Category: Live performance

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.

 

Woodwind students deliver a delightful variety of lunchtime music at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Works by New Zealand composers (mainly)

Woodwind students of Te Koki New Zealand School of Music; accompaniments by Hugh McMillan (piano)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 27 July 2016, 12.15pm

Head of Woodwind at NZSM, Deborah Rawson, introduced the students taking part in the concert, and said she had asked them to find suitable works by New Zealanders.  However, the unavoidable absence of a few students meant that several played more than one piece, the latter ones in each case being by other composers.

Perhaps the cause was the rather more esoteric nature of the programme, but there was a smaller audience than is often the case at these lunchtime concerts.  First up was Winter for saxophone and piano, by Natalie Hunt.  It was performed by Kim Hunter.  The saxophone part was interesting, employing the full range of the instrument, but I found the piano part rather tum-te-tum; the overall effect of the piece was somewhat dreary – perhaps the composer’s view of winter.

Next came one of the several clarinet players: Laura Brown, playing Sonatina for clarinet and piano, by Douglas Lilburn.  Laura explained that the piece was not played frequently, and that Lilburn himself had decided that he did not like it, and put it aside.  Here again, the accompaniment was not very interesting, though it livened up in the second movement.  However, the composer exploited most of the considerable range of the woodwind instrument and its capabilities.  After a quiet opening, the sonatina developed into a tuneful and expressive work.  There were gorgeous effects and fresh-sounding melodies. The sudden ending was a surprise.  Laura Brown played with excellent phrasing.

After Lilburn, we had a performer-composer; in fact, we witnessed a world premiere: Peter Liley’s ‘Trees’, for solo saxophone.  Peter was the only male among the day’s performers.  The piece was unaccompanied, and moved through several short episodes, which the composer explained to the audience.  (It was good to see all the players using the microphone, so that their descriptions could be clearly heard).  The episodes were to do with birds, insects, the fantastic woods, and a great beast.  Peter’s sound was bigger and more brassy than that of the other sax player.

He introduced into his piece extended techniques such as over-blowing, thus producing different and multiple tones.  However, I found that the practice of starting each phrase of the melodies on the same lower note became a little tedious.  Very loud sounds were followed by high chirping bird-like tones.  Considerable musical gymnastics were performed as part of the piece.

Next up was clarinettist Leah Thomas, playing Gareth Farr’s Waipoua, a contemplation of the great kauri forest, and especially of the giant Tane Mahuta.  It was an attractive piece, played in a controlled but evocative manner.  There was good interplay between clarinet and piano.  Dynamics were handled very well.

The only bassoon on show was played by Breanna Abbot. She gave us ‘Three Pieces’ by Edwin Carr.  The first was contemplative, the second bouncy and impetuous, but rather like an exploratory journey, while the third had features of both the other movements.  They were played with clarity, and pleasing tone.

Kim Hunter returned to play ‘A flower who never fully bloomed’ by Michelle Scullion, a New Zealand flautist (or flutist, if you prefer), composer, and multi-tasker in the arts.  Although Kim’s instrument was again the alto saxophone, this piece began with the lower register of the instrument, giving quite a different effect.  The unaccompanied piece again demonstrated the player’s excellent control of dynamics and lovely tone.  Suiting the title, the piece had a mournful character.

We then turned to the classics: firstly, the appassionata movement from Brahms’s Sonata Op.120 no.2, played by Laura Brown.  It has to be said that the confidence and experience of this great composer was most obvious in this gorgeous piece.  Rippling passages on both instruments were a notable part of the movement.  The piano was in no way left in the background; it was essential.  There was an attractive variety of tonal colours and dynamics from both players; a thoroughly satisfying performance.

Last was Poulenc; like so many French composers, he was a lover of woodwind.  His allegro con fuoco was the last movement of his Sonata for clarinet and piano, which was one of the last works he wrote, in 1962, the year before he died.  Leah Thomas treated it as typically spiky Poulenc, fast and jolly and one could imagine Poulenc playing this in a Paris night club.  There was plenty of variety in the piano part as well as in that for the clarinet:  lots of fun and the players gave it life.  It made an excellent ending to an interesting and varied concert.

