Category: Reviews – Concerts

Saxophone opening up the chamber vistas – Simon Brew with the Amici Ensemble at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music Series 2026 – Simon Brew with the Amici Ensemble

RUSSELL PETERSON (b.1969) – Quintet for alto saxophone and strings 2003
MAX RICHTER  (b.1966) – On the Nature of Daylight (2004)
ELLEN TAAFFE ZWILICH (b.1939) – Quintet for Saxophone and Strings
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) – String Quartet in F Major K.590
ASTOR PIAZZOLLA (1921-1992) Winter and Spring from The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (arr. Mary Osborn)

Amici Ensemble (Saxophone Quintet)
Donald Armstrong (violin), Anna van der Zee  (violin), Nicholas Hancox (viola), Andrew Joyce (‘cello), Simon Brew (saxophone)

St.Andrews-on-The-Terrace
Sunday, 12th April 2026

The saxophone as a musical instrument has made quite a journey – its inventor, Adolphe Sax, intended his instrument as a kind of “missing link” between winds and brass in the symphony orchestra, wanting  to combine the power of brass instruments with the flexibility of woodwinds, though the earliest saxophones tended to find their way into French military bands because of their ability to project their sounds outdoors. The instrument did appear in some nineteenth-century classical compositions, mostly by composers with names unknown today (has anybody previously heard the names of Jean-Baptiste Singelée, who wrote a Premier Quatuor  for Saxophones in 1857?- or Jules Demersseman, the composer of an 1860 Fantasie for Saxophone and Piano? ) but also with a number of “pioneering” examples of usage, such as in George Bizet’s incidental music for the play “L’Arlesienne” (1872), in music by Delibes (the 1876 ballet “Sylvia”) and in Massenet’s operas (“Le Roi de Lahore”, “Herodiade” and “Werther”) the earliest of these in 1877.

Of course since the turn of the century the orchestral gates have occasionally opened to admit the saxophone, with concertante works from composers such as Debussy, Glazunov and Ibert, and significant contributions from the instrument in works by Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Strauss, Vaughan Williams, Richard Strauss and Ravel (via Mussorgsky) among others. In chamber music, too, the saxophone has noticeably figured, both in original works for the instrument and different kinds of arrangements, each of which were featured in this afternoon’s presentation by saxophonist Simon Brew and the Amici Ensemble.

Our concert began with American composer Russell Peterson’s 2003 Quintet for Alto Saxophone and Strings, the music beginning plaintively with strings only, then hauntingly continuing with the saxophone’s disarmingly dulcet tones – a sombre, processional-like exposition with gently melancholy dialogues and concerted passages – whose ambiences were then briefly but arrestingly galvanised by an impassionedly rising saxophone sequence, the music falling back to the previous subdued manner , only to again arch splendidly and disconcertingly – one was transfixed anew by the saxophone’s arresting power of utterance when at “full throttle”! –  I enjoyed the movement’s following dance-like, somewhat exotic-sounding sequences, despite a  “sameness” about the saxophone’s repeated “rise-and-fall” aspect to the music.

The second movement’s Bartok-like dance rhythms brought repeated-note patterms, more saxophonic declamations and running figurations, with the violin’s folkish lines echoed by the cello’s soulful responses. What appeared to be a third movement was begun by the saxophone, partnered by the ‘cello in a kind of  sombre and almost canonic duet, whose musings were broken into by the viola, beginning a fugal-like sequence, and joined by the second violin, the mood remaining sombre until the first violin burst in with a more dance-like line, inspiring the ‘cello to begin a spirited, “running” kind of response to which the saxophone joined, the pace of the music quickening until the opening chords of the second movement returned. This then sent the music into a kind of “spin”, the saxophone pursuing a kind of orgiastic folk-theme, whose cries brought the strings running towards and executing as one a brilliant concluding flourish!

The contrast with Max Richter’s meditative and “slow-chapp’d”  work for strings On The Nature Of Daylight,  which followed couldn’t have been more profound – at first, not unlike the opening of Strauss’s “Metamorphosen” the music almost straightaway developed in a different, more esoteric direction, beginning here with three players delivering long, slow, mesmeric and suggestive chords, until a fourth enters with a melody that derives wholly from these chord progressions. The piece’s popularity has actually begun to generate a kind of reaction to its over-use by film-makers, a counterproductive kind of  “bleeding the piece dry” effect, though Richter’s powerfully simple evocation will, like so many over-used pieces of music have previously done, doubtless survive its unselfconscious fecundity and remain fixed for future generations. I couldn’t imagine a more “centred”, sensitively-judged performance than we got here from our quartet of string-players.

The first half’s highlight for me was the Ellen Taafe Zwilich work, a 2008 Quintet for Saxophone and Strings, one with its opening Beethoven Grosse-Fugue-like beginning announcing its credentials and intents before setting off to a jogtrot-like journey throughout vistas of ear-catching detail. At first, the strings trod measured steps while the saxophone undertook a “whistling an air” kind of attitude, but with the group occasionally varying the trajectories, moving between a kind of lyrical wonderment, spontaneously impulsive gesturings and a droll “take it as it comes” manner.

Short, sharp impulses aplenty set the second movement on its intriguing course, in-and-out of occasional sequences which “papered over the cracks” in the music’s sustained lines (some evocative saxophone outpourings in places!). Our ears were kept engagingly activated by these wonderfully benign conniptions of expression, and highly entertained by an amusingly po-faced set of false “endings” to the movement leading up to the music’s true one!

The cello took up a nostalgic rocking rhythm at the third movement’s opening over which the saxophone sang a lullabic refrain, the strings joining in with a repeated-note accompaniment – fabulously ear-catching! As the saxophone began to energise its voice, the strings caught the mood and adroitly “syncopated” the exchanges, until the opening rocking rhythm made a sudden reappearance on the strings – saxophone and violin rhapsodised over the import of the moment, which intensified as the “chugging” rhythm also returned. The opening chord of the work then resounded, and echoed, before the players decided to have done with the past with a few terse, no-nonsense chords. I sat at the end, unexpectedly enchanted by it all!

After the interval, Mozart proved to be a perfect re-entry point to the concert with one of his “Prussian” Quartets (K.590 in F Major), albeit one of his greatest compositions, and one fraught with “might-have-beens” at the time the quartet was written – the circumstances have conspired to give this quartet a particularly distinctive flavour in a number of respects. At the time of writing this work the composer was in financial straits due to a recession in the Austrian economy caused by a drawn-out war with Turkey, resulting in fewer concerts and commissions. He had, in 1789, travelled to Berlin to meet the Prussian monarch Friedrich William II, an amateur cellist, hoping to make a good impression on the music-loving monarch, but instead had to be content with meeting the King’s Director of Chamber Music, the ‘cellist Jean-Pierre Dupont.

Afterwards he wrote to Constanze, his wife, that he had received money and commissions for six string quartets and six keyboard sonatas after performing for the Queen on a second visit. But there is no entry in the Court records for either money or commissions being made, and researchers have concluded that Mozart probably borrowed the money from friends, and invented the story regarding the visit and the commissions so he would have something to show for his efforts on his return to Vienna! He did complete three string quartets, two of them during 1790, the year following the Berlin visit, the second of which we heard today.

It’s an extraordinary work in itself, right from the beginning – two soft introductory notes and then a third louder and more insistent, followed by a scampering and unresolved unison descent – the whole then balanced by a repetition with solo violin, the dynamic contrasts softened, and the descent harmonically resolved. Mozart then uses that same three-note pattern and the scampered descent throughout the movement, the playing here of the Amici’s strings as deft and tonally varied as one might wish.

The following Andante has a hymn-like beginning, to which each instrument adds an embellished dance-like variation, leading to a stratospherically piquant ending. The Menuetto’s lively dance is characterised by an oscillating accompanying figure which passes from voice to voice throughout and in places moves up-and-down in almost vertiginous chromatic ways, while the Trio makes much of gawkily-witty grace-notes at some of the phrase-ends – charming! As for the finale it thrives on fluidity of utterance and quicksilver reactions, with several of the modulations seeming to flirt with atonality in places, while leaving our ears to actively wonder whether the lines would actually “find” one another again – such extraordinarily forward-looking juxtaposing of rhythms and harmonies! And what a delightfully po-faced concluding cadence – a wonderful sleight-of-hand ending!

Simon Brew brought his soprano saxophone with him this time, to conclude the concert with music by Astor Piazzolla, and featuring two excerpts from a work I’d not previously heard and was looking forward to – Piazzolla’s “The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires”. The composer originally wrote and scored the pieces separately between 1965 and 1970 for his own ensemble, which featured his own instrument, the bandoneon (a kind of accordion). Like much of the composer’s music they have been arranged for all kinds of combinations, including a version by Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov for string ensemble which occasionally quotes from Antonio Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.

The Amici players performed two of  these “seasons”, winter and  spring, the first Invierno Porteño (Winter),having a gorgeous melancholic flavour, with much languishing at the piece’s beginning, and then with the saxophone tones bring out a truly exotic flavour to the textures and tones. Both pieces use the term Porteño, a word referring to a native of Buenos Aires, so that the Spring is given the name Primavera Porteña –  the music’s somewhat livelier than the first piece, though the players here give even the slower middle section’s rhythms plenty of “heft” . We enjoyed the experience so much we were able to persuade the ensemble to return to the platform and give us some more Piazzolla, a characteristically sultry opening, with the strings sighing as the saxophone literally took flight, the lines soaring like a bird, before the instrument brought these impulses back to earth, joining the strings for a soulful concluding melody in luscious thirds. Gorgeous sounds! – we couldn’t have helped enjoying the ensemble’s wonderfully cosmopolitean adventurings throughout a variety of times and places – a real treat for the senses in every way!

Pianist Otis Prescott-Mason – an unexpected but precious gift for us of Schubert’s heavenly G-Major Sonata D.894.

Posted on by Peter Mechen

FRANZ SCHUBERT – Piano Sonata in G Major D.894

Otis Prescott-Mason (piano)
St.Andrews’-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Wednesday, 8th April, 2026

Firstly, a bit of background, which I gleaned from the concert’s programme leaflet  – pianist Otis Prescott-Mason has recently completed his undergraduate studies with Dr.Jian Liu at the New Zealand School of Music here in Wellington. During this time, he’s taken part in several competitions throughout the country, winning firstly the 2020 New Zealand Junior Piano Competition and then both the 2022 PACANZ National Piano Competition, and the Lewis Eady National Piano Competition in Auckland that same year. More recently, in  2025 he won Third Prize at the National Concerto Competition in Christchurch with Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto, and has performed with various regional orchestras such as the Christchurch Symphony, Orchestra Wellington, and the Auckland Philharmonia.

Now having completed his undergraduate studies, Prescott-Mason is looking forward to his next step on the pianistic ladder, taking him to a course of study further afield at the prestigious Yale School, of Music in New Haven, Connecticut, USA during the 2026-27 academic year, and working towards a Master of Music with the great Boris Berman, a Professor at the school, and a pianistic “hero” for the young musician. He joins a prestigious group  of past keyboard-achievers from these shores who have similarly  ventured outwards to seek further artistic and musical fulfilment.

