Author: Peter Mechen

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.

Silent Love – chronicles of love and loss (Caprice Arts)

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Peter Barber (viola)

Mary Barber (piano)

Annabel Cheetham (mezzo-soprano)

Music by Schumann, Bridge and Franck

Cambridge Terrace Congregational Church WELLINGTON

30th October 2009

This splendid concert took its name from the title of a song by Robert Schumann, “Stille Liebe”, one of the twelve “Kerner-Lieder” written during the composer’s “year of song” (1839-40). Tonight’s performance of the whole set of these songs by mezzo-soprano Annabel Cheetham and pianist Mary Barber was merely one of the pleasures to be had from a most enjoyable evening’s music-making. More Schumann came from the brother-and-sister duo of Mary Barber and violist Peter Barber, a transcription for viola and piano of Three Fantasiestücke Op.73. The second half of the concert featured firstly a full trio of musicians performing Frank Bridge’s Three songs for mezzo, viola and piano, then concluded with another transcription for viola and piano, that of Cesar Franck’s A Major Violin Sonata. I was familiar with Franck’s own version for ‘cello of this work, but the viola transcription was one that I’d not heard before.

This was one of an enterprising set of concerts organised by the Caprice Arts Trust, a series that deserves the widest possible support for the innovative programming and the calibre of the artists involved. In some ways it was extremely pleasant to experience music-making of such immediacy and vitality in an intimate venue attended by a smallish number of people; but on the other hand it was a pity that more people hadn’t got to hear about the concert, so that something more of an audience “buzz”could have been generated (though we did our best to show our appreciation at the appropriate moments!).

Schumann’s Three Fantasiestücke Op.73 began the concert in fine style – is there another composer whose music so identifies its creator within a bar or two, regardless of the work? It’s such a distinctive sound-world, at one and the same time so focused yet equivocally suggestive, the sounds infused with imaginative possibilities.  This was a lovely performance, the viola bringing a richly varied array of nuance to the discourse, the partnership with the piano opening up the composer’s beloved “other realms”, some sombre and deep, some infused with glowing light. The musicians achieved what gave the impression of a seamless flow of sound while realising all of the music’s subtle detailings. Particularly remarkable was the soft playing from both instruments, the phrases able to “speak” with particular eloquence, employing a marvellous variety of gently-expressed tones. Although not note-perfect, the music-making unerringly captured the composer’s uniquely poetic vision of an inner world.

More Schumann came from mezzo-soprano Annabel Cheetham, with Mary Barber again at the piano. The twelve “Kerner-Lieder” owe their name to the poet, Justinus Kerner, whose verses with their strong leanings towards the individual’s oneness with nature brought a ready response from the composer – the opening “Lust der Sturmnacht” (Pleasures of a stormy night) immediately plunged us all into the “sturm und drang” of romantic sensibility, bringing forth exciting and committed singing and playing. I found Annabel Cheetham’s tones a shade raw in such places throughout the cycle, probably exacerbated by the liveliness of the acoustic in a smallish listening-space. But there was so much to enjoy, especially when the music required poetry and graceful utterance, the singer’s committed response able to make the words “sound” so meaningfully, and impart a real sense of story – the sequence from No.4 “Erstes Grun” (First Green) to No.6 “Auf das Trinkglas eines verstorbenen Freundes” (To the drinking glass of a departed friend) in particular featured delightful interplay between singer and pianist, the last-named song a highlight of the cycle, with its ready evocation of true friendship and rueful philosophy, and with the piano most excellently “mirroring” the singer’s heartfelt utterances.

After the interval the trio of musicians gave us Frank Bridge’s Three Songs for mezzo, viola and piano (the composer played the viola in the English String Quartet for a number of years), a performance which again worked better in the quieter moments, the singer able to demonstrate a beautifully focused quality in places such as the second song’s setting of Matthew Arnold’s words “Fold closely, o nature, thine arms round thy child”, and the more ruminative utterances of the final Heine setting “Where is it that our soul doth go?”, all deeply-felt and extremely touching, with viola and piano weaving plenty of magic around the voice to telling effect.

