Category: Live performance

A long and circuitous route from the Guildhall

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand School of Music presents:

A Guildhall Trio Reunion

Barbara Hill (flute) / Debbie Rawson (clarinet) / Donald Maurice (viola)

with Jian Liu (piano)

Music by Max Bruch, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Maurice Durufle, Alfred Uhl, Francois Devienne, Jenny McLeod

Adam Concert Room, NZSM Kelburn Campus,

Victoria University, Wellington

Wednesday 27th March, 2013

“…..a musical reunion? – ooh, yes, a lovely idea! Remember some of those things we unearthed and played, and had so much fun with? Yes, they’ll sound great, especially with a few wines, and plenty of yummy food – what’s that? A concert? You mean, the real thing? – an audience? – Ooo-er! – eh? – what was that? – No, not at all! – I’m on if you two are on! What gave you that idea? – I’m keen if you’re keen. Yeah, a couple of those things are at home somewhere, at the bottom of some pile. No, it’ll do me good! What about you? – you haven’t played that since when?……well, it won’t have gone stale, then……”

Of course one “invents” scenarios for effect – and truth is often stranger, funnier and more interesting than any fabricated exchange. But this trio of musicians, made up of Debbie Rawson, clarinet, Donald Maurice, viola and Barbara Hill, flute, were simultaneously flatmates and fellow-students at London’s Guildhall School of Music during the 1970s. During the intervening years they’d mostly gone their separate musical ways, except for periods where two members of the trio played together in different ensembles – but up until this present concert the threesome hadn’t performed together or alongside each other since their student days.

Now, along with the help of pianist Jian Liu, the three reunited for the present concert, though most of the repertoire presented involved no more than two of the group at any one time. Happily, the last item on the programme did use the whole ensemble – Jenny McLeod’s Suite – jazz themes was written in 1987 for the Zelanian Ensemble, in fact while Debbie Rawson and Donald Maurice were both members of the group. So the reunion was complete, and honour was well-and-truly satisfied.

Throughout the concert pianist Jian Liu’s playing was both the solid rock on which the different instrumental combinations stood and delivered, and the chameleon whose aspect adapted its tones to whatever was required by the music’s character at any given moment. The programme was largely a twentieth-century one, with the honorable exception of a Duo for flute and viola by Francois Devienne (1759-1803). Though Max Bruch (1838-1920), is generally thought of as a nineteenth-century romantic, his Eight Pieces for clarinet, viola and piano, four of which were played here, were written in 1910.

It was the Bruch which began the concert, Debbie Rawson and Donald Maurice joining forces with Jian Liu to give us Nos. 2, 5, 6 and 7 from those Eight Pieces. At the age of seventy the composer probably wasn’t concerned with fashionable trends in composition, drawing instead from a lifetime’s experience of his own creative impulses and other people’s music. So the Nachtgesang (No.6) which opened the concert had a mellow, sometimes Brahms-like, sometimes Schumannesque character, here beautifully realised, with the players taking turns to accompany one another most sensitively.

The short No.2 (Allegro con moto) was rather more lively, again reminiscent of Schumann, and with the piano part expressing miracles of quiet, nervous agitation (there was a delicious gurgle of appreciation from a very young child in the audience, right at the end of the piece!). No.5, the Rumanische Melodie was true to its description, the solo violin gypsy-like, and the folksy clarinet rhapsodizing by turns gaily and darkly. And what a contrast brought out by the players with the Dvorak-like No.7, beautifully setting the long-held melodic lines over infectious skipping energies, all with the lightest of touches.

Heitor Villa-Lobos’s music isn’t heard nearly enough in our concert-halls, and the composer’s brief but high-output Chôros No.2  merely whetted our appetites for more. One of a series of diverse instrumental combinations, this one threw Barbara Hill’s flute and Debbie Rawson’s clarinet together, lyrical outpourings, angularities and all, Debbie Rawson advising us at the beginning to “tighten our seatbelts” in anticipation of the same – a highly diverting and totally idiosyncratic entertainment.

No greater contrast could have been devised than with the music of Maurice Duruflé which followed, the Prelude, Recitatif and Variations for flute, viola and piano. Where Villa-Lobos’ music seemed all knees and elbows and nervous energies, Duruflé’s richly resonant sound-world conjured up depths of feeling whose surfaces occasionally shimmered and bubbled, realms of liquid and of air brought into active play, and presented for our delight and wonderment. Only during the final variations did the music take on a more physical aspect, and almost always with a light touch, though the notes were appropriately and splendidly scattered over a wide area by way of the work’s exhilarating conclusion.

I’d not heard any music previous to this concert by Alfred Uhl – by dint of the work’s title Kleines Koncert, and the composer’s Viennese connection, the spirit of Mozart seemed to be present from the start, although Uhl was very much a twentieth-century composer, with a number of film scores to his credit. Pianist Jian Liu introduced the work, emphasizing its wit and charm, and its references to the music of other composers. I thought its opening very burleske-like – crashing chords, running chromaticisms and sinuous melodies created a kind of “music for the pictures’ ambience. I particularly enjoyed the “half-lit” sequences, the eerie harmonies and half-tone shifts – all great fun! The players also appeared to enjoyed themselves greatly, moving with relish from the mordant wit of the duo-cadenza-like exchanges at the first movement’s ending to the gothic, dark-tread of the music at the slow movement’s beginning, with viola and clarinet sounding their notes like warning-bells at sea.

As if enough swirling energies hadn’t been expended by this time, the work’s finale reached new heights of vertiginous abandonment, driving the music giddily along within  the confines of closely-worked harmonies. It was a “heads down and scamper” kind of scenario among the musicians, their full-blooded playing screwing up the tensions brilliantly right to the end – all very accessible stuff, uninhibited and entertaining.

Barbara Hill was the obvious choice to tell us about the next composer’s work, as the other musicans would have been quite breathless for a while after putting across Uhl’s riotous music so engagingly. And, of course, Francois Devienne’s work featured the flute, in a duo with the viola. An eighteenth-century composer, performer and teacher in Paris, Devienne’s music isn’t well-known to concert-goers, though there’s a fair deal of it extant,  (over three hundred numbered works, mostly involving wind instruments). This two-movement work nicely contrasted an expressive style at the outset, with a more energetic Rondo, the latter incorporating a photo-finish kind of ending, which must have gone down well with the punters at the time. Barbara Hill and Donald Maurice conveyed a palpable sense of enjoyment to us of both the music and of their partnership in realising its many delights.

There can’t have been many classical music concerts which featured a musician talking about putting down a hangi on a back lawn somewhere in London, as Donald Maurice did here by way of illustrating a context for the group’s connections with the next item and its composer. Jenny McLeod’s work Suite – Jazz themes splendidly performed its dual function of entertaining its audience and rounding the concert off most satisfyingly. Debbie Rawson invited people to dance if they felt so inclined at any stage, which added a kind of physical dimension to people’s listening, even if no-one actually leapt from his or her seat during the performance.

The work’s five movements had many ear-tickling sequences, particularly the first one, Zelania, with its syncopations and “wandering stresses”. The following Chaconne lazily drifted its sounds through ambiences of memory and nostalgia, its slow dance evoking a very rural and idiomatic feeling of familiar vistas. In contrast, the perky Blue Classic had an almost “Beckus the Dandiprat” feeling about it, chirpy, droll, and very much with “attitude”, the cross-rhythms leading to a lovely throwaway ending.

The following Reverie seemed like a kind of daydream or sleep-encircled experience, sounds almost turned in upon themselves, with just touches of reverberation here and there – its taciturn aspect throwing the final Gypso into bold relief, rhythms flailing from piano and viola, saxophone lustily calling out juicy and jazzy themes and flute counterpointing merrily above it all. And to cap it all off (possibly because the hangi wasn’t quite ready out the back!) Donald Maurice insisted that the group play the final Gypso again, ostensibly because, in his own words to us, something “wasn’t quite right”.

The group’s reprise seemed more freely and energetically characterised, the different instrumental roles more sharply-focused – though being able to hear them twice in quick succession in this piece would have on its own “cleansed” everybody’s listening palette. Altogether, it made for a splendidly-delivered ending to a happy and rewarding musical occasion.

 

 

 

NZSO’s “Bolero” – well-wrought excitement and elegant ecstasy

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:

BOLERO!

RAVEL – La Valse (poème choréographique)

Piano Concerto in G major

Boléro

SCRIABIN – The Poem of Ecstasy, Op.54

Stephen De Pledge (piano)

Pietari Inkinen (conductor)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday 22nd March 2013

What better way to begin an orchestral concert than with music that features playing of rapt, superfine concentration, sharp-edged focus and meticulous attention to detail?

For much of Maurice Ravel’s La Valse, which opened the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s Wellington Concert on Friday evening, I thought the playing and conducting among the finest and most compelling I had heard from these musicians at any time – right from the outset I found myself riveted by the sounds maestro Pietari Inkinen and his players were bringing into being. At first, everything was dark-hued, with each deeply-resonating pulsation, murmuring oscillation and faintly-shimmering texture seeming to grow organically out of what had come before, Inkinen giving his musicians plenty of time and space to properly articulate their figurations and fill out the textures. I thought it all superbly-wrought, the music’s voices resonating with inner life and shimmering with quiet allure, at once transparent and mysterious, clearly-etched and yet still suggestive and equivocal.

The music’s early climaxes came with plenty of force, each one properly “prepared” though seeming natural and inevitable. In this performance we were able to gradually conjure out of the mists of the opening the shapes and forms of dancers swirling in a ballroom, their movements caught in some kind of fantastic intoxication, drawing us into a vortex of make-believe. And so it all continued, at once dream-like and over-wrought, with tender waltz-undulations followed abruptly by upheavals and disturbances from brass and percussion, as if sounding portents of things still to come. Up to the piece’s final quarter I thought conductor Inkinen’s blending of overall movement, phrasing and detail exemplary.

However, as the sense of growing claustrophobia and desperation began to exert its grip, I wanted to “feel” the change more palpably from the musicians. Those “portents” of imminent tragedy should inevitably begin to curdle the music’s flavour, tighten the rhythms and squeeze the air from those textures – for me, the lead-up to the final reprise of the waltz was too relaxed and untroubled to herald an evocation of collapse and dissolution, which the work’s final bars come to deliver so brutally. Still, the coup de grace was expertly and tellingly done; and when it was all over I still felt grateful to conductors and players alike for so much rare and intense pleasure along the music’s way in this performance.

