Category: Live performance

Adventurous, revelatory concert by Troubadour String Quartet in Lower Hutt

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Troubadour String Quartet (Arna Morton and Rebecca Wang – violins, Elyse Dalabakis – viola, Anna-Marie Alloway – cello)

Haydn: String Quartet in G, Op 77 No 1
Alfred Hill: String Quartet No 3 in A minor (The Carnival)
Britten: String Quartet No 2 in C, Op 36

Little Theatre, Lower Hutt

Monday 24 July, 7:30 pm

At the Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson this year, the Troubadour Quartet gave two free concerts, one giving the same Britten quartet that they played here, the second, Schubert’s A minor quartet (Rosamunde). I was there for a few days and really regret not hearing them.

Haydn
For it took only a few bars of the Haydn quartet (one of his very last) to show me that these were players of real talent and insight. Its first movement came as a revelation of care, sensitivity, delicately springing rhythms, subtle humour; an interesting range of instrumental colour, in part at least through the contrast between the bright first violin and the warmer, almost viola-like second. In particular, I delighted in the quartet’s agility, tossing the parts from one to another.

In the second movement, cellist Alloway had a few bars of prominence, enriching its meditative character, and she also supplied a throbbing undercurrent. After about three minutes all movement seems to cease and the players held us breathlessly awaiting the return of the main theme and its slow pulse.

There was a seriousness and emotional depth in the Adagio that reminded me that it was written, 1799, around the time of Haydn’s last, beautiful masses; no more symphonies, concertos, operas or piano trios. And after this came just two more string quartets, one unfinished.

The Menuetto took us back to the more familiar Haydn, energetic, overflowing melody and rhythm; and then the rather astonishing trio section, hard down-bowing, no longer any semblance of aristocratic minuet; as the programme remarks, it approaches the Beethovenish Scherzo which replaced the minuet and trio of the earlier, Classical period. Then in the last movement, Haydn reminds us that he was to become most famous for his 104 symphonies, as both in the denser scoring, playfulness and rhythmic energy; it sounds like a symphony trying to break out. It all emerged in a performance that was clearly thoroughly rehearsed and thought out. The applause rather suggested that the audience was pretty surprised at such an accomplished and committed performance.

Alfred Hill
The quartet by Alfred Hill probably aroused more uncertainty in many listeners, as till very recently, it has been fashionable to dismiss him as an inconsequential imitator who was unable to measure up to the great figures of his generation (born 1869, close to Sibelius, Reger, Busoni, Roussel, Vaughan Williams, Scriabin, Rachmaninov… and Schoenberg!).

The Wellington-based Dominion String Quartet has recorded all 17 of Hill’s quartets and have been sturdy advocates for his music; however, some of his 13 symphonies, mostly derived by Hill from his quartets, have been championed by Australia (recorded by the Melbourne and Queensland symphony orchestras). Australia likes to claim him as one of theirs as he was born in Melbourne, but his family came to New Zealand two years later and Hill spent most of his first 30 years in New Zealand, in Wellington, with a period at the Leipzig Conservatorium. He spent most of his latter 60 years in Australia because he was offered better opportunities, being co-founder of the NSW Conservatorium and was an important figure in Australian music. His 90th birthday was celebrated by a special concert of his music played by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by Henry Krips.

No comparable attention has been paid to him here, and as far as I know none of his symphonies have been played by a New Zealand orchestra.

Listening to this quartet is to feel its place in the Hill’s era, if in the company of the rather less famous and ground-breaking. The first movement intrigued me with a feeling of its rhythmic uncertainty, as if there were permitted alternative ways of handling the metre. Unadventurous perhaps, but not to be dismissed. The dreamy Andantino, second movement verged on the sentimental until a modulation made me pay attention, and indeed, it became more interesting, with a genuine emotional feeling. And Dalabakis’s viola became prominent in its last phase. The third movement was marked with a distinctive character, even if not radical or especially original; yet the players exploited its individuality with commitment.

The last movement was another matter: was there a certain Maori quality in its rhythm and melodic feel? Or was it more akin to Balkan, Gypsyish sounds; and still looking for resonances, there seemed melodic hints of Viennese operetta. There was even an episode in which stamping called up eastern European folk dance, even though the notes drew attention to the piece’s original title The Carnival or The Student in Italy. It was a very lively and committed performance of a piece that should encourage more exploration and performance of Hill’s music.

Benjamin Britten wrote three string quartets; this one was written to mark the 250th anniversary in 1945, of Purcell’s death. And it was the third movement, a chaconne, that offered references, though probably not especially conspicuous for most listeners, to the earlier composer.

The performance opened dramatically, not simply in the somewhat mysterious, even anguished, wide-spaced themes that introduce it, but with leader, Arna Morton, breaking a string. A repeat of the opening measures was rewarding, as it had been so immediately arresting, and the emotional impact was simply duplicated; and after a little while it gathers both speed and emotional force.

Even though written in a tonic vocabulary, it sounds of its time, the end of World War II, through its generally sombre feeling rather than any particular lamenting. As for its context, Morton, who has studied Britten for her PhD, drew attention to his feeling of isolation, as a homosexual, a pacifist, a committed left-winger (did she also say, his aversion to the prevailing ‘pastoral’ character of English music of the period?), all of which might account for the mood of the music.

Without a score it’s not easy to describe the structure of the first movement, and I’m limited to remarking the episodes (‘variations’ in essence) of markedly different speed, motifs that are chased, canon-like by each player in turn, the throbbing beat of four-note quavers, the biting commentary by the cello here and there. There are surprises such as the series of glissandi around the middle, and a meditative, viola-led diminuendo as the end approaches.

Nothing was more striking, perhaps chilling, than the slow subsidence to a high, lonely, ppp note from Morton’s violin, followed by a motivic scrap from the central section, on the cello. One anonymous remark from the Internet: “Britten’s number 2 is an isolated masterpiece of a genius. This is as powerful, astonishing and emotionally draining as any work for the genre ever written.” I admire such definitive, risky assertions like this, instead of the more usual cautious, ambivalent judgements that most of us shelter behind.

The second movement, Scherzo, seems to be a reworking of the more spirited parts of the first – on the cello, much more agitated, with ferocious down-bowings, driven by fast triplet quavers, referred to in the programme note as a ‘Danse macabre’: to me, not really….

The third movement, Chacony: Sostenuto, honouring Purcell, quarter-hour long, seems an extraordinary creation by a youngster of 32. The first section is a chorale-like lament with almost incessant dotted semi-quavers: calm, edgy, verging dissonance, in which all contribute till Alloway’s cello plays a long, plaintive meditation leading to an agitated section that becomes increasingly impatient.  If a set of variations in the slow triple time that’s characteristic of the chaconne is what you expect, it wasn’t the main focus for this listener, even after the pulse rate drops in the meandering, polyphonic writing around the middle of the movement.

Rebecca Wang’s second violin had a long, grieving solo passage, soon passed to others, importantly the cello again, then viola. Some parts – variations, though the individual sections are profoundly evocative, yet elusive – might seem rhapsodic, though the sense of its imposing structure was always clearly felt, and impressively so in this performance that seemed so thoroughly studied, ingested and technically mastered.

In spite of hints of a wide range of musical eras and genres, try as I might to spot influences, I couldn’t mistake such prevailing unity of mood and sense that left no one but Britten as a candidate composer. In all, it was a concert that emerged with far greater variety and richness than I’d expected: revelatory, fascinating and compelling.

