Category: Live performance

Renaissance of the song recital heralded with Poulenc and ‘Songbook’ at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Songbook: A breath of Poulenc

Songs and woodwind sonatas by Francis Poulenc

Barbara Graham (soprano), Rebecca Steel (flute), Deborah Rawson (clarinet, Bruce Greenfield (piano)

Adam Concert Room, New Zealand School of Music

Sunday 14 August 2016, 2pm

This time, pianist Catherine Norton, the promoter of Songbook, took a rest from the piano.  Seasoned accompanist extraordinaire Bruce Greenfield did the honours.

The concert was but an hour long, and concentrated on one composer instead of the many composers featured in April’s concert.  Despite the promoter’s title for the group, this concert featured woodwind music, beloved of a number of French composers, as well as song.  With top musicians performing, it was a pity the audience numbered not more than around 30.

A breath of fresh air Poulenc was (along with a number of his contemporaries), leaving behind the sometimes ponderous solemnity of Saint-Saëns and Franck.

Bruce Greenfield arranged the recital and its order, and included in the printed programme notes from Poulenc’s diary that gave some of his philosophy regarding his songs.  Applause was requested to be given only before the short break in the middle of the programme, and at the end; a great idea for allowing continuity of the music.

The songs were settings of poems by Louise de Vilmorin (1902-1969) and Louis Aragon (1897-1982), poets of Surrealism.  Several were very humorous.  Most of the compositions were written during World War II.  The recital began with ‘Violon’ from Fiançailles pour rire (Betrothals for fun?) by Vilmorin.  Through all her songs, Barbara Graham’s language was clear and beautifully pronounced.  Having words and translations printed for us made the songs so much more than ‘mere’ good singing.  The singing was in character with the words, e.g. ‘On the string of disquiet / to the chords on the hanged strings…’

This was followed by the allegro malinconico first movement of the composer’s Sonata for flute and piano.  I wondered what Poulenc would have thought of the silver flute, with its rather more brittle tone than that of the traditional wooden flute.  Poulenc’s writing for the piano was far from just being accompaniment; he gave much delicious music to the piano.

The next song from the same Vilmorin cycle was ‘Fleurs’.  This was no traditional sonnet in praise of flowers.  I loved the expression translated as ‘Flowers sprouting from the parentheses of  a step’.  I have a few of those.  The more sensitive, benign character of this song suited Barbara Graham’s voice better than did the first song.  The slower tempo allowed the words to be pronounced more fully.

Deborah Rawson now played the first movement, allegro tristamente, from the composer’s Sonata for clarinet and piano.  It was not easy to find anything sad in this allegro.  Some of the delightfully spiky accompaniment was in a minor key, but sadness was difficult to detect.

The third song from the cycle, entitled ‘La Dame d’André’, was mellifluous, with quirky touches typical of Poulenc.

The second movement of the familiar flute sonata followed, its description ‘cantilena’ very appropriate in this recital.  The pattern or structure of the work is classical, but the components, i.e. melodies, harmonies and rhythms were not at all.  The beauty of Poulenc’s writing here for flute is incomparable.

Another song from Vilmorin’s cycle was entitled ‘Mon cadavre est doux comme un gant (‘My corpse is as soft as a glove’).  Here again, Poulenc’s treatment of the words was wonderful.

The romanza movement from the clarinet sonata came up next.  There is no doubt about the skill of these musicians: they indeed allowed Poulenc to speak with his own breath.  This movement was like a song – I could almost imagine the words – yet Poulence traversed the range of the instrument, with taste and invention.

‘Paganini’ is a song from another of the same poet’s cycles: Metamorphoses.  With a title like that, it was obvious that this was another song about the violin.  However, the juxtaposition of the instrument with seahorse, mermaid and Mary Magdalen was surreal indeed – stream of consciousness stuff.  The setting matched the diversity of  poetic thoughts, with its various musical images.

The flute rejoined the piano in the final movement of the sonata.  The presto giocoso had a similar flighty, headlong character to the preceding song.

The last song from Fiançailles pour rire was titled ‘Il vole’, probably to be translated as ‘Thief’.  The song contained plays on the words from the verb voler, to fly, and voler, to thieve.  Some of this was lost in reading the English translation.  The sentiment of the last line ‘Je veux que mon voleur me vole’ reminded me of ‘Sweet thief’ in Menotti’s opera The Old Maid and the Thief.

The final movement of the clarinet sonata, allegro con fuoco, was indeed furious – a race to an exciting end.  This excitement was carried over into the final song.  Before it, we heard ‘C’ from Deux Poèmes by Louis Aragon (1897-1982).  The poem introduces images of war among its varied figures, beginning ‘J’ai traverse les ponts de Cé’.  The second poem, ‘Fêtes galantes’ was a fast and furious tongue-twister.  I could not read the English translation as fast as Barbara Graham could sing the French words!  The ironic text points to its having been written during the war, e.g. ‘You see [On voit] fops on bicycles/ You see pimps in petticoats/ You see brats with veils/ You see firemen burning their pompoms’.  It made a glorious end to the recital that illuminated the many-sided talent and innovation of Francis Poulenc.

I’ve long wanted, nay, needed lieder (or art song, if you prefer) in Wellington; the Songbook is the answer to that need, although I do not find this venue the most desirable; it is too resonant for loud solo singing or playing, in my view, and detracts from the beauty of the music.  I noticed that at long last the street-lamp-orange fluorescent lights have been replaced by normal-coloured ones.  Maybe this is not recent, but I haven’t noticed it before.  It’s certainly a vast improvement.

