Category: Live performance

Marvellous Wagnerian farewell (Siegfried and Götterdämmerung) for conductor Inkinen and his Symphony Orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen
Wagner Gala

Christine Goerke (soprano) and Simon O’Neill (tenor)

Episodes from Siegfried and Götterdämmerung

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 12 June, 6:30 pm

I hadn’t heard Eva Radich’s interview with soprano Christine Goerke on Upbeat before the concert (and that has a bit to do with the unfortunate shift of the programme’s time from midday to 2pm). But I heard it on Saturday morning. It was one of those wonderful, animated, intelligent, thoroughly prepared interviews that Eva invariably achieves with articulate and gifted people that reveals many of the physical and psychological issues that a great singer faces.

And the session ended with a recording of her singing Brünnhilde in the first scene of Act III of Die Walküre (‘The Ride of the Valkyries’) recorded when she sang the entire music drama with the NZSO in 2012. Not only was it a thrill to hear her performance again, but being allowed to focus on her singing, without visuals or much awareness of her fellow Valkyries, was an endorsement of her stature as one of the best Wagner sopranos in today’s post-Nilsson world.

Before discussing the present concert however, I must express what I think many must feel, that it is a shame – a lack of nerve and financial confidence perhaps – that the wonderful Walküre has not been followed by comparable semi-staged performances of both Siegfried and Götterdämmerung; better still would have been the more complete visual realisation such as the Parsifal at the 2006 International Arts Festival.

In this review I will mention more of the events in both works, as the programme notes rather dwelt on matters like orchestral instrumentation, Leitmotive, but did not adequately identify the excerpts performed and make clear what was sung and what was not.

The concert opened with the Prelude to Act III of Siegfried. It was a well-chosen, awe-inspiring introduction for an audience, few of whom had probably seen the work staged, with motifs relating, among others, to Wotan’s spear on which the ‘laws’ are inscribed and one touching the downfall of the regime of the gods.  That only takes a couple of minutes after which the first scene opens with Wotan (in Siegfried, The Wanderer) calling on earth goddess Erda (who had born Wotan’s many off-spring including Brünnhilde and the other Valkyries) to hear his account of the world’s condition and attend to her wisdom. I couldn’t tell whether the orchestra played, without voice, the Wanderer’s first lines of his call for Erde, skipping the rest.

Also passed over is Scene 2 where the Wanderer encounters Siegfried who is seeking the way to the fire-encircled rock on which Wotan had confined Brünnhilde at the end of Die Walküre. That fascinating encounter with its detailed etching of personalities and ambitions, ends with Siegfried breaking The Wanderer’s spear, thus finally destroying his authority and power: all wonderful stuff that one rather missed.

Simon O’Neill’s first appearance, after the Wanderer’s departure, is preceded by an ecstatic orchestral Interlude running through several motifs and seamlessly passing to the Introduction to Scene 3 where delightfully played wind passages capture the misty mountaintop. It sets the scene for Siegfried’s encounter, evading the ring of fire, to find the sleeping Brünnhilde, with calm violins before Siegfried murmurs “Selig Öde auf sonninger Höh”, and soon wakens her to lovely sequences of bassoons, bass clarinet, oboe, and harp.

Finally Brünnhilde wakes and slowly realises that this is the hero she saved while he was in Sieglinde’s womb. My memories of the wonderful Christine Goerke from her thrilling performance in Die Walküre in 2012 came back, as her performance unfolded. She presented a vivid impression of wonderment, with a penetrating, gleaming upper register that was perfectly integrated with the warmth and humanness of the lower part of her voice. There was both gentleness and intelligence in her portrayal, and even though the two stood on either side of the conductor, one could sense the rapport, growing slowly towards erotic attraction between them as the long scene progressed.

The two voices transmitted different characteristics, O’Neill’s seeming to emerge from a more self-observing and detached sensibility, yet heroic and hugely expressive, as the grain and intensity of his timbre created an engrossing drama. And his response to Brünnhilde reveals a sensitivity and gentleness that we get hardly a hint of in Siegfried’s relationship with Mime, in the first two acts of this part of the cycle. O’Neill approached that tenderness with genuine feeling, but one has to feel that he seems even more convincing when he has the opportunity to boast of his heroism in braving the flames, for example in “Durch brennendes Feuer”.

Because it is more frequently performed on its own, Die Walküre, with its Siegmund-Sieglinde love scene and Wotan’s moving farewell to Brünnhilde are better known high points. But this last scene of Siegfried is their match, and we await performances of it as soon as the NZSO can gather courage and resources.

Then after the interval, Götterdämmerung. Here, the whole span of the work was encompassed, starting with the opening of the near-40 minute Prologue where we meet the Norns, the equivalent of the Fates in Greek mythology, who reflect on the past of the race of gods and on what will happen. They weave a rope that determines the course of events, but it frays and breaks and they return to the depths of the earth. The Prologue presents a beautiful depiction of Dawn, the NZSO strings exhibiting Wagner’s genius not merely in the brass department, here for strings (if anyone had doubted).

Brünnhilde and Siegfried wake from their night(s? – we’re not really told how long the lovers are together) of ecstasy, and within minutes the devoted Siegfried, seemingly prompted by nothing, prepares to leave his lover on the rock, protected by the fire to be sure, in order to pursue heroic deeds. In any case we hear the exchanges between the lovers, with their ecstatic climax, followed by the orchestral Siegfried’s Journey to the Rhine.

Throughout, of course, a huge amount of the excitement of the performances derived from the superb playing by the orchestra, very conspicuously the horns – nine of them – with four picking up Wagner tubas at the start of Siegfried Act III, and in the Prologue to Götterdämmerung.  Other brass players tend to be less conspicuous, but their contributions, trumpets, trombones, the tuba, were always distinguished. Wagner’s oboes often catch the ear too, as in Siegfried’s journey to the Rhine which is not just a mighty brass fanfare, and the NZSO’s oboes are a joy.

Contrary to some belief, Wagner’s orchestra is not inconsiderate of singers: instrumentation complements rather than smothers the singer, diminishes and thins out to allow the voice and the composer’s own words to penetrate and be understood.

