Category: Reviews – Concerts

Henry Purcell’s “Food of Love” at Wellington’s Cathedral of St.Paul

Posted on by Rebecca Stanton

Wellington Cathedral’s TGIF recital series presents:
HENRY PURCELL – Songs and Duets
Anna Sedcole (soprano) / Helene Page (mezzo-soprano)
Michael Stewart (harpsichord)

Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul

Friday, 23rd July 2021

There is a particular pleasure in hearing a duet sung by two voices that are well-matched in timbre, especially when the singers obviously share not only a vocal quality but a musical sensibility and a personal rapport.  Such were the harmonies on offer at this presentation of Purcell songs, performed by old friends Anna Sedcole and Helene Page, and accompanied fluently and unobtrusively on harpsichord by Michael Stewart, the Cathedral’s Director of Music, who also happens to be married to Sedcole — completing the sense of a musical afternoon among friends.  At its best, the concert felt almost spontaneous, as if the three felt a common impulse to burst into song. Such a carefree effect, of course, bespeaks careful and devoted preparation.

The recital opened with “Music for a while” from the incidental music to Oedipus, sung by Page in a warm but austere mezzo-soprano reminiscent of a Baroque recorder. While the vast vertical space of the Cathedral did its best to swallow her low notes, she made a compelling case for the “beguiling” properties of music, which was amply borne out by the next two numbers, “Let us wander” and “Lost is my quiet.” Here we got to appreciate fully how well-suited the two voices were to each other, each striking overtones off the other that showcased Purcell’s harmonies beautifully.  Ornaments and fast-moving passages were clearly articulated for the audience to appreciate.  Next came “If music be the food of love,” showcasing Sedcole’s agile, flute-like soprano.  I especially appreciated her sensitive dynamics (again not easy given the voracity of the space) and bright, clean articulation, so necessary in this music (and the polar opposite of the viscous legato required for the Russian choral repertoire the singer would be performing the following night as a member of the Tudor Consort!).

Page then returned and the two sang a gorgeous love duet, “My dearest, my fairest,” making the most of long, languishing melismas, suspensions, resolutions, and a hocketing “no, no” at the end that recalled bird song (and made one wonder whether a tragic ending was secretly encoded in this otherwise idyllic pastoral-sounding romance.  Having now looked up the play for which Purcell wrote this song, Pausanias, the betrayer of his country: a tragedy by Richard Norton, I find it indeed precedes a scene in which the eponymous hero’s lover, Pandora, attempts to seduce his lieutenant — so Purcell seems to have caught the mood here exceptionally well).

A slight technical malfunction in the harpsichord recalled us to Michael Stewart’s labours at the keyboard, and afforded an opportunity to marvel a second time at the family likeness between Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus and the opening bars of the next duet, “Sound the trumpet” (from Come Ye Sons of Art, one of the odes Purcell wrote to commemorate the birthday of Queen Mary II in 1694).  Appropriately jubilant, it was sung with fine rhythm, vigour, and precision, and went with a swing.  The next piece was a total contrast in all but the technical excellence of the performance: the slow, melancholy and poignant “O Solitude,” sung by Helene Page in a tender legato which reminded one of liquid honey, the vocal decorations — mordents and small trills — offered to the listener precise and unhurried.

The final two songs, both duets, were drawn from King Arthur, an opera I’m now extremely curious to see performed in its “Restoration spectacular” entirety.  The first of these, a duet of shepherdesses entitled “Shepherd, shepherd, leave decoying” was the highlight of the program for me: witty and nimble. I would have placed it last on the program instead of “Two daughters of this aged stream” (a song for two sirens), whose more languid tempo and theme (and final refrain of “And circle round, and circle round”) suggested intrigue rather than peroration.  Intrigue, however, was there none; the performers ended their recital promptly at the destined hour, leaving their audience satisfied but not surfeited with Baroque harmonies.

Ravel and Bartók make companionable and stimulating piano-and-percussion bedfellows in stunning NZSM Adam Concert Room performances

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī  NZ School of Music presents:
RAVEL – Rapsodie Espagnole (arr. 2 pianos and percussion)
BARTÓK – Sonata for 2 pianos and percussion SZ110

Gabriela Glapska and Jian Liu (pianos)
Sam Rich and Naoto Segawa (percussion)

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University of Wellington

Friday 23rd July 2021

While waiting in the foyer for the Adam Concert Room to be opened for the NZSM concert, and pricking up my ears to flute snippets from Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and trumpet phrases from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade being practised by students in an adjoining studio, I couldn’t help but reflect on the charm and delight of experiencing such a “music-in-the-air” ambience about where I was and what was about to happen – a free concert of great music given by some of New Zealand’s finest musicians, at this particular time balm for the soul in the midst of a sea of troubles.

With its various series of lunchtime concerts, and a more-or-less constant flow of music and theatre presentations on all sides, Wellington still remains a wellspring of artistic endeavour, and particularly in music, despite the privations of ongoing earthquake strengthening operations at much-loved and -missed venues such as the Town Hall, St.James’ Theatre and the Sacred Heart Basilica in Hill St.

For various reasons the Adam Concert Room has been a godsend over the years, enabling Te Kōkī  NZ School of Music to showcase the talents of both its students and their tutors, the latter highly-esteemed performers in their own right, and apparently inexhaustible in their efforts to advance music’s cause in diverse contexts around the capital.

This latest concert provided a mouth-watering opportunity to hear “live” one of the most renowned of twentieth-century chamber music classics, Bartók’s Sonata for 2 pianos and percussion, together with another earlier “classic”, Ravel’s Rapsodie Espagnole, here served up in a relatively unfamiliar guise via an arrangement presumably made by German percussionist Peter Sadlo.  The four “star performers” on this occasion were pianists Gabriela Glapska and Jian Liu, with percussionists Sam Rich and Naoto Segawa.

As it turned out, I enjoyed the Ravel at least as much as I did the Bartok, partly, I think, because I was prepared for something of a disappointment with the former – I’d read a lukewarm review of a performance of the Rapsodie in this form given by fairly illustrious names, with the implication being that the results didn’t justify the efforts made by the artists due to the material. I was, however, instantly held in thrall with the intensities generated by the two pianists in their delineations of the opening Prélude à la Nuit’s “heavily-scented pianissimi”, its occasional surges exquisitely coloured by percussion, the players giving the music all the space and sensousness it required – a totally absorbing “sleeping before the awakening” beginning!

Malagueña, too, captivated with its combination of rhythmic verve and sultriness, the pianos dancers and the percussionists guitarists, moving and playing with edge and physicality, leading the music fluently between substance and suggestiveness towards one of Ravel’s enigmatic endings. Even more beguiling was the Habanera which followed (and which particularly captured Manuel de Falla’s admiration for its “Spanish character”), the piece’s languid melancholy here superbly wrought by the musicians, bringing utmost delicacy cheek-by jowl with deep-seated resonance, the gentle tolling of accompanying figures bringing to mind another evocative Ravelian soundscape, that of “Le Gibet” from Gaspard de la Nuit. It all somehow awoke in this listener a nostalgia for the sounds of a distant (and unknown) land where melodies and rhythms mingled with splashes and slivers of evocation along with deeper, darker imaginings.

Though I thought the “piping” opening theme of the concluding Feria (Fiesta) could have been more incisively delivered by whichever pianist (they both had their backs to me!), it was my only quibble regarding a tour-de force of positively orchestral realisation by the players! We got energetic, detailed, and incisive playing punctuated with great upward flourishes, the dovetailed piano figurations pulsating with energy and the percussion ringing and roaring with uninhibited exhilaration before the music seemed midstream to spectacularly collapse in a smouldering heap!