 

Gems from the tutors at the Aroha String Quartet’s music academy

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s Lunchtime concert

The Aroha String Quartet’s International Music Academy 2016: Tutors’ concert

Music by Schumann, Beethoven, Mozart and Mendelssohn

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 10 August , 12:15 pm

The Aroha String Quartet is more than ten years old and has, through two or three personnel changes, become an important feature in Wellington’s musical scene.

They take their position seriously, now contributing to the teaching, coaching and support of young (and adult, non-professional) musicians. The Academy takes place at St Andrew’s between 9 and 14 August, with two public concerts on Sunday the 14th. The coaching is done by the quartet’s members plus a number of other international musicians, most of whom participated in this recital.

There was only one complete work (Mozart’s Sonata in D, K 381) and three single movements by the other composers.

The piece played in its entirety was a reasonably familiar sonata for piano, four-hands, played by Songwen Li and Xing Wang. They played it in a brisk, staccato manner rather than seeking its lyrical character. Their style no doubt tended to expose possible ensemble flaws in a piano duet, though there was little of that to bother about, with all four hands hitting the keyboard in a well-practised manner with fine ensemble. That applied to the outer movements while the middle, Andante, revealed a more song-lie quality: it was by far the longest of the three movements.

The first item on the programme was the first movement of Schumann’s wonderful piano quintet (Op 44), from the Aroha Quartet (Haihong Liu and Simeon Broom, violins; Zhongxian Jin, viola; Andrew Joyce, cello) with Jian Liu contributing the piano part. It might have reflected the players’ positions, or mine, in the organ gallery, that Jian Liu’s piano and Andrew Joyce’s cello (he had replaced an ailing Robert Ibell) dominated the soundscape. Given that the piano was Schumann’s first love, it’s never surprising in his chamber music that the piano tends to take charge.

Then came the first movement of Beethoven’s ‘Ghost’ piano trio (in D, Op 70 No 1) in which Simeon Broom (second violin in the quartet) and Andrew Joyce were joined by pianist Rachel Church. Here Broom assumed a conspicuous space while Church’s piano was beautifully subdued and genial but by no means obscured; and as usual, Joyce’s cello was a lovely contribution; he attracts immediate attention no matter how gentle or subdued his playing, or how good the other players are.

Then finally, the quartet, alone, played Mendelssohn’s last string quartet, first movement, Allegro vivace assai (in F minor, Op 80) written shortly before he died. For many a music lover, for whom Mendelssohn may not be among the top ten, an exception is made for this: beautifully crafted, infused with a depth of feeling and musical inspiration that is moving and completely arresting. A pity that it took his beloved sister’s death and his own failing health to inspire him to commit it to paper; and the only problem was their stopping at the end of the first movement, and that he didn’t feel the impulse to write more of such genius.

Try to get along to their public concerts at St Andrew’s on Sunday: 3 pm and 5:30 pm.

Piano quartets from Diedre Irons and NZSO string principals

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Chamber Music
Vesa-Matti Leppänen (violin), Julia Joyce (viola), Andrew Joyce (cello), Diedre Irons (piano)

Schubert: Adagio and Rondo Concertante in F, D 487
Fauré: Piano Quartet in C minor, Op 15
Brahms: Piano Quartet in A, Op 26

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 7 August 3 pm

There was little doubt that a piano quartet comprising three of the principals in the NZSO plus one of the most admired New Zealand pianists would produce a delightful concert. And the composers to be played were further assurance of a couple of rewarding hours.

That expectation could withstand the unknown quantity of the first piece, by Schubert. Written aged 19 and therefore, in Schubert’s case, the work of a thoroughly experienced, even mature, composer. After all, he’d already written more lovely music than most composers do in a long life: seven operas, four symphonies, eleven string quartets, scores of songs and piano pieces.

This was practically the only music he wrote for piano quartet. Diedre Irons’s programme note remarked on the prominence given to the piano, and I thought she was to be admired for making little effort to disguise that feature. There were occasional moments when, for example, the cello sounded as if it might be offered something worthwhile to do, but often that was just a passing distraction; and one of the violin’s appearances soon led to a defeated sounding, descending arpeggio.

That was the introductory Adagio part. The Rondo proved a bit more interesting, though it still sounded rather like a piano sonata with obbligato strings. However, there was more liveliness here and better evidence of Schubert’s singular musical gifts. For all the comparative reticence by the three stringed instruments, the players explored all the latent possibilities of colour and dynamics and varied pacing that are to be found in Schubert.

The first of Fauré’s two piano quartets, probably his most popular piece of chamber music, brought us to well-known territory. And there was never a moment’s doubt about either its musical worth or its illuminating playing by these four musicians. By the time Fauré was about 30, when this was written, he was displaying great maturity in handling ensemble music and in creating interesting, well balanced music that evolved in an imaginative way. In this work he seems to be seeking as full and varied a sound as possible, even striving towards the spirit of an orchestral work, perhaps the piano concerto he never wrote.

Often in music these days, what I look forward to is the slow movement (when I was young it was usually the fast, exciting parts). So in this quartet, I particularly enjoyed the Adagio with the slow, thoughtful theme that was introduced by the piano and cello, though soon it encompassed all the strings which were particularly beautiful. And the cello’s return later in an extended passage was especially captivating. The strongly contrasted finale – Allegro molto – created a feeling of inevitability with some moments in which the piano became quite insistent; but the work’s overall feeling is of a generous and perfectly reasonable sharing of all the musical material among the four players.

Brahms was five or six years younger than Fauré when he wrote his two piano quartets. It’s the other one, Op 25, that’s rather better known, and more popular; so this outing was most welcome.