In the first and second acts proper, Götterdämmerung introduces a new race, the Gibichungs, introducing an entirely new element to the story. Their only known connection with the main figures in the Ring is through the Nibelung, Alberich, who is Hagen’s father. In Act I Siegfried arrives at the Gibichung castle where bizarre events take place: Siegfried is drugged and is at once attracted to Gutrune, sister of Gunther, the king of the Gibichungs; then Siegfried is persuaded to give Brünnhilde to Gunther in marriage and then, disguised as Guntyher, Siegfried returns down the Rhine to capture her. Brünnhilde is forced to ‘marry’ Gunther and the latter’s sister Gutrune ‘marries’ Siegfried;

Confusion proliferates: at the end of Act I Scene 2 we get our only sample of the act with a rich and beautiful orchestral interlude, a compendium of a number of the most evocative and relevant motifs; but there was nothing else from the first two acts; it precedes the scene where one of the Valkyries, Waltraute, attempts to persuade Brünnhilde to give the ring back to the Rhine Maidens; then Siegfried arrives at Brünnhilde’s sanctuary, disguised as Gunther, tears the Ring from her hand and forces her, protesting violently, to accompany him back to the Gibichung castle.

In Act II the confusion, for Brünnhilde, Gunther and Gutrune increases, exploited by Hagen, leading nevertheless to Brünnhilde being forced to ‘marry’ Gunther. Brünnhilde, unaware that Siegfried’s inexplicable behavior is the effect of a potion, eventually concludes that he has betrayed her, and  she falls in with Hagen’s plan to murder him.

At the start of Act III as Siegfried is hunting with Gunther, Hagen and co, he is tackled by the Rhine Maidens in another attempt to have the Ring returned to the Rhine; Siegfried refuses , is induced to tell his heroic history of forging the sword, dragon slaying. Then, after taking a reversing potion from Hagen, Siegfried recalls his marriage to Brünnhilde, and relates it: a ‘treachery’ that gives Hagen the excuse to kill him.

The performance picks up immediately after Hagen has killed Siegfried with his spear, and Siegfried, finally aware of the reality, addresses dying words to Brünnhilde. The sequence opens with the famous Funeral music for Siegfried and skipping the exchanges between Gunther, Hagen, Gutrune, devoted the last half hour to Brünnhilde’s concluding soliloquy, the Immolation scene, in which the orchestra demonstrated its astonishing command through the endless succession of Leitmotive, from many episodes of the cycle, with a panoply of brilliant orchestral colours and moving emotional structures.

Goerke sustained a level of energy, of vocal drama, that gave the audience a wonderful taste of the way the whole marvellous creation comes to an end, an end after four and a half hours of music, when most proponents of Brünnhilde’s role show at least some signs of tiredness, but she has been spared the huge challenge of singing the entire role.

The audience was even moved to come to its feet at the end, no doubt to mark both a great and momentous performance and the departure of a gifted musical director and chief conductor.

It was much more than a mere taste of the two parts of the Ring that had never been performed in New Zealand; but surely an enticement for many who will have heard this performance here and in Auckland and Christchurch, to call for an awakening to this astonishing music drama, as well as a reminder to New Zealand Opera and, one would even dare hope, the International Arts Festival in Wellington that some of the greatest dramatic music ever written still awaits full performance in this country, that calls itself civilised.

 

 

Pianist Catherine Norton initiates delightful, welcome renaissance in song recitals

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Songbook: an anthology of songs about song from five centuries

Songs by Finzi, Telemann, Josquin, Mahler, Canteloube, Vaughan Williams, Browne, Wolf, Schoeck, Stephan, Rachmaninov, Hahn, Farquhar, Bolcom

Amelia Berry (soprano), Elisabeth Harris (mezzo-soprano), Declan Cudd (tenor), James Henare (bass-baritone), Roger Wilson (bass-baritone), Richard Greager (tenor). Catherine Norton (piano), Terence Dennis (piano)

Adam Concert Room

Wednesday 10 June 2015, 6.30pm

Resounding congratulations are due to Catherine Norton, who is not only a superb accompanist, but also is the initiator of Songbook.   She has fairly recently returned from study and performing overseas, mainly in the United Kingdom.  She has worked with the Young Songmakers’ Almanac, descendant of The Songmakers’ Almanac, an English vocal group which toured here some years ago with Chamber Music New Zealand.  This doubtless gave her the idea of doing something similar here.

The presence of Amelia Berry (like Catherine an alumnae of Victoria’s New Zealand School of Music) and James Clayton, from Australia, as soloists in the recent production of La Cenerentola was obviously a spur.  Unfortunately the latter was ill, and at short notice some changes had to be made; two stalwarts of Wellington’s vocal scene, Richard Greager and Roger Wilson, plus the fortuitous presence in Wellington of that doyen of accompanists, Terence Dennis (now Blair Professor of Music at the University of Otago) outstandingly filled the gaps.

I was delighted to discover such an innovation as this concert.  I have bemoaned for years the lack of live song recitals in Wellington these days.  Occasional lunchtime concerts feature singers, but mostly they sing operatic extracts.

There are thousands of wonderful songs out there, in a variety of languages.  The audience was treated to a programme printed in a very readable typeface, with full texts and translations where required, the latter by Catherine Norton herself.  Another excellent feature of the printed programme was that not only were composers’ dates and opus numbers of the songs given where possible, but also the year of composition of the songs, plus the names and dates of the poets.

An eclectic selection of songs about songs, or songs containing songs was a good introduction to what one hopes will become a series of themed recitals.  Included in the mix of singers were cicadas, a donkey, a cricket, a couple of cuckoos, and a nightingale – not to mention the occasional lover, of course.

Elisabeth Harris had the unfortunate task of opening the concert at short notice, with ‘Intrada’ by Gerald Finzi. Some uncertain low notes hardly spoiled the performance of this song (poem by Thomas Traherne) and were understandable in the circumstances.  The voice has matured and become more sonorous since I last heard it.  Catherine Norton was a simply superb accompanist, here and throughout the concert.

Amelia Berry sang a short song, entitled in English translation ‘A new thing’ by Telemann.  A delicious song, it typified Norton’s enterprise in selecting the programme; the words in translation read “Presenting something new, / not after the old tastes, / will depress anyone / who does not hatch anything new himself. / But what kind of slavery is it / to set such narrow limits? / whether it is old, or new, it’s enough if it’s useful and delightful.”

Josquin’s amusing ‘El grillo’ (The cricket) was sung by a quartet of the four School of Music graduates.  Their blend and matching dynamics, pronunciation and excellent diction in this unaccompanied piece allowed the audience to enjoy it amply.

From Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Roger Wilson and Terence Dennis performed ‘Lob des hohen Verstandes’ (translated as ‘In praise of higher understanding’).  This amusing song about a singing contest between a cuckoo and a nightingale, judged by a donkey, had Mahler writing in picturesque style, especially when it came to narrating the donkey’s judgement.  It was performed with much
gusto by these two splendid musicians; a dramatisation could hardly have given us much more.

