ability to communicate these to his audience. Two things I noticed in particular throughout the recital, one of them being his ability to colour the music’s textures at appropriate moments, making for some magically-conceived sequences in each of the works he played; while the other was what seemed like his innate sense of each piece’s shape, and (in the case of both the Haydn and Chopin works) a feeling for how the parts fitted together to make the whole structures seem coherent and well-proportioned.

One always wonders what to expect from young musicians in terms of the approach they might take to performing – whether they’ll take a full-blooded and impetuous “no-holds-barred” attitude, placing great store on the music’s emotional content and opportunities to express the same, or else adopt an overtly “correct” and literal approach, dotting and crossing every “i” and “t” and leaving no stone in the score unturned. Of course, things are seldom as cut-and-dried as such polarities suggest; and Ludwig Treviranus, while certainly not an impetuous, abandoned player, was also no literalist in a dry and correct sense. Occasionally I felt the need for bolder delineation of what he was doing, wanting the contrasts pointed a bit more cheekily in the finale of the Haydn, for example, as well as more adventurous rhythmic terracings in the third Chopin Ballade (that rocking rhythm didn’t for me quite draw the music along as I was hoping it would) – however, these comments are made in the context of many other aspects of his playing giving a good deal of pleasure.

Before playing each of the works on the programme, the pianist talked to his audience briefly about the music and his relationship with it – thus we learned that he felt very close to the slow movement of the Haydn Sonata, and was able to readily demonstrate this affinity with his long-breathed playing, limpid tones realising the music’s attractive melancholy. I liked also the first movement’s unhurried perkiness, the playing bright and sunny at the beginning, but capturing the different colourings of the harmonic shifts without making a meal of them – very unforced and natural-sounding. Only in the finale of the work did I think some of the humour’s earthiness underplayed in favour of urbanity – just as valid an approach, of course, if a tad less engaging.

It seemed from Treviranus’ playing of the Prokofiev “Romeo and Juliet” movements that the pianist knew the orchestral versions well, so colourful, detailed and richly-voiced was his playing of all three movements chosen. The opening Folksong was nicely terraced, bringing out the contrasting dynamics and layered lines in a way that readily suggesting spaces and movement; while the Young Juliet evoked a strong, healthy young girl, more vigorous and physical than elfin and quicksilver, making the contrasting episode of her romantic daydream all the more telling. I liked the way the pianist’s left hand brought out the ‘cello melody, phrasing the ascending theme with great tenderness. Finally, the well-known Montagues and Capulets had all the swagger, tension and clannish arrogance and bravado that one could have wished for, the pianist excitingly orchestrating the textures, and particularly enjoying the heavy brass! Again, the player wrought considerable magic via the music’s contrasting episodes, with the middle section almost wraith-like, the sounds very “interior” after the extroversion of the opening. Using his ear for colour and texture, Treviranus gave the descant melody in the right hand an almost touching quality, its poignancy thrown into bold relief by the return of the dance’s grim menace.

Merely the idea of all four of the Chopin Ballades being presented on the same programme felt like a real treat – and so it proved here. LudwigTreviranus prefaced his performance with a few words which emphasised Chopin’s storytelling abilities, despite the composer’s stated aversion to titles and to programme music. The pianist judged the opening of the first Ballade beautifully, dark and rich without being too portentous and laden, his hands sharing the melodic lines as the bass momentarily took the lead from the treble, digging into the notes as the music began to surge forward, then relaxing poetically for the introduction of the beautiful second subject. And if the piece’s penultimate frisson of excitement took a while to ignite at the gallop-away, the cumulative effect of the player’s committed energies brought a satisfying inevitability to those final avalanche-like chromatic flourishes.

Dispensing with applause between the pieces was a good idea, as the silences gave a “charged” quality to each transition from one piece to the next. I liked the hymn-like aspect Treviranus brought out in the second Ballade’s opening, and the urgency with which he plunged into the allegro, more organic than rhetorical – he kept the underlying pulse going throughout the piece to its advantage. Again, with the third Ballade, the pianist took a simple, direct line with the opening theme, though he treated us to a treasurable impulse of hushed delight at the very top of one of the phrases, just before the onset of the “rocking” rhythm which so dominates the work. With this I felt he didn’t “advance” the music sufficiently – I wanted a greater sense of growth, of inexorable momentum building up and leading towards that wonderful downward plunge into the swirling waters, out of which grows sufficient resolve and energy to re-establish the theme and conclude the piece. The fourth Ballade enchanted with its opening (a slight mis-hit at one point reminding us that this was a REAL performance), Treviranus capturing the wistful character of the theme to perfection, gathering purpose with each repetition and nicely setting filigree detail alongside simplicity of utterance. Perhaps the growing agitations needed a bit more volatility and temperament, though all was forgiven after the pianist had enchanted us with the opening’s beautiful reintroduction and its ghostly melismatic echo. And there was power and energy aplenty in evidence throughout the rest of the work’s eventful course, Treviranus’ playing bringing out that slightly “off-centre” quality to the music’s surgings leading us up to the final emphatic chords, and giving us a real physical sense of the distance traversed from the piece’s opening.