It might seem odd that Op 25 is in a minor key (G minor) while this, which a generally fairly peaceful and meditative, is in the most sanguine of keys, A major. The experts hear a good deal of Schubert in this piece, in the handling of the piano by itself in, to mark out a big extended tune as the strings murmur along. It’s been observed that with these chamber works Brahms was responding to the discovering, unearthing, in the 1850s (much by Schumann), of a great deal of Schubert’s music which had simply been filed away, unplayed and unpublished.

As I listened, I had begun to make notes to the effect that in this quartet, Brahms was stretching the limits of convention by injecting greater variety in each movement with unexpected mood changes and a disinclination to adhere literally to the character of each movement as announced by its title.

This became so erratic and puzzling that when I got home I looked up the movements of Op 26 and discovered that those printed in the programme related to Op 25, and of course, my notes conformed much better to the real names of the movements, as they should have been shown: 1. Allegro non troppo, 2. Poco adagio, 3 Scherzo – Poco allegro, and Trio, 4 Allegro. The main discrepancy was the reversing of the fast and slow, second and third movements. (Op 25’s second movement is marked as in the programme, Allegro ma non troppo and a Trio: Animato). Then it fell into place.

In any case, the players seemed to rejoice in the idiosyncrasies in Brahms’s composition, and there was a real feeling of pleasure and engagement. In the Finale the piano led the way at once with the strings contributing cohesive support for it, though individual strings took their turn in the limelight. And here I had remarked that, if Brahms had intended to inject a gypsy element in it (‘alla zingarese’, in the G minor quartet), he seemed to have encountered a fairly sedate gypsy band that day. However, there was a touch of the zingarese here, though nothing to remark on.

Happily, of course, the mistake probably bothered only the one who was trying to keep track of what was going on, in order to be able to write something that was vaguely sensible.

It was a most satisfying concert, a mixture of the known and the not well known and the unknown; but all rewarding and performed with the greatest musicality, zest and imagination.

 

 

 

 

NZSO and Christiane Libor in wonderful Strauss songs and Mahler’s Fourth Symphony

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edo de Waart with Christiane Libor (soprano)

Strauss: Four Last Songs
Mahler: Symphony No 4 in G

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 6 August, 7:30 pm

It might have been possible to blame a rival entertainment or the wet and chilly weather for the rather loosely packed audience for a concert that I’d expected to have a ‘full house’ notice at the door. One might also wonder whether it’s a reflection on the slow decline of musical tastes, and that those of us who were brought up with a certain amount of great music in our ears as children are disappearing (and being replaced by, let’s say, generations with different tastes).

Has Wellington become blasé about the fact that we have one of the world’s great orchestras living here, conducted by an eminent conductor of the older generation, and the programme comprised a couple of what I’d have thought were among the most popular and best-loved classical works.

German soprano Christiane Libor’s reputation rests primarily on Wagner and Strauss and she is based largely in Europe with a few North American outings; none, by the look of her biography, in Britain or other English-speaking countries. While it would have been wonderful to have heard her in a substantial chunk from the Ring cycle for example, the Four Last Songs are a moving summation of the art of Richard Strauss.

Her gifts were evident within the first few bars of the first song, Spring, with a voice that was not just strong and opulent, but could also find the pathos and beauty in Strauss’s late music. The song’s themes however, are not uniformly elegiac, depicting life’s twilight years, capping a long, richly creative life. This first song is suffused with a calm happiness, the optimism of springtime. The second however, September, presages autumn, is a more elaborate song where Libor could demonstrate her vocal fluidity, ranging between glowing fortissimi as well as quiet.

The third and last of the three Hesse songs, Beim Schlafengehen, introduced by low stings, later featured a lovely solo from Vesa-Matti Leppänen’s violin, and then rose to an ecstatic climax. It sometimes seems to me the right place for the cycle to end (there were discussions about the most appropriate order of the four songs), for the spirit awoken by singer and orchestra seems a mixture of that ecstasy and a going out.

But the words of the last song, Im Abendrot, by Eichendorff, one of the most distinctive poems of the early 19th century Romantic poet, contemporary of Rückert and Heine, do make a more meaningful ending, Libor’s voice now in a warm vein of acceptance.

Though the huge size of Strauss’s orchestra makes possible occasional overwhelming effects, more often it’s the range of instruments used with finesse, that have evolved over centuries in western music, that allows an ever-changing chamber music quality to emerge, subtly reflecting the sense and emotion of the words, and supporting, almost never obscuring, the voice.

Mahler’s Fourth Symphony was, I think, the first live Mahler performance I heard, 20-ish, and I remember being at once captivated and baffled by its size and character. It employs a smaller, more discreet orchestra than the other symphonies: no trombones or tuba and only five horns, when some at the time, were using eight or nine (as in NZSO’s last Strauss plus Escher concert). Its character is perhaps defined by the poem used in the last movement, somewhat peasant-like, naïve; so it opens with sleigh-bells (I have an early recording by Bruno Walter where the sleigh-bells are deleted).

Its magic only deepens and expands with the passing years.

Which prompts me to reflect on the behaviour of some of those who ply my trade of music critic. This work attracted some nasty and cruel reviews at its first performances, and some were quoted in the programme notes; similarly it’s sad to read about the cruelly treated Bruckner, himself a somewhat naive figure, who was routinely attacked by the myopic Brahms-lover, Hanslick who seemed to regard music criticism as ablood sport.

It’s the fairy-tale qualities that endear this music to the listener, and De Waart, to help create that, encouraged woodwind players (in particular) to deliver keener, shriller tones, often by raising their instruments to a horizontal position, and making much use of the three flutes plus piccolo. And thematic fragments get passed around in a way that creates a sort of children’s game.