Amelia Berry returned to perform a Languedoc folk song arranged by Joseph Canteloube in 1948: ‘O up!’  A cuckoo featured again, and a cicada.  The excellent French and the style with which Berry put it over embodied the humour. She sang next a Vaughan Williams song ‘Orpheus with his lute’.  She has great tone throughout her range, and her phrasing and enunciation of words are very pleasing. Sometimes I found her a little too loud for the size of the venue.

Catherine Norton had chosen two songs by men who died 100 years ago this year, during the First World War, one English, one German.  Richard Greager sang ‘To Gratiana dancing and singing’ by William Denis Browne, to words by Richard Lovelace – a fine poem.  In this the accompaniment was particularly lovely – and not easy.  Like Roger Wilson, Greager demonstrated that he continues in good voice, and sang this enchanting music so well that it was hard to remember it was at short notice.

This range of gorgeous songs, some familiar; others not, did not even touch on the most famous song writers, except Wolf; his was the next song: ‘Was für ein Lied soll dir gesungen werden’, sung by Amelia Berry.  Again, her language was extremely good, and she introduced light and shade into her rendition.

A poem ‘Ravenna’ by Herman Hesse was set by Othmar Schoeck, a Swiss composer who died in 1957.  The words revealed that Hesse was not particularly impressed by the town, and the setting was unusual musically.  However, James Henare sang it well in his wonderfully deep bass voice.

Tenor Declan Cudd performed ‘The canticle of night’ by the other war victim, Rudi Stephan.  Cudd was the only one of the singers to perform his song from memory, and his full tenor voice was very lively; his performance had plenty of volume when required, and the song demonstrated yet again that all these composers set their poets’ words very well.

The best-known item was Rachmaninov’s ‘Vocalise’, written in 1915 (another centenary).  Amelia Berry demonstrated superb breath control, and varied her voice and dynamics beautifully.  Catherine Norton brought out the melodic phrases in the accompaniment splendidly.

Richard Greager gave great feeling and expression to the French song ‘Le souvenir d’avoir chanté’ by Reynaldo Hahn.  (Wikipedia gives the date of composition as 1898; the 1888 given in the programme seemed a little improbable, even though Hahn was a child prodigy – he was born in 1874).

The New Zealand element, ‘Synaesthesia’ by David Farquhar, a setting of a poem by Cilla McQueen, was sung by Elisabeth Harris.  The repetitive nature of the  accompaniment and also of the vocal line were part of an effective and commandingly sung item.  Like Berry, Harris has learned to use her resonators well.  And Norton demonstrated that she is well able to work in a huge variety of styles throughout what was only three-quarters of an hour.

The programme ended with a song by American William Bolcom (born 1938): ‘Over the piano’, a cabaret song.  Amelia Berry sang it in suitable style, leaning against the piano and supplying appropriate gestures and facial expressions.  The poem ending with ‘Goodbye’ made it an apt end to the recital, although another was in the programme which could not be performed given the absence of James Clayton.  However it would have been fitting: a Hindemith setting of words by Francis Thompson, beginning “Go, songs, for ended is our brief, sweet play”.

It was a treat to hear a programme like this.  Thanks to all concerned – do it again soon!

 

Moving performances of three Tudor composers by The Tudor Consort

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Tudor Consort conducted by Michael Stewart
Music by three Tudor composers

Robert Wylkynson: Salve Regina and Jesus autem transiens – Creed (Credo in Deum à 13)
John Sheppard: The Lord’s Prayer; I give you a new commandment; Libera nos’, salva nos (I) and (II); In manus tuas; Media vita in morte sumus
Thomas Tallis: If ye love me, keep my commandments; In manus tuas

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart

Saturday 6 June, 7:30 pm

The Tudor Consort returned to its origins with this concert at the Catholic Basilica (as we used to call it). Its focus was on 500 years ago, and two anniversaries. Robert Wylkynson died that year and John Sheppard was born – both approximatrions. Putting it in historic perspective, as Michael Stewart made short introductory remarks that set the scene, Henry VIII had just come to the throne, after his father, the first Tudor king Henry VII died, in 1509.

Wylkynson was a contemporary of early Renaissance composers like Ockeghem and Josquin des Prez and ?lesser English composers like Robert Fayrfax and William Cornish. His career fell largely during the reign of Henry VII (who won the throne with the Battle of Bosworth in 1485), when Catholicism was still the established religion. Though Protestant movements had been challenging many of the doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church for a couple of centuries – for example with translation of the Bible into vernacular languages. Thus his music is suffused with elaborate polyphony, prolonged melismata, in Latin of course.

Though both Tallis and Sheppard were and remained Catholics, both accommodated themselves to the fairly mild musical demands of Henry VIII’s reign, but had to make much more radical changes during the six years of Edward VI’s reign from 1547. He imposed the far more rigorous (and violent) laws of a more thoroughgoing Protestantism, in both doctrine and liturgy, where Latin was decidedly out. Sheppard died at about the last year of Mary I’s reign (1553 – 1558), when determined Catholicism sought to regain lost ground.

Three of the Sheppard anthems and one of Tallis’s were in Latin, so probably pre-1547, while the English settings of the two composers, The Lord’s Prayer, If you love me and I give you a new commandment were written after Edward’s accession.

So it was Wylkynson’s fine Salve Regina that opened; the first words an arresting exclamation, which quickly calmed with a brief solo soprano that led on to the gentle prayer-like, sentimental if you like, body of the poem. They took care with the expressive dynamics available between the subdued men’s parts and the rest, delighting in their command of a lot of high-lying music for the sopranos. There were many details, involving individual voices, and smaller groups within the choir that I’m sure held the audience’s delighted attention.

It was interesting to compare the expansive and rich sounds of this choir, so beautifully adapted to this acoustic with the less comfortable sounds of the Wellington Youth Orchestra a week before, in a space not designed for them.

The second of Wylkynson’s only four surviving works was the Creed, or Credo, the words looking the same as the Credo of the Mass. This one a canon setting for thirteen male voices: Christ moving among the twelve apostles who were ranged around a bare white cloth-covered table; Michael Stewart himself sang Christ. A 1300 reproduction of the apostles illustrated the piece in the programme, with balloons around the relevant words of each. This too was a much more than plain, hymn-like setting, plenty of rhetoric and dramatic detail, clearly conceived to keep the congregation turned on.

That ended Wylkynson’s contribution. Then came English motets, or anthems I suppose, two by Sheppard and one by Tallis. As well as the diktat demanding the liturgy in English, came the edict against fancy musical setting, burdened with decoration and elaborate polyphony. The change was almost shocking: one note to a syllable which meant you get through the text much faster, and the loss of the magic wrought by an only partly understood language. (No doubt a heretical remark, but I suspect shared by many atheists as well as believers).