Beguiling concert of French chanson, torch songs, café and cabaret songs by Magdalena Darby and friends

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Lunchtime concerts at St Marks, Lower Hutt
Café Européen – Songs of Passion

Magdalena Darby (cabaret singer, chansonneuse) with Ian Logan (piano), Gary Stratton (accordion), Alistair Isdale (bass)

Torch songs, chansons, café music; French and derivative styles

St Marks church, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 27 July, 12:15 pm

Magdalena Darby’s bio begins with her studies at the Conservatorium of Music in Utrecht, but shies away from dates, early education, or when she came to New Zealand; one assumes she was born in the Netherlands. Before coming to New Zealand she lived in Mexico and presumably Paris. Her bio refers to performing in Paris as well as London and elsewhere in Europe (can we still assume that ‘Europe’ includes Britain?).

Throughout, her career has been a combination of teaching and cabaret-style singing. Her publicity refers to ‘torch songs’, perhaps not very familiar to the musical generalist, but it describes songs of broken love affairs, of lost love (which tends, I suppose, to be a major element in music of all kinds). The expression to ‘carry a torch for’ someone relates to the word in this context.

Paris was the biggest element in her repertoire, even if there were songs from several other parts of the world. That tone was set as the instrumentalists played Michel Legrand’s theme song from the much-loved film Les Parapluies de Cherbourg featuring Catherine Deneuve (which you can find in the Wellington Public Library). The three instrumentalists were clearly very comfortable in music of this style and era (mostly the 50s to 70s) and lent sensitive support to the singer.

Nearly half of her songs were French, by French singers or sung in French: names that appear in my ‘other self’s’ collection of LPs and CDs, like Serge Gainsbourg, Sidney Bechet (the jazz, soprano saxophonist), and Jacques Brel, but also Piazzolla’s Rosa Rio which she sang in French.

What has always attracted me to the French chanson has been the intellectual, heterodox, often politically dissident, even anarchic quality of their subjects, in addition of course to the edgy, rebellious or pathetic character of the love-songs.

Darby’s voice, exploiting the microphone with finesse, didn’t express just the pain of lost love in Gainsbourg’s songs (Les amours perdues, Les yeux pour pleurer and Indifférente), but an awareness of a fractured, lonely world, with a warmth and seductiveness that seems unique to French singers. Though Indifférente was deceptively upbeat and Les yeux pour pleurer an unusual story of cruel loss and the sudden appearance of a new love.

So one enjoyed hearing echoes and tones of voices like Piaf, even Josephine Baker, Françoise Hardy and males like Yves Montant, Jean Sablon, Charles Trenet…

Bechet’s Petite fleur was of course written for himself and his soprano sax, but lyrics were put to it later, giving it a perfectly Gallic chanson character. Here and throughout, one was seduced by a voice and a control of that voice that captured the idiom of the languages and utterly belied her years.

Darby’s clarity of diction and ability to capture the style of other cultures became clear in Spanish songs such as Carlos Almaron’s Un historia de un amor and Nino Rota’s Theme from The Godfather (the love theme with words by Larry Kusik); she sang the latter in its English version, with some in Italian (if I wasn’t fooling myself).

Her singing of the Second World War song Can’t get out of this mood (words by Loesser, set by Jimmy McHugh) succeeded in demonstrating how deeply a European style of lyric and music affected American popular music: Nina Simone was one of the most famous interpreters of that song in the late 50s, and later, Darby sang her But remember me which displayed her warm, low register, that so perfectly leapt into a high head voice in dealing with the spread of the song’s melody.

There was a break for accordionist Stratton to take front stage with a Piazzolla song, Fiebre, where I suppose the idea was an approximation of the bandoneon; but nothing quite matches that unique Buenos Aires instrument.

The song by Cy Coleman, A moment of madness seemed to step aside from the Gallic spirit that ruled in most of the recital; a song in which the singer tries to persuade herself that she doesn’t care about the moment of madness that ended badly, expressed with its series of short, almost sobbing phrases; but the singer succeeded in planting it convincingly in Paris.

Then there was Jacques Brel, a really tough singer to impersonate with any success; happily she didn’t attempt things like La valse a mille temps, or Marieke, or Ne me quitte pas. But in English, If we only have love, (Quand on n’a que l’amour) was a classic Brel melody the spirit of which, even without that inimitable voice, Magdalena Darby caught with integrity and conviction.

And the three-quarter hour ended with a surprising step to the east, into Yiddish song, which she sang in English, with a short excursion into German (Yiddish is very close to German – derived from Middle High German). At her hands, and with the impeccably idiomatic backing of (especially) pianist Ian Logan, and Gary Stratton and Alastair Isdale, the words and music took root firmly at L’Olympia, Paris, to bring this most beguiling little concert to an end.

