Category: Live performance

NZSO’s Symphonic Dances concert explores Nature, Life and Love

Posted on by Peter Mechen

TABEA SQUIRE – Conversation of the Light-Ship and the Tide (World Premiere)
ALEXANDER GLAZUNOV – Saxophone Concerto in E-flat Major Op 109
DARIUS MILHAUD – Scaramouche for saxophone and orchestra Op.165c
SERGEI RACHMANINOV – Symphonic Dances Op.45

Jess Gillam (alto saxophone)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Gemma New (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Thursday 20th November 2025

“Symphonic Dances” seemed an apt enough description of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s latest concert with inspirational Music Director Gemma New – however while listening to the concert  another title occurred to me, that of the well-known  “Nature, Life and Love” trilogy of orchestral Overtures completed by Antonin Dvorak. I thought it would make an apt key to characterising the programme we heard in the Michael Fowler Centre last evening, with star British saxophonist Jess Gillam taking a significant role in three of the four pieces we heard.

“Nature”, then, formed the basis of the concert’s opening item, a world premiere performance of music by Tabea Squire (b.1989 in Scotland, of Kiwi (NZ) and German parents). The work’s title “Conversation of the Light-ship and the Tide” reflected something of the composer’s multi-national origins, as it depicted the once-common practice of various Northern Hemisphere countries with coastlines too rugged and impassable for lighthouses to instead use “light-ships”, vessels containing warning lights who were moored close to any such hazards to warn any passing ships of the attendant dangers.

Tabea Squire’s music took us immediately to remote, unpeopled places, with sounds and impulses devoid of flesh-and-blood human activity – here were louring brass tones, percussive patternings and stark, almost pitiless wind-and-brass chords, made bleaker and more unremitting by undulating strings, whose occasional sul ponticello tones  further highlighted the isolation and loneliness of the seascape. Slowly the characters in this scenario emerged – the ship, bound, but patient and stoic, and the sea, with its near-limitless resources giving notice of its power while holding itself at first in reserve.

Clarinet and piccolo brought light and animation, the ship feeling the ocean’s all-encompassing but relatively static embrace and conveying its gratification, which the brasses at first seemed to confirm, though occasionally reminding the vessel of its tenuous grip upon oceanic tranquility – however, the winds’ ever-increasingly playful, and La Mer-like interactions with the strings which followed seemed to defy at first the disquiet of the increasingly baleful brass – but then, with the tocsin adding portentous soundings, the ocean finally voiced its displeasure and impatience, unleashing its dominance over the hapless ship. In the wake of the agitations a kind of cosmic balance seemed crucial and came with the winds’ restoration of serenity, with the strings’ stratospheric tones resounding in empathy as vessel and ocean retreated into silence.

With Jess Gillam’s superb alto saxophone playing “life” was definitely on the cards for both of the next two items, the Saxophone Concerto by Alexander Glazunov being a new piece for me, though I’d heard Darius Milhaud’s “Scaramouche” before played by two pianos. Glazunov wrote his concerto for Sigurd Rascher, a German-born American saxophonist, who, according to the composer “mercilessly hounded” the latter for the piece’s completion. He himself never heard a public performance of the work.

Though Jess Gillam “owned” the performance in a visual, “playing with her whole body”  sense, we were just as entranced by the exchanges between soloist and orchestra throughout – Glazunov didn’t seek to exploit the instrument’s more jazzily contemporary qualities, but instead expressed and shared with the orchestra an old-world romanticism, to which Gillam and the players responded with breath-bated beauty. Perhaps the gem from the piece was the fugal finale, which tossed the material around between soloist and orchestra before the saxophone skipped off on a kind of goose-chase of recycled material and then regaled us with a hilariously raucous fanfare finish!

Darius Milhaud’s Scaramouche was even more winning than I remembered in its saxophone-and-orchestra guise – a delightfully vertiginous opening, with the soloist’s whirling figurations buoyed up by strummed strings and bubbling winds and brass! We were regaled by a version of “Ten Green Bottles” which differed from the one I was taught at school but resonated just as strongly, its trajectory then deliciously interwoven with the opening! The middle movement’s dream-like processional took us to a graceful waltz sequence, then combined the two, before whirling us into a final Brazileira, a samba that produced toe-tapping activation all around and enthusiastic applause at the end. Gillam’s encore, Duke Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood”, couldn’t have rounded the life-vibe off better!

And what, then, of love? Sergei Rachmaninov’s music for many people embodies such a feeling, though with this, the concluding work of his creative career he would have pronounced his achievement as something of a failure, describing his composing self as “a ghost wandering in a world grown alien…..” and calling his Symphonic Dances, his Op.45, his “last spark”. However, the love Rachmaninov felt as an exile from his lost homeland, Russia, is manifest throughout all of this music. And it was a love that was greater and deeper for being unattainable – the Russia he knew and loved had gone.

Gemma New’s performance of the work with the NZSO was an extraordinary experience for me, due to the abiding sense I got from her realisation of the music with her players of this quality of love. It was expressed in many ways – in the players’ attack throughout the work, in the weight she accorded the phrasing of the main themes, in the variegated emphases she gave different phrases so that they sounded freshly-minted, and in her awareness of the specific character of each of the work’s episodes. Not the least of these achievements was her inspired collaboration with the same Jess Gillam as the “guest” orchestral saxophonist in the first movement’s great instrumental solo.

Only at the end of the first movement, when Rachmaninov relinquishes his iron grip on the music’s driving rhythm and allows a reminiscence of the “Dies Irae” theme from his First Symphony to make an appearance, did I experience a pang of disappointment – New took us straight into this moment without reflection upon its sudden reincarnation. whereas I wanted to be taken more tenderly to this “freshly disinterred” episode from a work whose ham-fisted premiere performance (conducted, ironically, by Alexander Glazunov!)  had given the young composer the most harrowing artistic experience of his career.  Of course it’s one of those instances of a different interpreter’s subjectivity having to be accepted and validated. But the rest brought ample compensation, with one of the most moving and exciting performances I’d ever heard for all the above reasons, and richly deserving of enduring memory.

The Maori Sidesteps – bringing out an awareness as to who we can all be

Posted on by Peter Mechen

THE MAORI SIDESTEPS
Jamie McCaskill, Cohen Holloway, Jerome Leota and Kali Kopae (performers)
Director: Jonathon Hendry
Producer/Lighting Designer: Sonia Hardie
Gillian Eva Boyd: Audio Engineer
Gabriella Eaton: Lighting Operator

Circa Theatre, I Taranaki St, Wellington
29th October 2025 (until Saturday 1st November)

I still remember the incredible excitement generated by the announcement back in early 1960 on our local radio station (2ZA Palmerston North) that there was going to be a special broadcast that evening, something which shouldn’t be missed!  Great was our family’s expectation as my parents tuned in on our little monophonic radiogram to something that had the “feel” of a kind of nation-wide news broadcast.

It turned out to be part of a “Showtime Spectacular” that had previously been recorded at the Pukekohe Memorial Hall, and featured a song written by Gerry Merito, a member of the popular all-Maori Howard Morrison Quartet. It was a parody of an existing song recorded by Lonnie Donegan and his skffle group “My Old Man’s a Dustman”, but this was a protest song at the All Black team’s selection in 1960 of a touring team to South Africa with no Maori players, one that was called “My Old Man’s an All Black”.

Sporting ties with South Africa during the republic’s apartheid regime of course became increasingly debated over the years, culminating in the mass protests and scenes of civil unrest during the 1981 Sprigbok tour of New Zealand, which caused serious division up and down the country.  But actual protests began in real earnest in 1960 with the NZ Rugby Football Union’s announcement of a no-Maori players touring team.

Merito’s song was described as “a bitter-sweet parody” of Donegan’s song – though it used humour to make its point, with comic asides thrown into the mix the song most definitely had an air of protest about it. I read, much later, about the occasion, recorded at  that Pukekohe concert, with the doors of the Hall locked to prevent the audience leaving during recording. By 1 a.m. the producer was satisfied with the “take” and the by then restless audience was released to go home. The rest is history – the disc that was made from the occasion sold 60,000 copies – an amazing number for 1960!

My first reaction upon arriving home from this Circa Show last night was to find and play (You Tube is simply amazing!) the recording of this occasion: there it was! –

“Oh, my old man’s an All Black,
He wears the silver fern,
His mates just couldn’t take him
So he’s out now for a turn.

