Author: Peter Mechen

Rites of Exultation – The Bach Choir of Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

PURCELL – Come, Ye Sons of Art

HANDEL – Coronation Anthems

Pepe Becker (soprano)

Andrea Cochrane and Katherine Hodge (altos)

Kieran Rayner (bass)

The Chiesa Ensemble (Leader, Rebecca Struthers)

The Bach Choir

Stephen Rowley (conductor)

St Andrew’s on the Terrace, Wellington

Sunday, 13th December 2009

What a tonic after reading the Sunday newspapers to go to such a concert! Here we had music by two of the greatest of all composers bent on celebrating all that’s gracious, noble and glorious about the idea of royal rule, transcending all the all-too-human preoccupation with aspects of human foible, such as scandal, gossip and intrigue, and setting the monarchy itself upon high with tones whose beauty, energy and magnificence ennoble the state of kings and queens. In each composer’s case the music that was produced spoke for the ordinary person, giving tongue to his or her feelings concerning the pride and righteousness of being a much-loved monarch’s subject.

The concert began with Henry Purcell’s Birthday Ode for Queen Mary of 1694, the last of six odes he wrote for a popular monarch, who was to tragically die of smallpox within eight months of the composer writing this final paean of praise for her – Purcell could not have forseen at the time that he would shortly be writing the Funeral Music for his Queen, or that the same music would be performed less than a year later at his own funeral. The words, whose authorship is doubtful (though some think it could be Nahum Tate, who wrote the libretto for Purcell’s most famous opera “Dido and Aeneas”, and the previous year’s birthday ode for the Queen), evoke the spirits of music to celebrate the queen’s birthday – her fondness for music would presumably have inspired Purcell and his librettist to couch their praises for her in the most metaphorically musical ways, a wide range of  instruments giving tongue to joy, celebration and praise – “Strike the viol, touch the lute, wake the harp, inspire the flute!”

Purcell was able to transcend the somewhat earthbound quality of the verses with energising phrasings and rhythms that lift the commonplace up into the realms of great art: The words “Come, ye sons of art, away, tune all your voices and instruments play, to celebrate this triumphant day” when set by Purcell, become a mellifluously-constructed ode to a friend and patroness of music, immortalising her in the process. Before the verses appear, the composer gives us a full Italian-styled three-part sinfonia, concluding with a grave adagio that serves to highlight the solemnity of the occasion and throw into relief the joyousness of the invocations to Art and Music to follow. Purcell’s librettists for these works were not great poets, apart from Sir Charles Sedley, who wrote the verses for the fourth Ode of 1692, Love’s goddess sure was blind. The satirist Thomas Brown, recognising this, wrote the perceptive lines “For where the author’s scanty words have fail’d / Your Happier Graces, Purcell, have prevail’d”.

The playing of the Chiesa Ensemble, led by Rebecca Struthers, was splendid at the outset – strings and trumpets set the scene with bright, shining tones and energised phrasings that brought the music nicely to life – conductor Stephen Rowley chose tempi that allowed phrases to be savoured by the players, whose momentum was generated by dint of accent and phrasing rather than merely speed. After the solemn adagio alto Andrea Cochrane surprisingly took the pulpit for “Come Ye Sons of Art”, placing her alongside the back rows of the choir – a miscalculation, I thought, as she should have been far further forward (in the front, next to the conductor) and more immediate-sounding. She sang very beautifully, but her invocation to the “Sons of Art” had insufficient power and persuasion, due to her backward placement. Similarly, both she and Katherine Hodge were further disadvantaged in “Sound the Trumpet”, not only backwardly-placed, but distanced from the continuo instruments (Eleanor Carter’s ‘cello and Douglas Mews’ harpsichord) who were providing the rhythmic trajectories of the music with such buoyancy. Both singers sang beautifully, blending and dovetailing their tones nicely, and keeping nicely in touch with their instrumentalists; but both of their rather soft-grained voices needed all the forward projection that was available to them, in order to sound the clarion calls that Purcell surely intended.

Having more brightly-focused and strongly-projected tones, both soprano Pepe Becker and bass Kieran Rayner were able to realise more successfully  the more “public” aspect of the Ode.  Kieran Rayner’s declamations sonorously encompassed all but the highest notes without a hint of strain – the  words “Grant, oh grant, and let it have the honour of a jubilee” in particular were clearly and splendidly hurled forth. And the aria “These are the Sacred Charms” was marked by more mellifluous singing from the bass, a momentary voice-slip towards the end apart.  Pepe Becker’s singing of “Bid the Virtues”, in duet with the oboe, while paying less attention, I thought, to word-painting than to the production of beautiful tones, realised some lovely moments, among them a beautifully-arched “Blessing with returns of prayer, their great defender’s care”. Again, I think the backward placement of the singers robbed the words of some of their expression, rather generalising the solo voices’ effect (not that the poetry was anything to write home about, but even the most banal words can be transformed by settings of genius, as here). Soprano and bass shared the festive splendour of the final verse-settings “Thus Nature, rejoicing” with rich and noble tones from all concerned, the timpani flourishes at the end capping off the celebratory effect in fine style.

Handel’s Coronation Anthems, written for the Coronation of King George II and his Queen Caroline in 1727, have proven among the most durable of his works, used in coronation ceremonies of monarchs since then, and regarded as epitomising the composer’s most public and grandiloquent manner. Of course, the music was written for performing in Westminister Abbey, and as such deals in broad brush-strokes of sound, written for maximum public effect. With a choir of fifty voices and instrumentalists numbering in excess of a hundred and fifty, that first performance must have made a splendid noise! St.Andrew’s in Wellington is certainly no Westminster Abbey, but the effect when the Bach Choir’s voices took up the opening words of “Zadok the Priest’ was scalp-prickling. There was a nice sense of processional about the instrumental introduction, Stephen Rowley’s tempi both here, and in the more vigorous “God Save the King” section which concludes the anthem, I thought perfectly judged to bring out the music’s spacious grandeur, allowing the players to put real point and “girth” in their phrasing.

The second anthem, “Let Thy Hand be Strengthened” saw oboe and strings bring a pleasing variation of colour to the music, the singing nicely “rounded” in effect, not perhaps especially pointed, but entirely lacking any mannerism of emphasis or articulation. The minor-key mood of “Let justice and judgement” was allowed all its deep-hued gravity, unfolding and breathing naturally, while the “Alleluias” at the end had plenty of spring and energy. In the next anthem “My Heart is Inditing” I wanted a bit more “spring” from the voices in their opening passagework, something of the kind that was readily provided by the oboes in similar passages throughout. I liked the sopranos’ emphasis on the word “inditing” in their vocal line, something which energised and personalised the words’ delivery. Again, Stephen Rowley managed a tempo at “Kings daughters” which allowed the phrasings of the music to set the rhythmic trajectory of the whole, and again brought out the loveliness of the soprano voices, an effect that was also noticeable, in tandem with the oboes, at “Upon thy right hand”. With the final “Kings shall be thy nursing fathers”, the brass and timpani again came into their own, as they did in the final anthem “The King Shall Rejoice”. Perhaps the concluding “alleluias” were a shade too fast for the choir’s comfort, the voices striving to keep with the conductor’s beat and with the playing of the orchestra – but the effect overall was of great exhilaration and a marvellous sense of occasion, which is what we got, and was, surely, what the composer intended!

