Author: Peter Mechen

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.

HellHereNow – Anzacs at Gallipoli, Pataka Museum, Porirua

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Gallipoli Diary of Alfred Cameron

Paintings by Bob Kerr

Music by Alfred Hill and Gabriel Faure

Slava Fainitski (violin) / Brenton Veitch (‘cello) / Catherine McKay (piano)

Robin Kerr (speaker)

Pataka Museum, Porirua

Sunday 25th April 2010

At Pataka Museum in Porirua, an exhibition featuring a series of paintings of Gallipoli by Wellington artist Bob Kerr was presented, bearing the title “HellHereNow”.  The ten paintings together made up a sizeable panorama of Anzac Cove in Gallipoli – a place that uncannily resembled Makara, not far from Wellington, one similarly rugged and desolate. Interestingly, the ambience and atmosphere of each panel was reflected by the elements in different ways – the landforms were depicted as more constant and immutable from image to image, whereas the sea and sky expressed movement, change and occasional volatility. The sequence thus engendered at once a sense of permanence and the unceasing movement of time and tide.

At the bottom of each of the panels Bob Kerr wrote an exerpt from a diary written by Alfred Cameron, one of the young New Zealand soldiers who saw action during the First World War at Gallipoli, while along the top of all except the outside pair was written the words of a statement attributed to a Turkish officer, Ismail Hakki, expressing his anger at the senseless of soldiers being made to “kill each other without reason”. The effect of these writings transcribed upon images of a totally unpeopled and forbidding landscape is a somewhat ghostly one – almost as if the land is quietly murmuring the sentiments of the shades of the soldiers who fought there, keeping their stories alive for those coming after who would take the trouble to stop and listen.

Kerr found Alfred Cameron’s diary among a collection of  fifty World War One diaries in the Alexander Turnbull Library, and was struck by the directness, the honesty and the clear-sightedness of the young man’s writing, enough to want to express in visual terms the all-too-enthusiastically expressed spirit of the age, a desire to experience the adventure and excitement of going to war.

Alfred Cameron’s diary captures the wide-eyed idealism of the young men who went off to war, as well as the bitter disillusionment which followed. Over twenty-one days of diary-writing Cameron had gone from reflecting this idealism to expressing the brutal realisation of the situation’s realities in one of the final entries – “It’s hell here, now”. Alfred Cameron was subsequently wounded at Gallipoli, hospitalised, and eventually repatriated. He returned to farming in New Zealand in North Canterbury, married, and raised a family, some of whose descendants now live in Wellington.

The paintings were exhibited at Pataka for over two months, from March 20th until  May 23rd. During this time, appropriately enough on the weekend of Anzac Day, the exhibition featured several performance presentations of the diary writings as a spoken narration to the accompaniment of live music, all set against the backdrop of the series of paintings. With the artist’s son, Robin Kerr as an impassioned and theatrical, though nicely-poised reader,  along with the heartfelt playing of a trio of musicians, violinist Slava Fainitski, ‘cellist Brenton Veitch and pianist Catherine McKay, presenting exerpts of music by Alfred Hill and Gabriel Faure, Alfred Cameron’s diary writings took on even more of the emotive force of a living, cumulative tragedy.

The performers chose Alfred Hill’s music as reflecting the somewhat naive patriotic spirit of the times,  playing a reconstructed work, a piano trio written in 1896, whose piano and violin parts were subsequently lost, but which had also been reworked by the composer as a Violin Sonata. From this work, Australian musicologist and publisher Alan Stiles had been able to put the Trio back together along its original lines, to marvellous effect in the work’s opening movement, much of which was used to reinforce the forthright optimism of the diary’s first few entries, eagerly and youthfully conveyed by narrator Robin Kerr.

The presentation began with Bob Kerr welcoming the audience and speaking about his paintings, after which it was the turn of the musicians and the narrator to take up Alfred Cameron’s story. The first music we heard was the opening of the Trio by Alfred Hill, at the outset arresting, forthright chords and strongly syncopated emphases, with lyrical lines in between the more energetic episodes. A second subject was beautifully prepared by the writing and nicely shaped by the players, the ‘cello having the line and the violin the descant, before the instruments joined, with piano accompaniment.