I had seen and heard Otis play before on occasions which included a memorable 2020 St. Andrews’ solo recital (review at https://middle-c.org/2021/11/firstly-sparks-and-then-a-conflagration-pianist-otis-prescott-mason-in-recital/), as well as a “shared” recital with other solo pianists (actually a ”preparation”  concert for the aforementioned 2020 NZ Junior Piano Competition, which Prescott-Mason won!), and a sparkling lunchtime concert duo recital (four hands) with Sunny Cheng in 2021. In all, my expectations had been suitably primed by the above to regard this concert as something not to be missed!.

Upon making his appearance, the pianist explained to us that, rather than fronting up with his originally-planned programme of predominantly virtuoso pieces (which I was expecting to hear) he’d felt of late much more like spending time with an audience in the company of a composer like Schubert – so to my special delight (and partly also because I had already heard him play a couple of the originally-scheduled items, and this was something very different!) he’d decided to play the Schubert Sonata in G Major D.894, a work I’d become particularly fond of in recent times thanks to Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter’s daringly leisurely (and, for me, utterly mesmerising!) performance, especially in the case of the work’s first movement.

Though Prescott-Mason didn’t attempt to emulate Richter’s “near-timeless traversal”
of the first movement’s oceanic-like expanses, he caught at the very outset the music’s unique blend of surety and resonant utterance which the slightest hint of any haste or impatience or anything mechanical in a performance can deaden and neutralise. In fact, at the work’s very beginning the pianist “set the scene” for all of us so very beautifully by adopting the once-fashionable opening gesture of playing a series of gently-modulating figures (sometimes chordal, sometimes arpeggiated) as a kind of “storyteller’s introduction” to what was to follow. (Those readers who know of and have heard the late, great Roumanian pianist Dinu Lipatti’s legendary “farewell” recital, recorded “live” as long ago as1950, will be familiar with this enchanting and heartwarming practice!).

Schubert’s own opening chords were then gorgeously-voiced, the whole introduction entirely and disarmingly spontaneous in effect – even more elfin-like were the sounds of the following contrasting sequence, both hushed and beautifully darkened by the deeper bass notes. The music then “opened up”, gloriously amplified through its newly- burgeoning joy and intensity. Though Prescott-Mason seemed to allow the ensuing flowing trajectories of movement at first “play themselves”, he made the following filigree right-hand decorations dancing above the music’s gentle progress utterly captivating. And the timing of these decorations’ sudden downward movement was superb, generating just enough sense of momentum, strength and spontaneity to underline the sense of a kind of “arrival” at the exposition’s end, though with things remaining yet to be fully understood.

Throughout the repeat we found ourselves as entranced by the pianist’s concentration as before, the music unfolding as delightfully and spontaneously, with the descent into those declamatory chords leading to an enchanting postlude resonating with even greater gravitas and resonance this time round. Of course, the development’s sudden pitiless onset of dark-toned attack opened up a new world of frightening disturbance, from which the music’s furtive moments of “escape” into desperately-sought gesturings of consolation get beaten back by the composer’s own demons. We heard one or two instances of near-derailment as the pianist wrestled with these dark forces before managing by sheer effort of will to endure their grim purposes with sufficient patience – though I thought the recapitulation of the opening here could have conveyed a deeper, more spacious and exhausted sense of the “trauma of experience” the music conveyed so vividly in those throes of despair.

All was well by the time the coda was reached, with Prescott-Mason’s re-entry into the music’s trance-like world bringing out those almost archway-like “gates of heaven” utterances with what seemed like wonderment and gratitude, surely and generously taking us with him, as the descending phrases concluded this first part of the journey.

What enchanting song-like lines we then heard at the Andante’s beginning, the tones engaging and the mood almost joyous in its reiteration of full-throated lyrical phrasings – then, how dramatic a plunge into the second group of utterances we got here! Some  detailings seemed to have a couple of out-of-focus moments in the more beseeching parts, but the pianist kept his head and steered the music back on course  – along with the occasional unexpectedly “repeated” phrase, these felt like “corrections” of things originally mistimed…… (perhaps a by-product of the programme’s relatively late re-alignment for the recital?)

Far more important was Prescott-Mason’s maintaining of the music’s overall character, the reprise of the movement’s opening was again beautifully elaborated, with just enough suggestibility and insinuation for us to register the lasting impact of the various plungings into more shadowy and stressful sequences, a wonderful exposition of a relationship between well-being, conflict and eventual resolution. The dramatic Menuetto/Scherzo, too, was delivered with telling contrast between the opening’s muscular purpose and the wryly piquant responses, an interaction which largely dominated the movement – a lovely moment is the occasional quixotic reprise of the opening in more muted tones and with occasional wry grace-notes (as if the more bumptious manner of the opening can occasionally exhibit a more personable “inner” character, one which is brought out here to perfection. As for the Trio, it was pure enchantment on this occasion, almost like a “sleepwalking” sequence displaying an alternative side of the same coin, an “echt-Schubert” moment!

The finale here is surely one of the composer’s happiest creations, an utterly disarming instance of a composer “coming to terms” with the demons lurking in some of the music’s earlier recesses. Prescott-Mason beautifully captures the music’s charm and good humour of the opening, his technique having the spring and pliability that readily give these qualities an irresistible demeanour. And he has the gift of a delightful insouciance, which adds to the music’s appeal while keeping its significance in the larger scheme of things intact and resonant – his playing doesn’t erase memories of the journey but adds to the composer’s own achievement in  deepening the impact of the whole as a living entity. Implicit in this was his simple and heartfelt playing of the work’s final phrase, whose silences that followed were true resonances of memory. What a way to spend a lunchtime! – one, at the end of which we were left feeling such gratitude to both composer and performer!

 

 

Music from the memory, in the air and on the wing – all from Wellington City Orchestra’s opening 2026 concert!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington City Orchestra’s 2026 concert series – a fresh and adventurous beginning!

LILI BOULANGER – D’un Matin de Printemps *
LOUISE WEBSTER – Violin Concerto (In Hollowed Bone I hear the Seas Roar)
LILI BOULANGER – D’un Soir Triste
SERGE PROKOFIEV – Ballet “Romeo and Juliet” – Suite No. 2

Helene Pohl (violin)
Justus Rozemond (conductor)
Virginie Pacheco (assistant conductor)*
Wellington City Orchestra

St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Saturday 28th March, 2026

This opening Wellington City Orchestra concert of 2026, brought to its audience a truly engaging and stimulating  programmme. Conductor Justus Rozemond and his WCO musicians here followed up their enterprising 2025 concert of works by Nicolai, Rachmaninov and Berlioz with an even more exploratory selection – two compositions by the tragically short-lived French composer Lili Boulanger (the first of which was directed by the WCO’s Assistant Conductor. Virginie Pacheco and which opened the concert), followed by a Violin Concerto from Auckland composer Louise Webster, here played by the work’s first performer in 2016, Helene Pohl – and with the composer in the audience! – and finally, a Suite of dances from one of the most beloved of twentieth-century ballets, Serge Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet”.

Assistant Conductor, Virginie Pacheco (who had made such a positive first impression in last year’s concert series), took the rostrum for the concert’s beginning and launched her players enthusiastically into the opening wide-eyed spring-like strains of Lili Boulanger’s D’un Matin de Printemps, (A Spring Morning). This was one of the last works the composer completed before her untimely death in 1918 at the age of twenty-four – she had written several chamber versions of the piece for different instruments, but wanted its “full-orchestra” expression as the piece’s last word.

The music’s remarkably verdant textures were conveyed here throughout the “spring morning” opening section with a judicious amalgam of elan and delicacy – a more sombre set of sequences followed, featuring strings and wings in forest-murmur-like “nature-exchanges’, which built up through a splendid crescendo, becoming at the end a kind of exultant processional exuberantly capped by a splendid harp flourish – wonderful, atmospheric playing!

The front violin-desks were then moved back to make room for the concerto soloist – this was Helene Pohl, who had given the premiere performance of Louise Webster’s Violin Concerto as long ago as  2016 with Auckland’s St.Matthews’ Chamber Orchestra. The composer was originally going to write an “overture-like” piece for the concert with passages for a solo violinist, but when she discovered who the violinist was going to be, the present concerto simply “growed”, inspired by Webster’s regard for Pohl as a musician. Incidentally, Webster subtitled the work with the quotation from Ruth Dallas’s poem about the  sea – “In hollowed bone I hear the seas roar” – AFTER the music had been written, a truly organic, rather than “made-to-order” gestation!

The following year, Pohl was due to reperform the work with the NZSO as part of the SOUNZ readings of music by New Zealand composers, but conflicting schedules meant that NZSO violinist Yuka Eguchi had to step in to perform the work instead. Now, ten years after that first SMCO performance Pohl was delighted to have the chance to revisit the concerto in concert – she recalled being particularly struck by the work’s fusion of emotional expression with colourful pictorial detail, making the concerto all the more pleasurable a prospect to go back to.

The work’s beginning instantly arrested one’s attention – over a low orchestral pedal-point the solo violin entered with an ascending theme, the orchestra repeating the theme at a quicker pace. The violin’s “similar but different” wandering, soulful theme, joined by the flutes, gradually energised things, elaborating on certain phrases, rising to stratospheric heights – a beautiful sequence!  From there on the movement played host to sequences alternating tensions and exaltations, all joined in a kind of accord which  featured the soloist reacting to and interacting with both single/smaller groups and with larger orchestral forces – however, a brief confrontation sequence with the orchestra brought forth echoed phrases, sharp pizzicati, percussive “slaps”, and piled-up-note patterns, cautioning against easy conquest!

In other places the interactions of the violinist with smaller groups had an intimacy and candour that suggested something of a “friend in the wilderness” relationship – the soloist frequently parleyed with winds such as the flutes or piccolo, or tenderly mused with the clarinet, or larger groups of sostenuto strings, as well as gentle wind chorales with pizzicato accompaniment – the violinist soared above the winds’ ostinato -like figures in a beautiful passages reminiscent of Holst, sometimes echoing, and at other times supporting each of the soloists phrases and “frontings up” with similarly-derived figures. Another gorgeous “wind chorale” sequence encouraged the soloist to break into a kind of dance, joined in with by the orchestra – something which seemed for a few treasurable moments to unify the music’s questing spirit.

It came across to me as much as a kind of re-exploration or reassessment of deeply-felt experience and feeling.  various both tension and exultation.  The writing for the orchestra in places spare and uncompromising, seemed still  to respond to the soloist with things she already knew, echoing or elaborating phrases and impulses from the solo instrument’s own plethora of realities.  At the end  even the strings gave the soloist moments of reassurance in return to her oputpourings, however brief the rhythmic impulses and guarded sighings, leaving a solo ‘cello and then a viola to offer the soloist concluding impulses of companionship.

Conductor Justus Rozemond got the second movement to grasp the trajectories and flex plenty of orchestral muscle, bringing out a swinging theme that was punctuated by various wind, brass and percussion irruptions. The violin danced at first, then after letting the orchestra echo the dance, re-entered, soaring and swooning beguilingly as the winds amicably chattered away. Eventually the orchestra decided to join in with the violin, grasping the mettle with force and energy, trajectories riding upon surges of almost joyous collegial abandonment. Honour satisfied, the momentums sank to rest – so that when the violin tried to revitalise the dance the orchestra abruptly called a halt!

