Category: Live performance

Great start to NZSO’s Beethoven festival with the first three symphonies

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen

Beethoven: Symphonies No 1, 2 and 3, in C, D and E flat respectively

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday 12 June, 6:30 pm

Here is the third in Pietari Inkinen’s great symphonic cycles, following Sibelius and Brahms. This time, of course, the greatest such creations in the whole history of symphonic music.

It was interesting to hear Inkinen’s conversation with Eva Radich on RNZ Concert in which, as far as I know, not having caught all of it, neither remarked that simply to tackle this music is to make a statement about the world-class character of the orchestra, as well as to suggest something about the conductor’s feeling about his own readiness to undertake such a grand and formidable project.

Even in the decades immediately after Beethoven’s, it has pleased many critics to dismiss the first and second symphonies, in comparison with the later masterpieces. To so judge them is to overlook the fact that by 1800 when the second was composed, no existing symphony could come anywhere near them, apart perhaps from Mozart’s last three. How ridiculous it is to compare a composer’s relatively early works with more complex and profound music that might have emerged later.

To play these three in the same evening was in fact to allow us to hear the clear kinship that they share. The stately and confident character of the opening of the C major symphony announced at once that Beethoven had absorbed and surpassed, at least in adventurousness, the models of Haydn and Mozart.  Though one must be careful not to confuse those elements that might represent ‘progress’ (a dangerous notion) with inspiration and creativity involving the expression of profound human truth.

The latter exists in roughly equal measure in Josquin, Tallis, Palestrina, Monteverdi, Handel and Bach, Haydn and Mozart, Schubert and Berlioz, Verdi and Wagner, Bruckner and Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Strauss, Debussy…

Inkinen’s input could be heard in the careful energy that he projects, civilised by discretion and precision, but given dramatic character by the vivid dynamic shifts, readiness to allow flexible rhythms and to make arresting changes of tempo.  The slow movement, in triple time, opens with attentive fugal treatment of the unpretentious theme and it’s a sudden pianissimo that enlivens it. The Menuetto, indicated ‘allegro molto e vivace’ seems like a contradiction: it must be one of the fastest ever – I’d hate to try dancing to it; it’s really a scherzo in disguise.

The true heart of the symphony is the last movement, starting with the repeated, playful attempts to play a scale; here Inkinen gave the orchestra licence to burst the seams, very fast, employing quite simple material adventurously and without too much attention to orchestral proprieties.

The second symphony, in D, set alongside the first, reveals a confidence and discursiveness in the longish Adagio introduction which seems to merge more organically into the Allegro.

The performance seemed to relish the chances to disappear into pianissimi occasionally, suddenly to burst out afresh. There are repeated conversations between strings and winds – clarinet, then bassoon, flute, horn… Here, and often in this and in the Eroica, Inkinen seemed to cherish beautifully executed wind playing. And in the Scherzo, one felt a scarcely contained impulse to flippancy. But it’s the finale where it was possible to sense the emergence of a more versatile and dynamic composer, the music taken at some speed almost as if pushing players beyond their limit.

There seemed a much shorter distance between No 2 and the great Eroica than is suggested by many commentators.

Two commanding chords take the place of the Adagios that introduced the two earlier symphonies. I might have hoped for a slightly more fearsome impact but these were a good enough announcement of a composer for a revolutionary era.

You could have argued that the full-sized orchestra used in Nos 1 and 2 was larger than is kosher for essentially classical works (strings were 16, 14, 12, 10, 8), but the numbers were right for the Eroica.  Though scored for three horns, compared with two for Nos 1 and 2, we had four offering more flexibility; otherwise the orchestra was of the same size.

Here, as in the earlier pair, Inkinen’s stamp consisted, rather than through any radical interpretative revelations, in paying striking attention to dynamic and tempo markings which were sufficient to hold the audience in a semblance of trance throughout. For example the emphatic, thudding wind accompaniment to the lyrical strings; but more than anything, there was constant delight in the many solo wind phrases or passages from flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and of course horns and trumpets. Though this orchestra’s strings are incomparable, it’s the clarity and beauty of the winds (horns have recovered their form) that lends any performance special piquancy, and these are all available.

No Eroica can survive without a Marche funèbre (again, nearly 20minutes long like the first movement) that is masterly and profound. This performance had weight from the great body of cellos and basses, as well as transparency, emotional impact, slow, treading tempi and a knack of subsiding into anguished pianissimi from which it seemed almost impossible to recover.

The justification for four horns became clear in the Scherzo: joyous, sanguine, life-affirming, and then the Finale filled the auditorium with energy, achieved through fugal writing, high-lighted by sudden breaks, sustaining an expectancy and excitement that built to the grandeur and triumph of the Coda. That, I am loath to confess, sounded just a little less thrilling than my hopes had been (certain performances, early in life, sometimes raise expectations that are impossible to erase). Nevertheless, in all, this first concert exceeded reasonable hopes, and confirmed both the orchestra’s excellence and the conductor’s vision, sense of structure and his awareness of the importance of refinement and detailing, not to mention pure excitement.

The next three evenings are bound to be among the year’s most memorable.

 

 

 

Tawa’s orchestra tackles substantial programme under lively young conductor

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Tawa Community Orchestra conducted by Andrew Atkins and Laura Barton (violin)

Mozart: Symphony No 25 in G minor – first movement: Allegro con brio
Wieniawski: Violin Concerto No 2 in D minor, Op 22
Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture

Tawa College Hall

Sunday 8 June, 2 pm

There are several community, amateur orchestras around Greater Wellington; their major role is probably to enable local musicians to get orchestral experience; not to lay any claim to offering dazzling musical revelations. Most of the audience no doubt comprised friends and family members. Many of those have a genuine interest in music of the classical kind, and no matter the level of accomplishment, it is always interesting, sometimes pleasantly surprising, to be at such concerts.

My connection was as family member, but I was more than a little interested to hear how the players would cope with pieces that were one hundred percent solid classical repertoire.

The first movement of Mozart’s ‘Little G minor symphony’, No 25 (distinguishing it from the other one, No 40) would have resonated with many, as the urgent music, with arresting syncopation, that opened the film Amadeus. While the opening bars were an interesting exhibition of the meaning of ‘balance’, demonstrating the challenge of getting an integrated sound from the varied instruments of the orchestra, which are by nature so incompatible. More striking however was the energy that the young conductor, Andrew Atkins, a graduate student at the New Zealand School of Music, brought to the job. He imposed a professional tempo and sense of momentum on the performance that to a good extent masked any weaknesses of ensemble and technical competence in the players. Nevertheless, the real Mozart showed through, the spirit and the melodic genius.

It was the next piece that had me intrigued. While the Mozart employed a fairly limited orchestra – horns the only brass instruments – Wieniawski, writing about a century later, called for the full Romantic orchestra, double woodwinds, horns and trumpets, three trombones and timpani.

Here too the presence of several guest players, including many from the School of Music, strengthened strings and brass, in particular.

Though I knew both Wieniawski’s violin concertos, I cannot recall hearing either played live, though it would be surprising if the Michael Hill Violin Competition had not thrown one of them up at some stage. The concertos of instrumental virtuosos tend to be denigrated or ignored, though Paganini’s, Vieuxtemps’s and Wieniawksi’s remain in the repertory. However, this one is well-wrought, melodic, interesting; but it would hardly have survived an amateur performance without a pretty competent soloist.

Violinist Laura Barton is a student at the New Zealand School of Music.  After getting through the formal and not uninteresting orchestral introduction, with a certain tentativeness, Barton’s first phrases sounded as if she was feeling her way, but she very quickly hit her stride, playing without the score in front of her, though there remained, very understandably, a degree of tenseness. But if the audience still had to be convinced of her credentials, the first movement cadenza demonstrated an accomplishment that banished any doubts.

The gentle second movement, Romance, demonstrated an unsentimental lyricism and true musicality in the violinist. While Barton despatched the last movement, with its exciting gypsy rhythms, with an aplomb that not only confirmed a fine violinist in the making, but an orchestra that did not disgrace the performance.

The last work was even more of a challenge, written about the same time as the concerto, a product of Tchaikovsky’s early years, it is a colourful and vivid symphonic poem after the manner of Liszt, depicting three episodes of Shakespeare’s play.  No one could have expected a particularly polished performance from the orchestra, yet the energy and zest that young maestro Atkins drew from it, the poignant, lyrical music of the love scene, produced a performance that was quite engaging. There was a palpable feeling that the entire orchestra was giving more than they might have believed possible, and they as well as the audience were being rewarded accordingly.