A good case for Mendelssohn’s (complete) organ music in cathedral series

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Organ recitals at St Paul’s
The Mendelssohn Project, first recital

Michael Stewart, Cathedral Director of Music

The complete organ works of Felix Mendelssohn
Sonatas, in F minor and C minor, Op 65 Nos 1 and 2
Andante – Sanft; Passacaglia – Volles Werk; Fugue in D minor; Andante con moto in G minor

Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

Friday 22 July, 12:45 pm

On top of last year’s Bach Project from Michael Stewart and Richard Apperley and the latter’s Buxtehude Project that’s running now, cathedral director of music, Michael Stewart, has now invited us to pay attention to and hopefully change our minds about Mendelssohn. In his introductory notes for the first of the series of recitals he claimed that Mendelssohn had “made an incredibly profound contribution to the organ and its repertoire”, and that he stood alongside Bach and Messiaen as an organ composer whose influence is felt across all genres.

Quite a statement, though very defensible in the musical environment of the first half of the 19th century.

Stewart went on to say that the three preludes and fugues and the six sonatas were fundamental to the repertoire of any serious organist. And he noted that Mendelssohn had achieved this place in spite of the fact that he never held a post as an organist; he had, however, begun organ lesson aged eleven and started to composer for the organ at once. Though his formal lessons lasted only 18 months, after which time he was self-taught, and confessed to not really mastering pedal technique.

This first recital included the first two of his sonatas whose provenance was unusual – really cobbled together from a variety of smaller pieces – in response to an English publisher’s request for some organ ‘voluntaries’. Mendelssohn claimed he didn’t really know what this peculiarly English liturgical form was and asked that they be called sonatas so they could be published recognizably in Germany. France and Italy.

Sonata No 1 is in four movements; it starts in conventionally grand manner using big diapason stops with what might have been a rudimentary melody on the pedals; it then changes abruptly to a calm, chorale-like phase which is interrupted by returns of the style of the opening. From then the two moods alternated, the heavier seeming to oppress the lighter passages.

The Adagio movement seemed constructed in a similar way, with alternating passages in widely separated registers, jumping from one manual to another. And the Andante recitativo presented a thin little tune that was suddenly overwhelmed by dominating chords, rather similar to the behavior in the second movement, and the two elements continued to alternate, with increasingly complex harmonies. With no pause and almost without a change of tone, the fourth, Vivace, movement took over and brought it to a rather exciting close.

Apart from the second Sonata, the rest of the programme consisted of slighter pieces, without opus numbers. Three from his early teens: first, an Andante which was tuneful and pleasant, seeming very conscious of the sort of music for which the organ was traditionally associated.

A second entitled ‘Volles Werk’, German for ‘full organ’. It was a stately Passacaglia, the theme subjected to a number of variations which became repetitive rather than interestingly contrasted or developed in an organic way (?pun intended).  Eventually brighter variations arrived and one had to credit the organist with providing more diverting registrations here with lively quaver accompaniment. It ended with a return to the portentous style, which was employed to build effectively to a satisfying climax. It did indeed strike me as pretty clever for a 13 or 14-year-old.

An 11-year-old’s Fugue in D minor followed, a counterpoint exercise originally for violin and piano.

Then a piece by a mature 24-year-old: Andante con moto in G minor. Though it set off purposefully on quiet stops, it was only a page long.

The second Sonata was rather shorter than the first (dating from 1844/45). The first movement, Grave – Adagio, could have been described as ‘meditative’ but I wasn’t drawn into any spirit of mature contemplation, founded on any deeply-felt philosophical reflection. It didn’t sound of its era at all and I found myself thinking how it compared with music being written around the same time – especially Schumann’s piano and chamber music (though I don’t know the few bits of organ music that Schumann wrote). I also read that the ever-generous Schumann played Mendelssohn’s sonatas over on the piano and wrote warmly to him, describing them as ‘intensely poetical’; ‘what a perfect picture they form’, he wrote.

It’s not as if Mendelssohn was not as influenced as his contemporaries were by the prevailing ‘Romantic’ ethos of the 1830s and 40s, in his piano and chamber music, his two best symphonies and several concert overtures. Perhaps his awareness of the overpowering impact of Bach inhibited a freedom of spirit that is found in those other genres.

