Author: Peter Mechen

Saint-Saëns, Psalms and Spirituals from the Festival Singers

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Saint-Saëns – Mass Op.4 / Works by Felix Mendelssohn, John Rutter, René Clausen, Zsolt Gárdonyi, Moses Hogan and William Henry Smith

Clarissa Dunn (soprano), Bianca Andrew (mezzo-soprano),  Chris Anderson (tenor),  Kieran Rayner (baritone)

Jonathan Berkahn (organ, piano), Paul Rosoman (organ)

Festival Singers

Rosemary Russell (director)

Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul

Hill St., Wellington

Saturday 29th May 2010

“Camille Saint-Saëns was wracked with pains,

When people addressed him as “Saint-Saynes”;

He held the human race to blame,

because it could not pronounce his name.”

Readers who remember Ogden Nash’s verses will sympathise further with Camille Saint-Saëns in his predicament at being known as a composer primarily for his zoological fantasy “Carnival of the Animals”, though his “Organ” Symphony and several of his concertos for violin, for ‘cello and for piano, have always figured in concert programmes. All gratitude, therefore, to the Festival Singers here in Wellington, for presenting in concert a relative rarity, the composer’s Mass Op.4, written in 1856 when Saint-Saëns was twenty-one, and working as an organist at the church of St-Merry, in Paris. Originally written with orchestral accompaniment, along with the two organs (grand and petite), the work was performed by the Festival Singers in the composer’s later arrangement made without the orchestra. Always his own man in whatever he did, Saint-Saëns largely ignored the more “operatic” vocal style of the liturgical music of his contemporaries, instead choosing to emulate various “historical” precedents, such as the exchanges between the two organs which open the work, and the alternating of organ and choir immediately following, called “alternatum”. Other influences on the work are those of plainchant, of renaissance-like polyphony, of Bachian counterpoint and the sense of drama expressed in the masses of Haydn and Mozart.

At first, the opening alternating statements by the two organs were puzzling – though nicely antiphonal and varied, there was little sense of forward movement or projected focus, which in itself created a kind of tension. The entry of the voices for the Kyrie then seemed to uncover a hitherto concealed pathway along which the music could then move. Whether the youthful composer had this almost “cut adrift” effect in mind at the outset which could then be energised in a specific direction, I’m not sure; but a sense of expectation-cum-bemusement was engendered by the organ dialogues at the beginning, making the entry of the choir a moment of real frisson, of sudden enlightenment and compelling forward motion.

As with the performance of the Dvorak Mass last year, I thought the Singers revelled in presenting to its audience music that ought to be far better known. The work of both soloists and chorus constantly delighted the ear, the full choir able to set the voluminous spaces of the cathedral resounding, even if some of the singing of the sections, through dint of lack of numbers, couldn’t manage the evenness of tone required by some of the exchanges (the women outnumbering the men, and their lines consequently rather more consistently full-toned and secure). Each of the four soloists, soprano Clarissa Dunn, mezzo Bianca Andrew, tenor Chris Anderson and baritone Kieran Rayner, gave particular pleasure with their work, and blended their voices beautifully throughout. Both Jonathan Berkahn and Paul Rosoman contributed stirring organ solos, the latter setting the spaces thundering and shaking with the larger instrument’s grandeur of utterance in places, and setting off the delicacy and poise of Jonathan Berkahn’s playing of the “petite orgue”, accompanying the choir throughout most of the work. Rosemary Russell’s direction seemed to me to be exactly what the music asked for at all times – one could imagine a more tautly-conceived introduction, perhaps, but such a course may well have gained little for the work and lost that air of expectancy which both the silences and the natural flow of the organ-playing built up.

After the interval came the “Psalms and Spirituals”, a sequence whose success surprised and delighted me, as I thought it worked well. The Psalms were begun with Mendelssohn’s energetic and festive “Jauchzet dem Herrn”, the unccompanied choir confident, secure and accurate, and the solo soprano voices from the body of the choir spectacularly good. Somewhat less compelling as a work and as a performance was John Rutter’s “I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes”, the ethereal tones of the “petite orgue” blending sweetly with the small but properly plaintive tenor voices, the full choral passages confident, if occasionally over-balanced on the women’s side. I thought the fragmented vocal lines towards the end (broken up by frequent organ passages, albeit beautifully played) made it difficult for the choir to maintain its tones securely, though forgiveness was forthcoming at the very end with the delicately-floated “Amens”.

American composer René Clausen’s “All That Hath Life And Breath Praise Ye the Lord” featured lively unaccompanied singing, with a striking “many tongues” effect towards the end of the piece, not completely accurate in pitch, but with a real sense of bubbling excitement in the textures – again some sonorous, well-focused work came from a solo soprano choral voice, while the rest of the sopranos brought off a lovely ostinato-accompanied reprise of the main theme midway through. I liked the second John Rutter Psalm “The Lord Is My Shepherd” better than I did the first one, the singing well-rounded (tenors keeping their line despite a touch of strain) and a delicious organ solo sounding as though poet Christopher Smart’s cat Jeffrey had wandered into the work from one of Benjamin Britten’s pieces. Another Rutter Psalm-setting “O Clap Your hands” evoked a dance-spirit with occasional bell-like descending figures, though I thought either the composer or the performers could have given the work’s last couple of pages a little bit more energy and “ring”.

Saint-Saens’s music made a reappearance with his “Ave Maria” sung as a duet by Clarissa Dunn and Bianca Andrew, a welcome change from the over-performed Gounod setting, and one which again enlarged one’s appreciation of the composer and his work. Accompanied by some sensitive piano-playing from Jonathan Berkhan, the singers captured the joyous radiance of the first part of the prayer, and the clouded-over, minor-key supplication of the second.  Bianca Andrew took a strong and heartfelt canonic lead through the latter episode, before easing gratefully back into major-key mode together with her equally melifluous-voiced soprano partner for a beautifully-floated “Amen”. The composer might or might not have approved of his music being juxtaposed with such a bluesy number as “Somebody’s knockin'”, the first of the Spirituals, and probably the funkiest of the selection, the piano accompaniment being particularly moved by the spirit in Jonathan Berkahn’s capable hands. I liked the variation of atmosphere from piece to piece underlined by the different accompaniments, a capella alternating with piano, and a primitive-sounding African-style beat for “Keep Your Lamps!”, which conductor and percussionist launched successfully after a “ready-steady” first attempt. The groundswell of feeling engendered by the final item “There is a Balm in Gilead” satisfied on all counts, appropriately featuring a sweetly dignified soprano voice from the choir and a gently-rocking piano accompaniment – a warm and engaging way to end an enjoyable concert.

Venetian Carnival with the Wallfisch Band – Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Eizabeth Wallfisch (violin), director / Raquel Massadas (viola) / Jaap ter Linden (‘cello) / Albert-Jan Roelofs (harpsichord)

with:

Miranda Hutton, Kate Goodbehere, Shelley Wilkinson, Lara Hall, James Andrewes (violins) / Fiona Haughton (viola) / Emma Goodbehere (‘cello) / Rchard Hardie (double-bass)

LOCATELLI – Concerto in F Op.4 No.8 (à immatatione de Corni da Caccia) / Concerto in F for 4 violins and strings Op.4 No.12 / Concerto Grosso in E-flat Op.7 No.6 (Il pianto d’Arianna) / Concerto in D for violin and strings Op.3 No.1

VIVALDI – Concerto in D for 2 violins and 2 ‘cellos RV564 / Concerto in A Minor for violin and strings RV356 (L’estro armonico) / Concerto in A for 2 violins and strings RV519

Wellington Town Hall

Thursday 20th May 2010

Elizabeth Wallfisch is one of the great “characters” of early music performance world-wide, as her inspirational skills, enthusiasm, and down-to-earth sense of fun as a performer amply demonstrated in the Wallfisch Band’s recent Wellington Town Hall concert. This was no ordinary event featuring a standard “touring ensemble”, but the most recent in a series of projects by the Band, the idea for which was begun by Wallfisch in 2008. This was to bring together a core group of skilled seasoned performers and a number of promising younger players as a kind of “living masterclass” experience for the young musicians involving a number of concert performances by the ensemble as part of the experience.

The results were astonishing, the young New Zealanders responding to the challenge of matching the technical excellences and musicianship of the experienced players with well-founded poise and confidence, and in places, heart-warming élan. Under these circumstances the playing naturally lacked in places the seamless technical polish of crack professional ensembles; but there was not a jot of routine or an unmotivated gesture in the music-making throughout the evening. And moulding everything together with the strength of her leadership and warmth of her personality was the remarkable Elisabeth Wallfisch, a wonderfully star-spangled presence in tight-fitting trousers whose silvery scintillations probably drew as much audience attention as did her remarkable playing, an effect heightened by the player’s standing throughout and frequently moving across the platform to a microphone to talk to her audience (as a result of these uncharacteristic extra-musical musings, I look forward to the reproving “Letters to the Editor”!).