Another peasant-like feature appears in the second movement where Leppänen switches to a scordatura-tuned violin (typically tuning the G string down a tone or so) to capture that amateur fiddler sense, in music that moved between the Ländler dance (pre-curser to the waltz) and rough peasant tunes. The orchestra played along with it all in seeming delight.

The Ruhevoll (Adagio I guess) movement has always seemed to me is a kind of try-out for the Adagietto in the Fifth Symphony and I’ve wondered why it hasn’t achieved a similar life of its own. But it’s great length – round 20 minutes – would be against it. Its variety of mood is also greater than in the Adagietto, with its combination of splendour and delicacy and rough, peasantish passages.

The reappearance of Christiane Libor, walking in slowly during the opening bars of the fourth movement, felt like a home-coming – we needed to hear more of her. In some ways the last movement might seem something of an anti-climax after the splendours of the third. It’s a setting of one of the 700-odd folk poems collected by Arnim and Brentano and published as Des Knaben Wunderhorn between 1805 and 1808.

It was criticised from that time, not for additions through the nineteenth century, but for its lack of scholarship – the sources were not adhered to, some were subject to embellishment or addition, and some were simply inventions by the compilers themselves. But they are no less a rich treasury of folk poetry that helped inspire the many poets and composers of the Romantic era, from Heine and Eichendorff to Weber and Schumann.

The combination of the ebullient, colourful orchestral scoring with a voice beautifully equipped to blend their playfulness, naivete and spirituality. They rejoiced in the simple things of life, bringing about a subsiding, ‘glow of serenity and peace’ (to quote a quote the programme notes take from musicologist Hugh Macdonald).

The absence of a Beethovenish coda led initially to a somewhat subdued response from the audience, though it grew in passion as the minutes passed, as people understood what a wonderful performance they’d heard.

 

Diverting, accomplished, baroque concert from Auckland’s NZBarok on a cold night

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Cello Charms

Mozart: Divertimento in F, K.138
W.F. Bach: Suite in G
C.P.E. Bach: Symphony in E minor, Wq 177
Haydn: Cello Concerto, Hob. VIIb:1

NZBarok led by Graham McPhail, with Daniel Yeadon (cello)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

5 August 2016, 7.30pm

Formerly known as AKBarok, this Auckland group was making its first visit to Wellington, though it has been in existence for 14 years!  It was a welcome visit, with an audience almost filling the downstairs and half-filling the gallery at St. Andrews, this despite the night being wet and perhaps the coldest of the year.  It was a pleasure to find the gallery open; it is not always for evening concerts.  The sound is good up there – and hot air rises, so this made it a valuable location on such a cold night.

The highlight of the programme was Haydn’s first cello concerto, with Australian-based English cellist Daniel Yeadon as soloist.  This was claimed to be the first original instrument performance of the work in New Zealand.

These performers play original instruments of the baroque era, having gut strings and using baroque bows.  They stand to play (except of course the cellos, though on Wednesday evening I saw Rolf Gjelsten briefly play his cello standing up!).  Both these factors give them a freedom and a different sound from that from modern instruments.

The Mozart Divertimento was lively, though the group took a little time to settle into intonation and ensemble.  One doesn’t usually think of Mozart (or Haydn) as baroque composers, though in his introductory remarks David McPhail made links between the two periods, with the Bach brothers rather straddling both.

His brief remarks were informative and useful, since there were no programme notes.  Made up of seven violins, two violas, two cellos, double bass and fortepiano, the group has considerable rapport, and plays under the leadership of McPhail, with no conductor.  Fortepianist James Tibbles is up with the times, using an iPad or similar instead of sheet music – but I did find the winking light of the control unit under the instrument a little distracting; incongruous when the music was from the eighteenth century and the instruments were authentic ones.  Apart from McPahil and Tibbles (and Daniel Yeadon, who played with the ensemble in the first half), all the players were women.

The music was charming and, well, diverting, as are all Mozart’s divertimenti and serenades.  We should, of course, have been eating, drinking and conversing during it.  Its sudden ending was part of its charm.

Wilhelm Friedemann Bach’s suite began with a smooth larghetto introduction that gave opportunity to hear the gut strings’ tone which is general clearer in articulation as well as being warmer in tone.  The fortepiano sound was not much in evidence from where I sat, in the gallery.  The allegro contributed plenty of rhythmic vitality and variation.  While not comprised of the set of dances that baroque composers used in suites, there were some dances.  The term ‘Torneo’ puzzled me, and none of my music dictionaries, nor Wikipedia, obliged with a definition.  However, the Italian dictionary did: tournament.  I could not detect horses and lances.

The following adagio Aria was lyrical and beautiful.  It could also be interpreted as an elegant baroque dance.  Menuetto followed; the courtly slow dance it usually is.  The final movement, Capriccio, was more unusual and variable melodically and harmonically than the others.  Nevertheless, I have to say that this music sounds plain after the Mozart; that work was written in 1772 when the composer was only 16, at which time W.F. Bach would have been 61.

The C.P.E. Bach work, written in 1756 was the only one of his twenty symphonies published in his lifetime.   After quite an abrasive opening, it continued to have plenty of dynamic contrasts in the first movement (allegro assai).  A smooth, ingratiating andante followed; again it was possible to envisage a stately dance.  The allegro last movement was rhythmically alive, with dotted rhythms in a melodic line that darted from top to bottom of the stave.

The highlight of the programme was the Haydn concerto.  Yeadon spoke to the audience, explaining some variants in his style from what we come to expect: a narrower vibrato, portamento (slurring), and less than strict rhythm in places.  These, he said, were the fashions in the composer’s time.