The third movement, written for soloist and strings alone, drifted into being like a half-realised dream, solo violin harmonics floating into and out of the bleak sostenuto orchestral string textures. The orchestral strings remained glacial as they built an impassioned climax (reminiscent in places of the slow movement of Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony). The solo violin toyed with other solo lines, all wanting to fill the ambient soundscapes, all trying in places to break through a kind of expressive stranglehold, but constantly being brought back to order by the sheer intensity of the orchestra’s impassive response.  The solo violin returned briefly to its world of spectral, half-lit tones and muted impulse, so that the work proverbially ended “not with a bang but with a whimper”. Whew!

A delighted composer came onto the platform at the end to congratulate the musicians and acknowledge our applause – what a work, and what a committed performance! And what an inspiration Helene Pohl’s incredible mastery of the solo instrumental writing would have obviously been in terms of enabling the music to work its spell – all due credit to all concerned!

We needed an interval to take it all in sufficiently, of course, and especially in view of having another of Lili Boulanger’s heartfelt final compositions to give our attention to in the concert’s second half. I was wondering whether we would get Virginie Pacheco back to conduct the second Boulanger piece, D’un Soir Triste but it was Justus Rozemond’s turn as conductor to guide the players through the second of the composer’s pieces. It proved to be the diametrical opposite of the joyous “Spring Morning” piece we had enjoyed – though its title gave us some warning of what was to follow, the music unequivocally takes the word “Triste” in the title to near-unbearable depths of despair.

The piece began with a faint heartbeat rhythm whose trajectories awoke the senses with firstly the winds and then along with the strings beginning what seemed like a death-struggle with oncoming darkness. Each of the music’s upward-thrusting agitations took us towards a remorselessly grinding climax, in which percussion and brass savagely intoned their despairing message. The haunting throbbing of drums and a cello solo clothed in mourning delivered a scenario of intense sorrow, given tongue by the strings and winds. A harp and piano added to whatever consolation the music seemed capable of giving, though the brass and percussion didn’t hesitate to imbue the same themes with sterner, more fateful and sharper-edged accents. The strings aided by the winds continued their threnody of consolation, though the increased intensities led to tragic outcomes and eventual darkness.

The piece’s ending here seemed an incredible evocation of bravery and raw courage from a composer in the midst of the gathering darkness of impending death. Adding to the poignancy of it all was music-making from conductor and players which responded to the work’s heartfelt emotion with focus and commitment that was itself moving to experience at first hand.

Even so, after such rawly-unmitigated emotion, one was almost grateful for the relative distance and paradigmatic tragedy of the “Romeo and Juliet” story, as expressed by the variety of feeling, colour and action in Serge Prokofiev’s music for his famous eponymously-named 1935 ballet. Renowned as much for its initial neglect when first completed, the ballet had to wait until a 1938 production in Brno, Czechoslovakia, for its first public staging, and until 1940 for its first presentation on Russian soil by the Kirov Ballet. The composer meantime had resorted to compiling suites of dances from the complete work to be played in symphonic concerts, as well as extracting ten pieces arranged for solo piano, as a means of getting the music known.

We were given the composer’s arrangement of a second suite of dances from the work, beginning with the portentous “Montagues and Capulets” sequence of orchestral crescendi which serves as a prelude to the “Dance of the Knights” from the ballet’s first act. These famous crescendi were delivered with tremendous gusto by the brass and percussion here, with the sudden hushed ambiences leaving the string tones floating beautifully. Justus Rosamond took a wonderfully portentously tempo for the “Dance”, conveying the arrogance and brutality of the Capulet Knights and the contrasting minuet-like sequences depicting the disguised Montagues at the ball. And how wonderful to briefly hear the timbres of the saxophone taking up the resumption of the Knight’s Dance music towards the end.

The strings made an outstandingly nimble and winsome job of Juliet’s music, Rozamund allowing the clarinet no respite in the alternate sequence (beautifully played!), but relaxed expansively for the touching flute-and-solo-cello portrayals later. In his music Friar Lawrence was a younger, more vigorous priest than I’d been accustomed to, a refreshing alternative – the portrayal got lovely bassoon work, and was ably supported by the horn and the strings. A whimsical favourite of mine has been the “Dance of the Five Couples”, one in which the various players scampered about to great effect.

More expansive was the “Romeo and Juliet before Parting”, with gorgeous, lump-in-the-throat flute playing at the start, and beautiful replying strings, before the horn splendidly made its presence felt, along with the various winds, each “launching” the lines with real presence, such as with the viola solo, nicely animated and properly demonstrative.
The more concerted reprise of the “farewell” music was properly full-blooded, with the occasional “bloop” adding to the desperate, heartfelt nature of the scenario, setting in poignant relief the ostinato-like accompanying lines from the winds and strings as the lower instruments growled an ominous foretaste of the tragedy to come in the bass registers – a splendidly-wrought scenario!

More poignance was to be had with the old-fashioned-sounding “Dance of the Maids from the Antille”, here touchingly characterised by both solo and concerted violins, and contrasting clarinet and saxophone contributions. Came the  inevitable “Death of Romeo and Juliet”, the players digging into the rawly-wrought lines, and the brasses making a properly anguished array of tones, and the cellos and violins throwing out the lovers’ ill-fated theme with heart-wrenching resonance – the whole orchestra’s delivery of the “funeral procession” sequence made for a highlight of the afternoon’s presentation. All that was left at the end were the bleak, comfortless tones of the strings and piccolo, sounding without words the refrain – “for never was a tale of such woe/than that of Juliet and her Romeo”….

All in all, the concert made a truly memorable start to a year’s eagerly-awaited music-making, with every item representing and delivering “moments per minute”, rather than the other way round! A touching “extra” occasion-moment was the marking of Rowena Cullen’s retirement from ten years’ Presidency of the Wellington City Orchestra with a presentation and a warm-hearted ovation. But the afternoon’s music was splendid and special in many ways, not least of all due to composer Louise Webster and violinist Helene Pohl. And, to conductor Justus Rozemond, and his concert assistant conductor Virginie Pacheco, and to all the players, well done for a great beginning to 2026!

 

 

 

Still more musical miracles reported and evidenced in Wellington, this time at Roseneath’s The Long Hall!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The creative spirit continues to work wonders in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa – (“Kei te ora tonu te wairua auaha ki Te Whanganui-a-Tara o Aotearoa”)

Peter Gjelsten tackles a Bach Violin Sonata (No. 2 in A Minor BWV 1003) at The Long Hall, Roseneath

The Chamber Pot-Pourri Ensemble
A Kaibosh Food Rescue Benefit Concert

ROSS HARRIS – 2 Micro-Trios (2020)
Helene Pohl, Peter Gjelsten (violins), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)
NICCOLO PAGANINI – Caprice No. 9 for solo violin
JS BACH – Sonata for solo violin in A Minor BWV 1003
Peter Gjelsten  (violin)
CRAIG UTTING – Four Wellington Dances for violin and cello
Helene Pohl (violin), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)
FRANZ JOSEF HAYDN – String Quartet in G Major Op.33 No. 5
Helene Pohl, Peter Gjelsten (violins)
Sophia Acheson (viola), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

The Long Hall, Point Jerningham, Roseneath
Saturday 21st March, 2026

Fresh from attending my first St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace lunchtime concert earlier in the week, I had the good fortune to catch another. not dissimilar kind of musical happening – this one a 2026 “first” for the capital of a series instigated a year ago by violinist Helene Pohl at Roseneath’s “The Long Hall”, situated on the Point Jerningham lookout reserve next to Roseneath Primary School. The concerts are designed to alternatively support the Kaibosh Food Rescue charity, and the Arohanui Strings, the Sistema-inspired early intervention music education programme. The Kaibosh charity makes a significant difference to food and energy waste and carbon emissions, enabling thousands of kilos of food to be redistributed to community groups, resulting in renewed efforts by the same musicians over the present in continuing and supporting an eminently worthwhile venture.

Thanks to the inspiration, skills and capacity for hard work of Helene Pohl and ‘cellist Rolf Gjelsten, the 2025 concert series was a great success. The two musicians, aided by various colleagues, were able to simultaneously commemorate and take advantage of composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s 50th death anniversary, performing a number of the composer’s chamber works in tandem with a wide range of other pieces, including a couple of contemporary works written specifically for these concerts (and therefore both world premieres!) by composers currently both on-and off-shore, Ross Harris and Gao Ping, respectively.

Now, to begin the 2026 series the Long Hall’s opening Kaibosh Food Rescue programme paid appropriate homage to some of the previous year’s delights, including works by “resident” composers (two of whom were present today!), as well as instrumental solos which illustrated the power of a single voice’s communication, and a string quartet by the composer who effectively defined the form and whose efforts provided all kinds of “springboards’ for those others who followed suit.

First up was music representing a kind of timely antidote to Aotearoa New Zealand’s present version of Trumpish madness, two Micro-Trios by Ross Harris, written during the much-discussed lockdown period of 2020 for the Pohl/Gjelsten family members present today. The two works, as if conceived with different personalities in mind, displayed contrasting characters, the first beginning in a restless, slightly anxious 5/4 which developed more forthright impulses befitting a kind of “confused turmoil of being” in response to the isolated circumstances. The second work took a more lyrical approach, with long-linked lines attracting all kinds of impulses which attached themselves to the lines before dropping off the pace and wandering quizzically through unfamiliar vistas (like an ageing process, perhaps – with apologies to the composer!).

Violinist Peter Gjelsten followed up his 2025 performance of Eugène Ysaÿe’s Third Sonata (“Ballade”) for Solo Violin with another work by a virtuoso violinist-composer, perhaps the doyen of them all, Niccolo Paganini – The Ninth of his 24 Caprices for solo violin was given here with plenty of confidence and elan, the opening “hunting calls” resounding their thirds with spirited effect in dynamically-contrasted episodes readily suggesting the shouts of purpose and encouragement from the riders relishing the chase.  The “sport”was given plenty of incident by the violinist’s confident throwing-off a middle-section’s skitterish runs broken by stentorian phrases, suggesting both mishap and success in the pursuit!

Sterner stuff followed these hi-jinks, with Peter Gjelsten giving us JS Bach’s wonderful A Minor Sonata for solo violin, one of three Sonatas for the solo instrument, all of which are often coupled as a performing edition with three Partitas for the same instrument. An all-purpose differentiation between the two titles “Sonata” and “Partita” is that the former is traditionally a four-movement structure which often features linked slow-fast sections  and a fugue, whereas a Partita consists of different types of Renaissance/ Baroque dance movements. True to type this Sonata includes a fugue as the second movement.

First impressions of this work emphasised seriousness over gaiety, the solemn, declamatory opening commanding our attention with the player’s presence of intonation and command of nuance giving his listeners an engaging sense of exploration right to the movement’s final questioning note. The Fugue’s elegance and poise at the outset opens out, Gjelsten finding plenty of room for variations of tone and presenting an astonishing array of different voices – the music’s trajectories buildup and carry us along with wonderful ”heads of steam”, so that the phrases and statements really resonate.