Speaking about the Band’s “masterclass” arrangement, Wallfisch had nothing but praise for the young players in the ensemble, on the face of things a somewhat predictable tribute, but one which her straight-from-the-shoulder manner, and the subsequent performances richly upheld. She said at one point, “We worked them hard!”, and I’ve no doubt that the musicians in question would have experienced, both individually and corporally, a unique kind of enrichment by association that no amount of conventional teaching could have approached.

To the uninitiated, the concert’s programme might have seemed on the face of it to be made up of pleasant but somewhat unvaried fare – all strings for one, and each work possibly difficult to distinguish from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” concerti. However, Elizabeth Wallfisch set the scene for the distinctive qualities of the concert’s first item, by Pietro Locatelli, describing the opening as depicting “the mist rising over the lagoon”. The group beautifully built up layers of tone and impulses of animation as the music did its work of steeping our sensibilities in the glory that was, and still is, Venice. Further, more vigorous episodes found the players emphasizing an engaging out-of-doors flavour, with slashing szforzandi and vigorous attack suggesting rustic pursuits such as horse-riding and hunting. So, on the face of it, very like the “Four Seasons” concerti, one could say, except that Locatelli’s compositional style seemed more volatile and narrative-based than Vivaldi’s – less “pure” as music, but more anecdotal and unpredictable. As the group alternated Locatelli’s and Vivaldi’s works throughout the concert, one had the opportunity to instantly compare the two varied compositional methods.

Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Violins and Two ‘Cellos which followed featured plenty of melismatic duo work between the “pairs” of instruments. The violins’ articulation seemed almost a blur at the rapid speed set by the leader, an effect which the composer presumably wanted! The interplay between solo instruments was filled throughout with effects such as echo and canonic imitation, the duo pairings seeming to hunt as such to give each other support. Another concerto featuring four soloists was Locatelli’s for four violins Op.4 No.12, a work described by Elizabeth Wallfisch as “an acrobatic concerto of danger and excitement”, and one which certainly lived up to its description, most notably in the finale, with its rapid phrase-passing from instrument to instrument. Though the articulation was occasionally uneven between the players in the most quick-fire exchanges, the spirit never flagged, and the timbral differences between instruments, laid bare by such an exercise, were fascinating to register.

Such was the overall bonhomie of the occasion, that Elizabeth Wallfisch’s repeated attempts to sound the top note of one of her opening phrases in the Vivaldi A Minor concerto from “L’Estro Armonico” which followed met with great amusement and interest from the audience. I notoiced that Wallfisch’s tone, though largely vibrato-less, remained warm and pliable throughout this work, a sound somewhat removed from the steely, bloodless pin-pointed lines one finds on most recordings of baroque string instruments these days, a playing-style I confess I find it almost impossible to abide, “authentic” or no.

The Locatelli Concerto Op.7 No.6 that immediately followed the interval was a depiction in music of the Greek myth of “Ariadne on Naxos” – Wallfisch told us the music would depict calm seas turning tempestuous, deep lamentations as Ariadne is abandoned, and a tragic ending. Certainly the music’s descriptive and narrative capacities rivalled any such sequence in Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”, the playing by the ensemble making the most of the composer’s penchant for richly-wrought narrative textures. As cautioned, we were ready for the work’s conclusion when it came, a heart-rending single, rapt, long-held note gradually merging with a pitiless silence. After that we needed something a bit more ebullient, and Vivaldi came to our rescue with his Op.3 No.5 Concerto for Two Violins, with its brilliant, varied interchange between the soloists, the music’s volatility suggesting that Vivaldi could occasionally sound like Locatelli.. This was so brilliantly brought off that the group chose to encore the finale at the end of the concert.

But it was Locatelli who brought the scheduled music-making to its conclusion with his Op.3 No.2 Violin Concerto, Elizabeth Wallfisch making the point before this work was played that the composer had a reputation for a certain roughness of manner as a player, and that he tended to wear out his bowstrings before anybody else. It may have been due to tiredness that Wallfisch had a couple of intonation lapses in the first movement and seemed actually to lose her poise for a second or two just before the cadenza, though her ensuing filigree “soft as a whisper” playing could hardly be faulted. The slow movement featured some high-wire decorative work by the soloist, along with one or two confidently-played portamenti, a startling effect to these ears!  Still, it was in the finale that the virtuoso element was explored in all its “baroque-like” glory – Locatelli’s high writing required a spooky, almost skeletal effect, a distinctive timbre which the soloist brought off wonderfully, if not without the occasional spill – the cadenza allowed Wallfisch to conspire with the audience via a knowing look and a sudden plunge back into further complex figurations after the orchestra had readied itself for the expected cadential entry – all tremendous fun, and thrown off with great verve. The aforementioned encore rightly refocused our attention upon the collaborative nature of the music-making that had been such a distinctive and memorable feature of the concert.

Bravo, the Wallfisch Band and its associates for a splendid evening!

Mozart, da Ponte and Figaro ride again – NBR New Zealand Opera

Posted on by Peter Mechen

MOZART  – Le Nozze di Figaro (Opera in Four Acts)

NBR New Zealand Opera 2010 Wellington (May) and Auckland (June)

Cast: Wade Kermot (Figaro), Emma Pearson (Susanna), Gennandi Dubinsky (Dr. Bartolo), Helen Medlyn (Marcellina), Wendy Dawn Thompson (Cherubino), Riccardo Novaro (Count Almaviva), Nuccia Focile (Countess Almaviva), Richard Greager (Don Basilio), Richard Green (Antonio), Derek Hill (Don Curio), Alexandra Ioan (Barbarina), Helen Lear, Polly Ott (Bridesmaids)

Lionel Friend (conductor)

Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus (Michael Vinten – chorus-master)

Vector Wellington Orchestra

St.James Theatre, Wellington

Saturday 15th May

NBR New Zealand Opera’s most recent production of the perennial favourite, Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” looked and sounded splendid on the opening night in Wellington. Despite one or two modernist quirks of production, this was definitely a “period” setting, with costumes, surroundings and ambiences that mostly sat well with the music and the drama. Onstage, behind an initially overbearing, almost fortress-like latticed wall which opened and closed at will were rooms with largely bare, elevated walls and tall doors, the spaces expanding, contracting or dividing to suit whatever scene. Interestingly, a friend was reminded by the clear lines and cool, austere spaces of Vermeer’s paintings; while another remarked upon the scale of things creating a kind of dolls’ house scenario. Generally designer Robin Rawstorne’s spaces and David Eversfield’s lighting nicely reflected nearly each scene of the drama’s business at hand, though I felt the extreme height of everything took away some of the conspiratorial drawing-room ambience of many of the goings-on, especially in the First Act. And while I appreciated (perhaps slightly voyeuristically) the luxury and spaciousness of the Countess’s bourdoir, I thought the window stylistically out of keeping with the design of everything else, as well as being too high for Susanna to plausibly announce to us that she could view the progress of the errant pageboy Cherubino, once he’d made his escape by jumping out of the same opening.

It would follow from this that I had misgivings regarding the final act’s setting – instead of a “garden”, there were stylised Mediterranean-like marble terracings, sensuously curved and almost aromatically lit, but in my view out of keeping with the more naturalistic environments of the previous three acts of the drama. If the intention was to create a kind of dream-sequence of denoument and resolution, then well and good; but one would have thought Mozart and da Ponte wished the motivations of thought and action as earthy and driven in this scene as in any other. Having made my complaint I feel bound to report that the acting and singing of the characters, as well as the orchestral playing (with especially beautiful winds!), transcended any visual incongruities, and, with the great moment of the Countess’s forgiveness of her errant husband making as tear-inducing and lip-trembling an encounter as ever, the drama’s point of fulfilment was triumphantly reached and borne aloft during the sparkling finale that followed.

The aforementioned medieval fortress-like curtain which greeted us upon our arrival was in direct contrast to the sparkle of the overture and the saucy exchanges between Figaro and Susanna during the first scene (rather TOO cramped a space, even with the high walls, it seemed to me). Wade Kermot’s Figaro was handsomely sung, with the occasional note richly upholstered, giving us ample notice of his voice’s expressive potential. The only thing I felt underdeveloped in his portrayal was true wit, the kind of joviality that would have set him up so well in his previous career as Seville’s most famous factotum, and enabled him to be more than a match this time round for his employer-cum-adversary, the Count. This quality his on-and-off-stage partner Emma Pearson had in abundance as Susanna, in a sense, her “lightness of being” acting as a foil to her lover’s seriousness of purpose, but always suggesting depth of character and whole-heartedness – a lovely performance, deliciously sung.

Their noble counterparts, Riccardo Novaro as Count Alvaviva and Nuccia Focile as his Countess Rosina, each presented a richly-wrought stage character. Riccardo Novaro’s elegantly-sung Count possessed a focused suavity, through which flickered the fires of his restlessness and sexual appetite, a portrayal finely calculated save for what I thought an unfortunately gratuitous kick which he aimed at a servant girl at the beginning of the Third Act. As for his “predatory spider” aspect in the “dream-garden” at the end, it was, by that stage in the proceedings, a case of “desperate people doing desperate things”, and acceptable as such, rather like the hilarious “coitus interruptus” scene involving the noble couple and Susanna earlier, in the Countess’s bourdoir. Nuccia Focile’s gorgeous Countess readily brought to mind the humanity and girlishness of Rosina, the ward of Doctor Bartolo, amid her stylish grace and nobility of bearing. Although less “pure” than I remembered, her voice and delivery possessed the power to move one to tears, as with the hushed reprise of her “Dove sono” in Act Three, and the rapt beauty of her reconciliation with her husband at the end.