So we had, not Pater Noster, but ‘Our Father’, and I give you a new commandment by Sheppard, both sung by a reduced choir of around ten, of men and women, again including Stewart as leader and singer. And they were more straight-forward with less variety of dynamics and colour but beautifully balanced and expressive.

In between came Tallis’s beautiful If you love me, keep my commandments, evidently widely known and performed, witness Wikipedia. Though spare in its numbers of voices, detail and clarity made up for volume and density.

Latin returned for the rest of the concert: two settings by Sheppard of Libera nos, salva nos, probably from before 1547. This was the full choir, the harmonies were still rich and dark, the polyphony elaborate, over the bass that pronounced the original cantus firmus, revelling in the Catholic permissiveness; the other setting was shorter, stylistically similar.

Then two settings, one each by Tallis and Sheppard, of In manus tuas, described for those erudite in Catholic liturgy, as ‘a responsory for the late evening service of Compline’ (Compline is the last office of the day in monastic ritual). Here the choir was again stripped back to about 10, and though in Latin, was a more economical and simply moving. The Sheppard version was a little more lyrical, emitting more warmth, more variety in the use of various parts of the choir, men and women separately at times, much of it calm. The men alone brought it to a hushed conclusion.

The biggest work on the programme was Sheppard’s Media vita in morte sumus. It is a Latin antiphon which the composer has embedded in the separate Nunc dimittis, a traditional ‘Gospel Canticle’ of Night Prayer (Compline).

Stewart’s programme note quoted the surmise that its length and emotional intensity suggested something more than mere liturgical purpose; perhaps for a memorial service. So it moves majestically, in meandering harmonies, where certain words, the Responses themselves, were sung with compelling force: ‘Sancte Deus’ …’Sancte fortis’ … ‘Sancte et misericors Salvator’ …  The Nunc Dimittis stood in sharp contrast, sung in plain chant, before the return to the second part of the antiphon which resumed the sustained sense of religious ecstasy of the earlier part. There was a certain sameness after a few minutes, but then a realisation of the unique strength of the composition and its likely impact on listeners in the 16th century.

At the end of this moving performance the choir sang a tribute to Jack Body who had died a fortnight earlier: the fifth of his Five Lullabies, written in 1989.

 

 

Admirable, heart-warming concert closes an inspiring NZSM chamber music weekend

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Combined Final Concert of the 2015 NZSM Queen’s Birthday Chamber Music Weekend
The culmination of the weekend

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University

Monday 1 June, 1:30 pm

The New Zealand School of Music helped keep the Queen’s Birthday road toll down by attracting scores of secondary and tertiary students to a sort of immersion programme that would prepare secondary school competitors in the NZCT Chamber Music Contest and general tuition for chamber music groups in a communal atmosphere, and keep them off the roads.

It had been a busy week for many of the participants, as I noticed the names of about ten of the players in the Wellington Youth Orchestra on Friday evening were among those at this Monday afternoon concert.

The Chamber Music Weekend had coincided and in some way combined with the school of music’s Classical Saxophone Festival, and student saxophonists as well as a couple of tutors contributed to the concert. Otherwise the programme consisted of a series of string and piano trios. While Debbie Rawson led the saxophone section, Helene Pohl and New Zealand String Quartet colleagues Douglas Beilman and Rolf Gjelsten led in the general chamber music area.

The School of Music Saxophone Quartet opened the concert with a couple of pieces that they’d played in the Wednesday concert of the school’s Showcase at St Andrew’s on The Terrace. Excellent individual performances, though I felt that their sound would have coalesced better if they had placed themselves further back from the audience.

Almost all the groups announced their music, some well projected, some not so well; but the practice is very important, for to be a live musician involves more than just musical skill and talent. Delivery: speech comfortably paced; don’t gabble composers’ names and musical terms and titles; make it sound as if you’re really interested.

A string trio was next, by Taneyev (stress on second syllable – Tanyéyev), and played by the eponymous group. Though written early in the 20th century, for two violins and a viola, it sounded remarkably Haydnish, showing little of the influence of Tchaikovsky, his teacher and life-long friend. Here was a creditable performance from a promising young trio of a piece that was not overtly very interesting.

The Alsergrund Trio (cellist Tessa told us that’s the Vienna suburb when Schubert was born), played their namesake’s first piano trio and made a very good job of it, both individually and as an ensemble. Their playing of the first movement was bold and confident, fully justifying their courage in taking on one of the great masterpieces of the repertoire.

It would have come as a pleasant surprise to many to hear the set of three songs by Glinka (we hear too little Russian song), attractively arranged for piano and two violins – the violins making as if the songs really were lovely duets. (I wondered why the title of the three songs was in German: I don’t see a group of Glinka’s songs so-named).  All three players acquitted themselves beautifully.

The first half ended with the opening movement of Smetana’s anguished piano trio in which the oddly named Melodious Thunk (what connection with the great jazz pianist?) captured the drama and the close-to-the-surface emotion. All players were in command of it, though the piano was a bit loud: I was tempted single out cellist Bethany Angus, in particular, but it would be invidious to attempt singling out.

A solo saxophone piece opened the second half: Tomomi Johnston demonstrated an understanding of Piazzolla’s style, and we could hear the breathing challenges that she managed very well.

The rather forgotten but slowly being revived Benjamin Goddard has not been known for much other than his opera Jocelyn; famous for a lovely Berceuse. These movements from Six Duettini, were charming music which the three very young-looking players, called Trio Souvenirs, handled sympathetically and very musically.

The Debussy Trio played his very early and unfamiliar piano trio (only rediscovered in recent years); all three captured the tone of the work, which reflected Fauré’s very strong influence, in a performance of, was it two or three(?), movements. The three players didn’t blend very comfortably, but I suspect the reason lay more with Debussy’s inexperience in his teens; nevertheless they played with impressive confidence and accuracy.

Two of the weekend’s saxophone tutors broke the domination by violins and pianos with three amusing Conversations by Richard Rodney Bennett: two baritone saxophones exhibited accord and sympathy and mild dissent.

To play Saint-Saëns’s second piano trio, a particularly impressive group, named after the composer, awakened me to the first movement of a piece I didn’t know: another persuasive exhibit for the defence and rehabilitation in the court of his reputation.