Whenever the playing broke off to allow the speaker his turn I found myself torn between wanting to hear the music continue, and waiting for the next piece of the narrative. The words of Cameron’s diary brought out the young man’s essential boyishness excitement at the prospect of going to war, and the first exotic ports of call that the young men experienced, in Egypt and at Suez. The music began again at the diary’s description of the young soldiers’ going out to dinner in Cairo, the sounds wistful at first, then gradually returning to the mood of the opening, jagged and athletic, with strength and lyricism well-harnessed together. Throughout I liked the tensile, well-wrought argument between all three instruments, the robust and rugged interworkings and the singing of the lyrical lines contrasting to rich effect.

The diary narrative skilfully dovetailed with the music – the first news of casualties from the “front” was contrasted with descriptions of the beauty of the Mediterranean, and the excitement of the arrival at the Dardanelles, where, upon approaching and landing on the beach the soldiers were suddenly confronted with the realities of war, the company being heavily shelled by the Turkish forces. Before long the situation’s hopeless tragedy became apparent, the diary towards the end describing the desperate conditions, the ill-fated skirmishes, and the loss of life – the description of the soldiers’ graves was placed alongside Gabriel Faure’s  Elegie, beginning with sombre ‘cello and piano, and with violin eventually joining in as the music became more impassioned. The full force of Alfred Cameron’s words seemed to find expression in the instruments’ tones: – “It’s just  hell here, now, no water or tucker, only seven out of thirty-three in number one troop on duty, rest either dead or wounded. Dam the place, no good writing any more.”

At the end, the music took over from the words, the heartfelt playing by the trio of musicians ineffably expressing the mood of the evocation, wrought in tandem with the paintings and the narratives. Altogether, the presentation made a stunning effect, the synthesis of visual art, music and spoken narrative finely and sensitively judged by all concerned, artist, speaker and musicians – an Anzac Weekend event to indeed remember.

New Zealand Youth Choir – the Wellington Connection

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Members of the NZ Youth Choir

Fundraising Concert for Asia/Australia Tour

Music by Tallis, Stanford, Brahms, R.Strauss, Mendelssohn, Shearing, Rachmaninov, Penderecki, Bellini, Tchaikovsky, Britten, Carter, David Farquhar, Wehi Whanau

St.Mary of the Angels Church, Wellington

23rd April 2010

At the end of June the New Zealand Youth Choir heads off to Asia for an international tour that will include concerts in Singapore, South Korea and China, before returning to Australasia via further performance dates in Brisbane, Canberra and Sydney. During April, the Wellington members of the Choir gave a fundraising concert at St.Mary of the Angels’ Church, one which readily demonstrated not only the group’s corporate abilities, but individual choir members’ variety of musical skills. If the other “chapters” of the choir possess comparable abilities, the assembled group will, under their artistic director Karen Grylls, a musical force to be reckoned with.

Throughout the concert one had to “bend one’s ears” to pick up the microphoned voice-announcements in between each item, some of which were almost impossible to decipher in the reverberant acoustic of the venue. Fortunately the musical performances were unaffected, even if the placement of the singers in one or two instances didn’t do the performances complete justice. Generally the church’s ample acoustic served the singers and instrumentalists well, in both solo and ensemble items.

The concert began with a group of two English anthems, the well-known  If Ye Love Me by Thomas Tallis, and the setting by Charles Stanford of Psalm 119 Verse 1 Beati Quorum Via, the choir conducted by Ruth Kirkwood.Immediately one registered the soprano lines in the Tallis work as clear, beautifully-defined strands with a rich, full quality. With the Stanford motet the mens’ voices had more chance to shine, particularly the tenors, whose singing featured long-breathed lines and lovely pianissimi. Throughout the six parts the tuning was good and the tones both delicately and richly-sustained equally by the smaller groups and the full choir.

Following this was the Brahms Quartet Der Gang zum Liebchen (Way to the Beloved) Op.31 No.3. I would have brought the voices further forward for this, as Belinda Maclean’s excellent piano-playing was given too much physical prominence by the placement of the instrument, in places obscuring the close-knit vocal lines. Nevertheless, the group’s lovely singing gave pleasure, with only the softer, more delicately pointed harmonies failing to register as they ought, due to the balance. Strauss’s song Morgen worked better, with its more open textures and soprano Amanda Barclay’s clear, focused tones, sensitively accompanied, again by Belinda Maclean. The performers took us into the song’s heart, capturing all of the setting’s awareness, expectation and rapture – a lovely performance. Belinda Maclean was to demonstrate further talents with two harp solos later in the programme, her playing of what sounded like a “Willow Song” bringing out such beguiling qualities as a pliability of touch and phrasing that made every note a pleasure to listen to.