One of the comedy’s main catalysts was the testosterone-laden pageboy Cherubino, here played with real comic flair by Wendy Dawn Thompson. She nicely contrasted her two important solos, a breathless, somewhat tremulous “Non so piu”, describing the driven desperation of the boy’s libidinous urgings and besotment with womankind in general, and a rather more considered and ritualistic “Voi che sapete” (variations on a similar theme). In both of these sequences I thought the singer brought less “body” to the voice than I would have expected from such expressions of post-pubescent excess, but her acting fleshed the character out nicely each time. However, I thought the Act One sequences of the page’s concealment and discovery by the Count awkwardly handled, and the somewhat muddled consignment of the hapless youth to the glories of military life didn’t here really take up the cues Mozart’s music was giving to the stage action.

Better done were the scenes involving the plotters and schemers, with Helen Medlyn’s ripely-drawn and cracklingly-well-sung Marcellina leading the charge, richly aided and abetted by a cherubic-faced Gennandi Dubinsky as Doctor Bartolo, occasionally uneven of voice in his “La vendetta’ aria, but investing his character with requisite surges of ill-humour and malicious glee. As good were Richard Greager as an oily, supercilious Basilio, adding his vituperative counterpoints to the ensembles with brightly-lit focus and relish; and Richard Green’s bluff, rugged Antonio, the gardener with a snitch against Figaro for trying to make a fool of him over Cherubino’s escape from the window. Derek Hill’s engaging cameo of the notary Don Curio did without the usual disfiguring stutter, while Alexander Ioan as the gardener’s daughter Barbarina sang her “lost pin” aria most fetchingly, acting “for two” throughout with quick wit and charm, her pregnancy wonderfully pronounced, and brought to bear most embarrassingly for the Count regarding his past interactions with her.

Although the chorus doesn’t have a great deal to sing in this work, the servants and their families are a kind of omnipresence, seen or unseen, embodying the underclass dominated by the likes of the Count and Countess and the system that supports the feudal relationship. Their few appearances were striking, almost Breughel-like in their deployment and their variety of colourings, thanks  in part to Elizabeth Whiting’s adroit juxtapositionings of work and festive costumings. Their singing had plenty of bright tones and engaging rusticity. It was also good to hear the Wellington Orchestra sounding in better all-round shape than when I heard them at the opera last, in Tchaikovsky’s “Eugen Onegin” the previous year. All credit to conductor Lionel Friend for securing such lively and well-upholstered playing, with some deliciously-delivered wind cameos accompanying some of Mozart’s most beautiful operatic arias.

If there was justification for yet another “Figaro” from our opera company, it was here amply-realised by Aidan Lang’s thought-provoking and highly entertaining production.

Viennese Connections – Dame Malvina Major and the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

MOZART – Symphony No.41 “Jupiter” / J.STRAUSS Jnr. – Overture and Czardas from “Die Fledermaus”, “Thunder and Lightning” Polka / LEHAR – “Meine Lippen, sie kussen so heiss” from “Giuditta”, “Liebe, du Himmel auf Erden” from “Paganini”, “Vilja” from “Die Lustige Witwe”, Waltz “Gold and Silver” / SIECYNSKI – “Wien, wien, nur du Allein”

Dame Malvina Major (soprano)

Tecwyn Evans (conductor)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 15th May,2010

(A “guest review” by Peter Coates of this concert appears at the end of this article)

Enthusiasts for fine orchestral playing would have been thoroughly diverted by the chance to compare the NZSO’s playing of the Mozart “Jupiter” Symphony in this concert with that of those recent visitors to this country for the International Arts Festival, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. Unfortunately I didn’t get to the concert at which the latter played this particular work, although I did hear the “Prague”, and thus was able to glean something of the orchestra’s style and their particular sound. What struck me with the NZSO’s performance with Tecwyn Evans was how stylish everything sounded, given that the timbres weren’t quite as “characterful” (an authenticist’s euphemism) as those of the Freiburg Ensemble. The key to everything was in the balance between orchestral sections – here winds, brass and timpani were given every opportunity to “speak”, both with solo lines (the playing of both oboist Robert Orr and timpanist Larry Reese a constant delight) and in ensemble, for once properly counterweighting Mozart’s superb string-writing. It made for an absorbing narrative of interaction, especially during the first and last movements, and enhanced by the decision to play all repeats, the amplifications making the symphony truly “Jupiter-like”.

That word “characterful” kept reappearing in my notes hastily scribbled during the performance, referring to various felicitous detailings – the pair of deliciously-played bassoons in thirds during the first movement development, the extra depth of sound asked for and got by the conductor for the second movement’s minor-key episode (and such tenderness in the phrasing of the strings at the recapitulation!) – and the enlivening of the opening melodic lines of the finale by those urgent, scampering accompaniments, already suggesting the fugal ferment to follow. Again, the repeats enlarged the music’s span, properly suggesting vast, imperious orbits of energy around which conductor and players readily danced that joyous cosmic dance proposed and then led by the composer. Life-enhancing stuff!

After the intoxicating draughts of the symphony, it seemed to me the champagne flowed more fitfully during the second half, though there were good moments, especially with Dame Malvina Major, again, the concert’s true centerpiece. Her voice seemed on fine form once again, though again in certain places I found it difficult to “place” her tones as a soloist to those of the orchestra’s. For that reason I enjoyed her singing more the previous night, because we seemed to actually hear more of her – in places the voice seemed subsumed by orchestral textures as if a wind instrument in an ensemble. Oddly enough I sat a lot closer to her on this occasion, but such are the vagaries of concert-hall acoustics!

Best were the Dame’s Lehar items – from “Giuditta” we got a finely-spun “Meine Lippen, sie kussen so heiss”, the voice sustaining the line of the introduction, and then melting us with the awakening of the main tune, including a lovely hushed ascent at the end of the first verse. Finely-honed, sinuous wind accompaniments supported the singing to near-perfection. Again, in “Liebe, du Himmel auf Erden”, from “Paganini”, the voice had a silvery, wonderfully-focused aspect throughout, enhanced by the hushed orchestral playing – a lovely cushion of sound for a singer.

Inevitably, and rightly, the programme finished with one of Malvina’s calling cards, the “Vilja” from “Die Lustige Witwe”, sung in English, the voice slightly masked by the orchestra throughout the verses, but clear and lovely for the soaring tune and reprise, the singer treating us to a brief, skilfully floated stratospheric ascent the second time round, during which time itself seemed to pause and listen.

Again, the more strenuous items seemed to suit the voice less well – the “Czardas” from “Die Fledermaus” (Johann Strauss Jnr.) ultimately required more power, despite moments of lovely detailing (some skilful high trumpet work in the “friss” section), and the balance again seeming to over-favour the orchestra in Sieczynski’s popular “Wien, Wien nur du Allein”. It will be interesting to read reports of the concerts featuring this same programme from further up the island over the touring week – in different venues, the voice-and-orchestra balance may well shift, hopefully towards the side of the singer.

The programme was “fleshed out” a little with some purely orchestral items – and I wish Tecwyn Evans hadn’t agreed to conduct such a horribly truncated version of one of the greatest of all concert waltzes, Lehar’s “Gold and Silver”! Shorn of all repeats, and with at least one important reprise completely excised, the work became a trite collection of pretty waltz tunes, one meaninglessly following the other. Thank goodness for Strauss’s “Die Fledermaus” Overture – spirited and theatrical – and for the rumbustions “Thunder and Lightning” Polka, though anybody who’s played this music in an amateur orchestra, as I have, might just have found themselves wanting a bit less finesse and a touch more “abandonment” from the NZSO percussion!

A QUESTION OF BALANCE – Malvina’s Second NZSO Concert

Guest review by Peter Coates

It is 12 years since Malvina Major appeared in concert with the NZSO, 25 years since I worked with her on a series of television “specials”. Hearing her sing again with the orchestra is a long awaited pleasure. To hear her creamy soprano once again brings back many fond memories to me, and at least two sad ones. These are the two recordings I made with her with conductor John Matheson and New Zealand casts of Puccini’s “Tosca” and Mozart’s “Il Seraglio” for TVNZ that have never been completed. Malvina is special. She holds a place in our hearts because she primarily stayed in New Zealand during her career to entertain us, raised large sums of money for charity and has over the past twenty years worked hard to train and offer opportunities to New Zealand’s growing number of talented young operatic singers.