Finally came the ‘other’ piano trio of Shostakovich; that written when at the Leningrad Conservatorium in 1923. Lyrical, light-hearted though far from straight-forward, with several moments of curious complexity, it has been called “the most romantic music that Shostakovich ever wrote”. It too was revelatory, in the hands of Trio Glivenko (Who? S. fell in love with Tatyana Glivenko as he was recovering from tuberculosis in Crimea, and dedicated the work to her). The trio included two musicians who’d greatly impressed me earlier, Bethany Angus and Claudia Tarrant-Matthews (now at the piano, having been the accomplished violinist in the Debussy), plus the equally talented Shweta Iyer: confidence, in total command.

I had hoped to discover more details about the music, about the groups that performed, where they came from, which ones were competitors in the forthcoming NZCT Chamber Music Contest, which were at university level. And I’d wondered why there were no groups of wind instrument players.

However, this was an admirable initiative which I hope becomes a regular event. School of Music director Euan Murdoch remarked during the interval that the high achievement of young New Zealanders in the field of chamber music is admired internationally. The work of Chamber Music New Zealand and the various programmes undertaken with the universities, particularly Victoria, are helping compensate for the increasing neglect of the arts in general, and classical music in particular, by most primary and secondary schools.

 

Wellington Youth Orchestra under Hamish McKeich with winning Brahms and Rachmaninov

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Youth Orchestra conducted by Hamish McKeich

Brahms: Variations on the Theme by Joseph Haydn (St Anthony Variations), Op 56a
Rachmaninov: Symphony No 2 in E minor, Op 27

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart

Friday 29 May, 6:30 pm

One might as well begin by quoting the information about the provenance of the theme of the Brahms variations that is offered in Wikipedia:

“In 1870, Brahms’s friend Carl Ferdinand Pohl, the librarian of the Vienna Philharmonic Society, who was working on a Haydn biography at the time, showed Brahms a transcription he had made of a piece attributed to Haydn titled Divertimento No. 1. The second movement bore the heading “St. Anthony Chorale,” and it is this movement which, in its entirety, forms the theme on which the variations are based. Brahms’s statement of the theme varies in small but significant ways from the original, principally with regard to instrumentation. Some sources state the Divertimento was probably written by Ignaz Pleyel, but this has not been definitely established. A further question is whether the composer of the divertimento actually wrote the “St. Anthony Chorale” or simply quoted an older theme taken from an unknown source. To date, no other mention of a “St. Anthony Chorale” has been found.”

Whatever its origins, Brahms rightly spotted it as a splendid basis for a set of variations, first for two pianos, which he then orchestrated. It was virtually the first full-scale set of orchestral variations, separate from those that often formed the substance of a symphonic movement.

I have often commented on the challenge presented by the Basilica’s acoustic for orchestral performances, at once very clear, likely to expose the slightest blemish, and at the same time liable to amplify bass sounds – timpani and basses in a sometimes uncomfortable way. And while I’m at it, it will not be considered unduly harsh to observe that, naturally, a youth orchestra can never be expected to produce perfection: minor imperfections were a bit conspicuous here and there.

For example there was some imbalance between woodwind instruments which occasionally made middle parts louder than the melody line.

However, the orchestra, under the vivid and energizing direction of Hamish McKeich, captured the spirit and grandeur of the work, in all the colours that Brahms used to create a set variations that maintained steady interest; the studious exposition of the big tune, set the scene splendidly. Strings, even though violas were few in number, provided a good foundation in the first variation; woodwinds were attractive in Variation II, in fact, the piece as a whole provides a great deal of rewarding activity for the winds which met the challenges very well. (It’s fair to note of course, that some of the fine wind playing was due to a bit of support from professional players).

I enjoyed the accurate staccato liveliness of the fifth variation, and then the driving dance rhythms of the sixth. In the lovely Grazioso variation, horns and strings sounded particularly happy.

However, the Rachmaninov symphony was probably the main attraction, and indeed this was a performance that, even though I am used to being surprised at the opulence and energy of performances by young orchestras, thoroughly delighted me. Right from the ominous opening on low strings, thanks to the muscular support by the five double basses, and a pretty fair evocation of the gorgeous wind chords, the music gathered itself up with the sense of ever-expanding momentum, endless variety in the handling of the various themes. Both the build-up to and the descent from the big climax in the middle was an emotional winner. Though about 20 minutes long, the first movement just doesn’t ever need to end, and this was my feeling here.

The Scherzo always seems rather a descent from the endless enchantment of the first movement, but the energy of this dynamic performance rapidly took possession. Sure, there are delicate refinements in the piece that were not perfectly caught, but the spirit was sustained. The third movement lasts about 15 minutes, capturing the audience at once with something more akin to the first movement, the gorgeous string melody followed by long and beautifully played clarinet and bassoon (in a high register) solos – then duet. McKeich again created wonderful ecstatic episodes that seemed to prepare for the close, only to bring the music back for renewed experiences.

The last movement, again, offers yet more variety of emotional explorations, and they were beautifully paced, interspersed with exclamatory passages, strongly and accurately created, finally providing the audience with a succession of phantom perorations, as the Finale weaves its long path to the end.

I assume there was a reasonable amount of publicity for this concert as the cathedral was well filled. I heard about it through an email only a day before: I’m very glad I did.

 

A new Baroque ensemble on a cold evening at Wesley Church, Taranaki Street, musical strengths, but…

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Camerata: Haydn in the Church

Handel: Concerto Grosso, Op.6 no.9
Alessandro Marcello: Oboe concerto in D minor
Haydn:. Symphony no.1

Camerata, led by Anne Loeser, with Peter Dykes (oboe)

Wesley Church, Taranaki Street

Thursday, 28 May 2015, 5.45pm

Camerata is a new, small chamber orchestra.  Anne Loeser is a violinist in the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, where Peter Dykes also plays.  For the first item, the group consisted of four violins, viola, cello and double bass; only the latter two instruments were played by males (not counting Peter Dykes).

Its programme was attractive, but the hour-long concert did not attract any more than a small audience.  Other negatives were the lack of a printed programme, and above all, the fact that the church was not heated.  On a cold winter’s night, that made the experience much less enjoyable than it should have been.  I was tempted to leave between items on this account alone; my feet, neck and hands were very cold, despite a woolly jumper and a thick coat.

The Handel concerto grosso is a most appealing work.  I did not hear all the introductory comments from the lectern, although there seemed to be some connection with the composer’s organ concerto that is usually given the subtitle ‘The Cuckoo and the Nightingale’.  Perhaps it was too cold a night for these birds; I was not aware of them.  Wikipedia says “The second and third movements are reworkings of the first two movements Handel’s organ concerto in F major, HWV 295, often referred to as “The cuckoo and the nightingale”, because of the imitation of birdsong.