 

Requiems and delights à la Francaise – Duruflé and Fauré

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Choirs Aotearoa New Zealand Trust presents:

DURUFLÉ – Requiem
Bianca Andrew (mezzo-soprano) / Christopher Hillier (baritone)
Michael Stewart (organ) / Jane Young (‘cello)
Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir
Karen Grylls (conductor)

FAURÉ – Requiem
Jayne Tankersley (soprano) / Christopher Hillier (baritone)
Michael Stewart (organ) / Matthew Ross (violin)
Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir
Orchestra Wellington
Karen Grylls (conductor)

Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul, Molesworth St.

Saturday, 7th June, 2014

Big and ungainly though it can seem, the Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul is a remarkable music-making space for the “right” kind of repertoire. It’s repeating something of a truism to suggest that most of this would be church or sacred music, though Wellingtonians were fortunate enough to experience, two weekends previously, a performance of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony featuring an impressively-augmented Orchestra Wellington conducted by Marc Taddei. It was music that resonated most positively with the acoustic, which more than made up for a small loss of clarity with oceans of sheer tonal splendour.

Even more “hand-in-glove” a match of music with the venue was provided by the present concert, featuring two of the most beautiful choral works in the repertoire. On paper the idea of having two Requiem Masses butted up against one another in the same concert might appear too much of a good (!) thing – but each of these works, though having certain things in common with the other, makes a markedly individual impression on the listener.

Though both French-born there was little other direct connection as such between the two composers of these Requiems – Fauré wrote the first version of his work in 1887, one which was first performed the following year (other versions appeared in 1893 and 1900); whereas the much younger Duruflé, whose student years centered around Rouen, and the Gregorian plainchant tradition fostered at the cathedral school, completed his Requiem in 1947. Duruflé, like Fauré, produced a number of versions of his work, one for orchestral accompaniment (the composer’s favorite), followed by a version with organ and ad lib. solo ‘cello, and then a “reduced-orchestra” version.

Duruflé undoubtedly based his Requiem on the older composer’s in terms of structure – the text is largely the same as Fauré used, with the “Dies irae” sequence (used by Mozart, Berlioz and Verdi) all but completely omitted. The younger composer’s work is similarly non-apocalyptic, though both occasionally allow moments of anxiety and fear to darken and dramatize the textures, albeit briefly (Duruflé’s “moments” are a tad more explicit than those of Fauré’s).

Where the composers part company is with their compositional style – though Fauré drew inspiration from Gregorian plainchant in the Mass’s recitative-like moments, his work is late-Romantic in its expression of melody and harmony – for instance, I love the unashamed tribute made to the Wagner of Die Walkure at the beginning of the Lux aeterna, following the Agnus Dei.

Duruflé, on the other hand, drew his inspiration from his early studies of plainchant, incorporating into each section of his work corresponding chant-like sequences from the sung Latin Mass for the Dead, and building on these figurations with harmonies and extended melismas, though nothing too florid or wide-ranging. The work to my ears sounded paradoxically at once more modern and yet older than Fauré’s – and as such, the two pieces made well-nigh perfect and complementary companions.

For the performance of Duruflé’s work conductor Karen Grylls judiciously opted for the organ-accompanied version (with ad.lib.’cello obbligato during the Pie Jesu movement). Presented alongside Fauré’s particular version of HIS work which featured an ensemble with strings and brass as well as organ, I thought the contrast between the two sound-worlds was stunning, and worked entirely in favour of each piece’s distinctive character.

From the outset of the Duruflé, the superb focus of the Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir was evident, their tones set off to perfection by the brilliant playing of organist Michael Stewart. But it seemed the opening Requiem was more floated by the choir than sung, an impression which in various places throughout the work returned, shining and glistening like silver-tapestried thread.

After a radiant Kyrie, the music darkened, and the vocal lines beseeched, calmly at first, but then with great urgency and impassioned attack, the organ excitingly joining the fray – “Libera eas de ore leonis!” (Save them from the lion’s jaws!), with the baritone soloist, Christopher Hillier, sonorously raising his voice for the “Hostias” by way of offering sacrifice and prayer for the sake of the departed souls – wonderful, heart-stopping moments!

I loved the rippling organ and the angelic tones of the opening of the Sanctus, relishing all the more the gloriously contrasting irruptions of energy for the “Hosannas”, and then savoring to the full the rapt, devotional ardor of the Pie Jesu which followed, mezzo-soprano Bianca Andrew and ‘cellist Jane Young singing and playing like angels to Michael Stewart’s beautifully-sculptured accompaniment.

How beautifully the choir managed the wordless accompaniments to the melodic lines in Lux aeterna – the singing and playing quite superbly setting off the sudden angst brought about by the organ’s clarion call, followed by the choir’s and the baritone soloist’s strongly-projected agitations. Though brief, the appearance of “Dies illa, dies irae” caused further choral combustion, culminating in one of the few Fauré-like moments in Duruflé’s work, the heart-easing, melodic unison reiteration by the choir of the “Libera Me”.

And what a wondrously rarefied, even austere world is that of the In Paradisum  sequence! – such a marked contrast to the older composer’s setting! – something that here evoked the “unknown” so potently that we sat in the midst of its wonderment for a long time afterwards before marking our appreciation of the performance with rapturous applause.

I confess to experiencing some anxious moments myself during the interval, arising from sudden doubts and fears regarding the Fauré work’s pending performance. By this time I’d noticed that the printed programme, through some vagary or other, had omitted the names of several of the orchestral musicians, including those of the horn players! My relief was great when, in due course, the instruments in question made their appearance – the thing was, the two previous performances of the work I’d heard recently were both with organ-only accompaniment, and….. yes, I expect organists will possibly sniff and smart at my none-too-subtle inflections surrounding that “organ-only” usage – but anyhow, I’ll further explain below…..

Karen Grylls chose the 1893 version of the work to perform, here – the composer’s original 1887 version featured only five movements (no Offertory and no Libera Me),  later adding the extra movements and a baritone soloist. There has over the years been a degree of “creative agglomeration” practiced upon this work in performance, the situation due partly to the later, 1900 edition of the score which featured an extended orchestration entrusted by Fauré to one of his pupils, and which, according to choral-conducting doyen John Rutter, is filled with both printers’ and editorial errors.

But here we were, about to hear an authentic performing edition which called for a goodly number of instrumentalists on the performing platform – including horns, and also a solo violinist! – along with the choir, soloists and conductor, and the organist ready in the loft. The opening was spaciously and dramatically sounded, with the silences “surging softly backwards” after each cadential pause. At first I though the orchestral tones too fulsome for the voices – the tenors had a lovely plangency which seemed, however, in danger of being submerged within the acoustic in places, but things seemed to refocus with the great cries of “Exaudi” and “Orationem” – and thereafter it seemed as if I could hear everything.

Gorgeous string tones introduced the tenors and altos duetting at “O Domine”, making a lovely sound and building each repetition of the opening words upwards and towards the string modulations which prepared the way for the baritone’s entry with “Hostias”. Christopher Hillier here wasn’t particularly honeyed in tone, but his voice was perhaps instead more appropriately textured with vibrant strands of supplication. And the choir’s reprise of “O Domine” would, I swear, have melted hearts of stone with such celestial ascending lines.

Came the Sanctus, and with it, for me, one of the work’s great moments, but to my ears invariably and frustratingly muted whenever the performance is simply organ-accompanied – yes, you’ve guessed it! – those great horn fanfares which introduce and reaffirm the “Hosannas”! Well I have to register some disappointment mingled in with my delight, here, as I thought Karen Grylls didn’t encourage the horn-players to sufficiently roar out their notes with truly joyous exuberance! The singing was splendid, though, short of an “Anything you can do I can do better” kind of scenario, I simply wanted ALL of the sounds to ring out through those vast spaces, just for a few seconds! I should mention the solo violin playing as well, Matthew Ross’s instrument making a suitably sweet-toned sound, the intonation not entirely blemish-free, but certainly creating the desired cherubic effect.

Another truly memorable sequence was the Pie Jesu (so different an effect to that of Duruflé’s setting!) – of course, nothing less than the voice of an angel was needed, and soprano Jayne Tankersley touched many of those tingling stratospheric places with some beautifully-floated sounds. Though perhaps not ideally serene, not as uniformly pure of tone as I expected, she nevertheless inflected the words with real feeling – but I did wonder, having enjoyed her vibrant, engaging (and invariably spectacular) singing of Monteverdi’s music so much over the years, whether her voice as naturally took to this music’s cooler, far less-inflected lines of relatively chaste expression.