Gjelsten’s control of the Andante’s pulse enabled both melody and rhythm to coexist, often in little more than whisperings, but with an underlying strength of overall purpose. We felt taken to another world by the second half of the movement, with the composer  seeming to allow us a lingering glimpse of his serenity of outlook and purpose of faith – I could imagine a young player in future years delving even further into the music’s timelessness that allow these sounds to linger long after the player ceases. The concluding Allegro is here excitingly launched and teasingly sustained with the antiphonal alternating phrases made here to dance through our sensibilities’ spaces. The rapidly-executed impulses have an exhilarating ring to them, and we’re “teased” with what seems like the approach of a final cadence, but with geyser-like irruptions that suddenly push the boundaries out further – tantalizing playing that keeps us on our toes and  enables us to relish the music all the more.

We had been promised a quick, “straight-through” concert at the beginning, so our kaleidoscopic musical journey  suddenly whirled us homewards via local composer Craig Utting’s engaging “Four Wellington Dances”, for violin and ‘cello (written in 2025 for Helene and Rolf.) The work began with an entirely apposite “Wind Dance”, a nagging 7/8 perpetuo-molto rhythm  by turns driving, teasing and cajoling the notes into sound-impulses whose insistence any Wellingtonians would recognise, and with alternating instruments adding a moaning-sighing figure over the agitations, catching their constant unpredictabilities. Next was the strangely mesmeric “Whale Song”, introduced by spectral “con sordino” violin tones (which set the scene for strangeness) and galvanised further by hauntingly-charged “vocalisings”, firstly in the lower and then upper registers of the ‘cello – an incredible soundscape, tapping into a “natural world” communication, with the instruments conveying a real sense of ambient surroundings and language essentially removed from human interaction.

“Seagulls”, the third dance, has an introduction flecked with further atmospheric touches, such as the ‘cello playing eerie glissandi to the violin’s arpeggiations and rather touching “seafarer’s song”, first played, incidentally, lower than the ‘cello’s accompaniments, though the instruments exchange their roles at certain points – the melody is a real charmer, replete with nostalgia! Finally, the “Habanada” imbues a well-known operatic rhythm with a mischievous spirit during short sequences of dance-tunes and  illicit collaborations with ostensibly unlikely partners such as Saint-Saens’s “The Swan” and Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Bumble Bee”, with even Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” making a brief appearance before falling down the stairs and (thankfully) coming to its concluding senses!

After all of this, what better finale than to be given a masterwork from a composer whose music paralleled the conditions that produced each of the concert’s preceding works – isolation, compositional mastery, instrumental fluency, and a need for entertainment? All these things come together in the string quartets of Franz Joseph Haydn, whose Op.33 set of six string quartets were written in 1781, and became known as the “Russian” Quartets, due to the dedication to the Grand Duke Paul of Russia. Another nickname given to these works is Gli Scherzi  (The Jokes) referring to the replacement of the older style Minuet with a quicker, more dynamic movement.

Here, then was the fifth of the Quartets from this Op.39 set, a work which itself has been nicknamed with the English sobriquet phrase “How do you do?”, drawing attention to the Quartet’s very beginning, a pianissimo galant cadence which actually returns to conclude the movement with which it started. the opening “How do you do?” cadence is only a prelude to the ensuing Molto Allegro, which seizes hold of the argument and propels it excitingly forwards. The mood lightens for the lyrical second subject, only to unexpectedly plunge into the almost “groaning downwards” chromatic modulation towards the end of the exposition. The volatile development dances, swoops and plunges as the music unfolds, releasing almost operatic surges of energy in places, with the “how do you do” cadence realigning the music’s focus for a recapitulation – we are, by this time, agog at the music’s volatilities, and marvel at how quickly the music races to its concluding cadences without missing a beat!

Our heartstrings are tugged immediately by the slow movement’s intensities, most strenuously propelled forwards with almost unrelenting energy, to which one simply has to surrender and allow oneself to be borne aloft and taken somewhere. What a contrast, therefore, with the impishly impulsive Scherzo, filled with all kinds of hesitancies and impulses!  The Trio brings a steadier, more genteel character, as if wishing to reform such excesses, though to no avail when the opening returns, as quirky and ornery as ever, though with a touch, perhaps, of guilt via its almost evanescent ending!

After this, the finale’s music is almost prim and proper, in what seems like variation form, with the first violin decorating and elaborating on the melodic line in both subsequent variation movements, and then, the viola and cello taking turns to decorate the dance steps for a subsequent movement. Finally, there’s a Presto which scampers to a satisfyingly breathless conclusion!

Such a lot packed into a relatively short time! Nevertheless, we were replete – delighted by the music and the playing, and honoured by the good and prestigious company – a truly memorable occasion!

 

Masterpieces from masterly musicians – A St. Andrew’s lunchtime concert, from Rolf Gjelsten and Nicole Chao

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church, Wellington  – Lunchtime Concert Series

BEETHOVEN – ‘Cello Sonata No. 3 in A Major Op.69
TCHAIKOVSKY (arr. Fitzenhagen) – Variations on a Rococo Theme Op.33

Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello) and Nicole Chao (piano)

Wednesday 18th March 2026

Review for “Middle C” by Peter Mechen

“Two masterpieces for the ‘cello-and-piano repertoire, delivered by a pair of musicians regarded as among the country’s top players of their respective instruments” – well, it  sounds like nothing less than a dream prescription for a concert!  Alternatively, the blurb for the occasion could have fixed as easily upon its contrast with present-day scenarios – ranging from world-wide upheavals undermining one’s sense of national and personal security to localised disillusionment and desperation faced with escalating dysfunctional infrastructure and cost-of-living price-hikes – and invited us “to escape from it all into the relative bliss of St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church for a free lunchtime concert of uplifting music”.

However one chooses to view these regular Wednesday lunchtime concert occasions they have given many Wellingtonian classical music-lovers much joy with a stimulating variety of performers and repertoire. In this case we were thoroughly spoilt as regards the concert’s essential ingredients, with cellist Rolf Gjelsten, late of the New Zealand String Quartet, but more recently affiliated with Korimako, a piano/string trio formed with pianist Michael Endres and violinist Helene Pohl, and here joining forces with pianist Nicole Chao, most readily associated with the much-acclaimed Duo Enharmonics together with fellow-pianist Beth Chen.

I had heard Rolf Gjelsten’s solo playing on a couple of occasions, most recently in an absolutely delightful performance of JS Bach’s Third Violincello Suite in C Major at a “Long Hall” Roseneath concert; but I’d not heard Nicole Chao as a solo recitalist since briefly at a 2009 song-recital concert with soprano Nicola Holt, where for an instrumental interlude she gave an atmospheric, by turns finely-detailed and splendidly volatile performance of Chopin’s Fourth Ballade. Though not solo performances this time round, today’s offerings readily demonstrated the technical and interpretative skills of each of the players, brought together beautifully here in St.Andrew’s.

As befitted such a positive partnership, the occasion featured an actual milestone in the repertoire of the solo ‘cello with Ludwig van Beethoven’s ground-breaking Cello Sonata in A Major Op.69. Though this was the third actual sonata of five written for the instrument by Beethoven, this one was the first which gave “equal partnership” status to the ‘cello in a sonata, instead of  (as with the composer’s two Op.5 works, described as “piano sonatas with accompaniment by the ‘cello”) merely providing a supporting role for the keyboard. In fact Beethoven wrote this work for the same cellist, Nikolaus Kraft, who had taken part in the first performance in 1808 of the composer’s Triple Concerto.

At the work’s beginning the ‘cello celebrates its new-found status with its solo announcement of the opening theme, effortlessly floated into being by Rolf Gjelsten  before intensifying the tones with the instrument’s alighting upon a sustained E – to which Nicole Chao’s piano then replies with a lyrical “rounding -off” of the theme and a brief flourish. What follows is an enthralling exchange of ideas which each player acts upon in a sense of both thoughtful contribution and impulsive challenge to the music’s argument – I’ve always loved the music’s ascending runs in this movement, figurations that seem to me to almost “dare” each player (but especially the cellist in the second, higher figuration!) to markedly “sound” and relish these ascents, a kind of “flight of fancy” that’s contrasted with the earthily, no-nonsense agitato plungings into the succeeding episodes by both instruments. The minor-key passage which constitutes the development is delivered with the same focused combination of energy and fancy, breathtaking in its “give-and-take” rapport throughout lyrical and impassioned sequences. And ‘cellist’s and pianist’s instinctive capacity for mutual understanding beautifully bring off the sequence which transforms what sounds like a “third exposition” into the movement’s coda, turning Beethoven’s simplest of phrase-resolutions into a precious kind of homecoming, complete with a “grandstand finish” for the pundits!

The allegro molto Scherzo became something of an “anything you can do” game of syncopated daring, exhilarating to give oneself over to and feel “borne along“ by the players’  sharply-focused trajectories – again, music with contrasting episodes afforded by an obsessively grumbling trio and a po-faced pizzicato coda. No slow movement as such – but an opening sequence of rapt lyrical beauty, wrought by playing that seemed to commune with listeners in mutual enjoyment, before abruptly and mischievously breaking into a precipitous, fleet-fingered (footed?) dance, one which delights as much in contrast of mood as anywhere else in this sonata. So Gjelsten and Chao revelled as much in the music’s “sotto voce” excitement as in the hell-for-leather passages, enabling the energies unleashed by Beethoven to tingle expectantly throughout both exuberant and more circumspect passages – such a COMPLETE performance!

Those of us who had seen the concert’s original listing were expecting the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations to follow, but the printed programme at the church had listed only the Beethoven work – so some people (feeling with every good reason satisfied with what they’d already heard) were getting up to leave when the musicians reappeared for the second item. As well most returned, because the Tchaikovsky work, normally heard in concert played by ‘cello and orchestra, was given simply gorgeous treatment by Gjelsten and Chao, to the point where I found myself preferring the ‘cello-and-piano combination to the original!

I would imagine most cellists are aware of the controversy accompanying this work from its inception, largely due to the activities of its dedicatee, Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, a German cellist and fellow-professor at the Moscow Conservatory, who had given the first performance of the work in 1877. Fitzenhagen had been asked by Tchaikovsky for advice regarding his finished “first-draft” for ‘cello and piano, but the composer wasn’t prepared for the extent to which his dedicatee then “revised” the score with the changes (both in the solo and accompaniment parts) then being incorporated into the published ‘cello-and-orchestra score). Though Tchaikovsky was documented as being furious at Fitzenhagen’s changes, his displeasure never actually translated into action, and the score was published in 1889 in the dedicatee’s version.

Tchaikovsky’s own version of the work wasn’t performed until 1941 in Moscow, but the score of the original had to wait until 1956 to be completely reconstructed, along with the cello-piano arrangement (though even the reconstructed version has been questioned because of the methodology used!). Several recordings have now been made of the original, though the Fitzenhagen version still regularly appears in concert and on record. It wasn’t made clear at today’s concert whether the version used by the musicians was Tchaikovsky/Fitzenhagen, or echt-Tchaikovsky (enquiries to this end are proceeding!).

I grew up with the “Fitzenhagen edition” of the work (used by practically all the  versions on record at the time), as per the recording by Rostropovich with Rozhdestvensky and the Leningrad Philharmonic, and loved it to pieces, though I also heard Janos Starker play the work with the NZSO in the1980s in Palmerston North (also a fabulous concert!). I bought what I believed to be the first-ever recording of Tchaikovksy’s original version of the work, made by cellist Raphael Wallfisch as long ago as 1983, but haven’t played it as much as I have the earlier recording, preferring to my shame the “dark side” territory of Fitzenhagen’s version – it seems to me that the only crime regarding the latter’s rearrangement of the work was that he wasn’t Tchaikovsky!