Wellington Chamber Orchestra – family connections

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ANTONIN DVORAK – Serenade for  Winds in D Minor Op.44

TABEA SQUIRE – The Suneater – for Recorders and Strings

HELMUT SADLER – Concertino for Recorders and Strings

JOSEF SUK – Symphony in E Major Op.14

Wellington Chamber Orchestra

Soloists: Members of the Recorders and Early Music Union

Conductor: Gregory Squire

St.Andrew’s on the Terrace, Wellington

Sunday 6th December, 2009

Family ties involving both composers and performers were brought into play through this concert – firstly, on the strictly compositional front, works by both Antonin Dvorak and his son-in-law Joseph Suk featured on the programme; while Wellingtonian composer Tabea Squire’s commissioned work “The Suneater – for Recorders and Strings” received skilled and committed advocacy from musicians whose ranks included both of her parents, conductor Gregory Squire and leader of the Recorders and Early Music Union, Katrin Eickhorst-Squire. I was interested in the conductor’s (and, presumably, the orchestra committee’s) decision to play Tabea Squire’s new work TWICE on the programme – while it seemed a laudable thing to do for a new piece, helping the audience to take in so much more of the work’s essence on a second hearing, one would hope that Greg Squire would want to extend such advocacy to all new music he conducts. His enthusiastic and engaging spoken introduction to the work emphasised the importance of repeated hearings to the understanding of any unfamiliar music – by way of example he amusingly quoted his first encounter as a student with Brahms’s First Symphony.

However, it was not Brahms, but his great contemporary, Dvorak, whose music opened the orchestra’s programme, the Serenade for Winds, Op.44. This was a work which obviously represented another formative musical experience for the conductor, who described the prospect of directing the piece as akin to a dream come true. Something about this piece truly engages people – the friend I happened to be sitting next to in the audience bent over and whispered to me “This is my funeral music” just as the piece was about to begin! It’s certainly a most lovable work, one which the Chamber Orchestra wind players (helped by a ‘cello and double-bass) relished with delight, digging into the dotted rhythms of the opening with great enthusiasm and managing some nice dynamic variation through the lead-back measures (lovely clarinets in thirds, nicely answered by horns) to the opening’s return. The second movement (a trifle fast for the players’ articulation at the outset) deftly pointed the contrast between the lyrical opening and the scherzo-like trio section scamperings, even if some of the instrumental solos had treacherous twists, and the tricky rhythmic dovetailings at the end of the scherzo-episode fully stretched the group’s capabilities as an ensemble.The players got a lovely colour at the slow movement’s beginning, horns, bassoons and strings laying down a rich carpet of sound on which the individual solos could be floated; and while there were smudged instrumental lines in places, ensemble was good and the overall feeling was right. A good, strong and forthright opening set the finale on its way confidently, and even if the ensemble subsequently lacked the sheer weight of tone to bring to bear to the growing excitement of the rhythms and exuberance of the fanfares at the end there were heartwarming moments, the most engaging being at the recapitulation of the work’s very opening, sturdily and strongly played.

Tabea Squire’s work for recorders and strings was inspired by Keri Hulme’s iconic novel “The Bone People”, in which story appears a “Suneater”, an idiosyncratic device made of wires, mirrors and crystal which spins when placed in the sun, and which is accidentally broken by its maker. Further inspiration for the composer came from various world mythologies that have developed “sun-eating” stories explaining the oscillations in nature between darkness and light. The music explored a range of colours and hypnotic rhythms which suggested these processes. Right from its eerie Aeolian-harp-like opening on strings, through exchanges both throaty and piping-like with various recorders, the piece unerringly evolved a strongly-wrought atmosphere, somewhat reminiscent of Holst’s “Neptune” in places. I liked the oscillations between rich strings and more astringent winds, which moved the sounds away from such remote “unknown region” ambiences and into more volatile and interactive realms. The intensely “breathy” effect of the recorders gave the last section an almost primitive feel, the instruments’ earthy,  “wrong-note” harmonies moving the sounds as a block out and away from the string ambiences, like a separation of disparate elements, each to their own realms. A second playing of the piece focused these thoughts concerning union and dissolution even more strongly, though I found it was interesting how uniquely “charged” the first performance felt, compared with the repeat, when things simply sounded “different” – everything with more focus a second time round, but less ethereal and magical in effect.

Helmut Sadler’s pleasant but largely unremarkable Concertino for Recorders and Strings filled in an entertaining quarter-hour’s listening, from the “Walk in the Black Forest” aspect of the opening movement, with its out-of-door, almost cinematographic ambiences, and rumbustious attention-seeking tones from the massed recorders, through some quasi-exotic harmonisings in attractively ritualised marches and processionals (some lovely, sensitive solo and ensemble work from the wind players) to a final agitato movement, whose slower middle section was marred by some poor wind tuning, but whose livelier sections were well-upholstered by the strings and deftly negotiated by the “group of soloists”.

The family circle aspect of the concert was completed by the orchestra’s performance of Josef Suk’s Symphony in E Major, an early work, in many ways indebted to the influence of Dvorak, who was Suk’s teacher as well as becoming his father-in-law, but with many original and beautiful touches. As this was the only full orchestral outing of the afternoon for the players they made the most of things, and gave the performance all they had. Before the performance Greg Squire spoke of the composer’s later, darker works, such as the Asrael Symphony, written in the wake of the deaths of both Suk’s father-in-law and his wife, and emphasised by comparison the relatively sunny nature of the earlier symphony. The playing was marked by some lovely solo work in places – a single horn at the start, the clarinet introducing the second subject – and Greg Squire asked for and got great rolling cascades of sound in places, strings capped by festive brass, triumphant and buoyant. Similarly, for the slow movement, my notes read “lovely solos from clarinet and oboe, rich string accompaniments, playing captures the music’s volatility – everything full-on…” The orchestra realised plenty of the scherzo’s dancing energy and spirit, with only the trio section sounding less happy due to some string-intonation lapses.  As for the finale, although too long (the composer’s exuberance getting the better of his judgement with too many episodes and climactic denouments) Greg Squire’s and his orchestra’s concentration never flagged, keeping the narrative well-paced and nicely detailed. There were some tricky exposed passages for strings that sounded uncomfortable for the players at one or two purple points, but more importantly, the epic sweep of the music was conveyed to us in as full-blooded a manner as was required.

Guitar’s Song and Dance – the old and new worlds of Gunter Herbig

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Gunter Herbig – Classical guitar

Music by Luys de Navarez, J.S.Bach, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Douglas Lilburn and Agustin Barrios

Old St.Paul’s Church, Thorndon

Sunday 29th November 2009

During the nineteenth century Franz Liszt was the greatest exponent of the transcription – he used the piano to help popularise orchestral and vocal music whose performance would have otherwise been confined to places and venues where there were orchestras and musicians able to present the music as written. Another instrument whose range and flexibility made it an admirable vehicle for transcriptions of all kind of music was the guitar – one that Liszt unfortunately never turned his hand to – and during the nineteenth century people such as Anton Diabelli, the Bohemian virtuoso Johann Casper Mertz, and the Spaniard Francisco Tarrega were responsible for guitar versions of music by people such as Mendelssohn, Schubert and Paganini, though the last two did themselves actually write directly for the guitar. It struck me, while listening to guitarist Gunter Herbig give his inspirational concert recently in Old St.Paul’s Church, how versatile the instrument actually was – a good deal of the programme was made up of transcriptions of both songs and works for other instruments, yet the guitar seemed admirably suited to express the music’s essential elements. My point in citing Liszt’s well-known transcriptions for piano at the beginning of this paragraph is to thus draw a favourable comparison with similar kinds of reworkings of music to be played on the guitar.