The choir’s delivery of Mendelssohn’s Drei Volkslieder did the music proud, with the first song’s gentle pastoral lilt set against the slightly sinister tread of the following piece’s minor-key mood, all tensions resolved with the carol-like finale. Imogen Thirwell’s wonderfully capricious performance of David Farquhar’s Princess Alice was another whose effect would have been more telling had the singer been placed further forward – as it was, her bright, eager voice and clear-as-a-bell diction delighted, as did her use of facial gesture to “flesh out” and punctuate the words. More word-pointing, this time from the whole choir, enlivened the George Searing number Lullaby of Birdland, with some lovely harmonisings and echoings of the lines throughout. At the other end of the “entertainment” scale were the performances of both Rachmaninov’s Bogoroditse Devo, the Hymn to the Virgin from the composer’s Vespers (All-Night Vigil”), and the Sanctus from Penderecki’s Requiem, the Rachmaninov bringing out the voices’ deepest and richest tones, casting a dark and ruminative spell, and the Penderecki filled with tensions and strained beauties, the lines constantly fractured or broken for expression’s sake.

More individual performaces included baritone Josh Kidd’s bright, energetic and attractively Italienate singing of Bellini’s Vaga Luna, Isaac Stone’s droll, nicely folkish rendering of Britten’s setting of the English folksong The Foggy Foggy Dew , and Jessica Lightfoot’s rapt, dusky-toned playing of the slow movement Canzonetta from Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, beautifully partnered on the piano by Evie Reiney. When one thinks about it, it stands to reason that a person’s musicality would more than likely manifest itself in a number of ways, though such demonstrations of multi-faceted technical proficiency still seemed remarkable. The focus appropriately returned to the choir for the last bracket of items, including a rhythmically-alert and glorious-toned rendition of the Negro Spiritual I‘m Gonna Sing, and a beautifully-grounded final number, the Wehi Whanau’s  Wairua Tapu, complete with body actions, music that gives one the feeling of belonging to a very specific part of the world, one that the members of this choir will undoubtedly play their part in representing with great honour and distinction.

Sweet, Seductive Sounds – La Musica Antica at Te Papa

Posted on by Peter Mechen

La Musica Antica

Un viaggio musicale – a musical journey through the 16th and early 17th century

Songs and instrumental music from Italy

Music by Monteverdi, da Festa, Da Rore, Rognioni, Spadi, Strozzi, Frescobaldi, Caccini and Mazzochi

Pepe Becker (Baroque  Voices), soprano / David Morriss, bass

Robert Oliver (Phantastic Spirits), viola da gamba / Donald Nicholson, virginals

Peter Reid, cornetto

Te Papa Marae, Wellington

Sunday, 11th April, 2010

La Musica Antica consisted of singers and instrumentalists from different performing groups in Wellington coming together to charm and delight an audience with some utterly gorgeous sounds from the late Renaissance/early Baroque era, all secular music, and mostly on the topic of love.  A programme with English translations of the songs was provided at the concert, but I had little recourse to refer to mine during the performances, so captivated was I with the “sounds” of the music-making, the combination of voices, cornetto, viola da gamba and virginals having an unashamedly sensuous appeal to my susceptible ears.

Remarkably, these musicians recreated these sounds with one of their original number missing, soprano Rowena Simpson being indisposed and unable to perform. Pepe Becker reassured us that the concert wouldn’t be unduly affected, because cornettist Peter Reid would play all the duets with Pepe, realising the second soprano part on his instrument. The only piece they couldn’t thus play was the first listed in the programme, a Monteverdi duet for two sopranos and cornetto Come dolce hoggi l’auretta which was dropped.The concert began instead with the second-to-last listed item, a work by Costanzo da Festa, Venite amanti insieme, for soprano, bass, and cornetto, music whose pleasingly “ancient” sounds called to mind scenes of festive pageantry, of a kind often used in presentations of Shakespeare and his times.

