Category: Reviews – Concerts

Bartók’s Duos on folk music from two violists, Donald Maurice and Claudine Bigelow

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Bartók: Excerpts from 44 Duos; field recordings made 1906-1915

Claudine Bigelow and Donald Maurice (violas)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 16 May 2012, 12.15pm

Despite the atrocious weather in Wellington the audience was of a reasonable size at what was a lecture-recital rather than a concert – but none the worse for that.

Donald Maurice is well known locally as a violist, and as one of the performers and the promoter of Alfred Hill’s string quartets recordings.

Caroline Bigelow came here from the Brigham Young University School of Music on a Fulbright scholarship, to work with Donald Maurice.  In a recent radio interview I heard, she paid tribute to Donald Maurice, whom she had met some years ago at an International Viola Congress.

Both performers gave quite lengthy spoken introductions to Bartók and the Duos, which were written for two violins. They are recording the duos for CD; the recording, like the concert, will feature the composer’s field recordings made from 1906 to 1915, upon which these 1931 compositions are based.  It will be the first recording of them for two violas, and is being produced in collaboration with the Bartók Archive in Budapest.

It was a pity that Maurice and Bigelow (particularly the latter) did not use the microphone, since dropping the voice at the end of sentences and phrases made them inaudible at times – and I was seated near the front of the church.

Each of the 11 selections from the 44 was introduced, the translation read, and then in the relevant cases (which was most of them) the original field recording, transcribed from wax cylinders to CD, was played through the church’s speaker system, then Bartók’s duo based on that recording played.

This made for an interesting programme.  The simple melodies used different tonalities from those we now consider standard major and minor.  The first piece, ‘Midsummer Night Song’, was played with warm and rich tone, the beautiful harmonies created by Bartók and altered rhythms from the original folk song combining to create a colourful picture.

The ‘Cradle Song’ that followed was humorous, and the bi-tonality (B flat against E, Donald Maurice explained) employed by the composer appropriate to the modal original, making for a very effective piece.

In ‘Burlesque’, Bartók altered the timing from a simple one in the original to a dotted rhythm.  ‘Fairy Tale’ was an example of more complex rhythms, but such as are common in Eastern European folk music.

‘Bride’s Farewell’ far from being a joyous song, sounded mournful, especially with the unison notes and intervals of a second that the composer chose.  It was full of strong colours, compared with the earlier songs.  Like ‘Burlesque’ and the Dance that followed it, this piece was from Ruthenia.  Maurice explained that it was very difficult to get a translation of the Ruthenian language; it seems not to have survived.  Nor has the name ‘Ruthenia’, in my atlas! [Ruthenia was the small eastern-most province of Czechoslovakia as it existed between the two world wars; it had a mixed population of Hungarians, Romanians, Ukrainians and a significant Jewish population; the region was predominantly Ukrainian. Till 1919 it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; it is now the Zakarpattia Oblast of Ukraine, and bordered by Slovakia, Romania and Hungary. The language referred to is most likely to be Ukrainian. L.T.]

The ‘Ruthenian Dance’ used a different minor scale from the one we know today, and employed an 8/8 rhythmic pattern of 3+2+3, very evident in the accompanying part; the melody line sounded typically folksy, however.

The song ‘Sorrow’, the performers found, differed in a recording by the composer himself from what he had written in his score, as well as from the folk original he recorded. It was a plaintive piece, with woeful humour in the last line about the wench from the inn: ‘How much of my money it has cost, all in vain!’  A man sang this in the original; most of the recordings were by girls or women.

Maurice explained that in the Hungarian language, emphasis tends to be on the first syllable of words (and I recall this from a Hungarian woman I once worked with), and this informs the musical rhythms.

‘Bagpipes’ was an original melody from the composer.  Donald Maurice’s part was the drone and Bigelow’s the chanter with the melody.  It was lively and jolly, and a very good evocation of the bagpipes.  We were told that after this was written, Bartók went to Scotland, and showed much interest in the instrument.

‘Prelude and Canon’, purporting to be about two peonies blooming but ready to fade, was allegedly about two spinsters.  However, the piece (and the original) speeded up towards the end, indicating perhaps that the fact that ‘No-one will pluck them’ was no bad thing!  Here, Bartók was true to the original, but the colours of his harmonies were dark, even in the more animated section.