A goodly number of “grey haired” supporters – like me – came to see our popular “Lady of Song” at the Michael Fowler Centre double concerts last week. The first,a recital featuring the more dramatic arias in her repertoire I did not see, but I certainly saw and enjoyed her second venture into the Viennese. What never fails to impress me is the ease that she can sung those difficult pianissimo high notes, displaying the flawless technique that always has been a feature of her singing.Sadly there were problems though in the balance with the orchestra during the softer passages of her arias, which made her voice difficult to hear.Having recently spent time with Sir Donald McIntyre during the Simon O’Neill Wagner concert, and Donald Munro during his recent visit to Wellington, I have been reminded constantly about the importance of the words in performance. When you find the accompaniment preventing you from hearing the words clearly it is very frustrating, whether it be German or English. A recent performance of “Miss Saigon’ was spoilt for me for example by the distorted amplification of the singers, so the problem of not being able to hear accompanied vocal performances doesn’t occur just with the NZSO.

This contrasted greatly with the  Mozart 41st Symphony that began the concert, where the smaller orchestra gave the chance for the audience to hear the wonderful Mozart orchestration in all its glory. The beautiful interplayof the woodwind was great to hear so clearly, with Robert Orr starring on the oboe. Sadly Malvina’s softer passages were not given the same courtesy. Part of the problem appars to be the accoustic of the  Michael Fowler Centre .A position beside the conductor does not appear to be as accoustically good as the back of the choir stalls. I remember how clearly one could hear the singing of Martin Snell from that position during the wonderful “Parsifal” production in 2006. Having a reflective surface so close behind you certainly helps. Perhaps a position further in front of the orchestra might help? Links with the conductor these days can be provided by monitor. The audience in the past has been ignored by the use of “space stages”, bad stage position and heavy absorbent costumes that affect the ability of the human voice to project to the back of the hall.

The trouble is that it is the singer who tends to get blamed for lack of projection rather than the other accoustic elements involved. Should one blame the excellent conductor of the concert, New Zealander Tecwyn Evans – “ the first New Zealander to hold a conducting position in a major European Opera House for over 30 years”? Not if his wonderful Mozart 41 is anything to go by. Speaking to Malvina following the concert I got the impression that he tried manfully to get the softer passages sung by Malvina properly exposed.

I congratulate the NZSO for two very good operatic programmes this year, but I would like to see further exploration of the accoustics involved with vocal performance at the Michael Fowler Centre.

Dame Malvina Major and the NZSO – a concert of commitment

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ANTHONY RITCHIE – French Overture

GIUSEPPE VERDI – I Vespri Siciliani “Merce dilette amiche”

GIACOMO PUCCINI – Tosca “Vissi d’arte”, Madama Butterfy “Un bel di vedremo”, Gianni Schicci “O mio babbino caro”

VINCENZO BELLINI – Norma “Casta Diva”

EDWARD ELGAR – Symphony No.1

Dame Malvina Major (soprano)

Tecwyn Evans (conductor)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday, 14th May, 2010

I was originally going to “roll two reviews into one”, as Dame Malvina Major was performing on consecutive days with the orchestra in Wellington; but after thoroughly enjoying the first of the two concerts I made an executive decision to write about the two events separately, so as to properly “place” the tumbling profusion of impressions that the first event alone landed upon me. What struck me most forcibly about this concert was the sheer commitment shown by all concerned to the task of getting the music across to us. From the opening strains of Anthony Ritchie’s beguiling “French Overture”, through the beautifully-delivered operatic arias bracket by Dame Malvina Major, and finally to the stirring blaze of Sir Edward Elgar’s first, epoch-making symphony, I thought the musical responses had a whole-heartedness and sense of purpose that drove to the heart of each of the works presented. Even when one could quibble with this detail here and that emphasis there, the sense of everybody’s involvement in the music-making carried the day, resulting in a most successful and heart-warming concert.

Centrestage was Dame Malvina Major, bringing to her performances of several well-known and much loved operatic arias an amalgam of stylishness and simplicity of utterance that  served the music well throughout. Backed to the hilt by stellar playing from the orchestra, expertly guided by New Zealand’s most prominent and currently successful overseas-based conductor, Tecwyn Evans, Dame Malvina successfully brought each of the operatic heroines to life on the concert platform for us. Perhaps she struggled at the very beginning of the recital to produce enough tone and heft to project the vigorous aria sung by Elena in Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliani, “Merce, dilete amiche”; and her rendering of Tosca’s “Vissi d’arte” which followed, ideally also needed a bit more juice at its climax. But in other ways the latter was so well-focused, so detailed and heartfelt in depicting the character’s desperation, that we forgave the lack of amplitude at one or two cardinal points.

One registered the beautiful phrasing and sensitively-weighted line in Bellini’s “Casta Diva”, singing which seemed to expand naturally and unforcedly into golden outpourings at the big moments, that same elegance of vocal production shaping the lines of “O mio babbino caro” so unerringly as to melt the stoutest paternal heart. Only in the more strenuous moments of Madama Butterfly’s famous “Un bel di vedremo” did one sense a voice having to be content with less that what the music seemed to require; but the sheer musicality of Dame Malvina’s more subtle delineations of Cio-Cio San’s character revealed for us the artist that she remains.

Framing the Dame, so to speak, were two orchestral excursions, the concert beginning with Anthony Ritchie’s intriguingly-titled “French Overture”, a work which the composer wrote while on study leave in Paris in response to a commission by conductor Tecwyn Evans. Ritchie modelled his work on the form of a French baroque overture, with its slow-fast-slow scheme, as well having recourse to characteristic dotted rhythms and fugato form to strengthen the traditional connections. What struck me about the work (as with Ross Harris’s two pieces in the recent “Made in New Zealand concert) was the music’s overall surety of shape and focus throughout, allied with its splendidly-modulated use of detail, leading the ear ever-onwards in a more-or-less continuous exploration of melody, rhythm and colour. The opening brass-and-percussion flourishes set the scene splendidly, as if proclaiming a kind of historical pageant to follow, the mood of the introduction by turns stern, epic, lyrical (a beautifully soaring theme on the violins over the lower strings’ dotted rhythms), and noble (golden horn tones warming the textures).

Throughout the work I felt that forms such as fugue were being used in ways that related to what had come before, either by osmotic transition or well thought-out contrast – here the fugal impulses which seized the strings mid-work seemed to have been waiting in the wings since the beginning, and so were readily integrated into the later “workings-out” of revisited and enriched material. Thus the return of the imposing opening music’s mood is enriched with a darker, grander statement of the fugal subject, after the winds had earlier roared out a somewhat livelier version, again in tandem with or in close proximity to a soaring string tune shedding stratospheric light on a tattooing timpani rhythm. I loved the folkish “slur” on the lowest reach of the flute-and-strings tune, repeated by the lower strings when they had their turn – and the strings-and-timpani conclusion to the work, with the sounds slowly emptying out through the ether, felt profoundly satisfying.

As well as with this performance, conductor Tecwyn Evans had amply demonstrated earlier in the month his commitment to contemporary New Zealand composition with his directorship of both the NZSO/SOUNZ Readings, and the “Made In New Zealand” concert to his credit. Now, to set beside his skills as an operatic accompanist, Evans then gave notice of his abilities as a symphonic conductor with a stirring performance of one of the great late-romantic symphonies, Sir Edward Elgar’s 1908 Symphony in A-flat. Right from the beginning of the work one could sense the care with which the “great tune” was shaped and nurtured, with beguiling touches of wind counterpoint brought out in a sensitively colouristic way and the “pomp and circumstance” of its repetition on the full orchestra splendidly hurled forth, if just missing that final touch of swagger in evidence on the very greatest performances on record. Especially notable in the first movement was the conductor’s balancing of the music’s purposeful energies with its more lyrical and winsome aspects (such an intensely beguiling grace given to that repeated melismatic phrase which sits at the top of a solo violin’s upwardly striving tendrils – on each occasion a moment of real orchestral frisson, catching the sllghtly “wind-blown” effect to perfection).

Terrific playing from all concerned gave the scherzo real bite and colour (received wisdom has it that Elgar’s writing for orchestra is an exemplar for any budding composer wanting to study instrumentation). The trio section in this performance conjured up sound-worlds of evocation in line with the composer’s description of the melody as “something one hears whistled down by the river”. And the transition from this to the slow movement was a sequence to die for, as much for what it promised as what was fulfilled, the string textures warming and ripening, as the players found themselves given plenty of time to “breathe” their lines deeply and richly. A Brucknerian horn chord introduced the movement’s main theme, with its characteristic falling interval, whose sigh of contentment or regret or both is goosebump-making when played, as it was here, with sufficient heartfelt intensity. Even more heart-rending was the strings’ soaring transformation of the opening theme towards the movement’s end, the rhapsodisings melting back regretfully into a final, beautifully rapt clarinet phrase. At the risk of sounding like a musical Pooh-Bah I confess to cursing the gaucheries of that section of the audience which applauded during the silence that followed, and had to stop myself springing to my feet and “shushing!” in response to the outburst, well-meaning though the show of appreciation undoubtedly was.