The playing was fine, and idiomatically baroque.  The contrasts between the movements was delightful.  The fast final movement was not quite as accurate as the earlier ones.

Next, oboist Peter Dykes entered, to play Marcello’s oboe concerto – the one commandeered by Bach for a harpsichord concerto (no.3).  This was splendid oboe playing, with appropriate ornamentation according to the practice of the Baroque period.  Marcello was roughly contemporaneous with J.S. Bach.  The adagio slow movement is particularly beautiful.

After its solemnity comes the delightful third movement, presto.  Again, lots of flourishes ornamented the movement gloriously.  The piece is not easy; it is pitched high in the oboe register throughout.

Then came the Haydn in the Church: his Symphony no.1.  Now two horn players were added to the chamber orchestra.  I could hazard a guess at their names, but as one was hidden behind the viola player, I couldn’t be sure.

This is a very bright and enchanting work.  The oboe and horns play in the first and third movements but not in the andante second movement.  The whole was played gracefully with a splendid variety of dynamics. In the second movement for strings alone, I couldn’t help remembering the Baroque Players of old, founded and directed by Peter Walls – a former Wellington-based chamber orchestra.

Intonation was not always perfect, particularly in this movement.  I wondered if the players’ fingers were cold.

The presto finale had the winds back in fine fettle. Altogether, this was a series of creditable performances.  More credit would have accrued if the church had been heated.

 

The strings of the School of Music take turn with wonderful Bach programme for St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand School of Music Showcase Week at St Andrew’s

The string players in an all-Bach programme

Violin sonata No 1 in G minor, BWV 1001 – Adagio played by Katie-Lee Taylor
           Fugue played by Matt Cook
Cello suite No 2 in D minor, BWV 1008 – Prelude played by Olivia Wilding
Violin Partita No 3 in E, BWV 1006, Loure and Gavotte en rondeau – played by Grace Stainthorpe
Brandenburg Concerto No 3 in G, BWV 1048 played by the above students plus 15 others

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Thursday 28 May, 12:15 pm

This was the last of the four concerts devoted to student players from the university School of Music.  Perhaps in future years we’ll also have concerts from woodwind and brass players, and singers, even organists and harpsichordists and percussionists; but these four have shown that it’s possible to attract good audiences more than just once a week. The limitation is no doubt the level of energy that the unpaid concert manager Marjan van Waardenberg can call up, and the availability of the church. (And it also should be pointed out that all musicians perform unpaid at the lunchtime concerts).

The first half hour of the concert was taken up with individual violinists and a cellist playing movements from Bach’s unaccompanied suites and sonatas.

Violinists Katie-Lee Taylor and Matt Cook began playing, in turn, the first two movements, Adagio
and Fugue, from the first violin sonata, in G minor. It was an admirable performance of the Adagio, with all the signs of careful tutorial guidance and music intuition on Taylor’s part, scrupulous attention to dynamics and the shaping or ornaments. There was interesting variety of tone and an organic feeling of life as if the music was breathing.

While she had played with the score before her, Matt Cook played from memory and paid a small price for that in the middle of what is certainly a difficult and complex fugue; so his courage and demeanour were to be admired in his recovery and persistence, though the experience somewhat affected the freedom and elasticity of his playing for a little while. The audience applauded him warmly.

Another minor key piece was the choice of Olivia Wilding – the Prelude from the second cello suite in D minor. Her handling of the bow created a lovely tone, mellow (at one point I craned my head to see whether she had put a mute on) and varied in dynamics, and she allowed herself attractive freedom in her tempi. She used a score.

Grace Stainthorpe ended the solo section of the concert with the Loure and the most popular movement from the violin sonatas and suites, the Gavotte en rondeau, from the third partita. Bravely, she dispensed with the score, with only a minor glitch during the Gavotte. Her playing was careful, and like the others, showed fastidious attention to its phrasing and rhythms, though I thought she might have exploited her opportunities for emphatic bowing occasionally.

There was a lot of stage rearrangement to accommodate the full ensemble – the five cellos (though six were named in the programme) arrayed at the front while violins flanked the violas in the middle of the back row.

While a couple of programmes in this series taxed their audiences (and themselves) by playing unfamiliar music, the strings made no apologies for playing great music, most of which was pretty well known by the average lunchtime-concert-goer. Few works are more loved than the Brandenburg concertos, and No 3 might well be at the top. The music might have almost played itself, but there was no missing the special affection that the players managed to convey in their buoyant, spirited performance. Professor Donald Maurice conducted and he introduced the concerto briefly to draw attention to the Calvinist environment of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen where Bach composed this and much other instrumental music. There was no choir or organ, but a musical Prince who valued Bach who wrote little other than instrumental music for the court.

Maurice noted that the non-existent middle, slow movement was to be supplied by a cadenza played by the orchestra leader, Laura Barton and it was indeed a chance for another excellent solo presentation, involving a splendid crescendo.  Much of the liveliness and warmth of the performance was inspired by Maurice’s expansive, richly expressive conducting, with plenty of cues; whether it did or not for the players, it contributed a fine visual element that the audience enjoyed, and applauded enthusiastically.

 

Revival of Victoria Voices for all-comers a welcome return

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand School of Music Te Koki

Music by Mozart, Fauré, Seiber, Hatfield, Krommer, Saint-Saëns

Victoria Voices, conducted by Robert Legg; chamber music ensembles

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University of Wellington

Wednesday, 27 May 2015, 7.30pm

The varied programme was presented to a modest-sized audience.

Victoria Voices  was promoted as a new ensemble, but in a sense it is a revival; the School of Music has had choirs before, but not for a number of years.  Of course, the students in it were probably not in its predecessors. There are approx. 50 singers in this all-comers choir of students and staff from various faculties of the university (previous incarnations were auditioned).

Conductor Robert Legg spoke to the audience, but it was a pity he didn’t tell us a little about the less familiar composer: Stephen Hatfield (19156-). Wikipedia tells me that he is a Canadian choral composer and conductor.  His website contains many plaudits.

Legg was very much in charge of the choir, and drew from its members a very pleasing tone, excellent Latin pronunciation in Mozart’s well-known and well-loved Ave Verum Corpus (K.618), together with a most musical performance.  He needs to be aware that too much physical movement from the conductor is distracting for audiences, particularly bending at the knees frequently.  The piano accompaniment from Chelsea Whitfield could have been a little softer.

Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine (Op.11) was written when the composer was only 19 years old.  It is a very lovely piece, and delightful to sing.  Here, particularly, the dynamics were well managed, with good attention to detail, but there is yet insufficient blend.