 

Refined, period sensibilities from Kuijken Quartet in Haydn and Mozart

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Kuijken Quartet with members of La petite bande (Sigiswald Kuijken and Sara Kuijken – violins, Marleen Thiers – viola, Michel Boulanger – cello)
(Chamber Music New Zealand)

Mozart: String Quartet No 18 in A, K 464 and String Quartet No 21 in D, K 575
Haydn: String Quartet No 30 in E flat, Op 33 No 2, Hob III 38

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 15 July, 7:30 pm

The Kuijken Quartet is very much a family affair: second violin Sara is Sigiswald’s daughter and violist Marleen Thiers, his wife. They have devoted themselves to playing music in the ‘historically informed’ manner. While that has tended to refer mainly to music of the earlier, Baroque era, it applies also to the Galant and Classical periods, and in theory to all later periods, up to yesterday, if you insist.

It applies to two aspects of performance – the physical characteristics of the instruments, and the way they are believed to have been played in the relevant period. There is also a third aspect however, and that is the character of the performance space. Instruments using gut strings, pianos with shorter keyboards and wooden frames with less tension on the strings, were fine for more intimate venues, but larger concert halls were built as instruments were developed with bigger sounds (or perhaps it was the other way round), and the new environment encouraged composers to write larger-scale, more dramatic, louder music.

Baroque and Classical music, written mainly for small forces in small venues, was generally adapted successfully (in the ears of that audience) for the changed environment; and for more than a century, as ‘early music’ was steadily unearthed and played, sometimes in arrangements, everyone was happy. Until music historians started to adopt relativist attitudes, according virtue, even compulsion, to performance that was strictly in keeping with the playing conditions and customs, and listener expectations of the age in which music was written.

The major problem is that you can’t put the genie back in the bottle, and our acceptance and expectations are deeply affected by what we’ve heard, especially in our early years when the mind is so absorbent and open to everything. We are all aware of the profound impact that certain childhood performance experiences had on our response to later, different performances.

To the point.
The opening phrases of Mozart’s K 464 were extremely quiet and refined, small enough not to be able to fill the large MFC space and so was not at all the sound that an audience in the 1780s would have heard. Thus bows moved very lightly on the strings as they created a range of quiet, subtly varied dynamics rather than the very marked contrast, pp and ff, between phrases that is usual; nothing rich or opulent and suggested, in the language of piano playing perhaps, playing with no pedaling.

The Menuetto and Trio was treated in the same genteel way, though in the Trio section, there was some emphasis on the first note in the bar, and I noticed a limited amount of vibrato, mainly from the cello. The Andante crept into one’s awareness almost secretively, though in my head I could hear, memory-driven, the rather more bold performances that most of us might have been used to. But it was good to have the false feeling that I hadn’t ever heard it before, as it is a great and marvellously sophisticated variations movement which was still evident in this restrained performance, though the cello’s dancing, spiccato offering couldn’t help breaking out of the mould.

The last movement is also formidable and the players did allow themselves to become involved with the sliding, descending chromatic sequences, and as with the whole six ‘Haydn’ quartets, one was spellbound by Mozart’s mastery and the seeming endless variety that was played out and I eventually became reconciled to the hypnotic quietude that nevertheless created a spell-binding impression. Haydn’s famous remark to Mozart’s father was certainly an unavoidable response from a comparably gifted composer.

So it was wonderful to hear one of Haydn’s more quirky and entertaining quartets from his 1781 set that had inspired Mozart to write his great set of six.

It began with more of a feel of full-blooded music than the Mozart, though it’s light in spirit, often fragile and delicate. As I think was the case with the Mozart, the players took no repeats. As with Mozart’s K 464, the Scherzo movement was second, happy, indulging in subtle glissandi (more subtle than some), and every-so-slight emphases on the first-notes-in-the-bar of the first theme.

The viola and cello start the Largo movement very slowly, and the violins waited for the phrase end before joining. It’s a movement that signals Haydn’s awareness of his own genius, though there’s nothing in the other more jocular movements to suggest that he’s offering anything less than truly inspired music. And they chose that Largo to repeat as an encore at the end of the concert.

The last movement builds to the famous ‘Joke’ right from the start – you only need to have heard the piece once before for the singular little theme to take root and the subsequent games are laid out before you. They played in a sprightly manner, fast 3/8 time, and then came the several blind gags, none of which fooled this sophisticated audience into premature clapping.

For Mozart, we had the weightier quartet at the beginning, for he was writing for the Viennese sophisticates, where in the three Prussian quartets he was writing, as Bach had done forty years before as a sort of job application, and providing a cello part suitable for King Friedrich Wilhelm II himself to play. Here, I have to confess that for all my self-persuasion, I just wanted a bit more warmth and energy, more oxygen, than the Kuijkens allowed themselves. In the Andante, the cello is allowed a couple of near-solo episodes, for the king, but Menuetto and Trio offers the royal cellist more. The Andante was a movement that felt sympathetically handled by these players, as it’s intrinsically subdued, its beauties of an exquisite kind.

The Menuetto is a thoughtful piece, not lending itself to dancing, but in their handling, rather subtle and restrained which felt perfectly appropriate. It was the Trio where the king would have enjoyed a moment of melodic charm, until violin and viola take over. The cello actually leads the way in the last movement, and there’s much else that would have allowed the gathered eminences to make admiring remarks. But compared with the complex fabric of K 464, this is a more conventional piece, no less charming; but Sigiswald never allowed himself to become too animated, leading with such a small, almost hesitant tone and limiting the weight of his bow almost to the point of inaudibility. The artistry and refined musicality of these players was a constant revelation.

Lively and colourful Iolanthe from Wellington G&S Light Opera

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Iolanthe by Arthur Sullivan, libretto by W S Gilbert
(Wellington G&S Light Opera Company)

Wellington Opera House

Friday 14 July 7:30 pm

Iolanthe is one of the operettas admired by many who take it upon themselves to judge musical worth, and it doesn’t rank among the most popular, with Pirates, Mikado, Gondoliers and Pinafore. The company last staged Iolanthe in 2008.

Here was a chance to see how those opinions stack up with someone who was not seeing it for the first time (I saw the 2008 production and reviewed it in The Dominion Post), but whose memory needed to be prompted a bit. Over the years I have come to enjoy Offenbach and certain of the Viennese school, most conspicuously, Die Fledermaus, and their close comic relatives by Rossini and Donizetti, rather more than G&S.

G&S has carved a niche in the English-speaking consciousness so that it is not really compared with the equivalent operetta or comic opera genres across the Channel. The Wellington company however attempted to broaden its appeal by adding the words ‘light opera’ to its title a decade or more ago, to accord with staging The Tales of Hoffmann, Die Fledermaus, The Merry Widow, The Gypsy Baron; there’s a great deal more to explore, particularly Offenbach.

The music may not be quite as strong and memorable as in the four most popular works, but there are three or four other G&S pieces, including Iolanthe, that do belong up there with the best.

The curtain remained down during the short colourful overture and rose on a possibly somewhat irrelevant but delightful pastoral scene that could as well have been around the Waikato or Rangitikei as in the Home counties. Presumably, John Goddard, listed as Director, was responsible for the stage design, as no specific stage designer was named.

[Monday 17 July, John Goddard commented on my reference to the stage design.  Oddly, he seems to have read the sentence above as suggesting that he was not the director, because I speculated that because no stage designer was named at all, perhaps Goddard was also responsible for stage design, which is not unknown in small – even large – companies. He explains that the set which ‘has been around for generations’, was designed and built by Wilf Conroy; but his name and that information did not appear in the programme. L.T.]