Nevertheless, the finale’s brooding, rather sinister opening “got back” the atmosphere quickly and surely, the allegro urgent and strong, perhaps the tiniest bit splashy ensemble-wise, but settling to allow the violas to dig into their striding theme with plenty of outdoor vigour. Perhaps the conductor pushed the staccato theme too quickly when it first appeared (it slows down anyway as it peaks), but the ensuing bustle and tumult of “working out” were extremely exciting, and the ennobling of that same theme by the strings had all the romantic sweep one would wish for. When the symphony’s motto theme returned at the end, after fighting its way through the various agitations and galvanic irruptions, the effect was thrilling; and at the detonation of the very last chord, we in the audience were able to at last express our pent-up excitement and pleasure at witnessing such a brilliant and committed performance.

Fantasy and reality – New Zealand School of Music Orchestra Concert

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SCHUMANN – Piano Concerto in A Minor

SHOSTAKOVICH – Symphony No.11 “The Year 1905”

Diedre Irons (piano)

Kenneth Young (conductor)

New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

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

Wednesday 12th May 2010

This concert reinforced my feeling that there is a pressing need in Wellington for an alternative mid-sized venue for concerts. Ensembles such as amateur and student orchestras, whose following wouldn’t perhaps stretch to filling with audience an auditorium such as the Town Hall, nevertheless deserve to play somewhere that’s more acoustically grateful to orchestral sound than is St. Andrew’s on-the-Terrace Church. Throughout both of the orchestral concerts I’ve attended at the church this year, I found myself thinking how much more musical both bands would sound if playing in an acoustic less bright, analytical and constricted than what they and their audiences have had to cope with.

I’ve no wish to denigrate such a wonderful church as a concert venue for solo recitals, chamber groups and smaller vocal and instrumental ensembles, and have enjoyed many concerts there given by those kinds of forces. Like many churches, the intrinsically theatrical layout and performance ambience of St.Andrew’s makes it an ideal place to listen to and enjoy an enormous range of music performances, as the recent series of March Concerts which ran parallel to the International Arts Festival richly demonstrated. But try to jam a sizeable orchestra or the forces required for a major choral work into the performing space and then listen to them perform – the resulting sound reflects all-too-obviously a lack of ample space for effective large-scale music-making.

As an ex-player in an amateur orchestra I often used to reflect on the phenomenon of the performances I took part in sounding considerably more mellifluous when our group performed in public, compared to the sounds we made at our rehearsals, the difference being largely a warmer and better-balanced acoustic at our regular concert venue than what we had to endure in our cramped practice rooms. A pity that both the Wellington Chamber Orchestra and the NZ School of Music Orchestra don’t have the luxury of a similar sound-metamorphosis. One could reflect by way of compensation that we live in a troubled, less-than-ideal world, and making and listening to music in a less-than-ideal acoustic environment could perhaps be regarded as a metaphor for our troubled times.

The music featured on the programme for this concert mirrors some of the issues associated with “troubled times” – the Schumann concerto is a romantic, almost escapist evocation of a world removed from irreconcilable conflict and darkness; while its pairing with the Shostakovich symphony in the concert could epitomize the chasm between an ideal and the reality of life. The latter work all too graphically depicts the constraints placed upon individual activity and happiness by a regime prepared to brutally sacrifice human life to maintain the status quo. Certainly the contrast between the two halves of the concert couldn’t help but make upon listeners an enormous impression of distance traversed, and of experience both enjoyed and resolutely confronted.

The orchestra had the inestimable benefit of pianist Diedre Irons as soloist for the Schumann concerto, a work with whose performance she’s been identified over the years. She certainly commanded the keyboard to thrilling effect in places, such as in the first-movement cadenza, and during those joyously abandoned moments in the work’s finale, when piano and orchestra match momentums stride-for-stride. Perhaps the immediacy of the acoustic had something to do with it, but I was surprised her playing seemed very insistently-projected in places where I was expecting more light-and-shade, more limpid and withdrawn tones, as with the first movement’s main theme (I did write in my notes at that point, “piano very full-toned – but we are all very close, and this IS a full-blooded romantic piano concerto!”). Having said this, I thought the slow movement beautifully phrased throughout by piano and orchestra alike, a highlight being the gorgeous tones of the ‘cellos in their “big tune” mid-way through the movement, which the rest of the strings joined in with and shared. The winds, while not always DEAD in tune throughout, negotiated some lovely exchanges with the piano at the very end of this movement. And all credit to both oboe and clarinet, in the first movement voicing their respective first-and second-subject themes clearly and gracefully, and to the horns for their great calls at the reprise of the finale’s main, leaping theme.

In general, I thought the musicians captured the joy of the music, if not all the poetic nuances of the writing – I was able to witness a huge wink from conductor Ken Young to his soloist after she had completed a surging flourish leading into one of those full-blooded orchestral tutti in the finale, an exchange which nicely summed up the collaborative spirit of the performance. No such joy and tumbling warmth was in evidence during the concert’s second half, featuring Shostakovich’s mighty Eleventh Symphony – whatever collaborative spirit celebrated by the music was indeed a grim, resolute affair, the symphony’s subtitle “The Year 1905” providing a clue as to the work’s intent and physical and emotional terrain. Having heard Ken Young expertly conduct a similarly harsh and confrontational work last year, the Sixth Symphony of Vaughan Williams, I was prepared to have my sensibilities similarly laid bare by the Russian composer’s all-too-palpable depictions of violent oppression and untoward human suffering.

The symphony is one of a number of Shostakovich’s works which has acquired over the years a certain negative reputation for politically-motivated bombast. True, in certain hands, these works can sound empty and over-inflated, but rarely when interpreted by Russian conductors like Mravinsky and Kondrashin, who get their players to cut through the hollow-sounding rhetoric to the nub of the matter. In a sense, everything is already in the music (as with Michelangelo’s “releasing the angel from the stone”) and the musicians simply work to set it all free. For me, this is just what Ken Young’s conducting and the playing of the student musicians (helped by a handful of NZSO players) managed to do throughout the work. The Symphony emerged as the searing, universal testament of human suffering and fortitude that its composer would have wanted it to be.

Each movement’s prevailing character was sharply etched – the hushed opening, with its ghostly brass fanfares (both trumpet and horn by turns capturing that paradoxical sense of enormity of distance in time and space, and oppressive, impending menace, the occasional split note mattering little in such an atmosphere), the flute duo’s melancholy song, and the constant suggestions from orchestral groupings of underlying suffering, despair and menace, set the scene for the nightmarish coruscations to follow. Young beautifully controlled the second movement’s swirling foretaste of the ensuing tragedy, and got the utmost out of all sections during the pitiless fugal passages and the savage three-against-two brass-and-percussion onslaught, everybody, the audience included, collapsing with exhaustion at the end, the trumpet calls having a proper “angel-of-death” ambience, with strings and winds offering little consolation.

Over portentous pizzicati the violas beautifully sang their third-movement lament, joined by violins (playing lower!) to great effect, the ensuing quasi-Wagnerian textures (shades of Siegfried and Fafner!) dissipated by conciliatory strings, Young building the intensities with his players to almost-unbearable thresholds of pain and angst, before the short-lived respite offered by the return of the viola theme. Still, nothing in the performance surpassed the players’ commitment to the “Tocsin” finale (my notes feature scribbled exclamations such as “wonderful punch and spike”, “like a series of hammer-blows”, “slashing violin lines”, “roaring, stuttering brass”, and “shattering climax”, one’s critical senses obviously too dumbstruck by the onslaught to resort at the time to anything more than cliches!). It didn’t matter that, in the final uproar, I couldn’t hear the climactic tubular bells being rung at all – there was simply no room in the crowded soundscape – it was that feeling of having witnessed musicians at full stretch playing music which activated one’s capacities for total involvement which was lastingly treasurable and made the most impression.

Songs My Mother Taught Me – Mother’s Day Music from Nota Bene

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Music for Mother’s Day

Music by Grieg, Bruckner, Pärt, Tavener, Holst, Gounod, Biebl, Gorecki, Dvorak, Haydn, Vautor, Hely-Hutchinson, Hrušovskŷ, Richard Puanaki, David Childs, David Hamilton, Carol Shortis

Nota Bene Choir

Frances Moore (soprano) / Julie Coulson (piano)

Christine Argyle (director)

Lyndee-Jane Rutherford (presenter)

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Sunday 9th May

Christine Argyle’s “Nota Bene” Choir got the mix right for their Mother’s Day concert,  with a programme of music whose first half did strong, sonorous homage to Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, before paying tribute after the interval to ordinary, everyday mothers, with songs of affection, remembrance, and wry humour – and finishing with “Rytmus”, Ivan Hrušovsky’s well-known “choral etude” in praise of Eve, the first human mother, as a brief, but exciting finale. With a waiata-like guitar-accompanied opening (actually called “Ka Waiata” and written by Richard Puanaki), and featuring greetings and spoken commentaries by theatre and television personality Lyndee-Jane Rutherford, the event kept an appropriately light touch throughout, the music expressing an attractive amalgam of fun, energy, sentiment, nostalgia and profundity in nicely-gauged doses.