Gunter Herbig’s programme spanned several centuries and continents, being described as “a musical journey from the Old World into the New World” A small degree of amplification was used throughout the concert, which seemed somewhat obtrusive to my ears right at the start, but one quickly adjusted to a point where it was hardly noticeable. Herbig began with some pieces written by the sixteenth-century Spanish composer Luys de Narvaez, a song “Cancion del Emperador”, and two sets of variations. The song had a wistful and melancholic air, with elements of ritualised movement suggesting dance-steps, while the sets of variations contrasted nicely with one another, the first “Diferencias sobre Guardame las Vacas” cheerful and forthright, the other Diferencias sobre otra parte” more ruminative and varied in voicings and in timbre.

The next item was a transcription by Herbig of J.S.Bach’s Partita in D MInor BWV 1004, written for what the guitarist called “prepared guitar”, which meant that a steel wire was inserted beneath the strings of the instrument to colour the sound. The result was not unlike those throaty timbres one associates with early keyboard instruments of the kind that Bach himself would have been familiar with – the clavichord and the early fortepiano. I must confess that part of me was at first wondering why anybody would want to emasculate the beauty and purity of clearly-voiced classical guitar timbres, but I got used to the sound after a while. The somewhat spectral tones of the doctored instrument certainly reflected something of the turmoil that would have afflicted the composer at the time of writing this music, with the unexpected loss of his first wife. Whenever the playing’s intensity heightened, the astringency of the sound sharpened, so that the more introspective moments, robbed of their intrinsic tonal beauty, took on added poignancy in Herbig’s hands. Best of all was the great concluding Chaconne, whose forthright flourishes just before the return of the final tragic statement of the theme made for wonderful drama and deep expression.

After the interval we heard the Five Preludes of Heitor Villa-Lobos, a guitar classic of its kind, as it were – but one with a difference, here, as Herbig was using a new edition of the work incorporating earlier handwritten manuscripts by the composer of these pieces, featuring differences to those of the published versions commonly known. These are wonderful works, the first a baritone-like aria with a duetted middle section, the second a quixotic dance whose central episode darkens (rather like a cloud crossing the sun) with flurries of chilly breezes, and a third (a favourite of mine) a recitative- like exploration of surrounding spaces, with beautiful progressions reminiscent of Grieg’s Norwegian March from his “Lyric Pieces”. A fourth seems like a nature-piece, declamations with whisper-echoes from great distances, sudden agitations and then silences filling up the remaining spaces, apart from a final strum of farewell, while the last is appropriately a Latin dance, here played with commanding colouration and rhythmic flexibility.

Nobody who knows the voice-and-guitar version of the song-cycle “Sings Harry” should be surprised that Douglas Lilburn wrote for the solo instrument. His “Seventeen Pieces for Guitar” (published in 1975, but written throughout the 1960s and 70s) were composed largely at the instigation and encouragement of guitarist and artist Ron Burt. Gunter Herbig played a set of pieces called in the programme “Six Canzonas” – two of these, including the poignant “Flowers of the Sea” from the “Sings Harry” cycle, were from “Seventeen Pieces”, while the other four were transcriptions of music written originally by the composer for Shakespearean productions in Christchurch in the 1940s. Together, the pieces made a gentle, somewhat melancholic impression, indicative, one suspects of a solitary inner landscape, with wistful, even lament-like melodies, measures and processionals, sparsely accompanied.

It was left to “the Paganini of the Paraguyan jungle”, Agustin Barrios, to disperse the pall of introspection that had been thrown over the proceedings, with a romantic waltz (Vals No.3), played with plenty of charm and rhythmic freedom, and two song transcriptions, “Julia Florida” and “Villancico de Navidad”, whose colour, rhythmic verve and depth of feeling amply demonstrate why some regard Barrios as the greatest of all guitarist-composers. Following his death in 1944 he was neglected by the world at large until a new generation of performers rediscovered his work, and restored his reputation as a composer. Gunter Herbig’s playing, as throughout the concert, brought it all to life with considerable elan and skill, concluding a most successful evening at the wonderful Old St.Paul’s.

“Cultural Property” – The New Zealand String Quartet at Te Papa

Posted on by Peter Mechen

John Psathas – Abhisheka

Michael Norris – Exitus

Juliet Palmer – Egg and Tongue

Ross Harris – Variation 25

Jack Body – Three Transcriptions

New Zealand String Quartet

(Helene Pohl, Douglas Beilman, violins,

Gillian Ansell, viola, Rolf Gjelsten, ‘cello)

Te Marae, Level 4, Te Papa, Wellington

Sunday November 22nd 2009

This programme of string quartets by New Zealand composers is being recorded by Atoll Records, the enterprise serving as a well-deserved tribute to not only the composers but also the New Zealand String Quartet for their advocacy of home-grown music over the years. And although a number of these works have been recorded before by the same ensemble, it’s a splendid idea to bring together the group’s updated “take” on pieces that have either already are or else show signs of becoming classic genre works in the ever-burgeoning stockpile of New Zealand compositions. Pieces like John Psathas’s Abhisheka have already developed something of a “performance history” which suggests a welcome longevity, as does Jack Body’s Three Transcriptions (though might the latter work benefit from a rather more mood-inducing title, such as “Three Travelogues” or something?). No such equivocation hampers Juliet Palmer’s intriguingly-titled but lesser-known Egg and Tongue, which dates from 1994, a deliciously “layered” piece bringing impulses, gestures and styles from various sources. The other two works on the programme were both 2009 premieres from Nelson’s Adam Chamber Music Festival, each piece suggesting in its own way a fruitful gestation of advancement in terms of future audience appreciation.

John Psathas’s Abhisheka represented the composer’s first sustained attempt to come to terms with through-composed stasis and spaciousness, though works such as “Waiting for the Aeroplane” (1988) featured episodes of similarly-conceived stillness and inward reflection. Here, the players beautifully “grew” the sounds out of the silences, subtly and unhurriedly exploring the piece’s different colours and textures along the way, and blending exotic melodic lines with faraway ambiences whose hypnotic spell seemed to transcend time and space. Reflecting the composer’s interest in writings by a Buddhist mystic at the time, the music suggested a creative fusion of impulse with reflection, encompassing occasional melismatic movement alongside a deeper, and perhaps inexplicable peace – the abhisheka of the title refers to the process of sprinkling and pouring into a receptive vessel that ineffable state of calm acceptance so alien to normal human “modus operandus”.

Juliet Palmer’s viscerally engaging Egg and Tongue made a great foil for the inward intensities of John Psathas’s work – though it was interesting how again episodes within the music set motion against long-breathedness in a different kind of way. The work suggested something bubbling constantly just beneath a surface whose “skin” would occasionally rupture and fragment – but never catastrophically, the impetus of accented movement being gathered in as quickly as the patternings irrupt. I felt there was an almost “hoedown” element trying in places to get out, its efforts at liberation giving rise to wonderfully startling sonorities, the crunching of four-note patternings against “jamming” pizzicati; while at other times held violin notes exchange like resonating bells, then, in the midst of a “battle of pizzicati” the same instruments excitingly swoop and soar like air-raid sirens. I loved the kaleidoscopic aspect of the piece, its patternings, mirrorings and (in places) volatile dissolutions, not the least of which was its wraith-like conclusion, the violin tones seeming to dissolve in the very air.