The Agnus Dei and the Libera Me have the work’s darkest moments – Karen Grylls got a particularly wonderful “floating” response from her voices for the Lux aeterna  sequence, though I would have liked the horns once again to have interjected in more baleful tones just before the reprise of the opening Requiem aeternam. Christopher Hillier’s lean, forceful tones had an almost operatic intensity when delivering his Libera me, one which conductor and singers took up with ferment and gusto at the words “Dies illa, dies irae”, and carried over to the reprise of “Libera Me”, horns beautifully darkening the voices’ beseeching phrase-ends, before allowing the baritone to join in with a final, exhausted plea for deliverance.

Having done with anxieties and fears, voices, solo violin and organ then turned their attentions, most affectingly, towards the prospect of eternal bliss, with the beautiful In Paradisum – and though I wanted organist Michael Stewart’s arpeggiated accompanying figurations to oscillate rather more brightly and forthrightly, the singing was appropriately angelic, and the soaring solo violin line a delight. The sounds of the voices blended with the instrumental tones towards the end and then with the eternal silences…….as with the Duruflé’s conclusion, we registered the gradual disappearance of those affecting sounds before showing our appreciation of the music and performers’ efforts – including those of Michael Stewart, who was somehow stranded on one side of the platform at the end, away from all of the others!

But very, very great credit to conductor Karen Grylls and to her soloists, instrumentalists and singers, for a splendid  and long-to-be-remembered pair of performances!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aspects of nature, life and love, from the NZSM Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Koki New Zealand School of Music presents:
RURAL ROMANCE

LILBURN – Overture “Drysdale”
FAURÉ – Pelléas et Mélisande
BEETHOVEN – Piano Concerto No.3 in C Minor
DVORAK – Symphony No.8 in G Major

Jian Liu (piano)
Kenneth Young (conductor)
New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

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

Wednesday 4th June, 2014

It was the sort of programme I would have travelled miles and miles, over hill and dale, thru fog and storm, and braving accident and ambush to see and hear – with distance lending enchantment, as is often the case. But even without the distance, the enchantment remained – this was music by turns exciting and evocative, so very typical of each composer’s work, even the relatively early Overture by Lilburn, but still, as were the other pieces, treasure!

To my great delight, the bringing about of it all by these youthful players and their conductor had many magnificent moments, for most of the time triumphing over the difficulties posed by the venue. The chief problem was the “in-your-face” character of the St.Andrew’s acoustic, which gave the performance sounds an insistence which wasn’t altogether the doing of the players.

It underlined and set in bold the importance for Wellington of having the Town Hall restored to its former glory as soon as possible, with both performance venues in that building currently out of circulation and sorely missed. I recall over recent times a number of youth orchestra performances in the main auditorium of the Hall whose qualities were underlined by the acoustic’s warmth and focus, a marked contrast to the somewhat overbearing, almost raucous immediacy of the St.Andrew’s sound.

My thoughts regarding the performance of the engaging Drysdale Overture of Lilburn’s were thus coloured by that acoustical context. I found a lot of the playing in what was otherwise a splendid performance lacked dynamic variation – the “great waves of sound” referred to in my notes regarding the piece’s opening gestures scarcely abated during the more vigorous working-out of the different motifs in the composer’s “sunlit rondo”.

Fortunately, the sounds did give space for the various appearances of  the “nostalgic theme”, and the unanimity and focus of the strings in places such as their sudden reprise of the opening figure, just before the final sequence. But this was due as much, if not more, to conductor Kenneth Young’s control and the skills of his players, the oboist in particular delivering the lovely melody with all the feeling for its context that the composer might have wanted.

Thanks to Fauré’s (or rather, his pupil, Charles Koechlin’s) somewhat gentler scoring, three of the Pelléas et Mélisande exerpts from the composers’ s incidental music for Maeterlinck’s play made a lovely impression throughout – Young and his musicians didn’t hold back the emotion, the string-playing in the Prelude having plenty of juice, and the clarinet work outstanding, really making something of the sequence just before the strings’ final phrases.

Fauré’s music doesn’t have the astringency of Sibelius’s for the same subject, and nothing like Schoenberg’s evocations of unease and darkness in his 1903 symphonic poem, also inspired by the play. This feeling was underlined by the exclusion of the fourth piece from the suite La Mort de Mélisande, leaving the lovely Fileuse (Mélisande at her spinning-wheel), depicted by whirling strings and a charming, winsome oboe solo (a different player to that in the Lilburn Overture), and finally the Sicilienne, a graceful dance composed by Fauré for an earlier, unfinished work, and used here again to beguiling effect, with its piquant oscillations between major  and minor. Here the harpist was able to shine, with a nicely-judged accompaniment of winds and then strings.

The Beethoven concerto featured a much-awaited appearance by that fine pianist Jian Liu, whose recital and chamber work I’ve so enjoyed over previous seasons. He didn’t disappoint with this, Beethoven’s darkest and most austere of the composer’s concertante works. Young and the players gave him an opening tutti which “spelt out” the journey in no uncertain terms, tense of mood and sharply-focused in articulation. Again the acoustic tended to narrow the dynamic range of the playing, but this music could easily deal with whatever sonic vagaries were brought to bear on the performance.

From his very first, commanding entry, Liu caught us up with his overall focus, his feeling for dynamic contrast, and his quicksilver responses to the music’s volatilities – as well as commanding the piano part (as with the cadenza) he was able to play “chamber music” with the orchestra in such passages as the rather misterioso section leading up to the recapitulation, dovetailing his cross-rhythmic triplets beautifully with the orchestra’s wind players, and bringing our the “gothic-like” touches to the writing just before the movement’s end.

The slow movement had a kind of Hellenic beauty at the start, its eloquence in Liu’s hands beautifully matched by the wind-playing that brought about a lovely sea-change to the soundscapes, as well as the beautiful dialogues with which the lower strings engaged the pianist at a later point. Only some slightly hurried turns of phrase in some of the exchanges prevented total pleasure – but the coda reinstalled that sense of rapt beauty which continued right up to a slightly misread wind entry at the end (which probably went swimmingly by comparison, at rehearsal – them’s the breaks!).

The finale’s attaca broke the spell, the pianist launching the argument with a real swing, taking the music at a fair lick and rendering some of his figurations as a whirl of notes – very exciting! But again from Liu was this lovely “accompanying” instinct in places, supporting the winds as they took over the melody. I loved the “fierce dance” character of the music during the tutti just before the clarinet tune, brought out with a will by Young and the players. But the contrast with the clarinet’s entry was also magical – fine playing, here – and the string fugue continued the excitement, leading up to the music’s martial element being hurled across the canvas with gusto.

After this, the coda was just right – a proper release of boisterous high spirits, kept pent-up for so long and here given full expression, by both pianist and orchestra. A pianist friend with whom I sat was also lost in admiration for Liu’s playing – “gossamer”, “agile”, “forthright”, and “energizing” were the words that were bandied about between us during the interval!

The recommencement brought out what seemed like the full band for the Dvorak G Major Symphony, surely one of the most adorable works in the romantic symphonic repertoire – and certainly one of its composer’s sunniest creations. Only in the second movement do the clouds gather for moments of anxiety and doubt – and Dvorak had that ability, shared with Schubert, to smile through tears and keep his essential spirit indomitable. And so it is with this symphony.

The outer movements – particularly the opening one – are both rhythmically tricky beasts, and I thought here in particular, throughout the first movement, that the orchestra didn’t manage to exude quite enough energy to really “kick” the music along. It always seems to me, with student and amateur orchestras, that not enough attention is paid to the rhythmic character of difficult pieces – and if the rhythm is tentative, unsure, or sluggish, then no amount of in-tune or note-accurate playing will save or properly enliven the music.

I once heard Ken Young, when rehearsing a difficult piece of contemporary music with the NZSO, telling the players, “Don’t count the music – FEEL it!” With Dvorak’s music, there’s that constant need to feel the rhythmic “kick”, to activate the dance element that’s in so much of his work. It’s not a question of speed or even tempo – but of “pointing” those rhythms, of stressing both beats and/or off-beats where appropriate. Accurate and eager though the playing was, here, I thought the first movement needed a touch more nervous energy overall, and sharper attack on some of those rhythmic beats. With this composer’s music in particular, a strongly-characterised rhythm beats the hell out of merely playing the right notes.

Still, I did think the performances of the middle movements of the work of a particularly high order, here – Young and his musicians revelled in the multifarious changes of mood in the second movement. bringing out the charm and lyricism and, indeed, romance of the opening, but fronting up to the theatrical darkenings of texture and tone brought by forceful wind,brass and timpani at key points – the timpani, in particular, was spot-on in its many rhythmic underpinnings and textural colourings. And the third movement similarly disarmed, with its bright, eager, slightly tense waltz-tune, put across with gorgeous string-tone (even with a touch of portamento in places!). Both the Trio and the sprightly Coda kept the music’s charm to the fore, nicely underlining the contrast with the finale’s declamatory opening.