The fairies presented a lovely multi-coloured scene and the chorus singing just what the situation calls for, neither too polished nor too uniform in ensemble: simply bright and delightful. Soloists appear one by one – Stephanie Gartrell as the Fairy Queen, then Iolanthe herself (Alys Pullein), the title role that’s probably famous for having the least to do in all opera. She had been banished from the fairy court for marrying a mortal (shades of Dvorák’s Rusalka), and after being restored, has her brief moments, introducing her son, Strephon (Andrew Mankowski). He reveals that he’s fairy to the waist and human below that. This was a major part, and Mankowski both looked and acted the part in a sort-of fey manner, as well as revealing an engaging baritone voice.

Strephon is in love with Phyllis, the ward of Chancery, and she is, of course, loved not only by the Lord Chancellor himself but by the entire House of Lords, which is the crucial dilemma that is the pivot of the drama. Phyllis was sung by Karishma Thanawala, whose appearance, acting charm and voice combined to created a perfectly delightful character.

The crux of the story, apart from the constitutional complexities that arose through the admission of fairies to the House of Lords, is the Lord Chancellor’s debate with himself over the conflict of interest in his seeking to marry Phyllis, a ward of Chancery.

Chris Whelan has long been a major strength in the company; here as the self-serving (if he can get away with it) Lord Chancellor, he displays both foppishness and ineffectual self-interest, but he commands the stage. His splendid number, ‘When I went to the bar’, was the typical patter song in anapaests (triplets, stress on last syllable), satirising the way the stupid can yet succeed. And I asked Chris Whelan to allow me to print his brilliant little, very topical reworking in the same metre of ‘When you’re lying awake’:

For you dream you are walking in Wellington talking to strangers about hair-net shopping,
Which is odd, you admit, given hair loss has hit, rather harder on your thinning topping.
When you see walk along, in a jostling throng, a crowd of underemployed politicians.
They are arguing loudly and forming up proudly – aligning in strange new positions.
There’s the chap from the left, firmly claiming he’s best as a partner for unaligned greenies,
While the man from the right declares with some spite – their chances are tiny to teeny.
There’s the folks checking polls before choosing their goals and declaring it best for the people.
And the strange little man with the bow tie and tan claiming centrism makes us all equal.
First the left and lefter claim their way is bester and hope no one checks out their numbers
Then the right and the righter do gather in tighter declaring the left as shrill bumblers.
But in moments the troop quickly leap to regroup as the polling shows new ways for reigning,
While the voters stand round with a dumbfounded frown suspecting they’re in for a caning.
Then a figure appears flashing grins and dark sneers – it is Winston the ever outrageous,
Double-breasted his suit and with gaze resolute, claiming he alone “can bring back greatness”.
He compares naive greens to hysterical teens and dismisses the Nats bland abjectness.
“As for Labour”, he cries, “their policy dies on the altar of abject correctness”.
All the parties look glum as their voters succumb to this populist damned agitator,
But he rounds with a grin and a small violin claiming “surely I’ll play nicely later.”
So the parties all split and reform in a bit saying “they don’t heed populist stances”,
And yet none of them dawdles in off’ring him baubles to join them to prop up their chances.

Two lesser members of the Lords, Mountararat and Tolloller (David McKenzie and Kevin O’Kane), have significant parts to play, and they emerge with increasing clarity and conviction. David McKenzie, as Lord Mountararat, made a great job of his jingoistic ‘When Britain really ruled the waves’, as he insists on the dangers of the House of Lords being ruled by intellectuals.

As Private Willis (now the ‘Usher of the Black Rod’), Lindsay Groves opens act 2 with the famous ‘When all night long…’ reflecting on the qualifications demanded for the House of Lords, that brains be left outside, and concludes by recognising the inevitable: that ‘every boy and every girl’ …becomes… ‘a little Liberal or else a little Conservative’.

A comment on the excellent chorus is perhaps the place to mention the extent of the cast’s involvement in many areas of Wellington choral music, as revealed in the biographies in the printed programme. It’s almost a complete inventory of the best Wellington choirs: the chorus of New Zealand Opera, the Orpheus Choir, The Tudor Consort, Nota Bene, Cantoris, the New Zealand Youth Choir, Supertonic Choir, Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir, Inspirare. And I’m sure that a list detailing the activities of individual chorus members would reinforce that.

A proper orchestra is as essential to G&S as to any opera production and it lent a real professional touch that there was a good body of players in the pit, mainly from Orchestra Wellington, under music director Hugh McMillan. Ensemble between pit and stage was occasionally out of focus – the singing a little over-enthusiasic, but an overall spirit of enjoyment and orchestral professionalism supported the whole performance, lending it lively rhythm and momentum, yet never getting in the way of the singers. Microphones were used around the stage and while they can sometimes be useful, allowing words to be heard more distinctly, the sound tended to vary according to the singer’s position on the stage.

The company now takes the production to Palmerston North (Regent, 22 July) and Napier (Municipal Theatre, 29 July). If you’ve missed it in on the Kapiti Coast or Wellington, I’d recommend finding a pretext to take a trip to the Manawatu or Hawke’s Bay to catch this very well presented and sung operetta that’s lively and funny in the inimitable style of one of the most famous composer/librettist partnerships in the history of lyric theatre.

Brahms for lunch at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BRAHMS – Sonata for Viola and Piano in F Minor Op.120 No.1
(transcription by the composer of the Sonata for Clarinet Op.120 No.1)
Zwei Gesänge Op.91 (Two Songs for Voice, Viola and Piano)

Peter Barber (viola)
Linden Loader (mezzo-soprano)
Catherine McKay (piano)

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

Wednesday 12th July, 2017

 

As a counter to the day’s wintry woes, the music of Johannes Brahms provided an interlude of gentle autumnal rest and refreshment, with the first of the two late clarinet sonatas (here performed in the version for viola made by the composer), and the two songs which make up Op.91, Zwei Gesänge for voice, viola and piano. Both compositions occasioned interestingly flavoured associations, if of a diametrically opposed nature. One of the Zwei Gesänge in particular became intertwined with goings-on involving accusations of illicit amatory activities and a threatened marriage breakup on the part of friends of the composer.

Brahms had formed a student relationship with the brilliant young violinist Joseph Joachim, through him meeting the Schumanns, Robert and Clara, an association well-known to music history. In 1863 Joachim married Amalie Schneeweiss, a well-known mezzo-soprano, a marriage which produced six children, among them a son named Johannes, for whom Brahms wrote a cradle song Geistliches Wiegenlied (Spirits’ Lullaby). Things continued in this vein, with Joachim’s continued support for Brahms reflected in the dedication by Brahms of his 1878 Violin Concerto to Joachim, until the early 1880s, when Joachim accused his wife of having an affair with Fritz Simrock, a well-known music publisher. Alarmed by his friend Joachim’s paranoia and believing Amalie to be innocent, Brahms rewrote the lullaby as a new song Gestille Sehnsucht (Stilled longing), presenting it to the couple in the hope that it would help repair the rift.

Joachim persisted, however, and filed divorce proceedings against his wife, forcing the composer to write a letter testify on Amalie’s side, one which she used in court as evidence of her innocence. The incident cause a rift between Brahms and Joachim, one that was healed only when the composer wrote his Double Concerto for Violin and ‘Cello, in 1887. Undaunted, Brahms published the two songs as Zwei Gesänge Op.91 in 1884.

The other work we heard today came of a later, somewhat happier series of encounters Brahms had with the most remarkable clarinettist of his day, Richard Mühlfeld. Brahms had, by this stage, declared he would compose no more, but Mühlfeld’s playing awoke within the composer such ecstasies, that no less than four works involving the clarinet flowed from his pen. Brahms thought Mühlfeld the finest wind player he had ever heard, describing him to Clara Schumann as the “Nightingale of the orchestra”.

