Author: Peter Mechen

NIMBY Opera triumph in Janáček opera

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Cunning Little Vixen by Janáček: NIMBY Opera

Musical Director :Justus Rozemond; Director : Jacqueline Coats;  Kate Lineham, Matthew Landreth, Edmund Hintz, Daniel O’Connor, Barbara Paterson, Stuart Coats,
Chorus/Dancers: Barbara Graham, Felicity Smity, Megan Corby, Frances Moore, Rachel Day, Natalie Hona. Instrumentalists: Claire McFarlane, Margaret Guldborg, Tui Clark, Dillon Mayhew, Catherine Norton

Salvation Army Citadel, Vivian St., Wellington

Friday 27 March  2009

This was my first experience of NIMBY Opera, so I didn’t really know what to expect regarding the company’s capabilities. I’d read about their previous productions – Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti, and Lyell Cresswell’s Good Angel, Bad Angel, both of which had garnered some excellent reviews. Nevertheless, considering the size of the venue for Vixen it seemed as though a compromised operatic experience would be the order of the day, however skillfully presented and performed – no full orchestra, for one, no operatic stage, curtain or proscenium arch, in fact almost none of the things that one associates with ‘opera performance’ atmosphere, or at least with things on the normal scale of opera performance.

In the event, nearly all of these potential shortcomings were transformed into virtues, with their own valid operatic/theatrical qualities. It’s true that a stage, a curtain, and a dividing orchestra pit can help create a magical, far-away-land ‘happening-in-a-dream’ ambience if the performances are sufficiently involving – but one can also feel ‘distanced’ by those physical spaces, far removed from the characters and their world, the audience on the outside looking in, as it were. Here, there was no need to look in, because it was happening all around and close at hand. The dimensions of the Salvation Army Citadel auditorium gave the production an intimacy that couldn’t have been easily reproduced in a normal opera house. And of course the opera eminently suited this close-at-hand, intimate setting, with the use of English words enhancing our enjoyment (most of the time!).

In short, here was an operatic experience that I, for one, enjoyed to the full away from many of the normal operatic structures and conventions. I think it was partly this sense of performers ‘stepping out’ from conventional presentation scenarios which helped give the production some of its power and engagement.

I thought I would lament the substitution of a full band with a small ensemble, because Janáček writes so vividly and pungently for orchestra, vesting each scene with very specific ambiences and textures with the help of his orchestration. It’s a tribute to the skill of the music director, Justus Rozemond, that, once the first pricklings of getting used to a smaller scale of sound were over, I hardly missed the full orchestra – obviously something to do with the sounds matching the intimacy of the theatrical situation, but also suggesting that the arrangement managed to convey Janáček’s thematic and rhythmic essences, and sufficient colour to suggest the worlds of imagination the composer wanted us to enter. Again, there was a sense of something happening so closely at hand that one felt physically caught up with it – not exactly Wagner’s concept of the ‘womb of Gaia’, but something quite different, elemental in a completely different way.

The story of the opera is on an intimate rather than a grand scale – a mischievous young fox is kidnapped from her forest home as a cub and taken to the world of the humans. Vixen Sharp-ears, however, is not a fox to be trifled with – she escapes, and proceeds to turn both the local Forester’s life, and the rest of the woods upside-down. It’s a story with a lot of humour, a lot of action, and with some twists, some of which Janáček himself incorporated into the original source-story. This was from a novel by Rudolf Těsnohlídek that was serialized in a Brno daily newspaper, and was brought to Janáček’s attention, as legend would have it, by his housekeeper, whom he caught reading the paper and laughing to herself at the vixen’s adventures.

Janáček made several changes, the most radical of which was introducing into the story the death of the vixen, shot by a poacher. He justified the story-change by saying he wanted to emphasise the cyclical nature of things – ‘death follows life – life follows death’, a premise which of course changes the whole opera from a light-hearted children’s tale into a serious matter involving death. The production emphasizes the cyclical nature of things by depicting the original Vixen, played by Kate Lineham, entering at the end as one of her own cubs – so life is renewed in a heart-warming way.

One of the traditional truisms regarding opera is that performers are there to sing, not to act. There have been numerous instances in the past of famous operatic performers with stunning voices behaving like lumps of lead on stage – I’m sure that was largely because in earlier times the conductor ruled the roost in the opera houses, and the stage directors largely did what they were told and tried not to get in the way, so that everything became subservient to the music. We’ve seen the balance of power shift quite dramatically in those terms – some would say far too much, considering the wackiness and inappropriateness of some opera directors’ conceptions.

But one of the good things resulting from this emphasis on stage production is that singers are now expected to be able to act – and this was one of the great strengths of the present production. Everybody looked, moved and sang completely and utterly in character – a tribute to Jacqueline Coats, the director, Sacha Copland the choreographer, costume designer Rachel More, and of course to the performers themselves. And we were so close that if there had been any weaknesses or discrepancies they would have been uncomfortably obvious.

As the Vixen, Kate Lineham gave what I thought was an extraordinary performance, quite all-encompassing, with acting and movement that fully matched the quality of her vocal performance. She was a Vixen who, despite her sharpish temperament and occasionally deadly intent, warmed our hearts at other times with her sense of fun and her vulnerability. Her interaction with Fox Goldenstripe, portrayed with a fine show of gallantry by Barbara Paterson, was a highlight of the production, both singers playing into each others hands, or should one say, paws! The ‘teenage love’ antics of their first meeting delighted the audience, and was marred only by some over-loud instrumental playing, which circumstance I’ll return to later.

Matthew Landreth as the Forrester gave a strong and well-focused, entirely believable ‘character’ performance, bringing out both the robustness as well as the philosophical side of the character. It was a pity he wasn’t placed further forward for his final aria, so we could have ‘connected’ with his love of the natural world more readily at that point. On the other side of the same fence was the Poacher, played by Stuart Coats (he also took the smaller part of the Innkeeper), whose voice made, for me, the strongest impression of the evening amongst the men – in many ways the ‘alter ego’ of the Forrester, with both a rugged and a sentimental side to his character, singing his folksong-like serenades to his absent sweetheart. Another versatile performer was tenor Edmund Hintz, who bounced between the gravitas of the schoolteacher and the cartoonish machoism of the rooster with relish, his farmyard antics vividly choreographed, and complete with evocative animal noises.