And so on, to the last verse: –

Well the All Black team is leaving / And the best of luck to them
And if they find things tricky/ They’ll have to play like men
Cos the Springboks will be watching /from Transvaal to Cape Town
That team that ain’t got Horis/ To score their last touch down”

That same history, with all of its “of-its-time” and  “we’ve moved on from that” patter, if anything intensifies its integral power in the relistening, along with those  comic asides that gained laughs while making a point:
Morrison: “I say, Jerry, my boy, uh – I suppose your Old Man’s a little disappointed his mates left him behind – is that right?”
Merito:”Well, actually, Howard, he wasn’t “cravin’”to go…..”

And then there was the concluding patter, which actually got the biggest laugh –
”Fee-fee  Fi-fi  Fo-fo  Fum….. there’s no Horis in that scrum!”

I mention these things because for me they were the stuff of connections and resonances made last might at Circa Theatre by these amazing performers, “The Maori Sidesteps” which completely overtook my receptivities to an extent for which I wasn’t prepared. Quite a few people at the performance who seemed to be roughly of my age group would have shared these memories and had similar thoughts and reactions – but many others were obviously younger, and ready instead to resonate with enjoyment of the group’s ability to connect as strongly with contemporary issues involving Maori and Pakeha interaction. So it was one of the show’s strengths that the performers could reach out and “touch” such a variety as was in its audience.

The group paid homage to Howard Morrison and his Quartet (cheekily called a “quintet” by somebody onstage last night!) making amends for what they called the “All Black” song’s “parody of a parody” by then giving us a spirited account of another of the original Ouartet “parody” songs, “The Battle of the Waikato” (which “Maori Sidesteps” leader Jamie McCaskill significantly updated by calling it “A New Zealand Land Wars” song – actually, a long-overdue characterisation!)

While the old recordings still bear witness to the group’s outstanding musical and charismatic performance qualities, these were here remarkably echoed by this evening’s beautifully sung and readily engaging set of performances, adroitly mixing older standards such as “I believe”  and “Wonderland by Night” (echoes of another outstanding Maori group, the Hi-Marks) with older Te Reo songs like “Hine e Hine” (beautifully sung by Kali Kopae) and a handful I didn’t know but couldn’t help but resonate to all the more. And, though remaining intrigued as to its inclusion, I found myself enjoying the famous Donizetti aria “Una furtiva lagrima” from the opera L’elisir d’amore in Cohen Holloway’s surprisingly prodigious (if somewhat “tenor-in-the-shower”) rendition!

So, on musical terms alone, the show is a knockout! However it also delivers in a way we in Aotearoa New Zealand have been sadly lacking of late, of satirising the antics of our political leaders (whose outrageous recent behaviour seems to have induced a kind of stupefaction here akin to the late satirist Tom Lehrer’s comment re the US political scene that “satire became redundant when Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize!”). We need our own Tom Lehrers even more desperately at present – our cartoonists are doing what they can within the constraints of a right-wing-dominated print media at present, but we could do with far more “calling out” of the kind the “Maori Sidesteps” performers demonstrated for  us so richly and satisfyingly last night – and judging by the audience reactions to sequences like a game show’s enabling its contestants to “Win back Your Land”, and all-too-resonant impressions of bigoted talkback listeners airing their racist viewpoints, such satire has vatfuls of untapped resource “out there” waiting for things like this to rush in and fill the vacuum!

The impression left at the end of it all was of the effervescence of the performers and their modus operandi, caused not by means that might cause further divisiveness, but by humour and as much self-deprecation as criticism of others, by alternating long-range vision with mirrors, so that people become as used to laughing at themselves as passing judgement upon others. This quality was brought out by things in the show like the Sidesteps’ hilariously knockabout depiction of our own Creation myth in the almost Monty Pythonesque separation of Rangi and Papa, and then the dispersal of the “ Seven Eyes” that make the Matariki constellation.

Again, in every set of truths a modicum of banter and even disrespect helps tease out the true fibres – and the show reiterates this view of things in Aotearoa, weaving threads through these “true fibres” with a sure touch. Right from an opening , beautifully-harmonised waiata mentioning the “seven canoes” (I think I registered most of the names), another song urging the participants to “work for your consideration on your vowels’ pronunciation”, to the amusing irreverence of Prince Tui Teka’s “My ding-a-ling” song, there’s that all-important and communicative leveller of “fun”.

So, Ka pai te mahi!  (Well done!) The Maori Sidesteps make one feel better for the awareness they bring out as to who we all can be!
I pa o matou ngakau ki tou aroha! (Our hearts were touched by your love).

 

Sextet scintillations from Dohnányi and Penderecki, courtesy of the Morton Trio and Friends, at Wellington’s St Andrews-on-The-Terrace

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music presents:
Morton Trio and Friends
Sextets by ERNST VON DOHNÁNYI and KRYZSTOF PENDERECKI

Morton Trio – Arna Morton (violin), Alex Morton (horn), Liam Wooding (piano)
with David McGregor (clarinet), Sharon Baylis (viola) and Jeremy Garside (‘cello)

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

Sunday, 28th April 2024

The first thing I did when I got home from this concert was to get onto the computer and find recordings of each of these unfamiliar and incredible pieces of chamber music that I could purchase without delay, such was the compulsive fascination exerted by each of the works I’d heard that afternoon and brought to the fore by the brilliance and beauty of the performances by the Morton Trio and Friends. In fact I’d already been knocked sideways by the sheer elan of the ensemble’s playing of the Dohnányi piece by the interval, and it did take much longer for the Penderecki Sextet to similarly get under my skin – but the end result of the concert’s presentation was my wanting to have both of these works on hand to enjoy once again as soon as possible.

For me it was fascinating to experience how the two separate processes of coming to grips with each piece took me on quite a different listening course, though concluding in each case with no less of a compulsive quality regarding my wanting to hear the music again. Right from the beginning of the Dohnányi work I was struck by its almost wilful plenitude of spontaneously-wrought sonorities, setting up a more-or-less constant flow of compulsive, “whatever-next?” kinds of expectations that continued in joyful abundance right to the end.

But then, how different seemed my journey throughout much of the Penderecki work, confronted at the outset by a rather more tightly-woven company of motivic impulses and varied texturings over more expansive sound-vistas, a panoply of impressionable happenings whose intent seemed to evolve from out of a first movement’s closely-knit conflict, but whose eventual second-movement resolution “from within” slowly but surely captivated my sensibilities as the sounds strove with all their might towards a kind of dark transfiguration which alternated glimmerings of hope and shadows of tragedy .

I straightaway loved the “questing “ quality of the Dohnányi work, its darkly-hued restlessness at the outset seeming to investigate every possible pathway set up by the music’s trajectories and harmonic shifts. The flexibility of the music’s trajectories gave the work a kind of Cesar Franck-like volatility, and also with an occasional “diabolique” kind of flavour thrown in from a tritone-like interval. Throughout, the ensemble’s virtuoso use of a wide dynamic range took one’s “listener’s breath” away, especially throughout the stormy development section. Then. the second movement’s ghostly opening grew from within a rhapsodic passage interrupted by a ruggedly march-like “carving out” by the players characteristic of the volatility of the piece, as was the return to tranquility at the music’s end.

The next theme-and-variations movement was begun by a clarinet melody, phrased here with an engaging mix of sentiment and insouciance, and followed by a piano solo that had set its mind on goading the rest of the ensemble into action, resulting in a series of delightfully divergent inspirations – running, circus-like exchanges, skitterish triplet-led sequences and occasional returnings to the gentle soulfulness of the clarinet theme. The playing here flowed like oil in an almost Mozartean way, with horn and clarinet striking an attractively elegiac note (was there a brief horn “slip upwards” from the otherwise impeccable Alex Morton at one point?) towards the end with the piano’s steadfast support.

But then, how excitingly the music then “gathered” itself, sounding the tritone as a kind of “something’s happening” signal, and then, without a break, plunging into a “ragtime” dance-rhythm, here so especially “grunty” and joyous in the exuberance and abandonment with which the players dug into the accents! And what a wonderful moment it was when the heart-on-sleeve waltz-rhythm suddenly appeared, sparring with the ragtime rhythm and working up to an almost Rachmaninovian climax, before the coda carried all before it, waltz-tune, diabolus reference and all, teetering towards a gorgeously wrong-harmonied grandstand finish, and then cheekily correcting itself – outrageous and exhilarating!