These works included the two Op.120 Sonatas for Clarinet and Piano, composed in 1894, of which we heard the first here, but played by the viola! Just why Brahms chose to transcribe both sonatas for viola after waxing so enthusiastically about Richard Mühlfeld’s playing is a subject open to conjecture – possibly, he felt no other player could do the works the same justice on the instrument, and therefore sought an alternative. The transcriptions are done with such skill that no-one need feel short-changed by the experience of having the clarinet replaced – except, perhaps for clarinettists!

Violist Peter Barber and pianist Catherine McKay, who took part in both of the concert’s offerings, began proceedings with the F Minor Viola Sonata Op.120 No.1, the piano beautifully preparing the way for the stringed instrument’s wide-ranging lines, both instruments then settling into the warmth and reassurance of each other’s company before girding their loins and attacking the terse dotted-rhythm counter theme with plenty of dynamism and risk-taking, the violist preferring to strive for the notes with a flourish at phrase-ends rather than take a safer, somewhat meeker course. After these agitations, the epilogue-like return of the viola’s opening theme, modulating briefly into F major before reasserting the more sombre ambience, was treated with wonderful inwardness by both musicians, making the most of the music’s dying fall.

Such lovely, long-breathed lines flowed from both instruments at the slow movement’s beginning, the viola not entirely comfortable with one of the upwardly reaching gestures, but making amends a second time round. How beautifully the piano led the way further INTO the music’s tremulous world and then through the exploratory modulations that led to the opening’s reprise, both players dovetailing their phrases beautifully, allowing the composer’s lyrical vein full expression before softly whispering the music’s end. Out of the silence the following movement’s dance-like exchanges seemed at first to slowly waken from a dream-like state before kicking in with trenchant tones and plenty of girth, making a fine contrast with the Trio, the piano delicate and watery, the viola nicely withdrawn and circumspect until the reprise of the dance.

An excited piano flourish and a shout of viola exuberance launched the finale – the playing was at times orchestral in energy, at other times questioning and circumspect, with a gorgeously Haydnesque “dead-end” passage at the halfway point that hung its head in embarrassment before a return of the opening sounded a regrouping, this time a light-footed skipping through textures with autumn leaves flying and fields and forests echoing with glad cries and excitable whoops of joy – surely one of Brahms’ happiest creations!

Rather less familiar to me were the two Op 91 songs, which proved as amenable lunchtime companions as did the Sonata. Mezzo-soprano Linden Loader joined Peter Barber and Catherine McKay in richly ambient performances, the singing and playing giving the first part of the opening Gestillte Sehnsucht plenty of space and stillness in which to whisper the world’s slumberings, before expressing the singer’s ceaseless longings with animated voice-and-instrument interplay, sentiments to which the players give plenty of life before allowing thoughts and words to rest.

The second song Geistliches Wiegenlied seemed less lullaby and more admonition of the elements, including a plea to the holy angels, the “winged ones” (Die ihr geflugelt) to “silence the treetops” and counter the “fierce cold” so that the sleeping child might not be disturbed. A parent’s angst was refected in the agitations, though the singer took comfort and strength in the child’s sleep – here, piano and viola most beautifully augmented the singer’s tones, which were fraught once again at “Fierce cold”, but again appeased by the instruments’ gradual “rolling away” in great roulades of tone and generous phrasing all the parent’s anxieties, the players giving us at the end a gently-wrought postlude of gentle peace.

Very great appreciation of all this was shown by a smallish but attentive and grateful audience.

Excellent Kiwa String Quartet (NZSO players) in programme of quartet masterpieces and a couple of fun pieces

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Kiwa Quartet: Malavika Gopal and Alan Molina (violins), Sophia Acheson (viola) and Ken Ichinose (cello)
(Wellington Chamber Music)

Beethoven: String Quartet in B flat, Op 18/6
John Adams: ‘John’s Book of Alleged Dances’
Gareth Farr: Mondo Rondo
Tchaikovsky: String Quartet No 1 in D, Op 11

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 9 July, 3 pm

We have reached the mid-point in Wellington Chamber Music’s seven-concert 2017 series of Sunday afternoon concerts. A string quartet of players from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, with an intelligently balanced programme that might well have attracted a much bigger audience.

It opened with the last of the set of six quartets, Beethoven’s Opus 18 No 6.
It begins with a movement marked Allegro con brio, and so the players approached it, energetically, even brusquely, taking pains with the distinct contrasts between the violins and the viola/cello, and to give emphasis to particular beats, and moving between certain notes with a distinct ‘scoop’ or glissando, which till recently has been frowned upon, but such rigidity is declining. In the second movement, the second violin’s subdued handling of the second theme, was interesting, sounding muted though it wasn’t; it was later taken up by the cello and passed around, but violin 2 struck me as having a special voice here. It’s a movement with a curious hushed, secretive quality that they captured very nicely.

The entire set contains music that no one other than Beethoven could have written and the Scherzo is no exception, with a strongly contrasting Trio that doesn’t lead to a repeat of the Scherzo itself. The most original part of the work is the Finale with its Malinconia opening that continues for nearly four minutes, with abrupt, strong interjections, before the conventional spirit of a Finale breaks through, with the leader’s violin dominating for a long time before others pick up elements of the themes. The Malinconia returns briefly and it was handled again with a fine sense of its strangeness.

John Adams’s sense of humour – of the droll perhaps – is marked, and the quartet handled four of the pieces from John’s Book of Alleged Dances, playing out his penchant for the unorthodox, in the right spirit. I was not certain about the order of the pieces played as the notes had them in a different order from the way they were listed in the heading. They were intended, one assumes, as pieces that a string quartet could use to punctuate a programme, and the players had no difficulty in capturing the wit in its many aspects, especially in the task of keeping in step with the sounds from the pre-recorded tape accompanying each, making a curious, surprising commentary on what the live players were doing.

A step back to the serious business in hand came after the interval with Gareth Farr’s Mondo Rondo which gets played fairly often. Three parts, or movements, if that’s not technical a term; the first with tumbling passages indulging in a range of playful violin techniques. The second part, Mumbo Jumbo, alternates soft pizzicato, hard bowing, and then prickly pizzicato and a long-breathed melody from the second violin; while Mambo Rambo goes fast, offering a mock melody of rich emotional substance. The quartet again displayed a lively versatility in which elegant, polished playing wasn’t relevant, but which revealed many other qualities.

Tchaikovsky’s first string quartet was an excellent way to end the recital, handling the hesitations of the first theme with rather moving simplicity; though it’s symphonic in tone, individual instruments have turns in the spotlight, particularly the cello which, somewhat to my surprise, seemed to occupy the emotional centre at times.

Such a hugely popular movement as the Andante cantabile might invite knowing reactions from audiences intent on finding blemishes; every performance is slightly different and here it was low key, modest, not given to excessive sobbing or tragic colouring, even with in the viola’s particularly moving episode later. It was a beautiful performance.

There is something very symphonic, again, about the scoring of the Scherzo which really responds to energetic playing with rich ensemble, ending so enigmatically. The last movement has a dense contrapuntal character that rewards attention, and I loved the way the cello led the way toward the rallentando, near stopping, before the brilliant little Coda.

I’m not sure that I’ve heard this quartet before, though the note said they formed in 2015. Middle C’s first (and only) review of them was in November last year when they played the same Beethoven quartet and a couple of the John Adams’s pieces.