The home-town audience was treated to an encore featuring more Chopin, the young man plunging into the well-known and treacherously insistent C-sharp Minor Op.10 Etude, one which he would have played perfectly a hundred times previously instead of, as here, mis-hitting the final chord (his rueful look at the keyboard at that point was as treasurable as if he had played the notes perfectly!). It was of no matter – with this recital Ludwig Treviranus had already done himself, his audience and the music proud. One wishes him well.

Time-travelling Wellington Orchestra revisits 1810 and more….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Vector Wellington Orchestra – ‘1810’

BEETHOVEN – Overture ‘Egmont’ Op.84 / SCHUMANN – Piano Concerto in A Minor Op.54

ROSSINI – Overture ‘The Barber of Seville’ / STRAVINSKY – Ballet ‘Jeu de Cartes’

Michael Houstoun (piano)

Marc Taddei (conductor)

Vector Wellington Orchestra

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday 24th July, 2010

The idea of learning one’s history through music seems an attractive one; and the Wellington Orchestra’s 2010 programme has taken pains to forge links in time between the present year and various composers and their works connected with one, two, and three hundred years ago. The latest in this year’s concert series focused upon the year 1810, though only two of the four works on the programme seemed to have an association with that year. Of the others, the Stravinsky ballet Jeu de Cartes was part of a parallel series featuring the composer’s ballet works, and Rossini’s perennially delicious Overture Il Barbiere di Siviglia was included to highlight Stravinsky’s use of one of the most prominent tunes from the work in his own ballet.

One could posibly cavil at the shortish playing time of the concert, just as some of the audience at the NZSO last Saturday night objected to the longer-than-usual presentation. Perhaps room could have been found for another work, or the Rossini replaced by something a bit more substantial length-wise. A positive aspect was that the contents of the concert made a refreshing change from the usual formulaic componentry of such concerts – overture, concerto, symphonic work – one which seldom admits any pieces which don’t fit the mould, and are thus neglected. A soprano could have been engaged and given us a couple of the orchestral songs from Beethoven’s Egmont music. Alternatively, another Stravinsky work could have been included in the concert (one which would have contrasted nicely with both the Rossini Overture and Jeu de Cartes) such as the Dumbarton Oaks chamber concerto, a piece which seldom gets played in symphony concerts because of its awkward length (about 12 minutes).

Of course, less is sometimes more, as my grandmother used to say; and what’s important is quality, more so at times than quantity. I thought this concert had sufficient quality to make it an eminently worthwhile venture. Marc Taddei, as is usually his wont, spoke with his audience before the concert started, emphasising the interactive links between the orchestra and its community, as reflected in both the attendance at concerts and the sponsorship the orchestra receives from locally-represented businesses. In hindsight the speech’s message served as a counterweight to the scenario painted by speakers at an after-concert reception, involving arts funding from Creative New Zealand for the orchestra being cut, a policy that would also affect the NZSO. It would be a pity if the Wellington Orchestra had any of its activities impaired by such a policy.

The concert started snappily and strongly with the Egmont Overture – and a rattling good performance it was, too, athletically directed by Marc Taddei, the playing notable for muscle rather than mass. This is an orchestra which consistently punches above its own weight, and this concert and the playing of things like Egmont demontrated living, dynamic proof of its quality. Only a lack of numbers in the string section disadvantages the balance in tutti passages, where the brass and winds seem to hold sway, without the strings being able to properly soar over the top and exert plenty of tone and muscle.

I was really looking forward to hearing Michael Houstoun playing the Schumann Concerto, partly because I’d enjoyed his Beethoven series with the orchestra last year so much, and partly because I was looking forward to comparing Houstoun’s with Diedre Irons’s performance which I’d heard earlier this year. Well, in a sense the occasion didn’t disappoint, because the interpretations were very different. Houstoun brought all of his familiar virtues to his interpretation, strength, directness and incredible focus, setting up a great sense of flow in the first movement  and achieving a lovely build-up to the first big orchestral tutti – the orchestral solo playing was notable, with both Merran Cooke’s oboe at the beginning and Tui Clark’s clarinet in the dreamy exchanges doing a very lyrical and sensitive job. Occasionally I thought Houstoun’s playing just a bit too abrupt – he’s not really into romantic rhetoric – and so the pianist’s big octaves statement mid-movement had muscle and fire rather than a grand declamatory air. So, in general it was an interpretation which went for drive and urgency rather than any kind of big-boned romanticism.

The slow movement was successful in bringing about a necessary contrast – the exchanges between piano and orchestra were sufficiently poised to give a sense of poetic feeling, though one sensed still a current of urgency beneath it all. What lovely ‘cellos at their big moment in the middle section of the movement! – and then, a beautifully-shaped build-up by the whole orchestra towards the last statement by the strings of this very romantic theme! These were touches of radiance in the midst of what seemed like serious business.