It was naturally expected that Penderecki’s would be a different world, with the tersely-tattooed piano figure at the very beginning “setting the scene” for the pointillistic, spaced-out exchanges with which the work began, activating the other instruments by turns as the sounds unfolded – a flurry of toccata-like interchange marched along, fell away briefly and almost sorrowfully, but then renewed with even more vigour – such full-blooded playing, I thought, from all concerned! The sounds slowed to a trudge, and took on an almost Mahlerian funereal aspect, mixing grief and anger. I was amazed at the clarity with which the musicians delivered detail, here, despite the insistence of the contrapuntal detailings and the pace at which the ensemble maintained its agitated interactions. Horn and clarinet then paved the way in sonorous fashion for a grotesque kind of march-cum cakewalk which built up to a frenzied bout of gesturings from all concerned before abruptly collapsing!

The viola began the second movement tersely, drawing further elaborations from the piano, before the other strings echoed the viola’s theme, the piano continuing to explore the spaces. A clarinet call evinced a sombre, almost ghostly response from the strings, augmented by a restrained, self-communing horn (I did see a You-Tube performance of this in which the horn player left the stage at the second movement’s beginning to play in the “wings” for a period, but this event wasn’t replicated here). Again, I thought the players’ various detailings of the lines seemed never to miss a trick – the music seemed in “ebb-and-flow” mode, by turns desolate and then forthright and determined, and always “knowing” where it was going, however rudderless the trajectories sometimes seemed.

The volatilities of the work couldn’t be kept down, as even the most mournful of sequences would suddenly energise and flare up, as in a hair-raising triplet sequence featuring the instruments flying up and down the scale in desperate frissons of energy of their own making, trying either to “connect” or “escape” the manifestations and implications of this journey. As I listened I began to feel just what it was the music was heading towards amid its trajectoral and dynamic contrasts. It was a feeling that was summed up best by one commentator, himself a horn player, whose thoughts on the work I shared: – “Underlying the chatter of these contrasting episodes is a minor-key dirge that ultimately subsumes everything else in the work – the message being that you can have all the fun that you want, but the end bears only bitterness and loss.”

Something of this realisation came to me as the work entered a sequence towards the end consisting of long-held chords, a melody from the ‘cello, and a repeated two-note “lament-like” motif which again brought Mahler’s music to mind – the players here held this mood as if it were second nature to them, “inhabiting” the notes and expressing their underlying tragedy, the unearthly string harmonics which concluded the work leaving each of us with little else in mind but to ponder our own destinies.

At the concert’s scheduled end, violinist Arna Morton thanked us for our attendance and observed that the afternoon’s music had probably been akin for a lot of people to a “heavy meal”! – nutritious and satisfying in that sense, but needing something of a sweet for complete homegoing satisfaction! She proposed that the group would thus perform an encore, a piece by the French composer Lili Boulanger originally written for a mixed choir, but arranged by Arna herself for the ensemble today to perform. The piece was originally titled ”Sus bois”, a name translated as “forest floor” or “undergrowth”, a gentle, and beautifully harmonised piece which reminded me in places of Ravel. Its sylvan beauty was certainly an antidote for the sensibilities after the travails of the Penderecki Sextet! In all, a concert long to be remembered!

Jane Austen’s “Mansfield Park” – an operatic transfiguration

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand Opera presents:
MANSFIELD PARK– an opera by Jonathan Dove (composer) and Alasdair Middleton (librettist)
Based on the novel “Mansfield Park” by Jane Austen (published 1814)
Director: Rebecca Meltzer
Wardrobe and Props: Sophie Ham
Piano Accompaniment: Soomin Kim and David Kelly
Stage Manager: Chanelle Muirhead
Production: courtesy Waterperry Opera Festival, UK
Cast: Fanny Price – Ashlyn Tymms
Lady Bertram – Kristin Darragh
Sir Thomas Bertram – Robert Tucker
Maria Bertram – Sarah Mileham
Julia Bertram – Michaela Cadwgan
Edmund Bertram – Joel Amosa
Aunt Norris – Andrea Creighton
Mary Crawford – Joanna Foote
Henry Crawford – Taylor Wallbank
Mr. Rushworth – Andrew Grenon

Wellington Public Trust Hall
Lambton Quay, Wellington

Thursday 18th April 2024

First staged in 2011, composer Jonathan Dove’s and librettist Alasdair Middleton’s adventurous adaptation of Jane Mansfield’s novel “Mansfield Park” has since achieved world-wide exposure, eventually finding its way to what author Adrienne Simpson once called “opera’s farthest frontier”, the shores of Aotearoa New Zealand, the work taking pride of place as the first 2024 production staged by New Zealand Opera.

It occupies territory close to the heart of the company’s recently-appointed general director, Brad Cohen, whose vision centres upon “getting a wider range of people to attend the opera” by diversifying the various presentation spaces and enlarging the scope of the repertoire in a “something for everybody” manner. It’s a philosophy straightaway borne out by the “outside-the-box” delivery that characterises this latest production, which is, of course, very much in line with the original story’s essentially domestic setting.

Mansfield Park has an ensemble of ten on-stage singers (an audience member makes a brief appearance as a non-singing “extra” at one point) accompanied by a piano duet, everybody occupying a shared space in the same room (the venue on this occasion Wellington’s Public Trust Hall), and with the performers making entrances and exits from and towards various directions including through the audience itself, creating a vibrantly inclusive ambience for all concerned to enjoy. Nothing more removed from the usual operatic scenario of stage, proscenium archway and auditorium, all clearly delineated, could have been imagined.

Composer Jonathan Dove has since recast the work with a chamber orchestra accompaniment, but I hugely enjoyed the omnipresent sound of the original piano duet (here superbly realised by Soomin Kim and David Kelly), the pair completely out of my view from where I was sitting mid-hall, but whose pianistic ambiences unfailingly conjured up the largely drawing-room atmosphere of most of the story’s action. The music might have occasionally seemed “vocally minimalist” or suggestive of “silent film” accompaniment – but the score’s different, more thoughtful or even grandly epic evocations in other places were etched in just as surely and atmospherically. I kept on thinking about the composer telling us that he recalled moments of “hearing music” when first reading parts of the novel, and how we might be hearing the results of those reimagined moments.

I was grateful for the production’s use of subtitles, despite the opera being in English – I’d found in various “opera in the vernacular” performances the text often suffering from a lack of clarity in places. Fortunately I found this cast particularly well-drilled in this respect, and especially in the case of singers such as Andrea Creighton as the voluble Aunt Norris, even when having a lot to say in a short time! Also exemplary in this respect were Robert Tucker and Kristin Darragh as the parents, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram – and I must mention the special pleasure I derived from Andrew Grenon’s vivid word-characterisations as the bumbling Mr. Rushworth!

So, within the elegant frame of what would have otherwise been something like an original Gainsborough-like landscape oil painting on the drawing-room wall appeared the opera’s libretto, written by Alasdair Middleton. The action was divided into two acts containing altogether eighteen “chapters” (Austen’s original novel has over forty of the latter!). The cast itself announced the name and number of each chapter, with the setting, aside from a couple of al fresco forays into “wilderness”, “shrubbery” and “grottoes”, largely taking place in Mansfield Park’s stylish interior. It all had a surface charm “mirroring” the emphasis placed on social climbing and material expectation in society, to which young people’s affairs of the heart were constantly shaped and manipulated.

The heroine of the piece, Fanny Price, has a “back-story” in the novel that’s here hardly touched upon – and then in the most negative terms by her widowed Aunt Norris – she seems to be constantly berating Fanny for her lack of “ostensible” gratitude to her rich Aunt and Uncle, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, for taking her into the household at all to relieve the pressure on Fanny’s own family. There’s a lot going in in the Bertram household, with Sir Thomas having a business in Antigua which takes him away from his four children, all of whom are looking either for suitable careers (the boys, one of whom , Tom, doesn’t appear in the opera) or marriage-matches (the girls, one of whom, Maria, is already engaged to the wealthy but exceedingly boring Rushworth!).

Fanny’s covert interest is in the younger brother, Edmund, who, unlike his sisters, treats her kindly, but as he would a kid-sister for most of the time. Of course, the pair finally make good their largely unspoken deeper interest in one another, despite the various cajoleries of a neighbouring and outwardly attractive brother-and-sister pair, Mary and Henry Crawford who arrive on the scene early in the piece to disrupt things for their own ends. The production cleverly cuts through this and more besides of the elaborate and complex Austen original, thanks to some judiciously- focused textual distillations and sharply-characterised, forward-driving music.