Mátyás Seiber’s  Three Hungarian Folk Songs, the first of which is repeated after the second song, were sung in English, which enabled the audience to understand the humorous words.  These songs, plus the following item, were sung unaccompanied.  There was good attack and articulation in the Seiber, in both words and notes.  The choir obviously has learned the music well, and sang in an appropriately spirited manner.  Here again, the tone was engaging, and now the blend was better.

The Hatfield piece, Living in a Holy City, began in unison – this is often dangerous territory, but the choir managed it well.  This quite complex music was written in multiple parts as the piece
moved on.

Although there were breaks in the programme, there was no interval; this was rather too long a concert to leave the audience sitting without an opportunity to stretch the legs!

Promoted as the launch concert of Victoria Voices, it nevertheless seemed to me that the chamber music content was rather larger than the choral.

The first chamber music item was actually two: Oboe Quartets by Franz Krommer (1759-1831).  I did not completely hear the spoken introduction, but heard that there were four movements; it appeared that there were four movements in total, so perhaps not all of each quartet was played.  The first began as quite straightforward music; the oboe playing was very fine and the violin good, but not always on the spot intonation-wise.  The lower parts seemed relatively easy to play. There was an attractive tone from all players.  A movement in a minor key was played very expressively, and playing passages with detached notes was done with considerable delicacy.

The final quick movement was very will articulated.  This was playing of a high standard, of music that was not the most complicated, but there were tricky passages.  Annabel Lovatt (oboe), Grace Stainthorpe (violin), Craig Drummond-Nairn (viola) and Elena Morgan (cello) performed with considerable accomplishment.

France was to the fore in the rest of the programme, firstly with Nicole Ting (piano), Matthew Cook (violin) and Lavinnia Rae (cello) playing two movements of Piano Trio no.2, Op.92 of Saint-Saëns
(Fauré’s teacher).

In the opening section the piano-playing was far too blurred (i.e. too much pedal), and had neither enough clarity nor sufficient volume to match with the other instruments.  The strings were strong and confident, with good dynamic range; the players had the feel of the work.  The piano came into its own in later loud passages, and then the players really became a trio.  Themes were treated in subtle fashion.

The second movement featured a gorgeous opening theme from the violin, followed by the piano.  Later, the cello took it up sonorously.  There was much fast finger-work for the piano, with very quiet pizzicato accompaniment from the strings.  The movement had plenty of variety, rhythmically as well as melodically.

Now to the pupil: Fauré’s Nocturne and En Prière for violin (Laura Barton) and harp (Michelle Velvin).  What could be more French than the harp?   Michelle wore a short dress, and thus the audience could see her feet changing the pedals.  It was a slow piece but both performers played it very well.

The second piece, like the first, required a lot of independence in the parts; both players produced gorgeous tone.

The Saint-Saëns Fantaisie for violin and harp was understated, but full of meditative gestures, and some drama as well. The two young women (in red dresses, as against the dull black of the other instrumentalists) are both fine musicians.  There was lots of double-stopping for the violin and glissandi for the harp.  It was quite a long work, and seemed to me to run out of inspiration.  However, the playing revealed great rapport between the musicians, and they did the piece proud.

Music of all kinds is in good heart at the School of Music, as this week’s numbers of concerts reveals.

 

Guitar students deliver impressive performances in spite of relative inexperience in tough field

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand School of Music Showcase Week at St Andrew’s

NZSM Classical Guitar Ensemble (Joel Baldwin, Toby Chadwick, Jake Church, Amber Madriaga, Lucinda Ng, Emma Sandford, Royden Smith, Dylan Solomon, George Wills)
and the NZSM Classical Guitar Quartet (Church, Smith, Solomon, Wills)

Music by Tylman Susato, Andrew York, Piazzolla and Jürg Kindle (the Ensemble); and Bizet and Boccherini (the Quartet)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Monday 25 May, 12:15 pm

The first of the four programmes arranged by the enterprising manager of the St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts, Marjan van Waardenberg, with the New Zealand School of Music in an effort to draw more particular attention to the school’s contribution to Wellington, downtown.

As was to be expected, the audience was somewhat smaller than that for the usual Wednesday concerts, but it was by no means an embarrassment. Guitars, though still not quite classical mainstream, have a strong appeal, especially when they play music that has survived in the repertoire for a century or so, including much music of the Hispanic world that seems to invite transcription ‘back’ for the instrument that probably inspired its creation: Albeniz, Falla, Barrios, Villa-Lobos, Tarrega, Brouwer…

This programme really offered none of that, apart from a transcription of Piazzolla’s Primavera Porteña. It opened with a set of three Renaissance dances by Tylman (Tielman) Susato who lived from around 1515 to 1570. (So this might be around his 500th birthday). He was a calligrapher and printer in Antwerp, the first in the Netherlands to use moveable type for printing music. Antwerp was a leading centre of printing in the first century after its invention by Gutenberg. (Last year I spent a fascinating three or four hours in the Plantin-Moretus Museum of printing in Antwerp).

Susato was also a composer of motets and masses as well as chansons and dances, either arranged or original tunes. Here we had dances: a Pavane, Gaillard and Ronde. Their arrangement left the Pavane in what I felt was a somewhat ponderous state, though dynamics were carefully and enjoyably studied; the triple time Gaillard and the more lively Ronde, felt better adapted for dancing.

Andrew York’s two pieces were quietly interesting, the first, Pop, starting with chords that hinted at Theodorakis’s sirtaki, or hasapiko, from Zorba the Greek, but soon went its own way. Brajamazil had a comparably quiet pulse, that used the eight-part ensemble in two parts, one providing a repeated riff, under a tune that varied somewhat; all played with the same care for ensemble as the set of Susato dances. It may have been the acoustic, but I missed something of a resonant bass that might have underlain the rather uniform quality of the whole ensemble.

Piazzolla’s Primavera Porteña (originally for bandoneon, violin and guitar I suppose) is an attractive and fairly well-known piece, partly in triple time, but often rhythmically obscure (to me), which the ensemble played skilfully. Finally, a couple of pieces by a composer I had not heard of, Jürg Kindle, entitled Funky and Techno, which Jane Curry suggested (if I heard correctly) represented a style of music that had only brief vogue. Funky needed precision, solid rhythm as well as a certain freedom; it was rather a work in progress.

Techno perhaps suffered from the limitations of what it was imitating, but the attempt to invest it with a little sophistication left it somewhat morbid.