Peter Barber described the final item on the programme, the Cesar Franck Sonata, as “jacket-removing music” – he then proceeded to delight the audience, who had been admiring his colourful bow tie during the evening, by revealing identically-hued trouser braces, a nice touch of flamboyance in keeping with the overt romanticism of the music to follow.  As with the ‘cello version of the sonata, compared with the violin’s silvery voice, the deeper-toned viola brought out many differing perspectives to the music, the most obvious being a smokier, more sombre voice resembling that of a maturer, more worldly-wise lover, whose terms of endearment used rather less outward emotional “juice” but expressed more shades of layered meaning and equivocation. Peter Barber negotiated the instrument’s occasional switching between violin-voiced mode and the deeper hues of the larger instrument with great skill, while pianist Mary Barber let the piano-writing unfold so beautifully throughout the whole of the movement, her rich, arpeggiated chording seeming to transcend the instrument’s mere “upright” status.

The second-movement brought forth a big-boned imposing manner, relying more on depth of tone than surface brilliance to generate momentum, an approach that held back from the usual virtuoso pianistic roar, and created a far more detailed soundscape, enabling more give-and-take of musical substance than is sometimes evident between the players. I thought the recitative-like exchanges in the middle section had a very “charged”, almost theatrical quality in this performance, which contrasted beautifully with subsequent outbursts from both instruments, together and separately. The coda was beautifully prepared for, here, less of an impulsively orgasmic virtuoso cataclysm, and more of a roughly-wrought struggle against great odds from which the players triumphantly emerged at the end. Something of that “charged” quality informed the slow movement’s performance as well, some beautiful high work on the viola matched with eloquent lyricism on the piano, even if in places a touch of stridency in the playing indicated the extremes suggested by the music’s expression. Finally, the last movement underlined the “hand-in-glove” nature of the musical partnership throughout, with strong, forthright statements of the canonic theme from both players adroitly giving way to “running” sotto voce passages, beautifully realised. A brief rhythmic mishap at one stage was of no matter, as the final statement of the theme magically stole in and grew like a magnificent double archway, through which the last excited measures scampered, the players at full stretch and the notes a bit splashy, but the ending leaving us exhilarated and extremely satisfied. Great stuff!

Eugene Onegin straight from the heart…

Posted on by Peter Mechen

TCHAIKOVSKY – Eugene Onegin
an Opera in Three Acts
Libretto by the composer, after Pushkin

NBR New Zealand Opera
The Genesis Energy Season

Cast: Anna Leese (Tatyana) / William Dazeley (Eugene Onegin) / Roman Shulackoff
(Lensky) / Patricia Wright (Madame Larina) / Kirstie Darragh (Olga) / Martin Snell (Prince Gremin) / Wendy Doyle (Filipyevna) / Andrew Glover (Monsieur Triquet) / Roger Wilson  (Zaretsky)

Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus
Vector Wellington Orchestra
Conductor: Alexander Polianichko
Director: Patrick Nolan

St James Theatre, Wellington: 10th Oct 2009 to 17th Oct 2009

One of the loveliest of all operas, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, a setting of Pushkin’s tale of innocent ill-fated love, received a strongly-conceived and finely-executed production from NBR New Zealand Opera on the opening night of its 2009 Wellington season at the St.James Theatre. Its pivotal stage-figure was soprano Anna Leese in the role of Tatyana, the girl who at the story’s outset declares her love for the opera’s eponymous hero, and then, having been wounded by his rejection of her, marries someone else. For this role of Shakespearean range and depth a consummate artist is needed, and as a singer Anna Leese has developed into just that – throughout, her voice for me vividly evoked all of the various moods and developments of the character, every utterance recreating a young girl’s romantic dreaminess and impulsiveness at the story’s beginning, and a deepening of womanly understanding as the story’s tragedy unfolds.