The programme skilfully rang the contrasts throughout, so that we had juxtapositionings such as solemn, Wagnerian Bruckner leavened by excitable, energetic Aarvo Pärt, and then David Hamilton’s West Indian rhythms next to Henryk Gorecki’s rapt, richly-harmonised mesmeric lines. The choir’s configuration would often change between items (womens’ voices only for Gustav Holst’s “Ave Maria”, for example), and soprano Frances Moore contributed several solo items accompanied by pianist Julie Coulson, which were interspersed throughout the concert.

After the opening preliminaries,  Grieg’s “Ave Maris Stella” demonstrated the choir’s finely-nuanced control of tone and texture, not over-moulded, so that those piquant harmonies of the composer’s sounded as fresh as ever – a far cry from the rich upholstery of Bruckner’s very Wagnerian writing for voices (like something out of “Lohengrin”) in his “Ave Maria” setting, featuring some testing top-of-the-stave lines for the sopranos, who emerged from the encounter with credit. All the more excitable, then, seemed Aarvo Pärt’s hymn to the Virgin “Bogoroditse Djevo”, very “Slavic” in its energy and love of contrast.

I equally enjoyed the work of another “holy minimalist”, John Tavener, whose conversion to Russian Orthodoxy inspired works such as the chant-like “Hymn to the Mother of God” (the narrator touched briefly on the importance of Mary in the Eastern Orthodox liturgy), here delivered with wonderfully suffused resonances, the choir relishing the clustered harmonies and glowing evocations of worshipful prayer. The sparer textures of Gustav Holst’s music (sung by womens’ voices) exposed a touch of stridency during the more “striving” lines of the opening, but the withdrawn ambiences at “Et benedictus fructus tui Jesu” readily captured the setting’s beauty.

Frances Moore’s turn was next, with Julie Coulson providing admirable support for her soprano partner in Gounod’s perennial favourite “Ave Maria” – a lovely performance by both musicians, the singer having plenty of upward heft and true tone on the high notes, though her breath-taking was a bit obtrusive in places. Still more changes were rung by the next item, Franz Biebl’s “Ave Maria” setting, in this performance for men’s voices only, the singers arranged with a trio of voices set apart, and soloists within the choir, giving the textures a degree of spaciousness and making for lovely antiphonal effects. Each exchange between the voices had a slightly different character, varying dynamics and colours in a perfectly delicious-sounding way. The trio of voices (tenors Nick McDougal and Andrew Dunford, with baritone Isaac Stone) got a rich ground-sound, while the higher-voiced group had more plaintive, almost reedy tones which emphasised their placement and their different lines.

Music by two New Zealanders and two “Davids” followed, firstly David Childs’ “Salve Regina”, an attractive minor-key setting with a soprano soloist, Gilian Bruce, from the choir, some momentary ensemble imprecisions of little moment when set against the heartfeltness of the singing. The last few utterances  were notable for the terracings of the words “O clemens, o pia” and “dulcis virgo”, the descriptions nicely differentiated.The work made a good pairing with the “other” David’s piece that followed, the “Carol of the Mother and Child” by David Hamilton, the Caribbean rhythms fetching up some delicious syncopations from out of the setting’s infectious gait.

Concluding the concert’s first half was Henryk Gorecki’s sublime “Totus Tuus”, a hymn of devotion to the Virgin Mary, written to commemorate Pope John Paul’s third visit to his homeland of Poland in 1987. “Totus Tuus” translated from the Latin means “totally yours”, and was the Pope’s apostolic motto, the opening words of a prayer declaring utter devotion to the Virgin Mary and the Holy Trinity. Declamatory and arresting at the beginning, with cries of “Maria”, much of the work was rapt and devotional, using conventional but extremely rich harmonies which varied in colour and intensity as the piece progressed. The contrast was marked between the work’s forthright opening and utterly mesmeric conclusion, the word “Maria” at the end repeated more and more softly, like the conclusion of “Neptune” from Holst’s “The Planets, with the womens’ voices disappearing gradually into the ether. The effect was of having undertaken a significant journey through realms of timelessness, thanks to the strength of the voices’ response to Christine Argyle’s confident, patient direction throughout.

Not surprisingly, the concert’s second half had a rather more secular feel, with the focus directed firmly towards earthly mothers, beginning with a song written by David Hamilton “When My Mother Sings To Me”, featuring a unison opening verse, whose words were then given canonic, and then harmonic treatment in subsequent verses. A natural ally for this item was, of course, Dvorak’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me”, here sung by Frances Moore, tremulous, and with some breathless phrase-ends, but sweet-toned and with wonderfully secure high notes. Her two other solo items, a folk-song by Josef Haydn and a somewhat quirkily theatrical setting of the “Old Mother Hubbard” nursery rhyme by Victor Hely-Hutchinson, were brought off with aplomb, the Haydn song-birdish and radiant, and the Hely-Hutchinson setting mock-Handelian with a dash of dramatic rhetoric, singer and pianist relishing the fun of it all. A pity the quintet of voices which came together to perform 17th-century composer Thomas Vautor’s “Mother I will have a Husband” didn’t bring more temperament, more “spunk” to their otherwise nicely-sung performance – it all needed to be a bit more boldly characterised.

But the highlight of the second half of the concert was a piece composed by Carol Shortis, in response to a commission from one of the Nota Bene choir members, Judy McKay. This was for a work dedicated to her mother, Dulcie Reeve/Coutts, described as a “pianist, piano geacher, gardener, mother, grandmother, homemaker and friend to to many – generous of Spirit, loving of Heart”. The music was to a text by the Bengali poet and author Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), a poem called “My Song”. Pianist Julie Coulson’s arabesque-like figurations made for an atmospheric, almost bardic beginning to the music, the voices exploring a wide range of expression, from whispered to full-throated tones, colourings subtly changing as the composer gently drew together the choir’s cluster-harmonies (with a particularly telling harmonic “shift” towards the end). The whole work was suffused with glowing feeling, by turns radiant with the soprano soloist soaring aloft, before gliding gently downwards, and a softer tranquility of remembrance and wonderment which lingered after the sounds had ceased to be.

A Touch of Spain – Trio Con Brio with Caprice Arts Trust (2010 Concert Series)

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Music by CARULLI, PIAZZOLLA, BRUNI, ALBENIZ, TARRAGO, GRANADOS, and BEETHOVEN

Trio Con Brio

Cheryl Grice-Watterson (guitar)

Martin Jaenecke (violin)

Victoria Jaenecke (viola)

St.Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt

Tuesday 4th May, 2010

It didn’t take long for the Trio Con Brio’s mellifluous combination of guitar, violin and viola to make a lasting impression on this listener. What I heard in the grateful acoustic of St.Mark’s Church in Lower Hutt, all but persuaded me to give myself entirely over to the music of Ferdinando Carulli as if it were among the greatest ever written. I strongly suspect that, attractive though the music undoubtedly was, it was largely the animated elegance of interplay between three fine musicians that captured my attention so wholly, the kind of music-making that’s worth taking a lot of trouble to seek out and enjoy.

The work in question was a Trio Concertante by the aforementioned Carulli, whose name, though not unknown to me, was unconnected with any music I could remember hearing. The programme notes suggested that Carulli’s output was somewhat uneven, though adding that he was at his most inventive when composing chamber music. Though I suspect my listening at this stage of the concert was taken up largely with registering how well the guitar’s limpid tones held up against the brighter, more sustained timbres of both violin and viola, the trio’s adroit balancing of voices allowed the composer’s across-the-board inventiveness to make a positive impression. By contrast with the opening movement the Largo explored softer episodes, the guitar demonstrating its dynamic range as tellingly in its way as could its companions. A final movement, marked “Presto” wasn’t quite that – more “allegro”, but also quixotic and volatile, with a lovely “false” ending that satisfied both one’s capacity for amusement and sense of completion.

Martin Jaenecke’s violin next joined with Cheryl Grice-Watterson’s guitar to realise one of Astor Piazzolla’s redoubtable tangos, one entitled “Continental Cafe 1930”. A slow, languorous beginning, more dreamed by the guitar than played at the start, until awakened by the violin with dance-like impulses, put the work into the category of one “more to be listened to than danced” (although experts might disagree!). A major-key section emphasised the dance rhythms, though sequences from the solo guitar inclined towards the freely rhapsodic, the fascinating interplay between the two instruments suggesting an intertwining of different sensibilities attracted by something ineffable.

The following work was by a composer whose name I didn’t at all know, Antonio Bartolomeo Bruni (1757-1821), a composer of opera in his day as well as of many instrumental works. Italian-born, he spent much of his career in Paris as a violinist, conductor, composer and teacher, having the good fortune to be seen as a supporter of the Revolution, which helped his job prospects – apparently at one stage he was given the task of compiling an inventory of valuable musical instruments confiscated during the Terror!  Martin and Victoria Jaenecke, playing violin and viola respectively, gave us one of Bruni’s many duos, and added plenty of physical excitement to their playing by standing, thus able to almost “choreograph” the music – a flowing, lyrical opening was enlivened with dance-like episodes, switching from major to minor and with lead and accompaniment constantly changing. As one might expect, the teamwork between the players was impeccable, with the finale’s “allegro con moto” adding extra excitement to the interchanges – I particularly enjoyed both the swapping of melodic lines in the same register between instruments, allowing the different timbres of each to tell, and also, towards the conclusion, the “question-and-answer” phrasings in the melodic line.