Another Bartók original was the ‘Pizzicato’.  The entire piece was plucked.  It was beautifully executed and a joyful little number.  Donald Maurice explained that the short duos were written by the composer for students, but he said that the last ones in the set would require very advanced students to play them, that is, this one and the next, of those we heard.

Number 44, ‘Transylvanian Dance’ was last in the set and the last performed.  It derived from the region where the composer grew up.  Again, an unusual scale (to us) was employed.  Maurice said that its exotic sound might have been because it derived from the music of migrants from India, long ago. It made for a complex and interesting piece in Bartók’s transcription.

The well-planned and played programme was fascinating, marred only by the lack of projection of the voices, particularly that of Caroline Bigelow.

The forthcoming recording will be of considerable interest.

 

Wellington NZ Choral Federation – celebrating 25 years of workshops with the best of ’em!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

VERDI – Requiem Mass

Bryony Williams (soprano) / Margaret Medlyn (m-sop) / Richard Greager (tenor) / Rodney Macann (bass)

NZ Choral Federation May Workshop Choir

Rosemary Russell (assistant director) / Thomas Gaynor (organ and piano)

Michael Fulcher (conductor)

Brass: Danny Kirgan / Chris Clark / Chris Woolley / David Kempton / Matthew Stein (trumpets)

Benjamin Zilber / Ben Robertson / Tim Walsh (trombones)

Percussion (timpani): Brent Stewart

Salvation Army Citadel, Vivian St., Wellington

Saturday 12th May, 2012

Twenty-five years ago this year, Sir David Willcocks, doyen of British choral conductors at the time, came to New Zealand  and took the very first of the New Zealand Choral Federation Wellington workshops. Local  choral conductor John Knox, who had sung in the Bach Choir in London under Willcocks, had formed a friendship with him over time, and invited him to come and conduct choirs in New Zealand (one of which occasions I well remember, that of a performance of the Berlioz Requiem in Wellington in 1986). It was on Willcocks’ third visit here, in 1988, that he took that now-historic first NZCF workshop,  which featured music by one of the Venetian Gabrielis and the North German Samuel Scheidt.

New Zealand’s equivalent to David Willcocks was and is undoubtedly Peter Godfrey, now aged 90, and present at the concert on Saturday evening. Godfrey took over the workshops for the next seven years, returning in 2002 after a break of another seven years (all very Biblical) to direct a workshop featuring this evening’s work, the Verdi Requiem. So there were wheels and circles clicking and circling around and about and coming full circle with tonight’s performance of that same work, the director on this occasion being Michael Fulcher, taking part in his (you’ve guessed it!) seventh workshop for the NZCF.

In all, nine directors have led the workshops over the duration, with Peter Godfrey and Michael Fulcher clocking up the most frequent appearances between them. As well, a goodly proportion of the singers present (requested by chairperson Elizabeth Crayford during her closing speech at the end of the concert, to show their hands) indicated that they were also at various of these earlier occasions – in fact, several indicated that they had attended that very first workshop directed by Willcocks. All of which contributed to the festive atmosphere and undoubted emotion of this, the most recent event, one that was fortunately crowned by a remarkable performance of the Verdi Mass, put together by Michael Fulcher and his assistant director, Rosemary Russell (replacing an indisposed Mark Dorrell), with just two days’ rehearsal for the singers and instrumentalists – “born in fiery hour!” as Robert Schumann would have said.

Actually “two days’ rehearsal” suggests more time than was actually given the performers, as the two hundred and eighty or so choir members met together for the first time on Friday evening, working for two hours from seven until nine o’clock. They began again at nine o’clock on Saturday morning and workshopped it all until five o’clock in the afternoon. The soloists and instrumentalists (pianist, brass players, percussionist) came in on Saturday afternoon. True, some people had done a bit of preparation with their own choirs (eg. the Festival Singers), and some got the music in advance. Most people, however, were issued with their scores on Friday night.

All of which suggests some kind of alchemy on the part of Michael Fulcher and assistant Rosemary Russell, in pulling such a massive work together in such a short time with people in various stages of preparation. But far more than simply getting the music to hold recognizably together, the performance sounded truly inspired – here was one of those instances where enthusiasm and sheer will combined with skill and experience to produce something memorable and satisfying for all concerned.