Amidst the sonic wreckage stirred a plaintive, languorous theme, here played by Liu, and a “sighing” rejoiner, delivered by Glapska, both exuding that characteristic brooding Iberian torpor, holding us in a spell underpinned by the return of the melancholy ostinato figure from the opening of the work, the whole further charged by atmospheric “night noises” from the percussion. Soon, the festive sounds  reawakened the slumbering rhythms, with first the timpani and then side-drum rapping out its insistent figures, and castanets unashamedly joining in with the dance! Such tremendous exuberance from everybody over the last few pages, with even the brief hiatus before the end halting only momentarily the surges of released energy emanating from all sides – a triumph!

So, here was a how-de-do! – would the players be able to “recapture that first fine careless rapture” for the Bartók work after such an energy-sapping display? As it proved all those present were obviously “fired up” for what was about to happen – both Glapska and Liu talked a little with us about the oncoming work , Liu in particular stressing that performing it was for him an exhilarating, if also “frightening” experience!

Bartók’s work was written in 1937, and first performed early the following year by the composer and his second wife, Ditta Pásztory-Bartók, at an  International Society for Contemporary Music anniversary concert in Basel, Switzerland. Besides two pianos and pianists, the work employs two percussionists who play seven instruments between them – timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, snare-drum, tam-tam and xylophone. Bartók as well gave the percussionists numerous detailed playing instructions, besides stipulating the layout of the instruments.

The longest of the three movements began the work, with dark, portentous timpani rolls introducing low, overlapping piano notes from both instruments,  the sombre scenario suddenly set alight by the first of two violent irruptions, each generating a sense of something waiting in the ambient darkness to strike. Gradually the players led the way out of the gloom with a firm grip, judging the acceleration to a nicety, the percussion forward and “present”, each strand properly telling, and playing its part in the delineation of each section’s character.

Trilling piano lines and scampering figurations led from a dotted-rhythm toccata-like sequence to a rollicking, angular section, each player contributing to a kind of juggernaut of sound, tumultuous in effect with energetic piano dovetailings between the players driving a series of great crescendi that burst out brilliantly in fanfare-like figures. What was notable from this performance were the sharply-etched contrasts the musicians brought out from the different episodes, the music falling back from the enormous climax into almost folksongish figurations, underpinned by bell-like percussion sonorities, the piano exchanges wandering for a while in what seemed like ambient wastelands. A side drum roll then led into the Bartókian equivalent of “a devil of a fugue”, hair-raising in its effect, with the heavy percussion excitingly prominent! I thought the forceful angularities of the exchanges at the movement’s end could have been rammed home even more lustfully and with an even greater rhetorical sense of finality, here – (but the “sensationalist within” often gets me over-excited at tumultuous times such as these, so I cautioned him to keep his composure and not over-project)!

Bartók’s “night music” movements are proverbial, and this one was no exception – the players breathtakingly caught both the stillness and the depths of the music’s world. The various rhythmic  impulses that punctuated the soundscape became almost a “processional” of their own, accompanied by chord clusters that morphed into swirling chromatic figures before becoming eerie glissandi, uncovering an element of unease and disquiet at the feral nature of forces in play, before the impulses dissolved into three hushed, beautifully-poised chords at the end.

The attacca which brought the last movement into play burst the sounds about our senses like a firecracker, the xylophone playing especially incisive and almost festive in impact! – I thought the initial theme almost Shostakovich-like in its folkish appeal. The pianists varied their trajectories in places, here  direct and almost business-like, and there, droll and loping, the whole time turbo-charged by the percussive  elements, most satisfyingly “present!” I loved the pianists’ “cake-walk” treatment of the theme, almost a parody, as in the folksy treatment of the music in  the “Concerto for Orchestra” finale,  a sequence which alternated tongue-in-cheek insouciance with rumbustiousness, before exploding into a final, exciting accelerando! That done, Bartok’s little waltz-tune at the end brought smiles of pleasure, as did the unexpected courtliness of the final piano chords and the muttered percussion codicil ending the work!

What a piece, and what a performance! Come to think of it, what a concert! Very great credit and honour to those concerned – Gabriela Glapska, Jian Liu, Sam Rich and Naoto Segawa!

 

 

 

 

 

Breathtakingly accomplished piano playing from Ya-Ting Liou at St. Andrew’s

Posted on by Steven Sedley

St.Andrew’s Lunchtime Concert Series 2021

Dimitri Shostakovich: Prelude and Fugue No. 5 in D Major
Franz Schubert: Sonata in C minor, D. 958
Vladimir Horowitz: Carmen Fantasy (after Bizet)

Ya-Ting Liou piano

St. Andrews on the Terrace, Wellington

Wednesday, 21 July, 2021

Although Ya-Ting Liou is a regular visitor to Wellington and plays recitals all over New Zealand, she is hardly recognized among New Zealand’s best known pianists. This is undoubtedly due to her excessive modesty, because she is, without any doubt, technically the most accomplished pianist you are likely to hear.

She opened the programme with Shostakovich’s Prelude and Fugue No. 5. This is not Shostakovich of the Leningrad Symphony. This is Shostakovich introverted, meditating on Bach’s Preludes and Fugues. The Prelude is chorale like, the Fugue is like a clarion call. Ya-Ting Liou gave it a powerful, crystal-clear reading.

The Schubert is a grand powerful work written in the shadow of Beethoven, but Schubert was a very different composer. Whereas Beethoven’s mind set was dramatic Schubert’s was lyrical. He thought of songs, singable melodies. Ya-Ting Liou emphasized the dramatic quality of the piece, the grand chords, the contrasts at the expense of, what I thought, lyricism. It was a valid reading and I appreciated her impeccable playing, but I, with my Middle-European background, would have liked to have more singing, the song-like themes brought out more, with more flexible phrasing. It was a clear, consistent, but somewhat driven performance. Yet it is significant that the work is in C minor, the key of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, his Pathétique Sonata and his 32 Variations, works that suggest disquiet and restlessness and gloom.

The second movement, Adagio, has an air of sadness, while the third movement, Menuetto, is a graceful dance movement, but whatever lightness this might have suggested was banished by the furious Tarantella last movement heading towards darkness. This was Schubert making a grand statement, not the loveable little Schubert with a song in his heart, who was everybody’s friend.

Vladimir Horowitz’s Carmen Fantasy was the highlight of the concert. Horowitz was perhaps the last of the era of pianists basking in their ability to show off their brilliance. It was a time when every middle class home had a piano, many middle class girls, and indeed some boys struggled to master the piano that dominated the parlour. People valued, appreciated sheer virtuosity. Ya-Ting Liou’s playing was just simply breathtaking.

Seldom would one have the opportunity in a lifetime to hear such daemonic brilliance. Yet, when after the concert I complimented Ya-Ting Liou on her playing and complained that I couldn’t find any music played by her on YouTube, she said, with a self-effacing smile, that she couldn’t record anything to make it available for people anywhere,  because her playing is just not good enough – maybe in twenty years’ time!

We must really applaud this superb artist for her modesty. In the meantime make the most of any opportunity to hear her.

Fever’s Candlelight Jazz Standards with Retro Pack at Wellington’s Public Trust Hall

Posted on by Anne French

Retro Pack at the Public Trust Hall
Andrew London (guitar); Kirsten London (bass and vocalist); James Tait-Jamieson (saxophone); Lance Philip (drums); and April Phillips (vocalist). 

Public Trust Hall, Stout St, Wellington

Wednesday 21 July, 2021

Jazz is a polarizing genre. For aficionados, it’s all about innovation, pushing the boundaries, expanding the genre whilst respecting its traditions. Technical skill is prized, but always in the service of new ideas. For your average classical concert-goer, it’s pretty much a mystery, and sometimes incomprehensible.