Concluding the first half was another piece by Piazzolla, “Oblivion Milonga” which was arranged by the Trio themselves to play. A characteristic opening, sultry and laden, with the viola taking the melody initially, before handing over to the violin, subsequently became a duet in octaves, the guitar supplying the rhythmic impetus, the music as potent when delicate and withdrawn as when full-blooded.

Cheryl Grice-Watterson began the second half with a work for solo guitar, the wonderful “Asturias” by Isaac Albeniz, telling us a little about the composer and the work and the “guitaristic’ qualities of the music. Listening to her playing this work, it was difficult to imagine that it was originally written for piano, so “guitaristic” did the player make it sound. She captured the storytelling aspect of the recitative passages with remarkable focus and concentration, her subtle “voicings” of tone compelling our attention throughout. The guitarist was then joined by Victoria Jaenecke, whose viola stood in for the human voice in three song transcriptions, one by Graciano Tarrago (1892-1973),and two by Enrique Granados. In the Tarrago transcription, I felt the viola sounded a shade too “smooth” compared with the forthright guitar-playing – a slightly coarser, more “pesante” approach might have worked better, perhaps? Again, Cheryl Grice-Watterson’s guitar timbres  and rhythmic impetuses really made the Granados songs come alive, the viola nicely encompassing in particular the mood of the first of the two Granados songs, “La Maja Dolorosa” (The Sad Woman).

The concert ended with a Serenade by Beethoven, arranged for the ensemble by a contemporary of the composer’s, one Wenceslaus Matiegka, whom the programme note describes as “a fashionable teacher of piano and guitar in Vienna” (nothing is said about Beethoven’s opinion of the transcription, though there were many such made of the work for different combinations). The players realised the opening’s vein of melancholy, with lovely long lines, the strings in octaves and the guitar a middle voice, before what seemed like a schizophrenic vein of mischief gripped hold of the proceedings, with the composer alternating between a major-key allegro and a quasi-tragic adagio – all very divertingly and entertainingly brought off by the Trio. The second movement, an Andante quasi Allegretto, was charmingly done, by turns poised and deeply-felt throughout a set of variations; while a polonaise-finale with genteel rather than rustic intentions featured golden-toned strings and rousing guitar chords, and a surprise scampering ending, brought off with characteristic style and elan by the three musicians, who thoroughly deserved the acclaim which marked the concert’s end.

Polish Pride – an Antipodean tribute from the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Polish Pride

SZYMANOWSKI – Concert Overture

CHOPIN – Piano Concerto No.2

CHOPIN (arr.Stravinsky) – Nocturne

LUTOSLAWSKI – Symphony No.4

Diedre Irons (piano)

Jacek Kaspszyk (conductor)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday 29th April 2010

Polish hearts beat staunchly both at the beginning of and throughout this special concert in the Michael Fowler Centre, as Beata Stocyńska, the Polish Ambassador to New Zealand, addressed those present in the Michael Fowler Centre at the invitation of Peter Walls the orchestra’s CEO.  Mrs Stocyńska spoke of her countrymen’s and women’s pride in their culture and the achievements of their creative artists, such as Fryderyk Chopin, whose 200th birthday was marked by the proclamation of a “Year of Fryderyck Chopin” by the Polish Government. There was tragedy, too, at the mention by the ambassador of the recent air-crash in Russia that claimed the lives of the Polish President and a number of government officials, an event that gave this concert and its music all the more poignancy for those present. Adding his dignified gravitas to the occasion was the Governor-General of New Zealand, the Honourable Sir Anand Satyanand, speaking on behalf of all of the non-Polish people present, and eloquently but simply conveying a nation’s sympathy for another’s anguish and grief.

The tributes concluded, it was then over to the musicians, who moved the proceedings forward spectacularly with Karol Szymanowski’s Concert Overture. Anybody unfamiliar with Szymanowski’s music would have presumed that the overture was by Richard Strauss, so unerringly does the younger man imitate the latter, at the time the most famous composer in Europe. In fact Szymanowski almost out-Strausses Strauss, if not to the music’s advantage – though exciting and forceful, the work is simply too heavily scored, and risks tiring the listener’s ear before the end. Conductor Jacek Kaspszky controlled the profusion of youthful orchestral exuberance as best he could, although one was still left with a “less-is-more” feeling after the tumultuous waves of instrumental tone had ceased once and for all.

If the excitement and energy was all too palpable during the Szymanowski Overture, similar qualities were in short supply during much of the performance of the Chopin piano concerto which followed, at least in the orchestral playing. Though numbered as the second, the F Minor Concerto was actually composed earlier than the E Minor No.1, and, despite the young composer’s love for Mozart’s music, shows little of the latter’s aptitude for using the orchestra as an effective protagonist, especially in the outer movements. It’s music that doesn’t ”play itself”, requiring instead plenty of positive and energetic advocacy, which conductor and orchestra seemed strangely reluctant to fetch up, with the result that, when pianist Diedre Irons wasn’t playing, the music seemed to amble inconsequentially along. Right at the outset there was genuine poetic feeling from the strings, and some nice work by oboist Robert Orr, but thereafter things were oddly lacklustre – some nicely shaped bassoon-and piano exchanges later in the movement raised hopes, but the duetting if anything seemed to further inhibit rather than stimulate any contrasting vigour and muscle in the tuttis.

It’s interesting, and fortunate, that the slow movement of the concerto is an absolute gem – inspired by the young composer’s passion for a singer, Constantia Gladowska, the music conjures up a kind of breath-stopping enchantment throughout, underpinned by a richly-woven carpet of sensitively-sustained orchestral tones. Diedre Irons wove one magical arabesque after another in this movement with finely-spun feeling and delicacy, nicely supported by the orchestra at every turn. But as for the rest, there was little to enthuse about – no strong impulse or spark that would have energised those admittedly dull orchestral textures and given the interchanges between piano and orchestra some interest. The pianist was doing her utmost (and how good to have her perform with the NZSO once again), but the orchestral response to her elaborate solo paragraphings and spirited lead-ins during the outer movements suggested that hearts and minds were largely elsewhere.

Igor Stravinsky’s piquant orchestration of Chopin’s A-flat Nocturne Op.32 No.2 served to demonstrate the well-known balletic inclinations of one of the twentieth-century’s greatest composers. Written in 1909 for the impresario Diaghilev, to extend an existing ballet using Chopin’s music for the famed Ballets Russes, Stravinsky produced a delightful neo-Tchaikovsky-like realisation which brought out all the sentiment of the original (a lovely “stopped” horn at the cadence-points of the opening section) and gave bright Russian colours to the more vigorous episodes in the middle part of the work. A lovely, diaphanous ambience gave the conclusion a sombre beauty, Kaspszyk and the players nicely realising the setting’s mixture of delicacy and turbulence.

Both delicacy and turbulence were writ large in the evening’s final work from Poland, the Fourth Symphony of Lutoslawski. Overshadowed at first by the incredible popularity of his Third Symphony, with its engaging tunefulness and high drama, Lutoslawski’s Fourth is a much tougher proposition, shorter, more introverted and darker, in places elegiac. The work has a two-movement layout, each part relating to the other in a way that creates a kind of arched structure, the first movement making its listeners, in the composer’s words, “hungry, and finally even impatient” for the fulfilment of the second part. So we heard the clarinet’s gentle, lyrical theme at the start against a murmuring accompaniment, extended later by both flute and clarinet,and interspersed by episodes of faster, more mercurial and less predictable music – these are marked in the score “ad libitum” and the performers asked to improvise, to shape the gestures according to their own impulses.

The players were transformed, engaged, focused and totally committed to making these sounds – my notes refer to things like “impassioned tolling-bell figures – great swinging strides from basses, snappish brass clusters splash colour and tighten tension, strings soar and sear…”  and later “claustrophobic ostinati from strings with brass and percussion bouncing backwards and forwards off walls…” the impression thus given of sometimes elemental, sometimes feverish activity. Against this were the moments of stasis, in line with Lutoslawski’s avowed intention of delaying the listener’s desire for continuity and resolution through unexpected contrast and variety. I noted “pointillistic shimmerings from strings, iridescences from everywhere, like fireflies at dusk” and “great spaces, deep loneliness, railway lights humming along lines in the middle of nowhere – a sense of impulses coursing over vast spaces, subdued but purposeful…”. One’s gradual awareness of the process of resolution of these disparate elements became a profound listening experience – throughout the performance the focus of the playing and conducting was palpable, spell-binding in its intensity and brilliance, and unerring in its control and direction, for which the musicians received their just dues from the audience at the end.