Occasionally I thought her stage movement needed more fluidity, matching what the music was doing (parts of her well-known Letter Scene I thought too static, where she seemed confined by her writing desk, instead of spontaneously expressing with her movements what she was singing) – but her voice alone conveyed so much of what her character needed that such criticism seems quite ungracious. She conveyed to us all of her bitter disappointment and disillusionment at Onegin’s rejection of her, and went on to develop strength and resolve as a worldly-wise woman at the story’s end, as, after admitting to Onegin that she still loved him, she in turn spurns his belated declarations of love to her.

William Dazeley’s baritone provided a near-perfect foil for Leese’s Tatyana, with singing and acting that captured the essentials of Onegin’s character, his aloof charm and supercilious arrogance in the early part of the story, and his growing disillusionment with life and final despair at losing Tatyana forever at the opera’s thrilling denoument. This was great theatre, made possible by the sheer commitment shown by both singers to their roles, and underpinned by full-blooded playing from the Wellington Orchestra under Alexander Polianichko. Earlier in the story, where Dazeley’s Onegin was elegant and contained, Russian tenor Roman Shulackoff’s Lensky was all youthful ardour and boisterous spirits, readily demonstrating an impetuousness of manner that was to bring about his own tragic death at the hands of his friend.

As Olga, Kirstie Darragh sang winningly, though I thought her stage-character needed a bit more flirtatious spunk in order to convincingly drive her lover, Lensky, into the jealous rage that pulsated the story’s heart of darkness. By contrast Patricia Wright was superb in every way as Madame Larina, Tatyana’s mother; and convincing cameo roles were also taken by Wendy Doyle as the nurse, Andrew Glover as Monsieur Triquet, and Roger Wilson as Lensky’s duelling second, Zaretsky. A show-stopping appearance in Act Three was that of bass Martin Snell as Prince Gremin, his aria extolling the virtues of Tatyana, his young wife deeply sonorous and beautifully touching.

Occasionally the chorus was hampered by a stage set that crowded its movements, as in the Act Three Polonaise, where the use of chairs by the company did nothing except make the setting seem even more claustrophobic – though, as with the second-act Waltz, the movement  of the dancers gradually cleared the oppressive spaces and opened up the vistas. The Wellington Orchestra seemed to make heavy weather of parts of this score, and took time to “settle” under conductor Alexander Polianichko, with strings occasionally sounding unhappy in exposed passages and winds sometimes fallible in ensemble work – still, conductor and players got things together sufficiently to deliver the drama’s knockout punch in the final scene with thrilling impact, supporting the singers to the utmost.

The production had the virtue of recreating a scenario approximating to the work’s original conception, one which the audience had not a whit of trouble relating to or getting involved with. I occasionally found the visuals cast unduly on the dark and sombre side – the monolithic columns at times seemed more appropriate to something like “Aida” or Act Two of “Die Zauberflote” than to a Russian country estate – but in general I thought director Patrick Nolan did a wonderful job, working with Bernie Tan’s lighting to make creative use of the space and reflect the emotional complexities of the drama. A case in point was the work’s brief overture, during which Onegin was shown reflecting on his life and its troubles and complexities. For a first-timer’s encounter with the work, NZ Opera’s production must have been a great experience, and if not faultless in every respect, could hardly have been more satisfactorily or enjoyably presented by all concerned.

East of Vienna – Wellington Chamber Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

GEORGE ENESCU – Roumanian Rhapsody No.1

GARY GOLDSCHNEIDER – Sinaia

BORIS PIGOVAT – In Argentinian Style

BELA BARTOK – Hungarian Peasant Songs

ALFRED HILL – Symphony in A Minor “The Carnival”

Wellington Chamber Orchestra

Donald Maurice, conductor

St.Andrew’s on the Terrace, Wellington

Sunday 20th September, 2009

Now here was an enterprising programme! – two of the composers whose music was featured I had never heard of; and no less than FOUR New Zealand premiere performances were given, the works by Gary Goldschneider, Boris Pigovat, Bela Bartok and Alfred Hill.  George Enescu’s colourful Roumanian Rhapsody No.1 was obviously the “taster” which began the concert, the music’s beguiling opening melodies and catchy rhythms providing exotic atmosphere aplenty, and setting the scene for further, more unfamiliar explorations to follow.