Interestingly, I felt pretty much the same way about the presentation of the well-known Bolero, which concluded the concert. Again, I thought the opening measures of this work here wrought of magic, sounds whose delicacy suggests something borne on air, pulsations of the spheres, the “dance” a mere impulse of distant delight to begin with. I couldn’t see the side-drummer at all (to my great surprise percussionist Lenny Sakofsky turned out to be sitting directly in front of the conductor, though he was almost totally obscured) – it sounded as though he was offstage, so gently-tapped were his rhythmic patterns, so unobtrusive, in fact that the solo flute which introduced the first of the two themes sounded amazingly full-toned by comparison. The ensuing solos and duets and combinations from different instruments were all gorgeously voiced and shaped, though the long-familiar “curse” of the piece – of which, more in a moment – did strike towards the tricky, syncopated ending of the second of the two oft-repeated tunes at one point, the players “turning” the phrase-ending too soon and threatening to throw the whole ensemble out. However, with Pietari Inkinen in charge, things were kept on an even keel, and the music rolled on and into the next sequence.

I always wait for that first massed violin entry, about two-thirds of the way through the work, playing the first tune – such a great moment! For me, those strings bring a suffusion of light and energy which begins to enflame the whole piece, to the point of near-conflagration towards the end. Here, I thought the orchestral playing expert and reliable over the last few repetitions of the tunes, but to me the intensities created by all those wind and brass combinations didn’t build further after the violins had done their thing. It seemed almost as if the conductor was keeping the brass in check towards the end, thus leaving the last-gasp, percussion-underlined sequence to properly heighten the tensions and cap off the work – perhaps those stalwart brass players had given their all during Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy a few minutes before, and couldn’t quite recapture the same level of voltage.

As to the “curse of the Bolero “, among orchestra players the piece is regarded as proverbially treacherous, due to the mesmeric nature of those many repetitions of the rhythm. I recall a radio program played on “Concert” some years back in which a number of prominent orchestral players from top orchestras in Britain and the USA described the experience of playing in the piece, and the frequency of those rhythms simply going off the rails – one player described the experience as a “double nightmare”, being the fear of (a) getting “out” with those rhythmic patterns, and (b) having to figure out how to “get back in” again. One of my recordings (featuring – sacre bleu! – a French orchestra!) bears out this phenomenon, with the side-drummer at one point getting his rhythms mixed up, but, adroitly, (perhaps with the conductor’s help) mirror-imaging his mistake and thus finding his way back in “sync.” once again! On Friday night the glitch occurred almost at the end of the melody-line, so the players merely had to keep their heads and wait for the next repetition to begin.

Within the framework of these two pieces in the concert were a couple of others as different as chalk to cheese, though fortunately separated by the interval. In the first half, after La Valse, we heard the adorable G Major Piano Concerto, with Stephen de Pledge as the nimble-fingered soloist. Though Ravel indicated his debt to both Mozart and Saint-Saens when writing this work, the first movement of this work in particular is very bluesy, and probably owes something to Gershwin, whom Ravel had met (turning down a request from the former to become his pupil, advising him to “remain a first-rate Gershwin, rather than become a second-rate Ravel”). However, there were plenty of different jazz influences at large throughout the 1920s, and Gershwin was of course just one of these – Ravel had already incorporated jazz elements into his 1927 Violin Sonata, written the year before he met Gershwin.

This was a characterful performance, the soloist not afraid to point the music’s angularities in places, getting slightly “out” with the orchestra at one point for that reason, Inkinen and the players adopting a smoother, less spiky trajectory which resulted in the combination “playing around” rather than “with” one another throughout a sequence featuring the opening tune’s reprise. Elsewhere, the accord was mellifluous, if never taken for granted – de Pledge’s spontaneous-sounding playing made for moment upon moment of great interest, his passagework never as smooth and crystalline-sounding as, say, Stephen Hough’s (a keyboard wizard, after all!), but incapable, I thought, of turning out a meaningless or mechanical phrase. I loved the horn solo, but I must say I was surprised when the normally impeccable-sounding oboe seemed to my ears to make heavy weather of a short, but awkward ascending passage in octaves – still, it’s music that certainly keeps everybody on their toes.

De Pledge made something soulful and “human” of the slow movement’s opening solo, eschewing the marmoreal coolness often brought to this passage – his shaping of the melody was taken up readily by the wind solos, which here were simply to die for.The enchantment was taken on by the strings, leading up to the music’s “dark moment of the soul” climax and the consolation of the following limpid exchanges between piano and cor anglais, the pianist again concerned with shaping the figurations rather than simply “prettifying” the textures.

The finale crashed in with great verve, not quite matched by the soloist, whose lack of real incisiveness throughout made for a more muted keyboard effect than usual, though the superb wind solos, begun by the clarinet seemed to whistle up plenty of energies, as did the whip-crack (right on the button!) and the “toy-soldier” trumpet fanfares. Though there was an uncharacteristic fluff from among the otherwise superb horns, the trombone’s sighing four-note figure was a delight, a pearl of insouciance! Conductor Inkinen held back and unleashed his forces at just the right moments, while De Pledge’s playing certainly caught the vertiginous momentum of the chase and the whirling dervish aspect of the final bars with great aplomb! – a thoroughly entertaining performance.

The “cheese” put alongside Ravel’s “chalk” (or what you will) was Scriabin’s amazing “Poem of Ecstasy”, a work requiring all kinds of extra players to come out of the woodwork in the Michael Fowler Centre, for the purposes of the composer’s requirements – quadruple woodwind, eight horns, five trumpets and two harps, as well as, alas, a pipe organ, which the MFC didn’t unfortunately have. We were informed (warned?) in advance by an enthusiastic programme note on the work that a “brilliant and exuberant finish, resplendent in C Major, makes Scriabin disciples of us all”, though as this would presumably be an internal happening, rather like the conferring of a state of grace upon believers, it would be difficult to actually verify. (A friend told me afterwards that he felt a bit nervous when reading this sentence beforehand, as he wanted neither to be made a disciple of anybody, really, and conversely, nor did he want anybody, and certainly not a dead composer, to be declared HIS disciple!).

Despite the lack of a “proper” organ, the work still managed to generate more than the usual number of decibels in performance. As sheer sound it was an awe-inspiring sonic experience, if somewhat cosmopolitan in effect. As I had been listening of late to a recording of a Russian orchestra playing this work, an incredibly exciting and volatile performance, though somewhat disconcertingly coarse in texture, I felt sure that Pietari Inkinen would bring quite different qualities to the performance this evening, and so it proved. From where I was sitting it was well-nigh impossible to pick out contributions from individual players (invariably, bobbing head movements alone gave me a clue as to which clarinettist, which flute-player, which oboist, and so on, were actually playing!) – but I understand that Acting Section Principal Jon Dante was the superb trumpet-player whose recurring motif rang triumphantly out amid the vibrant orchestral textures.

I confess that, in places here, I thought the work’s unashamed rhetoric needed a bit more of the Russian performance’s sheer animal excitement – on the recording, the raw tumult of the sounds leading up to the two enormous climaxes which conclude the work wasn’t quite replicated by the NZSO players. But such a comparison begs the question as to how music in general ought to be played and interpreted, let alone a work by a part-fin de siècle part-futurist-cum-theosophist Russian composer obsessed with mystical oriental philosophy and the phenomenon of synesthesia (in Scriabin’s case, colours linked to musical tones). What Inkinen and the NZSO did with the Poem was, I thought, play it as a musical work with enormous skill and finesse. And if, like with the tone-poems of another great musical innovator, Franz Liszt, this very abstracted, almost literal approach tended to underline the music’s repetition as well as inspiration, it still came across as an impressive and exciting performance of a rarely-played, but worthwhile work by one of the most fascinating of all composers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kronos Quartet – holding time and audience in thrall

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand Presents:

The Kronos Quartet

David Harrington, John Sherba, violins

Hank Dutt, viola / Jeffrey Zeiger, ‘cello

Music by Omar Souleyman, Ram Narayan, Nicole Lizee, Jack Body,

Valentin Silvestrov, Steve Reich, Aleksandra Vrebalov

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Monday, 11th March, 2013

The Kronos Quartet got an extremely warm reception at the end of their Wellington concert – and they responded with no less than four encores! Still, opinions among people I knew in the audience varied afterwards – simply marvellous, said one friend; while another lamented that the group played only one thing he liked, the Silvestrov Quartet. A third thought it all a bit self-indulgent, three “veterans” and a youngster, the former reliving former glories, but without the “edge” of yore. Perhaps I was one of the few in the hall who had not seen the Quartet live in concert before – after all this was their fourth visit to the country – and so for me the experience was more akin to a new discovery.

For the uninitiated such as myself the only sense that could be gleaned of a group of musicians resting on their laurels was in leader David Harrington’s laid-back-plus spoken introductions to each of the items – and such an approach could easily have signified twenty different performance attitudes for twenty different audience members. Though the quartet played a couple of established pieces, such as Steve Reich’s WCT 9/11 and Jack Body’s Arum Manis, at least three of the pieces in the concert were less than three years old, all commissioned by Kronos. That hardly constituted “resting on laurels” behaviour, I would have thought……

Considering the range and scope of the group’s stylistic forays in this concert it’s hardly surprising I picked up a few thumbs-downers from people regarding individual items – mostly it was Canadian composer Nicole Lizee’s “Death to Kosmische” described by the composer as “faded and twisted remnants” relating to a particular style of electronic music, which brought forth puzzled and negative reactions. My own feeling was that the piece perhaps needed a clearer demarcation-line between the piece and its actual source-subject – even a stylized stand-alone piece of “Kosmische” would have clarified for many listeners just what was being given the treatment. And the composer’s scheme for the piece was laden, to say the least, incorporating both “musical hauntology” and “residual perception” as currents in the argument, alongside the lampooning of a specific genre – all fascinating, but for some of us a tortured, obsessive-sounding thicket, complete with a “La Valse-like” disintegration into chaos at the end.