But everyone loves a jazz standard. Jazz musicians know them inside out and sometimes reference them on their way to something else. Every Wellington Jazz Festival includes two or three gigs that incorporate standards in some way – this year Whirimako Black performed ‘Cry Me a River’ and’ Summertime’ alongside traditional Tūhoe waiata, while Ruth Armishaw channelled Ella Fitzgerald at Cable Top.

This concert of jazz standards by candlelight, presented by Fever Original, was commercially well judged. There were two concerts on the same night. I went to the 6.30 pm concert, and the Public Trust Hall was almost full. The audience was pretty mixed in age – from RNZ Concert to the Rogue and Vagabond crowd. Someone had done a great marketing job.

The quintet, billed as the Retro Pack (an indication to expect some Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin), wore dinner suits with bow ties or sparkly dresses. The volume was on the low side for a jazz concert, so it was perfectly comfortable for a non-jazz audience. And the stage area was marked by a bank of electric candles, flickering pleasantly.

Of the members of the Retro Pack, only James Tait-Jamieson (saxophone) and Lance Philip (drums) were familiar to me. Lance Philip has taught percussion in the jazz programme at Massey since the early 1990s and now at NZ School of Music. James Tait-Jamieson is a Massey graduate in saxophone who has also spent time on cruise ships. Lance plays all around town and is always excellent; Tait-Jamieson is a good sax player. The ones I didn’t know were Andrew London, guitar (ex-Hot Club Sandwich); Kirsten London, bass; and April Phillips, vocalist. The Retro Pack goes back to 2002, and the line-up has been remarkably constant over the years, though April Phillips seems to be a recent addition. She is billed elsewhere as a ‘singer, actress, playwright and movie-maker’. She researched, scripted, and delivered all the song intros, and did much of the singing.

The repertoire was, as promised, jazz standards, from the 1920s to the 1960s. The programme began with ‘Summertime’ from Gershwin’s groundbreaking opera Porgy and Bess, but there was no hint of the stage production in this version, just a tasteful cover version that showed off April Phillips’s low notes, with lovely vibrato. She had a nice duet with the saxophone, subtle, tasteful, understated, and all too short. And that was how the show went. The bass player took the vocals for Jerome Kern’s ‘Can’t help lovin’ that man’, with harmonies from the guitarist and lead vocalist, and another short sax solo.  I felt that the key was too low for Kirsten London, who has a pleasant, untrained voice; and I felt the same about the other songs she sang, Peggy Lee’s ‘It’s a Good Day’ (livened up with close harmonies from the others) and ‘Why don’t you do Right’ (with the sax solo providing some heat).

I would have preferred to hear more from April Phillips, who has a wider vocal range, and offered more colour and more power, with a gorgeous lower register. But that is a minor quibble.

April Phillips was a dab hand at suggesting whose version of a well-known song she was channeling. She did Ella Fitzgerald’s version of ‘Cry me a River’, and Ella’s version too of ‘Night and Day’ and ‘Witchcraft’, but the Billie Holliday version of ‘The Man I love’, complete with Holliday’s choppy phrasing and asthmatic in-breaths. It was subtle, and would have provided reassurance to someone less familiar with the repertoire than me. Andrew London did a couple of great Louis Armstrong covers, ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’ and in ‘Mack the Knife;’ where the vocals were shared around, and he provided the Satchmo growl. Even Tait-Jamieson got in on the act, in his pleasant light baritone, doing a passable Frank Sinatra. The audience loved ‘Mack the Knife’, but not being a jazz audience, they left their applause until the end of the song.

It was all a bit too tasteful for me, I’m afraid. There is a terrific singer inside April Phillips who barely got allowed out – we had just a glimpse of her in Cole Porter’s ‘Night and Day’. There were some classy tempo changes. The sax solos were all well-judged and, I thought, too short. This is a polished act. But it wasn’t until the encore, a Cuban number made into a hit by Dean Martin, that the band showed what they are capable of. A faster tempo at last. Lance Philip was even allowed a (very short) solo, and the higher energy swept the audience away into raptures. The welcome rise in temperature made me sorry that there wasn’t a Cuban set to follow.

 

 

 

Jade Quartet presents a somewhat “patchworked” concert at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Anne French

Wellington Chamber Music series – Jade Quartet

JOSEF HAYDN –  ‘Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross’ Op. 51 (extracts)
DAVID HAMILTON – String Quartet No 3, Quartetto Piccolo (2021)
PETER ADAMS –  ‘Proclamations, Canons and Dances’ (2018)
FRANZ SCHUBERT – String Quartet No 14 in D min ‘Death and the Maiden’, D810

St Andrews on the Terrace,

Sunday 18th July, 2021

This was an unlucky concert from the first. It was originally scheduled for 27 June,
but had to be rescheduled when Wellington went into Level 2 lockdown a few days
prior. At some point the second violin (William Hanfling) and cello (Edith Salzmann)
became unavailable: the first due to illness and the second being caught in a
COVID-19 lockdown in Melbourne. When the Jade Quartet finally arrived to present
this concert, Hanfling had been replaced by Charmian Keay, a first violinist in
Orchestra Wellington (and daughter of Miranda Adams, the quartet’s founder, who
has been Assistant Concertmaster of the APO since 1994). The new cellist,
replacing Salzmann, was James Yoo, who teaches cello and chamber music at the
University of Auckland and is a graduate of the Sydney Conservatorium and the
Musikhochschule of Cologne.

This made for a patchy concert, the weakest in the current Wellington Chamber
Music Season so far, which began with a bang with Trio Elan in April.

Haydn’s Op. 51 was originally an orchestral work, commissioned in 1786 by the
Canon of the Cathedral of Cadiz as a work for Good Friday. The Cathedral was in
the habit of commissioning new music for the solemn mass on Good Friday. The
church would be draped in black, and the windows shrouded. The Bishop would
speak each of the last words in turn, provide an exegesis, and prostrate himself
before the altar, while the orchestra played the relevant movement, each movement
about ten minutes long. The effect must have been arresting.

Haydn wrote nine sections, starting with an introduction and finishing with an
earthquake in C minor (‘Il terremoto’) with the marking Presto e con tutta la forza.
Although Haydn complained about the commission (‘it was no easy task to compose
seven adagios lasting ten minutes each, and to succeed one another without
fatiguing the listeners’), the work was immediately popular. Haydn produced a
reduced version for string quartet the following year, and also a piano version. In
1794, on his way to London, he heard a choral version in Passau, with the choir
singing a German text rather than the Gospel texts in Latin that the Bishop of Cadiz
had spoken. Haydn rather liked the effect, and wrote his own version with the
German text improved by van Swieten, which premiered in Vienna for Easter 1796.
He and van Swieten went on to work together on The Creation and The Seasons.

The Jade Quartet played only extracts from the quartet version of the work: the
Introduction; Sonata V (‘Sitio’ – I thirst); Sonata VI (‘Consummatum est’ – It is
finished), and Sonata VI (‘In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum’ – In
thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit’), plus the earthquake mentioned in Matthew
27: 51. The result was unsatisfactory, to say the least. This is a solemn work, written
for the most solemn ceremony of the most solemn day in the Church year.
Wrenched out of the liturgical context, it becomes an interesting example of Haydn’s
tonal exploration, but little more.

The Jade Quartet may have done their best, but their performance lacked profundity
or, indeed, conviction of any kind. There are a lot of notes, and although they were
all there, the tragedy and pathos were completely lacking. At times the music
sounded insouciant, even jaunty. The only movement that the players seemed to
believe in was the last one, the earthquake, in which the earth trembled and we were
all afraid.