Director Rebecca Meltzer originally created this production for Waterperry Opera in Oxford, UK in 2018, resulting in her being invited here to direct the production with NZ Opera. Her fondness for working with singers in intimate audience environments was readily evident in the detailed delivery given the texts by the cast. As well, her direction of the opera’s “outdoor” scenes (such as the hilariously-contrived journey of the company to the estate of Mr.Rushworth at Southerton in the “barouche”, and the deployment of people not in the scene as characters but instead as “stage-props”, such as trees and gateways!) caused plenty of merriment.

We also relished the sensitive treatment of the more lyrical chorus-like moments in the work, like the almost Mozartean farewell (one thought of Soave sia il vento in Cosi fan Tutte) accorded Sir Thomas from the ensemble on his departure to Antigua, and the lovely “Stargazing” music duetted between Fanny and Edmund in Chapter Six. At the other expressive end of the work’s range was the wonderful scene “A Newspaper Paragraph” in which the general ensemble seemed to revolve like a flywheel around the sensational newspaper publication of Henry’s elopement with Mrs Rushworth, the characters gradually splintering off in different directions and leaving Edmund at last able to come to his senses regarding Mary Crawford’s true character via HER reaction to the news – fabulous musical theatre! – (but more about the work’s final chorale in a minute……)

In the title role of Fanny, mezzo-soprano Ashlyn Tymms looked, moved and sang with ease, grace and decorum as befitted her character and station in the Bertram household (Sophie Ham’s costumes beautifully modulated across the entire cast), though she allowed her emotions to betray her feelings given the chance, as when steadfast in her refusing to comply with Sir Thomas’s wishes that she should accept Henry Crawford as a husband. Her and Edmund’s final vows of commitment to one another were all the more touching for their “surprised by joy” aspect and given all due warmth of tone by both singers. As Edmund, Joel Amosa looked and sounded all the while steadfast, straightforward and upright, even if his head had been turned by the all-too superficially engaging Mary, whose portrayal brought forth resplendent and characterful singing from Joanna Foote.

Mary’s rakish brother Henry received a confident, swashbuckling rendering from Taylor Wallbank even if I felt some of his higher notes evinced a degree of strain. In the pathetic and thankless role of Mr Rushworth, I thought Andrew Grenon’s characterisation brilliantly and almost painfully engaging, as was his singing. As for the remainder of the Bertrams, both Robert Tucker and Kristin Darragh brought an ease of vocal delivery to their roles that itself gave their characters a kind of status and authority as Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, in stark contrast to Andrea Creighton’s waspish and petulant yet wonderfully sung Aunt Norris, a thorn in her niece’s side as of her own god-given right! And each of the two sisters, the “twelve thousand-a-year-obsessed” Maria, and the younger, impressionable and impetuous Julia were played with characterful spirit and sung with attractive tones and well-crafted “surface” by Sarah Mileham and Michaela Cadwgan respectively.

What brought home to me an enduring feeling of the production’s depth and resonance of quality and truth was the opera’s final scene – after all Fanny’s trials and tribulations, endured with the utmost steadfastness, she is rewarded by the love she has wanted for herself for some time, that of Edmund Bertram. Austen celebrates her Fanny’s ultimate triumph somewhat matter-of-factly in the novel, whereas the composer and librettist of the opera obviously felt the need for some kind of outward catharsis, at any rate on Fanny’s part, and by extrapolation, on Edmund’s as well. So, at the end is the most beautiful of the opera’s sequences, with all the characters of the story, family, friends, villains and monsters alike gathering in a group on the stage to intone these beautiful words – not Austen’s own, but the librettist’s, speaking, as it were, for all of us who have been through the experience afforded in all of its forms by this remarkable work:
“Too soon falls the dusk,
Too soon comes the dark;
Let us learn to love, laugh and live –
at Mansfield Park!”

Circle Of Friends throws open the doors at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music presents:
CIRCLE OF FRIENDS
– an afternoon with Natalia Lomeiko (violin), Sarah Watkins (piano) and Yuri Zhislin (violin/viola)

CLARA SCHUMANN – Three Romances Op.22 (1853)
ROBERT SCHUMANN Phantasie in C Major Op.131 (1853)
KAROL SZYMANOWSKI – La Fontaine d’Arethuse (from Myths Op.30 – 1915)
Nocturne and Tarantella Op.28 (1915)
JOHANNES BRAHMS – Viola Sonata No. 2 in E-flat Op.120 No. 2 (1895)
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH – 5 pieces for violin, viola and piano (1955)

St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington

Sunday, 14th April 2024

The elves had been busy overnight at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, changing all the seating back to “normal” after the previous day’s Janáček / Dvořák choral concert, for which everything had been reversed in deference to the singers and instrumentalists who had filled to bursting the organ/choir-loft at the rear of the church’s nave – in the light of the normality now firmly re-established it might have seemed to those who had also attended the previous day’s concert like a “did we dream you or did you dream us?” situation.

Whether those same elves had remained hiding in the church’s nooks and crannies to get a taste of the beauties and excitements of today’s programme wasn’t obvious to the eye, but in retrospect the many delights and gratifications afforded by the playing of the three musicians throughout would have caused ripples of pleasure activating the sensibilities of all but the most inert life forms on hand this afternoon.

The programme’s “circle of friends” title encompassed not only the performers (the “wife-and-husband’ team of violinist Natalia Lomeiko and violist Yuri Zhislin in partnership with pianist Sarah Watkins) but three of the composers whose music was about to be performed, and whose ties have since become legendary – Clara and Robert Schumann, and their mutual friend and protégé, Johannes Brahms. However, the range and scope of the performers extended even further in the case of several other items, and most entertainingly with a near-riotous encore piece , about which you will have to read the rest of the review in order to learn more!

First up was Clara Schumann’s Three Romances for violin and piano Op.22, written in 1853 , a year of both triumph and troubles for Clara, touring successfully with violinist Joseph Joachim (to whom these piece are dedicated), but with her husband Robert’s deteriorating mental condition causing serious concerns. The pieces here seem like strands of hope stretching forth for a kind of deliverance, the first gentle and richly-toned, Lomeiko and Watkins moving gracefully as one through a beautifully-wrought sensibility; after which they brought out in the second piece a rather more sober and melancholy feeling, happier and even quixotic in places in the middle section’s major key, but inevitably drawn back to the opening’s darker mood. The third’s long-breathed melodies had a rippling accompaniment, Lomeiko’s violin ardent in song and Watkins’s piano mirroring every impulse – the latter’s able fingers as impish throughout her staccato passages as they were liquid and flowing at the piece’s beginning.

Dating from the same year was Clara’s husband Robert’s astonishing Phantasie in C Major Op.131, a work that had dropped out of the repertoire until reintroduced in a version for violin and piano conceived by Fritz Kreisler in 1937 (I can’t find any reference to the work having been performed by anybody earlier in this form, the Dusseldorf premiere having been played by Joseph Joachim with the composer conducting the orchestra). It’s an incredible piece of violin writing by somebody thought of as being in a state of mental duress and decline at that time, a one-movement work filled with contrasts of expression which here “marry” its composer’s often wildly-opposing creative personas in remarkably cogent ways. Most of the virtuosic fireworks came from the violinist, though pianist Sarah Watkins readily backed up Natalia Lomeiko’s more florid violin gesturings with appropriately orchestral tones and figurations at climactic points, the duo elsewhere “playing into” one another’s hands with some equally heartfelt melodic phrasings that in places made one hold one’s breath.

Other repertoire that’s been gradually re-establishing its place in musical history in recent times is the music of Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937), now regarded as one of the greatest of Polish composers. Included in his output are a number of chamber works for violin and piano, two of which Lomeiko and Watkins played – firstly we heard one of a group of three poems called Mythes, inspired by Greek mythology, with the title “La Fontaine d’Arethuse”. This concerns the story of the nymph Arethusa, fleeing from the attentions of the river-god Alpheus (those Greek deities were something of a randy lot, I must say – perhaps a case of “if it was good enough for Zeus, then….”) and being turned into the waters of a fountain to avoid capture.

We heard the piano notes shimmer and scintillate at the beginning, as the violin called forth the nymph Arethusa with its silvery, enchanting line – the music began to agitate with the appearance of the river-god, Alpheus, but the latter’s desire to ensnare the nymph was thwarted by the eerie stillness of the violin harmonics concealing her presence. The river-god renewed his desperate agitations (amazing pyrotechnic playing from both musicians!) and Arerthusa was snatched away and concealed by her protector, Artemis. Hearing Alpheus’s lament, the other gods allowed the fountain waters to mingle with those of the river (violin and piano mingled their sounds), and honour was satisfied.