What we got here from Gjelsten and Chao sounded to my ears pretty well like the version I’d become accustomed to – and the playing gave me such pleasure I hardly stopped for a moment to consider just whose work I was hearing. Undoubtedly the sheer elan and sensitive beauties of the playing here influenced my feelings concerning the matter, but I felt the music in this instrumental format reflected even more deeply the composer’s love for Mozart and the classical style surrounding his work – and the “theme” itself wasn’t an existing rococo or classical melody, but Tchaikovsky’s own.

The work’s two concluding sequences here sounded particularly captivating – the Andante presented a sorrowful minor-key song, with the melodic line augmented by echo-like effects from both instruments, the whole rounded off by piano musings and a wistful ascending ‘cello phrase. It had an intimacy which the piano-and-orchestra version couldn’t replicate. Then, with the Allegro vivo Finale and Coda we got a spirited, exhilarating finish, with the cello’s vigorous utterances made playful by the piano’s counter-melody before both instruments finished the piece with suitably demonstrative gestures. We couldn’t have asked for anything more satisfying from two musicians in absolute accord with one another and with the music!

 

 

 

 

Sonic Architecture and Musical Splendour at Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Sound Cathedral – assembled forces, Wellington Cathedral of St Paul – all photo images courtesy Nick George, Creative

SOUND CATHEDRAL:  Almost 500 years of music and sound collaboration brings together Renaissance composer Orlande de Lassus’s Sibylline Prophecies from1550,  traditional Taonga Puoro from Aotearoa, and  present-day composer Michael Norris’s reconstructive configurations of Renaissance polyphonies.
The Tudor Consort – directed by Michael Stewart
Rangatuone Ensemble – conducted by Riki Pirihi
Stroma Ensemble – directed by Michael Norris
Organist – Max Toth
Bellringers, Wellington Cathedral – Dylan Thomas, Jamie Ben

Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul, Molesworth St., Wellington
Sunday, Ist March, 2026

Presented with the auspices of Aotearoa New Zealand’s 2026 Festival of the Arts

Over half-an-hour before the event’s beginning there were groups of people forming lines in the foyer of  Wellington’s Molesworth Street Cathedral of St. Paul, drawn by the prospect of experiencing what composer Michael Norris had described in the pre-concert publicity as an enlivening of “the sonic architecture” of the Cathedral.  Those of us who had in the past revelled in the Cathedral’s inherent aural capabilities with music written especially for large spaces were irrevocably drawn to the prospect. And, inside, our programme notes contained effusively elaborations on the venue becoming “an immersive bath of sound that emanates from every corner”. No better introductory build-up to the event’s efficacy could have been devised.

The musicians involved in “Sound Cathedral” began taking up positions at the beginning which enclosed the audience in a kind of surrounding web, the atmosphere further enhanced by diaphanous streams of mist emanating from the altar end of the nave and creating veritable swathes of ambient mystery. A hush suddenly prevailed as the Dean of Wellington Cathedral, Katie Lawrence welcomed and addressed us both in Te Reo and English from the pulpit, enjoining us to “open our hearts and enjoy the spectacle”.

The Karakia is delivered, sonorously and scalp-pricklingly, augmented with impressively sonorous, even baleful-like trumpet tones from the taonga puoro players – others join in from the surrounding areas, with the sounds taking on a less confrontational, more “inclusive” kind of ambience as we begin to discern voices amongst the instrumental sounds. Gradually the voices were made manifest by the singers’ one-after-the-other appearance from the back and up the central aisle to the front, as the instrumentalists continued with their all-enveloping array of sounds from all precincts of the nave. It was an enchanting cornucopia of sound, in constant swirling flux, unexpectedly reminding me at this point of those “river sounds” which build up in the same way in Wagner’s Prelude to his opera “Das Rheingold”.


MIchael Stewart

Following his singers was music director Michael Stewart, whose appearance occasioned a withdrawal of tones from the various instrumentalists in favour of eerie, almost spectral percussive sounds, intended to accompany the Consort’s singing of the Prologue – in effect,  Lassus’s own sung introduction to his set of Sibylline Prophecies which were to follow. Beginning with the words “Carmina chromatico” , this enchanting episode ( performed by the Consort Voices just as the composer had written) struck me in that instant as the kind of musical “sound” this building was surely created for, as celestial an effect as was the singers fan-like dispersal at the end to both sides, whilst still singing, the sounds augmented by soft percussion and harp in a seamless, dream-like flow!


Tudor Consort Singers


Lenny Sakofsky, percussion


Michelle Velvin, harp

At this point one sensed that the music was preparing to “take flight” from its place of origin, as if we were present at the very act of creation, with the sounds inspired by Lassus’s following “Sibylla Persica” seeming to themselves resonate and augment their own existing ambiences – I could make out some of the Sibyl’s words at the beginning – “Virgine Matre satus…” but with the sounds seeming to follow composer Michael Norris’s idea of introducing qualities of utterance such as “cloud-like time-stretching”, encouraging our listening sensibilities to perhaps soar, or, conversely, cease physical movement in favour of hitherto unexplored realms. This delightfully disorientation of time and space accompanied a rich resonance of taonga puoro instrumental detail, sounding for all the world like birdsong as if emanating from a deep and hitherto undiscovered adjoining valley.


Riki Pirihi – director, Rangatuone Ensemble

What this did was disengage me from the singers words’ and their meaning from here onwards, save for the occasional phrase, such as the emphasis given to the line “…ille Deus casta nascetur virgine magnus”, with those birdsong ambiences rising to a great outpouring of forest  amplitude with voices and instruments. I presumed this was a depiction of  ”Whirl / Komiro” with the splendid bullroarers helping to build up the ambieces leading to the “Oscillate/Kopiupiu” with its almost visceral pendulum-swings, expressing the idea of surpassing nature’s work  “by he who governs all things”. For the rest I simply gave myself over to the repeated phrases and their mesmeric effect bearing my sensibilities aloft, the sounds again vindicating the building’s capacity to creatively augment any such potential resonances to their utmost effect.

I found myself led by instinct by an upsurge of beatific vocal lines floated in “Sibylla Cimmeria” , with its reference to “Eco lucebit sidus ab orb Mirificum” (And the star shines from a wonderful orb), sounds which here create as celestial and unworldly an ambience as any music has a right to sound. A subsequent dark and portentous episode enabled me to surmise that we had reached “Sibylla Phrygia” with its punitive words “…punire volentem Mundi homines stupidos”  (…wishing to punish the stupid men of the earth)…..the grim, forceful accents which characterise the sequence strike an appropriate contrast afforded by the final “Sibylla Agrippa” with its music’s return from the dark depths.

With the choir reducing its size and the taonga puoro taking up a “cleansing” sound-palate, the time for reconciliation seemed at hand. Nature is returned to accord as the whole choir gathers, inviting the furthest-flung strands to renew unanimity and kinship. All is heightened by euphoric sequences of aleatoric vocalism, creating a kind of hubbub of renewal into which all strands are gradually wound – the choir pauses to allow the natural world its primacy, before the voices join in, the lighter voices overlapping with stratospheric tones representing a kind of “on high” overlordship, with tones constant and glorious, to which the organ adds its mighty voice.

Standing ovations can become cliches, but in this case one found oneself propelled upwards and on one’s feet by the sheer force of delighted response to join in with the acclaim. Afterwards, reactions and opinions I shared stressed the magnitude and splendour of the occasion, with some, like me, admitting to the expectation of hearing more clearly other parts of Lassus’s music in the manner presented by the Prologue – but instead his music became the deep well from which irresistibly gushed all kinds of time-and-place elaborations upon his themes and texts, proving in a very visceral sense the fantastical “onreach” of artistic  impulse!

One certainly with which to grace the capital’s music performance chronicles – and perhaps even to record for posterity (the latter already done and dusted?) However caught and held, this was a memorable addition to our part of the world’s distinctive sonic voice!

Handel’s “Messiah” from the Orpheus in warm-hearted seasonal tradition

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orpheus Choir and soloists  with Brent Stewart  in Handel’s “Messiah” at the MFC

George Frideric Handel – MESSIAH
Emma Pearson (soprano)
Maaike Christie-Beekman (alto)
LJ Crichton (tenor)
Joel Amosa (bass)
Orpheus Choir of Wellington
Orchestra Wellington
Brent Stewart (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Saturday, 13th December, 2025

Walking into a concert hall foyer a good half-hour before the performance’s starting time and encountering a veritable sea of faces and conglomerate of bodies all exuding a kind of excitement and anticipation tells you that you’re somehow onto a good thing for the evening!

Such an osmotic buzz of expectation spreads like a forcefield throughout the shared spaces to the performers, creating a “charged” environment through which the ordinary is metamorphosed into the fabulous even before a note is sounded.

Through some kind of alchemy, Handel’s “Messiah”, no matter how many times it gets performed, never loses its appeal. I’ve practically lost count of the ones I’ve attended, and the details have a habit of running together when I try to fetch up specific memories of a presentation with this conductor and that singer, and especially in tandem with dates – but it has for me developed the aura of a ritual in which I feel something of an unexplained compulsion to repeatedly take part.

Of course a major consideration for many people is that “Messiah” is almost never the same work on each occasion it’s presented – and I don’t mean merely in terms of differences of interpretation of the same score, because there is no single “same score” – no single “definitive” version. A statistic I encountered recently which took my breath away was that Handel had produced forty-three versions of the work’s fifteen solo numbers, the composer making numerous adjustments to suit the needs of the different singers he used at various times. Different versions of the whole work also appeared, beginning with the Dublin version in 1742, then a London version the following year, followed in 1750 at the London Foundling Hospital and a revision in 1754, featuring different music and alternate version of numbers.

This near-profligacy of difference makes each performance of this work something of an adventure for the listener – and it’s definitely a factor in the music’s never-ending joy and fascination. Naturally interpretation plays a part in this on-going process, with different conductors and soloists (and choirs and orchestras, for that matter) bringing to each occasion singular characteristics and qualities. While I can remember with great pleasure certain aspects of past performances involving both individual and concerted efforts, it’s a particular joy to encounter, as here, something of a shared benchmark of achievement on the part of all the performers. In fact I can put my hand on my heart and declare that I thought this a splendid and great-hearted “Messiah” which set out from the very beginning to “engage” with us, drawing us increasingly and unsparingly into the story’s intense wonder, drama and fulfilment regarding Christ’s sojourn on Earth.

Under conductor Brent Stewart’s focused direction, orchestra, soloists and choir were able to touch realms that seemed almost transcendent in places –  of course every listener will cherish certain singular “moments” and mark them out for “legendary” status in times to come (as I’ve done now and then with past hearings of this work,as an essential component of the process). Tonight’s soloists rose to the occasion in various instances  – tenor LJ Chrichton pleased with his attractively airy “Evry Valley” at the work’s beginning, even if his opening phrase of  “Comfort Ye” seemed more like a “test run” than the real thing  – but his subsequent longer-held phrases made sonorous amends! At the other end of the expressive scale was his more-assured Part Two set of recitatives and ariosi, concluding with the vigorous “Thou shalt break them”, which featured some confident ascents to the demanding top notes of “thou shalt dash them in pieces” – sterling, true-toned efforts!