We should be delighted at the chance to hear four gifted professional musicians from the best orchestra in the country, playing programmes that combine entertaining curiosities with truly great masterpieces of the string quartet repertoire. They deserved a full house.

 

 

Kapiti Chamber Choir with the Romantic Triangle: Brahms, Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Brahms: Motet – Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Mühseligen
Hungarian Dance WoO1/1
Liebeslieder Walzer, Op.52
Clara Schumann: Drei Gemischte Chöre
Robert Schumann: Requiem, Op.148

Kapiti Chamber Choir conducted by Eric Sidoti, with Jennifer Scarlet and Kay Cox (piano), Heather Easting (organ), Karyn Andreassend (soprano), Elisabeth Harris (mezzo), Jamie Young (tenor), Simon Christie (bass)

St. Paul’s Church, Paraparaumu

Sunday, 9 July 2017, 2.30pm

As I observed of the last Kapiti Chamber choir concert I reviewed  (three years ago), none of the choral items in the first half was an easy sing, and most  were unaccompanied.  Good observation of dynamics was a significant feature throughout the concert.  The items were sung in the original German language except the Requiem, which was in Latin.  English translations were printed in the programme.

Before the concert began, the  choir’s chairman paid tribute, this being its 25th jubilee year, to Paddy Nash, who, Lyall Perris said, had persuaded Professor Peter Godfrey to form the choir and conduct it.  Paddy had been an almost one-person administrator for a considerable period of the 25 years.

The first item was the first part only of Brahms’s motet.  Sung unaccompanied, it began with a good attack and spot-on intonation.  However, this happy situation did not last.  The motets of Brahms are difficult, with shifting tonalities and unexpected intervals. It was rather a lacrymose opener, talking about misery and those who ‘…are glad when they find the grave’.

Clara Schumann’s Three Mixed Voice Choruses (Abendfeier in Venedig; Vorwärts; Gondoliera) were composed as a surprise gift for her husband Robert on his 38th birthday. They were being sung for the first time in New Zealand, according to conductor Eric Sidoti’s introductory remarks.  Though they were written in 1848, they were unpublished until 1989.  They too were unaccompanied.  The words of the first two, and translation of the third (from the English of Thomas Moore) were by Emanuel von Geibel.  It is less than two weeks since I reviewed a concert in which the poet’s songs translated from the Spanish set by Robert Schumann were performed.

The first was ‘Abendfeir in Venedig’ (Evening in Venice). The singing revealed lovely tone at the opening, especially from the sopranos and the male voice parts, in piano and pianissimo singing.  However, the blend among the altos was not so good, with one strident voice obvious at times.  Descending phrases sometimes fell too far.

The second song, ‘Vorwärts’ (Forward) was more jolly and faster than the first, and demonstrated the fine choral writing of the composer.  Here, attention to the words needed to be more precise than with the slower music; it was not always.

The tuning became more problematic in the third song, ‘Gondoliera’, which was a pity, for this lovely love song.

Brahms’s Hungarian Dances are well-known, and usually heard in their orchestral versions.  However, they were originally written as piano duets, and that is how we heard the first one today.  (I played another of the set in this form in my teenage years.)  The duettists performed it very competently, and in perfect accord with each other.  The character of the gypsy dance was well conveyed.

The same composer’s Liebeslieder Walzer are a collection of love songs in folk-song style.  I have never heard the whole set of 18 Op. 52 songs performed together before.  Here again, the piano duettists were absolutely splendid.

I believe that programme notes taken straight from Google should be acknowledged.  Yes, if they are from Wikipedia copyright is not a problem, though some online sources are copyright.  But they should have been acknowledged especially when the printed piece is word-for word from the original source.

The first of the 18 songs of the Liebeslieder Walzer was ‘Abendfeir in Venedig’ (Evening in Venice). The men needed a little more clarity, and accuracy in singing intervals.  The third song was about women ‘…how they melt one with bliss!’.  It was a fine duet from Jamie Young and Simon Christie, although it lacked some of the lightness implied by the words “I would have become a monk long ago if it were not for women!’

The women soloists followed; their voices were well matched; dynamics were excellent, and the men’s tone was good when they joined in.

One of the songs with which I was familiar, was about a small, pretty bird.  Tenors opened each verse, a little weakly, then the excellent basses joined in.

After a delightful solo from Karyn Andreassend, the choir returned with a lovely song in a swinging folk-song rhythm, ‘When your eyes look at me’.

The song to the locksmith was a great exclamation, about locking up evil mouths.  Men had their turn (with Simon Christie helping out in the choir here, and in some other songs), in a brief song about the waves and the moon.  It was admirable that the choir endeavoured to express a different character for each song.

Perhaps singing the entire set was a strain on the concentration – not all the songs command attention.  Nevertheless, it was a splendid effort.

Schumann’s Requiem is problematical.  Why is it almost never performed?  The answer is apparent in the music.  It has not the variety of musical expression or invention of those great Requiems that are performed regularly: those by Mozart, Brahms, Fauré, Dvořák, Verdi, Bruckner, or more recently, John Rutter.  Its dreary ambience is little relieved, in the way that those of the other composers is.  Although written in 1852, towards the end of the composer’s fore-shortened life, it was not published for some years, edited by his widow, Clara.

It is scored for orchestra, but some recordings exist with piano accompaniment; here we had a digital organ; it was a pity not to have a pipe organ available to give fuller tones and more nearly approximate orchestral sound.  Nevertheless, Heather Easting did a superb job, and it was notable how much more accurately the choir sang with a strong accompaniment.

A slow, subdued entry introduced the hymn-like ‘Requiem Aeternam’.  It was effective, despite its rather restricted harmonic language.  By contrast, ‘Te Decet Hymnus’ was declamatory, and utilised both the splendid soloists and the choir.  This was strong singing.  The ‘Dies Irae’ was solemn and grand, and featured much chromatic writing, and similar chords on the organ.

‘Liber Scriptus’ began with the choir, then the soloists entered one by one. Here, their voices really shone; a very fine performance from all four.  ‘Qui Mariam’ Featured excellent singing from the choir, and particularly from soloist Elisabeth Harris.  The movement ended with gorgeous quiet singing from the choir ‘…dona eis requiem’.

Declamation returned with ‘Domine Jesu Christe’, then Karyn Andreassend and Elisabeth Harris plus choir sang ‘Hostias’.  I couldn’t help but think of the wonderful ‘Hostias’ in Mozart’s work: so full of exaltation, positivity and musical invention.  Here again the choir showed admirable variation of dynamics, giving the music interest.

The final movement, ‘Benedictus and Agnus Dei’ started interestingly with the quartet of soloists unaccompanied, and organ chords in between their phrases; the final lines were grand and portentous.

Summing up: the work was tedious in places and lacking in musical invention.  However, soloists and choir made the best of it, and mostly succeeded in providing a good performance.

 

Magnificent NZSO concert, with percussionist Colin Currie, under James MacMillan

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by James MacMillan with Colin Currie (percussion)

Thomas Adès: Polaris
James MacMillan: Percussion Concerto No 2
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No 4

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 8 July, 7:30 pm

I had rather expected that, even if the pieces by Adès and MacMillan had not exactly created a stampede for tickets, that the remarkable, let’s even say ‘great’ symphony by Vaughan Williams would have done the trick.

But no, it didn’t. However, if it was something of a statement about the timidity of Wellington audiences, it was not a disgrace.

Thomas Adès
For another thing, I’d have thought the name Adès might have chimed with a few hundred on account of the operatic notoriety Adès achieved in the 1990s. For some time after the 1995 premiere of his Powder Her Face, it looked as if a new era of box-office success might result from opening the stage to rather explicit sexual flagrancy, in our new age of public pornography.