Where the “myth” was primarily impressionistic and suggestive in effect, the following piece Nocturne and Tarantella Op.28, though dating from a similar period, inhabited a different sound-world, the introductory Nocturne evoking a more Iberian ambience, with sultry evocations of stillness set against episodes of vigorous Spanish dance-rhythms. By stark contrast, the following “Tarantella” was a riot of impulse, movement, and raw vigour which left us all breathless with amazement and stupefaction at both performers’ energy levels throughout!

Having taken all of these intensities in our listening stride, an interval gave us the chance to come up for some air before turning our attentions to the music of Brahms, via the playing of violist Yuri Zhislin with Sarah Watkins, in a work I’ve always loved in its original form, the second of two sonatas originally written for the renowned clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld, whose playing had inspired the composer to produce an unexpected “Indian Summer” of additional chamber music! Brahms (somewhat, it seems, against his better judgement) had subsequently produced viola versions of these two same sonatas.

Whatever the composer’s misgivings – “sehr ungeschickt und unerfreulich” (clumsy and ungratifying) was his comment to Joseph Joachim re the transcriptions – he would surely have revised his opinion had he heard Yuri Zhislin’s performance with Sarah Watkins, here – it really made me love the music all over again (I had, of course, heard recordings of the viola versions, but still preferred the original clarinet ones until now) – the eloquent ease with which Zhislin negotiated the lines was matched by his tonal range which for me “inhabited” the music’s character at every point of the discourse. Also, Sara Watkins’ playing similarly illuminated the music from within – the central interlude in the work’s middle movement Scherzo here wove a spell whose realms I’d never previously been taken into so deeply. Then, the “Theme and Variations” finale was a similar joy which the “hit-and-run” excitement of the final variation’s coda rounded off in exhilarating fashion!

I’d thought that, after these heady excitements, the concert’s final printed item, Shostakovich’s Five Pieces (a kind of “assemblage” work brought together by Lev Atovmyan from the composer’s various film and ballet scores) would prove to be somewhat “small beer” – but Lomeiko and Zhislin (the latter now playing a violin) found, with Watkins’ help, a lot more “character” in the pieces than did the somewhat bland rendition I’d previously auditioned on a “You Tube” clip. Where the trio REALLY set the usually staid and respectably-wrought venue alight was with the encore, a piece by Igor Frolov, a violinist in his own right (he was a pupil of David Oistrakh) who enjoyed a distinguished career in the Soviet Union as a teacher, artistic director and musical arranger, well-known for his composition of pieces written using what have been described by certain viewpoints as “forbidden” musical styles, such as jazz (there are various opinions regarding the much-vaunted “Soviet disapproval” of western-style forms of entertainment during the 194os and 50s). Whatever the case Frolov’s 1979 “Divertimento” with its outrageous juxtaposing of pastiche baroque-styled sequences alternated with jazzed-up and “swung” passages of tongue-in-cheek variants and vagaries of style, was all “turned” in what seemed like the manner born, with spadefuls of elan from the players! We loved them for it and made no bones about our appreciation of the whole afternoon’s feast of music-making!

Flavoursome Janáček and Dvořák from the Bach Choir

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Bach Choir of Wellington presents:
JANÁČEK – Otče náš (Our Father)
DVOŘÁK – Mass in D Major, Op.86

Laura Dawson (soprano), Sinéad Keane (alto),
Theo Moolenaar (tenor). Simon Christie (bass)
Michelle Velvin (harp), Douglas Mews (organ)
Bach Choir of Wellington
Musical Director – Shawn Michael Condon

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

Saturday, 13th April 2024

I couldn’t recall a previous time I’d walked into St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church in Wellington and straightaway been confronted by an audience of faces rather than heads entirely – well in most cases! – of hair – as if in a dream I had suddenly and bewilderingly been thrust into the role of a performer or celebrant in what was to follow, instead of an accustomedly passive onlooker!

Of course this audience volte-face was arranged so that singers and instrumentalists in both works could be more closely arrayed than was often the case in works requiring the services of the splendid pipe organ and a choir of reasonable size, not to mention a quartet of solo singers and a harpist with her instrument to boot! It resulted in a different kind of “spaciousness” to that end-to-end kind normally afforded by the church for choral concert music accompanied by an organ.

Actually, the relative “novelty” of the arrangement further intensified the stimulation I’d previously noted in listening to recordings of these works which were entirely new to me! I put a lot of it down to the music’s distinctive “Czech” quality, present in spadefuls throughout Leos Janáček’s Otče náš (the setting of the prayer ”Our Father”) by dint of so many characteristic composer-fingerprints in the music’s making.

But even in the more conventionally-presented Dvořák Mass there were numerous aspects which proclaimed a kind of expression which, though influenced by, was nevertheless apart from most of the familiar stylistic formalities of the Austro-German tradition of church music, drawing instead from the composer’s folk-influenced roots with a plaintiveness and simplicity of utterance that readily evoked an awareness of and a feeling for the natural world and an ordinary, simple being’s place in it.

First up, however, was the Janáček work, opened by the organ and harp, and joined by the voices, firstly the basses, and then in canonic imitation, the altos, a strong, simple and beautiful effect, with both vocal strands drawing resonances, it seemed, from one another, as with the lighter and no less beautiful exchanges between tenors and sopranos which followed. Tenor soloist Theo Moolenaar brought a wonderful fervour to his first solo, his ringing top notes creating a frisson which was carried forward by the entry of the choir in reply. A rhapsodic instrumental interlude for organ and harp paved the way for another solo from the tenor, beautifully echoed by the choir and by the organ, joined by the harp for further rhapsodising (delightful playing, as throughout, from both Douglas Mews and Michelle Velvin!)

What a contrast, then, came with the choir’s tumultuous entry imploring our “daily bread”, with particular insistence upon dnes, the word for bread, flung upwards and outwards into the spaces overhead! – and how readily the tenor then implored the choir’s responses to his plea for forgiveness of humankind’s trespasses, with organ hand harp adding their own heartfelt contributions. Finally, a particularly “grunty” organ passage heralded a vigorous and even biting response from the voices in matters pertaining to temptation and evil before assenting the prayer’s plea further and finally with a number of ringing and rousing “Amens!”

My delight in recent discovery concerning the Dvořák Mass which followed was happily taken further by this performance, complete with the “togetherness” of the entire ensemble crowded into the St.Andrew’s organ-loft doubtless reflecting the circumstances of the work’s premiere. Dvořák’s original commission for the work had come from one of his patrons, the architect Josef Hlavka, and involved the inauguration of a small chapel in the Bohemian village of Lužany, the place which gave the Mass its nickname.

I was able to savour all over again those sweet opening phrases of the work in the “Kyrie”, here beautifully floated by the choir, with conductor Shawn Michael Condon beautifully controlling the “ebb-and-flow’ dynamics of the lines, creating an almost lullabic sound around a crescendo of tones and associated emotions. The “Christe” passages made a telling contrasted effect, especially when the Kyrie refrain returned at the end, plus some briefly reiterated “Christe christe” murmurings.

A vigorously-begun, declamatory “Gloria” took us to a stately and lyrical “Et in terra pax hominibus”, which grew back the music’s jubilation through the following “Laudamus te”, before reaching a splendid choral climax at “Glorificamus te”. The most moving sequences for me came with the interplay of the soloists and choir throughout the “Domine Deus” sections where first the choir, and then the soloists brought out the beauty of the exchanges, the choir then excitingly bringing out the music’s energies at “Suscipe deprecationem nostrum”, and continuing with a robust “Cum Sancto Spiritu’ followed by resoundingly satisfying “Amens”.

Another moment to savour was the surprisingly lyrical and serenade-like opening to the “Credo”, the women’s voices sweetly alternating with the rest of the choir – by contrast, the “Deum de Deo” sections brought forth some unexpectedly explosive interjections, with the organ’s chording in places bordering on the discordant. A pause gave us breathing-space for the contrast at the soloists’ taking up of the “Et incarnatus est” with beautiful work from all concerned, beginning with alto Sinéad Keane and bass Simon Christie, and followed just as effulgently by soprano Laura Dawson and tenor Theo Moolenaar, who, together with the choir, brought about a palpable sense of peace with the gently-breathed “Et homo factus est”.