Brighter lights shone upon most of the other pieces for me, either by way of reactions to the sounds in a purely visceral sense (as with the two opening items by Omar Souleyman and Ram Narayan) or through an opening-up of different worlds through an interplay between intellect and sensibility. Omar Souleyman’s La Sidounak Sayyada (translated as “I’ll prevent the Hunters from hunting you”) had an instantly-catchy pop-ethnic sound, the composer grab-bagging a multitude of classic, ethnic and pop-techno-like styles. Kronos played an arrangement of his work commissioned by the group from American composer and arranger Jacob Garchick. And Ram Narayan’s interpretation of a traditional Indian raga, transcribed from an actual recording by the composer of Raga Mishra Bhairavi featured the Kronos players  combining conventional instrument textures (“bending ” the note pitches in the manner of a sitar, or more properly the “Sarangi” – Ram Narayan’s own instrument) with hurdy-gurdy-like sounds, exotic and in places filmic in effect.

Jack Body’s work Arum Manis (Indonesian for “candy floss’) was another Kronos commission, this one from 1991. Body intended for the work to have something of the quality of that particular confectionary, more air than actual substance and predominantly sweet and pleasurable. What also came across (as it does with a lot of Body’s music) is a sense of discovery, almost by “stumbling upon” something, which the composer conveys here by setting acoustic and tape sounds, the quartet’s instruments the traveller and the taped sounds the discovery. Most uncannily I visualized while sitting in the semi-darkness listening to this action/reaction process a kind of antennae drawing impulses of energy downward to earth from a starry sky – in other words I felt a pronounced flow of energetic impulses, the fragments of taped sounds somehow “finding”a focus of resonance and response – a case for me of “What, without asking, hither hurried whence?”, but without an Omar Khayyam sitting beside me to pour the next glass of wine!

Draughts of a different, rarefied sort came in abundance with Valentin Silvestrov’s Third String Quartet, premiered by the Kronos just over a year ago. Like his fellow-composer Aarvo Part, Silvestrov’s earlier, more avant-garde works got him into conflict with the Soviet authorities in the 1970s, and it wasn’t until he modified the severity of his work in subsequent years that it began to enjoy a wider acceptance, both officially and popularly. His seven-movement quartet took its time to unfold, the sounds having for me at once a sequenced and spontaneous quality. It was as if the composer was drawing from a stream-of-conscious set of memories, allowing them to call forth their own associated developments. I felt as if the group had become an instrument that was simply being played on. There were occasional angularities and impulsive thrusts of energy, but largely  the lines of the instruments were like old grandmothers’ songs, or nostalgic tunes sounded by a harmonium, themselves memories of deep, rich strains of things.

Over the work’s latter stages I felt we had been taken to a world similar to that of Sibelius’s music for “The Tempest”, everything rich and strange, and redolent of distant lights at sea and mist-shrouded surroundings. It came down to each impulse from the music sounding like a heartbeat, moving in accord with the natural world, and with our own sensibilities as audience members in the end, by this time in utter thrall to the music.

After an interval rich with discussion and disagreement, we were back for Steve Reich’s WTC 9/11, of which I found analysis impossible, so “caught up” I became in the tumultuous nature of the events of that tragic day as presented by Kronos’s assemblage of sounds and music. In three sections, the piece featured the stringed instruments in both “live” and pre-recorded guises, doubling and harmonizing the various fragments of speech patterns and repetitions, concerning themselves with both rhythm and pitch, and bringing out the inherent musicality in human voices. Section One used the voices of air traffic controllers trying to get in touch with the plane which first crashed into the World Trade Centre building, and reports by commentators of that event. The second and third sections featured voices in the aftermaths, including a ‘cellist playing and a cantor from a New York synagogue, singing Psalms and sects of the Torah.

Pushing the idea of what constitutes art-music outwards, Reich’s work emmeshed sounds of human and technological activity with tones and rhythmic patterns. It was like bringing the act of composition closer to the original source of inspiration by directly transferring sounds and patterns of sounds to a piece rather than refracting their impact through some kind of abstract instrumental expression. How fascinating it would be to hear a version of something like Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, or La Mer made by Reich or one of his contemporaries. In the present work’s case the effect wasn’t unlike some kind of secular Requiem, its composer using sounds as notes and contexts as building-blocks, and putting them together.

I hadn’t forgotten the programme’s final work, the quirkily-titled ….hold me, neighbour, in this storm….  The composer, Aleksandra Vrebalov, from Serbia, went to live in the United States in her twenties, and is currently teaching in New York. She wrote …hold me neighbour…in 2007 for the Kronos Quartet, who premiered it the following year. The piece seeks to fuse the different strands of folk and religious music from the Balkans region and express them using one of the Western World’s most iconic classical music institutions, the string quartet. Vrebalov wanted to characterize in music a “coming-together” of cultural and religious differences that have for centuries troubled the region – interestingly, she comments that, in some ways at the grass-roots level this fusion has already been taking place, producing something musically quite unique springing from the land and its people.

The composer pre-recorded church bell sounds, Islamic calls to prayer, sounds of children playing, lullabies, war and conflict sounds and drinking songs, an assemblage whose contributions at times pushed things into tumult, then at other times fined down to subtle murmurings.The quartet leader played an ethnic-looking bowed instrument at one point, another player thumped on a drum, and feet were stomped in time to some of the dance-like rhythms.  But then the strings would evoke the sadness of peoples trapped in conflict mode and powerless to make a difference to it all. The sounds of the work were by turns moving and exciting, and made a satisfying and varied whole.

The audience simply kept on clapping at the end, and the quartet obliged again and again with several encores. The players’ generosity accorded with the range and scope of their program – despite the nonchalant, laid-back platform manner, Kronos seemed as ready as ever to give itself as a group over to whatever the music demanded of them. The group’s forty years as an ensemble, packed with presentations of no less than eight hundred original compositions, were tonight carried lightly and gracefully, and brought to bear with wonderful ease and fluency for our pleasure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Melanie Lina – celebrating her “L’isle Joyeuse” at St.Andrews

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St Andrews Lunchtime Concert Series presents:

MELANIE LINA – a piano recital

BEETHOVEN, CHOPIN, GERSHWIN, DEBUSSY

St.Andrews-on-the-Terrace, Wellington

27th February 2013

I didn’t manage to get to hear the very beginning of Melanie Lina’s St.Andrews lunchtime concert recital, crashing in (metaphorically) at what seemed the stormiest point of the Waldstein Sonata’s first movement development section, ostensibly a good place in which to make a late entrance as an audience member!  In truth, I had foreseen that things would keep me from making the starter’s call, so had arranged for my Middle C colleague, Rosemary Collier, to record her impressions of the first movement, to “tide the review over” so to speak! It turned into what I thought was a fascinating comparative exercise – had a well-known Biblical figure been present, he would have washed his hands for a second time, and reiterated his well-known definitive mantra, “What is truth?”.

Rosemary traced the music’s course in Melanie Lina’s hands from “dark opening sonorities” to “more ecstatic sounds”. Commenting on the pianist’s technique, she said that the skills and musicianship on display were of a high order, though she felt some blurring of figuration in the early part of the sonata, due, perhaps to slight over-pedalling.  This was underpinned by the tempo set by Melanie Lina, an “Allegro con brio” with plenty of the latter, and perhaps a faster allegro than is usually the case in performances of this sonata.

Nevertheless, Rosemary found herself admiring “a good variety of tonal colours”, bringing out the music’s drama. Occasionally it was felt that the piano made a clattery sound, specifically the notes in the second octave of the treble – was some restoration of the felts on the hammers needed in that much-used part of the keyboard? She made the point that Melanie Lina’s sound was rather less “clattery” than some she had previously heard. I must confess that, when I arrived my first thought was how INVOLVING the pianist’s sonorities were, the tones bright and focused but commanding a range of emphases which nicely coloured the lines and their range of intensities.

Had I not known the pianist’s identity (rather like tuning into a radio broadcast of a performance mid-movement) I would have forwarded the opinion that she/he was Russian – I could feel a pronounced degree of what commentators have called in the past “imaging”, a quality which characterizes the playing among members of the Russian piano school. This allies the music’s sound with a poetic or narrative idea, however abstracted or disguised, awakening potentialities in listeners for equating the music with their own experiences of similar ideas and/or emotions.

So, mid-development, the music’s drama was palpably and full-bloodedly engaged. Melanie Lina then contrasted this with a “Tempest Sonata-like” sequence of charged expectancy, the left-handed pulsating of the music supporting the right hand’s playfulness, and the crescendo bringing us to a swirling pitch of excitement before setting the reprise upon its wonderfully clear-headed course once more – such characterful, involving playing! The lyricism of contrasting episodes was given its due, but not allowed to languish, impelled forwards by the playing’s drive, and giving the dynamic contrasts all that they were worth – this was Beethoven after all!

Occasional finger-slips merely added to the excitement and sense of risk-taking in this dynamic performance, the “swirling” effect just before the last, breath-catching lyrical statement of the second theme again quite Russian in its utterance (shades of Richter and Gilels), a lovely meditative moment before the concluding pay-off.

My colleague drew attention to the slow movement’s beautiful legato, creating a mood at once delightful and soulful, a judgement I agreed with – here was music which seemed to me both abstractedly poetic and unashamedly operatic, the lines a veritable love-duet, as much demure as ardent, with tones matching the music’s different characters. I particularly loved Melanie Lina’s delineation of those three obelisks of sound at the movement’s beginning, a framework around which the music then wove its poetic interactions. I thought the pianist seemed momentarily to lose a little of her poise when approaching the finale (outside, perhaps some workmen’s occasional and annoying noises off were partly to blame at this point) – the character of the sounds seemed to recede and lose its focused edge and “charged” quality.

Happily, equanimity was restored with the finale’s beautifully ambient trilled tones which opened up the vistas and gave the bell-like melody space to ring resoundingly – a great moment! Lina didn’t need to hurry the reprise of the opening, though, as the slight tempo-nudge at the reprise impaired a sense for me of heavenly bodies going about their cosmic business – there was ample opportunity within a few measures to intensify the trajectories with the recapitulation of the trills and the powerful left hand – but the broken octaves that followed were very excitingly delivered, the composer at once setting a more earthy set of impulses alongside sublime order, a dynamic of contrasts well-realised by the pianist.