His bass counterpart, Joel Amosa, impressed throughout with his virility and flexibility, pinning our ears back with his “Thus saith the Lord” and rolling his voice up and down his runs on the word “Shake” in fine style. Even more thrilling was his partnership with the orchestra in “Why do the Nations?” , a high-energy combination of rushing orchestral figures and melismatic vocal lines, the singer’s triplet figures riding the orchestra’s impetuous common-time trajectories with breathtaking adroitness! However, it was Amosa’s partnership with trumpeter Lewis Grey in “The Trumpet Shall Sound” which carried the day, the singer’s prescient introductory story-telling tones paving the way for the splendid combination of voice and brilliantly-sounded instrument that we were then treated to.

I’ve always thought the alto in “Messiah” had fewer opportunities to really “shine” in this work compared with the other singers, with the exception of the great aria “He was despised”. Here, Maaike Christie-Beekman movingly took us right into the hollowed-out chamber of sorrow and rejection  suffered by the beleagued Christ, almost as if it were a great and private universal “confession of sorrow”. I’m nearly always disappointed when a performance neglects to include the tempestuous middle section “He gave his back” because of the dramatic contrast it sets up – a real “trial” for everybody concerned, though, when it happens!

Soprano Emma Pearson’s first recitative entry, of course, was preceded by the sublime sweetness of the “Pifa” (the Pastoral Symphony characterising the shepherds), after which she sang the 4/4 version of “Rejoice greatly” (my first hearing of this was Handel’s first gigue-like 12/8 version) – the coloratura passages were terrific, really capturing a “joyous” effect! Pearson’s lovely voice also came into its own in the second half of “He shall feed his flock”, following the alto’s opening verse with another, “Come unto him”. Where Pearson’s singing, however, for me “touched” that transcendence I’ve mentioned beforehand was in “I know that my Redeemer liveth”, her clear-as-a-bell rendering still giving the line affecting nuances while fully proclaiming the emotion of belief and surety – something about the unaffected simplicity of her “And though worms destroy this body” I found ineffably touching without knowing really why, but it was a moment that has stayed with me as one of those memories which will endure – a salutary experience for an unbeliever!

As for the “Mighty Orpheus” (as the choir has been known for decades) the voices were at one with their conductor/director Brent Stewart right from the outset, with a vigorous and stirring response to “And the Glory of the Lord”, with the sopranos particularly radiant in their soaring, largely single-note lines.  I felt at times that the rapid tempi for a couple of the choruses missed a certain “deliciousness of utterance”  (“And He shall purify” was one and “His yoke is easy” was another), but I could register the enjoyment of a compensatory “effervescence” in the overall effect (for example, in “All we like sheep” the voices scintillated like bubbling and cascading springs!).  Though not at all related to THIS performance, I still can’t help repeating  for enjoyment’s sakes a reasonably well-known anecdote attributed to the famous conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, who was heard to remark at one point in a “Messiah” rehearsal.  “Ladies and gentlemen of the chorus, when you sing “All we like sheep have gone astray”, could we please have a little more regret and a little less satisfaction?” ).

At the other end of the expressive scale the chorus work projected tremendous potency – in “Surely He hath borne our griefs”, for example, whose opening word was like a hammer-blow – then, in both “He trusted in God” (the most thrillingly incisive performance I can remember ever hearing of this!) and “Let us break their bonds asunder” with similarly biting lines, allied to fantastic energy, making the words come alive – and  making the most of dramatic contrast in “Since by man came death”, bursting out from its positively sepulchral opening in grandly theatrical style. I especially relished, too, the varied treatment of the final “Amen” Chorus, which featured sequences of solo and paired string-playing alternating with the voices – a scalp-prickling effect, then rounded off with plenty of suitably sonorous orchestral tones in support of the voices – wonderful!

With stirring support from the Orchestra Wellington players (a scaled-down band to more readily reflect a Handelian sound-world) aided by the mellifluous strains of  both Bethany Angus’s harpsichord and Jonathan Berkahn’s chamber organ, Brent Stewart and his performers gave Handel’s work a solidly-based sonority from which the details readily sprang, always interestingly, and often excitingly to the ear. The “buzz” that had begun earlier that evening in the foyer had certainly done its job on this occasion, and  in the best seasonal “Christmas tree” tradition!

WORLDS WITHIN WORLDS – Wellington City Orchestra’s congress of assorted realities

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington City Orchestra at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, with Diedre Irons (piano), Brendan Agnew (conductor), and Virginie Pacheco (Assistant Conductor)

SAI NATARAJAN – In This Corner Of The World
LUDWIG van BEETHOVEN – Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor
DOUGLAS LILBURN – Symphony No. 2

Diedre Irons (piano)
Virginie Pacheco (Assistant Conductor – Natarajan)
Brendan Agnew  (Conductor)
Wellington City Orchestra

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Sunday, 7th December, 2025

Now this was a treat for any concertgoer relishing the thought of something old and something new, combining an easeful kind of familiarity with more challenging musical terrain, as well as setting home-grown worlds in a wider context. Wellington City Orchestra’s programme enterprisingly opened up for us here-and-now impressions of creative forces at work in Aotearoa, before time-travelling us to Beethoven’s world and back again, and finally giving us a time-in-motion slice of “being” at a significant emerging point in our own colourful history. The sounds we heard spoke volumes for each of these times and places – it was something of a proverbial journey!

Different people participated in this process, and in different ways – we were welcomed to the concert at its beginning by Rowena Cullen, the orchestra’s President who’s also a member of the violin section, after which today’s conductor Brendan Agnew firstly paid tribute to a recently deceased orchestra member, Mark Hill, and then introduced today’s concert’s assistant conductor, Virginie Pacheco, who directed the concert’s opening performance, a heartwarming piece by youthful composer Sai Natarajan. At its conclusion Brendan Agnew then  bade us welcome pianist Diedre Irons to the stage to deliver her Beethoven concerto performance. Like the “players” in Shakespeare’s “Ages of Man” all of these individuals had, by their own lights, a special part to play in the panoply.

Beginning the concert charmingly  and sonorously was a work written by emerging freelance composer Sai Natarajan, from Palmerston North, one called “In This Corner of the World”. With Assistant Conductor Virginie Pacheco (the first to actually hold this title with the WCO) at the helm, we were transported at the beginning to the Manawatu plains, with Sibelius-like wind impulses sounding across the deeper murmurings of those open spaces, all the while engendering awakenings of activity, the thrustings and resoundings suggesting  iceberg-tips of the “absolute powerhouse of artistic and musical talent” that abides in the region.

The music gathers itself and epically “pushes out” this landscape, contrasting numerous “forest murmurings’ with attention-grabbing percussive scintillations, a recurring motif resounding in one’s attention as the brass give us some Lilburn-like reminiscences suggesting the inherent “musicality” of natural rhythms. My own experiences as a born-and-bred Palmerstonian responded to the composer’s recognition of “artistic toiling” in modestly-appointed, yet still-resonating hatcheries of human productivity in all fields of expression. I remember watching as my parents and their contemporaries set examples for us of partaking of things resulting for some of us in what Sai Natarajan calls  an artist’s “joys, struggles, disappointments and triumphs”, and from which modest origins still brought forth “beauty and joy”  in the doing, and occasionally even something enduring and worth celebrating – as this this great-hearted piece certainly was!

Happily, “In This Corner of the World”, after being premiered by the Manawatu Sinfonia in 2024, was recorded earlier this year by the NZSO as part of their annual NZ Composer Sessions initiative. I would imagine we haven’t heard the last of this intuitive, versatile, and delightfully communicative composer.

The programme’s suggestion of a wider context of human creativity was hinted at by the music of a composer whose output for many people epitomised a kind of universality  of utterance, Ludwig van Beethoven. His Third Piano Concerto is a kind of bridge-work between the classical and romantic eras, a realm which Mozart had also occasionally explored in music written in a similar key, but one more fully and dramatically furthered by this and other works by Beethoven.

Having splendidly recorded all of the composer’s piano concertos, and frequently played them in concert Diedre Irons was the ideal soloist to realise the “sturm und drang” of this work, aided by a suitably dark-browed accompaniment from the orchestra, with conductor Brendan Agnew on the podium. The opening was the orchestra’s alone, strongly-focused and well-detailed, to which the soloist responded with suitably dramatic contrasting gestures – it wasn’t all high drama and theatricality, with the second subject group almost playful in intent in places under Irons’ fingers, but leading back to a stern recapitulation by the players under Agnew’s direction and a properly virtuoso performance of the solo cadenza. Here, Irons was in complete command of the drama and volatility of the writing, bringing out the almost ghostly ambiences of the instrument’s return to the world of interaction in the movement’s darkly-enigmatic coda.

One of the most beautiful of Beethoven’s slow movements followed, with piano and orchestral passages delighting the ear, and the interchanges expressing a heartfelt “communal” sense of expression. Irons’ voicing of the decorative poetic utterances made every impulse a joy, and the winds and strings in particular matched her ardour – though the strings’ pizzicati could have been a tad firmer in places as they were near to inaudibility, so sensitive was their response! Particularly lovely were the last few interactions, the strings tender phrasings and the piano’s “haunted” chordings all underpinned by dark wind-and-brass murmurings before the latter echoed the piano’s final descending notes and brought in a final single chord – magical!

I loved the insouciance with which Irons then started the finale’s ball rolling – but the orchestra was ready for her, picking up the traces of the trajectories and ready to do its bit with the first big tutti – what great exchanges between orchestra and piano with those mighty chords and flourishes! A lovely clarinet solo introduced and elaborated on a new episode, and a string fugato followed, after a while beginning to loosen at the seams, but managing to complete the task as the pianist jumped in and steadied the rhythms! The recapitulation was strong and purposeful, as was Irons’ final grandstand solo flourish before the coda’s cheeky beginning, with truly spectacular piano-playing and a suitably vigorous audience response.

She was accorded a richly deserved tribute from all, but had not done with us yet! To our delight she sat back down at the piano and began the deliciously droll F Minor Allegro moderato dance from Schubert’s adorable Moments Musicaux. It was playing in which every note resonated and every impulse “choreographed” its own sound, inviting parts of us by turns to listen and sing and dance in our minds – and the moment towards the end when the final line impishly turned to F Major seemed as if the music was suddenly smiling at us and telling us to forget our troubles – magical piano playing!

An interval saw the piano further “magicked” to one side, leaving more space for the players to resound the strains of one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most significant musical compositions, Douglas Lilburn’s Second Symphony. Completed in 1951, this iconic work had to wait until 1959 for its first public performance. Part of the problem was the country’s National Orchestra still being in its relative infancy (it gave its first concert in 1947) and its early conductors were certainly reluctant at that time to “take the plunge” with anything as off the beaten track as a locally-produced symphony – rather, they were set upon establishing the standard repertoire. The composer’s First Symphony had been an earlier casualty, completed in 1949, and premiered in 1951, to be then ignored for a further ten years. It wasn’t until the advent of John Hopkins as the National Orchestra’s Principal Conductor in the late 1950s that Lilburn’s music began to be performed more regularly – the composer’s gratitude was such that he went on to write a Third Symphony in 1961 and dedicate it to Hopkins!