Dvořák doesn’t disappoint with the contrasting force of his setting of “Crucifixus etiam pro nobis” – the voices unsparingly produced fierce and harrowing tones, while the following “Passus et sepultus est” expressed the grief in a vastly different way, with hushed tones and ever-increasing resignation. How appropriate, then was the different kind of contrast again wrought by “Et resurrexit tertia die”, one expressed with lilting rhythms and ascending lines blossoming with the help of the organ. The rest of the setting seemed to me to emulate a pealing of church bells expressed in vocal terms, an effect accentuated by the “swinging” trajectories of the music and the “folksiness” of the organ’s squeeze-box-like timbres, leading inevitably to the joyously-voiced “Amens” at the end.

Bells were again brought to mind by the opening of the Sanctus, the voices enchanting us with a well-nigh irresistible carillion of sounds and resonating “HJosannas” at the end. Came the “Benedictus” with its piquant organ solo at the beginning and “entranced” vocal entries, producing slow-moving near-oceanic waves of sound – a wonderful sequence, broken by the joyous return of the Sanctus.
It was left to the “Agnus Dei’ to conclude the work, simply and sonorously sung by the soloists in turn, beginning with the tenor, and then the alto, soprano and bass. After repeated and affecting soundings of the words “Miserere nobis” from the choir, the tenor then introduced the words “Dona nobis pacem”, echoed with most affecting beauty by the choir, the word “pacem” seeming to ring in our ears as a haunting message, indeed, even a directive, for our time……

Very great credit to all concerned with the Bach Choir of Wellington for a well-planned and engagingly-delivered concert, eminently worthy of ongoing memory…….

Orchestra Wellington under Taddei with Adam Page triumphant in Psathas’s saxophone ‘concerto’

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Orchestra Wellington conducted by Marc Taddei 
“Virtuoso Composer”

Mozart: Symphony No 25 in G minor, K 183
Psathas: Call of the Wild with Adam Page (saxophone), Premiere
Beethoven: Symphony No 4 in  B flat, Op 60

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 17 July, 7:30 pm

It was no surprise, after coming into the city on a thinly populated train, then a wet and windy wait for a bus and into a less than busy auditorium vestibule, to find the Michael Fowler Centre only about 60% full, when this orchestra’s concerts are normally sold out. There was nothing wrong with the programme.

In fact, the programme was admirable. Mozart and Beethoven are rather well-known, and both are full of energy and distinction. Nevertheless, the two symphonies in the programme are not so familiar, even though the opening of Mozart’s No 25, in G minor (which Mozart wrote in 1773 when he was only 17) was, as the programme note said, used most effectively to background Miloš Forman’s 1984 film, Amadeus.

Mozart’s Symphony No 25
Taddei launched into the Mozart dramatically, with vigorous rhythm and striking dynamic contrasts which were immediately in evidence between the syncopated, opening theme and the calm, more regular rhythm and more reflective second theme. The contrasts between instruments were somewhat more distinctive than is heard in some performances: cellos and double basses contributed more noticeably than the rest of the strings; a plangent oboe sounded and, particularly interesting, there are four horns, allowing for chromatic details; four horns instead of two was uncommon till the mid 19th century. The absence of clarinets was normal till a little later: Mozart first used clarinets in his Symphony No 31, five years after No 25.

The second movement is markedly calmer and quiet, and the playing was curiously secretive, each phrase carefully expressed with charming delicacy. The third movement – the typical Menuetto and Trio in triple time – restored an emphatic quality which that the Trio highlighted by playing distinctly slower.

And the last movement, that might have lightened the mood, does no such thing, Taddei took pains to emphasise its seriousness, to illustrate Mozart’s purpose in sustaining the symphony’s emotional seriousness.

Beethoven No 4
The other classical symphony was by Beethoven, but one that was performed with such flair and conviction that an audience may well have thought deserved fame equal to that of the odd-numbered works. The admirable programme note described the circumstances of its composition interestingly.

The fourth opens with a longish, contemplative introduction that offers no hint of what’s to follow, and the orchestra exploited it mysteriously, slowly emerging into daylight in a sudden attack: the Allegro vivace. It lifted the spirit with its energy and joyousness, with a rise and fall of dynamics that inspired an optimism that was elaborated throughout the magical, development section, secretively supported by timpani.

The Adagio was taken at a deliberative pace, though slightly more brisk than I remembered in others; likewise, its main theme sounded richer and more beautiful, particularly by the clarinet’s subtle contribution. The third movement is entitled Allegro vivace rather than simply ‘Scherzo’; holding the attention through its rather mysterious first episode. The Trio followed its title, un poco meno allegro, to prepare for the spirited return of first section. The fourth movement was driven with splendid precision, adding delight with a few bars that dip momentary into the minor key. Emphatic bassoons, clarinets, oboes and flute were enlivened by racing violins.

Both symphonies were performed with sensitivity and remarkable panache, offering a splendidly polished ambience for a rather distinctive masterpiece.

John Psathas
The showpiece of the concert was the premiere of John Psathas’s Call of the Wild. Psathas is Orchestra Wellington’s Composer in Residence, for a three year period from 2020. This is not his first saxophone concerto: that was in 2000 with a work called Omnifenix and was played at a festival in Bologna in Italy.

Psathas’s own programme note described the origins of the work most illuminatingly: a vivid, programmatic work that deals with the experience of both sides of his family over the past century: the terrible population exchanges between Greece and Turkey with awful loss of life on both sides after the First World War, and then the crippling, murderous Civil War after WW2 (Communism v. Capitalism, the war conducted in proxy style by the United States and the Soviet Union). The three movements deal with the experiences and character of his mother, his father and finally Psathas’s own children ‘hearing the call of the wild’ and talking now of living abroad.

The Greek civil war between the end of WW2 and 1949 was still a dominating memory when I was posted in 1964 as Vice Consul at the new New Zealand Consulate General In Athens; that war was still a divisive memory for the Greek people and it continued to influence Greek politics. Twenty years after the end of the Civil War, it was an element in the barbaric coup by the Colonels in April 1967 two months before my return to Wellington, That coup overthrew the democratic government on the pretext of possible left-wing success in approaching elections. Psathas’s reference to experiencing “normalised xenophobia, racism and religious mistreatment” when the family lived in Taumarunui and Napier, relates to my own surprise at encountering similar attitudes among, particularly, many English-speaking residents in Greece, including diplomats. For me, the three enriching years in Athens have remained a profound influence, linguistically, politically and culturally.

A considerably larger orchestra filled the stage for Psathas’s work, with many percussion players, as well as, most vividly, Adam Page’s tenor saxophone. Page led the opening passage, an arresting, rising motif that called us to order, and proclaimed the distinction of his instrument which, while still not standard in orchestras, has been imaginatively used by many composers, notably Ravel, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Milhaud, Richard Strauss, among others.

I have never heard the saxophone playing with such flamboyant confidence, employing such a wide range of techniques throughout the piece. With the accompaniment of a sharp-voiced side drum and many other percussion-driven features, suggesting civil war, there seemed little doubt to me that at least some of the music was inspired by the political strife after both World Wars. The sounds constantly announced the strong-minded inspiration that spoke clearly of disturbing events and a confident handling of them. And it was very often a partnership between saxophone and brass, along with percussion that carried it. Some of those exuberant episodes were nevertheless supported by quiet string accompaniment.

The music was always very conspicuously inspired by the sort of experiences Psathas had in mind with his parents. The second movement (He can worship it without believing it – his father) began with a sense of mystery: not a conspicuous feature of a saxophone one thinks, but it seemed to find its true character, such as when linked with sounds of marimba

The third movement, Tramontane (meaning, ‘on the other side of the mountains’), featured a frenzied orchestra, that allowed a more subdued saxophone to emerge, perhaps like the revealing of a beautiful landscape after reaching to peaks of a mountain range

This vividly individual music seemed to reinforce my long-held belief that contemporary music doesn’t flourish, or even survive, through sounds that are purposely challenging, tuneless, avant-garde, original in every possible sense. It can and should, like this successful work by Psathas, call for an opportunity to be heard again… and again. It was good to see microphones suspended above the orchestra (one recent and rewarding concert passed without being recorded at all).

This was a highly successful concert, featuring the orchestra and Marc Taddei, along with Adam Page’s saxophone, at their brilliant best.

I look forward to hearing it again – ideally another live performance. And it is noted that the place will be Christchurch, with the CSO, the Psathas piece’s joint commissioner.