From the first, opening bars of the work, spare, plaintive-sounding tones from Thomas Gaynor’s piano (with an unexpectedly arpeggiated chord at one point!), followed by the murmured hush of those first “Requiems” from two-hundred-plus voices, the music unfolded with living, breathing surety, our sensibilities all a-tingle at being in the same space as those voices, and almost made to feel each intake of the singers’  breath. Michael Fulcher’s control of the voices’ tonal ebb and flow was masterly, the men’s stentorian “Te decet hymnus” startling by comparison with the ambiently-floated “luceat eis”, and the choir’s variation of dynamics ever leading the ear onwards, and giving us a taste of things to come.

At the Kyrie it was the soloists’ turn, each a distinctive and characterful voice, feeing their way into the performance’s particular terrain – tenor Richard Greager heroic and Italianate, the vibrato pronounced at forceful moments, but the singing stylish as always, followed by bass Rodney Macann’s imposing and expansively-phrased utterances (his conductor flashing him the first of a few “hurry-along” glances which added interest to the evening). Then there were the women, both soprano Bryony Williams and mezzo-soprano Margaret Medlyn investing their tones and phrases with theatrical intensity,  the four singers working hand-in-glove to blend their tones and achieve a balance between devotional and dramatic focus. Mention must be made of the choir’s beautiful final “Christe eleision”, Michael Fulcher securing precise and secure attack on those ethereal notes.

When the “Dies Irae” started  I wrestled with the idea of jumping the audience parapet and rushing to the unattended bass drum to deliver a few much-needed thwacks and rolls to join in with the mayhem, as I could see that timpanist Brent Stewart wasn’t going to budge from his timpani throughout. I was told afterwards that the drum was never going to be part of the scheme, and that it was put on the stage merely by rote by the organizers. Oh, it was tantalizing! – but a pity, too, because the brass ensemble punched their whiplash chords and baleful cries out with great gusto, giving the chorus plenty of ambient terror in which to hurl their frightened cries of “Dies irae, dies illa” – all we needed to complete the picture was that abyss opening up beneath, via a few cavernous rolls at the bottom of the textures, something the timpani simply didn’t have a deep enough voice for.

Still, the brass played their hearts out at the “Tuba mirum”, the offstage trumpet surviving a shaky moment to join in with the mounting awe and terror in great style. Rodney Macann’s wonderfully rhetorical delivery of “Mors stupebit” needed a bigger, blacker noise in support that the timps could give, as well, and Michael Fulcher, playing the piano at this point, and moving things along, caught his timpanist on the hop for the latter’s first entry – though Brent Stewart soon caught up. Margaret Medlyn’s “Liber scriptus” sounded as though written for her – she gave it terrific thrust at “Unde mundus judicetur”, though for some reason there was no brass just before “Judex ergo cum sedebit”, and Medlyn also had to skip a beat to accommodate her pianist at one point – a true case of “Nil inultum remanebit” indeed.

The choir was again superb with their ensuing “Dies Irae” reprise, Fulcher adroitly juggling his pianist’s and conductor’s role at this point, before the “Quid sum miser”, with soprano, mezzo and tenor blending their tones again beautifully and Bryony Williams impressing with a shining soprano ascent towards the end, nicely assured. I wanted more sheer noise from everybody (sensationalist that I am) at the beginning of “Rex tremendae” on the opening word “Rex”, though the choir’s “Salva Me’s” at the end were terrific, achieving real supplicatory grandeur! And Margaret Medlyn’s blending with Bryony Williams throughout the lovely, tender “Quarens me” and into the dramatic interchanges of “Ante diem rationis” satisfied on all counts.

I’m uncomfortably aware, at this point in the review, that to go on indulging in “writing up” my great pleasure in all aspects of the performance would produce something whose volume would be akin to ballast for an ocean-going liner! Suffice to say that the soloists continued throughout as they began, Richard Greager soothing our sensibilities in places throughout “Qui Marian absolvisti” (though he had only just enough breath for his final “Statuens in parte dextra”), and Rodney Macann properly apocalyptic in his  “Confutatis maledictis”, his phrasing again rhetorical and measured in places (he chose a lower option instead of his final ascent with “Gere curium mei finis”). In the final “Lacrymosa” Margaret Medlyn again hit the emotional spot with a searing “Huic ergo parce Deus”, before counterpointing Rodney Macann’s reprise of the melody. Choir and soloists combined to great effect, Bryony Williams soaring aloft, her supplications piercing the heart. A beautiful blending of the individual voices at “Pie Jesu, Domine” followed, then some dark-and-light exchanges between mens and women’s voices in the choir eventually came together for a heartfelt “Amen”.