The concerto was a familiar one. It was composed around 1761-65 for longtime friend Joseph Franz Weigl, then the principal cellist of Prince Nicolaus’s Esterházy Orchestra.  Its mellow introduction had less staccato playing from the soloist that we have heard in some performances.  Our cellist had a warm, full tone and flawless intonation and bowing.  He imbued the work with taste and grace, and brought out the beauties in it, as did the accompanying strings.  The short cadenza was stylish and at one with the other music.

The adagio bore a sublime melody; syncopation was part of its charm; no wonder it is a popular concerto.  This was playing of a very high order.  Here, the fortepiano was more to the fore.  The total effect was magical.

The third movement was an exciting allegro, and a pretty quick one at that.  At times it was almost a perpetuum mobile.  It was a very skilful performance; the brilliant playing in this work was not only from the soloist.  It evoked a deservedly enthusiastic response from the largely young, and very attentive, audience.  As an encore, Yeadon played the well-known Prelude from J.S. Bach’s first Suite.  It was interesting to see that for this, Yeadon extended down the spike of his cello; all the cellists had played in true baroque style without this accoutrement.  The work sounded very different on gut strings, and made a gratifying end to a fine concert.

 

 

 

Second of New Zealand String Quartet’s 12-concert tour in fine auditorium of Porirua’s Pataka museum

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Heartland Tour
New Zealand String Quartet (Helene Pohl and Monique Lapins violins; Gillian Ansell, viola; Rolf Gjelsten, cello)

Mozart: String Quartet no.16 in E flat, K.428
Gillian Whitehead: Poroporoaki
Dvořák: Cypresses, nos.3 and 11
Mendelssohn: String Quartet no.3 in D, Op.44 no.1

Pataka Art + Museum, Porirua

Wednesday, 3 August 2016, 7.30pm

In the Quartet’s Heartland Classics tour, a number of smaller venues are being visited.  This was the second on the 11-centre tour.  It attracted an audience of approximately 100; the outstanding programme and playing received generous applause from those present.  It was good to see some children there.

The programme began with one of Mozart’s ‘Haydn’ Quartets.  In her remarks, Gillian Ansell informed us that the first performance was played by four composers: Haydn, Mozart, Dittersdorf and Vanhal (also spelt Wanhal).  The first movement (molto allegro vivace) had sombre opening chords that soon gave way to euphonious jollity.  There was both expression and dynamic variety in the playing.  The subtlety of utterance was quite breathtaking.

The opening of the andante second movement was gorgeous: smooth, lyrical, blended, idyllic.  Listening to this was like being in another world.  The modulation into a minor key affected the mood, but it was still blissful music.  It was so good to hear it in a smaller venue than is often the case.

The third movement was a sprightly minuet.  A staccato section was quite amusing in its lightness and playfulness; the trio was almost doleful by comparison.  The return to the minuet was marked by great precision.  The final movement, allegro vivace, had a similar jolly character to the first movement, bravura passages and all.  Its motifs were uncomplicated, but their treatment gave plenty of scope for intriguing variations.

We moved now to an unusual work, introduced by Helene Pohl in some detail.  The musicians demonstrated Gillian Whitehead’s skilful incorporation of the sounds of a number of taonga puoro, played on their stringed instruments.  It was amazing how much like the originals, made variously of wood, gourd, stone and shell, the sounds could be, using a variety of techniques.  They showed photos, some considerable enlargements, of the original instruments. This work was written for the Quartet to play at a conference in China honouring the composer Jack Body, last December.  It was a brilliant piece of work, superbly rendered.  The interweaving of the various instruments was achieved in a thoroughly musical way, each of the stringed instruments having its moments of prominence, but all as part of a cohesive and striking whole.

Two short pieces by Dvořák followed.  These were two of the 12 pieces entitled Cypresses, inspired by poems by Gustav Pfleger Moravsky, that Dvořák arranged for string quartet from the larger number of songs he had written much earlier.  The quartet pieces were published in 1887, and the two we heard were entitled ‘When thy sweet glances on me fall’ and ‘Nature lies peaceful in slumber and dreaming’.  Monique Lapins read out the poems, which were, like their fellows, about unrequited love.

The first certainly expressed a sort of exquisite pain, while the second, in contrast, had a more positive tone, contemplating the joys of nature, though still being about unrequited love. That love of melody and of rhythmic felicity typical of Dvořák was much in evidence in this attractive music.

The New Zealand String Quartet has recorded all of Mendelssohn’s string quartets, including some shorter pieces written for four string players.  The quartet no.3 was introduced by Rolf Gjelsten, whose lively remarks stressed the excellence of the counterpoint to be found throughout the work, making it very interesting for each part to play.  Its setting in the happy, cheerful key of D major helped to make this one of NZSQ’s favourite works to play.

The exuberant first movement (molto allegro vivace) had contrasting quiet passages – but these were almost obliterated by the sound of heavy rain outside.  Nevertheless, the movement was full of zest and enthusiasm, as was the playing.  A repeated passage that was almost spooky followed, yet it also had delicious harmonies and intricate counterpoint.  Indeed, no moment lacked interest.

The second movement (menuetto: un poco allegretto) began in a pastoral, languid mood, yet it also had intensity, and strong melodies.  The third movement (andante espressivo ma con moto) was lilting, but with drive.  The principal melody on the other strings was accompanied by pizzicato from the cello.  This was a delightful movement.  The finale (presto con brio) was spirited and dance-like.  Mendelssohn knew how to capture the audience’s attention from the first notes or chords.  The fugato in this movement, with which the composer was apparently very pleased (according to the programme note) was indeed thoroughly satisfying, as was the entire programme.

The Quartet play again, a different programme, on Friday 5 August at 7:30pm, at the Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University of Wellington.