Unusual trio ensemble with a highly satisfying, widely international series opens Wellington Chamber Music year

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Chamber Music: first concert in 2021 season

Trio Elan
Donald Armstrong (violin)
Simon Brew (saxophone)
Sarah Watkins (piano)

Russell Peterson: Trio for alto saxophone, violin and piano
Peter Liley: Deux Images for Trio: Small Scurrying and Glimpse
Albeniz: Evocación, from Iberia (piano solo)
Barry Cockcroft: Beat Me (tenor saxophone solo)
Debussy: Violin Sonata in G minor
Marc Eychenne: Cantilène et Danse
Piazzolla: Otoño Porteño 
Farr: Tango: Un Verano de Passion

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 18 April, 3 pm

The first concert in Wellington Chamber Music’s 2021 season attracted a fairly full audience, no doubt partly a response to their deprivation in 2020. It would have appealed to chamber music aficionados on account of the three well-known musicians and the inclusion of at least one well-known work, plus a couple of others by familiar and attractive composers – Albéniz and Piazzolla, and a popular New Zealand composer – Gareth Farr. That offered the prospect that the rest might be interesting: it certainly was.

Russell Peterson
It opened with a trio by American saxophonist and composer, Russell Peterson. It troubled me almost at once. Though it was a vigorous, rhythmic piece, throwing violin and saxophone against each other, each delivered such individual sounds that the wide spacing of the two gave the impression that unity could be in conflict. But rhythmic unity was always conspicuous and superficially disparate sounds were clearly studied and not simply tonal antipathy.

The second movement, Adagio, was more audibly genial, occupying the space in the church more comfortably. A congenial duet between violin and saxophone might have been rather shrill but the piano’s steady pace imposed a calmer spirit. The last movement, labelled ‘moto perpetuo’, again given to repetitive rhythms and terse themes, created an excitement that might again have been taxing in the church’s acoustic. Nevertheless, the performance of this deliberate music was admirably studied, displaying the trio’s vigour and unanimity, and however the instruments were assembled in performance, there was no doubt that it was a carefully studied, meaningful interpretation.

Deux Images by young Wellington saxophonist and composer, Peter Liley, created contrasting sound pictures with darting, tremulous motifs; first by the violin, then the saxophone. Its two movements seemed to vary mainly through the music’s general pitch; a hypnotic quality pervaded both movements, creating a distinctly enchanted feeling.

Albéniz 
It was good to hear Sarah Watkins in a solo piano piece such as one of Albéniz’s Ibéria: ‘Evocación’, the first of the twelve pieces. They are rarely played in New Zealand, as far as I can recall, and the likelihood of their being heard on Concert FM gets increasingly dim. Sarah Watkins’ playing was beautifully idiomatic, capturing both the essential Spanish spirit and her own obvious admiration for the composer’s music.

Next was a piece for solo tenor saxophone: Beat me, by Australian composer, Barry Cockroft. It was a display of the varied sounds available, including many that were unpitched, essentially non-musical; but it was driven by rhythmic, dancing or percussive sounds; a repeated bleat around bottom G or A flat offered a kind of stability. It was an intriguing experience, though I confess to being somewhat unclear about the purpose of and relationships between many of the sounds. I felt indeed that its formidable technical difficulties might take a very long time to master.

Debussy violin sonata
After the Interval, violin and piano played Debussy’s last piece, from 1917: the third of his planned six sonatas far various instruments: he died of cancer in 1918. This was an admirable performance of a piece that ends in a spirit of sheer delight; and it was an opportunity to hear both a pianist that Wellington rarely hears since she left the NZTrio, and a violinist who is conspicuous mainly at Associate concert master of the NZSO and leader of the Amici Ensemble (they give the last concert, in October, in this Wellington Chamber Music series). Their performance was multi-facetted and as near to flawless as you’d get.

Marc Eychenne is a French composer born in Algeria in 1933. In some ways, not merely because it called for the same instruments as the Peterson piece, the two seemed to have similar, or at least related characteristics, even though Eychenne’s piece was composed before Peterson was born. There was no sign of any attempt here to draw attention to the dissimilarity between violin and saxophone; in fact when the saxophone entered several bars after the violin had established itself, the two seemed to seek common elements, to find considerable homogeneity. The effect was certainly in contrast to that in the Peterson piece. The contrast between the ‘Cantilène’ and the ‘Danse’ in itself was engaging: once again, in the writing and the playing of the two movements there was a sense of unanimity as well as contrast.

It encouraged me later to look (through the inevitable YouTube) for other pieces by Eychenne; it proved a rewarding excursion. Both works were obviously composed in the post-Serialist, post extreme avant-garde era, neither seemed persuaded to employ such defeatist techniques in an attempt to emulate the influences that so alienated much music composed in the late 20th century.

Piazzolla and Farr
The same goes, of course for the last two pieces, by Piazzolla and Gareth Farr. The Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (‘Four Seasons of Buenos Aires’) by Piazzolla have become very familiar and the Otoño (Autumn) movement in its attractive arrangement including saxophone was charmingly idiomatic.

It was a nice idea to link Piazzolla’s piece with a piece that Farr wrote for a TV series, The Strip. In the words of the programme note, it was “incidental music for a smouldering scene between a stripper and choreographer”; as described, it proved dreamy and seductive. A nice way to bring the wholly attractive concert to a close.

The remaining six concerts in Wellington Chamber Music’s series look most interesting: chairman David Hutton mentioned special concessions available to those attending the concert to subscribe for the rest of the year.Don’t hestitate!

 

NZSO launches into 2021 determined, with a splendid, dynamic programme to evade Covid 19

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hamish McKeich with Stephen De Pledge – piano
First concert in ‘Podium’ Series: entitled Carnival

Ravel: La Valse and Piano Concerto in G
Anna Clyne: Masquerade
Stravinsky: Petrushka Ballet (1947 version)

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 26 March, 6:30 pm

The first of the NZSO’s main concert series, which is entitled the “Podium Series”, proved a conspicuous triumph. Though it might have seemed difficult to account for the name “Carnival” which was given to this particular concert, it was vividly illuminated in Feby Idrus’s colourful and well-informed programme notes, indirectly with La Valse, but quite specifically with Petrushka, where the word relates directly to Stravinsky’s setting of the first tableau of the ballet – Carnival or Shrovetide which precedes Lent.

However, it was a near full house, marking an encouraging change from audiences in the past year or so; it also marked the steadily rising reputation and popularity of the orchestra’s Principal Conductor in Residence, Hamish McKeich.

The programme booklet was free: an excellent move, considering the intelligence and illuminating character of Feby Idrus’s writing.

There were two distinctive aspects to the programme: two of Ravel’s most distinguished works and one of Stravinsky’s first ballet scores: Petrushka which retains its undiminished popularity as a vivid and colourful ballet as well as being a brilliant, luminous orchestral masterpiece.

La Valse
I must seek vindication for the pleasure I get from Ravel’s La valse, in live performance compared with a recording, since I’ve recently been enjoying a personal Ravel festival, recapturing CDs, recordings of Ravel from the SKY Arts channel, and on the ubiquitous You Tube on the Internet. This music reflects both Ravel’s and my love of the Viennese waltz, especially of the Strauss family, Waldteufel, Offenbach, Kalman, etc.

This performance illuminated the music’s dynamism and rhythmic energy through Ravel’s remarkably colourful scene of a Viennese dance-hall which, in her programme notes, Feby Idrus captured beautifully. She related not only the scornful reaction by ballet impresario Diaghilev to Ravel’s piano performance of the score, but an illuminating description of the evolution of the music and its ‘growing wildness’, depicting a ‘heartbeat fraught with panic’. They were words that vividly described this frenzied yet disciplined performance.

Ravel’s piano concerto (for both hands) is a profoundly different work, with the piano part in the hands of one of New Zealand’s leading pianists, Stephen De Pledge. It emerged with clarity and the careful application of rhythmic energy, even in the jazz coloured Adagio movement with its extended solo piano opening: idiomatic but essentially classical in character. To quote again from the programme notes, the concerto as a whole ‘remains aerated by jazz’s sweet perfume’. After several returns demanded by the audience, De Pledge played Couperin’s fairly familiar song La Basque with a lively spirit; though its translation from the clarity of the harpsichord to the modern piano is not quite the same.