Though sounding in places a bit of a raucous riot in this venue, the finale had plenty of thrills augmented by one or two spills. Everybody managed to kick up heels at some point or other during the wild dance-sequences (the horns had a great time with their trills, as did the trombones with their hoe-down-like shouts of encouragement!), and the contrasting lyrical variations featured, once again, lovely clarinet work and flute decorations that got the spirit, if not quite the letter, of the music right. And what a barnstorming finish!

I didn’t have miles and miles to go, nor hill and dale to contend with, when returning home – but this concert’s music and its performance still had just enough magic about it to both enchant and content.

 

 

Programme ‘by popular request’ calls for wide-ranging period and stylistic variety from The Tudor Consort

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Tudor Consort conducted by Michael Stewart

By Popular Request

Frank Martin: Mass for Double Choir – Kyrie
De Lassus: ‘Matona mia cara’
Josquin des Prez: Missa ‘L’homme armée’ – Gloria
John Dunstaple: ‘Veni sancte spiritus’
Stanford: The Bluebird
Pärt: Summa (Credo)
Allegri: ‘Miserere mei’
Vaughan Williams: Mass in G minor – Sanctus/Osanna I/Benedictus/Osanna II
Byrd: ‘Ave verum corpus’ and Agnus Dei from Mass for Four Voices

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Hill Street

Saturday 30 May 2014

It seemed a good idea: invite their subscribers/audiences to suggest music to be sung at the next concert, which should ensure a good audience, comprising those who’d submitted ideas and lots of others, who would be curious about the result of the game.

But it was a cold night, though fine and clear, and maybe there was something unmissable on television, and since I’d arrived about 7.15pm I waited for the church to fill. It didn’t.

Swiss composer Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir is probably one of his best known works, yet he held it back for forty years, feeling that it was too private a communication with his deity to be exposed to the rude masses (my gloss). The ‘doubleness’ of the music refers to the number of parts, yet it was curious to have it sung by this pretty small choir (16).

The Kyrie opens with what is described as a ‘quasi-plainchant’, spare and ethereal but it soon expands to involve the whole choir, and the two pleas ‘Kyrie eleison’ and ‘Christe eleison’ are in stark contrast between calm beauty and serious agitation. The singers dramatized it with a feeling of driving conviction.

There could hardly have been a greater contrast with the next piece, of 450 years earlier. A delightfully bawdy little ditty, ‘Matona mia cara’, from the 16th century master of religious polyphony, Orlando de Lassus (you can take your choice of variations from Roland de Lassus, Orlande de Lassus, Orlando di Lasso, Orlandus Lassus, or Roland de Lattre). Though he was equally famous for his chansons.

This was a song sung by a German lancer who attempts to woo an Italian girl in very basic Italian muddled with Spanish and German, employing ill-understood, suggestive words that just might have succeeded with a fairly knowing and susceptible lady. Even the onomatopoeia had an erotic ring to it and the choir evidently enjoyed themselves. So did we.

The music moved another century back to a Mass by Josquin des Prez, one of two based on the widely popular L’homme armée, this one on the sixth tone, in other words the Aeolian Mode, equivalent to A minor. They chose the Gloria which is opened by a tenor followed by sopranos and altos, and the tune lent the setting a character that modern ears could more easily absorb than is often the case with Renaissance polyphony; this in spite of the sophistication of the counterpoint. Most striking perhaps was the lengthy Amen in canonic style. Even more striking however was the sheer skill and idiosyncratic familiarity of the choir, including the voices that were given solo episodes here and elsewhere.

Then came a motet by English composer John Dunstaple (most of us are probably more familiar with the spelling Dunstable) who lived half a century before Josquin: Veni sancte spiritus, ‘Come holy spirit’. (You’d expect both the adjective sancte and the noun Spiritus to have the same ending. Sancte is the vocative case, used to address people, Spiritus must also be in that case but with the ending ‘–us’ is presumably a fourth declension word where the vocative takes the same ending, as the nominative case.)

Here was the only intrusion by non-voice in the concert: bass Timothy Hurd (otherwise known as the City Carillonist) produced a tenor dulzian (or dulcian), the predecessor of the bassoon, though I suppose the several smaller members of the dulcian family might be closer to the shawm, the oboe’s ancestor. This lent the music a very distinct quality, in addition to the interest of the structure and rhythm of the short line of the Medieval Latin verses that recall parts of the Carmina Burana.

Then a leap five hundred years toward the present with a short and lovely part-song, The Bluebird, by Stanford, evocative and a little sentimental, where soprano Erin King sang the touching solo part. With Arvo Pärt’s Summa, his setting of the Credo, came the only piece from the late 20th century: faced with the words, I was struck for the first time by the way the music seems to move, or not move, in reflection of the words, denying the singers much opportunity for tonal or dynamic variety. The choir performed immaculately.

By this stage it had struck me that while following suggestions of music for this concert, choir director Stewart had arranged them following the order of the Ordinary of the Mass, interspersed with motets and songs that could be considered as representing the Proper of the Mass.

The second half began with Allegri’s Miserere, with John Beaglehole singing the tenor part from the pulpit while four other soloists from the choir sang from the gallery. But for the first time in the evening the performance revealed characteristics that suggested a lack of confidence, even a lack of rehearsal that appeared in their handling of ornaments and even occasionally with intonation. There was no other item in the programme where I felt the choir had not quite the measure of the style of the early Italian 17th century.

The following movements from Vaughan Williams’s Mass in G minor also called for a group of soloists whose performances were an impressive demonstration of the strength and polish of the choir’s individual voices.  The Vaughan Williams Sanctus and Benedictus were marked by the most scrupulous intonation, articulation of varied tone and tempo changes.

Byrd’s Ave verum corpus for nine voices brought the choir back to its home territory, in a truly beautiful performance and, following the order of the Catholic liturgy, the concert ended with the Agnus Dei from the Mass for Four Voices. It found them in complete sympathy with the idiom, comfortable: the lines flowing and weaving with the ease that comes from familiarity and confidence.

The concert deserved a much larger audience.

 

Trio launches Hutt Valley’s Chamber Music season with élan

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music Hutt Valley presents:
LEPPÄNEN / JOYCE / IRONS TRIO

BEETHOVEN – Piano Trio in E-flat major Op. 70 No.2
DEBUSSY – Sonata for violin and piano in G minor (1917)
Sonata for ‘cello and piano in D minor (1915)
BRAHMS – Piano Trio in C Major Op.87

Vesa-Matti Leppänen (violin) / Andrew Joyce (‘cello
Diedre Irons (piano)

Lower Hutt Little Theatre

Monday 26th May, 2014

That singular personality, Sir Thomas Beecham, renowned for his witticisms and droll observations, once remarked that music’s greatest gift to the world was “to free the human mind from the tyranny of conscious thought”. I couldn’t help thinking how profoundly this process was demonstrated by the first few bars of Beethoven’s beautiful E-flat Piano Trio, with which Vesa-Matti Leppänen, Andrew Joyce and Diedre Irons began their Lower Hutt concert on Monday evening.

Here were sounds devised and played with a spontaneity and wonderment which seemed to disarm everyday preoccupations and conjure up realms of beauty and fancy, simply for our delight and pleasure. As it began, so the music continued – apart from a brief minor-key episode in the Trio’s slow movement there was almost nothing of the darkness and drama conjured up by this work’s opus-partner, the renowned “Ghost” Trio.

From those opening, air-borne sounds, and the gently-insinuating rhythms propelling the first movement’s allegro, the players were able to explore a good deal of mood-variation, enjoying episodes of poised, classically-wrought beauty well as the more forthright rhythmic exchanges. In the second movement allegretto, the players preserved the charm of the major-key sequences (Diedre Irons’ piano by turns graceful and skitterish as required!) but wonderfully presided over the theme’s minor-key darkenings and sudden enlarging of the music’s expressive force, before delivering the soft/loud, somewhat Janus-faced ending.

After the somewhat Schubert-like, soulfully-played third movement (those major/minor piano-chord sequences surely must have resonated for the younger composer when devising HIS piano trios), the finale’s rushing energies properly re-invigorated things, the pianist having a wonderful time whirling through the figurations, and showing the way for her colleagues with great élan and vigour. I enjoyed the musicians’ vivid characterizations of the music’s different moods, the heroic merging with the poetic, the angular vying with the graceful, and the whole delivered with infectious enjoyment.