Next in the programme was David Hamilton’s brand-new String Quartet No 3,
nicknamed ‘piccolo’ because there are only three movements, labelled ‘A little night
music’, ‘Helter Skelter’, and ‘Song without Words’. The Quartet commissioned this work, and they enjoyed playing it. The first movement starts with sustained slow
glissandi creating starry effects, before each voice enters in turn. There is a beautiful
cantabile passage from the cello with glittery sounds from the higher instruments,
before the cello’s tune is passed to the viola, sad and regretful.

The middle movement is fast and jazzy, with lovely textures (pizzicato cello under
the upper voices, and then a swapping around). And the ‘Song without Words’
began with the song in the viola, followed by the second violin, again with pizzicato
cello, then passed to the first violin, and eventually back to the cello, with silvery
harmonies again from the higher voices.

By this time, I was becoming aware that James Yoo is a superb cellist, with a
glorious sound, by turns commanding and incisive, then investing Hamilton’s rather
filmic writing with moments of beauty.

The last work in the first half of the concert was by Peter Adams, though the piece
was originally billed by Wellington Chamber Music as being by the exciting and
prolific young Chris Adams. Peter Adams was not known to me, but he is an
Associate Professor in Music at Otago, and Miranda Adams’ brother. He graduated
from Kings College London with an MMus in music theory, but he is perhaps better
known as a conductor than a composer. working with brass bands, Dunedin
Symphony Orchestra, and St Kilda Brass.

His second string quartet was written for Jade Quartet in 2018, and its title, ‘Proclamations, Canons, and Dances’ gives a sense of the work. The opening proclamation was big and imposing, as though announcing a portent. Already the emotional content was weightier than for the
entire Haydn item. This was followed by a dance led by the first violin, anxious and
restless. And so it continued.

The individual sections are short, and there’s a lot of anxious running around within
sub-sections, so it’s hard to know where the work is going as one idea is followed by
another and another. Adams describes his writing as incorporating ‘poly-stylism’ and
‘a mixed-modal language’. My notes say things like ‘another melancholy song’,
‘ghost music’, ‘a frenzied dance’, indicating that I was barely keeping up. A second
listening would clarify matters, I think.

After the interval came Schubert’s famous quartet No 14, known as ‘Death and the
Maiden’, because of the riff on his lied of the same name. It began well, and there
was some incisive playing in the first movement, but there were signs throughout of
being under rehearsed – a tempo change that almost fell apart, and a lot of choppy
playing, as though no one quite knew what to expect of the others. Often the tempi
felt rushed, which meant that the work lost some of its emotional intensity. The second
movement was under better control, except that the tragedy was often missing –
except from the cello, which held the emotional centre. The Scherzo was exciting,
and the Presto was positively hectic. The chorale section was under-powered and a
bit garbled, and there was another meno mosso that wasn’t quite together, before
the final prestissimo, which was.

And there was an encore – a syrupy arrangement of Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘Stardust’
by Russ Garcia, who wrote an orchestral version at the age of 11. You may be
familiar with the John Coltrane version. If so, you’d have wondered where the tune
went.

Orchestra Wellington under Taddei with Adam Page triumphant in Psathas’s saxophone ‘concerto’

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Orchestra Wellington conducted by Marc Taddei 
“Virtuoso Composer”

Mozart: Symphony No 25 in G minor, K 183
Psathas: Call of the Wild with Adam Page (saxophone), Premiere
Beethoven: Symphony No 4 in  B flat, Op 60

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 17 July, 7:30 pm

It was no surprise, after coming into the city on a thinly populated train, then a wet and windy wait for a bus and into a less than busy auditorium vestibule, to find the Michael Fowler Centre only about 60% full, when this orchestra’s concerts are normally sold out. There was nothing wrong with the programme.

In fact, the programme was admirable. Mozart and Beethoven are rather well-known, and both are full of energy and distinction. Nevertheless, the two symphonies in the programme are not so familiar, even though the opening of Mozart’s No 25, in G minor (which Mozart wrote in 1773 when he was only 17) was, as the programme note said, used most effectively to background Miloš Forman’s 1984 film, Amadeus.

Mozart’s Symphony No 25
Taddei launched into the Mozart dramatically, with vigorous rhythm and striking dynamic contrasts which were immediately in evidence between the syncopated, opening theme and the calm, more regular rhythm and more reflective second theme. The contrasts between instruments were somewhat more distinctive than is heard in some performances: cellos and double basses contributed more noticeably than the rest of the strings; a plangent oboe sounded and, particularly interesting, there are four horns, allowing for chromatic details; four horns instead of two was uncommon till the mid 19th century. The absence of clarinets was normal till a little later: Mozart first used clarinets in his Symphony No 31, five years after No 25.

The second movement is markedly calmer and quiet, and the playing was curiously secretive, each phrase carefully expressed with charming delicacy. The third movement – the typical Menuetto and Trio in triple time – restored an emphatic quality which that the Trio highlighted by playing distinctly slower.

And the last movement, that might have lightened the mood, does no such thing, Taddei took pains to emphasise its seriousness, to illustrate Mozart’s purpose in sustaining the symphony’s emotional seriousness.

Beethoven No 4
The other classical symphony was by Beethoven, but one that was performed with such flair and conviction that an audience may well have thought deserved fame equal to that of the odd-numbered works. The admirable programme note described the circumstances of its composition interestingly.

The fourth opens with a longish, contemplative introduction that offers no hint of what’s to follow, and the orchestra exploited it mysteriously, slowly emerging into daylight in a sudden attack: the Allegro vivace. It lifted the spirit with its energy and joyousness, with a rise and fall of dynamics that inspired an optimism that was elaborated throughout the magical, development section, secretively supported by timpani.

The Adagio was taken at a deliberative pace, though slightly more brisk than I remembered in others; likewise, its main theme sounded richer and more beautiful, particularly by the clarinet’s subtle contribution. The third movement is entitled Allegro vivace rather than simply ‘Scherzo’; holding the attention through its rather mysterious first episode. The Trio followed its title, un poco meno allegro, to prepare for the spirited return of first section. The fourth movement was driven with splendid precision, adding delight with a few bars that dip momentary into the minor key. Emphatic bassoons, clarinets, oboes and flute were enlivened by racing violins.

Both symphonies were performed with sensitivity and remarkable panache, offering a splendidly polished ambience for a rather distinctive masterpiece.

John Psathas
The showpiece of the concert was the premiere of John Psathas’s Call of the Wild. Psathas is Orchestra Wellington’s Composer in Residence, for a three year period from 2020. This is not his first saxophone concerto: that was in 2000 with a work called Omnifenix and was played at a festival in Bologna in Italy.

Psathas’s own programme note described the origins of the work most illuminatingly: a vivid, programmatic work that deals with the experience of both sides of his family over the past century: the terrible population exchanges between Greece and Turkey with awful loss of life on both sides after the First World War, and then the crippling, murderous Civil War after WW2 (Communism v. Capitalism, the war conducted in proxy style by the United States and the Soviet Union). The three movements deal with the experiences and character of his mother, his father and finally Psathas’s own children ‘hearing the call of the wild’ and talking now of living abroad.

The Greek civil war between the end of WW2 and 1949 was still a dominating memory when I was posted in 1964 as Vice Consul at the new New Zealand Consulate General In Athens; that war was still a divisive memory for the Greek people and it continued to influence Greek politics. Twenty years after the end of the Civil War, it was an element in the barbaric coup by the Colonels in April 1967 two months before my return to Wellington, That coup overthrew the democratic government on the pretext of possible left-wing success in approaching elections. Psathas’s reference to experiencing “normalised xenophobia, racism and religious mistreatment” when the family lived in Taumarunui and Napier, relates to my own surprise at encountering similar attitudes among, particularly, many English-speaking residents in Greece, including diplomats. For me, the three enriching years in Athens have remained a profound influence, linguistically, politically and culturally.