The second and third movements – Allegro maestoso e vivace and  Fugue: Allegro moderato – contained some imposing music, contrapuntal, harmonically formidable and in the Fugue, plenty of evidence of the composer’s study and assimilation of the techniques and meaning of Bach. Nevertheless, even in the absence of the kind of response I have to the organ music of Bach and Buxtehude and to the French school of the later 19th century, I heard an authentic, instinctive organ composer  whose music had genuine interest and vitality, played with as much imaginative use of the cathedral organ’s resources as could have been expected.

All this might well be influenced by my youthful brush with the sonatas. I had a good friend at secondary school whose family moved to Christchurch in the fifth form. There he took up the organ, and during my visits during holidays, we often shared the manuals and pedals in the organ loft of St Paul’s church, Papanui; among other stuff, there was a volume of these sonatas, bits of which we, or rather, he, found his way through. But I fear they made little impression on me.

This time, Mendelssohn certainly made more impact on me, but not quite to the degree urged by Michael Stewart.

 

Enthusiasm for Orchestra Wellington, with Anna Leese, in war-time masterpieces by Strauss

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Last Words: Capriccio

Richard Strauss: Festmusik der Stadt Wien for brass and timpani (arr. Maunder)
Metamorphosen: Study for 23 solo strings
Capriccio Op.85: Prelude and Final Scene

Orchestra Wellington conducted by Marc Taddei, with Anna Leese (soprano)

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 16 July 2016, 7.30pm

The latest in Orchestra Wellington’s innovative ‘Last Words’ series of subscription concerts featured a variety of music, despite being all from one composer.  The works were all written late in the composer’s life.  Marc Taddei made it apparent in his pre-concert talk (with young composer Tabea Squire) that he held Strauss in high regard.  The composer had considered the opera Capriccio to be his last work.  However, the other two works on the programme were written later, as were the well-loved Four Last Songs (programmed for performance later this year by the NZSO with soloist German soprano Christiane Libor).

Doing things a little differently, Orchestra Wellington had the announcements to the audience before the players came on.  Then the brass only (plus timpani) came onto the platform, where they stood at the rear, on low tiers.  This looked very effective.  Only the tuba-player and the timpanist sat. Festmusik der Stadt Wien, “composed in 1943 as thanks for having been awarded the Beethoven Prize – and also as thanks to the city of Vienna…[for] personal protection from Nazi harassment…”, featured characterful themes.  One would not have imagined, hearing this music, that a war was raging and that people were being killed.

The music became more military with a joyful fanfare towards the end, and then a slower, more lyrical passage intervened.  A final militaristic outburst ended the work.  It must have suited its occasion well, but has not been standard symphony orchestra fare.

Now the string players came on, for Metamorphosen.  They also stood to play (though not, of course, the cellos and double basses).  Concertmaster Vesa-Matti Leppänen was borrowed from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, and a fine job he made of his role.  As a friend remarked in the interval, there’s a difference between the NZSO and this orchestra.  Nevertheless they play well, and it was good to hear them with an inspiring concertmaster and their usual energetic and talented conductor.

The magical opening on cellos alone wove a spell that typified the entire work.  Taddei had alluded in his talk to the ambiguity around the keys employed in the piece.  He said that it is ostensibly in C major, but metmorphoses into other keys, but eventually arriving at C minor passing through E flat on the way.  Indeed, one could not have said what the key was in these opening passages.  Leppänen led the violins in their gradual entry into the music; finally they take over.

The piece’s slowly shifting, writhing tonality seems to express sorrow and mourning.  By 1944-45 when it was composed, the situation in Germany and Austria had changed for the worse.  Taddei, in his introduction to the audience, called it one of the most profound works ever written.  It was written with a Goethe poem in mind, a choral setting of which Strauss rejected in favour of the setting for strings.  It could not help but be a commentary on Germany’s position at the time.

The violin of Vesa-Matti Leppänen struggled to rise in hope above the deeper-toned instruments and their despondent contortions.  There was splendid playing from all, but especially from their leader.   However, there was no let-up in the course the music was taking.  Towards the end, a section of minor chords and solemn homophonic music took over, and there were echoes of the composer’s much earlier Death and Transfiguration (1899).

Taddei’s conducting both works in the first half without the score before him was impressively conspicuous.

For the final work a full orchestra was employed, conventionally seated.  Marc Taddei again introduced the work; there was no separate presenter/interviewer this time, as at some of last year’s concerts.