The soloists had further opportunities throughout the “Offertorium”, blending beautifully and making the most of individual moments (Richard Greager unexpectedly more forthright than prayerful at “Hostias”, and Rodney Macann phrasing a little too fulsomely in places, prompting further “encouragement” by Michael Fulcher, but still making something memorable of his “Quam Olim Abrahae” utterances). Bryony Williams negotiated her treacherous but celestial evocation of St.Michael nicely, floating her notes securely downwards from on high. Throughout, the ensemble handled Verdi’s amalgam of prayerfulness and dramatic impulse with aplomb, with Fulchers’s direction vital and focused, and keeping things on the move.

Then it was the chorus’s turn with the “Sanctus” to shine, the brass splendidly festive at the beginning, the voices exuberant in reply. At Fulcher’s steady tempo the lines danced and glowed throughout, the voices having plenty of tonal variation at “Pleni sun coeli”, and wonderful attack at the bell-like “Hosannas” at the end. And the instrumentalists were spot-on with their outlandish, syncopated ascents leading to the final joyous cries to finish – a riot of energy, colour and exuberance.

No greater contrast to it all was there than that of the “Agnus Dei” – firstly, soprano and mezzo in “octave-unison”, accents and timbres well-matched, the choir intense, but warm and supplicatory in response; then a minor-key version from the same soloists, beautifully accompanied by the organ, with the soranos an octave higher in response this time – a lovely sound!  How other-worldly by comparison the “Lux aeterna” sounds! – Margaret Medlyn sounding a trifle unsteady with one of her entries, but still conveying a sense of celestial light shining forth to confront the darkness of Rodney Macann’s grim-voiced “Requiem aeternam” – the ensembled trio (with tenor Richard Greager) again mellifluously blended throughout (I missed the composer’s creepy downward chromatic wind lines at “Cum sanctis tuis”, but the singing provided ample compensation).

And so to the dramatic “Libera me”. Verdi’s original contribution to a planned requiem to honor Rossini, a project that didn’t “make it” during the composer’s lifetime (in fact, not until 1988, when a belated performance was mounted in Stuttgart). The “Libera me” is as dramatic in its own way as the “Dies Irae” part of the work, though featuring only the soprano from the quartet of soloists, along with the chorus and orchestra. It’s a wonderful showcase for both soloist and chorus, and both here were well up to the composer’s demands, supported by dexterous piano playing and closely-worked direction from Michael Fulcher. From the beginning Bryony Williams fully engaged with the music, urgent and searing at “Dum veneris judicare speculum per ignem” – though the piano didn’t match the wonderfully ghoulish bassoon tones of the original at this point, the fear and horror in Williams’ voice was palpable enough, contrasting with the choir’s previously hushed, awe-struck “Libera me, Dominum”.

The return of the “Dies Irae” blazed anew, with powerful work from chorus and brass, then some wonderfully sepulchral exchanges between the men’s voices, baleful trombones and ghostly organ tones paved the way for Bryony Williams’ haunting reprise, with the choir in attendance, of the work’s opening “Requiem” music, concluding with the soloist’s cruelly-exposed octave ascent, here triumphantly realized. But what volatility this music has! – over a “Devil’s Interval” tremolando (difficult to achieve on a piano) the soprano reiterates the fearful opening text “Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna” and awakens the fugue, which has always sounded to my ears the work’s most exacting and fearsome challenge for the chorus.

Michael Fulcher kept it “steady as she goes”, enabling the voices to negotiate even the densest figurations, as well as integrate the soloist’s adding to the textures at several points (Bryony Williams crying mercy for all humanity, here), but also building the excitement of the surging ascents of the women’s voices, before the men take their turn to initiate the forward thrust, with “Veneris, judicare, speculum….” leading up to the brass-and-timpani-supported cataclysmic climax that lacked only the bass drum for its impact to raise the roof of the Citadel. It remained for soprano and chorus to reiterate the words “Libera me”, and allow the silences that followed to proclaim the end.