And serious business I thought the players made the finale – it was exciting in its way, it danced and surged, but for me it had very little of the tumbling warmth I’ve always enjoyed in this music. The speeds were very quick, and there was an element of precariousness about the exchanges between soloist and orchestra in places which added to the tension the urgency was already generating. Now call me old-fashioned if you will, but I don’t actually seek this music out as a listener for its dogged, insistent qualities, or its tensions – I’m wanting the music in this finale to evoke surgings of joy and warm-heartedness that I suspect in Schumann’s life were very precious, and savoured to the utmost when they happened for him. The “serene delight” of this music spoken about by numerous commentators was only fitfully in evidence here, and hearing Houstoun play this work left me wondering just how much he actually loved it, if at all. For me, not very much love came across in its performance overall, however impressive along the way I might have found the drive, the virtuosity, the control and the delineation of the themes.

I have to say that Houstoun got a great reception at the end – he was recalled more than once to foot-stamping ovations – so people obviously enjoyed that sense of the concerto being strongly and excitingly delivered. And I would be the first to declare that music can take as many interpretations as there are performers, if that music is delivered with sufficient conviction by those performers; and that one ought to rejoice at such variety stemming from realisations of a single work. However, Schumann’s music doesn’t “play itself”, and for me a certain dogged quality about the playing made it all just a bit one-dimensional.

The Rossini Overture, straight after the interval, was excitingly delivered, via one of Marc Taddei’s no-nonsense entrances – a brisk walk, a leap onto the podium, and a gesture plunging us straight into the music. While I enjoyed some of it immensely, I also want my Rossini to “smile”, and insinunate as much as scintillate – but there wasn’t much subtlety, though the energy was exciting enough in places.

All in all, I enjoyed the first and last items the most at the concert – Marc Taddei seems to have a “feel” for twentieth-century repertoire, as evidenced by previous forays into this repertoire with the orchestra. I thought his interpretation of Stravinsky’s wonderful Jeu de Cartes (The Game of Cards) allowed his players plenty of space to phrase and point in a way that brought it all to life, notwithstanding a couple of hesitant moments. What a feast of a score for orchestral soloists – so many solo lines, like a concerto for orchestra! Especially wonderful was the writing for brass, both solo phrases and in ensemble.

I’ve got to say that I thought the orchestra’s playing had tremendous spirit and character – there were occasional burbles in the brass, which any player will tell you is par for the course if you play such an instrument and your name isn’t Dennis Brain. The strings also had a lot to do, plenty of treacherous rhythmic dovetailing (this is Stravinsky at the height of his “neo-classical” period, revelling in rhythmic complexity and textural juxtapositions). Generally the players acquitted themselves magnificently, the odd purple patch of ensemble aside – as with the performance, earlier in the year, of Danses Concertantes, I feel they caught the “spirit” of the music and characterised the different sections vividly. Especially telling was the music for the Joker, who, throughout the work, was the disruptive “villain ” of the scenario.

The three movements are called “deals” as in a card game – and in the last deal, Stravinsky quotes from other composers’ music, in Rossini’s case directly from the Overture which we heard earlier in the second half of the programme. One could surmise that these quotations are nothing but deceptions on the part of the Joker, who, however, is defeated at the end of the game by a royal flush. Conductor and orchestra contrived to bring out all the theatricalities and chameleon-like colourings of these rites of deception, raising a ripple of mirth with the Rossini quotations, and underlining the finality of the Joker’s fate with the final, brusque quotation of the opening theme, its severity and abrupt closure splendidly conveyed, and leaving no doubt as to the hero/villain’s come-uppance.

Rapturous Mahler and more, with the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

HARRIS – Three Pieces for Orchestra

HAYDN – Cello Concerto No. 1 in C Major

MAHLER – Symphony No.5 in C-sharp Minor

Li-Wei Qin (‘cello)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Pietari Inkinen (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 17th July, 2010

This was a blockbuster of a concert, regarding both its overall length and the epic nature of the music throughout its second half. The Mahler Fifth Symphony isn’t the longest of the canon, but it has an epic grandeur that invites big, measured utterances, and the performance by the NZSO and its conductor Pietari Inkinen squared up to the work’s demands magnificently. Earlier we got Ross Harris’s Three Pieces for Orchestra, evocative vignettes of different times, places and personalities, followed by some lively, elegant Haydn from one of the stars of the world of ‘cello-playing, Li-Wei Qin.

Having a piece of contemporary music, and especially a world premiere put onto a programme always gives a concert a special flavour. Such occasions are welcomed with great interest and expectation in some quarters, and received in more conservative circles with attitudes ranging from mild tolerance to avid dislike. Ross Harris’s piece got its foot in the door rather cleverly with its different evocations of three places in Europe associated with well-known composers, one of whom was Mahler, whose name is of course forever linked with Vienna.

The work was a commission from Peter and Kathryn Walls, and was originally intended as a “calling card” for the orchestra to take on their European tour later this year. With each of the three European places named in the piece planned as part of the orchestra’s concert schedule, it seemed an ingenious idea that the orchestra should play at least the movement from the work referring to the concert’s location on each of those three occasions. One would think that concert promoters in each of those cities would jump at the idea of having a visiting orchestra play a piece written about their own part of the world, each piece emphasising an association with a great composer.