Conductor Donald Maurice encouraged a lovely improvisatory feeling with the winds’ phrasings at the Rhapsody’s opening, choosing tempi that set the rhythms of the dances nicely in motion, and characterising each differing section of the music with lovely colour and real feeling – a nice touch was getting the violist to stand for his brief gypsy-like solo! The more energetic sections went with real “schwung” in this performance, the woodwinds and horns covering themselves with glory, and the rest of the brass making the most of their more raucous moments. The players caught the “folksiness” of it all splendidly and put across episodes such as the lead-into the work’s “friss” section with infectious excitement and a great rush of adrenalin.

American composer Gary Goldschneider, who spent a short time in the 1980s teaching in both Nelson and Wellington, conceived his work Sinaia while on a trip to Roumania in 2001, after being carried away by the splendours of the historic Peles Castle, located in the town of Sinaia amid mountainous surroundings. Goldschneider based his work on Roumanian and other Eastern European folk-rhythms and melodies, using the device of a recurring motif representing Peles Castle to unify the different episodes of the piece. The work’s contrasting sections create evocative, even mystical ambiences from the outset, a strong, darkly-wrought opening throwing subsequent quixotic pizzicati and agitated, claustrophobic waltz-measures into relief, everything vividly and enjoyably characterised by the players. Another New Zealand connection came with the composer of the next item In The Argentinian Style, Boris Pigovat, through the advocacy by Donald Maurice of another of Pigovat’s works Holocaust Requiem. In gratitude to the New Zealander, Pigovat wrote In the Argentinian Style for Donald Maurice earlier this year, a “tempo di tango” piece that uses another South American dance style, the Milonga. The players delivered this with great verve, and real rhythmic bounce, Donald Maurice encouraging the violas in particular to make the most of their “moments”,  with warm and sonorous sounds.

Both works in the second half originally came into being for smaller forces than orchestra – Bartok’s Hungarian Peasant Songs were originally written for solo piano, but then orchestrated by the composer, while the Symphony by Alfred Hill began as String Quartet No.3, before being recrafted for orchestra 43 years later in 1955, but keeping the same nickname, “The Carnival”.  Throughout the Bartok, I thought the players’ instrumental detailing was exemplary, capturing the music’s wistful, melancholic aspect at the beginning, the winds in particular bringing a colourful “tang” to their exchanges with the brass in the “Peasant Songs” section; while horn and strings beautifully set the scene in the second part for the big processionals to follow – my notes read “majestic brass, imposing strings, winds add to the splendour with Kodaly-like shrieks” – the whole conjuring up the feeling of sounds springing from the very soil on which the dancers’ feet trod.

And so to the Symphony by Alfred Hill, whose string quartet version I had heard and enjoyed, but which equally captivated me in its orchestral guise, its rumbustious opening and attractive Italian-style rhythms moving with wonderful insouciance in this performance throughout the movement’s different episodes, towards a lovely, sospiro-like ending. The oboes relished their jaunty moments in the scherzo, strings digging lustily into their peasant-like drones, then relaxing into a brief but graceful contrasting episode – such skilfully crafted music, nicely realised.  I loved the strings’ command of the sinuous melodic lines in the slow movement, taken up by long-breathed winds, the expression reaching Elgarian depths of feeling in places.The finale, in a sense, returned us some of the way to the world of the Enescu Rhapsody which began the programme – a sultry, gypsy-like spirit galvanised Donald Maurice and the players, setting a sombre melancholy against a vigorous impetuosity, whose energies carried the day, and brought the concert to a suitably rousing conclusion.