Cellist Rebecca Turner with intriguing and entertaining music on carbon-fibre cello

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s Lunchtime concert

Rebecca Turner (cello) with help from electronic tape

Music by Christopher William Pearce, Carl Vine and Pêteris Vasks

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 3 August, 12:15 pm

There are certain benefits in forming habits, and the weekly lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s are among the less sinful of what I’m prepared to confess to. Well, there was the weather. But I was there and though we (Middle C Incorporated) had not assigned the reviewing to anyone, Rebecca Turner’s performance of a totally unknown composer soon had me reaching for pen and notebook.

It was by a composer friend of the cellist, 42-year-old American, Christopher William Pearce, and involved things that I often find pretentious, alienating, uncalled for, even disguising a lack of ideas. Sometimes the involvement of electronics or wacky instruments are a turn-off, but by setting aside prejudice, one can be surprised and delighted.

The first adventure however, was her cello, a black instrument without the traditional shape, but rather the shape of a large acoustic guitar. It delivered a warm and perfectly well projected sound. In spite of a normal wood-like sound produced when she hit the side of the cello, it was made of carbon-fibre which has become widespread in sports equipment and in the popular music field. It’s been accepted more recently in the non-classical field, but is still looked at askance by most classical musicians. I might have believed that too, before becoming increasingly uneasy at the madness of the multi-million dollar Stradivarius market; though I have given up claiming to detect a difference between a 1700 model and a well-made one of yesterday. There are in fact differences in the sound produced, but I suspect the untutored ear would only hear a louder and richer sound.

Rebecca played Pearce’s Variations on Wondrous Love, based on a ‘folk hymn’ from the American South, not familiar to me. It began normally, but slowly started to be interfered with by Asian sounds, a drone at the bottom end of the cello, eerie harmonics at the top, hypnotic sequences, hints of pentatonic tonality, trills and fancy efflorescence. Towards the end she parked her bow and attacked with pizzicato, which developed into a hair-raising technique as the plucking was linked with quick stroke down the string which created a sort of bowed effect. I found myself increasingly intrigued and amused (if that’s an emotion permitted of a reviewer of classical music).

The second piece was by Australian Carl Vine, some of whose music I know: not particularly main-stream.  Rebecca Turner gave some details about how it was to work. It involved a microphone placed near the cello and the activation of a tape that the composer prepared and supplied with the score. That was a bit mysterious to me; I found it hard to see or hear how she activated the tape and controlled its behaviour; how her playing actually engaged with and kept in line with the accompanying tape (and at one point with a not incongruous police siren on the street). The tape later became increasingly dominant, leaving her as an unequal contestant, threatening to obliterate the cello’s mere human-created sounds.  The sounds became increasingly complex, vying with each other, but the cello recovered its confidence and eventually subsided, as the main player, into rather gentle, lyrical music that even had touches of beguiling charm.

It did not annoy me and I had confess that for all its machine-driven aspects, the cellist’s skill in keeping abreast with the tape’s formidable demands, and the actual sounds produced, both impressed and delighted me.

Rebecca Turner, by the way, comes from Wellington – Tawa College, then a bachelor’s degree from Canterbury University, masters from Johns Hopkins and a doctorate from Goldsmiths College, University of London (where she was taught by the late cellist, Alexander Ivashkin, whom she’d followed after he left Canterbury), and where she now teaches.

Another excursion into the unorthodox was Pêteris Vasks’s Pianissimo. (Latvian: I have a special, irrational affection for Riga, a lovely, art nouveau-rich city with a splendid opera house where I got to four operas in a week, and Wagner worked in his twenties).  It is the second movement of a piece called Book. Rebecca also described some of the experimental aspects of this, helping her cause by allowing a secretive smile to appear once or twice. The excitement here was an accompaniment, not from machine but from the cellist’s own voice, as she pursued a gentle contrapuntal line, her voice nicely modulated to accommodate the cello’s strenuous line, and long sinuous glissandi down the A string. In fact, her singing voice carried quite well, though I had some difficulty catching all she said in her introductory remarks.

Though there was no mention of using tape material in the Vasks piece, there were times when the high line carrying the decorative melodic sounds were accompanied by a low drone that I couldn’t imagine could have come from an adjacent string. But in fact, it did – fingering high on the D string, accompanied by the open G string.

Here was a recital where the existence of electronic elements and fairly unusual techniques seemed really at the service of music rather than, as I have too often felt, being experiments for their own sake. In any case, I enjoyed all three pieces for their musical interest and the impressive skill and musicality of the cellist.

 

 

Music Futures diverting showcase for rising young musicians

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Music Futures: The Sound of Wellington Youth Music 2016

Blue Notes (Tawa College Chamber Choir, conductor: Isaac Stone, accompanist: Martin Burdan)
Mendelssohn and Daughters; Zephyr Wills (violin), Vanessa O’Neill (piano) and Emily Paterson (cello)
Guest artists: Malavika Gopal and Anna van der Zee (violins), Thomas Guldborg (percussion)
Lavinnia Rae (cello) and Hugh McMillan (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 31 July, 3 pm

Music Futures is an independent enterprise set up by a group of people who felt there was a need for something more to help talented young musicians through financial awards, performance, opportunities, workshops and masterclasses, mentoring, and lending and hiring instruments. This was their first public performance this year. Members of the NZSO are among the tutors and mentors.

This concert set out in part to illustrate the range of musical genres: a chamber choir, a cut-down concerto, a chamber group and an arrangement of an Indian raga from some of the grown-up participants.