I hope the idea of touring the work goes ahead, if only because the music is so good – each piece unerringly captures a world of vivid impressions concerning a place and its effect upon a powerful creative mind. The Vienna/Mahler piece is a spiky, grotesque waltz, not unlike that of the composer’s Seventh Symphony scherzo, from which there is a quote at the music’s beginning. Parts burlesque, reverie, nightmare, and satire, the piece catches a volatility, a juxtapositioning of vastly different moods throughout, the waltz-rhythm as much a tribute to Vienna as to Mahler’s use of the dance in his music. Of the three pieces I thought it the most subtle in that the direct links to the music of the associated composer were the least “signalled”, leaving the world of pastiche far behind.

The second piece, entitled Lucerne/Wagner, began with a tolling bell, the resonances drifting over still waters, evoking the scene that must have greeted Wagner on many a morning while he lived at the Villa Tribschen, on the shores of Lake Lucerne. This was reputedly the happiest period of the composer’s life, so it was interesting that Ross’s tribute had an elegiac, almost valedictory tone, with a cor anglais solo beautifully played by Michael Austin. The last piece was called Dusseldorf/Schumann, the music right from the start restless and agitated, for me reflecting Schumann’s energetic and obsessive activities as a composer and anxieties as a performing musician. Throughout the piece the Schumannesque fingerprints juxtaposed nervous tensions and dream-like fantasisings, with golden “Rhenish-Symphony” horns summoning the composer back from the most distant realms of his creativity, and returning the music to the opening agitations, the piece concluding with an ethereal upward flourish, an ending which seemed to take most listeners by surprise.

People have been quick to point out that such an ending to a piece doesn’t make enough of a rousing impression on audiences, especially when it’s an unfamiliar work. I thought the music’s “not with a bang but with a whimper” conclusion entirely appropriate given Schumann’s tribulations and eventual descent into madness while at Dusseldorf. I was more concerned with the obviousness of one or two of the quotations in the second and third pieces, quotes which pushed the pieces more towards the realms of pastiche – I wondered whether the “Rheingold” and the “Prophet Bird” motifs in the second and third pieces respectively needed to be quite so exposed, especially as, in the “Mahler” movement, by comparison, the references to original work made for a somewhat less cliched effect. Even so, I thought that each of the pieces was quite delectably written, managing to say significant things about the ambience of interaction between composer and location in all three instances – rather like acts of homage from one creator to three others. As such, it’s a very “international” piece that should travel well – and I feel certain the orchestra will have a lot of success with it, wherever they play it, either in part or as a whole.

By dint of his association with Vienna, both as a choirboy in his young years and as a senior composer, Haydn was readily aligned with Mahler for the purposes of this concert. And if there appears to the ear very little in common between them stylistically, each composer did share and express a joy in the countryside which they expressed in their music, Haydn far more so than many of his classical contemporaries, and Mahler through his frequent “nature-music” episodes in his scores. With the latter’s Fifth Symphony, however, the impression is less of evocation of nature than of a kind of neo-classical spirit, the composer declaring that he wanted the work “to combine the contrapuntal skill of Bach with the melodiousness of Haydn and Mozart”. As for Haydn himself, there were touches of rustic vigour in his newly-discovered ‘Cello Concerto in C Major, played here by one of the stars of the world of the ‘cello, Li-Wei Qin.

This was a gentler performance than I was accustomed to, having recordings by both Rostropovich and Yo-Yo Ma, both of whom ride the work using their instrument as a kind of bucking bronco in places, a very exciting and earthy “pesante” approach to which the music readily responds. But Li-Wei Qin made the work his own through gentler, more restrained means, very musical, if in places somewhat circumspect, my impression being that he was putting the music first and the performer second. The scaled-down orchestra kept things on a similar wavelength, concentrating on beauty of tone and unanimity of phrasing, rather than snap and bite. He didn’t make the upward scales in the finale behave like skyrockets, or evoke the madness of a Keystone Cops chase with rapid figurations – it was a performance that spun the music out like gossamer thread, everything more elegant than earthy, and in the end coming off beautifully.

The evening’s heavyweight business came with the Mahler Symphony in the concert’s second half. I thought that, corporately and individually, the players delivered this work magnificently, under the direction of Pietari Inkinen. Right from the opening trumpet fanfare (Michael Kirgan’s playing of this had a wonderfully urgent sense of sounding an alarm to the world, which sent shivers down the back of my neck!), one felt that the players were there for the long haul, bar by bar, bringing out everything they possibly could from the music. I was struck by the excellence of the solo instrumental playing as much as by the ensemble – and this work, as with a number of the Mahler symphonies, abounds in opportunities for solo playing, quite scarily in places where the player is so exposed (as with that trumpet opening).

I can recall hearing at least two previous performances by the orchestra of this work, the most recent being in 2006 with Susanna Mälkki (coincidentally, from the same part of the world as Inkinen)  – and, while I admired Mälkki’s skills and her commitment to other music she conducted here, I thought her interpretation of the Mahler fairly unsympathetic. The work was rattled through at what seemed like a tremendous pace, which brought forth brilliant playing from the orchestra but with so much of what I thought of as the music’s character ignored – its tremendous weight at the start, its charm and circumspection in the middle, and its lyrical beauty and good humour at the end – all seemed to me sacrificed to brilliance. Of course, this is music that, like all great works of a similar ilk, can be played many different ways and still work its magic upon audiences – rarely is a great piece of music performed to nobody’s (or everybody’s) satisfaction.