The chorus were required to play a number of roles, from feathered cockerel-cohorts and their offspring, to their enemies, the foxes and their cubs, as well as a host of other animals and human beings. Thanks to on-the-spot choreography, vivid costuming and great singing and acting, they achieved wonders of characterisation with each scene, bringing out the earthiness and comedy of it all, especially during the Vixen’s wedding when there were cries of “Halleluiah!” from all parts of the auditorium.

As I’ve said, I thought the arrangement of the original score for five players by musical director Justus Rozemond was an outstanding piece of work, skillfully and sensitively done. Obviously it needed to be played well to work as it did, and by-and-large the work of the musicians was first-class, with only a tendency to play too loudly detracting from the effect of Janáček’s subtle colourings, and obscuring some of the vocal lines from the singers. The light and shade of the original score was missed at such times, as was the amplitude asked for by the composer at the beginning of Act Three, where the original’s harshness and power just doesn’t come across with a small ensemble.

Small caveats, these, set against one’s warm-hearted enjoyment of the whole. NIMBY Opera can be justly proud of what the Vixen was able to achieve, a welcome alternative view to set against one’s usual preconceptions concerning opera and its production.

The Eroica Trio’s seductive Town Hall concert

Posted on by Peter Mechen

CHAMBER MUSIC NEW ZEALAND – THE EROICA TRIO

Music by Lalo, Villa-Lobos, Schoenfield and Mendelssohn

Erika Nikrenz (piano) / Suzie Park (violin) / Sara Sant’Ambrogio (‘cello)

Wellington Town Hall,

Tuesday 24th March

Described in a preview to the group’s recent Wellington concert as “three Sassy women who put the sex back into symphony”, the Eroica Trio, here in New Zealand on its second tour, charmed a Town Hall audience with its familiar combination of visual glamour and a winning stage presence, playing a sprightly, easy-on-the-ear programme of music by Lalo, Villa-Lobos, Paul Schoenfield and Mendelssohn. I thought the three musicians had to work quite hard to sufficiently project this largely affable, and for the listener, relatively undemanding programme of music throughout the venue’s voluminous spaces, a feat that to their credit they managed to achieve by beautifully-tailored teamwork and impressively sustained concentration upon the task. In none of these works were those grand, impassioned gestures that one finds in the trios of Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorak or Shostakovich, statements whose melodies, accents and rhythms leap from the instruments and pin back audiences’ ears, making for unforgettable listening experiences – even the D minor storms and stresses of the finale of Mendelssohn’s work didn’t explore much outside the realm of a drawing-room sensibility.

The concert began with Edouard Lalo’s C minor Trio, an early work (1850), and one of three written for this instrumental combination by the composer. This was a work that, perhaps unfairly, considering its place in the composer’s output, reinforced my opinion of Lalo’s music in general – pleasant, well-crafted stuff, designed to charm and entertain an audience without ruffling anybody’s sense of well-being or delving into recesses suggesting disturbances below the surface. When one turns to the music of Lalo’s almost exact contemporary, Cesar Franck, one is in a diametrically different sound-world of expressive depth of feeling, joyful, passionate and mystical. However, to be fair one would need to hear more of Lalo’s work in this genre, such as the Third, and much later (1880) Piano Trio, before indulging in such grandiloquent comparative judgements! The Eroica brought out the music’s charm and craftsmanship with some beautifully dove-tailed teamwork set against many a beguiling solo, with the ‘cello invariably given the thematic ‘lead-in’ to each movement by the composer.

The Villa-Lobos work is probably better-known as a piece for eight ‘cellos and soprano voice, though it’s been arranged for many an instrumental combination over the years. The composer adored the music of Bach, and paid homage to that great genius by writing nine pieces entitled Bachianas Brasilieras, of which the work played this evening was the fifth. I thought the arrangement (by Brazilian composer Raimundo Penaforte) worked better and better as the piece progressed, particularly the ‘cello’s contributions, and with beautifully expressive work from the strings at the piece’s end.

Café Music was described somewhat disarmingly by its composer, American-born Paul Schoenfield, as “high-class dinner music…which might also (just barely) find its way into a concert hall”. This performance began with a roar and continued with a swing, with plenty of leaning-into and -away-from beats, slurring of notes for expressive effect and high-kicking, hip-swinging momentum – music marked by energetic drive throughout, though one could imagine that more variation in tempo would characterise different episodes of the music more tellingly, such as with the characterful and languid violin solo just before the end of the movement.

A ‘bluesy’ piano solo at the next movement’s beginning invited a similarly sultry response from the strings, which didn’t quite happen – I could imagine the response being several shades ‘dirtier’ than the sweet, relative innocence of Suzie Park’s violin playing, though her duetting with ‘cellist Sara Sant’Ambrogio at the reprise of the movement’s ‘big tune’ was lovely, heartfelt stuff. The finale was little short of a full-frontal assault, with the instruments scrubbed, yanked, stretched and twisted, made to sound at their extremes, and the piano scampering along keystone-cops style, occasionally calling the strings to attention before dashing headlong into another orgy of wild exhilaration, everybody hugely enjoying themselves, listeners included!

Mendelssohn’s D Minor Piano Trio promised much, with markings such as the first movement’s Molto allegro ed agitato and the finale’s allegro assai appassionato suggesting something of the dynamism and sharply-etched focus of parts of the composer’s symphonies. Apart from a somewhat rigidly-phrased first rhetorical climax which needed a touch more amplitude to properly tell, the players realised the movement’s ebb and flow skilfully, rescuing the second subject’s initial melodic sentimentality with a finely-judged surge of burgeoning activity. Some of Mendelssohn’s themes, perhaps due to the composer’s amazing technical facility, seem too easily wrought, this aforementioned second subject being a particularly smug example until the dramatic coda, where the theme is spiked with a minor strain, changing its character to one of great agitation.

A sensitive treatment of the ‘song without words’ ambience of the slow movement was followed by a scherzo in the composer’s distinctive tradition, elfin scamperings and insistent patternings keeping the players instruments whispering, bubbling, chattering and occasionally trumpeting (to spontaneous applause from the audience at the end). The finale brought some Sturm und Drang to bear on the proceedings, even if the demons weren’t quite of the disturbing order of, for example, Schumann’s. The music’s drive through various agitations towards the work’s G Major resolution brought out the evening’s best playing from the Trio, committed and thrustful on all fronts. And if I would have rather they’d left the evening’s music-making at that, instead of giving us a somewhat syrupy trio arrangement of Saint-Saëns’ ubiquitous Le Cygne as an encore, it was a view that wasn’t shared by the audience. Anyway, by now the unfortunate bird ought to be well used to such treatment – what price fame!