Sibelius Festival 2009 – Pietari Inkinen and the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

TAPIOLA / SYMPHONY NO.2 (SIBELIUS)
DON QUIXOTE (R.STRAUSS) – with Gautier Capucon (‘cello)
Friday 18th September

SYMPHONY NO.3 / SYMPHONY NO.6 / SYMPHONY NO.7 (SIBELIUS)
Saturday 19th September

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra : Pietari Inkinen (conductor)

Was it a previously undiscovered ‘cello concerto by Sibelius that made an appearance right in the middle of the orchestra’s festival of the composer’s music? – alas, no! any rumours of there being a work which had somehow survived the self-critical silence of Sibelius’s last thirty years turned out to have no substance. The “cello concerto” was by the Finnish composer’s almost exact contemporary, Richard Strauss – and it wasn’t really a ‘cello concerto at all, more of a concertante work in the form of themes and variations for solo ‘cello and orchestra, with significant soloistic contributions from both viola and violin. What was it doing in one of the Sibelius Festival concerts? – Peter Walls teasingly answered a query along those lines at a pre-festival talk involving him, Pietari Inkinen and Vesa-Matti Leppanen, by saying that it was there because Sibelius never wrote a ‘cello concerto. But the orchestra had engaged French cellist Gautier Capucon to tour a programme featuring one of the Sibelius Symphonies, and Tapiola, as well as Strauss’s magnificent tone-poem Don Quixote, the concertante work.

One could have complained about this on several counts, one being that we were deprived of hearing a couple of Sibelius’s other tone-poems which could have easily filled up the concert’s spaces had the Strauss not been played. In fact, another of the problems of organising the concert was that the first item, Tapiola, wasn’t really a suitable work with which to begin the evening  – it’s too terse, austere and uncompromising a piece to set upon an audience first time up. We could have instead had En Saga or Pohjola’s Daughter, or even, as an alternative, the Four Legends, all of which would have more successfully “tuned the audience in” at the outset.

However, we would have been the poorer had Gautier Capucon not made an appearance at the concert with his performance of “Don Quixote”– not only did Strauss’s music make for a fascinating comparison with his Finnish contemporary’s (worlds apart from Sibelius’s quintessential nature-work Tapiola), but the music’s performance was outstanding. The orchestra played with a brilliance in places that was richly satisfying to experience, as was Capucon’s own complete identification with the title-role. He seemed to “live” the part of Don Quixote, expressing as much with his face and body-language as with his playing, constantly engaging and interacting with the first violist (representing Sancho Panza), the concertmaster, the conductor and the rest of the orchestra – a true piece of music-theatre. With these players in charge, the old story came to life, the music no longer having need of words to express Don Quixote’s knightly delusions.

Despite my reservations regarding Tapiola as a concert-opener, Sibelius’s masterful tone-poem was given an impressive performance, the playing readily conveying the work’s bleak austerity and dark foreboding, if underplaying the last ounce of raw savagery which depicts nature at its most elemental. I wonder whether Pietari Inkinen was simply too refined a spirit and elegant a musician to push the music to the extremes that are sometimes called for – I recall for example his mellifluous but oddly undercharacterised performance of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique earlier this year, where the same strictures seemed to apply. What impressed most here was the tension generated between strings and winds, the rhetorical opening exchanges building up a dark, brooding quality, and the tightly-focused quicksilver dialogues readily suggesting fairy laughter amidst the prevailing gloom. But for me the picture remained tantalisingly incomplete, with the brass entries towards the end having insufficient snarl and bite to evoke the forest god’s baleful presence, the dry-ish MFC acoustic perhaps partly to blame here, for the lack of ring and presence.

In the pre-concert discussion Peter Walls had remarked on Sibelius’s Second Symphony resembling a kind of detective story, with the composer sprinking clues throughout the first movement as to the nature of the whole. Inkinen and the players contributed to the compositional sleight-of-hand by keeping the opening movement moving, the strings allowed just a little room to breathe within their phrases, their warmth and richness actually making the horns sound somewhat lack-lustre in comparison. I thought the brass-writing throughout the symphony was hampered by the hall’s lack of resonance, the antiphonal calls throughout the second movement in particular having little atmosphere and spaciousness. Even so, the “mountain-tops” sequence in the same movement worked its magic, with the beautifully-played solo trumpet nicely supported by strings, winds and horns. The brass  brought out the music’s epic character with powerful chording and magnificently-controlled crescendi, a perfect foil for the answering poetry of the strings, with their “big tune”. I wanted more whirlwind recklessness from the strings with the third movement’s vivacissimo, but Inkinen and the players generated plenty of excitement in the build-up to the finale, the strings singing almost crazily throughout, and the winds making the most of their “journeying” tune on its first appearance, as did the rest of the orchestra with a magnificently-delivered build-up towards the final peroration, the brass at the end giving all they had.