Thankfully, Pietari Inkinen seemed far more involved with the work’s spirit throughout, taking great pains to characterise strongly the symphony’s three parts – the grim purpose of the first two movements, the dancing energies and nostalgic remembrances of the third movement, and the romance and gurgling good humour of the final two movements all received their dues. Where the interpretation really blossomed for me was with the third movement, the waltz-scherzo, the movement of which Mahler predicted that “conductors for the next fifty years will take it too fast!”. Inkinen seemed to have fully heeded the composer’s warning, and directed a performance with such lilt and charm and sensitivity to changing moods that the whole hall took on a kind of ambient glow at the shared pleasure of it all. The horn section, led by Ed Allen, played like heroes, sounding their frequent calls with golden tones across magically-conceived soundscapes, while the rest of the orchestra danced and ruminated by turns, Inkinen getting from the players real point to the Viennese rhythms throughout.

Another of the work’s features was the contrapuntal character of Mahler’s writing, again in the waltz-scherzo, but also in the finale. Conductor and players brought out these interactive lines with lots of energy, humour and bubble, the music given room to breathe and for the phrases allowed plenty of “point” – in fact the music takes on an almost concerto grosso aspect in places, with frequent quotations from the composer’s own songs and the counterpoint to which the melodic lines were yoked given as much to a variety of solo instruments as to the strings or brass sections. As for the work’s most famous movement, the strings-and-harp Adagietto, beloved of both film-makers and musak-merchants, it was played here so simply and with such pure intensity (at a natural breathing-pace) that it sounded for all the world as though it had been freshly-composed – it just unfolded, strand by strand, episode by episode, to magical effect (and I loved the basses’ choreography throughout their final descending phrase, the players swaying and digging into each bow-stroke as though their lives depended upon the outcome).

My only reservations came with the first two movements, neither of which I thought generated enough “weight” to adequately support what the brass players were doing so wonderfully with the top lines. I didn’t think there was quite enough sense of enormous crushing power in the tread of the first movement, and especially not in those baleful chromatic descents which conclude with percussive strokes that ought to shake the surrounding’s very foundations – I wanted the lower instruments at those points to really dig in and to “thwack”, to bring us right to the edge of the abyss, as it were, generating more of a sense of “Do not go gentle into that good night” throughout what the composer intended to be a funeral march. In the second movement, I felt the music’s baleful aspect was underplayed, the horns for one not given sufficient encouragement to roar in places, and the percussion held in check for most of the movement – that is, until the appearance of the work’s mighty crossbeam, the great brass chorale, where Inkinen seemed at last to really “open the music up” and give us a searing glimpse of something akin to the eternal, the orchestral playing magnificent almost to the point of pre-empting the chorale’s re-appearance at the end of the finale.

Had we experienced this degree of tonal weight and deep intensity earlier in the work, I would want to say that the performance was the finest I had ever heard of the symphony. As it was, Inkinen and the NZSO were able to spectacularly convey the work’s cumulative effect sufficiently for us to take into our hearts something of the composer’s idea of this worlde’s joye. No matter that the concert stretched on into the night later than was usual (a 7:30pm starting time would have helped in this case) – the exhalations of pleasure I heard from people all around me at the exciting conclusion of the symphony’s finale spoke volumes regarding the thrills of the music-making and the success of the concert.

Strings attached – viola then violin at the NZSM

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Douglas Lilburn – Suite for Solo Viola

Cesar Franck – Sonata for Violin and Piano

Donald Maurice (viola)

Rupa Maitra (violin) / Ching-Fen Lee (piano)

New Zealand School of Music

Lunchtime Concert, Adam Concert Room

Friday 16th July 2010

Having already played Douglas Lilburn’s Suite for Solo Viola at a recent St.Andrew’s lunchtime concert, violist Donald Maurice decided to make further amends for the work’s previous neglect in recital by performing the suite again, at the Adam Concert Room on the Victoria University campus. This brought the work’s total of performances in this country to three, including the New Zealand premiere in 1989, played by Michael Vidulich in Auckland. This second performance by Donald Maurice was, I thought, more confidently and securely voiced than the first, undoubtedly the fruit of the player having brought the work up to performance pitch a second time in a short while, and living with the music close at hand in the interim. I’m sure my own increased familiarity with the music also contributed to the sense I felt of the work being given a deeper, richer aspect this time round, as was my own appreciation of what the composer was able to achieve writing for what must have been for him a relatively unfamiliar instrument. It must have been one he thought well of, enough to write within a few years a second piece featuring the viola, this time in duet with a baritone voice, the Three Songs of 1958.