Enchanting strings opened the Prelude to Capriccio, followed by more solo work for Leppänen.  The winding path of the music through chromatic byways was reminiscent of Metamorphosen, and much Strauss music.  Eventually the horn enters – and so does the soloist.  Sensibly, no break was made between the Prelude and the Final Scene, thus maintaining the mood, unbroken by applause.

The other horns join in, introducing the romantic music to accompany the countess’s thoughts on whether that music by one of her suitors is more important to the opera-within-an-opera than are the words of her other suitor, the poet.  Percussion and woodwind join in the delightful soundscape, then Anna Leese sings, varying her voice beautifully.  The harp adds to the romantic atmosphere; the music absolutely matches the meaning of the words.  Soaring phrases and high notes from Anna Leese were glorious, and appeared effortless.  She fitted the part beautifully.

The large body of strings were given lush orchestration, accompanied by intriguing woodwind flourishes.  Rising and falling cadences reminded me of the wonderful settings of words in the composer’s Four Last Songs, written a few years later and published posthumously.

The ending comes when, the countess having not made up her mind about music v. words, the majordomo (Roger Wilson) comes on to utter one line telling her ladyship that supper is served.  He goes off, and so does she, and a horn ends proceedings, just as it began them.  For his brief effort, Roger was rewarded with a bouquet, as of course was Anna Leese.

The hall was well filled, though not full.  The audience responded enthusiastically to a concert chiefly remarkable for the stunning singing of Anna Leese.  Someone remarked to me afterwards “This was Renée Fleming territory.”

 

Buxtehude’s credentials solidly confirmed at the 6th of the organ series at Saint Paul’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Buxtehude Project – Programme 6
Richard Apperley – organ

Buxtehude: Praeludium in C, BuxWV 136; ‘Nimm von uns, Herr…’ BuxWV 207; Fuga in B flat, Bux 176; Magnificat primi toni, BuxWV 203; Canzona in C, BuxWV 166; Praeludium in A minor, BuxWV 153

Wellington Cathedral of Saint Paul

Friday 15 July, 12:45 pm

On 17 June I covered some of the background to the formidable complete organ works of Dieterich Buxtehude, after the first four of the series had eluded me (read: Middle C, or I, had neglected them, a grave oversight).

Here was the 6th of the series.
The first work in the programme was fairly large, employing three fugues; optimistic in tone, as the key of C major seems to inspire in composers. It started with an imposing, somewhat rambling, rising scale – a kind of prelude to the Prelude. The middle fugue sounded more orthodox, in common time, coherent and interesting in its progress and it led to the third fugue cast in a gigue rhythm.

Next came a piece based on a chorale, a set of chorale variations which, to begin, employed much less formal registrations than the Praeludium: flutes and lighter reeds, suggesting bird-song. A second variation was more densely textured, and the subsequent variations continued to offer interesting forays in imaginative registers, often with quite bold counter-melodies underlying the main themes.

The Fuga in B flat was an elaborate exercise, as its several lines of counterpoint were punctuated by dense passages that were occasionally coloured by nasal sounding stops.

A Magnificat setting followed, in which the actual fugal passages alternated with more rhapsodic music, succeeding in exhibiting the fecundity of the composer’s melodic imagination and his ability to fuse grandeur and decorative passages.

Another Canzona (I heard one in the previous recital on 17 June) offered yet another vehicle for the composer’s ingenuity and mastery of the rich variety in styles of organ music that existed in the late 17th century: rippling meanderings; airy, whispering stops suggesting shimmering light; peaceful and lyrical phases; quite striking colour changes as hands moved from one manual to another.

And finally, a Praeludium that was even more imposing and engrossing than the opening one: this time in a minor key: Apperley’s note confessed to its being one of his favourites, and his virtuosic performance was convincing evidence of his opinion. It encompassed music of ever-changing mood, melodic and developmental richness and mastery. It moved through fugal phases and highly decorated scales and arpeggios, changing tempi and rhythms and abrupt changes of direction, all ending with a tumbling, highly complex and thrilling coda that must have left his congregation in the Marienkirche in Lübeck wide-eyed and stunned.

I confess to finding myself in a somewhat similar state after this second dose of the great Danish-German master. And this condition has to be very substantially attributed to the wonderful mastery of the cathedral’s organ by Richard Apperley.

You should look out for the next in the Buxtehude series: there’s nothing boring or pious about this music.