The Tudor Consort sings songs of the sun and the moon of all ages

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Tudor Consort, directed by Michael Stewart

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University

Friday 20th February, 2009

For years performers of what we regard as “classical” music took an extremely formal and rigid attitude towards live concert presentation. Historical precedents regarding concert-giving, such as the patronage-driven pragmatic baroque example, the chaotic classical performance era and the flamboyance of the romantic age were all brought to heel during the nineteenth century by martinet-like reactionaries such as Hans von Bulow and Clara Schumann, whose loathing of any extra-musical elements in concert-giving spawned an age of ritualistic formality which reached its apogee in the mid-twentieth century.

Concerts stopped beg pragmatic, chaotic or flamboyant affairs, and developed an ethos of elitist worship of “holy art”, for which one dressed and behaved accordingly. Even today, classical musicians still mostly cling to the formal dress and “pure” music-making presentations that were entrenched for much of last century’s concert-going – rather like the old Catholic Latin Mass, one could go to a classical concert anywhere in the world and obey a pre-ordained code of dress and behaviour and feel completely at home with the proceedings.

More recently, musicians and impresarios have begun to venture away from a purist approach to classical music performance, with interesting results – one thinks of things like violinist Nigel Kennedy’s presentation of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” Op.8 concerti and various modern music-theatre treatments accorded works like the Bach Passions.

Bringing more theatrical elements such as lighting and movement into traditionally static musical presentations isn’t as new as one might think – after all, Haydn did it back in the eighteenth century with his “Farewell” Symphony – but such innovations are more associated with “new” or contemporary music performance. So, it was refreshing and stimulating to encounter the Tudor Consort’s creative evocations of sun and moon, day and night, through imaginative lighting and effective movement, for their Songs of the Sun and Moon presentation at the Adam Concert Room at Victoria University.

Another element infrequently associated with concert presentation, though again, by no means unknown, is the spoken word. For this concert, it was an interesting and effective idea to intersperse readings, properly and winningly delivered by various Consort members, of a variety of poems among the musical items similarly celebrating the juxtaposition of sun and moon, and day and night. It seemed to me that the solo speaking voices were successfully able to create alternative kinds of musical inflections which contrasted pleasingly with the sung items.

The concert began dramatically, with the Consort members entering carrying lighted taper-like torches, suggesting a monastic-like atmosphere in which to perform the opening item, an Introit Illuxerunt, which featured deliciously sinuous lines of sound, seemingly floating towards us across the ages in the semi-darkness. Illumination was then forthcoming with Longfellow’s poem Sunrise on the Hills which preceded a beautiful Easter hymn by Orlando de Lassus, The dawn’s light reddens, one whose antiphonal effects played with a kind of “concerto grosso” for voices mode, setting solos, and smaller groups against the full choir. Set guilelessly against such antiphonal skill was Katherine Mansfield’s charmingly direct child’s poem about the sun, accompanied by ambient lighting reflecting the shifts of perspective suggested by words and music.

William Walton’s setting of St. Francis of Assisi’s Cantico del sole began with the utmost tenderness, gradually radiating gentle warmth, before irrupting jazzily, lines thrusting jaggedly upwards, then grasped by the composer into tightly-worked handfuls of harmonies that never lost their grip throughout. The voices attacked the upward thrustings fearlessly, while keeping their timbral poise and harmonic direction admirably.

Walton’s visceral physicality contrasted tellingly with the other-worldliness of fellow-Englishman Thomas Tallis, whose shortish, but evocative O nata lux de lumine almost immediately had its listeners in thrall in this performance, despite a slightly uncomfortably-tuned harmonic moment towards the end.

Further contrast was in store with David Hamilton’s Lux aeterna, music with Ligeti-like lines spaced-out across vistas, tones melting into glissandi, and clustering together for warmth and companionship, creating some exquisite colour-changes. After such kaleidoscopic riches, the Gregorian Chant “Alleluia – Candor est lucis aeternae” was like a plunge into cool water, with the long, sinuous lines like subterranean undercurrents, timelessly undulating, and with a quality that seemed at once both to beseech and command. The Goethe poem which followed returned us to a world of sentiment and bourgeoise romance!

After an “Evening Song” by Rheinberger, richly and sonorously delivered, the choir turned its attention to Holst’s richly-conceived “The Evening Watch”, a work couched in appropriately mystical tones and harmonies, characterizing the poet Henry Vaughan’s dialogue between the body and the soul. Beginning with a tenor solo, the piece explores in places a world so still and transparent of texture that one catches one’s breath in order to listen, before the musical denouement swells like a sunrise towards the end. It was all nicely managed by the Consort, if a little “reined in”, lacking for me that last ounce of fervour and abandonment which would have overtaken our sensibilities as listeners completely. But the delightfully wry Ben Jonson poem that followed made for a more coherent flow as a result of this circumspection, difficult though it was for some of us to get Britten’s famous setting of the verses our of our heads when listening to the speaker.

The two settings which concluded the presentation seemed to draw whole worlds of time and space together, the Tallis Hymn To Thee Before the Close of Day ageless and immediate at one and the same time in its appeal, while the Ligeti setting of verses characterising Night and Morning exploring both the psychological “interior” of night as a human metaphor, and the tumbling externals of daybreak, complete with raucous cock-crowings and awakening bells – a brilliant and radiant way to conclude a concert..

Overall, the presentation was a great success for the Tudor Consort and Michael Stewart, considering the challenges set by the programme, plus the extra distractions afforded by the introduction of diverse elements. If very occasionally a tone sounded a shade raw, or a harmony wasn’t honed to quite the level of the Consort’s usually impeccable standards, it didn’t impair our appreciation of that sense of interaction the musicians sought to convey between natural cycles of things and the music that sprang from their inspiration.