A considerably larger orchestra filled the stage for Psathas’s work, with many percussion players, as well as, most vividly, Adam Page’s tenor saxophone. Page led the opening passage, an arresting, rising motif that called us to order, and proclaimed the distinction of his instrument which, while still not standard in orchestras, has been imaginatively used by many composers, notably Ravel, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Milhaud, Richard Strauss, among others.

I have never heard the saxophone playing with such flamboyant confidence, employing such a wide range of techniques throughout the piece. With the accompaniment of a sharp-voiced side drum and many other percussion-driven features, suggesting civil war, there seemed little doubt to me that at least some of the music was inspired by the political strife after both World Wars. The sounds constantly announced the strong-minded inspiration that spoke clearly of disturbing events and a confident handling of them. And it was very often a partnership between saxophone and brass, along with percussion that carried it. Some of those exuberant episodes were nevertheless supported by quiet string accompaniment.

The music was always very conspicuously inspired by the sort of experiences Psathas had in mind with his parents. The second movement (He can worship it without believing it – his father) began with a sense of mystery: not a conspicuous feature of a saxophone one thinks, but it seemed to find its true character, such as when linked with sounds of marimba

The third movement, Tramontane (meaning, ‘on the other side of the mountains’), featured a frenzied orchestra, that allowed a more subdued saxophone to emerge, perhaps like the revealing of a beautiful landscape after reaching to peaks of a mountain range

This vividly individual music seemed to reinforce my long-held belief that contemporary music doesn’t flourish, or even survive, through sounds that are purposely challenging, tuneless, avant-garde, original in every possible sense. It can and should, like this successful work by Psathas, call for an opportunity to be heard again… and again. It was good to see microphones suspended above the orchestra (one recent and rewarding concert passed without being recorded at all).

This was a highly successful concert, featuring the orchestra and Marc Taddei, along with Adam Page’s saxophone, at their brilliant best.

I look forward to hearing it again – ideally another live performance. And it is noted that the place will be Christchurch, with the CSO, the Psathas piece’s joint commissioner.

An unusual and striking St.Andrew’s Lunchtime presentation – Aroha Quartet’s ASQ International Music Academy Tutor’s Concert

Posted on by Steven Sedley

The Aroha String Quartet presents:
The ASQ International Music Academy Tutors’ Concert

Aroha String Quartet
Donald Armstrong (NZSO Associate Concertmaster) – Violin & string orchestra conductor
David Chickering (NZSO Section Principal Emeritus) – Cello
Sasha Gunchenko (NZSO) – Double Bass
Tom McGrath (Teaching Fellow in Accompaniment, University of Otago) – Piano

Richard Strauss – String Sextet from “Capriccio”
Igor Stravinsky – Concertino for String Quartet (1920)
Gioachino Rossini – Duet for Cello and Double Bass movements 2 and 3
Antonin Dvorak – Piano Quintet No 2 in A Op 81, Finale: Allegro

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Lunchtime Concert

Wednesday. 14th July, 2921

This was a strikingly unusual and interesting programme spanning different musical eras and musical languages. It was a showcase for the ASQ International Music Academy, which was holding its seventh week-long course of chamber music performance with participants from all parts of the country.

Richard Strauss – String Sextet from “Capriccio”

Donald Armstrong and Manshan Yang (violins), Zhongxian Jin and Michael Cuncannon (violas), Robert Ibell and David Chickering (cellos)

Richard Strauss’ opera, Capriccio premiered in 1942 while German soldiers were fighting, murdering and dying in the Russian front. There is something unreal about an opera buffa in which men and women argue about music and poetry, put on a pantomime to prove a point, and sing complex contrapuntal music for over two hours. This was Strauss’ response to the terrible world around him, to withdraw into music of the past, to avoid the confronting reality. Unusually, the opera doesn’t open with an overture, but with a string sextet, which, as becomes evident, is part of the story. Six musicians rehearse a work written for the birthday of the heroine, and it is this music that provokes the discussion. Musically the piece is full of rich counterpoint, with allusions to the music of the eighteenth century, and possibly a nod to Brahms’ string sextets, but the language is essentially Richard Strauss. There is tongue in cheek cynicism buried in the rich harmonies. The present six musicians give the work a vital, engaging reading. It was a rare opportunity to hear this seldom performed piece.

Igor Stravinsky – Concertino for String Quartet (1920)

Haihong Liu and Konstanze Artmann (violins) Zhongxian Jin (viola) and Robert Ibell (cello)

This short work by Stravinsky is a total contrast to the Strauss piece that preceded it. While Strauss’ Sextet is overwhelmingly rich in texture, the Concertino for String Quartet is sparse, rooted in Stravinsky’s own musical idiom, strongly rhythmic fragments, vivid contrasts, manic allegros interspersed with dirge like adagios. It was written for the Flonzaley Quartet, but it is nothing like traditional string quartets. It is a short experiment in writing a work a work for string players with a bravura solo violin, accompanied by the rest of the quartet. It is challenging, but not endearing music. Trust Stravinsky to make you sit up and listen!

Gioachino Rossini – Duet for Cello and Double Bass movements 2 and 3

Robert Ibell (cello) and Oleksandr Gunchenko (double bass)

Cello and Double Bass is a most unusual combination, but this work was commissioned by the amateur cellist Sir David Salomons for performance at a soiree with the double bass virtuoso Domenico Dragonetti. This is an immensely loveable curiosity piece, with opera like flowing melodies. The music has its technical challenges, but Robert Ibell and Oleksandr Gunchenko played it with a beautiful lyrical singing tone. Both they and Rossini had lots of fun, and the audience responded with enthusiastic applause.

Antonin Dvorak – Piano Quintet No 2 in A Op 81, Finale: Allegro

Tom McGrath (piano) Haihong Liu and Donald Armstrong (violins) Brian Shillito (viola) and David Chickering (cello)

Dvorak’s Second Piano Quartet is one of the gems of the chamber music repertoire. It is a pity that within these lunch-time concerts time didn’t permit the performance of the whole work. As it is, we had to settle for the last movement. It is light-hearted, spirited, scintillating music. It was played with great aplomb. The end of the movement, the tranquillo passage was like a ray of sunlight. My one quibble was that, either because of the acoustics of the church, or because of the placement of the piano, the top strings were swamped by the piano. Not withstanding this, it was a fine performance.

We are very fortunate in Wellington that we have the opportunity to have such free lunchtime concerts in the heart of the city by some of the best musicians in the country, week after week for most of the year. It is something to be valued. These are the kind of things that make Wellington the greatest little capital.

A girdle about the earth from Antarctica to Leningrad – the NZSO National Youth Orchestra concert

Posted on by Anne French

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:

NYO Leningrad

IHIARA McINDOE ( NYO Composer-in-Residence) – Ephemeral Bounds
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH – Symphony No. 7 in C Major “Leningrad”

NZSO National Youth Orchestra
Gemma New (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Sunday 11th July, 2021

It was going to be something of a risk, programming a work by the NYO Composer in Residence against one of the greatest symphonies of the twentieth century. A risk – or an act of faith.

Ihiara McIndoe’s Ephemeral Bounds was written in response to a visit to Antarctica last year, courtesy of the Antarctic Heritage Trust. It used less than half the players required for the Shostakovich, and scattered a few of them around the stalls which added little moments of surprise. The work opened with bold gestures from conductor Gemma New turning on the lighting that illuminated them and other players positioned eccentrically on the staging (such as the double basses behind and above the brass).  Some supplementary NZSO players were also on stage.