What a treat to have both of Debussy’s solo string-instrument sonatas (for violin and for ‘cello) presented within the same programme! These were among the last pieces (the Violin Sonata was actually the very last!) written by the composer, while in the throes of a final illness – they were planned as part of a series of six instrumental works, of which only three were completed (the third was a trio for flute, harp and viola).

In places in both sonatas one could hear the Debussy of old, with deft brush-strokes leaving behind the evocatively-hued harmonies and textures of a music style loosely called “impressionism”.  Right at the beginning of the Violin Sonata the pianist conjured magic from the air as it were with some simple chords to which the violin added an expressive, melancholy line, though later both instruments occasionally took up the dance, with coloristic sounds derived perhaps from gamelan, perhaps from Moorish influences – the vioiin’s exotic “bending” of its line at a couple of points, for example.

In the succeeding movements the hues became more pointillistic, as the violin tossed a couple of acerbic flourishes skyward, before taking up a droll “cakewalk-like” posture, the music’s gait by turns spiky and delicate in between moments of melancholy. Violinist Vesa-Matti Leppänen revelled in the music’s volatility, adroitly throwing off flourishes and as quickly gathering his tones in, nicely maintaining the music’s “light-and-shadow’ character. And Diedre Irons’ piano rippled like air “stirred and shaken”, matching the violinistic scamperings with irruptions and momentums leading to an exuberant close.

More forthright at the outset than its companion, the shorter ‘Cello Sonata mused in almost bardic response to the opening piano chords, with more than a hint of cool jazz coming out in Diedre Irons’ playing, both players firing off one another as the music’s agitations gathered weight and energy. What drolleries then, animated the pizzicato exchanges between the players in the second-movement Serenade! – the lines seemingly on the point of singing, occasionally,  but then breaking into dance-steps instead (a lovely, choreographed vibrato from Andrew Joyce and his instrument  at one point!).

And the spontaneous burst of energy from both players really made those opening dance figures of the finale hop! But what incredible changes of mood these two players were then required to realize, which they did, triumphantly – the Sargasso-Sea-like driftings of the textures, weighty- opaque oscillations somehow shed their bulk and built towards the dance figures once again…and then, fantastically adroit staccato exchanges positively scintillated amid verve-filled, dangerously-timed cadence-points, whose rhythmic precision at the music’s end made for exhilarating results.

How will Brahms sound next to all of this? I wondered, just before the concert’s final item, the C Major Piano Trio Op.87. Well, his music came through, thanks to some mightily “orchestral” playing from the Trio, which, throughout the first movement, helped to “grow” the music towards a wonderfully diversive and complex transformation.

In the second, theme-and-variations movement I was reminded here and there of Dvorak in his “gypsy” mode, a vein of melancholy threading its way through the various textures, the playing in places boldly and dramatically bringing out the feeling, while elsewhere quietly following its contourings.

I liked the scherzo’s deft touch of dark malevolence, the players also relishing the contrasting Trio’s ironic sense of well-being, before plunging back into the reprise of the mischief! Diedre Irons’ playing I thought superb, here, bringing both delicacy and glint to bear within the textures and rhythms, controlling the music’s volatilities with terrific gusto.

And the finale’s Allegro giocoso  marking could have been thought of at first as a Brahmsian joke, here, with spookily “gothic” effects in places (almost Lisztian, I thought – what was this “champion of the conservatives” thinking of?) – all very exciting! The players brilliantly caught the music’s sense of headlong flight, beautifully placing the near-obsessive three-note descending motif sequence and the more reflective nostalgic episode in the scheme of things, then completing the joke by almost brusquely rounding things off with a spectacular flourish. What a work and what a performance!

Orchestra Wellington confirms its stature in large scale late Romantic as well as Haydn, and honours Franz Paul Decker

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Marc Taddei dedicates Bruckner’s 7th symphony with Orchestra Wellington to Franz-Paul Decker

Orchestra Wellington conducted by Marc Taddei with Deborah Humble (mezzo soprano)

Haydn: Symphony No 84 in E flat ‘In nomine Domini’
Wagner: The Wesendonck Lieder
Bruckner: Symphony No 7 in E major

Cathedral of Saint Paul, Wellington

Saturday 24 May, 7 pm

Orchestra Wellington’s concerts in the second half of last year, banished from the Town Hall, took place in the Opera House. I missed both of those. The move to the Anglican cathedral might have been partly in the nature of an experiment, now that Wellington seems to be faced with the depressing news that strengthening of the Town Hall seems to have become more expensive and the city council seems ready to sacrifice yet another feature of Wellington as a sophisticated, culturally rich city, which is about all we have left, apart from Government, after the flight of manufacturing and most corporate head offices.

Gone are both one of the best concert halls in the country, the gem of a recital hall, as well as the fine city organ, and the splendidly spacious west foyers of the previous “strengthening” in the early 1980s. (By the way, who’s to be held responsible for an inadequate job back then?).

Before the start of the concert conductor Marc Taddei spoke about a loss of another kind: the death in Montreal on Monday 21 May of Franz-Paul Decker at the age of 90.

Decker had a 40-year association as Guest Conductor, Principal Conductor and Chief Conductor of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Decker was perhaps the most gifted conductor to have had a long relationship with the orchestra.  He was said to have had a “love affair” with the NZSO since he first conducted it in 1966, when he was “very positively surprised [by its] highly professional musicians”. He said: “It is the longest relationship I have had with any orchestra in the world”.

Perhaps Decker’s last engagement was in Barcelona in November 2010 which concluded with Strauss’s ill-omened tone poem Death and Transfiguration.

Taddei said nothing could have been more appropriate to honour the memory of a conductor so devoted to and penetrating with his Bruckner performances than his seventh symphony.

The Haydn
The Cathedral was full, and the concert opened with one of Haydn’s ‘Paris’ symphonies, Nos 82-87, written through 1785-86 on a commission from a Paris orchestra, the Concert de la (Masonic) loge Olympique.  It was a very large orchestra, of amateurs and professionals.

The seats in the cathedral had been turned around so that the orchestra was at the west end and the audience’s back were to the sanctuary, perhaps in the hope that a less reverberant acoustic would exist. That may have been effective for the two symphonies, but it offered little to the orchestra or the singer in Wagner’s Wesendonck songs.

In fact the opening Largo of the first movement of Number 84 promised both a warm and full-blooded performance and an acoustic that treated the playing kindly enough. Its slow pace left plenty of room for the echo to fade without clutter. And even in the main Allegro part of the movement, a certain amount of overlapping of sounds did not bother me. In any case I am very partial to a large space that slightly rounds the edges of symphonic performance, up to a point.

What was more significant was the sheer size of the orchestra – around 75 – which displayed impressive polish and even opulence to the point of risking the censure of the more pedantic of the ‘historically informed’ performance devotees.

But the Paris commission gave Haydn the chance to compose for a considerably larger orchestra than he had at Esterhazy and it’s clear that he jumped at the chance to use larger forces. The slow movement, in a gentle triple (6/8) rhythm, seemed to be the heart of the music, as it so often is, and I found myself wallowing in the sounds of the fine brass, the lovely legato lines, the beguiling tunes, indeed, the elegance and charm of the orchestration as a whole.

The Minuet may have been typical for its time, but who else could have written with such elan and wit. Unlike many Minuets, the Trio middle section offered only minor change of rhythm and character; might the performance, with advantage, have given it more contrast?  Nor might the Vivace finale be revolutionary, but merely of far greater interest and delight than most of the music of the time, apart from his own and Mozart’s.

A propos, it’s interesting that the young Mozart, on his visit to Paris with his mother eight years earlier, also had success with his fine Paris Symphony; apart from that, his visit was disappointing, and his mother died in Paris.

Deborah Humble with Wagner
Deborah Humble had come from Australia to sing Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder. Here was where the contribution of the cathedral’s acoustic became a matter of some interest.  The very introductory notes seemed to be coming from varying and indistinct places, as if they were disconnected, without a coherent performance plan. No reflection on conductor or players at all, but simply the mischievousness of the space.

But that opening sounded different from my memory of other performances; the programme did not identify the source of the orchestration (Wagner himself only orchestrated the last song, ‘Traüme’), and the usual arrangement is by Wagner’s colleague Felix Mottl. There are also versions by Vieri Tosatti, and Hans Werner Henze. I had discounted the latter because it is described as ‘for chamber orchestra’, though with ‘unusual wind registration’.  I discovered later that what we heard and which may or may not have been helpful in the acoustic, was indeed by Henze: perhaps sparer orchestration seemed more likely to cope better with the space.

(To my chagrin, I found a performance of the Henze version sung by Mariana Lipovšek sitting on my sagging shelves).