Masquerade 
The second half began with what I assume was the first New Zealand performance of a rowdy piece written for the Last Night of the Proms in 2013 by 40-year-old English composer Anna Clyne: Masquerade; inspired by the kind of music played in London’s 18th century pleasure gardens, such as the famous Vauxhall Gardens; judging by its spirit and liveliness it would have been a hit there, as it probably was at the Proms. Boisterous and constantly varied as it was, it hardly matched Stravinsky’s melodically and rhythmically inspired ballet music that followed.

Petrushka 
Stravinsky revised the 1911 original version of Petrushka in 1946 (performed in 1947) for a slightly smaller orchestra, altering certain instrumental features, but partly because the original was not covered by copyright in all countries, and thus delivered the composer no royalties. The orchestra played that later version, probably detectable to no one but the relative instrumentalists and conductor.

Of course, the theme of the ballet doesn’t demand music of a profound character, but it is nevertheless a unique score, quite as remarkable as The Right of Spring which rather outshone Petrushka two years later with its violence, rhythmic and thematic complexity. The score derives its profundity by means of its unique, half-hour-long musical inspiration.  Yes there were moments of a certain ensemble smudginess in Petrushka, but the overwhelming energy and passion were dominant throughout the entire performance.

But if you’d like to see and hear a very remarkable, yet somehow genuine performance of the composer’s Three Movements for piano, look at Yuja Wang on YouTube.

What a splendidly successful way for the orchestra to open its year!

 

Sleep-walking as Rhona Fraser’s Days Bay Opera returns with a delightful Bellini masterpiece

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Opera in a Days Bay Garden

La Sonnambula (Bellini)

Conductor: Mark Carter; producer and director: Rhona Fraser

Cast: Natasha Wilson (Lisa), Morgan-Andrew King (Alessio), Rhona Fraser (Teresa), Elizabeth Mandeno (Amina), Lila Crichton (Notary), Andrew Grenon (Elvino), James Ioelu (Count Rodolfo).
Chorus: Jemma Chester, Emily Yeap, Sinéad Keane, Olivia Stewart, Simon Hernyak, Samuel McKeever, Patrick Shanahan, Alica Carter

Canna House, Days Bay, Wellington

Friday 12 February, 5:30 pm

In common with most of the world, Bellini is no longer a famous composer in New Zealand; his operas are now rarely performed. Of Bellini’s operas only Norma gets much attention. I’m only aware of Canterbury Opera’s production of it in 2002, since its last professional production by a touring company in 1928.

However, in 2016 Rhona Fraser’s Opera in a Days Bay Garden was responsible for a somewhat rarer Bellini opera – the story that Shakespeare had used in Romeo and Juliet –I Capuleti e i Montecchi; which was staged by Auckland Studio Opera in 2018.

After two productions in 2017 – Handel’s Theodora and Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin – Rhona and her husband have been away for two years, in Germany. They returned last year and Rhona seems determined to resume the professional production of interesting operas. Her enterprise has been very missed.

Hers is just one of the small opera groups around the country which, very unevenly, offer opportunities for the public to discover opera and for advanced, mainly young singers, to gain first-class experience. None of these small companies, some, like Days Bay, fully professional, has attracted financial or other significant help from central or local government and few have lasted more than a couple of years.

If anything, there is less amateur or small-scale professional opera in New Zealand than there was 20 years ago, when, for example, both the Victoria University School of Music and the then Wellington Polytechnic Conservatorium produced an opera every year; now Victoria alone produces an opera every other year.

La sonnambula’s history 
Now, Days Bay Opera has brought one of Bellini’s most popular operas, La sonnambula, back to life, though this time, Auckland Opera Studio has been first with it, in 2011, The last previous production was in 1881. More interesting still is the fact that Sonnambula was just the second opera, after Donizetti’s Daughter of the Regiment, to be performed in New Zealand: in 1862. Adrienne Simpson’s splendid history of opera in New Zealand (Opera’s farthest Frontier) records these and a couple of now forgotten English operas in the amateurish English Opera Troupe’s historic productions in the make-shift Royal Princess Theatre in Dunedin.

And the book records that in 1863 the company brought Sonnambula to Wellington: absolutely the first opera in Wellington.

Fine, warm weather offered a delightful environment for the first (and the other two) performances on the lawn below the house and narrow terraces on which the audience sat, The tree-filled garden surrounded by beech forest create what might be the most unique opera setting in the world.

The opera’s staging, created by Rhona Fraser, was contemporary, with a limited number of seats and other props, and with costumes that spoke more of the attitudes and situations of the characters than of their period. The orchestra comprised thirteen players, led by Anne Loeser and conducted by Mark Carter, was somewhat behind and to the left of the audienec; inevitably, it was  bit remote for some of the audience.

During the brief prelude an ill-tempered Lisa (Natasha Wilson) is tidying and cleaning impatiently, though her vivid singing and acting showed a more charming character. But that was not in relation to any member of the chorus; especially, she flaunted contempt for the heedless Alessio, rich-voiced baritone Morgan-Andrew King, who gained attention at the recent Whanganui Opera School. She rejects his love: any qualms about his beard or rude appearance must be set aside in our age of unorthodoxy.

The coming marriage between Amina and Elvino is heralded by the arrival of the Notary (the impressive Samoan bass Lila Crichton).

The opera really took off with the arrival of Amina (Elizabeth Mandeno), and her first big aria, “Come per me sereno” and the cabaletta “Sovra il sen la man” rejoicing in her expected marriage to Elvino. His voice, with his moving greeting “Perdona, o mia diletta”, picking up later with “Prendi: a’nel ti dono”, was agreeable though his demeanour might have fallen short of his propertied standing; however, he portrayed a credibly decent chap. Though one might wonder, as the story evolves, how someone so improbably sensitive could have gained his reputation in the village.

Rodolfo, the Count (James Ioelu), arrives, presenting an imposing demeanour and vocal confidence, all the signs of small-time nobility which he shows through fundamental decency.

The ensemble of villagers has its significant role throughout. In an interesting later episode the villagers in an effective evocation tell Rodolfo of the phantom that locals see at midnight, “Udite, a fosca cielo”,

Elvino and misplaced jealousy
Scene I of Act I ends with Elvino, prompted by the Count making flattering gestures to Amina, confessing to Amina his uncontrollable jealousy, his “Son geloso del zefiro errante” was a curious revelation.

Even though Amina convinces Elvino that his jealousy is misplaced and peace reigns, in scene ii she sleep-walks into Rodolfo’s room at Lisa’s inn (here an AirBNB), and there’s a tentative attraction between them. Amina’s entry, sleep-walking, changes everything; she sees Rodolfo as Elvino and throws herself at him but he gets out before Elvino and the villagers arrive. However, there is Amina, now in Rodolfo’s bed, and no sleep-walking excuse (they’ve never heard of somnambulism) persuades any of the villagers that things are different from what they seem.

It was a splendid scene. Even if suspended at a very high level of improbability and absurdity, it was both dramatic and funny. Throughout, Amina’s foster-mother Teresa (Rhona Fraser), exhibiting calm sanity and in excellent voice in all her several episodes, remains faithful to her, even, one supposes, if Amina were guilty.

At the beginning of the second scene of Act II, Natasha Wilson, as Lisa, plays a vividly stylish part, now seeing herself as the likely winner, able to capture Elvino for herself, and her short, tight white dress illuminated her expectations; she adorns it with a white veil.

The suspense, awaiting Rodolfo’s explanation to the villagers and specifically to Elvino about the nature of somnambulism is protracted. It’s clinched by Amina’s walking along a riskless board between rows of audience (instead of on a fragile plank above the mill-wheels on the river).   The last scene eventually brings an understanding of “sleep-walking” and Amina’s singing at the end is plaintive and moving.

Though sung in Italian, the notes in the programme were sufficient for those new to the work to understand – in any case, the Italian from all singers was admirably clear. Accepting the limitations fundamental to the out-doors setting and various sound and production constraints, the entire performance was admirable and completely enjoyable. Rhona Fraser is warmly welcome back in New Zealand.

If you missed this one, don’t hesitate to book early for the next.

For the record, these are the operas Days Bay has produced so far:

2010   The Marriage of Figaro
2010   The Journey to Rheims  (Rossini)
2012   Alcina (Handel)
2012   Maria Stuarda  (Donizetti)
2013   Cosi fan tutte
2013   L’oca del Cairo (Mozart)
2014   Der Rosenkavalier
2015   Calisto (Cavalli)
2016   Agrippina (Handel)
2016   I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Bellini)
2017   Theodora (Handel)
2017   Eugene Onegin
2021   La sonnambula