The Second Symphony has always been associated with quintessential aspects of New Zealand life and landscape. What the composer referred to as “the imponderables” of the natural world feature strongly in the work – contrasts of light and shade and the vagaries of weather are prominent characteristics of the music’s different ambiences. Human influences are also a factor – in the second movement Lilburn immortalised what he described as the ”nasal and tangy” cry of Wellington’s Evening Post Paper-boy’s call, heard as he passed through the capital en route to or from the South Island. Others have commented upon the “search for identity” aspect of the music in the other movements, particularly in the third “Introduction”, where the “frontier” aspect of the environment seems somewhat remote and forbidding and essentially solitary. The music’s angst-like textures and ambiences seem to reflect struggles associated with a 1950s “coming of age” in artistic and other matters, one which the final movement translates into more positive and robust gesturings. I must here admit to a degree of dissatisfaction with the “Introduction” movement regarding its brevity – though expertly crafted, it doesn’t for me go far enough or even resound sufficiently within its existing parameters, eluding the feeling of a truly epic statement of being (it’s significantly shorter in scale than both the first or last movements!) – or have I been listening to too much Mahler or Bruckner or Shostakovich of late?

But to the beginning – beautifully and wistfully opened by the strings the first movement also featured buoyant solos from oboe, clarinet and flute, with the horns in atmospheric alignment. The strings, winds and brass raised us to the heights mid-movement with the horns having a wonderful “Carl Nielsen” moment (I once got taken to task by Lilburn himself for suggesting  the merest connection of him with that composer!), and the timpani adding to the music’s “epic” quality before the strings, with the oboe supported by the horns, bring the movement to a relatively placid close. A pity the St.Andrew’s acoustic had difficulty sorting  the dynamics, with the brass, to my ears sounding a bit lost in the mid-movement tuttis’ welter of sound!

Better-realised was the Scherzo, a more nimble, less weighty sound, the oboe doing a great job with the perky theme, and the brass and timpani lively at the climaxes. The other winds did splendid things with their variants of the theme, but the most nostalgic moments were the cellos’ introduction of the “paperboy” theme, and the strings in general joining in with its more extended moments. Elsewhere, the “snap” and “bite” of the rhythms was a joy.

The opening of the third movement  “Introduction” with its bleak and unremitting atmosphere was promising – strings and winds in tandem advanced the sobriety of it all, bringing out an almost Sibelius-like feeling of isolation to the textures. The strings pursued a “wandering” course underscored by the brass and counterpointed by the horns, and with the oboe and flute doggedly “lifting” the mood in places. The brass seemed warmer and more heroic when first entering, but their aspect quickly darkened in accord with the strings, the anguished chordings from both heightening the unease which the flute sought to console. At this point I wanted more, but for whatever reason the composer had decreed “enough”, and before we knew where we were, the finale was upon us and the clouds had dispersed …..

Though the composer might have given this marvellous finale more to react to in situ,  the energising warmth and freshness of the movement’s opening textures set the tone for what followed, impulses which seemed like a symbolic renewal of confidence following a dark night of the soul. Lilburn had already in words enjoined his fellow-composers to engage in what he called “a search for tradition” relating to the necessity of “writing our own music”, in his now-historic 1946 Cambridge Music School lecture written under the same title. Here, now, he practised his own dictum in the composition of this symphony, and to the extent he felt it necessary, whatever critics might say about the result! The work emphasised both challenge and possibility, and the results today spoke for themselves.

The coming-together of these things in this finale was a heady experience – moments in which the big ringing brass theme soared out gloriously, and the orchestra in other places seemed to pick up its skirts and dance were made the more memorable by a final peroration begun by stratospheric strings, and chiselled out of the texture by resounding brass and rolling timpani in glorious C Major! It had the effect of consuming everything at the concert’s conclusion in swathes of splendour and happiness!

 

 

 

BACK TO BACH from Baroque Voices takes the listener on a journey

Posted on by Peter Mechen
Baroque Voices at St.Mary of the Angels – from left: Pepe Becker, Andrea Cochrane, Samuel Berkahn, David Morriss, Imogen Granwal (‘cello), Simon Christie. Jamie Young, Toby Gee, Rowena Simpson

 

JS BACH – The Six Motets (BWV 225-230)
Baroque Voices (directed by Pepe Becker)

Pepe Becker, Rowena Simpson (sopranos)
Andrea Cochrane, Toby Gee (altos)
Samuel Berkahn, Jamie Young (tenors)
David Morriss, Simon Christie (basses)
Imogen Granwal (baroque ‘cello)

St.Mary of the Angels Church, Boulcott St., Wellington
Sunday 30th November, 2025

To my shame, I had never before heard a single one of JS Bach’s Motets before finding out about this concert – I’d “heard of” a couple of the titles of famous ones, such as “Komm, Jesu, komm” and “Jesu, mein Freude”, but had never taken the step of getting to know them, thinking that the “Passions” and the “B Minor Mass” and the “Christmas Oratorio” and the “Magnificat”, plus a clutch of Cantatas sufficiently qualified me as an accredited “Choral Bach listener”. So I was both delighted and intrigued upon being told by Baroque Voices’ director Pepe Becker some time ago that this concert was coming up, and DID managed to track down a couple of recordings and fit in some “listening” beforehand so as to get something of an idea of what I was in for…..

The concert date duly arrived and the presentation took place with the succinct title “Back to Bach” for  the Voices’ heady “whirlwind tour” through all six of the composer’s sacred motets, performed by the Wellington ensemble in the sumptuous (perhaps a tad too much so acoustically!) setting of St.Mary of the Angels church in the heart of the city. The director, Pepe Becker, described these works in her programme notes for the concert as “sublime, complex and deeply moving”, though one could add plenty of further epithets to the description of the afternoon’s performance by the ensemble. We warmed as readily to the exuberance of the writing, its enjoyment generated as much by the music’s own urgencies of feeling as by the voices’ different physicalities, all with their own channelled energies. These things all came together, the pieces amply reflecting their creator’s unquenchable human spirit and belief in a higher divine authority.

Unlike the cantatas, which Bach wrote regularly for every Sunday of the church year, the motets were infrequently produced for special occasions in Leipzig, and some may have even been lost. The six surviving ones were in fact the only choral works of Bach which didn’t disappear entirely from view until the renowned “Bach revival” of the 19th Century. The famous story of Mozart’s joyful response, upon hearing in Leipzig in 1789 a performance of Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied (Sing to the Lord a new song) bears witness to these works carrying a torch for future generations.

It’s unclear what Bach’s intentions were regarding the instrumental accompaniment of these works – only one of the motets, Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf (BWV 226) has extant orchestra parts, and two other Motets have separate continuo basslines written, Furchte dich (BWV 228), and Lobet den Herrn (BWV 230). So there is no “final word” regarding instrumental accompaniment, according to the composer. The works would probably have been accompanied at least by basso continuo (an organ or a melodic bass instrument) – Baroque Voices use a bass stringed instrument in all but two of the Motets – Komm, Jesu, komm (BWV 229), and Jesu, meine Freude (BWV 227), here a baroque cello, played by Imogen Granwal.

Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied got the concert away to a stirringly festive beginning, with the wonderful “pinging” calls of the opening Singet, the tones brightly shining, and the lines mellifluously blending, swirling nicely together at Die Gemeine der Heiligen sollen in loben, (Sing His praise in the congregation of saints). As well, the infectious “dancing” tones of Die Kinder Zion sei’n frölich über ihren Könige  (Let the children of Zion be joyful in their King) were delightful, leading to the  splendid all-in tones of the climactic Mit Pauken und Harfen sollen sie im spielen! (Let them sing praises unto Him with the timbrel and harp)! The second-movement Chorale Wie sich ein Vat’r erbarmet (As a father is merciful) had one group singing the chorale, and the other interspersing lines from the aria Gott, nimm dich ferner unser an (O, Lord, continue to care for us) – beautiful, heartfelt exchanges! A suitably zestful Lobet den Herrn in seinen Taten (Praise the Lord for His mighty acts), then moved without a break in momentum to a triple-time Alleluia for a satisfying finish.

Next was the tremulously-expressed Komm Jesu, Komm (Come, Jesu, Come), so very theatrical at the outset, and with the individual voices then conveying the hardship of life’s vicissitudes with Die Kraft verschwindt je mehr und mehr (My strength is fading more and more), and the solace of expectation, freed from “Der saure Weg” (the stony path). The voices put an infectious eagerness into the renewed cries of “Komm, komm”, and a renewed strength of certainty  (with touches of elation!) into the trajectories of Du bist der rechte Weg, die Wahrheit, und das Leben (The Way, the Truth and the Light). The concluding Chorale, Drum schliess ich mich in deine Hande (So I entrust myself into Thy hands) quietly exalted in its certainty here, right to the final long-breathed notes.

Though written for the funeral service in October 1729 of Johann Heinrich Ernesti, longtime rector of the St. Thomas School  in Leipzig, Bach was perhaps inspired by the great man’s positive qualities by writing some attractive and inspirational music for this motet, Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf (The Spirit also helpeth our infirmities). Its cheerful, forward-pressing gait and general overall tone includes some droll references to the “Spirit’s” intercession for our prayers “mit unaussprechlichem Seufzen” (with unutterable groanings)! The music’s lovely 3/8 trajectory at the beginning changes to common-time for both the “groanings” and the references to “Der aber die Herzen forschet” (He that searcheth the Heart). My only other thought was that the Chorale could perhaps have been a little more hushed, and varied in delivery at the outset, as befitted the words “Du Heilige Brunst, süsser Trost” (Heavenly Fire, sweet consolation) – which sounded as if they might have come from Schiller, for goodness sakes!

The interval gave us time to reflect on the magnificence of the music and the manifest qualities of the performances, which were considerable – brightly-shining tones, nimble trajectories, neither rushed nor dragging, distinctive individual voices, and, despite some idiosyncratic vocal “blends” in certain places, still successfully ensuring the voices’ clarity and the words’ flavourings and colourings were imparted. I wondered in places whether the acoustic was actually a bit “too much”, resulting in some of the singers’ tones being amplified more than others, and wondered whether a smaller, sparser acoustic might have integrated the sounds better. However, it was a “sometimes” effect, as more often the ensembled sounds came together most mellifluously.

The lovely opening of Fürchte dich nicht (Fear not) with its euphonious exchanges continued our pleasure, as did, in an entirely different way, the dramatic interpolations of recitative-like utterances of “Ich stärke dich!” from individual singers, and the contrast between the austere chromatic fugal passages and the radiant chorale excepts from the sopranos in the ensuing fugue, a vocal contrast that continued to delight us until the final concerted statement “Furche dich nicht – Du bist mein!” Heartwarming!

The longest and most complex of the motets is Jesu, meine Freude  (“Jesus, my Joy”). Essentially scored for five voices, including a second soprano line (as with Bach’s Magnificat) it alternates a chorale tune by Johann Crüger with settings of texts by Johann Franck and from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. It’s uncertain just when this motet was composed, or for what particular purpose, with one scholar even advocating the idea of Bach using the work just for educational purposes with his St.Thomas’s Leipzig  choir.