And so to the final concert the following evening – three rarely-played symphonies in a single evening making a treat for Sibelians and an intriguing prospect for the uninitiated. Fittingly, I thought the concert the best of the series overall, though my judgement could well be impaired by a particular fondness for the works presented. The pieces represented the composer in different guises, classicist, polyphonist, visionary, nature-poet and epic adventurer, each symphony sharing some of these aspects but having its own strongly distinctive character. Part of the success of the evening was due to Inkinen and the orchestra bringing out that special identity held by each work, with the Seventh Symphony making a fitting climax to it all.

The Third Symphony presented the strongest possible contrast with the Second the evening before – here were restrained orchestral textures and cleanly-conceived classical lines, the voices balanced and poised throughout. Inkinen got his first movement string polyphonies to bubble over beautifully, their effervescence building up nicely to the point where the strings and winds reintroduced the opening theme with a roar and a swing; though I felt the true climax of the movement came in this performance with the “giant’s strides” of the timpani and lower strings leading away from the brass crescendo and through hushed vistas towards the ritualistic hymn-tune with its wonderfully conclusive “Amen”. The slow movement had an enchanting “other world” ambience throughout, with winds and then strings in characteristic Sibelian thirds, contrasting nicely with brilliantly melismatic recitatives from the winds in the movement’s more animated episodes. The finale’s opening pastoral playfulness featured some adroit rhythmic dovetailing from strings, winds and muted horns, before the grand processional of the final theme suddenly appeared, winningly introduced by the ‘cellos, and spreading across the rest of the strings, the different textures making for an ear-catching effect as the power and momentum of the music increased – glorious playing from all, right up to the end.

There’s an “other-world” quality about the Sixth Symphony which some people find elusive and even puzzling. Despite what seemed like a less-than ideally poised beginning from the strings, the vibrancy of the playing quickly regained the ground, the music’s timeless aspect unfolding as inevitably as the lines of a great renaissance polyphonic motet, the horns calling forth the dancers at the string-saturated climax, led by the harp’s dulcet notes and the winds’ first energising steps (how could anybody not respond to such music?)…..the slow movement similarly hinted at a parallel kind of perfection, the winds ringing the timbral changes with great point, especially the oboe, the music’s stillness-within-the-bar beautifully caught. Horns made the most of their off-the-note accompaniment, the music at once lyrical and plangent and full of character, building towards the inevitable climax and release-point with marvellous spontaneity – at the end, the elfin swiftness of the strings’ figurations transformed meditation into dance with the surest of touches.

In an ideal world I would have requested more assertiveness from the brass in the scherzo movement, though the players found more of a voice for the final flourish. And had I been Inkinen I would have again encouraged my brass and excellent timpanist to play out even more in the finale, though each of the irruptions had more weight and snap than the previous one, so that the cumulative force of the last outburst had something of a proper cataclysmic effect, if falling a little short of the  glimpse into the abyss. Inkinen and the orchestra made amends with the epilogue, the string phrases filled with visionary fervour, and everything impulsive and heartfelt, as the music seemed at one and the same time to suggest eternities while turning and glancing homeward once more. If not of unalloyed greatness, this was music-making of something approaching the highest order.