The cornetto, whose sound has such a distinctive colour and timbre, worked beautifully as a “singing voice” especially in duet with Pepe Becker. Add to the texture David Morriss’s sonorous tones, and you have, as in da Festa’s Si come sete, a beautifully-tapestried combination of singing lines, delightfully teased-out for the listener’s pleasure. Again, as with most of these settings, it seemed to me to be the sounds as much as the words which gave these settings their peculiarly intense passion – something about these tones are “charged”, making a perfect vehicle for the highly emotional words of the texts.

Pepe Becker’s soprano was as pure an instrument as I’ve ever heard it to be, whether in duet with the cornetto, or creating whole realms of beauty out of a single line. Where she really showed her solo mettle was in the Barbara Strozzi setting I’Eraclito Amoroso in the concert’s second half, the composer requiring of the singer a vocal line that soars, weeps, fumes, melts and charms, the whole drawing the listener into the gamut of emotion wrought by a text describing the despair of love’s betrayal. Then, with the singer in partnership with the cornetto, Monteverdi’s Ohimè, dov’ è il mio ben featured Pepe Becker and Peter Reid in perfect accord, relishing the music’s mellifluous harmonisings and beguiling dovetailings of lines.

In such forthright company, David Morriss’s beautifully soft-grained bass voice, though clear enough in the opening Venite amanti insieme, by da Festa, was occasionally too reticent, especially where the tessitura was extremely low, as in the same composer’s Affliti spirit miei – here the voice needed a bit more juice in places, though the overall effect was touching and sensitive. He had more opportunities to shine in the following Una donna, where a slightly higher and more energetic line allowed the voice more expressive freedom. By the time he had reached Giulio Caccini’s spectacular Muove si dolce, towards the end of the programme, his voice had completely settled, resulting in powerful and varied tones used excitingly, with great runs, and, occasionally, even some very low notes. Adding to the excitement here and elsewhere was the continuo-playing of Robert Oliver on viola da gamba and Donald Nicolson on virginals.The instrumentalists had solo items, or extended solo passages within items, both the cornetto and the viola da gamba taking it in turns to duet with the virginals, each combination producing fantastic playing, some incredible runs and entertaining contrasts between both instruments and music keeping us burbling with interest and enjoyment.

The final Folle cor by Domenico Mazzochi brought together all the different elements of the concert’s success, again those seductive green-and-golden sounds, brought out by beautifully intertwined teamwork from singers and instrumentalists, relishing the quixotic rhythmic patternings of the setting. This was a kind of “eat, drink and be merry; for tomorrow…..” song, whose recurring and somewhat sobering moral has its own common-time gait, underlining the contrast with the lighter, more carefree tread of the verses. Some of the composers in this concert were names I did not know – Costanzo da Festa, a sixteenth-century Italian composer who, like Monteverdi, wrote both sacred and secular music, Giulio Caccini, a member of the renowned Florentine Camerata, who, along with Jacopo Peri, is regarded as one of the very first composers of opera (each composed an Eurydice at about the same time), and Domenico Mazzochi, who wrote only vocal music and is best-known for his activities an a papal composer, working at the same time (late renaissance, around 1600) as the aforementioned figures. To be able to be entertained AND educated thus at a free concert of this quality goes to show that there are still silver linings that flash and glitter into view amid the present gloom of uncertainty and recession and whatever else darkens our lives; and that we should thank our luck stars for them and for the musicians who make them shine so brightly.

Grief and Grandeur – New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

R.STRAUSS – Metamorphosen for 23 Solo Strings

BRUCKNER –  Symphony No.7 in E Major

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Pietari Inkinen (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 10th April 2010

At the beginning of the concert the NZSO’s Chief Executive, Peter Walls, brought the Chilean Ambassador Luis Lillo onto the platform to speak to the audience. The Ambassador talked about the devastation in Chile in the wake of February’s major earthquake, and thanked the orchestra and the concertgoers present for their support of the Chilean Earthquake Humanitarian Relief Fund. The NZSO has announced that all proceeds from programme sales at this and the Auckland concert on Saturday 17th April will go to the Fund. What a pity, therefore, that the attendance for this concert was noticeably less than usual, despite Peter Walls’ hope expressed in the programme foreword, that because of the music offered the concert would be well patronised. A possible explanation is that a proportion of orchestral patrons continue to take fright at the appearance of the name “Bruckner”, while another is that the combination with Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen seemed to some people as if it would be too much like hard listening work!