The beautiful opening sang out gloriously, the singers relishing the third of each group of lines of text, arching each towards a moment of intense feeling – a marked contrast with the beginning of the next movement’s Es ist nun nichts Verdamliches (There is therefore now no condemnation) with the word “nichts” separately and pointedly repeated, and the following line “Die nicht nach dem Fleische wandein” (Who walk not after the flesh) which wanders graphically in a kind of wilderness! The wonderful third movement Unter Deinem Schirmen (Protected by Thee) returned to the chorale tune, whose serenity was “roughed up” with references to Kracht und Blitz (“Thunder and Lightning”) and then Sünd und Hölle (“Sin and Hell”) adding to the dramatic effect. The three women’s voices then consoled our fears with the fourth movement’s Denn das Gesetz des Geistes (“For the Law of the Spirit”).

More drama and contrast was depicted by the fifth movement’s  Trotz dem alten Drachen (“Defy the Old Dragon”), the singers hurling the word “Trotz” (Defy!) upwards and outwards, and agitatedly word-crafting a world raging and quaking (Tobe, Welt und Springe – ”Rage, world, and quake!”), before painting a picture of the soul standing and singing  in perfect peace with God (Ich steh’ hier und singe in gar Sicher Ruh). The following movement Ihr aber seid nich Fleischlich (“For ye are not of the flesh”) most winningly here contrasted a quick-moving fugal opening with a sonorous chorale-like conclusion Wer aber Christi Geist nicht hat, der ist nicht sein! – (“Yet one who has not the Spirit of Christ is not His!”).

The vigorous and wonderful Weg mit allen Schätzen(“Away with all earthly treasures!)  that followed featured the soprano with the chorale line set against such deliciously contrasting and detailed figurations from the others – the urgently-delivered opening from the lower voices and with its first word Weg! repeated, was such a delight! And the singers conveyed the “strongly-felt essence” of other utterances such as Elend, Not, Kreuz, Schmach und Tod (“Poverty, distress, Cross, disgrace and death”) so very vividly at the conclusion.

The winsome So aber Christus in euch ist (“And if Christ be in you”) was gentle and dance-like, here, until the words Der Geist aber ist das Leben “But the Spirit is life”, when the figurations quickened, though leaving us with a somewhat unresolved conclusion – this was supplied by the following Gute Nacht, O Wesen (“Goodnight, O earthly Life”) – here, a stunningly beautiful piece whose lines I thought the sopranos  took a little time to settle into at the beginning, but which achieved a magic by the end.

After these heartfelt articulations, So nun der Geist des (“Now that the Spirit of him”) seemed businesslike and anecdotal by comparison, almost a case of the narrator moving the story on to its inevitable conclusion! Bach replicates the manner of the work’s second movement in the use of a repeated word (here, “Geist” is repeated, as was the word “Nichts” in the second movement) and the text has the same instruction-like tone as Es ist nun nichts Verdamliches. The true frisson of feeling came with the final Weicht, ihr Trauergeister (“Disperse, sombre spirits”), with the original opening Chorale melody taking us back to the work’s beginning in the most disarming and direct way – all truly wonderful!

There remained the “orphan” of the bunch to give some attention to – the motet Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden (“Praise the Lord all ye nations”), the one that there’s “doubt” as to whether or not it’s by Bach at all.  Pepe Becker put it succinctly in her programme note about the piece, saying that “it’s hard to imagine who else could have written such a vital, well-crafted piece”. And who could blame her, with such material to perform? At the beginning a sprightly combination of lines led to a splendidly-voiced fugue at “Und preiset ihn, aller Völker”, after which an appropriately slower section made reference to Seine Gnade und Wahrheit (which will) waltet uber uns in Ewigkeit “His mercy and truth (which will) reign over us for all eternity” – and with everything then enlivened by a sequence of triple-time Alleluias – an appropriately joyful way to end such a concert!

What to say? – except that the experience for me of hearing these works in concert for the first time was life-changing. To Pepe Becker and her Baroque Voices grateful thanks for a truly resounding experience!

 

NZSO’s night of beauty and splendour with Berlioz and Bruckner

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Joyce DiDonato sings Berlioz with the NZSO and Gemma New – photo credit Phoebe Tuxford

HECTOR BERLIOZ – Les Nuits d’ete
ANTON BRUCKNER – Symphony No. 7 in E Major

Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano)
Gemma New (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Friday, November 28th. 2025

We would have been forgiven, at the conclusion of this Wellington concert’s first-half-outpouring of glorious vocalism from American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, for imagining that the rest of the evening’s music-making would prove at best worthy, but perhaps not scaling the heights to which we’d been taken. And with good reason, as we had just heard one of the most beautiful of all orchestral song-cycles, Hector Berlioz’s “Les Nuits d’ete”, here performed in a way that simply embodied the idea of a singer “inhabiting” a piece of music, with every note, phrase, expression and gesture savoured as if parts of a living entity. For Joyce DiDonato, it’s music that, in her own words, is “emotional, beautiful and identifiable – it has both the light and the dark, a little bit of humour, and then the pathos.”

From the moment she stepped onto the Michael Fowler Centre stage DiDonato had her audience’s attention (as befitted a renowned international singer making her New Zealand debut) and, on this occasion transfixed her listeners with the first few notes of “Villanelle”, the cycle’s opening song, a charming “pastorelle” describing the onset of the spring, and the simple peregrinations of lovers, and with the singer’s voice by turns eager, wry, teasing and tender. As with the other songs, not a phrase or gesture went for nothing – we saw the “pearled dewdrops” and heard the “blackbirds call”, in “the month that lovers bless”, all delivered with a natural-sounding fluency, an artistry concealing art and revealing living feeling.

So it was with the different world of “Le Spectre de la Rose”, the renowned song which depicts a dream-like sequence of a rose plucked and worn at a ball, and promising to return every night to haunt its wearer’s dreams – the singer firstly galvanised us with the splendour of words such as “..j’arrive du Paradis” (I come from Paradise) – but then, how different a world the same voice plunged us into with the following “Sur les lagunes” (On the Lagoons), with the opening words “Ma belle amie est morte” (My beautiful love is dead), with each of the verses’ chilling and prescient Mahlerian final line “Ah!  Sans amour s’en aller sur la mer!” (Alas! – to go over the sea without love).

My favourite from the cycle has always been the radiant “Absence” – and DiDonato didn’t disappoint, tugging at the heartstrings even more than Regine Crespin and Janet Baker in favourite recordings, with her luminous “ownership” of the opening “Reviens” (Return) and her pitiable “Comme une fleur loin du soleil” (like a flower away from the sun). So bewitched were we, the audience, with her “moth-to-the-flame” detailing and resonating lines of ambience in “Au Cimetière” (In the cemetery) that, when what sounded like a stray cell-phone tone broke the ending’s silence, the audience hurriedly applauded to cover the intrusion!  The musicians then, in turn, broke into the applause to deliver the final, exuberant “L’ile inconnue” (The Unknown Isle) – here done with irresistible verve and detachment sense of release from what had been up to that moment the composer’s longed-for and sadly unrealised “Toujours” (always) from the opening “Villanelle” – acknowledged here by DiDonato with wry equanimity, rather than bitter resignation to “la jeune belle”, with the open-hearted words at the end – “Ou voulez-vous aller? – La brise va souffler….” (Where would you like to go? – the breeze is about to blow….).

Having received rapturous audience accolades for her efforts, DiDonato repaid us handsomely, with, firstly, the “Habanera” from Carmen (orchestra AND even some audience voices supplying the chorus’s “Prends garde a toi!” response here, in each verse!), and then what the singer called “a present to us in return from her part of the world”, a verse and chorus of Harold Arlen’s  song “Somewhere, over the Rainbow” from the film “The Wizard of Oz”. At that, even this diehard critic found himself on his feet, applauding!

But then! – the evening’s biggest surprise for me, however, came with the Bruckner! I had heard the NZSO give radiant performances of some of the symphonies over the years with maestri such as Franz-Paul Decker and more recently Simone Young, both of whom held established “Bruckner credentials” – so the orchestra had proven itself as a “Bruckner ensemble” in distinguished company. And while I’d been impressed over the last couple of years with Gemma New’s conducting of Mahler I’d never been one to “presume” (as many seem to do) that proficiency with the latter automatically guarantees the same with Bruckner’s similarly large-scale but vastly different worlds of expression. And I hadn’t been able to find any record of New having conducted Bruckner before, so this seemed to me like something she was undertaking for the first time.

Straightaway I was frustrated by the symphony’s opening, since New, after ascending the podium, very quickly gave the orchestra the signal to begin –  which meant that the whispered string tremolando with which the work opens was for me on this occasion almost totally inaudible due to audience “rustle” as part of the settling-down process. I SAW the violins begin, but simply heard the “E” of the lower strings “begin” the music! I wish she’d instead secured absolute stillness in the auditorium before beginning, and allowed the sound to magically conjure itself as it were out of the ether –

And then the surprise unfolded – not instantly, but as a slowly growing and evolving feeling as the symphony progressed that I was actually witnessing a superbly-played and wondrously-articulated performance. The symphony’s very first theme, for me had a pliable elasticity contributing to a parallel expansion and intensification of the sound as the trajectories proceeded, and with everything beautifully voiced. New kept the tempi of the different sections related to what seemed like a single inner pulse so that nothing had to speed up or slow down appreciably to properly “speak” its character – for instance, the massive brass entry featuring a minor-key inversion of the opening theme seemed more organic than disruptive in this overall context –- and how beautifully the composer used his wind players’ material to elaborate on existing themes when these variants were brought back later in the movement.

The majestic slow movement, Bruckner’s tribute to Richard Wagner, was just as successfully unfolded by New’s unhurried, but vitally-phrased tempi at every turn –  the first upwardly thrusting string phrase taking the lead in exuding emotion of a vigorous and resounding kind – while the deep brass, at first contained, still made so eloquently the perfect foil for the following full-throated strings-and-winds’ songbird manifestations. As the movement developed so did the urgency and vigour of New’s marshalling of the music’s tectonic forces towards and into a spaciously resplendent climax, one superbly delivered by conductor and players. However, it became as much a funeral oration with the news of Wagner’s death “capturing” this music for history from that moment on, the flute sonorously summonsing the resplendent “Wagner tubas” and their tones of sorrowful tidings, and bestowing upon the music a kind of immortality.

After this, there’s a lithe, muscular Scherzo, here splendidly directed and delivered in every way imaginable, the normally bucolic impulses of Brucknerian scherzi in this case to my mind worthy of elevation both by association and sheer exuberant excellence to the realms of “sport for the Gods”. But then, for me, it was New’s and the orchestra’s playing of the finale as much as anything else in the symphony that lifted the experience beyond my expectations, transforming what I’d always previously regarded as a somewhat “poor relation” of a movement to a piece that suddenly seemed bristling with nuance, impulse, spontaneity and variety while appearing to know unto itself exactly where it was going!   And, what was more, as with the symphony’s beginning, I  had another brief  questioning  “moment” at the end , thinking that New had begun the work’s coda too abruptly, and that what was needed was more time and space to “savour” the whole of what we had heard, and to bring the work to a “grander” conclusion. Halfway through the coda I found myself thinking, “This actually works! – in fact, it’s exhilarating!” – and by the end, my thought was “Wow! What a performance!”

Joyce DiDonato and her extraordinary singing will remain an ineffable memory for me! – but Gemma New’s Bruckner was also a revelation, one that I hope we’ll get even more chances to experience in times to come!