“Poetic and dramatic as required….a magnificent rendition” was Rosemary Collier’s overall comment regarding the finale, commenting further that  the pianist’s tempo was a little speedy for an Allegretto, resulting in a lack of weight as a whole. I felt that the pianist successfully realized Beethoven’s characteristic fusion of serenity and volatility, encompassing things like the breathtaking plunge into a new world-view with those massive chords changing the whole colour of the music, then gliding the music along a more winsome, syncopated pathway. The reprise was joyous and celebratory, though the pianist’s tempo did make for a relative “labouring” of the triplet figurations, and a touch of hectoring tone in places, perhaps due to that problematic piano register. There came that prophetic, Schumannesque moment of recall almost at the end (a lovely “reminiscing” effect), and the post-horn-like chords to finish.

In the wake of this performance the other item which really grabbed my attention was Melanie Lina’s astonishing playing of Debussy’s L’isle joyeuse. Here, as with the Beethoven, was, I thought, something of a grand tradition revisited, the pianist’s scintillating tones at the outset instantly at one with both idea and image of something shimmering and impulsive, all contours somehow both delineated and merged into one another, with everything made beautifully liquid. The pianist’s thematic shaping of the work’s “big melodic idea” grew beautifully from out of the textures, and, like Saint Francis de Paule of medieval times, who was said to have walked upon the water, rode the swirls and agitations triumphantly. I thought Lina’s command of detail, rhythm and colour realized the piece brilliantly, with a ringing flourish at the end whose sheer élan took away one’s breath with astonishment.

These items framed the remainder of the recital, works by Chopin and Gershwin. Again, the playing was brilliant, though in places, almost too much so – I felt the effect was sometimes too unyielding, too frenetic. The Chopin Waltz (the Op.42 A-flat Major “Grand Waltz”) needed more elegance and liquid flow for Schumann’s imagined countesses, Lina’s cascades of notes delivering too agitated and insistent an effect (the piano could possibly have been part of the problem). Her playing of the first (in C Minor) of the Op.48 Nocturnes was more successful, bringing out the orchestral contrasts of the opening with the hymn-like central section, though I felt some “straining on the leash” as the pianist moved towards the agitated chordal triplets, building the mood inexorably into something of a storm – it was evidently quite a night! Perhaps for some tastes the turbulence was over-wrought, though one could just as easily regarded the intensities as part of the pianist’s refusal to take a single note for granted.

Still, I thought the Three Preludes of Gershwin’s responded better to the pianist’s unflagging energy and intensity than did the Chopin items (Lina is, after all, American-born and trained, and would have doubtless been steeped in a kind of home-grown context for this music). Her playing of the dreamy middle Prelude was particularly atmospheric and evocative, and provided some relief from her brusque, hard-edged, totally unsentimental rendition of the opening piece (Gershwin himself played his music this way, judging from existing recordings). A busy, athletic evocation of the Third Prelude’s New-World glitter and bustle completed the set on a high note.

A word about the program notes, which contained a brief “recent undertakings” bio of Melanie Lina, and notes on the music, written by the pianist – the latter were a delight, in the form of a letter to us, the recital audience, putting each of her program choices into a context explaining its appearance, and telling us a great deal about her as an interpreter in the process. She told us of her youthful experiences with the “Waldstein” Sonata, and how she recently came back to it as the result of hearing a broadcast (to our great good fortune), delighting in its orchestral range and scope. With Chopin she talked of the quality of “singing with the fingers” when playing his music in general, and of the festive delight of some of his Waltzes, including the A-flat Major one played in the recital. She called the C Minor Nocturne “deeply dramatic”, a description borne out by her own performance.

Most interestingly, in tandem with talking about Gershwin’s music as being from her homeland, Melanie Lina expressed the intention to play more New Zealand music as well (one wonders if things like Douglas Lilburn’s Chaconne, John Psathas’s Waiting for the Aeroplane, and Philip Dadson’s Sisters Dance are already in her sights).

Having an interpreter of her abilities willing to play such repertoire would be cause for great joy – which leads me to the exuberance with which she wrote about the recital’s concluding item, Debussy’s L’isle Joyeuse, telling us about her midwest childhood spent far from any ocean, and her miraculous grown-up relocation to “an island in the Pacific” which she now calls home, indeed, a “joyous isle” that for her invests Debussy’s music with a special significance.

One hopes Wellington has not seen and heard the last of Melanie Lina, after such an exciting and stimulating solo concert.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Delight with a sting in the tail – Cosi fan tutte at Days Bay Opera

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte at Days Bay Opera, Wellington

(Producer – Rhona Fraser / Director – Sara Brodie)

Cast: Simon Christie (Don Alfonso) / Tom Atkins (Ferrando) / Kieran Rayner (Guglielmo)

Kate Lineham (Fiordiligi) / Maaike Christie/Beekman (Dorabella) / Imogen Thirwall (Despina)

Orchestra and Chorus

Conductor: Michael Vinten

Canna House, Days Bay, Wellington

Thursday 21st February 2013

It’s presently a feast for aficionados of outdoor theatre, in Wellington – firstly, Antony and Cleopatra splendidly strutting their Summer Shakespeare stuff in the Dell at the Botanical Gardens (on until March 2nd, incidentally); and now this latest delight from the Opera in a Days Bay Garden – Mozart’s and librettist da Ponte’s most exquisitely-contrived work for the stage, Cosi fan tutte.

Cosi’s opening night fortunately caught something of the run of beautifully mellow summery days that the capital’s been experiencing of late – alarmingly, the following morning clouded and drizzled, but forecasts were better both for later in the day and the subsequent days. It seems (moustaches crossed) as though the weather gods, having had a bit of capricious fun, might be on Mozart’s and Days Bay’s side, after all.

But what better an experience to enjoy a subtle masterpiece of music-theatre, splendidly directed, sung and played, in a garden setting redolent with fragrant, easeful airs, encompassed by elements seemingly at peace with themselves and their surroundings?

The audience was here seated on the lawn, looking up to the ascending terraces on which the action unfolded, in front of the house, all beautifully framed by trees and the surrounding hills. In a pre-opening night interview producer Rhona Fraser (owner of the house and garden) commented on the advantage of having this “naturalistic” setting, with real doors, gateways and archways as entrance and exit wings, as well as sufficient spaces in which people could safely “jump around” and be “physical”. And the acoustic supported the singers most gratefully, the voices right from the outset projecting their tones readily to our ears.

It did seem to me, at the overture’s beginning, as if the orchestra might this time be too far removed from the centre of things, and their sounds more dissipated than supported by the open-air environment – the configuration was different to last year’s “Alcina”, when the audience inhabited the terraces and the action took place largely on the lawn, with the singers sounding by and large in the same “space” as the orchestra. But as the overture progressed the music drew our ears increasingly closer and focused our sensibilities on the accompanying action – and it wasn’t long before we had gotten used to the perspectives of what became the evening’s perfectly-proportioned sound-picture.

During this process the “scene” was already being set, as Don Alfonso (Simon Christie), the cynical (and here, somewhat out-of-sorts) middle-aged bachelor made his way into a cafe, in which people at other tables (recruited spontaneously from the audience, to everybody’s delight) were being attended by an attractive waitress. The atmosphere definitely had a “modern” feel, though not a contemporary one (those were the days! – not a cell-phone nor text-messenger in sight!) – perhaps late-1950s/early-1960s, underpinned by the “Navy Lark” uniforms of the two young men, Ferrando (Tom Atkins) and Guglielmo (Kieran Rayner) who arrived and greeted Don Alfonso as an old friend.

The Overture completed, the conversation between the three soon turned towards women, Ferrando and Guglielmo avowing the steadfast beauties and fidelities of their beloved ones and Don Alfonso (having already called their lovers’ steadfastness to question) parrying their indignant responses – here was excellent, energetically-delivered recitative between the three (Simon Christie particularly sonorous and characterful), and what I thought just enough umbrage taken (leavened with their brief ogling of the attractive waitress at “ah, women! – oh, women!”) by the two young men at their older companion’s cynicism. (Incidentally, Andrew Porter’s excellent English translation was the text used.)

The scene augured well for the rest – having heard that the opera’s setting would be “updated” here, my fears that director Sara Brodie might have been tempted into some kind of Peter Sellars-like mastication of the scenario (I had just viewed that director’s “take” on the opera on DVD and found the production singularly and searingly insightful, but over-wrought and ultimately repulsive in effect) seemed thankfully unfounded from this point on!  I didn’t necessarily hold with the view that, because Mozart’s was a comedy of eighteenth-century manners, the scenario should, whatever the travails of the workings, return both the characters and we observers at the end to “reason and normality”. Instead I thought that composer and librettist provided plenty of scope for any production to explore uncomfortable ironies and life-changing emotional refurbishments in the denouement – more than the literal message of the text alone perhaps suggests. But read on……

We then met the “Penelopes” as Don Alfonso wittily called them – firstly, Fiordiligi (Kate Lineham) filling her tones with artless, indolent infatuation, not every note precisely placed at this early stage, but capturing most convincingly the romantic idealizations of a young girl. And so did her sister Dorabella (Maaike Christie-Beekman), less ardent and vulnerable-sounding, a touch stronger and more “controlled” in effect – together, a near-perfect combination, as it transpired, their interaction at once a happy blend and characterful difference. At “If ever my heart should change….” I thought Dorabella’s the shade stronger counterpointing in the duet, but, again, it was a case of “vive la difference”!

Don Alfonso’s entrance into this idyll, complete with tragic mien and utterances, put a cat among the ensemble pigeons momentarily, but the feeling of disruption of peace and order was appropriate to the unravelling. In fact, throughout the performance, such was the teamwork among the singers and the obvious rapport between them and conductor and orchestra, that any brief dislodgements of ensemble (very few) had to my ears a kind of “elastic” quality, which seemed to be able to reconnect the counterpoints at a moment’s notice – very easeful, naturalistic musicmaking! This, the first “big” ensemble of the work brought out further delights, both musical and theatrical – the different “pools of emotion” stirred by each character took on a wondrously antiphonal effect, with almost the whole stage-width being employed, Dorabella to the right and Fiordiligi to the left, and their lovers filling in rather less acute symmetries, but with the focus firmly on the whole, and beautifully held together by Michael Vinten’s conducting. An especially lovely moment for the ensemble was at the words “how my heart is torn when I must leave you”, the whole thrown into occasional relief by Simon Christie’s sly but telling asides, his Don Alfonso replete with the character’s ironic satisfaction.