Ross Harris was one of two composers present at the Te Papa Marae to hear their work being played (Michael Norris was the other). Ross spoke about the impression made upon him by hearing Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” played by a string quartet, so that his meditation, also for string quartet on the 25th Variation of Bach’s work seemed like a natural outcome of the experience. Variation 25 began by underlining the original work’s lyrical qualities, then introducing downwardly chromatic harmonies to “charge” the music with a kind of late romantic aura, filled with grave, scented beauty. Impassioned accents and phrase-beginnings vie with more circumspect passages, before a  closely-worked scherzando-like episode invigorates the music, then gradually pares away the excess, until the notes take on a more pointillistic aspect as the piece explores different harmonic directions. A lovely solo from the violin, underpinned by the viola’s voice, calmly finishes the work.

While New Zealand composers often draw direct inspiration for their work from their immediate physical surroundings, they’re as liable to respond to wider cultural stimuli representing universal themes and preoccupations – so it is with Michael Norris’s Exitus, an exploration of four different geographical and cultural conceptions of afterworlds. The different scenarios are in themselves intensely poetic and descriptively colourful and varied, and the composer’s response does each of them rich justice. For example, Quidlivun, the Inuit afterworld, is the “Land of the Moon”, whose realisation draws largely peaceful sounds from the instruments, with occasional quasi-vocal intonations suggesting some kind of resigned lament, against a backdrop of patterned repetition that puts one in mind of a mantra or chant. Conversely, the Mayan Xibalba sounds a more fearful place, suggested by pungent-harmonied chords with slashing szfordandi, creating an oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere; while the Norse Niflheim, the northern region of icy mists and fogs, features a spectral hymn-like melody played sotto voce by violins and viola, leaving the cello to explore some hauntingly stratospheric sonorities, with lovely, eerie harmonics. Finally, the North American Choctaw Indian afterworld of Oka Lusa Hacha (Black Water River) describes a trial by water for souls wishing to enter the proverbial Happy Hunting Grounds, the higher violins driving the primitive rhythms on while viola and ‘cello intone with great expressive force the rites of passage, dramatically exchanging roles at one point before the quartet of voices plunges as one into a concerted drive towards the place of destiny, the textures gradually dissolving and disappearing with a brief and disarming flourish.

A “return to life” came with Jack Body’s Three Transcriptions, similarly exploratory, if more “here-and-now” manifestations of humankind’s endlessly varied music-making – something of the alchemic spirit of Franz Liszt’s transcriptions for piano of all kinds of music was evoked by these realisations for string quartet, all from different parts of the world. What struck me from the outset was how the composer contrived to explore timbres from the instruments quite foreign to normal expectations regarding a string quartet’s “sound”, the melody in the first piece Long Gi Yi having, for example, a haunting and exotic vocal quality, around which the other instruments wove a sinuous ambience. The second piece, from Madagascar was called Ramandriana, a dance originally played on an eighteen-stringed bamboo tube zither, the quartet tossing pizzicato and arco phrases back and forth with great brio, across simple and compound rhythms. Finally, the slashing Ratschenita from Bulgaria with its wild 7/8 rhythms underpinned by guitar-like strummings and foot-stampings inspired exhilarating energies and momentums that got everybody’s juices pulsing and tingling in properly life-enhancing ways. A great concert, then, in a most stimulating environment – full marks to all!

Odes to Joy – Wellington Orchestra with Michael Houstoun

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BEETHOVEN – Piano Concerto No.5 in E-flat “Emperor”

ELLINGTON – Suite “The River”

RESPIGHI – The Pines of Rome

Michael Houstoun (piano)

Marc Taddei (conductor)

Vector Welington Orchestra

– with players from:

RNZAF Central Band,

Pelorus Trust Wellington Brass Band,

Titan Hutt City Brass Band

Wellington Town Hall, Sunday 22nd November 2009

You’d be hard put to devise a more celebratory conclusion to a season of orchestral concerts than this one, with both Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto and Respighi’s sonic blockbuster “The Pines of Rome” in the programme. Of course, Michael Houstoun’s performance of the Beethoven was the last in his presentation of the complete series of the piano concerti, giving the occasion a kind of “double-whammy” effect, and at the concert’s conclusion leaving us quite exhilarated with the energy and vitality of it all. I admit to enjoying the Duke Ellington work “The River”, even if it seemed to me to be a bit of “determined to be different” programming, interesting though the music was to hear – but perhaps I’m showing my prejudices regarding both the application of musical “novelties” to programmes and the parallel neglect of homegrown music. With only one New Zealand work (Jack Body’s “Pulse”) to its concert-programming credit throughout 2009, and one (admittedly a premiere by John Psathas) over four concerts next year, I’d be tempted to observe that the orchestra isn’t putting across much of an indication of compositional activity in this country to its concert-going public, given that scheduling one New Zealand work per season is better than having none at all.

Having gotten the gripe out of the way, I can more freely plunge into the business of reviewing Sunday’s concert, which was a great success – firstly, Michael Houstoun came, saw and conquered with his spirited rendition of Beethoven’s largest and grandest piano concerto, while the two second-half works by turns tantalised and thrilled us with their displays of different kinds of orchestral virtuosity, the sultry rhythms and colours of Duke Ellington’s dance-suite, and the full gamut of instrumental brilliance and power generated by Respighi’s Roman picture-postcards. The combination of exciting solo and orchestral playing and the inimitable Wellington Town Hall ambience made for plenty of thrills and, for me, after-glowings of satisfaction.

No-one ever plays the “Emperor” these days as I first heard it played, which was in the grandest possible manner on a recording made by Daniel Barenboim with the great Otto Klemperer at the orchestral helm – totally anachronistic, but still glorious and overwhelming! Vestiges of that formative magnificence, I confess, haunt my perceptions of other performances experienced since, and with which I constantly struggle, as with all first loves – Houstoun’s and Marc Taddei’s conception was a lean and fiery one throughout the first movement, the playing generating considerable orchestral excitement in the opening tutti, and providing an interesting foil for the soloist’s slightly more detached and Olympian manner. I liked the way Taddei encouraged the orchestra brasses, the horns occasionally rasping with scarcely-contained ebullience, and wonderfully contrasting their manner with the beautifully-phrased poetry of the wind playing. As for the strings, their warm tones and incisive playing was a joy – only in places such as immediately after the “battering exchange” between piano and orchestra mid-movement, where they share canonical phrases with the piano did I feel they lacked the numbers for their playing to “tell”. Houstoun’s playing encompassed all of these moods with both initiatives and responses that took us to the music’s four corners – incisive when needed, lucid and cogent in argument, and ruminative at certain cadence-points, he realised the composer’s “generosity of spirit” to which he made reference in a programme-note containing his own, thoughtfully-expressed views of the whole concerto series.

After the first movement I found parts of the remainder of the concerto a tad less engaging – the slow movement was very pure, with concentrated feeling and tightly-conceived lines, but for me the merest shade driven in places where I wanted the music to stand and catch its own stillness, and make listeners aware of their own breath-taking….I thought it lacked some of what the Germans call “innigkeit”, an inward intensity and concentration that banishes all other awarenesses of things.  A moment that did work beautifully was the hushed lead-in to the finale, the piano’s sudden surge of energy into the rondo-theme excitingly breaking the spell and causing exhalations of pleasure from some fellow-listeners in the hall. Houstoun had an uncharacteristic moment of lack of poise in one of the rondo episodes, but quickly recovered, enjoying the music’s exhilarations and contrasting episodes of playful teasing with the orchestra, even at one point anticipating and reaching a downbeat before Taddei and the orchestra could get there, to no great harm in the flow and ebb of it all. At the end, a well-deserved standing ovation seemed to abruptly and surprisingly come to an end, as if people were expecting something would be said from the platform by somebody, who never actually appeared. If there were flowers for Houstoun, one hopes he received them backstage, at least – his achievement in presenting the whole series of concertos with Taddei and the orchestra during the year deserved the warmest and most heartfelt acclaim.