The Tawa College’s small choir, Blue Notes, demonstrated a quality that would, for any average listener, demand top place in any choral competition, such as the Big Sing in Dunedin, where they have been nominated as finalists later this month. Three small pieces, one by their suburban mentor Craig Utting (Monument), slow, clear harmonies and, like all their items a display of admirably sensitive dynamics. Their other offerings were from almost the extremes of western music, from the ‘Agnus Dei’ from Palestrina’s Missa Brevis to Stephen Sondheim’s The Miracle Song. They also contributed at the end of the concert with a careful studied a cappella choral piece by Brahms: ‘Dem dunkeln Schloss der heil’gen Erde’ and Karimatanu Kuicha by Ko Matsushita, that involved tricky intonation and rhythms: all from memory.

The first movement of Mendelssohn’s piano trio in D minor, Op 49 was played by three players from Kapiti and Wellington Girls’ colleges, two girls and a boy, named as if they were Mendel’s son and daughter. Though it’s such a gorgeous work and I know it so well, I can’t remember when last heard it. They played it with a certain languorousness, not altogether inappropriate; but an excellent way to prolong the delicious experience of that rapturous second theme.

Three NZSO players then recreated an arrangement by violinist Malavika Gopal of a raga by Ravi Shankar, entitled La Danse, for two violins and tabla. That offered an attractive contrast to the rest of the concert.

Then we had a foretaste of the concerto that NZSM student Lavinnia Rae was to play the coming Wednesday at the combined concert between the NZSM orchestra and the Wellington Youth Orchestra: Shostakovich’s first cello concerto (first two movements), the orchestra’s part played by Hugh McMillan. Played without the score, this was a remarkably mature and accomplished performance that revealed a real dramatic awareness, as well as brilliant handling of false harmonics in the second movement.

I regretted the likelihood of missing that concert.

There will be two further concerts from Music Futures: on 18 September and 13 November. They too are bound to be highly rewarding experiences for the audience.

 

 

Full success for three works at Edo de Waart’s first Strauss excursion of his tenure

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Conducted by Edo de Waart, with Samuel Jacobs (French horn)  

Escher: Musique pour l’esprit en deuil
Mozart: Horn Concerto No 4 in E flat, K 495
Strauss: Sinfonia domestica, Op 53

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 30 July, 7:30 pm

In an account of the music I got to hear in Sydney last December (see review of 4 January 2016), I reported hearing two concerts by Edo de Waart and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra; one of them featured Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra and I allowed myself to be delighted that we would probably be getting some fine Strauss from him after he took over the reins of the NZSO.

This was the first Strauss outing, though we heard Mahler’s Third Symphony and Beethoven’s Eroica under De Waart in April.  Last year, you’ll recall, he came and conducted Mahler’s Ninth in August.

So the somewhat less often played Sinfonia Domestica was much looked forward to. However, I was a little surprised at the not-full house for this splendid concert, and can scarcely believe that anyone would pass up such a concert in order to sit in the freezing wind in the Stadium to watch a football match.

Rudolf Escher
The concert opened with a real surprise – a symphonic poem by a Dutch composer I’d never heard of: one Rudolf Escher whose father was the half-brother of M C Escher, the artist whose architectural etchings depicting irregular, impossible perspectives have continued to intrigue.

There has always been curiosity as to why the Netherlands has scarcely produced any famous composers, at least not since the Renaissance. Some of those you think might be Dutch turn out to be Belgian, like Joseph Jongen. But there are Alphons Diepenbrock and Willem Pijper; and there are a few others from the mid 20th century, including Rudolf Escher. His Musique pour l’esprit en deuil (‘Music for the spirit in mourning’) impressed me from its opening, the almost inaudible notes, finding in it a great deal of what I enjoy generally of the music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

It was written after Rotterdam, where he lived, was bombed to oblivion by the Germans in 1940 destroying most of his scores and possessions. While the music clearly expresses grief, it was also strangely beautiful and compelling, engaging with a rich, complex palette from a large orchestra that was skillfully and interestingly handled. There was apparently no detailed programme; anyway, I rarely try to conjure a narrative or images when listening to new music, though occasionally things come to mind.

Obviously, the composer had much on his mind here, and Edo de Waart helped the music to play itself so that the highly evocative score was endlessly absorbing without any need to look for a story or visual imagery.  The scoring was very colourful, with a piano creating a steady beat for a while, along with a wide variety of percussion, all of which seemed inevitable rather than used just because it was there. The big, slowly assembled, anguished climax came (I don’t think it was intended to depict the bombing, which would have been too trite and superficial in a composer of such obvious subtlety and intelligence), and faded calmly over a long coda, with acceptance.

Horn concerto
Mozart’s fourth horn concerto followed; such a disconnect damaged neither work. The total break between Escher and Mozart, occupied by extensive changes of players and orchestral configuration, to a small body of strings plus two each of horns and oboes. It sounded perfectly adequate after nearly four times that number a few minutes earlier.

The horn soloist was Samuel Jacobs who is soon to return to the position of principal horn in the orchestra after an absence that included the same position with the Royal Philharmonic in London. Even without the obvious international distinction of the post with the NZSO, and the impressive pedigree detailed in the programme booklet, the ears bore evidence enough of gorgeous playing confirming him as one of today’s most distinguished players.

The main feature of his playing is an almost unreal smoothness and perfection of tone which makes no gesture at all towards the idiosyncratic sounds produced by a natural horn, the use of which has become popular even in some late 19th century music. Even for a valved horn Mozart offers challenges, but audible flaws seemed inconceivable. The orchestra matched the elegance of the solo playing.