The work itself sustained my interest for the full ten minutes. Shimmering ice was suggested by very small glissandi from the upper strings, with the flutes and piccolo creating a chilly distance.  Crystalline harp plus percussion. Muted trumpets. The distant sound of a small engine receding. Waves breaking.  And then the much larger engine of the ice; deep, grinding. Sostenuto tuba. The sound is briefly enveloping. Wind. The violas tell us something sad, something ominous. A crescendo of storm (trombones, bassoons, lower strings). Another growl of motors.  A melancholy tune from the concertmaster – but quickly falls silent. A siren-line sound from a solo cello. Woodwind chords.

The piece closed, as it began, with the tiny string glissandos, then silence.

As usual with a new work, it is hard to see past the many clever effects. I was busy throughout trying to determine which instrument created which effect before it ceased. Will this become a much-loved addition to the concert repertoire? Is it challenging to rehearse and stage? My guess is that it is fun to play, and Gemma New, who enjoys working with new and experimental works, clearly enjoyed conducting it.

At this point the NZSO took advantage of the full house to hand out some awards. This year, CEO Peter Biggs told us, every player in the NYO has been sponsored. In addition, all the string players had to re-audition for their seat at the start of the rehearsal period. The John Chisholm Concertmaster Prize was awarded to Peter Gjelsten (Violin I); the Alex Lindsay Memorial Award to Eli Holmes (Principal Bassoon); and the Norbert Hauser Viola Award to Zephyr Wills. The Bill Clayton Memorial Award winner was selected by Gemma New, who gave the award to Isabella Thomas (Principal Trumpet). The audience stamped its approval.

The pre-concert talk was a series of presentations by players on aspects of the Shostakovich. From the snatches I caught, the players were well aware of the circumstances of its composition and its historical significance. The orchestration is huge: 8 horns, 6 trumpets, 6 trombones, tuba, bass clarinet, contrabassoon, two harps, and at least 16 first violins, 14 seconds, 12 violas, 10 cellos, and 8 double basses. Plus a big percussion section (5 timpani, 2-3 snares, and so on). To make up the numbers, the NYO was augmented by NZSO players as required, which meant we benefited from Robert Orr on oboe, Michael Austin on cor anglais, David Angus on contrabassoon, and Larry Reece on timpani. But the credit remains with the NYO players.

This is a monumental work, and the NYO approached it with the seriousness of purpose and steadfast application it demands. The author of the programme notes seemed to be of the view that Shostakovich wrote the symphony in response to the 1941 attack on Leningrad and its subsequent siege by the Germans. But the ‘invasion theme’ of the first movement builds to such a mirthless climax, that the hidden programme, the destruction of Leningrad and its people by Stalin in the 1930s, was clear to all who had ears. There is wreckage by the end of the movement. There are pitiable wails. There is almost no sign of life. The bassoon threnody is beautiful, but that relentless snare drum rhythm ticks away in a menacing undertone, and the trumpets are still ironic.

For those without ears, the NZSO provided ‘performance visuals’ by ‘leading creatives Nocturnal’. My heart sank when I saw this on the programme, but they were moody and unobtrusive (or as unobtrusive as a projection on a huge screen can be), and not too literal. I expect there were people in the audience who appreciated them, but to my mind Shostakovich’s music needs no visual interpretation, though some iceberg pictures may have usefully added to the atmospherics of the McIndoe work.

The second and third movements are freighted in sorrow. The brass choir that opened the third movement announced loss and doom. There were superb performances by Sam Zhu (tuba), Benedict van Leuven (clarinet), Harrison Chau (harp) and terrifying energy from the lower brass and strings. The percussion was splendid and inexorable. But it’s unfair to single anyone out: everyone played their hearts out, and if some of the best playing came from NZSO players, it hardly matters.

The C major climax in the fourth movement was preceded by elegiac themes in the strings, tenderness turning to tragedy, resilience haunted by loss. The climax itself presented a kind of triumph: grand, certainly, but for how long? Not long, the snare drum says. Not long at all.

I found this performance very moving. At some point in the fourth movement I had tears in my eyes, though I was not aware of them until it was over. All I wanted to do afterwards was to retreat to some quiet corner, alone and silent. The mirthless trumpets, the cynical snare drum came with me.

 

 

 

The NZSO’s “The Rite of Spring” replete with anniversaries and commemorations

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the New Zealand Listener present:
THE RITE OF SPRING

*CHOPIN –  Original piano works orchestrated for the ballet “Les Sylphides” – 1909
◊STRAVINSKY – Ballet “Le Sacre du Printemps” (The Rite of Spring) – 1913

*Michael Houstoun (piano)
Gemma New (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
◊Performance Visuals – Delainy Kennedy (Nocturnal)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 10th July, 2021

Quite a day on a number of counts, and especially in Wellington! – it all gathered momentum and excitement as the evening approached, with the prospect of Matariki fireworks over the harbour, and immediately afterwards, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s “The Rite of Spring” concert. For people of my generation, anybody typing or repeating out loud the date may have suddenly been revisited in the memory by a resonating radio jingle from the years 1966/67 – “the 10th of July – next/this year!”, referring to the arrival of decimal currency, entertainer Noel Coward’s famous quip regarding “the potency of cheap music” coming true for me all over again on this day!

As well as commemorating two anniversaries pertaining to Igor Stravinsky – sixty years since the composer came to Wellington to conduct the NZSO in parts of his “Firebird” Suite, and fifty years since his death – this NZSO concert was innovative in representing something of the character of that fateful evening of May 29th 1913 on which the composer’s ballet “Le Sacre du Printemps” (The Rite of Spring) was given its premiere at the then newly-opened Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. The Stravinsky work was preceded on the programme by “Les Sylphides”, a suite of orchestrated piano works by Frédéric Chopin. Stravinsky was actually one of the composers commissioned in 1909 by Serge Diaghilev to produce the suite for the Ballets Russes Company. Here, we had pianist Michael Houstoun playing those same works in their original versions (and, incidentally, celebrating a personal anniversary, it being fifty years since he first performed with the NZSO).

Presumably this, the opening work on the programme that evening in Paris would have scarcely caused an eyebrow to rise. However, the riot that broke out in the auditorium from almost the beginning of the Stravinsky work has earned the evening (and the music) a notoriety which lasted for much of the twentieth century. It has all been well-documented, and, of course, in many instances contradictorily – a number of accounts claimed that the spectators’ bewilderment and subsequent derision of “Le Sacre” was due to the choreography (devised by the legendary dancer Vaslav Nijinsky), rather than the music. Stravinsky himself referred to Nijinsky’s choreography in later years in contradictory ways – in a letter to a student friend he described Nijinsky’s work as “incomparable: with the exception of a few places, everything was as I (Stravinsky) wanted it”, while, much later to his amanuensis, Robert Craft, he scornfully described Nijinsky’s dancing maidens in the work as “knock-kneed and long-braided Lolitas”.

The work’s first conductor, Pierre Monteux (who went on to record “Le Sacre” four times over his lengthy career) once confessed to never liking the music. Speaking of the infamous premiere in an interview almost fifty years afterwards, he observed, “I did not like “Le Sacre” then. I have conducted it fifty times since. I do not like it now.” I’m sure that statements like that of Monteux’s would have actually enhanced the music’s mystique and popularity – it’s irrefutable that most of the world’s eminent conductors, whatever their feelings concerning the work, seem to have either presented it in concert or recorded it. Stravinsky himself also made four recordings as conductor of the work, the earliest (coincidentally, during the same year as Monteux’s) in 1929! Since then, the music has become as much a concert-hall as a stage-ballet classic, and one of the most oft-recorded of all twentieth-century pieces of music.