After the interval, Marc Taddei spoke with the audience about the orchestra’s 2010 season, a schedule which I thought had been very nicely devised – a feature had been made of centenaries of pieces of music and their composers, with works connected with 1910, 1810 and 1710, as well as with the present (John Psathas’s commissioned work “Djinn”).  Of course, this configuration worked against including any New Zealand composition except a new one, which was the case with the above work (“Che sara, sara” as the song goes – but I shall return, teeth bared, snapping at the orchestra’s programming heels, in 2011!). In truth I thought the schedule showed rather more flair and imagination regarding repertoire than did the NZSO’s already-published 2010 prospectus, with mouth-watering things promised such as Elgar’s Violin Concerto played by award-winning violinist Feng Ning, and Saint-Saens’ wonderful “Organ Symphony”.

I had little idea what to expect of the Duke Ellington work “The River”, though it seemed on the face of things to resemble Smetana’s well-known “Vltava” from his “Ma Vlast”, the idea of tracing the course of a river from its source through different episodes to either a lake or a larger river or even the sea. One of the sections of the score was titled “Village Virgins”, causing some conjecture regarding how such beings could be rendered musically (Smetana’s “virginal” equivalent, not actually in “Vltava” of course, but elsewhere in “Ma Vlast”, was the war-maiden Sarka and her fellow-Amazons). In the event, the suite of seven movements featured plenty of recognisably “bluesy” rhythms and textures which could have hinted at the music’s origins, but also some full-blooded cinematoscopic orchestral all-togethers, expertly scored by “the Duke”. I wasn’t entirely sure that I’d got my sequences of what I was hearing in line with the programme’s titles, but the ballad-like opening “Spring” with its melismatic horn parts made a great impression, with lovely playing from all concerned. Another movement to impress was the “Giggling Rapids” episode, evoked by a piano solo and agile brass, with terrific percussion work from Jeremy Fitzsimmons. I also liked the section called “The Lake”, beginning with great stillness, and sensitive detailing from the winds over the top of a broadly flowing tune from the lower strings, which eventually became a kind of “Begin the Beguine” from the brass. Finally, just as the virgins were getting into the swing of things during their section, the lights began to dim, and, as the music finished everything in the hall dissolved into blackness, like the end of a scene from a movie – very atmospheric and nicely brought off. Joseph Haydn, of course, would have loved it!

The empty seats in both “organ galleries” had meanwhile been filled by bandsmen and women carrying various shining instruments, in preparation for Respighi’s work to follow – and what a performance it was! I thought the orchestra boxed, as the saying goes, pounds above its actual weight, capturing all the brilliance and  gaiety of the opening section at a scintillating tempo, but one which didn’t “flatten out” the rhythms at all, keeping everything nicely spiked and buoyant. The change to a deep, sonorous ambience for the second section was utterly compelling and dramatic, with Tom Moyer’s trumpet-playing true and sweet, if simply too close and unatmospheric (if he had been offstage it would have been a truly magical moment) and Taddei and his players building the great central archway to brilliant effect. The third section featured more beautiful solo work, this time from clarinettist Moira Hurst, summoning up the enchantment of a nightingale’s song, and setting the scene for the ghostly procession to follow, an eerie, plangently-voiced cor-anglais solo ((Madeleine Sakofsky) seeming to awaken the shades of returning armies marching upon the still-sleeping city. Taddei set a marvellously slow tempo, eschewing the virtuoso romp through this section that spoils many recorded performances by crack orchestras, and instead vividly capturing the sense of a human juggernaut inexorably approaching, and menacing in its power. By this time, the array of brass players on both sides were on their feet, ready to awaken the citizenry and salute the homecoming heroes. What sounds they were! – as the brass players from the Central RNZAF Band, the Pelorus Trust Wellington Brass Band and the Titan Hutt City Brass Band gave voice to their instruments, along with the deep tones of the Town Hall pipe organ, along with the orchestra playing at full stretch enriching the soundscape with the loudest tones I think I’ve heard in the Town Hall since a performance of the Berlioz Requiem I heard given thirty years ago. Simply overwhelming! Bravo!

An American Journey with Cantoris

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Choral Music by Rorem, Copland, Ives, Barber,

Randall Thompson, Virgil Thomson

Cantoris

Heather Easting (organ)

Schola Sinfonica Players

Rachel Hyde (conductor)

St.Peter’s Church, Willis St., Wellington

Saturday 21st November, 2009

Cantoris concluded a rich and satisfying musical year working with current musical director Rachel Hyde by giving us a programme entitled “American Journey”. All but one of the works on the programme were composed during the twentieth century, the exception being Charles Ives’s setting of Tennyson’s “Crossing the bar” (1891). If one was looking for some kind of unifying spirit with which to tie the constituent parts of the concert together, it would be a sense I felt of the music having in almost every case been written to reach out to ordinary people. The exception was the Samuel Barber work Reincarnations, a set of three choral madrigals written in 1940 for the composer’s own Madrigal Chorus at the Curtis Institute of Music, complex, organically-conceived music, demanding for performers and more than usually challenging for listeners. Although the choir struggled at times with this work to maintain pitch, hold ensemble tightly and keep a pleasing tonal quality, it was nevertheless a rewarding piece to tackle, with many telling moments conveyed, such as in the second song, a setting of James Stephens’ poem about a hanged agrarian activist, where repeated cries of the martyr’s name, “Anthony” accompanying the verses generated a lot of power and feeling.

More characteristic of the concert’s general ambience was the opening “hymn anthem” written by Ned Rorem in 1955, a composer whose activities in different spheres would put most people’s creative output to shame in terms of volume, variety and interest. Sing my soul his wondrous love is the first of a set of three similar works dating from early in Rorem’s career, hinting at an interesting half-genre between hymn and motet, a gentle, sensitive setting of an Episcopal Hymn dating from 1841, beautifully “turned” by the choir under Rachel Hyde’s direction. In a not too dissimilar vein was Aaron Copland’s Four Motets, settings of Biblical texts written in 1921, the choir enjoying the “hummed” vocalisations in the first setting Help Us O God, and expertly negotiating the tricky key-changes (Thou O Jehovah, Abideth Forever) and the variation of metre (Have Mercy On Us O My Lord) in  the two central pieces, before capping the set off with the full-throated Sing Ye Praises To Our King, even if the singers’ attack had lost a bit of its “ping” by the end.

Charles Ives’ Crossing the bar, the oldest piece in the concert, sets some interesting harmonic modulations on the back of the basic key of C Major, such as those at the words “Twilight and evening bell”, out of which swells a great flood of emotion for the lines “….may there be no sadness of farewell”, nicely encompassed by the singers, as was the exultation at “I hope to see my Pilot face to face” and also the gentle, ruminative repetitions of the final “When I have crost the bar….” After this came what the programme notes styled as an American choral classic, Randall Thompson’s Alleluia, given a properly exultant reading, but paying due attention to gentler detail, such as the undulating accompanying passages in thirds, beautifully controlled. Conductor Rachel Hyde added a spontaneous percussive element to the excitement of the work’s climax, before gathering in the strands once more for a rapt “Amen” at the close.