Sinfonia Domestica
The riches of this splendid concert were not exhausted however. Strauss’s domestic symphony is not as often played as for example, Don Juan, Also sprach Zarathustra or Don Quixote; and that’s not just because of the embarrassing intimacies that Strauss exposes us to, or the enormous wind forces that he calls for. There’s a certain naiveté and excess that is not always perfectly matched by subtlety and taste; and it’s those characteristics that no doubt fueled its enormous success at its premiere in 1904 in New York and at Wanamaker’s department store in Philadelphia (6000 attended there over two nights), as well as the rather pious and pedantic attacks and ridicule that some critics have directed at it. If Strauss had refrained from offering any detail at all about the inspiration behind it, I’m sure its reputation would be very different.

Happily, the programme notes did not enlarge too much on the story and the audience was ready to be won over by the spectacular size of the orchestra (five saxophones, nine horns, quadruple winds elsewhere) and the stunningly accomplished performance that could still, and did, generate a rare excitement. That the house did not sell out to a knowledgeable public (do we still have one?) made me cringe for the groundless boasting by civic leaders about the ‘cultural capital’ which has been unjustified since the 1990s.

De Waart’s performance dwelt on the colour, drollerie and the purely musical elements of the composition, while taking care not to overplay aspects that lend themselves to burlesque or caricature. Then, the grand virtues of this episodic and idiosyncratic composition could be heard without hindrance and be enjoyed simply as a somewhat excessive orchestral showpiece with plenty of entertaining features and musical strengths.

It certainly succeeded splendidly at that level.

 

CMNZ scores with brilliant clarinet and piano trio at the End of Time

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Chamber Music New Zealand

Julian Bliss (clarinet) and the NZ Trio (Justine Cormack, Ashley Brown, Sarah Watkins)

Brahms: Trio for clarinet, cello and piano, Op 114
Ross Harris: There May be Light
Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday 28 July, 7:30 pm 

A programme of what, twenty years ago, might have been seen as a bit forbidding, drew a very good house at this concert, and at the end they responded very enthusiastically.

It may have been partly the fact that here was a conventional chamber group with the added interest of an extra player. It might also have been because audiences have come to accept that there is nothing to fear in Messiaen, even though he was in many ways, and still is, a radical composer who followed a unique path, all his own. In addition, Ross Harris’s music has gained more exposure in recent years; while it still sounds very ‘contemporary’, audience familiarity with much of his recent music, cast in traditional forms such as his six symphonies, has probably won him entry to the small group of new Zealand composers whose names are quite familiar, who are now considered mainstream, no longer too forbidding or incomprehensible.

Even though so far, I can recall only one of his symphonies, the second, being played by the NZSO – just a couple of months ago; there was a piano piece played by Emma Sayers last month and last year a piano quartet; and Requiem for the Fallen was played in 2014 – the year we were overwhelmed with WW1 stuff.

So it was perhaps a small surprise that Ross Harris’s piece, more than Messiaen, was now the most challenging listen, something of a retreat from the big public compositions of recent years, back to the sort of uncompromising composer of his earlier years.

The central piece was Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. Harris’s There may be light was commissioned by Chamber Music New Zealand with the suggestion that it might be related to the Messiaen piece. In many ways, sonically rather than doctrinally, it inhabited a similar world, using the same four instruments, but while Messiaen’s writing generally remains within the normal technical scope of the clarinet, Harris had made use of its eccentric possibilities such as multiphonics – creating more than one note at a time, exploiting the instrument’s harmonic resources.

English clarinetist Julian Bliss, who was born in 1989, has already built a notable reputation in the world of music festivals and prestigious venues. He was on stage for all three pieces. He talked about multiphonics before the performance, but it was hardly central to the music; instead, to have introduced the audience to the actual musical ideas might have been more useful in creating a receptive hearing. As a result, there was little chance to absorb themes or motifs or to follow an argument that might have woven the music’s fabric.

Its main impact was unease, mystification, restlessness, produced by scrambling sounds, elusive slivers of melody that quickly evaporated. Clarinet and strings tended to carry most of the fragmentary musical ideas with a sense of purpose, while the piano’s gestures were reflective and struck me as somewhat incidental. Nevertheless, one was undeniably caught up with the piece, with its interesting, unaccustomed, even evocative sounds; and though I abhor saying this, as it’s like a confession of incompetence, another hearing could be illuminating.

The Messiaen performance was quite superb; the first time I heard it, perhaps 40 years ago, I found its widely disparate elements and Messiaen’s unique voice (or voices) bewildering, yet today it sounds as normal a part of the chamber music repertoire as the Brahms Clarinet Quintet. Every one of the eight movements was vividly sculpted, and yet created, as a whole, a mosaic that spoke of the situation of the work’s composition and first performance, as well as feeling still relevant to the human condition today, perhaps even more.

The spotlight moves from place to place, from one kind of religious imagery to another, from all four to pairs of instruments or just one, like the extraordinary third movement, Abîme des oiseaux, where the clarinet alone took us on an astonishing and awful (as in ‘full of awe’) journey through disparate spiritual landscapes. (I heard Murray Khouri play it in total darkness in a memorable performance in Whanganui some years ago). The conspicuously spiritual fifth movement, Louage à l’éterinté de Jésus, is an opportunity for an arresting duet between cello and piano (the one movement without the clarinet); steady, ritualized piano chords underpinning one of the (surely) profoundest musical creations for the cello. The two were in perfect accord.

The association of the brilliant NZTrio and one of the today’s most gifted young clarinetists produced an unforgettable performance.

It’s probably just as well that the charming Brahms trio was placed at the beginning. I was slow in coming to love it but it has taken its place, perhaps somewhere below the quintet and the two clarinet sonatas, but it still delights. If some early parts are less than commanding in terms of musical inspiration, the whole was lovingly and rapturously played, and the last movement, quite short, was a wonderful meeting of minds and hearts.