The characteristics of the Henze orchestration were summarised for me by the orchestra’s General Manager, Adán Tijerina: ‘for low voice, and the special feature of the particular instrumentation is the use of deep instruments: alto flute, cor anglais, bass clarinet, contrabassoon’.

The voice enters quickly after the rather spare opening hints of mood, and it was obvious at once that Deborah Humble’s Wagner credentials were for real: a fine Wagner voice, large enough to cope with the orchestra surrounding her and that acoustic, though the latter did rather obscure the intelligibility of the words. (As an aside, last year I saw the last three parts of the Hamburg Ring cycle that she had sung in, but after her involvement had finished). Her most important recent engagement was in the Melbourne Ring last November/December, as Erda and Waltraute.

Those with Wagner embedded in their souls and memories were catching quotes from parts of the Ring, and especially Tristan which was emerging during the 1850s when Wagner was in exile in Zurich. Without that connection the songs are of course just as beautiful and fully expressive of the sense and emotion of the words and can even be heard as presaging the approaching expressionism of the end of the century. These were the characteristics of Humble’s performance, beautifully phrased, warm and rounded in the lower register, lustrous and spiritual as her lines went high into the soprano range, investing the songs with a dramatic quality that could be heard as the product of a totally theatrical performer.

Bruckner’s Seventh
I like to think many of us had come particularly for the rare chance to hear a big Bruckner symphony; the seventh is probably the best known and most popular, but its hour and ten minutes length no doubt deters many orchestral managements, though hardly the musicians and conductors (and besotted audience members).

What a thrill it was to be overwhelmed by the glorious opening melody, from an orchestra that might long have languished a bit in the shadow of its big sister in Wellington. Still with somewhat smaller forces than the NZSO might muster, there was simply no area that sounded in the least undernourished. The impact of the opulent strings, the lustrous woodwinds and finally the marvellous, gleaming brass given the final touch of grandeur by the presence of four Wagner tubas (strictly, they should be called ‘Wagner horns’), which Wagner had had made for the Ring cycle, to fill the sonic gap he felt existed between trombones and horns.

In fact, at least from my seat, about six rows from the front, the big space added the important element of a quasi-religious atmosphere that enhanced and enriched the sound, suggesting both a much bigger orchestra, not to mention a performance of huge authority (Taddei conducted without the score before him, always a mark of someone who has become utterly committed to the music).

It’s one of the works, like Wagner’s operas, which one rarely feels is too long; rather, there was a sense of bereavement at its eventual end, so strongly had conductor and orchestra sustained momentum, suspense, an awe that was spell-binding, wanting just another return to this or that episode. The effect was magnified by a unhurried pace of each movement lending the music even greater profundity.

This was a superb, imaginative programme, of music that was not-all-that-familiar but all of which exercises a strong pull for quite large numbers of the more musically knowledgeable and curious; not to mention the one uncontested masterpiece.

Though this orchestra, particularly at the hands of Marc Taddei, has given us a lot of very great performances in recent years, this concert, all of it, sounded to me like the most compelling, ultimate coming-of-age for Orchestra Wellington.

 

Innovative and balanced programme from Aroha Quartet at Waikanae

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Waikanae Music Society

Mozart: String Quartet no.1 in G, K.80
Sam Piper: Dance of the Sidhe
Zhou Long: Eight Chinese Folk Songs
Schubert: String Quartet no.15 in G, D.887

Aroha String Quartet (Haihong Liu and Blythe Press, violins; Zhongxian Jin, viola; Robert Ibell, cello)

Waikanae Memorial Hall

18 May 2014, 2.30 pm

What immediately struck me was not that Mozart should have written such a quartet at the age of 14, remarkable as that is, but rather the beauty of the playing by the Aroha Quartet.  Their tone, subtle gradation of dynamics, their blend and balance were utterly disarming.  Unafraid of playing real pianissimos, these musicians brought much light and shade, and delicacy, to this, the first of Mozart’s string quartets.

The allegro second movement provided a considerable contrast, its fast tempi and lively expression taken together made it utterly unlike the almost dreamy first movement.  Juvenile high spirits were disciplined, however.

A precise minuet was full of graceful poetry, while its trio was a charmer, constrasting with the slightly more robust minuet.  Rondeau was quite a rollicking movement. Naturally, compared with Mozart’s later compositions, there was not the range of musical ideas here. Nevertheless it was well worth hearing, especially at the hands of these accomplished players.

I have heard works by young New Zealand composer Sam Piper before, but I rather think they were all choral.  Dance of the Sidhe (Irish ‘little people’) was made up of three short pieces.  The first, marked ‘furioso’ was sparkling and tuneful, mainly for violin with innovative accompaniment for the other instrumentalists, including clapping, finger-snapping, and tapping the instruments.  The second, “Dance of the Elder: largo con molto rubato’ began with a melody for cello, beautifully played, followed by the same on viola, while the others shimmered on repeated two note motifs.  There were lovely modal harmonies. The third piece, a presto, was more folksy in manner.  A spirited violin melody was accompanied by staccato from the other players.  This was fine playing of entertaining music.

It was very appropriate to have some Chinese music, with two Chinese musicians in the Quartet’s make-up.  The settings of eight folk songs, for which the titles were given in the programme were delightful, and as a description in the programme notes stated the composer’s music was ‘embedding elements of two cultures in a consistent, seamless, and original musical language’.  This was certainly true of the first one – a fine fusion.

The pieces were played without breaks.  The second, ‘Driving the mule team’ was very pictorial, the second violin creating the sound of the animal’s hooves by playing pizzicato on two strings together, while the others played legato melodies.

The third, ‘ The flowing stream’ was very descriptive of flowing water, and wistful longing.  ‘Jasmine flower’ was quite a spiky piece, in which the use of the pentatonic scale was very prominent. ‘A horseherd’s mountain song’ was a very rhythmic work song, in which the workmen uttered vocalisations.  Uncertainty or even querulousness entered into ‘When will the acacia bloom?’ about the young woman embarrassed at being caught waiting for her lover; the musicians treated it with sensitivity.  There were interesting cross-rhythms in the pizzicato parts.

Number 7, ‘A single bamboo can easily bend’ featured very sonorous cello, while the final ‘Leaving home’ was a busy piece that seemed to be more about travelling and work than any sadness at parting. This was a well-constructed sequence of pieces which the audience patently enjoyed.

Schubert’s long quartet is so full of change and variety that sustaining interest was not a problem.  Excellent programme notes aided the listening.

The power of expression that Schubert had, and the poetry of his utterance in chamber music and song is peerless.  In the first movement, the dark opening, full of dram, gives way to a sprightly melody, almost like folksong, on viola.  It is followed in turn by a beautiful first violin and viola duet on a  brief, ethereal theme.  The cello then takes the place of the viola.  The change of key that follows sounds almost brutal.  One marvels at the creativity that brought forth a work of such diversity.

The second movement’s opening melody on cello is full of nuances and warmth.  Schubert’s sudden fortissimos, characteristic not only here but in much of his music other than chamber music, serve to command attention.  Much beauty resided in this movement, and the music was always moving somewhere; the players had a good idea of the shape and structure of the movement.

The third movement scherzo was pleasantly busy, like birds chattering, while the melodious trio featured cello followed by first violin in exposing the tuneful and animated melody.  The finale was described in the programme note as ‘full of sudden dynamic contrasts, and rhythmic complexities.  This harmonic and rhythmic tension carries the movement in an exhilarating ride to the finish’.  I could hardly believe through the lively opening section that the same composer wrote the opening lines of the quartet.  Yet soon, we were plunged into minor harmonies again.  Towards the end, song-like themes emerged once more.

The innovative programming and skilled playing made for a thoroughly enjoyable concert.  Not every note was perfectly in place, but the musicality of the playing, the sense of unified approach and tone, and the delight of the music performed completely overcame any thought of aberrations.  It was a marvelous experience to hear such great music so well played.

A familiar, brief Shostakovich piece, mainly pizzicato, was played as a humorous encore, to send the audience away with smiles on their faces.

 

Brilliant and vibrant exuberance from John Chen

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music presents:
JOHN CHEN (piano)

BARBER – Piano Sonata in E-flat Op 26
BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata in C Minor Op.111
MENDELSSOHN – 7 Character Pieces Op.7 – Nos 3 and 5
HINDEMITH – Piano Sonata No.3 in B-flat Major (1936)

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

Sunday, 18th May 2014

This was in many respects a masterly recital, a most interesting and, indeed, challenging programme, delivered by John Chen with piano-playing whose seismic performance energies in places would have given the foundations of St Andrew’s-on-the-Terrace a particularly singular workout. It was music that seemed to bristle with challenges for the pianist, though a different kind of challenge for both player and audience was due, I thought to the running order of the music that was chosen. I did know beforehand, for example, that both Beethoven’s Op.111 Sonata and Samuel Barber’s 1949 Piano Sonata were being performed, but not that they would be put right next to one another.