The lovely “Soft breezes….” trio provided a perfect extension to the sorrowful mood of the leave-taking, with the voices again being able to “separate” but remain pliable and secure in their combination, with Don Alfonso adroitly betraying a weakness for either Fiordiligi’s charms or a touch of generalized sexual gratification. Straightaway, the following scene introduced the “last-but-not-least” player in the scenario, the sisters’ maid, Despina (Imogen Thirwall), throughout bubbling with a mix of infectious energy and insouciance which made her a force to be reckoned with beneath the girlishness! Chocolate played its somewhat indelible part as well, firstly leaving tell-tale smears on Despina’s face for the sisters’ entrance, and then undercurrenting Maaike Christie-Beekman’s delightfully undone, Nabokov-like desperation as Dorabella, in thrall to despair and creature comfort (in Act Two, Kate Lineham’s Fiordiligi righted this attention-catching balance with a stunning appearance complete with plastic hair-net and portable hair-drier!).

But the action moved quickly to complete the ensemble possibilities around which the opera wove its subsequent tangles – after Despina’s pooh-poohing of her mistresses’ anguish, and her “conspiratory” scene with Alfonso, came the entrance of the “Albanians”, the supposedly departed lovers lavishly disguised and richly endowed with hair (a great audience moment!), followed by the sisters’ “getting wind” of the visitors’ presence and their subsequent confusion and embarrassment at the fulsome attentions paid them. It was all beautifully staged, with the men countering every move made by the women, like a dynamic game of chess, with Alfonso and Despina registering their “suspicious indignation” regarding the piteous squawks of the cornered women, interspersed with the sweet nothings of the exotic gentlemen callers.

By the First Act’s end all of the characters had stamped their mark on the proceedings, the sisters each performing beautiful instances of teamwork and individual characterization which would engage and fascinate our sympathies to the end. Kate Lineham’s Fiordiligi floated her tones with ever-increasing surety throughout, and made something many-jewelled of her aria “Like Gibraltar”, strong and imperious at the beginning, and with her conductor, judging the strength/energy ratio to perfection as the music reached fulfillment. As well, her softly-voiced moment of eventual capitulation to Ferrando’s attentions in Act Two touched our sensibilities, so completely drawn-in were we by that stage at her plight as a helpless plaything of emotion. Her sister’s portrayal by Maaike Christie Beekman brought out plenty of necessary contrasts of manner and vocal tone, strongly establishing a more confident and adventurous character, more volatile and playful than serious and sensible, thus more suggestible to the suitors’ flirtations. Her full-blooded, forthright singing of “Desires which torture me” in Act One made a marked contrast with her kittenish post-coital-like posturings for the benefit of her new “lover” in the Second Act.

Their lovers, real and disguised, contributed as much to the performance’s success, both together and individually – Tom Atkins as Ferrando used his true-voiced tenor to excellent lyrical effect, contributing to a true, knockabout partnership with his fellow-officer, Guglielmo (Kieran Rayner), as well as making much of moments like his Act One aria “The soft breath enchanting”, his voice having a lovely, “open” sound. His desperate and ultimately successful attempts to seduce Fiordiligi during Act Two were more effortful, in places a little breathless, but his urgency and purpose were strongly conveyed. As vivid and mellifluous-toned a characterization was Kieran Rayner’s Guglielmo, with his ardent Act One declarations of love and gently-mocking anatomical self-descriptions, more confident on the surface than his friend, but beneath more vulnerable and volatile. His encompassing of the character’s range of moods brought us great delight, from the irony of his admonition of women for their deceptions (“Dear Ladies…..”) to his anguish and bitterness at his belated betrayal by Fiordiligi.

These various couplings of friendship, love and betrayal underlined the ensemble nature of the work – and the “unholy alliance” of Don Alfonso and the maid Despina not only added to but twanged the strands deliciously. Both Simon Christie and Imogen Thirwall were compelling to watch and listen to from each of their separate entrances, and through their somewhat barbed interactions, right up to their part in the work’s unexpectedly eruptive conclusion. Christie made every one of Don Alfonso’s utterances “tell”, while conveying glimpses of a somewhat middle-aged-lecher aspect, which held a place but without exaggeration. Despina’s impersonated roles of doctor and notary were similarly treated, more characters than caricatures, and stronger as a result – her use of Dr. Mesmer’s “magnet” had the right mixture of hocus-pocus and suggestiveness, even if the trills, both vocal and orchestral, might have been a touch more outlandish.

I’ve already mentioned instances of the strengths and delicacies of Michael Vinten’s conducting, and the sterling efforts of his players throughout. Musically I took away as much a feeling of partnership and artistic interchange as individual expressions from singers and orchestra players – and I thought that, in this opera especially, it was as it should be. Very great credit, I feel, is due to both producer Rhona Fraser, and especially to director Sara Brodie, whose vision and dramatic instincts here, I think, provided a model for the idea (which I habitually shrink from) that opera production can successfully take in updated elements and “speak” directly and viscerally to different eras, without doing violence to the original. We were taken to a specific time-frame with the help of certain iconic objects and modes, but none that in appearance or use sharply contravened Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s content and style.

As to the true climax of the convolutions, it was definitely “come-uppance” time at the end for at least two of the characters, the action having wonderfully appropriate “shock value” for being so swift and focused, and a lot to take in all at once! Despina dealt to Don Alfonso with the classic “bent over double” result, and Ferrando landed a haymaker on his erstwhile friend Guglielmo’s jaw. What the two sisters did, if anything, I couldn’t say (it happened all too quickly!) – but perhaps, like me, they were too taken aback to do anything except go with the flow! No apocalyptic nihilism – merely just desserts! – and what happened to the couples then became anybody’s guess, speculation of which I’m certain both Mozart and da Ponte would have heartily approved, as they would our appreciative delight of what we had just been so generously given.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Youthful brilliance from the NZSO National Youth Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NZSO National Youth Orchestra

Summer Concert 2013

ARNOLD – Brass Quintet No.1 Op.73 / BALLARD – frisson (world premiere)

R.STRAUSS – Wind Serenade Op.7 / GRIEG – Two Norwegian Airs Op.63

BRAHMS – Symphony No.2 in D Major Op.73

NZSO National Youth Orchestra

Conductor (Brahms) :  Kenneth Young

Town Hall, Wellington

Friday 8th February 2013

Called a “Summer Residency Concert”, this NZSO National Youth Orchestra presentation most effectively highlighted the skills of some of the country’s top youthful musicians.

This was done by allocating works featuring the orchestra’s different sections to make up the concert’s first half. Following this, the whole orchestra came together to perform Brahms’ genial and much-loved Second Symphony.

The idea looked good on paper, and worked, I thought, marvellously in practice, thanks in part to the judicious programming.  In each of the pieces, the young musicians tackled the specific challenges fearlessly – in fact, I found the results astonishing as regards the virtuosity and musicality of the orchestral playing.

At this point I ought to apologise for what might seem a lengthy review to follow – but I want to try and do these young players’ efforts suitable justice by discussing just what I thought it was that made this concert such a special event.

First up were the brass players, five of whom presented themselves on the platform to take on Malcolm Arnold’s First Brass Quintet, written in 1973.

Arnold himself was a brass player who, in his youth, desperately wanted to play like jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong.  Perhaps he didn’t quite achieve this aim, but he was certainly a good enough musician to win places in both the London Philharmonic and BBC Symphony Orchestras in the post-WW2 years. Eventually he gave up full-time playing in order to compose.

A complex personality, dogged throughout his life by profound depression,  Arnold wrote a wide range of music, some of which did confront his demons – though much of his output turned its back on his life’s darker aspects, and resulted in a number of exhilarating and accessible works , as is the case with this piece, though the second of the work’s three movements did cast some shadows.

The Quintet, written in 1961 ideally demonstrated the technical virtuosity of these NYO players – two trumpeters, a horn-, trombone- and tuba-player. The “game of chase” opening movement delighted us with absolutely scintillating trumpet work at the outset, galumphing rhythms throughout and swirling fanfares at the end. The middle movement, a Chaconne, brought out a more serious, even occasionally menacing mood, with tragic sequences calling to my mind parts of the finale of Brahms’ Fourth Symphony, along with similar echoes of Purcell’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary.

But the con brio finale swept the skies clear of these clouds, Arnold bending his opening melody by throwing in occasional characteristic grace-notes, and writing irreverent glissandi for individual instruments wanting to “bale-out” of the toccata-like figurations. Everything went with a swing,  the players maintaining both intonation and ensemble with remarkable poise and touching in moments of real brilliance throughout the work.

Next was a world premiere performance of Sarah Ballard’s frisson, a work written for brass and timpani. Winner of last year’s Todd Corporation Young Composer Award with a work Bitter Hill, inspired by the Pukekawa District alongside the Waikato river, Sarah Ballard’s new piece seemed a rather more abstracted, cerebral affair. Ballard acknowledged the influence of the late Elliot Carter with this work, in particular the spectacular timpani solo that opened the piece in flamboyant style, the player transfixing us with the theatricality of his pop-drummer-like gestures and the boldness of the sounds produced.

The ensemble – trumpet, two trombones and timpani – produced some amazing individual and concerted sonorities, though I felt sorry for the trumpeter not having a “counterpart” to play off against, unlike the other two brass players, who were constantly setting timbre and figuration against one another to brilliant effect. As it was, both timbral and gestural effect stipulated by the composer was astonishing in its range and scope, even if I thought the trumpet line seemed isolated in places, less integrated in the argument compared with what the doppelgänger trombonists were doing! In places the trumpeter coped well with treacherous figurations, while the trombonists seemed able to “wrap” their lines around one another’s before either would detach with a peremptory gesture. So, for me, it was a work of great contrast and some tension in the “working out” – the composer got a good reception afterwards, and the comments I heard were favourable.