It was a nice idea getting Michael Houstoun to play the original Chopin pieces from which the ballet “Les Sylphides” was made – of course the orchestrated pieces could have instead been performed to great effect, though I thought the actual visual scenario of the piano being played, as here, in front of numerous empty orchestral chairs and music-stands perfectly evoked the idea of a “ballet-company répétiteur” running through the pieces for the next rehearsal, in preparation for the actual ballet with an orchestra.

The pieces themselves as a group made an extremely effective programme – I’ll probably be thought of as snobbish or elitist by saying that I wish the audience had been asked to save its applause for the end, but I still would have preferred the music to have flowed from dance to dance, continuing uninterrupted until the obvious applause-inducing  fireworks at the end of the concluding “Grande Valse Brilliante”! – I joined in heartily enough at THAT point! Houstoun played them all very much as “dance” pieces, eschewing extremes of interpretative expression, but still managing to bring out the poetic intensities of both the Op.32 No.2 A-flat Nocturne, and the totally adorable A Major Prelude. He caught the essential orchestral swagger of the well-known “Polonaise Militaire”, especially in its Trio section, resonating the stern trills with flair and purpose.

I thought it interesting comparing the characters of the individual pieces, especially the “valses”, having two (Op.70 No. 1, and Op 64 No. 2) composed much later than the Op.18 “Grande Valse Brilliante”, and sounding rather more emotionally “laden” than the earlier work. The Mazurkas are singular beasties, perhaps the closest Chopin got to his native land’s “folk” expression, Houstoun readily conjuring up the stamping of feet and swirling of skirts in Op.33 No. 2, complete with the ending’s impish upward gesture! – and catching the contrasting wistfulness of Op.67 No.3.  As for the Polish composer’s Nocturnes, often very un-Nocturne-like in places, here in Op.32 No. 2 the music’s intensities during the minor-key section were seamlessly integrated by the pianist into the flow, as was the return of the opening theme, with its somewhat vertiginously-decorated variation, followed by the beautifully-contrived echoing of the work’s opening at the end.

Extended applause brought Houstoun back to give us an encore, one which, to my shame, I didn’t recognise, but (thanks to help from Houstoun himself) have at last identified– the second of Chopin’s Trois nouvelles études, in A-flat Major – a pretty, very chordal piece with melodies as sub-plots in the bass – Houstoun made the reprise of the opening a magical happening, voicing the cross-rhythms with prayer-like beauty.

Seated before us on our return after the interval for the Stravinsky work was what appeared an enormous group of players, many of whom were obscured almost completely from sight from where I was sitting, mid-auditorium, though the impression of a “large assemblage” still remained. I’ve always thought it a pity that the orchestra’s platform in the MFC isn’t “tiered” right throughout (as was the case for the players when in the Town Hall) so that those players sounding the “middle voices” in orchestral textures (mostly the winds) can be seen as well as heard. There’s no visibility problem for audiences in the galleries above, but in the stalls the physical orchestral aspect often resembles the prow of a ship bearing down upon the observers from “below” so that only the figurehead(s) and the front of the bow are visible, with the “decks” and all who sail on them obscured by the frontispieces!

I was, I confess, anticipating the prospect of the “Nocturnal” performance visuals with little joy, my previous experience of such things being along the lines of thinking them at best irrelevant, and at worst, distracting. Still, an “open mind” was obviously called for, as I reminded myself while waiting for the arrival of the conductor, Gemma New.

Warmly greeted by the audience, New acknowledged the applause, took up her station, and stood before what seemed like a firmament of dimly-lit stillness, before enabling the opening notes from the bassoon to materialise in a sonic sense as if sounded in a dream, slowly and timelessly, a hypnotic beginning, the instrument enabled to almost “speak” in primitive but expressive tones, the sounds unfolding and transfixing us with their direct, spontaneous-sounding lines, mirroring New’s balletic movements of direction and encouragement. We were drawn into the sounds’ gestation, held by the extraordinary panoply of interacting textures creating a tapestry of burgeoning interest.  A sudden silence and the bassoon returned, its melody this time answered rhythmically by plucked strings, softly at first, and then vehemently, with biting, asymmetrical accents, the “Augurs of Spring” dance – I did remember occasionally to look at the screen backdrop, whose images weren’t as intrusive as I’d feared at this stage, dancing detached lines relating to the music’s trajectories.

New kept the rhythms steady, the detailing forthright and precise, picking things up again after the brief brass-and-timpani irruption, the strands regrouping, with the “ringing” percussion adding their various voices to the growing excitement, the trajectories augmented with increasing exhilaration and agitation, rhythmic accents pounding on and off the beat. A moment of disruptive chaos sounded by a “warning” chord and huge percussive beats, brought the “Ritual of Abduction”, with its frenzied, asymmetrical chaotic-like interchanges, the instrumental groupings wondrously detailed, the strands “keeping their heads” amid the uproar, New’s rhythmic control enabling some magnificent playing, the figurations from all parts of the ensemble forward-thrusting and dovetailing their varied impulses with real flair!

Trilling flutes emerged from the remains of the uproar, as clarinets intoned a brief hymn-like chorale, leading to the famous “Spring Rounds”, massive step-wise chords, launched by the lower strings and patterned by the upper strings, with winds and horns advancing the hugely weighty theme as it strode forward, here massively and tumultuously taken up by the heavy percussion, as the brasses roared their savage exultations. Though the music wasn’t giving me much opportunity to register what was appearing on the screen, I did notice a dancing figure seemingly made of water from a cascading fountain, one whicb I thought cleverly and expressively reflected the in-flux nature of the music throughout this section of the work, if predominantly liquid and balletic rather than monumental and primitive!

The trilling flutes and ritualistic clarinets returned, introducing the “Games of the Rival Tribes”, New marshalling her forces brilliantly as brass and percussion seemed to vie for supremacy, with strings and winds advancing the music’s thematic presence amid the agitations – a great trilling, almost maniacal in its energy, seemed to “herd” the music into a giant vortex, with moaning string ostinato and baleful brass calls riding percussive irruptions bubbling up alarmingly from below – virtuoso orchestra stuff was happening here, I thought, as more and more anarchic voices joined the fray, New as kinetic in her movements as ever, as she gave the mayhem its due before suddenly bringing things to silence.

Here was the “Sage’s Sacred Kiss of the Earth”, a breath-catching moment coloured by eerie winds, timpani and strings, then overwhelmed by orchestral tumult (the MFC’s relative lack of resonant tone here reducing the impact of the orchestra’s splendid playing at this point), with New bringing in layer upon layer of frenzied figurations over an ever-burgeoning bass ostinato that rose like a whale out of the sea and crushed the surface activities with a remorseless flick of its tail. Heart-stopping stuff!

As with the first part of the work “The Adoration of the Earth”, the second part “The Sacrifice” also featured a restrained, atmospheric introduction, more eerie and muted than that preceding the first – New and the players evoked a wonderfully claustrophobic sound-scape, here, the atmosphere momentarily spoilt when somebody on stage dropped something with a clatter! The softly-played but hugely suggestive chords conjured up unfathomable depths over which the scarcely-moving ambiences floated (I remember how telling was the Disney animation in the famous “Fantasia” film at this point in the music’s sequence, the sense of unease igniting and  “growing” as inexorably as did the sounds, with wind and brass sounding terse, uncomfortable scraps of feral intent) – what control, here, from conductor and orchestra, as all was suddenly let “off the leash” with yelps of excitement-cum-fear from brass and strings as the percussion suddenly crashed in, announcing “The Glorification of the Chosen One”. Again I felt the hall’s ambience “taming” the impact of the resonances here, acceptable in a theatre’s orchestral pit with action on the stage to take in, but a shade too dry to my ears for purely orchestral realisation!