As noted with the earlier performance, the first movement’s poco lento allowed the instrument’s magnificently rich and uniquely melancholy tones full opportunity to sing –  Lilburn’s blend of folk-lyricism and austerity reminded me this time round of some of Holst’s writing in works like his Lyric Movement for strings and solo viola. In contrast, the following movement’s “Quick” evoked the dance, with lovely reminiscences of the Scherzo of the composer’s Second Symphony, and spiky double-stopped seconds flavouring the melodic line, with a quirkily-slurred pizzicato note to finish the piece. I thought the succeeding piece “Lightly” enigmatic and ambivalent on first hearing, this time registering the music’s insistence and scarcely repressed nervous energy, perhaps denoting some anxiety on the composer’s part at the time of writing – though the piece seems to gradually ritualise its insistence with dance-like measures that finish on a more lyrical, even sombre note (all beautifully and vividly characterised by the player, I thought).

The fourth movement became, of course, the work’s prodigal son, revealing itself only in the performance by the dedicatee Jean McCartney’s grandson, James Munro, in Australia, in 2002. Regardless of whether the composer completed the serialist tone-row sequence he’d set out to do, the music has “other lives” involving effects created by a recitative-like tone punctuated by expressive trills and irruptions of rhythmic patterning. The intervals of the tone-row themselves expressed an interesting “adventure-sequence”, coincidentally in line with the idea of a work rediscovered after being lost in an ambient wilderness. The finale’s flowing ritual was nicely brought out at the beginning, Donald Maurice tightening up the textures and patternings of the music splendidly as the movement progressed, even if the occasional quicker figuration showed some intonation edginess at the tops of the phrases. My impression, after the music had finished, was of a journey well worth making, and with the opportunity to hear the work repeated in such a short space of time nothing short of a godsend.

More analytical minds than mine might well have been able to establish connections between the two works scheduled for this concert, with the Lilburn work followed by Cesar Franck’s full-blooded, overtly passionate Violin Sonata, played by Rupa Maitra, with Ching-Fen Lee on the piano. All I could think of was “vive la difference” as I listened to this gorgeous work unfold at the hands of two very skilful and committed musicians. The work’s opening phrases were beautifully floated, the violinist, though smallish-toned, demonstrating just enough variation to lead our ears onwards; while the pianist kept the music’s poise and gravity to the fore, not letting the feeling spill over at too early a stage. As well, occasional touches of portamento gave Rupa Maitra’s playing a slightly old-worldly air, in keeping with the late-romantic atmosphere the players were generating so well – both the culminating phrase of the “big theme” and the last ascent to the top note at the movement’s end were delivered with just the right amount of weight to realise the pent-up emotion of the music, which of course, surged and overflowed throughout the following allegro. Both musicians dug into the music splendidly, even if the violinist’s intonation occasionally went awry under pressure. The central declamations from both musicians were passionate and involved, and the coda was nicely prepared for, very “charged” at the start, and then excitingly negotiated.

The slow movement’s opening has an almost Shakespearean quality of utterance, both musicians catching the improvisatory and volatile air of the dialogue, and heightening the exchanges with well-timed breath-catchings of great stillness. They also beautifully coloured the finale’s second subject precursor, which stole in for its first appearance, before giving way to the great falling-interval theme that dominates the second half of this movement, here played juicily and whole-heartedly by Rupa Maitra, and supported with rich, spacious tones from pianist Ching-Fen Lee. The finale began sweetly, the canonic theme light and supple at first and gathering weight, with both violinist and pianist suitably trenchant when required, Rupa Maitra surviving an off-colour falling-theme episode which steadfastedly refused to find the note (her previous announcement of the same theme, a few phrases earlier, had been nicely in-tune, such are the anomalies of performance). But recovery was assured and easeful, as the opening theme returned and built gradually towards the “swinging” coda, thrills and spills adding to the excitement of reaching that final unison A – an enjoyable, and at times, stirring performance.

“From Garden To Grave” – Margaret Medlyn and Bruce Greenfield

Posted on by Peter Mechen

FROM GARDEN TO GRAVE – A Benefit Recital

Jack C. Richards Music Scholarship for Overseas PostGraduate Study

Margaret Medlyn (soprano)

Bruce Greenfield (piano)

STEPHAN PROCK – Song Cycle “Cages for the Wind” (poems by Alastair Campbell)

JENNY McLEOD – Song Cycle “From Garden To Grave” (poems by Janet Frame)

Songs by SERGEI RACHMANINOV and ERICH KORNGOLD

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University

Sunday 11th July 2010

It’s said that piano recitals and song recitals don’t draw the crowds sufficiently for them to be financially viable undertakings on a regular basis – just why this is, when some of the world’s greatest music has been written for each of these genres by nearly all of the great composers taxes my understanding somewhat. The perception seems to be that with chamber music there are a number of performers in view whose interaction provides plenty of interest and variety, whereas both piano- and song-recitals are too static, too insufficiently varied to sustain an audience’s attention. It’s an attitude that’s part of a general present-age malaise involving people’s priorities, an idea that the purely “listening” experience is no longer good enough for concert-goers. These days the eye must be entertained as well as the ear – the concept of having an “inner vision” generated by musical sounds and fed by one’s imagination has been devalued in favour of and overlaid by a pre-requisite surface gloss.