Onto the platform then came the wind players, ready to give us Richard Strauss’s youthful Serenade in E-flat, Op.7, a brief though enchanting work, and an assured piece of composition for an eighteen year-old. I enjoyed the performance greatly, partly because the players (unconducted) seemed less concerned with “moulding” the sounds and instrumental blends, and more with bringing out the different timbres and colours of these combinations. Having previously sat through concerts of wind ensembles with well-nigh perfect intonation throughout but singularly bland and unexciting results, I was here constantly stimulated by the ensemble’s actual “sound”. There was charm, gaiety and energy by turns, and one sensed the players’ delight in interaction, occasionally fulsomely-scored moments contrasted cheek-by-jowl with felicitous delicacies. Yes, there was the odd ill-tuned patch (which a friend, sitting near me, commented on afterwards), but I much preferred that to dull perfection, regarding the results overall as varied and characterful – so enjoyable!

It wasn’t until the string ensemble entered and began playing that I remember being struck by the “conductorless” status of the music-making – truth to tell, I had enjoyed the performance of the Strauss Wind Serenade so much I was obviously of a similar mind to the famous wind-player about whom the story is told that he was asked who the conductor was of a performance of “The Magic Flute” he had recently taken part in at Covent Garden –  to which he replied, “Don’t know – I never looked!”

Well, there may have been the odd phrase-beginning where intonation and ensemble might have benefitted from a guiding hand, but nothing which besmirched the delight and pleasure I felt at the group’s performance of almost all parts of the Grieg work chosen , which was itself something of a rarity in concert – Two Norwegian Airs, Op.63, though I knew the second of the “Airs” as “Cowkeeper’s Tune and Country Dance”, rather than the given titles in the programme of “Cow Call and Peasant Dance” (it obviously depended on which agricultural college one attended!).

I thought the ensemble was of a high standard throughout, both in terms of attack and in the flexible handling by the players of the music’s phrasings and pulse.  Grieg’s lines here sang and breathed with an unforced naturalness which I found beguiling.  Nicely-phrased lower strings gave us a beautifully wistful folk-melody, and then, augmented by the violins, playing of great delicacy, allied with command of weight and nuance – a real treat for the listener.  I enjoyed especially the upper strings’ wind-blown variation with its chromatic dying falls – in places uncannily anticipating Sibelius’s Tapiola.

The following “Cowcall” captured the same kind of rustic charm and sensitivity at the start, doing full justice to those very “northern” textures and harmonies characteristic of Grieg , contrasting the wistfulness of the opening with the more “earthy” emphases of the lower strings when they added their weight to the sound-picture. My one caveat was that I thought the following “Peasant Dance” too fast and slick-rhythmed, lacking a true “bucolic” quality – here, the players I thought needed to “dig in” a bit,  and trust more to accenting and “pointing” rather than to speed,  to give themselves space enough to properly bounce the bows on the strings near the bridge, and generally sound more like folk-fiddles.  The music seemed suddenly, throughout this section, to lose some of its character.

Still, in the light of the wonderful playing and conveyance of feeling and colour I’d heard earlier in the work, I felt as though we’d been treated to something special.

Having demonstrated their compartmented skills the players then had the opportunity to put their talents together, via a performance of the Brahms Second Symphony. Kenneth Young took the podium, and Salina Fisher (who had superbly led the strings throughout the Grieg work) swapped the concertmaster’s chair with Arna Morton, whom I’d often seen in the role, leading always with tremendous zest and intensity.

I was looking forward to Ken Young’s interpretation of the Brahms – my favourite of his symphonies –  as I very much enjoyed his work as a conductor. I liked his brisk, no-nonsense way with music, and his ability to draw from players great intensity and plenty of excitement. Very occasionally I’ve felt his work missing that last ounce of breathing-space, applying that no-nonsense quality a touch too rigorously, to the point of being a bit oppressive and lacking in repose – so here was a chance to experience what he would do with music I knew extremely well.

From the beginning the playing had a buoyancy, an “upward-thrust”, with the ends of phrases “speaking” to those that followed, and suggesting the music’s lovely, pastoral character. Though briskly-unfolded, the music wasn’t straitjacketed at the outset – I’ve never forgotten Young’s comment to the players at a rehearsal I once attended – “Don’t count it – FEEL it!”. Having said that I was in subsequent places reminded of Toscanini’s approach to this work, the first big climax passionately, almost fiercely declaimed, with plenty of onward drive, and perhaps with some of the figurations a bit unyielding, if very excitingly played.

The brasses in the development section sounded properly louring and purposeful, similarly activating the rest of the orchestra, and creating crescendi whose climaxes were like waves crashing one after another on a beach. Afterwards was a wonderful horn solo from Alexander Morton, ably supported by the strings, and characterfully riposted by the winds.

Slow movements don’t necessarily mean relaxation, and straightaway Young encouraged his players to really “dig in” and feel the intensity of this movement – very focused, impassioned ‘cellos at the beginning, more strong and vigorous rather than lyrical and warm, though the upper strings suggested some sunlight breaking through the clouds. There was another piece of lovely horn-playing, leading to heartfelt sectional exchanges, the whole having a “real and earnest” character, something of a battle for supremacy between light and dark. Finally the strings, with help from the bassoon counterpointing its way through the battlefield, managed to bring some hope, even though the shadows re-emerged near the end, with thudding timpani suggesting the abyss beneath this world’s feet. A not-quite-in-tune final chord helped suggest a slightly-out-of-sorts concluding mood.

Though it’s marked “allegretto grazioso” Young got his players to “energise” the third movement in places as if it were a true scherzo, the playing often emphasizing the music’s thrust and “spike”. Strings found ensemble with a couple of their entries precarious but they eventually came together, and their deep-throated “burgeoning” of tone in the music’s middle section made a great impression. After a stylish skip-and-jump away with the winds, the strings again touched our inner places with a “beautiful and strange” reprise of the opening theme,  put then to rights by the oboe, the sounds poised and lovely at the end.

A nicely “charged” first chord at the finale’s beginning was succeeded by swirling ambiences of strings and winds, rather like crowds of people gathering for the start of a great event – then, a great shout of exuberance, and the music was off over hill and dale, horses and riders parting company at some of the jumps, but everybody managing to remount and catch up at the singing second subject theme. I was reminded by Young’s headlong tempo of a recording I’d recently heard of the NZSO’s inaugural 1947 concert, with conductor Anderson Tyrer setting what was, for those players, an impossibly breakneck speed – by comparison, these young players could handle the pace, even if I felt a somewhat “hectoring” quality in the music in places.  The contrasting , gently-oscillating sequences just before the reprise of the opening gave us some much-needed respite, before it was “Yoicks! Tally-ho!” once again, and we were off!  It was all undeniably exciting, right to the end, with the look of exhilarated wonderment on one of the front-desk cellist’s faces after the final chord, with its “Wow! Did we do that?!” quality speaking volumes, as did the tremendous ovation for all at the music’s ending.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A world in a grain of sand – Pepe Becker and Stephen Pickett at Futuna

Posted on by Peter Mechen

COLOURS OF FUTUNA presents:

MUSIC FOR AWHILE……

15th, 16th, and17th Century Songs of love and life,

from Italy, England, France and Spain

Pepe Becker (soprano)

Stephen Pickett (lute and chitarrino)

Futuna Chapel , Friend Street, Karori

Sunday 9th December 2012

All that was needed for perfection to be had in this concert was a more substantial audience – but for one reason or another, people stayed away. Perhaps it was the weather – when Wellington turns on a beautiful day, it’s a place to be out and about like no other, and the prospect of an indoor concert, however felicitous, becomes proportionally less inviting. Still, it was an event whose qualities led one to recall those reproving words from Henry V – “and Gentlemen of England now abed / shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here….”

True, there’s been a superabundance of great concerts in the Wellington region throughout the year, and faced with the delights of such weather, many otherwise committed concert-goers could well have reflected upon cups that “runneth over” and chosen something different this time round. But the much bandied-about “arts capital” epithet which Wellingtonians are certainly proud to own by dint of location did receive a dent, or at least a paintwork scratch in this case, in my opinion. Whatever may have been the alternatives, world-class performances such as what we handful of audience members present heard from Pepe Becker and Stephen Pickett deserved better support than this.

This was my second visit to Futuna Chapel for a concert of recent times, and the venue again worked its unique magic, helping to impart a timeless feeling to the musicians’ explorations of music from distant times and places, and bringing the sounds triumphantly to life for our twenty-first century ears. The acoustic and general ambience admirably suited Pepe Becker’s voice and Stephen Pickett’s accompaniments, catching all of us present up in the music’s world and allowing its full force and flavour, thanks in equal measure to the skills of these performers.

The concert began with a short instrumental solo played on the lute by Stephen Pickett, a Ricercar by Joan Ambrosio Dalza, whose was a composer-name new to me – the work was published in 1508, which goes some of the way towards explaining my ignorance. From this uncommonly elegant beginning we moved to the first song, by Antonio Caprioli, Quella Bella e Bianco Mano (“That fair white hand”), in which love is depicted as both a wounding and a healing experience – beautifully performed.

Pepe Becker welcomed us graciously to the concert, expressing pleasure and gratitude at our attendance (for our part, as an audience, I think we felt embarrassed at our lack of real numbers, but both musicians quickly put us at our ease!). In fact, we were treated like kings and queens throughout, with song following beautiful song as if in some kind of “dream-ritual”. Especially evocative was this first “Mediterranean” bracket, with the soft, musical Hispanic word-sounds in particular adding to the general romantic effect – the last two songs of the group presented different aspects of the Spanish character, the first, by Miguel de Fuenliana, Passevase ei rey moro, a lament for the “Alhambra” in Granada, declamatory and serious in intent; and the second energetic and celebratory, Juan Encina’s dance-like Hoy comamos y bebamos, (“Today we eat and drink”), a roistering song complete with clapping and dance movements.

Stephen Pickett changed from the guitar to the lute for the bracket of English songs, introduced by a piece for solo lute Go from My Window, and followed by John Dowland’s Flow My Tears, with Pepe Becker opening the vocal throttle and suffusing the ambience with glorious resonant tones. If the singer paid rather less attention to word-pointing and more to a sense of  flooding the listeners’ sensibilities with sorrowful sounds, the latter carried the day triumphantly. Robert Johnson’s Hark, hark ,the Lark was also splendidly delivered, with a trio of lovely bird-like ascents to the tops of the phrases, each better than the last. A stratospheric Willow Song from the Dallis Lute Book of 1583 completed the bracket in beautifully bell-like style.