Soprano recital with baroque oboe: Rowena Simpson and Samantha Owens

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Works by LEGNANI, D.SCARLATTI, HANDEL (arr. Babell) and KUSSER

Rowena Simpson (soprano), Samantha Owens (baroque oboe), Emma Goodbehere (‘cello), Douglas Mews (Harpsichord)

St. Andrew’s on the Terrace

Wednesday 18th February

A most engaging programme, this, mellifluous and varied, and expertly performed by soprano Rowena Simpson, with her instrumental partner, baroque oboist Samantha Owens, and their sterling continuo duo cohorts, Emma Goodbehere (‘cello) and Douglas Mews (harpsichord). I had not previously heard a note of music written by either Angelo Domenico Legnani (1663-1700), or Johann Sigismund Kusser (1660-1727) – or “Cousser” as he was known in France., so the concert was an education for me as well as a delight. Legnani’s Cantata “Chi sa dove e la speranza” is a setting of a highly over-wrought text concerned with love, despair and grief, which the music and the performance illuminated with spirit and skill.

Rowena Simpson’s light but agile soprano gained in strength and confidence as episode followed episode, with florid runs capped by pinging top notes, and with Samantha Owens’ beguilingly-voiced oboe complementing the singer with both shared and contrapuntal lines. Not every turn of phrase was wholly accurate in pitch but the spirit of the music was wonderfully stirred and shaken throughout., the continuo of Emma Goodbehere’s ‘cello and Douglas Mews’ keyboard providing admirable support.

Douglas Mews then gave us the well-known “Cat’s Fugue” by Domenico Scarlatti, giving us a short illustrated explanation of the title before playing the work proper, which both entertained and enlightened his audience. This was a cat whose keyboard figurations gave a sense of the animal hardly being able to believe its own ears at the sounds, whose stepwise progressions then developed into wonderfully labyrinthine complexities before finding their way through to the end once again – a nice performance.

William Babell’s “arrangements” of opera arias and overtures were represented by a transcription of an aria from Handel’s Rinaldo – uncommonly civilised keyboard sounds, working up a bit of energetic contrast in a middle section, but ultimately confirming Charles Burney’s verdict that Babell’s arrangements “astonished ignorance…at small expense” – still, Douglas Mews enjoyed himself thoroughly and delighted us accordingly.

My education was advanced further by hearing Johann Sisimund Kusser’s music, a selection of arias from an opera Ariadne, dealing with the well-known story of the daughter of King Minos of Crete and her lover Theseus, the Athenian prince who overcame the monstrous Minotaur in the labyrinth. The music’s considerable demands enabled Rowena Simpson to demonstrate her skills as a singer developed during nine years of study and performance based in The Hague Royal Conservatoire, and various engagements throughout Europe.

Kusser’s vocal writing demands considerable flexibility and agility, with frequent treacherous leaps and large reserves of breath, and both singer and oboist were up to negotiating nearly all the music’s requirements without mishap, even if some of the awkward intervals proved difficult to properly “pitch”. Emma Goodbehere played a ‘cello transcription of one of the arias with Samantha Owens, ‘cello and oboe dancing nicely together, fleet-of foot and bright-eyed.

A smallish audience was captivated by the music and its performance, and saluted the performers at the concert’s conclusion with great enthusiasm – a promising beginning to what appears to be a year’s thoroughly worthwhile music-making at St. Andrew’s.

OPERA AT ARATOI with Anna Pierard and Jose Aparicio

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Songs, opera and zarzuela arias

Anna Pierard (mezzo-soprano) and Jose Aparicio (tenor and flute) with David Harper (piano)

Auditorium of Aratoi Art and History Museum, Masterton

Wednesday 14th January 2009

Trying to write about such a joyous affair as the first 2009 Aratoi Art and History Museum concert in Masterton seems to produce such a prosaic effect compared with the sheer pleasure savoured in the music-making of singers Anna Pierard and Jose Aparicio, and pianist David Harper on a warm January evening in the Wairarapa. For many people, myself included, this would have been the New Year’s very first concert outing, and one couldn’t imagine a more life-enhancing musical experience than what we were given by these world-class artists.

Their programme was an attractive mixture of the familiar (for example, “La donna e mobile” from Verdi’s Rigoletto), the darkly exotic (two Rachmaninov songs, including Oh, never sing to me, again), and the colourfully unfamiliar (Zarzuela arias by various Spanish composers), and delivered with all the engagement, skill and musicality we’ve come to expect from the trio. An unexpected but exhilarating bonus was the performance by Jose Aparicio playing the flute (his first musical instrument) of Francois Borne’s challenging Fantasie Brilliante on Carmen – no mere novelty, this, but an exhilarating display of virtuosity worthy of its place in the programme.

As with the Zarzuela programme which this trio brought to these performances something of the dramatic flavour of the stage, the singers using movement and gesture to bring a theatrical touch to the items from the opera or operetta stage. The opening duet from Bellini’s La Sonnambula, which involved the exchange of a ring between lovers, showcased the kind of teamwork these singers bring to their work together, breathing, phrasing and emoting as one. Again, in Vives’ Escuchame from Dona Francisquita, reckoned by some as the greatest of all Zarzuela works, the performers created a real “frisson” of interchange between wounded lover and coquettish sweetheart, redolent with teasing deception and inflamed jealousy, which made for great entertainment, David Harper’s responsive playing in colourful accord with the “stage” action throughout. As a bonus, we got the famous Cherry Duet from Mascagni’s L’Amico Fritz, whose piquant presentation most fittingly left each of us audience members with a smile to take away from the concert.

Both singers presented their solo items with theatrical gesture and movement rather than with a more formal recital platform manner, which gave their performances a bit extra thrust and colour appropriate to the occasion. Anna Pierard brought plenty of dramatic power to Rossini’s ‘Cruda sorte’ from L’Italiana in Algeri, and displayed a real feeling for Rachmaninov’s darkly throbbing realizations of youthful emotion, such as the alarmingly precocious ‘In The Silence Of The Secret Night’, written when the composer was just seventeen. Occasionally I felt the voice over-modulated in our small listening-space, as if the singer was pushing things too hard, or was finding her tones difficult to pitch evenly, as with an admittedly treacherous chromatic descent towards the end of the second Rachmaninov song ‘O Never Sing to Me Again’. But the beautifully exotic Borodin-like arabesques earlier in the song, with their melismatic vocal lines, were delivered with remarkable control and a real sense of atmosphere, which carried the day.