Returning to Ned Rorem’s music after the interval was a delight, the 3 pieces taken from a larger, 15-part work, in which they form unaccompanied interludes. Most obviously striking was the first of the three, whose sexual imagery persuades as much as it initially startles: – “nothing at all to talk to and make love when I awake”, the choir’s voices shaping the phrases with delightful relish; and then responding more urgently to the quicksilvery Father, Guide and Lead me and the epigrammatic Creator Spirit,please….. which followed. I liked also the direct simplicity of Virgil Thomspn’s Oh my deir hert, hymn-like with a humming accompaniment, music for which this sort of programme was devised.

The “other” Thompson (Randall) made a reappearance, with his work Frostiana, settings of the work of one of the truly iconic American poets, completed in 1959. The composer set seven of Robert Frost’s poems altogether,from which set four were chosen for presentation here. Originally for piano accompaniment, Thompson orchestrated the settings after the poet’s death (there exists contradictory evidence regarding the poet’s attitude towards the musical settings of his verses – perhaps Thompson’s reticence while Frost was still living provides a clue!). Several young players from Rachel Hyde’s own Schola Sinfonica accompanied the choir, and sustained their rhythms and tones well throughout, the lovely quasi-oriental instrumentals at the end of the first setting The Road Not Taken being particularly well-realised. At the end, the programme featured the youngest composer’s work, Matthew Harris (b.1956), exerpts from three books of Shakespeare songs from various plays set by the composer. A very “American” use of wordless “do-do-do” vocals coloured the second setting, Tell Me, Where is Fancy Bred, and as well the last of the four O Mistress Mine featured a soloist with an ear-catching “popular song” manner. I also liked the “Hey nonny-no” motif of It Was a Lover and His Lass, used rather beguilingly as a rhythmic carriage for the song, while the choir’s forthright tones and rhythmically confident delivery of the opening Take, O Take Those Lips Away was carried through the companion settings and made for a most rewarding evening’s singing and listening.

Diverse Soundscapes – Segerstam and Kringelborn with the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SIBELIUS – Luonnotar, for soprano and orchestra

GRIEG – Songs

CHRIS CREE BROWN – Icescape

BRAHMS – Symphony No.4 in E Minor

Leif Segerstam (conductor)

Solveig Kringelborn (soprano)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Friday 13th November 2009

It was hard to know what to make of this programme as an assemblage of music – I thought of it as a concert of two diverse halves, the first an exploration of cool, bracing sounds and ambiences from both the planet’s hemispheres, and the second an exposition of one of the greatest of all romantic symphonies. I would have preferred to have heard Leif Segerstam conduct more Scandinavian or perhaps some Russian music, following his and the orchestra’s magically-wrought first-half evocations of music associated with Arctic and Antarctic regions. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in how he would approach a work from the standard Central European symphonic repertoire. But, interesting though the Brahms Fourth Symphony performance was, I would have thought a major symphonic work from Northern Europe (Nielsen comes immediately to mind, though there are any number of works by other fine symphonists from this part of the world) might have been considered a more appropriate companion for music by Sibelius and Grieg, along with Chris Cree Brown’s impressive tone-poem “Icescape”. I remembered the remark “Segerstam is a wild man!” made by Pietari Inkinen during a pre-concert discussion forum at the beginning of the NZSO’s Sibelius symphonies series, and wanted to hear him apply that wild spirit to more music that breathes the same fresh, tingling and rarified air.

Still, in an imperfect world I was content with hearing Luonnotar, Sibelius’s utterly magical evocation of the Finnish creation myth, made all the more mysterious and ritualistic by the use of the composer’s native language, here engagingly delivered by Norwegian soprano Solveig Kringelborn. Her clear, communicative tones and detailed diction helped bring a powerful sense of storytelling to the work (wrongly described as a “song-cycle” in the pre-concert publicity – Luonnotar is actually a fully-fledged stand-alone extended orchestral song). At the beginning, the singer survived a slight “tickle” on one of her opening notes, going on to capture all of the brooding, mystical power of both words and music. Segerstam and the orchestra, for their part, provided her with a stunning evocation of timeless creative impulse, a real sense of something being wrought from nothing – now still and brooding, now urgent and restless, now elemental and declamatory. It was a marvellous performance, and a perfect fillip to the earlier Sibelius festival series – would that we had more directed by Segerstam in this vein (the incidental music to “The Tempest”, for example…)

More did follow, but not from Sibelius – instead, Christchurch composer Chris Cree Brown’s “Icescape” tellingly kept our listening temperatures firmly in single figures with some gloriously rugged orchestral sounds – rasping string timbres and bird-like cries from winds, accompanied by primordial glissandi from the brass and crystalline touches from percussion. Elemental blocks of sound from different orchestral sections contrasted tellingly with both a volatile dancing element and episodes of great stillness, the sostenutos readily suggesting the icy wastes of the Antarctic continent. It was a work where timbral differentiation was as crucial to the argument as was rhythm and dynamics, with some amazing, ear-tingling sounds resounding in the memory at the music’s conclusion.

I wondered whether the bracket of Grieg songs coming after such austerities would merely serve to underline Debussy’s dismissive “pink bonbons stuffed with snow” remark regarding the Norwegian composer’s music. I needn’t have worried – Grieg’s uniquely piquant and richly unsentimental harmonic language (greatly admired by both Frederick Delius and Percy Grainger) is heard to its most telling advantage in his songs, striking even in oft-heard pieces like “Solveig’s Song” from Peer Gynt, and the well-known “Last Spring” (one of two songs that the composer arranged for string orchestra, but vastly preferable in its original form). Singer, conductor and players made this music their own, with many magical touches, the soprano’s affecting “world-weary” tones in Solveig’s Song, the orchestra’s heartfelt phrasing of the strings-only passages of “Last Spring”, and the astringency of the strings-and-wind textures in the Mahlerian “En Svane” (A Swan) which concluded the first half. Only in the more declamatory passages of “From Mount Pincio” did I feel that the singer lacked the tonal reserves to fully “command” the vocal line, though again she shone in the work’s more ruminative, sensitively-breathed passages, and generally won our hearts.

Segerstam propelled the Brahms symphony on its way with little fuss and no intrusive exaggerations – everything was sweet-toned and unhurried, rather small in scale, but with nothing pushed or “hefted up” unnaturally. My notes make ready references to gorgeous orchestral playing from all departments, the whole creating a lovely autumnal atmosphere, with one or two touches suggesting the occasional ‘edge of the abyss” realisation, without drawing undue attention from the shape of the whole. I thought the opening of the slow movement was beautifully done (though it’s music that always gives me goosebumps!), pizziccato strings and winds enjoying the music’s equivocations of regret and resignation that colours whole episodes of this movement. The NZSO strings didn’t disappoint at the reprise of the big, Brucknerian tune, here gloriously rich and deep-toned, while the horns made a suitably baleful impression just before the movement’s close. I enjoyed the timpani’s prominent voicings during the rumbustious scherzo, with the horns this time warm and sonorous in the middle trio section.