There was no let-up, with “The Evocation of the Ancestors” bringing forth stenorian orchestral shouts capped off by drum rolls – later with cor anglais and bass flute phrases “colouring” the increasingly fatalistic scenario, culminating in a kind of “nightmare” processional, there followed what sounded to me like the work’s most uncompromising sequence, the “Sacrificial Dance” of the Chosen One. Interrupted by the Ancestors requiring some more “Ritual Action”, the victim then continued her sacrificial dance even more frantically and desperately, , a fantastical dovetailing of different orchestral impulses locked in an ever-tightening grip. We were mesmerised by it all, and held our breath as the dance suddenly gave way to a moment of release from the winds sudden ascent through a brief silence, and a sudden collapse of the music via a final orchestral chord.

I confess to all but forgetting about the screen backdrop images during these latter sequences – they must have been sufficiently “of a piece” with the music , even if the musicians’ stunning realisation of these sounds had obviously captivated me at that stage to the extent where my reaction to any query about them would have been “What images?” The shade of Stravinsky himself would, I’m sure, have purred with pleasure at the thought of the orchestra that was “his” for a few magical moments in the Wellington Town Hall sixty years ago (see the video link below) tackling his music here with such elan, confidence and splendour.

https://teara.govt.nz/en/video/44804/the-composer-conducts

 

 

Spacious, enraptured, beautiful – Wellington Chamber Orchestra with Baroque Voices and Nota Bene

Posted on by Anne French

MARIA GRENFELL – River, Mountain, Sky
ELGAR – Variations on an original theme – “Enigma”
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS – Five Mystical Songs / Serenade to Music

Wellington Chamber Orchestra with Baroque Voices and Nota Bene
Will King (baritone)
Ewan Clark (conductor)

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

Sunday 4th July 2021

For as long as I can remember, Wellington Chamber Orchestra has been a player-run orchestra which engages conductors by the concert.  This, I suppose, has some advantages. It gives the orchestra maximum freedom and minimum financial commitments. But it also tries to provide solo opportunities for young musicians, and given the inevitable coming and going of people from one concert to the next, the result must be a certain unevenness.

After today’s concert, I have a suggestion to make to WCO’s player managers. Hire Ewan Clark, and extract a two-year programme from him – and you will be going places, I guarantee it. Continuity, artistic vision, and stability have a lot to recommend them.

Ewan Clark is a composer and conductor as well as a trombonist. He has been conducting since he was a music student at Victoria University, nearly 20 years ago. Since then he has studied composition for screen at the Royal College of Music (MMus) and he also has a PhD from Victoria University. For years he worked mostly as a film composer, and his most recent score, for The Turn of the Screw (2020), has already won two awards at international film festivals.

This concert demonstrated what WCO is capable of under a talented conductor, with the support of excellent friends (in this case singers from Baroque Voices and Nota Bene, together with the phenomenal young baritone Will King).

The programme, as first glance, was not exceptionally interesting. Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs and Serenade to Music – all agreeable old war-horses – plus a short work by Australian/New Zealand composer Maria Grenfell to open the concert. Apart from the Grenfell work, it wasn’t interesting at all, in the sense of ‘I wonder what will happen next’, but it was very pleasurable. And there were surprises.

Maria Grenfell now lives in Tasmania, but she studied composition in Christchurch before going to Eastman in the US for her Masters, and UCLA for her doctorate. She tells us that she works from ‘poetic, literary, and visual sources’ as well as ‘non-Western music and literature’.  I discerned none of this in River, Mountain, Sky, which was commissioned for Tasmania’s bicentenary in 2004, but it was a delightful work nonetheless, with a clear programme and much to interest the ear. The first section features birdsong sounds from flutes and other woodwind, with first the timpani, then the horns suggesting spaciousness.  Sustained chords painted in a landscape of mountains and plains; recalling first Sibelius in the writing for the horns, then a dissolve into Vaughan Williams. The mountains section built in slow waves of sound, accented by unmuted trumpets and the harp (Anne-Gaelle Ausseil). I was sitting upstairs, and the harp was often overwhelmed by the timpani – perhaps an effect of the gallery? There was some lovely clarinet playing on the way to the sunset crescendo, and then the night sounds – oboe, the sussurations of the higher strings, muted trumpets, another lovely harp passage, and then an undertone of horns with flute, trumpet, and harp to suggest the starry night. A lovely work, I thought.

Next, Elgar’s Enigma Variations. It demands a large orchestra, and bristles with solos, made even harder because everyone in the audience can sing or whistle the tunes. And the playing was patchy.  The upper strings were considerably weaker than the lower strings, with uneasy tuning and a general air of tentativeness that marred the opening of Variation I. But the back of the orchestra rose to the many challenges that Elgar gave them, and the winds played beautifully, with some superb oboe solos and secure flutes and clarinets. I have to say, though, that the horns were terrific. They and the trombones get a lot of work; whilst the trombones were always enthusiastic but not necessarily delicate, the horns were tender as well as bold. By the time they got to the crescendo in Variation IV, the orchestra was making a big, exciting sound. The lower brass were great in Variation VII, and there was terrific wind playing in VIII after the lovely oboe solo, with sensitive piccolo and flute. Nimrod crept out of VIII as intended but although the lower strings played as one, the upper strings sounded uncomfortable and out of tune. Never mind! Here come the horns, winds, and finally the trumpets. Variation X was a curate’s egg, but one with a nice bassoon solo. Variation XI showed off the brass to good effect. By the time we reached Variation XIV the orchestra sensed the end was in sight. They built well to a splendid Elgarian crescendo, with a few rough edges.

The choir came on stage for the second half of the concert, which began with Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs. The soloist was Will King, who was an Emerging Artist with NZ Opera in 2019, and is supported by the Malvina Major Foundation. He has already sung Orfeo (Monteverdi) and Count Almaviva (Marriage of Figaro), along with Sam in Gareth Farr’s opera The Bone Feeder for NZ Opera. He has performed Schubert’s Winterreise, Schumann’s Dichterliebe, and Brahms’s Vier Ernste Gesänge. Later this year, he will understudy Orpheus in the NZ Opera production of Orfeo et Euridice.  When he won the Wellington Aria in 2018, Richard Greagor described him as ‘a baritone clearly with the potential to make a fine career’.

Not surprisingly, Will King made a splendid job of the Five Mystical Songs. He has a big, beautiful voice and excellent musicianship. From his first entry, he demonstrated the vigorous, rapturous sound that these songs demand. His diction is superb – I could have taken dictation from him. At one point during ‘Love bade me welcome’ I wondered whether he understood the poetry – George Herbert was a religious mystic, after all. But it was impossible to tell, because he thoroughly understood the music, and gave a superb performance. ‘The Call’ featured a gorgeous oboe solo, and Will King was lyrical perfection.

The choir acts mostly as backing group for the first four songs, until let off the leash in number five, ‘Let all the world in every corner sing’. I first sang this in the Auckland University Choir under Peter Godfrey, back in the late Cretaceous, and recall it as a bit of a shout. Not in the hands of Ewan Clark and Baroque Voices/Nota Bene. It was big and glad and joyful, with WCO’s wind and brass romping all over it.

The final work in the programme was Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music. This was written at about the time RVW was giving Douglas Lilburn a bad mark for the Drysdale Overture in his composition class at the Royal College of Music. The choir sang well, with various small solos being charmingly taken by one or two voices. Once or twice in quiet passages the orchestra overwhelmed the choir, but mostly the balance was good, with the choir’s sound delightfully imitating the instruments.  (I’m not sure whether to thank Ewan Clark or RVW, but it was lovely nonetheless.) The audience was enraptured, and applauded long enough to be rewarded with an encore, a reprise of ‘Let all the world’, which never sacrificed style for volume.