Certainly the pairing of two largely elegiac and valedictory scores gave the concert a very specific flavour, exploring a particular ambience in depth as it were, from two different viewpoints. Of course, there are as many responses to great music as there are people, and for some, the prospect of having to square up to any composer’s (let alone TWO composers’) outpourings of grief and mourning can be too sobering, even disturbing an experience, rather too far outside the parameters of “comfortable listening”. It’s precisely because of this that others, like myself, would have revelled in the experience of being taken so profoundly into those darkly despairing realms, far removed from normal experience. In fact I thought that, musically, it was great and imaginative programming.

Strauss’s Metamorphosen, scored for for 23 solo strings, was written by the composer as a lament for the physical destruction suffered by German cities during the Second World War – though the larger view of the composer’s intent would probably include the havoc wrought by the Nazis and the war in general upon German art and culture. The music’s intensity was highlighted in this performance by the musicians, with the exception of the ‘cellos, standing up to play, giving the music-making an extra “gestural” quality, quite choreographic in effect, and fascinating to watch. For me, it added to the performance’s intensity and sense of player-involvement – incidentally, qualities which I’m pleased to observe, seemed to carry over into the second-half performance of the Bruckner as well, even though most of the orchestra members had for the symphony resumed their seats.

Conductor Pietari Inkinen encouraged a deeply-voiced, extremely hushed beginning to the Strauss, the sounds seeming to grow from out of the ground the players stood upon as the violas brought in the first hint of the quotation from the “Eroica” Symphony’s Marche Funebre, one which transfixes this work. The upper strings brought cool and clear light and space to the textures, with intensities hinted at all kinds of different levels, both dynamic and timbral, and everything beautifully controlled and shaped. The work unfolded in great paragraphs, giving we listeners a sense of form and perspective with succeeding episodes, the transitions bringing out remembrances of light and warmth set against darker utterances, the solo violin a plaintive voice amid the ebb and flow of levels of feeling. Conductor and players brought the music up to an incredible fever pitch at the agitato climax, the lower instruments then digging in with a will, bringing out the full emotional force of the tragedy of man’s descent into inhumanity, and properly overwhelming the textures of the music with gloom and despair. It was black and trenchant stuff, taking us right to the abyss’s edge, before enveloping us within the deepest tones of dignified mourning at the close – impressive and deeply moving.

Of all the Bruckner Symphonies, the Seventh (although some would nominate the Fourth, instead) is possibly the most approachable for the uninitiated. It’s a most attractive work, filled with gorgeous melody, rich and varied colourings and a well-balanced amalgam of pastoral gentleness, playful impulse and epic power. The orchestra and Pietari Inkinen gave what I thought was a splendidly uninhibited performance of the work, bringing out and revelling in those marvellously juicy lyrical lines throughout the first two movements, and setting the music’s more ethereal other-worldly episodes against a gloriously epic soundscape of rugged and far-flung proportions.

One of the Symphony’s most distinctive features was a highlight of the performance and a resounding success – the use of those special instruments known as “Wagner tubas” in the work’s slow movement, the music paying homage to the composer that Bruckner admired almost unreservedly. The latter was at work on the slow movement when news of the death of “the Master” reached him, and he used the quartet of these eponymous instruments to express his grief. This was the passage immediately following the music’s biggest and most resplendent climax, when the instruments begin a dignified and sombre lament, which becomes a threnody of deeply-felt emotion – here it was all quite superbly played and beautifully controlled by the musicians.

With the other movements equally as characterful and focused, this was a performance to remember and savour – a soulfully-realised first movement with wonderfully-arched lyrical lines,a vigorous and charmingly bucolic Scherzo, and a Finale whose performance here knitted the music’s somewhat stop-start character together with rare cohesiveness, and brought about a resplendent finish. Pietri Inkinen and his players delivered the last pages of the work with a breadth and grandeur that evoked an image of the world viewed by the composer from what seemed like mountain-tops akin to the portals of Heaven.

All in all, I thought the concert a most promising start by the orchestra and its conductor to the 2010 season.