The large ensemble was then replaced by a quartet of the four more advanced players. They played arrangements of three of the dances from Carmen, which had the advantage of deriving, at least, from the home of the guitar. Rhythms were reasonably lively though again they suffered through the care and restraint with which they were played. The first, Aragonese, essentially a rather elegant, restrained dance, was the least handicapped by that sobriety; so it expressed that dignity quite well. But the Seguidilla which Carmen dances in high frustration as she faces Jose’s timidity, his overwhelming fear of letting go, his sense of duty to the army, was a tough one. At this stage, these players were not really up to capturing the sexuality that the dance expresses.

They ended with an Introduction and Fandango by Boccherini which lay quite well for the guitars. Though the Introduction passed without much impact, the Fandango came off well since it was drawn from the famous guitar quintet La retirata di Madrid. Throughout, their obvious pains over notation precision and dynamics were always conspicuous, and the performances showed proper attention to the basic challenges that face players of this instrument, in these not always very rewarding pieces, from which there is nowhere to hide.

 

Impressive semi-staged Elijah from Orpheus Choir, Orchestra Wellington and superb soloists

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

The Orpheus Choir of Wellington and Orchestra Wellington
Brent Stewart (conductor); Frances Moore (staging director)

Mendelssohn: Elijah

Martin Snell (Elijah), Lisa-Harper-Brown (widow), Maaike Christie-Beekman (Angel), Jamie Young (Obadiah), Archie Taylor (Boy); voice students of New Zealand School of Music,

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 23 May 2015, 7.30pm

I found this performance of Elijah entertaining, inspiring, and of a very high standard.  So did the large, attentive audience, who responded enthusiastically.  After the performance, I heard many favourable comments.

The first thing that struck one coming into the auditorium was the huge screen behind the choir seats.  However, it was not used for projecting images, but was simply suffused with colour.  The colour chosen varied with the mood or location of the various sections of the oratorio.

Martin Snell came on, in business suit but without a tie, and sang the words of the introductory oration, then while the orchestra played the Overture, the choir wandered in, wearing casual clothes in white or light colours, which I took to denote a Middle Eastern setting – but this made it curious that the soloists were dressed in modern garments.  It was good to see the choir appearing to have personalities, rather than being in their usual dour black, which makes the members fade into the background. Bright lighting enhanced the visual effect.

The orchestra members were placed on low platforms, to be above the action on the front of the stage.

Martin Snell immediately impressed; he was in fine voice.  In a radio interview he had said that he had sung the oratorio numbers of times in its language of writing: German, presumably in Germany and Switzerland, where he is based.  (This rather gives the lie to Roger Wilson’s assertion in his excellent programme note, that it ‘is seldom performed in Germany’.)  Snell therefore found it quite difficult, he said, to fit the English words to the notes.  However, that was not apparent.  Except that he sang entirely from the score.  In their much smaller roles, Harper-Brown used it some of the time, but Maaike Christie-Beekman not at all.

After performances in the 1950s and 1960s, the Orpheus Choir sang the work in 1971, and then not again until 1999, when there was a semi-staged performance, when Rodney Macann, dressed in sackcloth, sang the title role entirely from memory, moving round the stage in dramatic fashion.  However, apart from several other soloists being in costume, that version bore little relation to this semi-staged version.

Some of the choir were initially disposed at the front of the stage as a semi-chorus (where they could not see the conductor), before later taking their places in the main chorus.  The orchestra set the atmosphere well.

Brent Stewart conducted clearly and decisively, although it seemed to me that in the first half he was conducting with his hand, the baton being merely an extension.  However, in the second half he found his baton technique.

Almost throughout the performance, the projection of words by both soloists and choir was good – but I was sitting fairly near the front.  All the soloists sang as the real professionals most of them are; this applied also to a couple of the NZSM students who had minor roles of some significance: Katherine McIndoe and William McElwee.  It was most impressive to observe the resonance Martin Snell obtains by using the resonators of the face to assist in delivering the goods.

The orchestra’s every note, rhythm and dynamic seemed to be in place.  This was true of the choir also; I only observed one false, stumbling entry in the whole work in which, after Elijah, the choir has most to do.

I was tempted to say that this was Martin Snell’s night, such is the size of his role and the quality of his performance.  That would be unfair – it was also the choir’s and the orchestra’s night.  Snell handled the high tessitura of most of his role with aplomb – and got an opportunity to use his low notes in the quartet ‘Cast thy burden upon the Lord’, one of the most beautiful moments, with its solo quartet sections and intervening orchestral passages.

There were a few judicious cuts in the work, to bring the length down, but the only number I really missed was the felicitous ‘He that shall endure to the end’.  It would have been another demonstration of the huge variety of Mendelssohn’s writing; his ability to move from rousing to contemplative, to delicate, from chorale-like harmony to fugue.  In the delicate category was the lovely trio ‘Lift thine eyes’, sung by a women’s semi-chorus – in this case, the NZSM students, as angels, sited in the left gallery.  Here, I felt there was insufficient lightness, blend, or ethereal textures.

Elsewhere, they produced lovely tone, balance and blend, although I found them insufficiently impassioned as the priests of Baal (re-costumed in black) compared with the following chorus from
the full choir.  One feature of the choir’s singing was that fortissimo passages were sung with lively tone that was still pleasant on the ear, for example, in ‘Woe to him!  He shall perish’.  In contrast was the delicious ‘He, watching over Israel’, all calm and dignity.

The full choruses were splendid, as was Lisa Harper-Brown, in her roles as widow and soprano soloist.  Jamie Young, the tenor, was a little uneven.  In his first solo, ‘If with all your hearts’ he was fine, apart from a couple of strained higher notes.

Action there was, but it seldom distracted from the music, and in fact added drama and interest.  The inherent drama in the music and words was demonstrated, in a naturalistic way.

Elijah’s solo ‘It is enough!’ featured a solo cello that both precedes the sung aria and continues through it.  This was exquisitely played by Brenton Veitch.  Another delightful instrumental solo was for oboe, in Elijah’s aria ‘For the mountains shall depart’.

Archie Taylor performed his role as the boy more than satisfactorily.  He had to act as well as sing; his voice was clear and true.

The famous solo ‘O rest in the Lord’ was beautifully sung by Christie-Beekman, without being made too sentimental.  The orchestral accompaniment was a marvel of delicacy and subtlety.  I was horrified to see in the printed programme (but not in Roger Wilson’s note) ‘Oh rest in the Lord’ – using the feeble exclamation instead of the ‘O’ of invocation.

The chorus, appropriately, have the last word, singing ‘And then shall your light break forth’.  Who said Mendelssohn was not a genius?  In my book he was, and this triumph of a performance was another proof; the opera he never wrote.

The production involved movement for the choir as well as for the semi-chorus and soloists; all this was a lot of work for a one-off performance.