At the point when John Chen finished his blistering traversal of the Barber, which opened the program, I was ready for strong coffee, or something of an even more restorative nature! This was by way of my feeling somewhat drained of listening energy through close proximity to such supercharged music-making. What I really didn’t want to happen at that particular moment in time was to then be confronted with the alarming incongruity of encountering nothing less than Beethoven’s Op.111.

But here was this young pianist, having thrown off one of the great keyboard masterworks of the twentieth century with huge aplomb and complete commitment to the cause, ready to climb a different kind of Everest, with what seemed scarcely a pause for breath. It seemed a fraction – well, excessive……Perhaps if someone had appeared and said something like, “There will be a short break before the programme’s next item….” we would have been able to better realign our sensibilities for what was to follow.

Once Chen began the Beethoven, certain things about his playing of the music compounded the incongruity. With the Barber work he seemed to have both understood and fully entered into the music’s free-wheeling spirit of fearless creative ferment. However, his playing throughout the opening of the Beethoven work seemed somewhat constrained, the rough-hewn, elemental piano-writing I thought a shade too moderated in effect, to convey a sense of the music’s composer hurling his message outwards and upwards towards the heavens.

So much about his reading was to be admired – its pacing, timing, clarity of fingerwork and overall structuring all seemed clearly thought-out, and skilfully brought into play – and perhaps, in a different context it would all have convey more of the music’s intrinsic character. But after that performance of the Barber work it seemed to me as though Chen had with the Beethoven become too intent on conveying the music’s different “style”, instead of trying to directly get to grips with the work’s physical, emotional and spiritual content.

Symptomatic of this approach to the music was Chen’s omission of the first-movement repeat, as if for the pianist some structural logic was best served by its excision. I find its inclusion a significant intensification of the music’s character, a fleshing-out of the composer’s own dictum that “the idea counts more than its execution”. Removing the passage might serve some abstracted formal symmetry, but surely detracts from the range and scope of Beethoven’s emotional and spiritual architecture. It’s not quite a stylistic matter, but again it raises the question of priorities, this time regarding form and content and their relative importance. Of course, as with so many things musical, opinions will vary.

Going back to the issue of which piece should have followed which, my preference would have been for the pianist to have re-aligned the program, beginning with either the Hindemith Sonata or the Mendelssohn Character Pieces instead of the Barber Sonata, and playing the latter as a barnstorming finale  – after which, of course, the coffee would go down REALLY well!  But one day, I hope Chen will choose another alternative solution when programming Op.111, which will be to bring more of his own particular kind of creative abandonment to his playing and interpreting of the work. I don’t mean he should be riding roughshod over the music’s stylistic elements, but nor should they inhibit or be treated as ends in themselves – they’re a starting-point, a springboard from which to express Beethoven’s idea as the player sees fit and feels the music.

The remainder of the program seemed admirably suited to John Chen’s skills and sensibilities. Mendelssohn’s two Character Pieces (Op.7 Nos. 3 and 5) in places literally bubbled with enjoyment in the pianist’s hands. These were both fugal, and were from a set of seven, which the composer called “Character Pieces”, in line with how fugues were regarded by the Romantics, responding to the moods and intensities created by the interplay of different voices. In No.3 I enjoyed both the “ring” of the pianist’s right-hand work and the lovely singing quality he brought out from the lines, while the following, more devotional-sounding opening of No.5 gradually grew in warmth and momentum here, towards a wonderful and celebratory conclusion.

Paul Hindemith’s music is often a puzzlement for listeners mindful of reputation and prevailing attitudes. Contrary to the “dry and academic” labels which my early encounters with descriptions of his music seemed to repeatedly turn up, his music seems to me as deeply-felt as any, and in some instances, great fun to listen to. There is a certain rigour at times – but while I wouldn’t characterize the composer’s Third and last Piano Sonata as a barrel of laughs, it’s as readily approachable as any of the composer’s trio of works in this genre. Central to this accessibility is the first movement which uses a beautiful, slightly folksy melody that for me recalled a tune in Gustav Holst’s Brook Green Suite. Here Chen confidently and whole-heartedly brought out all the composer’s variants and developments of the theme in various “adventures” culminating in a kind of “laying-to-rest” ritual amid chordal progressions whose delicacies of dynamics were unerringly shaped, before the melody’s final winsome statement.

Then came a garrulous scherzo whose bumptious angular manner contrasted beautifully with a skitterish and sometimes gossamer-sounding trio (beautiful pianism, here), followed by a third movement March, grand and stately at the outset, but replete with lovely, mock-serious touches, Chen’s colourful playing by turns excitingly orchestral and atmospherically withdrawn. The fugal finale was a glorious undertaking, strong and assertive in places, more circumspect and playful in others – shades of the composer’s glorious Weber Symphonic Metamorphosis breaking though – Chen’s performance doing rich and whole-hearted justice to Hindemith’s rigorously-organised but fascinatingly-varied world of sound.

At the recital’s end I couldn’t help recalling the words of Sir John Barbirolli in an interview I once heard, during which the conductor talked about ‘cellist Jacqueline de Pre’s wholehearted approach to music and performance, and the reaction from various commentators to her allegedly over-fulsome style – “I love it!” grunted the maestro – “When you’re young you should have an excess of everything – otherwise, what are you going to pare off as you mature and refine your approach?” Which is not to characterize John Chen’s playing as excessive and fulsome – but that “excess of everything” referred to by Barbirolli is, I think, part of the essence of being a young performer, and wanting to encompass the full range of what music has to offer.

John Chen certainly exuded that essential quality in places throughout this recital – and we can count ourselves as fortunate that we’re able to share those moments, those transportings of delight when music combines with performance to produce something unique and memorable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Passion, poetry and valediction from the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
RUSSIAN FIRE

RACHMANINOV – Caprice Bohémien
SCHUMANN – PIano Concerto in A Minor Op.
SHOSTAKOVICH – Symphony No.15 in A

Alexander Melnikov (piano)
Alexander Lazarev (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 17th May 2014

It was one of those concerts in which everything seemed to me to come together and go “whizz-bang!” It provided in spadefuls just what can make classical music events such unique experiences. It’s that totality of concentration upon nothing else but the music and music-making generated by musicians whose skill, focus and energy create a kind of frisson of recreative involvement. And into this ferment listeners are drawn, to make of the experience what they will. Whatever the music, however light-hearted or profound, it’s that realization of its essence, of its character, which transcends all other considerations.

Well-worn thoughts, one might think, hardly worth repeating? But it was good to be forcefully reminded (as, indeed, this same orchestra had done a week previously through its stunning performance of Lyell Cresswell’s work “Hear and Far” with singer Jonathan Lemalu, conducted by James MacMillan) how a group of musicians can by dint of skilled and committed playing, and without any extraneous trappings, so completely and utterly engage its listeners. I couldn’t imagine better advocacy for live music-making and its availability and continuance than was provided by this present concert.

The evening’s presentation was called, somewhat spuriously, “Russian Fire” – a description which had nothing whatever to do with the delectable Schumann A Minor Concerto, here performed by pianist Alexander Melnikov, a work which epitomizes German romanticism at its most poetic and winsome; while the last of Shostakovich’s symphonies, the enigmatic Fifteenth, is a philosophical, part tragic, part ironic work whose manner is somewhat removed from most of its composer’s earlier, conflict-ridden symphonic essays. Only the brilliant and volatile Caprice Bohémien, written by the youthful Sergei Rachmaninov in 1894, fulfilled the expectation created by the concert’s banner publicity headline.

One could argue that the phrase referred to the combination of pianist and conductor – both Russian and both noted for their brilliance and volatility as performers. That was largely true of conductor Alexander Lazarev, whose demonstrative and theatrical podium manner brought a sense of fiery commitment  to almost everything he interpreted. As for the “other” Alexander (a friend also at the concert afterwards put it succinctly when she said “Thumbs up for the two Alexanders!), pianist Alexander Melnikov, whom I’d seen and heard play “live” before, brought by turns strength and restraint, poetry and precision to his playing of the first two movements in particular of the concerto –  any “fire” as such would have scorched and withered the delicate tissues of such finely-wrought music.