As much visceral intensity was in evidence with Jose Aparicio’s solo singing also, who gave us a lyrically ardent Mattinata by Leoncavallo, and an impassioned, verismo-like delivery of the insistent ‘No puede ser’ of Sorozabal which brought forth marvellously ringing, heroic tones at the end. Also, we enjoyed a properly cavalier ‘La donna e mobile’ despite a minor impromptu rearrangement of the lines in the first verse, a case of “where have we heard that before?” when the second verse came around. One of the highlights of the concert was Jose Aparicio’s rendition of Lara’s Granada, a favourite of mine, I must admit, and here realized with considerable physical élan, and pictorial immediacy.

At the concert’s beginning, Marcus Buroughs, the director of Aratoi, welcomed us most warmly to the museum and to the concert, before paying tribute to one of the patrons of the enterprise, Dr. Ian Prior, of Wellington, long-time supporter of the museum and of the careers of both Anna Pierard and Jose Aparicio. Unfortunately, Dr.Prior could not be at the concert, but he would have been thrilled by the evening’s performances and the warm reception accorded to the performers by an enthusiastic audience.

ALFRED HILL – String Quartets Vol.2

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ALFRED HILL – String Quartets Vol.2
Quartet No. 4 in C Minor / No.6* in G Major “The Kids” / No.8 in A Major
Dominion Quartet (Yury Gezentsvey, Rosemary Harris, violins / Donald Maurice, viola / David Chickering, ‘cello) *in Quartet No.6 the second violinist is David Pucher

Naxos 8.57209

Put on Track 10 of this new Naxos CD for an irresistibly foot-tapping introduction to the three quartets by Alfred Hill you’ll find here, in characterful readings by the Dominion String Quartet. Hill was Australasia’s first “recognized” composer – though born in Melbourne, his formative years were spent in New Zealand, after which he studied in Leipzig, becoming steeped in the music of Brahms, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky.

The first volume of Hill’s Quartets on Naxos (8.570491) show these European and nationalistic influences, whereas the works on this new CD find him gradually evolving a more austere and distinctive style. Like composers of an earlier era Hill thought nothing of “borrowing” his own music for different works; and so part of the first quartet on this CD, No.4 in C Minor, was reworked as a Symphony in C Minor, entitled “The Pursuit of Happiness”. It’s all beautifully written for the quartet medium – a lovely “sighing” opening, leading into an invigorating allegro, then followed by three equally distinctive movements, the highlight of which is probably the slow movement, with its Elgarian overtones. Quartet No.6 in G Major is engagingly subtitled “The Kids” – the slight gaucherie of the title belies the work’s structural strengths and attractive lyricism (the music is dedicated to Hill’s students at the New South Wales Conservatorium, where the composer was Professor of Composition). Particularly memorable are the Beethoven-like rhythmic patternings of the scherzo’s introduction and (again) a slow movement whose lyrical intensities highlight the child-like naivety of the music’s return to its source of inspiration in the finale.

String Quartet No.8 in A Major shows Hill’s most adventurous compositional undertakings to date, the opening movement redolent of Debussy’s more “impressionist” colourings, but at the same time energizing the music’s structures with folk-like exuberances. After the thoroughly engaging scherzo (referred to at the beginning) comes a slow movement whose whole-tone hamonies and chromatic accompaniments are of breath-catching quality.

The finale recycles the work’s opening, before removing the listener’s sensibilities from such stringencies, introducing an extended melody across different time- signatures and even working a fugue into the development, before drawing all the strands together nicely in a properly festive finish. Throughout, the Dominion Quartet plays like a group with a mission, and they deliver the goods triumphantly, aided by a mellifluous and truthful-sounding recording.

Alfred Hill (1869-1960) – A Birthday Celebration (139 years young)

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Alfred Hill (1869-1960)
A Birthday Celebration (139 years young)
ALFRED HILL – String Quartets: Nos. 7 and 9
The Dominion String Quartet (Yury Gezentsvey, Rosemary Harris, violins / Donald Maurice, viola / David Chickering, ‘cello)
Wadestown Presbyterian Church
16th December 2008

Introducing the music and the performers for this concert was Donald Maurice, the violist of the Dominion String Quartet, a musician and scholar who has worked tirelessly to re-establish the reputation and credentials of Alfred Hill as New Zealand’s first professional composer. He talked about the formation of the Quartet in response to the challenge of recording all seventeen of Alfred Hill’s works in this medium for the Naxos label. Longer-term, the Quartet hopes to be able to tackle other New Zealand works, including some more of the repertoire written by composers both prior to and following Douglas Lilburn.

This concert was in fact held to celebrate Alfred Hill’s birthday, in fact the composer’s 139th, an occasion further made special by the presence in the audience of the composer’s great-nephew, whom the audience appropriately acknowledged.

The Dominion Quartet has already released two CDs of Alfred Hill’s works (see the review of Vol.2 of this series elsewhere in this issue), and this concert featured two works recently recorded for the next CD which will appear during 2009. These performances of Quartets Nos. 7 and 9 were both New Zealand public premieres, and served further notice of the significance of Hill’s compositional output. Long regarded in many people’s minds merely as the writer of the charmingly dated song “Waiata Poi”, the composer whom these quartets represented came freshly before us as a vibrant and compelling creator of a memorable and enduring body of music. Quartet No.7 made an arresting beginning to the concert, with a rhythmically snappy introductory figure that was to launch a long and sinuous first subject, one whose questing energies led through a contrasting legato episode to a development where the same rhythmic “kick” stimulated exploratory harmonic shifts with chromatic agitato figures sliding from hue to hue. The pizzicato opening of the second movement set in motion a wonderful waltz whose trio section, introduced by the lower strings, had more than a hint of schmaltz in its makeup. The slow movement took us to further realms of fancy, with a Borodin-like melody whose radiance was offset by deep sostenuto strings, redolent of the Russian master’s famous “Nocturne” movement in another quartet. In conclusion, the finale’s vigorous stride brooked little interference from the occasional modulatory swerve, bringing the music homeward to the point where the quartet’s opening rhythmic flourish returned, stimulating celebratory fanfares and other vigorous gestures which concluded the work in an extremely satisfying manner.