Almost straightaway, the epic, questing Sibelius was returned to us with the very first phrase of the Seventh Symphony – the NZSO’s playing had both breadth and forward impulse from the opening ascent of the strings, through the hymn-like sonorities of its opening section, and to the first of three great trombone solos, sometimes characterised by commentators as great peaks rising from a continuous mountain range.  Inkinen took his time and allowed the music to unfold, with the dancing figures evoked by timpani, strings and wind, through the skitterish play of the elements and into the rolling orchestral juggernaut of strings and timpani that prepared the way for the trombones’ second appearance, here magnificently supported by the rest of the brass, the strings tumbling and skirling with the winds after the heavy batteries had shut down. Nobly heroic horns and graceful string replies led to tricky cross-fertilisations of rhythms and motifs – Inkinen and the orchestra right on their toes throughout this section, generating excitable interactions from which grew the final trombone solo, big and imposing and lovely, with strings arching upwards and bringing tensions to fever-pitch. A shout from the brass, a cry of anguish from the strings, and the crisis passed – in the MFC it seemed as though human angst had spent itself and nature was reassuringly drifting back to its place of pre-eminence.

At the end there was applause, prolonged and heartfelt, from those of us who had witnessed Pietari Inkinen’s and the NZSO’s wondrous Sibelian journey in concert. At this point I couldn’t help thinking that some kind of ritualistic public acknowledgement of the undertaking, perhaps from some representative of the Finnish government (what about the New Zealand Government?), or even a prominent Finnish person resident in New Zealand, would have added significance to the occasion. Apart from the pre-concert discussion on the festival’s opening night, there was precious little else visible to people to help suggest that the orchestra and conductor were doing something out of the ordinary. There were no displays featuring Sibelius, Finland and things Finnish that I noticed, no flags, national costumes, photographs, art-prints (what about those beautiful Kalevala illustrations familiar to those of us who buy recordings?), and certainly no groups performing Finnish songs or dances in the MFC foyer beforehand – things that would have added colour and interest and distinction to an event described as a “festival”. Really, it was all left to the music and the musicians, whose commitment to the cause brought forth magnificent results; and whose efforts were not yet done –  several recording sessions involving these same symphonies had been scheduled for during the coming week. If the recordings manage to capture something of the excitement of what we heard on the festival’s final night, they will be a series of sound-documents well worth waiting for.

Chorus And Keys – Festival Singers with Organists

Posted on by Peter Mechen

CHORUS AND KEYS – Festival Singers and Wellington Organists

DVORAK – Mass in D Major

Works by PURCELL, SWEELINCK, MATHIAS, MENDELSSOHN and J.C.BACH

Festival Singers

(Rosemary Russell, director)

Soloists: Clarissa Dunn (soprano) / Rosel Labone (m-soprano)

John Beaglehole (tenor) / Kieran Raynor (baritone)

Organists: Paul Rosoman, Jonathan Berkahn, Judy Dumbleton

Church of St.John’s in the City, Willis St., Wellington

Saturday 12th September 2009

This was a concert devised by Wellington organists and the Festival Singers to present music which combined the sounds of voices and organ. Similar concerts with the same forces have been held in the past during the annual “Organ Week” festivals, but 2009 being the 50th Anniversary of the Wellington Organists’ Association, this became a special occasion, celebrated in fine style with performances of a variety of music from different times and places.

I wondered at the very beginning whether the word “birdsong” ought to have been added to the concert’s title, as the first sounds we heard were those of the kakapo, the haunting and evocative notes allowed to resound in the spaces of St.John’s in the City for some seconds before organist Paul Rosoman began his first item, Jan Sweelinck’s attractively melancholic set of variations on a old German tune Mein junges Leben hat ein End. This manuals-only work imparted a charming, chamber-like feeling, though a brilliant trumpet stop invigorated one of the variations excitingly. Voices provided a contrast with the next item, Purcell’s well-known anthem Rejoice in the Lord Always, featuring soloists Rosel Labone and Kieran Rayner, blending their voices characterfully as they exchanged attractive antiphonal episodes with the chorus. Both soloists and chorus made sonorous and strongly-focused contributions throughout, the former at the reprise of “Rejoice”, while the latter produced a stirring impact at their final massed entry.