In a recent issue of the once-esteemed “Gramophone” magazine, I was disturbed to read a statement by a critic which asked (not altogether rhetorically) why anybody would bother with audio-only listening to opera when one had any number of DVDs available to view as well as hear the same repertoire. Well I have tried production after opera production on DVD, and can safely say that a good two-thirds of them that I’ve encountered irritate me so much with spurious, ill-conceived “visual conceptualisings”, that I often find myself reaching gratefully for my audio-only CDs and LPs, so I can listen to the music undistracted. But I digress somewhat from the real point of this review, which is to proclaim, to anybody who wants to listen, or read, or whatever, that song recitals (and piano recitals, for that matter) can work brilliantly and engage the listener’s sensibilities most satisfyingly when delivered with the energy, panache and heartfelt feeling that soprano Margaret Medlyn and pianist Bruce Greenfield gave to their recent “From Garden to Grave” presentation at Victoria University’s Hunter Concert Chamber.

Margaret Medlyn is, in fact, a concert-goer’s dream of a performer – her total identification with anything she chooses to perform makes the experience for the listener one of being taken profoundly by her into the world of whatever work she’s presenting. Unlike some charismatic performers, who invest whatever music they make with their own personalities to the extent that the composer’s vision is somewhat obscured or diverted, Medlyn gives herself entirely to whatever role she’s playing. The three operatic roles I’ve seen her undertake in recent times have all involved this process of abandonment of self and complete subsumption into these roles – Kundry in Parsifal, Judith in Bluebeard’s Castle and Kostelnicka in Janacek’s Jenufa. On the recital platform, she’s perhaps a bit alarming for people who might be expecting a degree or so more circumspection in non-operatic music. But one gets the feeling (as I did throughout this present recital) of having been transported as a listener to the pulsating heart of every piece of music she performs – and together with the excellent Bruce Greenfield on the piano, Medlyn engaged us totally throughout what was an emotionally heartfelt programme, from the overt romanticism of the Rachmaninov and Korngold songs to the full-blooded angularities of Jenny McLeod’s realisations of Janet Frame’s poems.

Right from the opening of the first Rachmaninov song O Stay My Love singer and pianist demonstrated their “engaged on all points” connection with the music, making  surgings within the work’s greater crescendo, their control of ebb and flow very much an art that concealed art. In the Silent Night, though more lyrical, still featured an intense climax – the composer’s often-declared practice of constructing a “point” within a work very much in evidence here – and how persuasively the singer encompassed both forthright and hushed concluding intensities in what seemed like a single span! Lilacs was exquisitely done by both musicians, restrained, but suggesting whole worlds of loveliness, contrasting sharply with the intense drama of the following Loneliness, the music over the four settings giving ample and compelling notice of Rachmaninov’s range of variation and expression as a song-writer.

One would have thought Alastair Campbell’s poetry eminently suited to musical settings, the poet’s feeling for lyricism and powerful imagery tempered by an innate sense of structure and rhythmic symmetry, which has the effect of the words being as much sung as read whenever the poetry is encountered. American-born composer Stephan Prock, currently working at the New Zealand School of Music as a senior lecturer in composition, was commissioned by Professor Jack C. Richards to write a cycle of settings of Campbell’s poetry for Margaret Medlyn to perform; so this was the work’s premiere performance. Stephan Prock himself wrote about the poetry’s singability in his programme notes, telling us that, upon reading, the words “began to suggest musical atmospheres and vocal lines infolding…like buds of roses unfurling their petals…” And I liked his open-hearted remark that followed: “When poems begin to sing themselves to me, I know I have found the right material”.

Prock took the last five poems from a collection called Cages in the Wind and set them as a cycle. The first, Words and Roses brought out a full-textured response at the outset, the piano tumbling and the singer declaiming, the music’s soaring energies dissolving upwards to a point of quiet ecstasy, like an aftermath of lovemaking. By contrast, Warning to Children was theatrical and frightening, eminently suiting Medlyn’s voice and Greenfield’s virtuoso piano playing, the performers enjoying the piece’s off-beat rhythms and sudden changes of mood. The third setting Gift of Dreams presented a swirling, vertiginous fantasyscape, Medlyn passionate and abandoned as the sequence swirled onward towards what seemed like a distant realm of continuance. Then came another contrast, with Whitey, a piquant, atmospheric tribute to a blackbird who regularly visited the poet’s garden, the vocal line soaring and the piano beautifully emulating the ambient birdsong, the text becoming a meditation upon life’s passing as the singer voiced the line “And I murmur to his ghost”, before farewelling the visitor’s shade, to a concluding echo of the bird’s song. Finally, Roots plunged us back into monumentability, the piano’s agitations reminiscent of parts of Lilburn’s Elegy, before circumspection overtook the singer’s powerful utterances, and  gradually brought about an elegiac mood, the piano deeply and quietly resounding at the close. A beautiful work, the performance realising all of the force, whimsy and tender sentiment of the settings.