With the following Quartet No.9 the development of a more personal and self-confident style of writing by Hill, described by Donald Maurice in his introductory talk, became even more evident, especially with the work’s slow movement, which seemed to come from nowhere after a more conventional but tightly-worked opening movement, with plenty of directly-expressed energy and focus. How profoundly everything then changed, with a strange and new world being brought to view! – intense pressure-points of sound, column- like creations whose proportions slowly evolved and reshaped like pillars of mist, a vision whose intensities were quietly resolved at the end. Then, just as disconcertingly, the scherzo, a festive dance with an engaging rhythmically ambiguous pizzicato accompaniment swept away the gloom with Dvorak- like vigour, clearing the decks for the finale. Hill took no prisoners with this strongly-etched music, biting chords at the beginning bridged with rhythmic patternings that led off into a melancholic lower- strings tune, and a central episode that looked inward as much as forwards, making the return to the opening music all the more telling. It was the work of a composer who seemed to be saying at the conclusion “This is how it is – like it or not !”. If performances weren’t absolutely note-perfect at all times throughout, the players nevertheless captured every mood of the music to a telling degree, and did its composer full justice. One can hardly wait for the recording, as much to hear the Fifth Quartet also, as to relish yet again the delights of those heard this evening in concert.

Afterwards musicians and audience were able to join together and sing “Happy Birthday” to Alfred Hill, as well as enjoy a wonderfully voluminous cake made by violinist Rosemary Harris – certainly a birthday worth remembering! (PM)

J.S.BACH – Christmas Oratorio

Posted on by Peter Mechen

J.S.BACH – Christmas Oratorio
(Cantatas 1, 2 & 3)
Nicola Edgecombe (soprano)
Andrea Cochrane (alto)
John Beaglehole (tenor) / Peter Russell (bass)
Douglas Mews (continuo)
The Chiesa Ensemble
The Bach Choir of Wellington
Directed by Stephen Rowley
St.Andrew’s-on-the-Terrace, Wellington

Sunday, 14th December 2008

Surely the first couple of pages of J.S.Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio” rate as one of the great musical openings – timpani calling everything to attention, flutes and oboes trilling joyously, and trumpets resounding with fanfares, heralding the festive approach of the processional, with its message of “praise, joy and gladness”. St.Andrew’s-on-the- Terrace reverberated with such glad sounds on Sunday afternoon, instrumentalists and choir launching into the work’s opening with great gusto under the energetic direction of Stephen Rowley, a name new to me, but obviously a conductor capable of getting an energetic and committed response from his musicians.

In general both the Bach Choir’s singing and the Chiesa Ensemble’s playing gave enormous pleasure throughout each of the three cantatas. The opening movement featured some splendid “trumpets and drums” moments from the players, and singing from the choir which had attack, precision, energy and great variety throughout. Stephen Rowley got from his forces both the music’s ritualistic grandeur and its excitement, pacing the three parts of the work admirably through the contrasts afforded by movement and stillness, ceremony and reflection.

In a venue which emphasised immediacy and visceral impact of sound, the music and its performance made a stirring impression. Particularly memorable was the choir’s singing of the more reflective chorales, from “Wie soll ich dich empfangen” in the first cantata, to “Ich will dich mit Fließ bewahren” in the third. But there was warmth and splendour in abundance as well, for instance in the work’s final chorus “Herrscher des Himmels” (Ruler of Heaven), where conductor and voices managed a nice differentiation between gentle and full-throated vocal lines at a tempi that allowed maximum articulation. Only in the angelic chorus in the second cantata “Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe” (Glory to God) did I feel the need for a bit more word- projection – the lines, though nicely dovetailed, didn’t quite scintillate with enough vocal excitement, so that we weren’t quite caught up in the bubbling wonderment of it all as we ought to have been.

As for the Chiesa Ensemble’s playing, the instrumental sounds pinned back our ears right from the opening chords, drumstrokes and wind-and-brass fanfares, all of which were delivered with infectious energy and superb focus. Equally telling was the quality of the obbligato work throughout, strings and winds supporting the vocal soloists unerringly, supporting and colouring the ambience of each episode with beautifully-phrased playing. With the Sinfonia that began the second cantata the music seemed to take a while to cohere between instrumental groups, but in general the players realised all of the score’s rhythmic and textural complexities with great élan, strongly supported by eloquent continuo-playing from Eleanor Carter (‘cello) and Douglas Mews (organ).

Each of the four soloists had challenges aplenty to tackle, with old Bach writing for his solo voices as if they were instruments with effortless range and limitless resources of breath! Tenor John Beaglehole threw himself into his recitatives as though his life depended upon the outcome, and his clear sense of line, of putting across the narrative’s meaning fully engaged his listeners, even though his delivery showed occasionally strained notes. Despite getting a bit out of synch with his accompaniment at one point in the second cantata’s “Frohe Hirten, eilt” (Happy shepherds, hurry), he made a good fist of the difficult runs in this aria, and worked mellifluously with Nancy Luther-Jara’s solo flute throughout. Alto Andrea Cochrane used her rich tones to beautiful effect in the slower music, never more so than in the second cantata’s “Schlafe, mein Liebster” (Slumber Beloved), where her long-held opening notes coloured the music’s textures magically. She also brought off the last, and somewhat treacherous run of “Wo wir unser Herz erfreuen”, in the aria’s middle section with determination and confidence, though she occasionally lost some of her poise and projection in numbers such as “Schließe, mein Herz” in the third cantata, where more warmth in the tone was needed.

Soprano Nicola Edgecombe and bass Peter Russell had a fine time with their duetting in the first and third cantatas, the first a lovely dialogue “Er ist auf Erden kommen arm” with the soprano’s chorale light but true against the bass’s focused and properly weighted recitative “Wer will die Liebe recht erhöhn”. The second, “Herr, dein Mitleid” featured nicely “sprung” rhythms and finely-sustained lines from both singers, with great teamwork at “Deine Holde Gunst und Liebe”, delivered against a backdrop of beautifully- voiced oboe accompaniment. Peter Russell, in his several solo arias, demonstrated his usual intelligently musical responses to words and music, retaining his balance and momentum even when the highest notes seemed just beyond his reach. The three cantatas were played without a break, making for a rich hour-and-a-half’s concert whose proportions seemed well-nigh perfect for a pre- Christmas Sunday afternoon – for the goodly crowd which attended, it proved a delightful and rewarding musical experience. (PM)

Nota Bene – A Snow-Free Christmas

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Nota Bene – A Snow-Free Christmas
Nota Bene Choir
Guest Conductor: Peter Walls
Carolyn Mills (harp)
Frances Moore(soprano)
Peter Barber (viola)
Fiona McCabe (piano)

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St.,Wellington

Saturday 6 December 2008

A couple of nights after being mightily impressed by the singing of the Tudor Consort at a recent “Messiah” I must confess to being even more taken with the performances by Christine Argyle’s wonderful choir “Nota Bene” at the group’s recent concert “A Snow- Free Christmas”, conducted by Peter Walls, and given at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Wellington on Saturday night (December 6th).