“Charlatans and Mountebanks” was the intriguing title of the next bracket (courtesy of a description (1619) by Michael Praetorius of music made by comedians and clowns), beginning with a solo by Stephen Pickett on the guitar-like chitarrino, and then plunging us into the no-emotional-holds-barred world of Barbara Strozzi, with the singer declaiming wonderfully melismatic lines high and low, stressing different rhythm-points in a way that created occasional mini-tensions, all to a passacaglia-like accompaniment – like much of this fascinating composer-performer’s music, the lines wept, raged and just as quickly dissolved once again. An instrumental Fantasia terza by Melchior Barberiis nicely effected a contrast with the following dance-song, Amor ch’attendi by Giulio Caccini, the singer augmenting the music’s energy and colour with a drum.

With Music for a While by Henry Purcell the musicians concluded eponymously both the final bracket of items and the entire concert, a section which featured as well works for voice by Merula, Monteverdi and Strozzi (again). Some of these were the most overtly expressive of the afternoon, Tarquinio Merula’s Canzonetta sopra la nanna for one, an extraordinarily doom-laden and fate-ridden lament by a mother made over a sleeping child, to an insistently “sighing” lute accompaniment, singing and playing which I found riveting in its intensity. Another was Claudio Monteverdi’s Ohimè, ch’io cado, energetic and volatile, with Pepe Becker demonstrating an exhilarating combination of force and focus over a wide-ranging terrain of emotion. The third of the “trio of intensity” was Barbara Strozzi’s somewhat suggestively-titled L’eraclito Amoroso, a conceit for despairing lovers, with different rhythmic trajectories underlining the spontaneity of thought and impulse, and words like “piangere” brought out and beautifully coloured by the singer. Altogether, a real “tour de force” of vocal expression from Pepe Becker, alternating beautifully “held” lines, with passionately delivered recitative, and holding us in thrall throughout.

As well that Purcell came to the rescue of our somewhat tenderized sensibilities at the very end – here was emotion cleansed of all excess, and rarefied as a pure stream of melody. No wonder he was so esteemed by his contemporaries – his setting of Dryden’s and Nathaniel Lee’s words, presented here by singer and player, persuaded we listeners that , indeed, “beauty is truth, truth, beauty…” and seemed to soothe for a brief time in our lives the sea of the world’s troubles.

 

 

 

 

 

Turning over a Blue Leaf – Adam Page and Stroma

Posted on by Peter Mechen

STROMA with Adam Page  – BLUE PAGE

Adam Page (saxophones and looping)

David Bremner (trombone)

Mark Carter (conductor)

Stroma

Downstage, Wellington

Sunday 9th December, 2012

This concert put me in mind of a review I once read of a performance given by the great 19th Century pianist/composer Anton Rubinstein, while on tour in the United States, the writer turning to a kind of “vernacular” in order to be able to express the wildness of exhilaration that had seized him when confronted with such music-making –

“….the house trembled, the lights danced, the walls shuck, the sky split, the ground rocked – heavens and earth, creation, sweet potatoes, Moses, ninepences, glory, tenpenny nails, Sampson in a ‘simmon tree – Bang!!!……I knowed no more that evening!….”

The concert was billed as “New Zealand s largest chamber ensemble meets New Zealand’s greatest multi-instrumentalist”.  Even though he’s Australian-born saxophonist extraordinaire Adam Page can call himself a Kiwi (or anything else he likes), just as long as he keeps his voyage of spontaneous and interactive discovery as fresh, intriguing and even as dangerous as he did with the Stroma musicians at Downstage Theatre.

Though the concert’s apex-point was Adam Page’s Space, Time and a new pair of shoes,  a work featuring this multi-talented musician’s technique of looping his own and accompanying musicians’ live improvisations into a continually enriched texture of accumulated musical impulses,  the concert featured as well works by Jack Body, Michael Norris and Jacob ter Veldhuis, all taking their starting-point as the tradition of the Blues.

Jack Body’s work Tribute to the Blues began this exploration, a work in four sections. It began with “Big Joe’s Moan” lovely, lazily loping accordion sounds, joined by various other instruments,  playing homage to jazz legend Big Joe Turner by way of setting long and lyrical lines,  over the top of an almost pointillistic soundscape, flecks and single brushstrokes of sound and colour. The following “Penitentiary Blues”,  realized by the New Orleans-based group Tangle Eye, had a sombre and definite “Singing Detective” ambience about its textures, one trying, it seemed, to ”lighten up” and escape the claustrophobia of both form and context.

John Lee’s Pluck came to the rescue, marimba and piano creating a gorgeous “carpet” with string pizzicato joining a sympatico marimba and piano, and finger-clicking from the musicians keeping the faith, as it were, in the spirit of John Lee Hooker. Contrast, if needed was afforded by “Chain-gang Chants”, with heavy bass-dragging beat underpinning a roaring sax and trombone. The lamenting winds and strings  seemed to speak for the human spirit, the roaring brass underpinning the oppression.

Finally, Mary Lou’s Dream (homage to another jazz giant, Mary Lou Williams, pianist composer and educator) presented a kind of “blues fantasia”, with cool, walking-pace rhythms leading the ear into a kind of twilight zone of eerie wind chordings and tremolando strings, until the blues gestures begin to coalesce, building up to great roulades of expression, before expiring with a muttered cadence.

Michael Norris’s Heart across night followed on from a film clip of Theolonius Monk playing his classic Straight, No Chaser, the trio of musicians responding at first with primordial sound-impulses, a muted trombone (David Bremner), rumbling double-bass (Alexander Gunchenko) and quietly scintillating percussion (Lenny Sakofsky), all kept pulsing together by the beat of Mark Carter. The composer’s own poetry was printed as a kind of word-map “paraphrase” of Monk’s piece giving us clues as to his specific visions – thus the irruption of energies could be interpreted as “hot tears crashing”, to all of which the electric double bass seemed to choreograph a kind of “danse macabre” very much on the surface.

“No rest” cautioned the poem, so that even the twilight-zone evocations contained bursts of activity responses to disturbances and terrors within. I found a kind of  perverse joy in David Bremner’s muted trombone, a lovely sound, the instrument later reverting to its full-throated voice. with Stravinsky/Firebird-like glissandi sliding like a board-rider on a molten surface of percussion-driven activity – the climactic “that’s her” getting a volcanic, exciting response from all the players.

The final two items were dominated by Adam Page’s incredible playing, firstly Jacob ter Veldhuis’s Grab It! for tenor saxophone and audio tape, the latter containing samplings from a documentary film of death row prisoners’ aggressive verbalisings. The saxophonist played a series of high-powered synchronisations  mirroring the energy of the constantly-recycled words. The whole scenario was an amazing assault on one’s sensibilities, though the combination of images, music and words drew one into the matrix of anger and despair evinced by the presentation’s various elements – a haunting, life-shaking experience.

Lastly, we got Adam Page’s own Space, Time and a new pair of shoes, a work whose improvisatory spirit created a Baroque-like panoply of melodic and rhythmic explorations processed and shared by Page himself and the whole ensemble in tandem with a looping recorder machine. The technique enabled the musicians’ contributions to and variants of the bluesy opening material to be added to the sound-picture via the recorder-machine, whose agglomerations gradually built up to near-epic proportions. Page commented in his programme notes that he had never used so many musicians when previously presenting this work live, and was thus looking forward to the “unknown” aspect this circumstance would create.

The effect was exhilarating, transporting – a total knockout! – not quite shades of “I knowed no more that evening” but instead, a kind of flabbergasted audience babbling in response, something which, had it also been recorded and “looped”, Adam Page himself would have presumably delighted in augmenting with the excitement of his own visceral, heart-on-sleeve intensifications.  And that would have been yet another work, and it would have been even harder to tear oneself away – as it stood, from Stroma it was no less than a feast of musical discovery, with Adam Page as the inspirational “lead-from-the-front” guide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Freddy Kempf’s Gershwin with the NZSO – poet-pianist with a brilliant orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NEW ZEALAND SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA presents FREDDY KEMPF PLAYS GERSHWIN

GERSHWIN – Second Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra / BERNSTEIN – Prelude, Fugue and Riffs

GERSHWIN – I Got Rhythm Variations / An American in Paris / SHOSTAKOVICH – Tahiti Trot

GERSHWIN  – Rhapsody in Blue (orch. Grofe)

Freddy Kempf (piano)

Matthew Coorey (conductor)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday, 7th December, 2012

A splendid program, expertly delivered, with the qualification that, to my mind pianist Freddy Kempf’s playing was notable more for poetry and introspection than glint and incisiveness, particularly in the “Rhapsody in Blue”. There were places where I wanted the piano to assert itself to a greater, somewhat brasher extent, particularly as the orchestra, under the energetic direction of Australian conductor Matthew Coorey, was “playing-out” in the best American style.

As with the players’ response a couple of months ago to Miguel Harth-Bedoya’s direction of Bernstein’s West Side Story Dances, here was a kind of untramelled spirit unleashed which took to the music with a will and realized much of its essential energetic joie de vivre. This came across most consistently throughout a vividly-projected rendition of An American in Paris – I wanted the motor horns at the beginning to “honk” more stridently, though it became obvious as the performance unfolded that the conductor was purposely “terracing” the score’s more overtly vulgar aspects to telling overall effect.

It seemed to me that any orchestra that could whole-heartedly “swing” certain music along in such a way that the NZSO players could and did on this occasion (as happened also with the Bernstein work I’ve mentioned) would be capable of bringing those same energetic, colourful and expressive qualities to any music it cared to play. Under Matthew Coory’s direction, the music’s story of the homesick traveller struggling to regain his emotional equilibrium in a foreign land, and eventually making the connections he needed, was here, by turns, excitingly and touchingly recounted, enabling the work to “tell” as the masterpiece it is.

Of course the brass has to carry much of the music’s character via plenty of on-the-spot ensemble work and virtuoso individual playing – and the solos delivered by people such as trumpeter Michael Kirgan delivered spadefuls of brilliance and feeling (even the one or two mis-hit notes had plenty of style and élan!). Not to be completely overshadowed, both winds and strings contributed soulful solo and concerted passages, balancing the blues with the brashness of some of the energies, though horns, saxophone and even the tuba also had episodes whose sounds tugged at the heartstrings.