But opera news, even highly spiced, doesn’t penetrate much into mainstream media.

Based on the flamboyant life and eventual humiliation of the Duchess of Argyll, Powder Her Face was commissioned from the Almeida Theatre for the Cheltenham Festival in 1995, made headlines at once and over the following decade was produced widely across Europe and North America.

Polaris (formerly known as the Polar Star, till it was renamed after a submarine) clearly, is not in quite the same class as Powder Her Face. It’s an astronomical tone poem based formally on rather arcane musico/mathematical, acoustic, even metaphysical notions (and Adès writes of magnetic relationships between notes), none of which is probably of help to the uninitiated; and is a rather more apparent and visually affective evocation of the Arctic (I suppose) sky, with aurora borealis thrown in.

It was a quarter-hour long, fairly spectacular, orchestral extravaganza, employing six percussionists plus timpanist, as well as piano, two harps, glockenspiel and celeste. If first impression was of a show-piece demonstrating Adès’s command of musical erudition and extreme orchestrational skill, a combination of close attention plus a suspension of intellectual effort, revealed an evocation of infinite space, that might have been beyond rational comprehension and any easy definition but created an undeniable impact.

A kind of rotating, machine-inspired theme underlay the music, which rose to a climaxes followed by tonality changes, perhaps three times. The range of sounds and their effect was kaleidoscopic (did someone say ‘prismatic’?); sometimes, faced with the employment of very large and disparate orchestral forces with a seeming lack of much basic musical inspiration, one is sometimes tempted to hear it all as no more than composer exhibitionism. This music was emphatically not of that sort, and its eventual impact made such scepticism hard to sustain. Yet: is it music that warms the heart and compels rehearing?

MacMillan’s 2nd percussion concerto
One suspected that Polaris was chosen in part to support the stage-full of percussion instruments that had been prepared for McMillan’s second percussion concerto (the first, named Veni, veni, Emmanuel was played by the NZSO under Alexander Shelley in 2010, a fact that I’d have expected the programme to have mentioned).

MacMillan had spoken a little about the percussion, particularly the aluphone, a long row of small, tuned, bell-shaped aluminium gongs across the right side of the stage. The other soloist’s percussion at the front of the stage, not individually listed in the programme, but to be found in Wikipedia, included: crotales, cencerros, vibraphone, marimba, steel drum, four wood blocks, two gliss gongs, eight “assorted pieces of metal”, floor tom-toms, high tom-toms, and a pedal bass drum.

In addition, there was a fairly formidable range of percussion behind the orchestra: glockenspiel, two marimbas, tuned gong, siren, bass drum, suspended sizzle cymbal, tam-tams, tubular bells, tomtom drums, snare drums, two suspended cymbals, two triangles, thunder sheet; plus harp, and piano.

The ability of the normal audience member, including the non-specialist critic, to distinguish all these individual sounds, and to accord them some kind of purpose, is probably extremely limited and one really has to accept it in a spirit of quite profound bemusement. Generally, because of course there was only one player of all the front-of-stage hardware, only one implement (instrument?) played at a time which ensured a degree of sonic clarity. However the complementary array of machinery behind the orchestra often compensated for much prolonged quietness.

Currie is among the most versatile and virtuosic percussion practitioners in the business, multi-tasking to beat even the most gifted female achiever in that sphere. In addition to which he appeared to be handling his multifarious equipment from memory.

The novel item, the aluphone, opened the soloist’s performance, soon joined by the marimba, immediately behind it; and from then on one tried to be alert to significant and repeated motifs in order to gain a sense of its narrative, its emotional journey. Even though such attempts largely failed, the evolving dynamic patterns, which at times drifted to near silence, with gentle harp and murmuring trombones, succeeded in holding attention, suggesting that at a second or third hearing a path through the maze would take root in the memory. In the midst of the near frenzy emerged a near lyrical string episode in an adagio section, as Currie caressed reverberant cow bells, with flutes and double basses among the few contributors.

It was not only a showcase for the extraordinary soloist, but presented the orchestra and the composer/conductor with a formidable challenge which was met with impressive success, evidenced by unusually heart-felt, mutual applause from all parties involved.

Vaughan Williams’s fourth may be his most sunless, atypical symphony; and it might be compared with Sibelius’s fourth in mood, though it’s more fiery and varied. It does evoke something other than the landscapes, townscapes, seascapes and the avian world; the emotional opposite to the sunny fifth which he wrote in the middle of World War II. The fourth was written avowedly with no programme in mind, but it’s hard not to believe that a politically aware composer was not depressed at state incompetence in dealing with the human tragedy of the Great Depression of the early 30s, not mention the advent of Hitler.

The composer’s wife, Ursula, recorded this comment about the symphony: “The towering furies of which he was capable, his fire, pride, and strength are all revealed and so are his imagination and lyricism.”

Here, if MacMillan had not proven his powers already, was an electrifying performance of huge intensity, displaying anger and ferocity right from the start. What attack and energy he drew from his players! What powerful momentum and compelling rhythms! Though it is almost always tempered, for example, by string-led more meditative moments, finely judged.

The second movement, slower in tempo and more calmly sombre and even beautiful, but no less biting even if there are no clues as to their emotional origin. The third movement is the traditional Scherzo, a symphonic movement that I used to enjoy in my youth, but often less these days. But this scored high with me; a most energetic and colourful performance, evoking in very quick triplets, a spirit of chaos with dark, muted brass, before the sudden mysterious subsiding just before the close, leading with no pause to the Finale, Allegro molto. It too is full of starkly contrasting episodes, often pulsing, trombone-led, to be followed by beguiling, muted strings: an extraordinarily arresting passage, that continues for some time before the return to the pulsing passages that with MacMillan became hypnotic, even nightmarish.

This great performance confirmed how much I love this symphony, with the fifth, my favourites. I place it very high among Vaughan Williams’s works; it was a privilege to hear it played by such an orchestra under a conductor so much attuned to the composer’s spirit.

Steel and McCabe, flute and piano in delightful recital at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Rebecca Steel (flute) and Fiona McCabe (piano)

Taktakishvili; Sonata for flute and piano
Bach: Sonata for flute and keyboard in E minor, BWV1034
Debussy: Flute Sonata, arrangement of the Sonata for violin and piano

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 5 July, 12:15 pm

A fortnight ago at St Andrew’s we heard Rebecca Steel as a member of a quintet of flutes from the RNZAF Band in a splendidly diverting programme of music (mostly) arranged for five flutes. So I had hesitated about coming to hear more flute music in a particularly busy week for me. But squeezing it in proved an excellent decision.

Rebecca was back this time with her piano partner, Fiona McCabe to play an equally interesting and perhaps slightly more musically mainstream music.

Otar Taktakishvili lived in Georgia from 1924 to 1989. He was one of the republic’s leading composers/conductors and a recipient of the Stalin Prize. This flute sonata seems to have been his best known work, though there are symphonies, concertos, symphonic poems, operas, songs, much of which has been performed and recorded in the Soviet Union/Russia and some in the West.  Judging by the character of the flute sonata, there are likely to be quite a few rewarding discoveries to be made.

When the dust settles and Soviet atrocities take their place among many violent regimes that nevertheless nurtured great art, we’ll find a huge amount of approachable music in Russian and Ukrainian (and other) archives.