I wasn’t familiar with the Korngold songs that made up the next bracket on the programme – but from what I did know of the composer I would have expected the music to be steeped in the lushest of romantic idioms and tones; and so it proved. The opening Sterbelied (a setting of Christina Rosetti’s well-known When I am dead, my dearest ) required and got the kind of full-blooded emotional commitment from the singer that Margaret Medlyn’s so richly able to supply, and with Bruce Greenfield’s piano playing its part in supporting the voice via generously-filled resonances. Two songs from Korngold’s Op.22 followed, the first, Mit Dir zu schweigen setting a text by Karl Kobald, one which evokes a kind of “love’s fulfilment” wrought by a silence shared with the beloved, the music enabling singer and pianist to “‘float” their tones throughout drifting, exploratory harmonies which express the endlessness of oblivion. The second, Was Du mir bist, was a setting of verses by Eleonore van der Straten, describing an almost fairy-tale evocation of a world wrought by the power of love, the music imbued with rapture and largesse of joyous feeling – the voice radiant throughout, the accompanying piano tones by turns grand and celestial.

The prospect of Margaret Medlyn and Bruce Greenfield performing a Jenny McLeod song-cycle immediately brought to mind a similar composer/performers collaboration splendidly recorded some years ago by Kiwi-Pacific on a disc called Burning Bright, and which featured McLeod’s settings of a group of William Blake’s poems entitled Through the World, a work I’d very much like to hear again “live”. But this was something different, a later work (again commissioned by Jack Richards, and actually dedicated by the composer to the pianist, Bruce Greenfield) whose title, From Garden to Grave, gave the recital its name. The work sets eight of Janet Frame’s poems, taken from two collections, The Pocket Mirror and The Goose Bath; and the cycle’s title comes from the sixth poem Freesias. The titles of the individual poems are themselves a delight, the first, When the Sun shines More Years than Fear, a declamatory plea for a better world featuring a strong vocal line and a detailed, volatile piano part. The composer’s “brief turn on an old song” drolly describes the descending/ascending musical topography of I Must Go Down to the Seas Again, while the third A Visit to the Retired English Professor incorporates a “parlando-like” introduction consisting of the title, followed by a delightfully discursive record of an unhurried encounter.

What fun Margaret Medlyn had with At the Opera – lots of “tessitura” and a moment of gleeful audience confrontation, likening we hapless spectators to “tier on tier” of grim-looking listeners! A few strained cruelly high notes took nothing away from the performance’s panache and enjoyment. The title of the next piece was sung – My Mother Remembers Her Fellow-Pupils at School – and the names of various contemporaries were poignantly resurrected, with each utterance given a different weight or colour, the exchange nicely delivered by singer and pianist, including the whimsical forgetfulness at the end. Probably the most “weighted” was Freesias, partly sung, partly spoken, dramatic utterances that were heartfelt and wry by turns, the writer trying, it seemed, to keep the pain out of the poetry, at times capitulating with utterances  like “but I cannot keep my promise”, and bowing the head to the music’s tolling bells and funereal aspect. After these emotional stretches and strainings, Medlyn and Greenfield gave both Too Cold and The Chickadee a droll cheerfulness that seemed eminently suited to the composer’s “life goes on” impulses by way of both renewal and resignation. In all, I thought the cycle a work to be savoured and, hopefully, revisited.

Music that has triumphantly stood the test of time is Rachmaninov’s, despite certain dire predictions of eventual extinction in some quarters half-a-century ago; and thanks to advocacy such as that of the late Elisabeth Söderström’s on record, the songs are coming into their own as magnificent late-romantic outpourings of intense feeling and sensibility, works wonderfully and exquisitely crafted. Often they require interpretative responses of an order that threaten to break the confines of their physical performance parameters, as Medlyn and Greenfield demonstrated with the unashamed operatic presentation given the magnificent Spring Waters, the singer’s highest notes not ideally pure and easeful, but somehow conveying in the throes of effortful expression an extra dimension to the music’s essence. As for the piano writing, Medlyn’s unashamed acknowledgement of her pianist’s positively orchestral playing even before the song’s end brought the house down on behalf of both musicians!

Not as paganistic, but just as heartfelt in a more devotional sense, was the pair’s performance of Prayer, a breath-catching evocation of a penitent’s torment through guilt, the major/minor oscillations at the song’s end symbolising the conflicting states of emotion. A happier mood was suggested with Before My Window, the music’s unashamed lyricism almost pure “Dr Zhivago” in form and feeling, voice and piano weaving beautiful double-stranded arabesques in rapture at the beauty and intoxicating scent of the cherry blossom. Finally, the heady emotion of Midsummer Nights brought forth tones of the most passionate order from both musicians, feelings burgeoning at “graceful realms of happiness”, and rising like a sea-swell yet again in a paean of praise for the moonlight of midsummer and its resplendent beauties.

This recital was held as a benefit for the Jack C Richards Music Scholarship Award for postgraduate students enrolled full-time at the NZSM, who wish to undertake overseas study. Besides supporting an extremely worthy cause, the concert served to underline what we concertgoers miss by having so few opportunities to enjoy song recitals given by our top singers. Margaret Medlyn and Bruce Greenfield certainly gave us such a one, a musical experience well worth savouring.