Maxwell Fernie – Centenary tribute at St.Mary of the Angels

Posted on by Peter Mechen

MAXWELL FERNIE – A Centenary Tribute

Concert at St.Mary of the Angels Church, Wellington

Presenter: James A.Young

Music by Maxwell Fernie, Helen Bowater, J.S.Bach, Rachmaninov, Palestrina, Purcell, Vierne, Widor

Performers: Thomas Gaynor, Donald Nicolson (organ) / Douglas Mews (organ, harpsichord) / Rowena Simpson (soprano)

Gregory O’Brien (speaker) / Yury Gezentsvey (violin), Peter Barber (viola) / Robert Oliver (viola da gamba, conductor)

St.Mary of the Angels Choir

Sunday 25th April 2010

Maxwell Fernie (1910-1999) was a true “Renaissance Man”, one of those multi-talented people whose activities encompassed a vast range of skills, interests and sensibilities. Born in Wellington exactly one hundred years ago this year, the young Max showed sufficient promise as a young musician and teacher to secure the position as organist and choirmaster at St.Joseph’s Catholic Church, next to the Basin Reserve. Immediately following the Second World War, during which he served with the Second NZEF in Egypt and Europe, Fernie became one of a number of talented New Zealand musicians who undertook to complete their musical training in the Northern Hemisphere. For him this meant remaining in London, where he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music. He was awarded prizes in Organ-playing and Extemporization, General Musicianship and History of Music. Just three years after his return to New Zealand he was back in London in 1953 where he took the post of organist of Westminster Cathedral, a position he held with great distinction for five years. Fortunately for Wellington, and for New Zealand, Fernie decided to return home to take up the directorship of the St Mary of the Angels Choir, a position he was to maintain until his death in 1999. He was also the Wellington City organist for 27 years, the founder and conductor of the Schola Polyphonica Choir, and a teacher of organ at Victoria University of Wellington. He was awarded the OBE in 1974 for services to music.

Something of his lasting influence across the years and among his many associates and talented pupils was strongly and joyfully conveyed by a Maxwell Fernie Centenary Tribute Concert fittingly held in the Church of St Mary of the Angels, an event participated in and attended by both people who knew and worked with him and others, like myself, who never met him but were aware of his prodigious achievements. For people to whom his name might have been familiar, but the extent of his activities as a musician far less so, the concert would have been a revelation, as well as food for reflection. The variety and depth of what music-lovers in Wellington enjoy today was built up over many years by the talents, hard work and inspiration of people like Maxwell Fernie, something that anniversaries such as these should emphasise and celebrate as an on-going and life-enhancing process. Thanks to the heartfelt and committed advocacy of Max’s family, and former friends, associates and pupils, this concert did him and his reputation proud.

The Parish Priest of St.Mary of the Angels, Father Barry Scannell welcomed us all to the church for what he called a “very special occasion”. He was followed by Andrew Fernie, Max’s son, who spoke about the Maxwell Fernie Trust, set up to continue the legacy of the great man by means of an annual scholarship award of $10,000 to young, up-and-coming organists and choral conductors. For the Trust the concert was a red-letter occasion, as it marked the inaugural presentation of the award to a young organist Thomas Gaynor, made later in the programme by the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage, the Hon. Chris Finlayson. James A.Young, who was Fernie’s assistant organist and choirmaster, and later his successor at St.Mary’s, took over as Master of Ceremonies, and first of all introduced Max to the audience via a recording of an interview, made in 1958, Max obviously in his element talking about the newly-installed pipe organ in the church. We heard him clapping his hands to demonstrate the space’s reverberation, and playing exerpts to illustrate the types of organ pipe being used, their combinations and interplay with the pedal notes. It all made a perfect introduction to the concert’s first musical item, Douglas Mews’ playing of JS Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in G, the opening sprightly and characterful, and the fugue steady and cumulative, with clear, focused lines throughout.

Next, Robert Oliver, currently the Director of Music at St.Mary of the Angels conducted the choir, which he sang with as a student under Fernie, who was in fact his first singing teacher. The performers firstly gave us Maxwell Fernie’s own “Ingrediente”, here sung with forthright, beautifully over;lapping tones, the voices true (a touch of wavery tone in places) and properly celebratory in impulse and effect. Rachmaninov’s “Ave Maria” followed, its plainchant opening leading to a harmonised repetition of the “Ave” and some lovely bass notes in “Benedictus tu” beneath the women’s voices with the melody in octaves. Palestrina’s  exquisite “Sicut Cervus” demonstrated the freedom and beauty of the women’s voices, able to float their tones throughout in a way that the men’s voices weren’t quite able to do. As a contrast, soprano Rowena Simpson, with Robert Oliver’s bass viol and Douglas Mews’ harpsichord, gave us Purcell’s “Music for a while” – lovely singing from the soprano (another of Fernie’s former pupils), even if I felt the music’s pulse dragged just a little in places.

The impact of Maxwell Fernie’s tenure as Director of Music at St.Mary’s, reflected in Art Gallery owner Peter McLeavey’s words “He opened worlds to me that I never knew existed”, was obviously a sentiment shared by poet and artist Gregory O’Brien and composer Helen Bowater. Their regard for Fernie’s work came together around a poem written by O’Brien called “The Non-Singing Seats”, celebrating the involvement in music felt by the listener when attending any performance directed by Max in St.Mary’s, a feeling also expressed by O’Brien in two etchings completed at the request of Peter McLeavey to help raise money for the Trust. The same poem was then set to music by Helen Bowater, the work interestingly scored for violin and viola, rather than for organ or any kind of keyboard configuration,as one might have expected, the composer’s choice expressing the ambience of each of the etchings, violin for the lighter,and viola for the darker of the two images. My experience of music mixed with spoken word, as opposed to singing, is that it rarely works well, partly due to the speaking voice’s comparative lack of projection (it’s no accident, I think, that those Second Viennese School works which use speakers call the technique “Sprechgesang”). O’Brien himself read the poem in the performance, the entry-points of the words precisely placed in the score by the composer, but afterwards the poetry allowed to flow at the reader’s own pace. The effect was interesting, but something of a diffuse experience for me, finding as I did the somewhat Ivesian effect of parallel modes of expression distracting, instead of one illuminating the other in performance.

Fortunately, the work was recorded by the same forces, violinist Yury Gezentsvey and violist Peter Barber joining Gregory O’Brien as in the church. Much of the text in the live performance was difficult to hear because of the microphoning and speaker placement not being ideal – the recording preserves much more clarity, being better-balanced. It also gives one the chance to concentrate on single strands and follow those lines for more coherence’s sake – in the concert the words of the poem particularly suffered in this respect, though I wanted to hear more clearly the interplay of the instrumental dialogues and their overall ebb and flow. I was certainly expecting something different from the work, probably a primacy of text-language, to which the musical strands would pay due homage. Instead, it sounded more like an instance of the voice being a third instrument, carrying less specific detailing and more interactive abstraction, the spoken word truly inhabiting a “non-singing seat” as it were, but fully participating in the refulgent glow of the music-making. The two instrumentalists also performed two 2-part Inventions by JS Bach, the second of which caused veritable ripples of appreciation throughout the building at its conclusion.

The moment came for the Hon. Chris Finlayson, the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, to present the inaugural Maxwell Fernie Organ scholarship. The Minister raised a laugh at the outset by talking of Max’s music-making giving him every Sunday a sense of the eternal, as opposed to the more common present-day phenomenon of guitar-playing in church leaving a taste of the infernal! He then presented the scholarship to the winner, eighteen year-old Thomas Gaynor, already a winner of various organ prizes in both New Zealand and Australia, one being the 2009 ORGANZ Organ Performance Award. The Maxwell Fernie Trust Award will help Thomas with funding the overseas experience he requires involving coaching from leading European players and teachers, and encountering some of the great instruments to be found throughout the Continent. We were able to watch some video footage featuring one of Britain’s most well-known organists Nicolas Kynaston, talking about Max, who was his teacher and mentor in London, and then some treasurable sequences featuring Fernie himself teaching, and philosophising about music in general – very inspirational!  After this, James Young recounted his impressions of Max’s exacting and uncompromising specifications for the rebuilding of the St.Mary’s organ (which took place eventually in 2006). There remained the proof of the pudding – and the young inaugural recipient of the Trust’s scholarship, Thomas Gaynor, proceeded to give a brilliant performance of the finale of Vierne’s First Organ Symphony, amply demonstrating both his suitability as the successful scholar, and Maxwell Fernie’s expertise as an organ designer. I loved the almost Mahlerian feel of the work’s final pages, the movement’s principal thematic material returning with wonderful, inevitable power.

Ater this tour de force one could have forgiven Donald Nicolson for steering the same instrument straight into the strains of “Happy Birthday” and away from the evergreen “Toccata” from Widor’s Fifth Symphony, which, following the Vierne, was always going to be a bit anticlimactic. However, he didn’t disappoint the punters and resolutely played the piece, then adroitly wove the time-honoured birthday melody into the coda, inviting the audience to join in with the song.  It was perfect as a tribute from everybody, including the “Non-Singing Seats”, to the man who like no other made the spaces of the same building resound with the most glorious music.