Taktakishvili’s sonata lives in the sonic sphere of Debussy and/or Françaix, Ibert, and is certainly a descendant of the Jean-Pierre Rampal flute revival. Lightish in tone, but not trivial or sentimental without the hard-edged melodic shape of Prokofiev or much direct Shostakovich influence, though he was a friend of Shostakovich. Not conspicuously folk music influenced either.

But it lay happily and idiomatically for the two instruments and their uniformity of feeling reflected the players long-standing musical friendship.

J S Bach’s flute sonatas are not as familiar as his many suites and partitas for keyboard, violin and cello, but this performance of the E minor, BWV 1034, awakened, at least my, interest in them. There is a group of six, plus one outlier.  Most of Bach’s instrumental works seem to be perfectly comfortable in arrangements for other instruments, and one can easily imagine the violin taken by the flute, or the oboe, or the viola, and vice-versa.

This one, in E minor, somewhat sombre in tone, would be interesting on the cello for it weaves an emotional scene in the slowish first movement that is somewhat complex, suggestive of a beautiful vocal piece; and the second movement, an Allegro that’s not too boisterous, features endless rippling arpeggios that our flutist managed breathwise most skilfully (she’d remarked on Bach’s thoughtlessness regarding the player’s breathing needs). The third movement is again dominated by a long vocal style melody, that caused me to be surprised that I didn’t know this and, perhaps, the other flute sonatas. The final Allegro might have been some kind of ‘Badinerie’ but refrained from unbridled speed and gaiety, to be merely a delight.

Debussy
Finally, an actual arrangement, of Debussy’s last work, his violin sonata. As I reflected above, it showed how some music for flute or violin moves easily from one instrument to the other without offence. In fact it sounded as if written for the flute, its ornaments translating exquisitely (I couldn’t recall with confidence whether they were exactly as written for the violin). It was arranged by the player, though I see that there have been other arrangements. There are long, slow notes that lie in the alto flute range, in between flutters high into the treble, and it all sounds perfectly natural.

Debussy gives a rather specific indication to the second movement: ‘Fantasque et léger’, and it was an awakening to hear those phrases in the middle where the piano beats repeated notes and the flute echoes and decorates the ideas. All the fantastic touches reproduce in exactly the spirit of the original. At one point I scribbled that the accompaniment actually sounded more interesting with the flute as companion.

The last movement is flighty, with little trills and accelerating scales, spiky series of four flute notes that are so idiomatic, and fill one with wonder not only at Debussy’s ever-evolving musical imagination, but his unique feeling for the sounds of individual instruments which in cases like this encompass more than one. If you have doubts, just listen more lovingly.

Rich and diverting recital of songs by Takiri vocal quartet and piano at Waikanae

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Waikanae Music Society
Takiri Ensemble: Anna Leese Guidi (soprano), Maaike Christie-Beekman (mezzo), Cameron Barclay (tenor). Robert Tucker (baritone), Kirsten Robertson (piano)

Schubert: Songs from Schwanengesang;
Songs and ensembles by Fauré, Ravel, Somervell, Quilter, Vaughan Williams

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday, 2 July 2017, 2.30pm

The reviewing of this concert was shared by Rosemary Collier and Lindis Taylor.
First part: Rosemary Collier 
Two years ago the ensemble sang for the Waikanae Music Society; on that occasion the mezzo was Bianca Andrew and the tenor Andrew Glover.  That programme also began with a bracket of well-known Schubert lieder, then progressed to Schumann (I’m embarrassed to say his songs were the Spanische Liebeslieder, which in a very recent review of another ensemble I said I was unfamiliar with).  The programme continued with New Zealand composers, then Britten and Vaughan Williams.

Our present concert followed a similar structure, but no New Zealand composers were performed.

While some of the songs were in a sad mood, many were not, so I was sorry to see the women of the ensemble dressed entirely in black.  However, the singers conveyed the moods of the songs very well, and not necessarily in sombre fashion (some connection with a certain sports event?).

Anna Leese Guidi opened the programme (and was the only one to sing her solos without a score), with the first of the Schwanengesang songs: Liebesbotschaft, with a beautifully rustling brook from Kirsten Robertson on piano.  What a gorgeous voice this soprano has!  It seemed to me that her voice has more shine that it used to have.  Her dynamics were subtle, and the words beautifully expressed and shaded.

Frühlingsehnsucht was sung by Cameron Barclay.  He sings with a splendid, forward tone, energy and urgency.  His singing of the repeated word ‘Warum’ had real feeling.   Ständchen is one of the composer’s best-known songs, and Maaike Christie-Beekman’s singing of it was simply lovely.  It was sung slower than I have usually heard it, but was none the worse for that.  It was interesting that the superb accompaniments from Kirsten Robertson were all played with the piano lid on the short stick, even the quartets, whereas at the recital I attended on Wednesday, the lid was on the long stick.

A quicker song was Abschied, sung by the tenor; he had a tendency sometimes to slip off, or onto, the note.  It was followed by Der Atlas, was sung by Robert Tucker very dramatically with a strong, rich sound and excellent words.  This is a demanding declamatory song.  An uncertainty about one entry was resolved without breakdown between himself and his accompanist.

Das Fischermädchen was a charming song in the capable hands of Maaike Christie-Beekman, while Robert Tucker gave a very accomplished rendition of Der Doppelgänger.  He treated the text with due solemnity, intensity and emotion not to mention a wide range of dynamics.  Finally we had Die Taubenpost, sung deliciously by Anna Leese Guidi; a light and bright song to end the cycle.

Next were three ensemble song by the same composer.  Der Tanz was performed by quartet; a jolly piece, followed by a duet from Leese and Barclay: Licht und Liebe.  It was very appealing – calm and thoroughly pleasant, and beautifully sung.  Last in this half was another quartet: Gebet.  It was rather Ländler-like (folk-song).  Each singer entered in turn, with a little solo passage, the quartet demonstrating excellent blend.

The large audience thoroughly enjoyed the Schubert, and hearing four voices of character and accomplishment.

Second part: reviewed by Lindis Taylor
The second half of the concert was devoted to non-Schubert, French and English songs.

Before the concert I had rather expected a group of real French songs by Debussy, Duparc, Fauré, Berlioz, Poulenc, Ravel and so on. But the French offerings were limited, arrangements, and outweighed by English.

It opened with a Fauré song: Lydia, the poem by Leconte de Lisle, one of Fauré’s earliest, Opus 2. I hadn’t come across the poem either in collections of French poetry or among Fauré’s songs.

It had been arranged by the pianist Kirsten Robertson, for all four voices. Kirsten spoke engagingly about the song and its transformation. She also remarked on Fauré’s using the title as a reference to the Lydian mode – the ancient Greek mode that amounts to a scale on the white notes beginning on F.

This may have been in sympathy with the poetic movement led by De Lisle called les Parnassiens, who rejected romanticism and personal emotion, returning to the notion of ‘art for art’s sake’ in the literature of classical antiquity.

So, this was a song that was cool in character, treating a classical theme of love culminating in death.

As I’ve written before, I have misgivings about arrangements but, as before,  I have finished up being surprised at having so enjoyed them. This was the case here too. Nothing about it detracted from its essential Fauré-esque quality, on either the vocal line or its harmonies.

As earlier, Anna Leese Guidi’s voice contributing descant passages, stood out in the second stanza, perhaps outshining the others at times, but what could she do about that?

The other Fauré song was a duet, Pleurs d’or (Tears of gold), a setting of a poem by a much more obscure poet, Albert Samain, and again not a song I knew. It was sung by the two women (though I’ve now encountered it by soprano and baritone). I confess, not my sort of poem and perhaps that’s why Samain isn’t up there with Baudelaire and Verlaine. Their voices were attractively contrasted and the piano rippled unobtrusively under them.