The Hill Street Cathedral has the double virtue of intimate audience/performer proximity within a relatively voluminous space, and we audience members certainly reaped the benefits of both of these characteristics throughout the concert. This sense of involvement in an occasion was underlined at the beginning and end of the opening work, Britten’s “A Ceremony of Carols”, which featured the entrance and exit of the all-female choir singing the traditional Christmas Motet “Hodie” – such a scalp-tingling effect at the start, those distant voices drawing nearer and nearer, bringing with them all the excitement and expectation of something festive, rich and satisfying.

Britten’s work was just one of the evening’s “Christmas” offerings, but it was among the most significant – and its performance, I thought, did the music full justice. The women’s voices of Nota Bene may have lacked the sheer animal vitality of some of the boys’ choirs whose performances I’ve heard of this piece on recordings, but the beauty and purity of their singing for conductor Peter Walls made for some breath-catching moments in places. Aided by some of the most atmospheric and diaphanously-woven harp- playing in this piece which I’ve ever heard, from Carolyn Mills, the choir encompassed every aspect of Britten’s wonderfully variegated settings, moving easily and tellingly from the vigour of “Wolcum Yole!” to the rapt beauty of “There is No Rose”, and beautifully integrating the use of solo voices with the contrasting amplitude of the larger group in numbers such as “Balulalow”. In the previous setting for solo voice and harp, “The Yonge Child” I was struck during this performance by how Britten manages to conjure up sounds that are at one and the same time so new and yet so old, speaking to our time, yet perfectly in accord with the medieval texts favoured by the composer.

Perhaps the choir’s singing of “As Dew in Aprille” might have had a touch more “swing” in its melodic trajectory at the climax to achieve absolute rapture, but amends were made with the tumbling energies of “This Little Babe”, and later a fine sense of almost pagan abandonment in those cries of “Deo gracias” that concluded “Adam Lay I-Bounden” most satisfactorily. Carolyn Mills’s incomparably sensitive realisation of the solo harp interlude was followed by a setting which could be described as the work’s dark heart, “In Freezing Winter Night”, with the choir’s anguished insistence on a repeated high-lying phrase heightened as the music moved up half-a-tone at the climax towards even colder and more forsaken realms, the emotional “squeeze” expertly managed by all.

Solace came with lovely duetting in the “Spring Carol” and a joyous feeling of homecoming in the excitable “Adam Lay I-Bounden”, before the performers took their leave as they had come. After the interval, we were treated to some attractive, intriguingly inter-connected Christmas music manifestations – firstly, listening to Michael Praetorius’s seventeenth-century arrangement of “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen”, and then a twentieth-century “take” of the same carol, arranged by Jan Sandström (the “Motorcycle Concerto” man, as Peter Walls gleefully pointed out to us, reminding us of the NZSO’s recent performance of this work with trombonist Christian Lindberg). Untutored, one would be hard put to associate the latter music and composer with the sounds we heard here – the melody and words were exquisitely “floated” by a quartet of voices antiphonally placed in the choir loft over the top of rich choral humming vocalisations from below – an amazingly timeless effect, brought off most beautifully.

Another set of inter-related musical strands were woven by the performers with a performance of the 14th-Century carol “Resonet in laudibus” (some evocative bare fourths and fifths raising antiquarian goosebumps), then relating the melody to the 17th- Century Lutheran Chorale “Joseph Lieber, Joseph mein”, both carols associated with the medieval practice of “rocking” a cradle during services. As Brahms used this same melody in the instrumental parts of his “Geistliches Wiegenlied”, soprano Frances Moore, violist Peter Barber and pianist Fiona McCabe then performed this song with sensitive teamwork and winning and nostalgic atmosphere.

Francis Poulenc’s attractive “Quatre motets de Noel” challenged the choir in all departments, and enabled them to shine – the opening “O Magnum Mysterium” demonstrated the voices’ flexibility over a wide dynamic range, and a capacity to deliver exquisite detailing; while the dialogues between shepherds and their questioners engendered a compelling story-sense in musical terms. Only the cruelly high soprano writing in “Videntes stellam” seemed to bring out the merest hint of strain, though the poise of the singing was unimpaired, with the evocative shifting harmonies of the concluding “Hodie” making for a rich and satisfying conclusion to the work’s performance.

Next were three traditional carols from France, Italy and Latvia – first, the enchanting French “Il est nè le divin enfant” captured our sensibilities with its lovely, droll rhythmic carriage, rather like dancing bagpipes or musettes in partnership with voices. Then came a different connection with another recent Wellington concert – the Italian carol “Quando nascette Ninno” shared the same tune as Handel’s “He shall feed his flock” from “Messiah”, this lovely performance gently scintillated by a jig-like tambourine accompaniment. Most distinctive of the three, however, was the Latvian carol “Dedziet skalu, putiet guni”, whose bell- sonorities and mesmeric rhythms built throughout agglomerations of groups of voices towards an enticing episode of filigree decoration from the sopranos that resonated within a bell-like finish – very nicely brought off! To conclude the concert we were treated to a New Zealand bracket of carols, featuring the work of Carol Shortis, Andrew Baldwin and Douglas Mews Senior. Carol Shortis, a Philip Neill Memorial prize-winner, is currently studying composition at the New Zealand School of Music, and Andrew Baldwin is composer- in-residence at Wellington’s Cathedral of St Paul. Both Shortis’ “I saw a Fair Maiden” and Baldwin’s “O Magnum Mysterium” demonstrated their composers’ skill and experience in writing for voices; while the older, and in some ways more adventurous and confident-sounding work of Douglas Mews Senior, “Snow-free Carols”, gave us three nicely differentiated Christmas settings from this collection, a Pohutukawa Carol with a tripping 6/8 rhythm, a meditative setting for two soloists and choir of Eileen Duggan’s poem “An Imprint of His Little Feet”, and a vigorous, coda- like call to action “Christmas Come In”.