If the J.C.Bach “Organ Duet” Sonata showed neither Paul Rosoman nor Judy Dumbleton at their best (perhaps through nerves and/or lack of rehearsal time), each made amends with a solo performance afterwards – first, Paul Rosoman gave a powerful reading of Mendelssohn’s Allegro, Choral and Fugue, the imposing toccata-like opening alternating great rhythmic drive and sinuously-wrought chromatic progressions, before relaxing into a major key in a way entirely characteristic of this composer (it would never have done for “Old Bach”, whose music Mendelssohn revered above all other, but whose musical sinews were obviously made of sterner stuff). The subsequent Chorale and Fugue were strongly characterised, with plenty of tension and sharp focus, before the music was triumphantly brought home in splendid D Major. For her part, Judy Dumbleton gave an exhilarating and open-aired reading of Eugene Gigout’s E Major scherzo, with reedy timbres and hunting-horn echoes to the fore, the playing not note-perfect, but with just the right amount of joie de vivre. The trio section particularly delighted us, the rhythmic phrases skipping along and jumping between registers, and managing to get the last saucy word in after the Scherzo’s brassier timbres had returned.

After the interval came the Dvorak Mass in D Major, a work I’d not previously heard, and an absolute charmer. The music began with a “Kyrie” whose lilting, lullaby-like accents built to more stirring utterances, leading to the “Christe” in which soprano Clarissa Dunn beautifully interwove her lines with that of the choir.

Throughout, the energetic triumph of the “Gloria” was splendidly directed by conductor Rosemary Russell, and featured some nice solo work at “Domine Deus”, with Kieran Rayner particularly sonorous at “Qui tollis peccata mundi”. In the “Credo” I liked the deceptively gentle altos-only beginning, with the whole choir bursting in at “Patrem omnipotentem” to great dramatic effect, as were the exchanges between choir and soloists at “Deum de Deum”. More lovely singing from Kieran Rayner, as well as from alto Rosel Labone, brought true mystery and reverence to “Et incarnatus est”, helped by beautifully reedy organ tones from Jonathan Berkahn’s playing. A harsh, confrontational “Crucifixus” was brought off with great strength of purpose, while tenor John Beaglehole supplied plenty of heroic energy in “Et ascendit in caelum”, the choir a shade shaky with the fugal writing at “Et iterum venturus”, but bringing it together well at “Cujus regni”. More good work from altos at “Credo in unam sanctam” and tenors with their “Confiteor unum baptisma” brought us resoundingly to the repeated and majestically-delivered final cries of “Amen!” at the Credo’s end.

The “Sanctus” which followed featured some lovely work in thirds by the women, their high lines leading surely to the celebratory “Hosannas”, and contrasting nicely with the rapt and reverential tones of the “Benedictus”, the organ again reedy and atmospheric, the choir sustaining the tones well (women a little more securely and surely than the men), and relishing the return of the “Hosannas” with glorious and vigorous outpourings of tone. The “Agnus Dei” gave the soloists further chances to shine, the tenor leading the way with nicely lyrical, suppliant petitionings, echoed by the altos and sopranos from the choir, and joined by soprano Clarissa Dunn with some beautifully-floated high notes. As for the concluding “Dona nobis pacem” it was beautifully managed here, the minor-to-major modulation nicely brought off, and the hushed choral entries giving the work an appropriately valedictory feeling at the close.

Not programmed on paper, but included as an item in the concert as a (somewhat specious) “filler” between the 19th and 20th centuries was Britten’s organ piece “Prelude and Fugue on a theme of Vittoria”, introduced and played by Jonathan Berkahn. Despite its brevity, the music made a big and imposing overall impression in Jonathan Berkahn’s hands, with majestic tones at the start, spiced by some glorious dissonances, and followed by a nicely processional fugue which explored contrasting bell-like sonorities and different rhythmic patternings through to a gradually receding conclusion. After this, the festive irruptions of joyful sounds occasioned by William Matthais’s setting of Psalm 67 “Let the People Praise Thee, O God” brought the concert to an exuberant conclusion, the Singers enjoying the Walton-like rhythmic syncopations of the writing as much as the celestially floated unisons of the music’s more luminous episodes. A great and celebratory way to end a concert.