The next song was a real curiosity – an arrangement by English baritone and composer Roderick Williams of the second movement of Ravel’s piano concerto in G. It proved a singularly lovely candidate for such an arrangement: the original was for eight voices and several French verses, which the programme did not identify; the vocal part was based on the orchestral score while the piano solo served as the accompaniment. The effect was more than a little entrancing, though I suspect eight voices would have been even better.

Then France was abandoned (as the British seem wont to do) and we heard a song by one Arthur Somervell to Twist me a Crown of Wild Flowers, a poem by Christina Rossetti who was associated, with her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti with the Pre-Raphaelites, that somewhat effete brotherhood of writers and artists that included Holman Hunt, Millais, Burne-Jones, Waterhouse, William Morris, Ruskin, Swinburne and so on… It was a rather charming, languid song, sung by all four.

Roger Quilter came second to Schubert in the number of his songs (six) in the recital. Shelley’s Love’s Philosophy sung by Anna alone, her brilliant top handled the setting admirably. And then Tennyson’s Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal, offered mezzo Maaike a contrasting song, handling the more subdued music very sensitively.

Quilter himself wrote the words for the next song, Summer Sunset, and the two men sang it, a harmless, sleepy piece in which the two found a happy accord.

The poem by one Norah Hopper, Blossom Time, was for the two women, a feather-light song, rather melancholy perhaps, but occasionally, Quilter goes a bit deeper than he is wont to do. And those moments were arresting.

Cameron Barclay alone sang an anonymous song, Weep you no more, Sad Fountains, which I thought didn’t do him any favours, as it drew attention to a certain inability to project characterfully.

Finally another anonymous 16th century song: Fair House of Joy where Robert Tucker suddenly revealed a stronger and more colourful voice than I’d been hearing earlier. Perhaps because the song plumbs rather greater depths and it drew a more dramatic strain, fuller, and well projected.

The concert ended with a song that was arranged by Robert specifically for the ensemble: Vaughan Williams’s, Silent Noon, a sonnet by the above-mentioned Dante Gabriel Rossetti (interestingly, originally written in Italian). Appropriately, this very well loved song was for the full complement, each voice taking its turn at the beginning, but soon the four voices came together, and here was truly exposed the strengths of a quartet of professional voices, and compelling admiration for the arrangement. In response to the audience reception the quartet sang Vaughan Williams’s Linden Lea: these two great songs establishing the real qualities of the English song tradition.

 

Beautiful contemporary choral music from Cantoris: if only an orchestra!

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Cantoris Choir conducted by Thomas Nikora with Mark Dorrell – accompanist and Barbara Paterson – soprano

Chris Artley: O magnum mysterium
Rutter: Magnificat
Lauridsen: Sure on this Shining Night

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Saturday 1 July, 7:30 pm

It was a calm, cool, drizzly night, when most of Wellington’s population was either at the stadium, in pubs or at home watching a rugby match between New Zealand and the combined British-Ireland team. Very few: to wit, about 30, felt free to attend a rather fine concert by one of Wellington’s longest surviving choirs (almost 50 years).

Those happy few had a wide choice of seating.

The concert opened with an a cappella setting of the Medieval Latin, liturgical chant, O magnum mysterium, which has inspired many of the great composers, particularly in the Renaissance.

Chris Artley was born in Leeds, then lived elsewhere in Yorkshire and Lancashire, went to school in Bolton, graduated from Bristol University (1981-84), did teacher training at Cambridge University. Then he worked in London until coming to Auckland ‘13 years ago’ (2004?), as he told Eva Radich on RNZ Concert back in February. In 2010 he took a graduate diploma in music at Auckland University, including conducting with Karen Grylls and composing with John Elmsly. He’s worked with and composed for Terence Maskell’s Graduate Choir, and currently teaches at King’s College, Auckland. O Magnum Mysterium was written for the Nelson Summer School Choir in 2013. (See https://www.chrisartley.com/biography)

Though it’s a short piece, it is based on several short but coherent and ear-catching motifs, and ends with the choir calling sweetly and engagingly, ‘Dominum Christum. Alleluia!’ Artley’s lucid and unpretentious music is a nice contribution to the fast-growing body of new music written to be enjoyed by singers and audiences alike, and Thomas Nikora guided his singers through a sympathetic, well-delivered performance of it.

The main work was Rutter’s Magnificat. Again, a liturgical text that’s been set by everyone from Josquin, John Taverner (and John Tavener), Tallis and Victoria, Monteverdi, Schütz, Vivaldi and Bach, Mozart, Bruckner and Franck to Arvo Pärt and, well… Rutter.

It opens at a fine clip, in triplets and the high voices of the choir generated a joyful clamour. The first of the sequence of mood shifts, to a sort of English pastoral scene, was again dominated by higher voices, which I came to feel was more an observation on the exposure and smaller numbers of tenors and basses. But then came a return to the almost operatic lustiness of the opening, though as this part of the work ended, in spite Mark Dorrell’s excellent handling of the piano, sensitive and colourful, some of its excitement may have been missed in the absence of an orchestra. You only need to look at the scoring that includes harp, four horns and rich percussion: glockenspiel, snare drum, cymbals, tambourine, bongos to see the importance Rutter placed on an orchestra. But what to do, given the poverty of New Zealand’s artistic resources? Funds are needed to meet the costs of an orchestra of the calibre of Orchestra Wellington, for a job on this scale. Wellington has the singers and the professional instrumentalists for a work like this, but how to pay them, as one must, without even a tiny fraction of the public and private funds that are readily found for sport?

Rutter’s insertion of the lovely Middle English poem, Of a rose, a lovely rose, might have seemed a curious aesthetic move, but it’s not too much at odds with the spirit of the religious canticle.

It was good to have the words of ‘Of a Rose,’ in the programme but it would also have been useful for those not so conversant with Catholic liturgy to have had the Magnificat’s text as well, so that the several sections into which the work was divided could be identified confidently. For example, one needed to read the sense of ‘Et misericordia’ as soprano Barbara Paterson sang this section. Initially her voice sounded slightly tremulous, rather than lyrically reverent, but her confidence and accomplishment sustained her performance there and at her reappearance in the ‘Esurientes’ movement where she expressed a humane message in a moving melody: ‘He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away’.

But between the two soprano sections, came the almost ferocious ‘Fecit potentiam’. I couldn’t catch enough words here to make sense of it, though it was jagged in rhythm suggesting some kind of revolutionary action. Again it would have been good to know that it was a plea to overcome that very contemporary political evil of gross economic and political inequality: ‘He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek’.

The final section, Gloria Patri, is a further plea to banish oppression against the powerless that Rutter, actually a non-believer, clearly took rather seriously. ‘succour those in need, help the faint-hearted, console the tearful: pray for the laity … intercede for all devout women’ (mm.. what about all women?); and it was full of ecstatic energy with its fierce dotted rhythms, repeated rising phrases, and crescendo.

The choir and its accompanist had done very well.

The last piece was Morton Lauridsen’s Sure on This Shining Night (setting a poem by American novelist and poet James Agee). Unusual poem, much given to repetition of the title, I can see its attraction to a composer, to whom such techniques are commonplace. Opening with graceful notes on the piano and the slow emergence of first, men’s voices and then women all coming together to develop an indescribably beautiful melody, again exquisitely handled by conductor, pianist and choir. I will draw contempt from certain quarters in saying that, for me, this music and that of the other two composers handled here, surely point the way to a revival of approachable and simply beautiful music that gifted composers have avoided creating over much of the past century.