Throughout the symphony a section of the audience had been applauding at the conclusion of each movement (unusual for a Wellington audience), and matters came to a head when the applause after the Scherzo interrupted the conductor’s attempt at an “attacca” with the final movement – Segerstam turned to the audience and pointedly extended four fingers, one after the other, to the amusement (or bemusement) of all concerned. Despite the finale’s big-boned opening, which splendidly carried us through the first gaunt utterances of the Passacaglia theme, I didn’t feel that Segerstam consistently picked up the music’s underlying forward thrust after some of the more lyrical episodes – the result was that the tension sagged towards the end, and the last few pages for me didn’t have that “screwed-up-tightly” quality that surely the whole movement is inexorably moving towards. And the conductor’s agogic pause inserted before the final chord seemed more self-indulgent than logical and organic, in this, the most “connected” of all romantic symphonies.

For me, however, all of this was of little moment – the concert’s first part alone had reaped such ample rewards, I felt richly repaid, and grateful that I had been given the chance to experience Pietari Inkinen’s “wild man” at work with repertoire he knows and loves – even if it was only half-a-concert’s worth!

Shared pleasures – The Elios Quartet at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

CHERUBINI – Double Fugue

SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartet No.7 Op.108

TCHAIKOVSKY – “Andante Cantabile” from String Quartet No.1

SCHUBERT – “Quartettsatz” (String Quartet No.12)

The Elios Quartet: Martin Jaenecke , Konstanze Artmann violins, Victoria Jaenecke, viola, Paul Mitchell, ‘cello

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

Wednesday, 11th November 2009

The Elios String Quartet was formed by a group of friends in 2007, who brought to this Wellington-based ensemble a wealth of musical experience acquired in different parts of the world. Together, they’ve developed a beautiful sound, and a closely-knit sense of the shape and flow of musical phrases which seemed today to bring out all the lines and contours of the pieces within the different frameworks of the music’s character. They chose a Double Fugue by Cherubini to open their concert, a work which demonstrated their qualities as a group to a pleasing degree – what emerged from their playing was a sense of line and a feeling for the work’s overall shape, so that you got a feeling during the second part of the threads and contourings of the music illuminating the intricacies of what had gone before. The work concluded with a grandly rhetorical statement, again presented with what seemed just the right amount of gravitas, though with enough buoyancy to lift the exercise out of the realms of its origin as a solfeggio vocal exercise.

From Dmitri Shostakovich’s fifteen string quartets, the group chose No.7, written by the composer in 1960, in memory of his first wife, Nina, who died in 1954. It was here introduced by violist Victoria Jaenecke, who talked about the work’s ability to convey great atmosphere and strength of character in a brief space of time (at roughly twelve minutes’ duration it is the composer’s shortest quartet). The three movements are played without a break, the group bringing out all the first movement’s dry, sardonic nonchalance, a mood which darkens into a Lento of almost unrelieved sadness, the music wandering for much of the time in an ambient wilderness. The finale’s explosions of energy were brought off by the quartet with great elan, the viola attacking the fugal argument with fierce determination, the ‘cello moaning frequent complaints in the face of the other instruments’ sometimes unison scrubbings. As the music gradually loses its aggressive edge, a ghostly waltz steers the course of things towards reminiscences of the first two movements, accompanied by pizzicato notes which gradually dissolve, leaving the sounds suspended in a kind of quiet, enigmatic state of resignation.

After this, the well-known Tchaikovsky “Andante Cantabile” (from the composer’s first string quartet) was balm for the senses – the players brought out a lovely “veiled” quality to the music, suggesting a lightening of mood between the folk-songish opening theme and the dance-like middle section, with the unisons of both violins adding extra emotional “squeeze” before the hushed return of the opening – all nicely orchestrated by the players, and with only a slight touch of unsteadiness in the high violin work towards the end threatening to break the spell.

There remained in the concert Schubert’s unfinished single-movement quartet (called No.12, but otherwise known as the “Quartettsatz”) – the composer plunges us into a kind of “sturm und drang” mood at the outset, here made more fraught by a couple of slightly out-of-tune notes from the first violin, but nevertheless capturing a mood of agitation and desperation before the lovely second subject has its say, the transition between the two essayed with great elan, as are the “sighs” which are shared between the instruments a little later. The players were particularly good at attacking the sforzando beginnings of tremolando passages, conveying both the angst of these irruptions of energy and the contrasting moments of lyricism, the composer in his music “smiling through tears”. All in all, it was extremely elegant and articulate playing by a group from which I hope we’ll hear a great deal more.

A Requiem to die for……

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Requiem for Phillip II

Christobal de Morales – Missa pro Defunctis

Alonso Lobo – Motet: Versa est in luctum

The Tudor Consort

Directed by Michael Stewart

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Saturday 7th November

The Tudor Consort’s concluding presentation in their splendid 2009 series of musical events was a reconstruction of the funeral music for Phillip II of Spain, a monarch forever associated with the unsuccessful Armada expedition of 1588 sent against England, but whose patronage of the arts during his mere forty-two years identified him more positively with a “Golden Age” of cultural activity throughout the Iberian peninsula during the latter part of the sixteenth century. At the King’s death in 1598, a Requiem Mass written by Cristobal de Morales (1500-1553) was performed, along with a more recent work, the Motet “Versa est in luctum” by Alonso Lobo (1555-1617). Together with an introductory Antiphon, “Circumdederunt me”, also by Morales, these were the works sung by the Consort. The choice of venue was appropriate enough, though I could have imagined an even more evocative ambience wrought by this timeless music at St.Mary’s of the Angels, a more overtly “theatrical” ambience which could then have readily lent itself to some antiphonal placement of different solo voices at various stages of the mass. However, the focus was the music rather than the ceremony; and Michael Stewart’s Tudor Consort voices wove for us a multi-stranded panoply of beautiful sounds throughout the evening, bringing out the telling contrasts between the composer’s use of both plainchant and his own polyphonal settings of the texts.

After the ethereal loveliness of Morales’ opening Antiphon, with the music’s individual strands superbly tuned and balanced by the choir, the starker unisons of the opening Requiem came as something of a shock, creating a real, visceral contrast between the timelessness of the composer’s polyphonic harmonies and the resolutely medieval-sounding plainchant, which was presumably the effect that was intended. Morales employed these dramatic changes throughout the work, revelling in both unities and contrasts by using the “old” chant as a springboard from which to weave his vocal elaborations, long-breathed vocal lines which seemed to span eternities by bringing time to a standstill, everything beautifully sustained by the Consort, with only one or two momentary uncertainties of tuning showing at mood-transitions between paragraphs of texts.

Perhaps Michael Stewart and the Consort might have used solo voices more spatially and ritualistically to create antiphonal effects between celebrant and chorus in places; but one couldn’t fault the character of the actual singing, and the sense of atmosphere created by the sounds of the exchanges. For this nineteen-fifties churchgoer, brought up in the Catholic Latin tradition, it was a chance to revisit long-unheard sound-vistas, none more potent than the thirteenth-century hymn “Dies Irae”, which Morales employs almost in full in its original setting, its principal melody beloved of many more recent composers – I would have added the name “Rachmaninov” to the list of names quoted by the programme note, as the “Dies Irae” was a constantly-recurring motif in the latter’s music. At the end of the hymn, Morales sets merely the last two lines of the poem, the beauty of the polyphonic lines coming like balm to the senses after the severity of the older unison chant. Somehow the applause at the end of this section seemed out of place, even if it was time for an interval.