What was caught seemed to me to be the “rhythm of the times”, putting me in mind of memories of watching some of those 1930s American films with their amazing song-and-dance sequences. Obviously this spirit had world-wide repercussions, as evidenced by Shostakovich’s contribution to the evening’s entertainment, via his Tahiti Trot, which was nothing less than a thinly disguised orchestral setting of Vincent Youman’s Broadway hit Tea for Two, completed by the composer in 1928.

Where Shostakovich’s work delighted with the wit and delicacy of its setting, Leonard Bernstein’s raunchy Prelude Fugue and Riffs from over twenty years later pinned the ears back with its percussion-driven brass declamations at the outset, irruptions alternating with echoes, and its in-your-face burleske-like gestures. It was all by way of preparing for a jazzy fugue whose peregrinations seemed to follow its own rules of expression, before returning to the all-out burlesque posturing and an ensuing “riff” whose manic energy threatened to sweep away the whole ensemble. It was the solo clarinet which finally called a halt with a single note. Again, I felt awed at the energies released by these normally straight-laced, classically-disciplined musicians, all of whom were suddenly demonstrated impressive “crossover”-like skills, and producing performances that to my ears sounded and felt creditably idiomatic.

A few further words about the concertante Gershwin items – the most interesting, by dint of being the least familiar, was the Second Rhapsody, first played in 1931, seven years after the original Rhapsody in Blue was first performed. Originally written as part of a film score, Gershwin set out to portray the bustling, concrete-jungle character of a big city (specifically New York), with a particular emphasis on the city’s upward-thrusting building activities, leading to the film-sequence being dubbed originally “Rhapsody of Rivets”. Gershwin’s later expansion of the score as a concert-piece retained the original music’s energy and rhythmic drive, but added and developed a contrasting lyrical character in places. The result was a work which its composer described as “in many respects….the best thing I’ve ever written”.

Freddy Kempf’s performance again delivered the more soulful moments of the score with plenty of heart-on-sleeve feeling, and he seemed here more into the “swing” of the energetic moments – also, his concertante approach seemed to me to suit this more sophisticated work better than with the first Rhapsody’s more “blue-and-white” character. While not as richly-endowed with memorable themes, this later work has a much more “interactive” spirit between soloist and orchestra, more like the later Concerto in F, the tension of the exchanges towards the end here magnificently terraced. I particularly enjoyed the chromatic, Messiaen-like orchestral lurches leading up to the final “all-together” payoff.

The I Got Rhythm Variations, perhaps the most lighthearted of the three, made a sparkling mid-concert makeweight, Kempf’s deft touch and whirlwind tempi for his solos reminiscent of Gershwin’s own, very unsentimental playing-style preserved on a few recordings. Again the orchestral playing under Matthew Coorey’s direction sounded right inside the music, by turns pushing, coaxing and simply letting it out there. How wonderful to have an orchestra in Wellington which can “swing it” just as whole-heartedly as it can deftly turn a Haydn or Mozart phrase, or rattle the rafters with a Brucknerian or Wagnerian climax. Well done, pianist, players and conductor, for giving us such a great concert.

Worlds Old and New, from the Wellington Chamber Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

WELLINGTON CHAMBER ORCHESTRA PRESENTS:

PRUDEN – Westland: A Back-Country Overture

MENDELSSOHN – Violin Concerto in E Minor  / Symphony No.1

RITCHIE – Remember Parihaka

Michael Joel (conductor)

Kate Oswin (violin)

Wellington Chamber Orchestra

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

Sunday 2nd December, 2012

There’s nothing quite like an encounter (preferably “live”) with an unfamiliar piece of music that rocks one’s socks off! This happened for me right at the beginning of this Wellington Chamber Orchestra concert, with Larry Pruden’s Westland: A Back-Country Overture, a work I’d not heard before. True, the rather cramped St.Andrew’s venue heightened the music’s (and the playing’s!) raw impact, not altogether helpfully; but there was no denying the impression made by all these factors of orchestral writing which brought out the South Island’s rugged landscape grandeur in this music.

Right from the very beginning, vibrant and spacious Vaughan-Williams-like opening chords and figurations blew out the building’s walls, opened up the textures, and suffused our senses with all the trappings of the great New Zealand Outdoors. The playing had both energy and vision, giving the music’s alternating episodes plenty of room to establish their different characters and place themselves accordingly, cheeky wind episodes rubbing shoulders with gracefully melodic strings and epic gestures from the brass and percussion. The fallible orchestral moments tended to be in the quieter, more exposed sections of the score, where a few vagaries of pitch and some mis-hits sun-spotted what were generally sterling efforts by the winds and brass throughout.

Ultimately, the performance by conductor Michael Joel and his players caught what seemed to be for me the music’s essentials – a big-boned kind of “wild places” character festooned with detail and artfully shaped to make the most of contrasts of mood, reflecting in turn human response ranging from excitement and awe to quiet contemplation of beauty.

Pruden’s music made quite a contrast with the Mendelssohn that followed – no less than the E Minor Violin Concerto, played by Kate Oswin, whose playing of this work I had previously encountered in sections, with piano accompaniment.  I thought her performance on this occasion sweet-toned, accurately pitched in all but the most demanding places, and graced with moments of what came across as deep feeling alternated with a true sense of the music’s classical proportions. Michael Joel’s accompaniment featured orchestral playing of whole-hearted commitment, and strongly-realised melodic and rhythmic expression, supporting the soloist at every turn.

For her part, Kate Oswin’s approach to melodic lines and vigorous passage work sang and danced with the orchestra’s throughout – not all of her exposed lines were pitched absolutely truly, but she would make amends a few moments afterwards with some particularly felicitous detail.  An example was in the cadenza, when she teetered precariously going up to one of those high notes which the composer uses so affectingly to cap off several phrases, only to then give us a top note of the utmost beauty at the climax of the following ascent. I liked also the way she “dug into” the phrases leading up to the coda, her concentration and energy surviving a mis-hit high note, and carrying the day with great conviction through the music’s agitations and into the bassoon-led slow movement.

Strangely, a slight lack of poise seemed to unsettle the violinist’s opening phrase here, but she quickly settled down, and subsequently handled the reprise of the opening far more mellifluously. Altogether, the slow movement was a delight, the orchestra again and again reminding us of the same composer’s “Scottish” Symphony by dint of the music’s ebb and flow of like-textured intensities. By contrast, the finale’s opening brought out the fairy-like delicacies of the music, beautifully realized, with stunning fingerwork from the soloist and charming detailing from the winds. The movement’s counter-subject which flowed beneath the music’s impish scampering at the reprise of the opening was here realized with fine judgement, and Kate Oswin and the players caught the music’s growing excitement as the ending approached, with plenty of élan and a sense of a journey being completed.

Enterprisingly, the orchestra had programmed two New Zealand works for this concert, the second being Anthony Ritchie’s Remember Parihaka. As with the Pruden work this was music of considerable evocation, if more emotional and psychological than physical and pictorial. Ritchie wrote the work in response to his feelings about the incidents which took place during the 1880s at Parihaka, in Taranaki, when the iwi and followers of the paramount chief Te Whiti were forced off tribal lands at gunpoint by soldiers acting on Government orders, in response to European settlement demands. Te Whiti and many of his followers were subsequently imprisoned for their “passive resistance” to the Crown in this matter.

Though there was a raw quality to the wind-playing in the piece’s early stages, the tuning a shade or two awry during the more forceful moments, the ambience wasn’t inappropriate to the music’s theme of unease and burgeoning conflict. Different strands of feeling were represented by chanting winds, supported by thrumming strings, as opposed to the sounds of a folk-fiddle accompanied by a field-drum. MIchael Joel and his players brought these opposing strands together in conflict with great skill, the orchestral string playing in particular impressing with its power and incisiveness. The players also realized the numbness and unease of the aftermath (helped by a beautifully-presented horn-solo), the strings allowing their ambient tones to gradually dissolve and disappear. A very satisfying performance.

So to the concert’s final work, the Mendelssohn First Symphony, its place in the composer’s output (rather like Bizet’s similarly early C Major work) deceptive, as parts of the work are extremely demanding to bring off well. This was something of a curate’s egg of a performance, with the somewhat relentless technical demands of the music producing in places a rawness of sound that seemed at odds with the work’s classically-conceived lines. I was reminded of a phrase from JC Beaglehole’s notorious review of the National Orchestra’s first-ever concert in 1947 – “the playing was notable for enthusiasm and vigour rather than refinement”. The first movement was sturdy, no-nonsense “sturm-und-drang” stuff that took no prisoners, and the strings seemed to be struggling in places to keep their tone amid the rushing plethora of notes. It was all somewhat dour, I fear.

Better was the Andante, with great work by the winds at the outset (a lovely second subject, nicely-phrased). Though the ‘cellos had trouble keeping their tone in places when playing high in their register, the rest of the strings warmly came to the rescue. Some doubtful tuning took the shine off some of the close-knit wind harmonies towards the end. However, I liked the big, black scherzo, with the strings revelling in the music’s  physicality, the players bending their backs to the task in realizing these swirling, energetic sounds. Though their sounds were a bit raw in places (and they also had to put up with a strange repeated extraneous noise outside the church, completely unmusical in effect!) the players fronted up wholeheartedly to the trio’s long, lyrical wind lines and sinuous string figurations.

The finale fared better than the work’s opening movement, the orchestra’s vigorous, enthusiastic playing driving the music forward, while allowing some felicitous detailing – some poised pizzicato playing, and a lovely clarinet solo. I thought the strings made a good fist of each of the fugal passages before the end, and I suspect the celebratory joy which came across at the music’s sudden change to the major key for the brief coda was infused with as much relief on the players’ part – certainly not an easy work to bring off!

This was the final concert of the Orchestra’s fortieth anniversary season – I would guess that orchestra members and associates can look back on what has been presented and achieved during 2012 with several degrees of satisfaction. And since the band occasionally presents repertoire that no other local band has tackled of late (eg. the Larry Pruden work we heard today) the value of what it does is greatly enhanced and appreciated all the more. I look forward to another year’s stimulating music-making from the Wellington Chamber Orchestra throughout 2013.