An unscheduled, but wholly appropriate encore to the concert was a performance of the original setting of Franz Gruber’s “Stille Nacht” with guitar accompaniment, the old tune as moving and as evocative as ever, but made even more magically so as the culmination of Nota Bene’s seasonal feast of truly lovely singing. (PM)

Handel – MESSIAH – The Tudor Consort

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Handel – MESSIAH – The Tudor Consort
Madeleine Pierard (soprano)
Nicola Hooper (alto)
Edmund Hintz (tenor)
Hadleigh Adams (bass)
Tudor Consort
Vector Wellington Orchestra
Conductor: Michael Stewart
Wellington Town Hall
Thursday 4th December 2008

This was a “Messiah” performance that obviously caught the public’s imagination before a note had even been sounded in public, judging by the palpable buzz of excitement in and around the Town Hall beforehand, with queues of people waiting to be admitted a few minutes before starting-time. The Tudor Consort has always publicised its concerts cannily, and perhaps the presence of Madeleine Pierard as a rising young soprano star was also a drawcard – whatever the case, the choir, as well as the Wellington Orchestra people, must have been gratified by the near-full Hall.

Reading conductor Michael Stewart’s note in the programme beforehand, regarding the work’s history and different performance practices over the years, alerted one to the idea that this was going to be a performance of Messiah with its own distinction. In practice, this was very much the case – Stewart had obviously thought long and hard about the work and recent scholarship into performance style, so that this would definitely be something of a fresh look at a much-presented classic, far removed from a mere reproduction of the last hundred or so Town Hall performances over the years.

Obviously with the superb voices of the Tudor Consort at hand, the conductor had the singers able to fill out his conception of the music with real sounds, along with an orchestra at his disposal that has in the past proved a flexible, willing and highly skilled band capable of rising to the most demanding of challenges. The result was an energetic and totally committed performance from all concerned, that earned for the performers a sizeable ovation at the end from an extremely satisfied audience. Whatever criticism one might be inclined to make regarding this and that detail, the overall conception of the work had a conviction and overall sweep which couldn’t help but impress.

The over-riding impression one carried away from the evening’s performance was the obvious extent to which everybody – conductor, soloists, choir and orchestral players – gave of themselves to the music. Thus the story of the oratorio was put across with a considerable amount of energy and skill, atmosphere and colour, an upshot of the very physical way that all of the musicians seemed to engage with the business in hand. All of the four soloists had particular qualities to offer, even if only one of them, soprano Madeleine Pierard, possessed the technical and interpretative means to bring off triumphantly almost everything she wanted to do within her part. Each of the others began strongly, and had their notable moments – Edmund Hintz truly consoled our sensibilities with a lovely “Comfort Ye!” right at the beginning, Nicola Hooper similarly charmed with a nicely-turned “He shall feed his flock”, and bass Hadleigh Adams pinned our ears back with his blood-and-thunder “Thus Saith The Lord”, as well as negotiating “The People Who Walk in Darkness” with a growing sense of passing from a state of gloom and despair into one of hope and gladness.

Despite the difficulties encountered by tenor, alto and bass at various other moments, each had the ability to sustain the mood of the music and the sense of what was wanted, so that the musical argument was sufficiently maintained. By contrast, Madeleine Pierard’s singing was a joy throughout, an artist whose work came across with the confidence, élan and sparkling projection that informed whatever she sang – a truly class act. It was possible to feel just a touch of astringent tone in one or two places, particularly noticeable when she followed Nicola Hooper’s opening “He Shall Feed His Flock” – but by the time she had reached “I know that My Redeemer Liveth” her voice had all the focus, warmth and colour to do the music full justice.

Director of the Tudor Consort Michael Stewart controlled his forces expertly throughout, and secured an extremely vital and energetic performance. He got absolutely splendid playing from the Vector Wellington Orchestra, who weren’t spared by an insistence on fleet-fingered tempi and incisive rhythms whenever the score called for them. Yet the playing had an attractive gravitas in places as well – a fine performance, with lovely brass work in items such as “The Trumpet shall sound” and of course “Halleluiah”.

Which brings me to the Tudor Consort Voices themselves, who covered themselves in vocal glory, despite in places being asked by their director to negotiate the music at what I occasionally felt were speeds that reduced the music’s coherence. I felt that Stewart’s desire to “blow away the cobwebs” resulted in the quicker music being given an edge that was too insistent, to the point that some of the structure’s paintwork was blistered as well as the surfaces freshly cleaned. It was as though he was relying too much on speed rather than rhythmic pointing to generate momentum and excitement, at which times I felt cheated at not being able to experience the delight of listening to those strands interlocking together to produce an amazing and articulate musical structure.

For me the approach emphasised the energy and vigour of Handel’s writing at the expense of some of its grandeur – there were places where I thought the music under- characterised, as in “For Unto Us A Child Is Born”, where the cries of “Wonderful’ and “Counsellor” hardly “told” so as to provide a contrast with the delicious contrapuntal matrix of the opening.  The wonder is that the choir enunciated their lines as clearly as they did, but despite their skill I felt that some of the music was passing me as if in a blur. “And He Shall Purify” reminded me of high-speed trains crossing a network of lines in a complex operation that gave me more anxiety than pleasure – in some of the choruses (such as “He Trusted in God” and “Let Us Break Their Bonds”) a valid emotional response, but surely not as an all-purpose treatment of quick movements and numbers.

The famous “Halleluiah!” made its mark, though, partly because of the focused singing and playing, and partly because almost everybody in the hall stood up – “that hoary old tradition!” was one friend of mine’s reaction – but I loved jumping to my feet with everybody, because doing so heightened for me the whole evening’s sense of occasion, of ritual, even of participation in the performance instead of listening passively. Of course, long before the performance had reached this point, Michael Stewart, with his soloists, the Tudor Consort and the Wellington Orchestra had already swept all of us up in the ferment of music- making; so this was a kind of “word made flesh” moment of audience involvement, which was almost unanimously relished. In its way it was a spontaneous tribute to the performance as a whole, with Stewart’s “fresh perspective on a favourite work” receiving its proper, well-deserved due. (PM)