In fact those first two movements of the concerto gave me such unalloyed delight, I was left feeling a tad disappointed by the finale, whose music here didn’t for me sufficiently “dance”. Melnikov gave us some lovely moments, but he seemed more taken with the movement’s ebb than with its flow – I felt neither his playing nor Lazarev’s direction generated quite enough overall momentum for the phrase-ends to be set tingling and the blood to be stirred. I thought of Schumann’s remark about the Chopin Waltzes needing to be danced by countesses, and felt something of the same need ought to apply to this work’s finale – as much as I appreciated what both pianist and conductor were doing I thought in overall terms, the movement didn’t quite get off the ground.

But ah! – such was the spell cast by Melnikov’s noble and poetic keyboard utterances throughout the earlier parts of the work I found it easy to forgive him – and along with everybody else in the auditorium I was charmed by his playing of one of Prokofiev’s Visions Fugitives as an encore, one with the most deliciously throwaway ending, which was tossed at us most delightfully and nonchalantly.

It rounded off a first half which had begun in the most spectacular and colourful fashion with a stunning performance by Lazarev and the orchestra of Rachmaninov’s rarely-played orchestral work Caprice Bohémien. This was composed just after the fledgling composer had graduated from the Moscow Concervatory, and it exhibits a confidence and surety in handling his material that’s quite remarkable for somebody writing such an early work.

What’s also interesting about this work besides its depth of feeling is the piece’s exoticism – granted that it’s music depicting Gypsy life, but Rachmaninov was to further intensify this exotic, somewhat oriental-sounding vein of expression in his First Symphony, which was first performed in 1897 and famously ravaged by the critic Cesar Cui, himself a composer, one of “The Five”, though perhaps its least distinguished member.

Had the Symphony’s first performance been better-managed and the work’s reception a more favourable one, Rachmaninov’s style as a composer might well have explored these exotic paths more fully. But as is well known, the young composer was sunk into a deep depression as a result of the Symphony’s failure – and his immediately subsequent works, such as the Second Piano Concerto and the Second Symphony were far less harmonically daring and innovative than the music of both the First Symphony and the earlier Caprice Bohémien.

In Alexander Lazarev the Caprice had the ideal interpreter – Lazarev brought to the fore the music’s excitement and volatility, but also brought out the vein of deep melancholic lyricism which marks Rachmaninov’s work – so those pulsating timpani contourings, throbbing lower strings and brooding winds of the opening created for us a wondrous atmosphere brimming with possibility and ready to explode with bite and energy at a moment’s notice – after briefly doing so, the music returned to smolder-mode, out of which grew the most gorgeous ‘cello tune, reflecting this aforementioned penchant for exotically-coloured expression, as did the solo clarinet melody which followed, and the subsequent interchanges with the flute and horn.

After this had all burst forth and subsided, the dancing began, slowly at first, but gathering in tension and excitement,and culminating in a near-frenzy of abandonment at the end, with players and audience members on the edges of their seats both literally and metaphorically. The conductor (as he’d done in concerts on previous visits) made his notorious “rostrum turn-about” to the audience on the final orchestral chord! – pure showmanship, but in a sense it was what this kind of music-making was about, involving the listeners as palpably as it did the musicians. We loved him for it!

An interval was greatly appreciated in view of the imminent Shostakovich Symphony, just as the business of moving the piano onto the platform  for the Schumann concerto gave us time to readjust our sensibilities after the wild and orgiastic Rachmaninov piece. But unexpectedly, there was more, because the concert happened to be the occasion of veteran NZSO violist Peter van Drimmelen’s final appearance as an orchestra player. So, before the second half got under way, deputy Concertmaster Donald Armstrong stepped up to the microphone to pay a well-modulated tribute to van Drimmelen, highlighting his contribution over the years both to the orchestra and to music in Wellington in general as a player, conductor and organizer.

Then it was ostensibly grimmer business at hand, with the re-entry of conductor Lazarev, ready to set in motion Shostakovich’s final and valedictory Fifteenth Symphony. In point of fact, the Symphony sounded anything but grim to begin with – more like a kind of surrealist entertainment, with a couple of quotations from Rossini’s “William Tell” Overture thrown into the first movement’s somewhat quixotic orchestral mix. Unusually for Shostakovich, this symphony contains several “borrowings” from other composers – apart from the Rossini, most obviously in the final movement from Wagner, but as well from Shostakovich’s fellow-countryman Mikhail Glinka.

Shostakovich wouldn’t be “drawn” regarding any possible “programme” suggested by the symphony, apart from commenting that his intention vis-a-vis the first movement was to depict a kind of open-air toyshop viewed through the eyes of a child – a somewhat misleading description of music that in places palpably depicted more like “something nasty in the nursery”. He was as coy when asked to explain the various quotations from other composers’ works, telling a friend, somewhat obliquely, “I don’t myself quite know why the quotations are there, but I could not NOT include them”.

Lazarev and the NZSO players took us into this surreal world in a trice, with snappy, alert playing that nailed the music’s angularities and brought out its piquant melodic lines, the flute and bassoon foremost among the winds at the outset. The “toyshop” aspect was given full rein from all sides at first – a wonderfully antiphonal sound-picture of disparate elements, into which comings and goings jogged, quite unabashed, the “William Tell Overture” quote, rather like a kind of sub-plot or passing theatre of separate activity on one level, yet at the same time “grown” out of the textures in a wholly unselfconscious manner.

The layered, cross-rhythmed string passages, echoed later in manner by the winds, eerily wound up the music’s tensions, and uncovered darker, more anxious purposes which a skittery solo violin and a couple more jaunty appearances of “William Tell” couldn’t entirely keep down – I thought the NZSO’s playing encompassed all the different variants of character in the music with real élan. And live music-making gave the listener visual bonuses as well, such as the use of the whip, held high and played with delicious precision by one of the hard-working percussionists.

The only place in the symphony I had difficulty going entirely with Lazarev’s reading was at the beginning of the second movement, where I thought the dark, sinister brass chorales were given a shade too quickly and smoothly. But what sombre beauties were then conjured up by Andrew Joyce’s wonderful ‘cello solo, the other orchestral strings coming forth in due course with rapt, properly awed responses. Not being Russian players the brasses couldn’t help their chorales sounding more like Bruckner than Shostakovich, so refined were their outpourings. But the winds’ eerie radio-frequency chords were answered by a superbly-done trombone solo with tuba accompaniment which brought our sensibilities into the music’s very heart, prior to a seismic irruption from the whole orchestra that seemed to suddenly open a wound, and lay bare the composer’s inner existential anguish. Afterwards, we found ourselves in the middle of a sound-world bereft of warmth, compassion and any hope for the future – most unsettling was the silence when the music stopped.

As were the ghoulish chords which began the scherzo-movement – grinning gargoyle-like sounds from the winds, suggesting a kind of “danse macabre” – also, wonderful “kitchen” sounds from the percussion, so very readily did they evoke the convolutions of dancing bones! Eerie, too were the flesh-creeping, Psycho-reminiscent responses of the strings to the solo violin, music from a master of the sardonic gesture, surpassing himself in this, his valedictory symphonic statement.

But what to make of the last movement? – along with its direct Wagner quotation (the “Fate” motif, associated with the deaths of both Siegmund and Siegfried, in “The Ring”) there were references to both “Siegfried’s Funeral March” and the “Tristan” Prelude, before disarmingly linking the last with a quote from a Glinka song….. the references to death are inescapable – Shostakovich was a man dying of heart disease when the Symphony was being written – and both the “Tristan” and the Glinka quotes involve aspects of love. Of course “Tristan” epitomizes all-consuming love, whereas the Glinka song is a setting of verses by the poet Baratynsky concerning a renunciation of love, containing the words “To a disillusioned man all seductions are alien…”. So Shostakovich’s choice of other people’s music as quotations was here replete with significance.

My notes say of the performance at this point, “the orchestral detailing is astonishing!” – and it was during this movement that I became aware of the intensity of the audience’s pin-dropping concentration upon the music and the music-making. The playing of the orchestra seemed to realize every ounce of the music’s message at every place along the dynamic spectrum, from the bleak stillnesses to the blackest, most jagged and numbing climaxes. After these, along with the quotations and the eerie “radio-frequency-chord” were done, nothing was left in the music but the bare bones of life tapping out the remaining, failing pulse-beats until only the silences could be heard.

Conductor Lazarev cannily kept his arms upraised and his hands beating time in ever-dimishing movements after the sounds had ceased, holding the audience breath-bated and spell-bound – and when after a minute’s silence had passed he brought his arms down to his sides the applause was thunderous in its response. He then generously (if rather too fulsomely in one particular case) brought every one of the orchestral soloists, as well as whole sections at a time, to their feet to acknowledge the ovation.

With all due respect to Shostakovich, I thought it really was a concert to die for – a most memorable occasion. For which, much thanks to all concerned!