Coming up next Friday, the 22nd, is the first of the Mendelssohn series from Michael Stewart; then Buxtehude Episode 7 from Apperley on Friday 19 August.

 

Interesting variety of arias and songs from NZSM voice students

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Songs by various composers

Voice students of Te Koki New Zealand School of Music, accompanied by Mark W. Dorrell (piano)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 13 July 2016, 12.15pm

A variety of voices was heard at today’s concert, and a great variety of songs from 18th, 19th and 20th century composers – interesting repertoire.

Stefano Donaudy (1879-1925) was a composer new to me; he was Italian-French, and a resident of Palermo in Sicily.  He composed mainly vocal music, including operas, and is known today for a number of songs, of which ‘O del mio amato ben’ is one.  It was sung to open this student recital by Olivia Sheat (soprano), a fourth year student.  She has admirable voice production and her tone was beautifully sustained.  Along with well enunciated words and inaudible breathing, she made great work of this aria, as indeed with the utterly different ‘I shall not live in vain’ by Jake Heggie (b. 1961), where she characterised the splendid words of Emily Dickinson aptly and mellifluously.  However, I found Mark Dorrell’s accompaniment in the first song, and elsewhere in the recital, rather too loud at times.

Olivia Sheat’s third contribution was the wonderful ‘Mi tradi’ from Mozart’s Don Giovanni.  It was notable that the singer’s spoken introduction to the audience was very clear, and loud enough (without microphone!).  She did not drop her voice, after starting, as so many do.  The aria was sung very dramatically.  She will make a fine opera singer; presence, voice and interpretation were all in line.

Nicole Davey, another soprano (second-year), has a lighter voice, but she gave it plenty of variety.  A problem I find with a few quite noted singers is that although they have voices of fine quality, and sing accurately, they do not vary the timbre or even the dynamics very much.  A Pergolesi aria from his Stabat Mater suited Nicole well, and her ‘Vedrai carino’ from Don Giovanni was sung with very pleasing tone; she phrased Mozart’s lovely music splendidly.  Appropriately, the singer adopted a different vocal quality for ‘Bill’ from Jerome Kern’s Showboat.  In any case, it was set low in her voice.  Not all the English words were clear.

The opposite was the case with mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Harré’s singing of ‘The shearer’s wife’ by Dorothea Franchi, a New Zealand composer (and harpist), who died in 2003.  Here, the English words were clear and precise.  It was interesting to hear a voice so different from the previous singer’s.  Harré’s darker, deeper tone suited her first song: ‘Au cimetiére’ by Fauré.  This was very accomplished singing from a second-year student.  Her legato singing was superb, and her French pronunciation excellent.  It was a very touching performance.

Her final offering was ‘Smeton’s aria’ from Anna Bolena by Donizetti.  The lilting character of this aria was well portrayed.

Another soprano was Elyse Hemara, a third-year student.  She displayed a wide vocal range in her songs, with a rich tone throughout.  Her first song, the lovely ‘Lilacs’ by Rachmaninoff, started low in the voice, while the second, the same composer’s ‘How fair this spot’, was quite high.  Both were sung in Russian, and both, as befitted Rachmaninoff, the great pianist and composer for that instrument, had gorgeous accompaniments, beautifully played.  Her third aria was by Massenet, from his opera Herodiade: ‘Il est doux, il est bon’.  Hemara’s mature voice and good French pronunciation made a good job of it; one could imagine her singing it on an operatic stage, but she would need rather more facial expression and characterisation.

Here, as elsewhere, Mark Dorrell was required to play some complicated accompaniments when substituting for an orchestra, in the operatic arias.

The last singer was another third-year student, baritone Joseph Haddow.  His first song was ‘Die beiden grenadiere’ by Schumann, a setting of words by Heine that needs to display the irony in both poet’s and composer’s views of Napoleon and of war.  Haddow has a strong voice, and sang this song with suitable bravado and panache.  His habit of poking his head forward rather, needs to be overcome.  For ‘Ah! Per sempre io ti perdei’ from Bellini’s I Puritani he adopted a more dramatic tonal quality that suited the aria well.  This was fine singing: he has plenty of volume, but used subtlety as well.  There were one or two slight lapses of intonation – the only ones I heard throughout the recital.

It was a pleasure to hear fresh, new voices; I think that the opening singer was the only one I had heard before.  All were obviously well-taught, and gave intelligent and musical performances.  Naturally, their skill levels varied somewhat, but I think all present would feel pleased with what they heard.