I particularly enjoyed the Offertorium after the resumption, the singers intoning the plainsong “Domine Jesu Christe Rex gloriae” before unfurling more of the composer’s beautifully-wrought polyphonies, these having a tensile strength whose upward-thrusting impulses emphasised the solidity of Christian faith and belief in heavenly destiny, finding eventual fulfilment at “et semini ejus”. More memory-evocations for me came with the Preface (tenor) leading to the “Sanctus”, Morales creating a rapt, worshipful feeling building up towards long-breathed majesty, as the Heavens and the Earth fill with the Lord’s glory.

The sung “Pater Noster” was another voice heard long ago and brought magically to life here again, its plain, everyman aspect set against the majestic treatment accorded the “Agnus Dei”, its thrice-repeated statements building to a grandiloquence and emphasis that couldn’t help but inspire awe and reverence. Afterwards, the placid, light-suffused “Lux aeterna” brought a measure of consolation, tempered by the imploring energies of the suceeding “Requiem aeternam”, and the sobering declamations of the tenor’s concluding “nunc dimittus”, in which the departing soul is farewelled and committed to the care of the Almighty.

And that was it, but for what was the most telling moment of all – the tiny Motet by Alonso Lobo, whose contribution to the funeral service has forever linked his name with that of Morales, but whose reputation in contemporary Spain stood alongside that of Tomas Luis de Victoria. Michael Stewart and his Consort shaped the work most beautifully, integrating the soaring soprano line with the acompanying textures and allowing the silences to surge softly backwards at the music’s conclusion. Altogether, a richly rewarding experience, and concluding a year of activity and achievement that the Consort and its director can be truly proud of.

A Brace of Troubadours – “Fabulous Guitars” from Caprice Arts

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Charlotte Yates (voice and guitar)

Owen Moriarty and Christopher Hill (guitar duo)

Music by Charlotte Yates, Andrew York, Astor Piazzolla, Isaac Albeniz,

Radames Gnatali, Joaquin Rodrigo, Manuel de Falla, Paulo Bellinati

Congregational Church, Cambridge Terrace, Wellington

Friday 6th November 2009

One would have thought, on the evidence provided by this concert, that time couldn’t have been better spent than listening to the dulcet tones of music for guitar (in fact, mostly TWO guitars!). After all, no less a musician than Frederic Chopin was credited with saying at one time, that “Nothing is more beautiful than a guitar – save, perhaps, two…”. Despite such impressive recommendations, only a handful of people took up Caprice Arts’ invitation to hear a concert of music for (mostly) guitars and for guitar and voice, given by songwriter and performer Charlotte Yates, along with guitarists Owen Moriarty and Christopher Hill, in the Congregational Church along Wellington’s Cambridge Terrace. As with the previous week’s concert with Peter and Mary Barber and Annabel Cheetham, the venue and the small attendance suited the intimate nature of the music and the music-making, but part of one couldn’t help but wish for greater audience numbers and a rather larger-scaled “ebb-and-flow” between performers and listeners.

Charlotte Yates began the programme and immediately invited those of us who were there to “come and sit closer”, a gesture which warmed the ambience and drew us all more closely into the proceedings. She sang three songs from a recent CD “Beggar’s Choice”, the first a ballad-like song “Under Black Water”, reminiscent of Joan Baez’s way with similar repertoire, and a second song “Lost – Blue”, a love-song lamenting the end of a relationship, the emotional angst of the piece expressed by astringent vocals and syncopated rhythms. A third song used words by NZ poet Hone Tuwhare, a poem entitled “Mad”, Charlotte Yates bringing out the heavy beat of the poem’s pulse in her setting, and again using syncopated accents for expressive effect – I had trouble catching the words at times, due to the almost orchestral weight of tones and timbres the singer drew from her guitar.

Owen Moriarty and Christopher Hill began their first-half bracket of items with a contemporary work, Andrew York’s “Sanzen-in”, a piece inspired by the composer’s visiting a temple in Japan, The music had a kind of canonic feeling, accentuated by the exchanges between the instruments, everything beautifully and subtly voiced. Interestingly the sounds weren’t pentatonic, and so avoided any feeling of pastiche, bringing out what seemed an inward, individual response to the experience by the composer. We were then whisked a good half-a-world away to the Iberian peninsular, and to Isaac Albeniz’s evocation of “Sevilla”, played here at a quick, challenging tempo, but with tremendously adroit articulation, the players negotiating the many little touches of rubato with near-perfect ensemble, apart from a momentary hiccup at the reprise of the opening section. Next were two pieces by Piazolla, the first, “Zita”, a transcription of a piece for larger ensemble, featuring a spiky opening with astringent harmonics and syncopated accents, and in places generating terrific momentum. The second piece “Whisky” was a scherzo-like dance movement, woven of gossamer thread at the opening, digging into a more trenchant middle section, and then quixotically going into a kind of “twilight zone” of deep thought, before gradually reawakening and revitalising the textures and rhythms. Most entertaining.

Charlotte Yates returned after the interval with two more songs from the “Beggar’s Choice” CD, performing these with the engaging informality that one would perhaps encounter in a club or a bar. Described as a “gentle pop” number, the first song delineates a fruitless search somewhere in Spain for a flamenco club, while the following “Blood Red Moon” in classic ballad style, described the effect of the previous year’s lunar eclipse – a stirring number , delivered with great panache and whimsy, of all of her performances, the one I responded to the most readily and pleasurably.

The Guitar Duo took up the reins for the concert’s remainder, beginning with a piece honouring a composer written by another composer – Radames Gnatali from Brazil paid homage to his composer-peers in a four-movement suite, each part dedicated to a colleague or mentor or inspirational figure. Here, the Brazilian composer Ernesto Nazareth was honoured with a movement entitled “Valsa”, a piece that began with attractive flourishes and introductory gesturings, before leaning into a waltz-rhythm with a lovely, sinuous melody. Contrasts were afforded by exciting accelerandi and occasional breathtaking sotto voce voicings, the ensemble between the two players, supple, flexible and tensile throughout, bringing off the piece’s ending with winning poise and elegance. Perhaps the most popularly well-known composer for guitar is Joachim Rodrigo, whose “Tonadilla” was next played, a work written for the husband-and-wife guitar duo of Alexander Lagoya and Ida Presti, names I remembered from my early days of record-collecting. This was a wonderful piece, engaging and wide-ranging across three movements – a scherzo-like beginning with pinging “wrong-note” harmonies, a “Minuetto Pomposo” whose droll rhythms give way to a baritonal trio melody spiked by ascerbic chords, and a concluding allegro vivace, a deceptively lazy beginning setting the scene for more astringent harmonic clashes and declamatory posturings, everything nicely “debunked” by the return of the attractively relaxed trajectory of the music.

Another well-known Spanish composer is, of course, Manuel de Falla, whose Spanish Dance from “La Vida Breve” figures in all kinds of instrumental arrangements, but works beautifully for two guitars. This was a more restrained, less overtly macho “take” on the music which I thought brought out a more volatile and elusive quality, the notes flickering like firelight, and the tones not so much threatening in places as strong and certain, but with a sense of power in reserve. Finally we were given another Brazilian work, “Jongo”, by Paulo Bellinati, a piece whose “game-of-chase” aspect between the instruments and occasional percussive effects (quite elaborate at one point) provided a brilliant and entertaining finale to the programme. After such guitaristic fireworks, the Duo generously played an encore to settle our pulse rates, a lovely “Evening Dance” by Andrew York, whose “American in Japan” piece we had already enjoyed in the programme’s first half. A pity more people weren’t present to witness this “triumph of the guitars”, fully living up to the sentiments expressed by the concert’s title.