For a performance such as we had just heard to come from less than two full days of workshop and rehearsal seemed near to miraculous. Very great credit to conductor Michael Fulcher and assistant director Rosemary Russell, for inspiring singers and instrumentalists to give what I imagine would have been their best endeavours, something of great value for performers and listeners alike. For everybody involved with or connected to the Choral Federation in any way, it all would have been a wonderful twenty-fifth birthday present at the end of what must have felt like an exhilarating couple of days!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interesting assortment of arrangements for viola ensembles from the New Zealand School of Music

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Viva Viola – the next generation (from the New Zealand School of Music)

Viola: Annji Chong, Vince Hardaker, John Roxburgh, Alix Schultze, Alexa Thomson, Aiden Verity, Megan Ward

High Noon Quartet (in Mozart’s Flute Quartet in D, K 285): Michael McEwen – flute, Jun He – violin, Andrew Filmer – viola, Charles Davenport – cello

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 9 May, 12.15pm

Viola students at the New Zealand School of Music have formed this group which has given several concerts in Wellington as well as at the International Viola Conference in Sydney.

The programme listed seven players who took part but not identified in each of the trios, quartets, quintets and the final sextet; plus one, Andrew Filmer, who played in the Mozart. Their programme was, of necessity, rather odd-ball, for not a lot of music has been written for groups of violas. Thus it consisted, apart from the first piece, entirely of arrangements of music originally written for different instruments.

The first was played as written: one of Mozart’s flute quartets, which of course included only one viola. The result was probably the most generally popular piece on the programme, and it was indeed delightfully played. It was the only piece whose players were listed individually. Michael McEwen played a particularly stylish and confident flute and the three string players matched him in the feeling of gaiety that Mozart wrote into his D major quartet. The whole performance was charming, with just a few minor smudges in the last movement.

Then followed a short suite of early baroque pieces, by one Johann Groh, arranged by Australian composer Paul Groh (no note about the strange coincidence). The composer died at the beginning of the terrible Thirty Years War. Five violas performed the four small pieces that were quite characterful if unexciting; perhaps the harmonies employed in the arrangement made me suspect tuning flaws.

Dido’s Lament, ‘When I am laid in earth’ from Dido and Aeneas could have been more effective if played a bit slower to linger a little on the despair. But the piece was played very well.

An arrangement for four violas of a fugue from an organ work by Domenico Scarlatti was a thoroughly engaging piece, in which the fugue was cleverly visited by another unrelated theme that increased very significantly the complexity and pleasure derived therefrom. Bach himself might have been impressed by it, and by its playing.

A Viola Terzett (three violas) by an Israeli composer, Boaz Avni, was brought forward in the programme next: a well-honed performance of a perfectly competent piece that didn’t leave an especially deep impression.

Another minor piece arranged for viola trio by a much greater composer followed: one of Tchaikovsky’s piano pieces, Aveu passione (variously: passionné, passioné, passioni). It began on the lower strings but soon moved, rather effectively up the A string. I do not know the piano original and so cannot tell whether this might have been a good rendering of it.

The first viola led quite strongly an anonymous Galliard arranged for five violas by one Sancho Engano, but otherwise the piece seemed rather pedestrian.

And the concert finished with a curious musical skit, Bartosky, described as ‘tongue-in-cheek’,  by Julien Heichelbech, starting with the opening phrase of Bartok’s unfinished viola concerto into which were injected a couple of familiar tunes including the waltz from The Sleeping Beauty. A performance by less skilled players on You-Tube is furnished with a sudden scream in the middle which was funny and struck me as the main point of the music which in truth had little other purpose. I wonder why The Next Generation decided against it.

Though most of the music was not hugely entertaining, the playing by the various configurations of violas was in itself admirable and very agreeable (I have an especial affection for the sound of the viola), and confirmed the excellent musical level achieved by these (I assume) students.

 

 

Note Bene in adventurous and inspiring programme of recent choral music

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

‘May Magnificat’
Sarah MacDonald: Magnificat Tonus Peregrinus
John Tavener: Magnificat (Collegium Regale)
Arvo Pärt: Magnificat
Gerald Finzi: Magnificat
Doublas Mews (snr.): The May Magnificat
Janet Jennings: Magnificat
Charles Villiers Stanford: Magnificat in B flat for eight-part chorus

Nota Bene Chamber Choir, conducted by Peter de Blois, with soloists, and organ (Michael Fletcher)

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill Street

Sunday, 6 May 2012, 2.30pm

It’s always a delight to hear a Nota Bene concert, and one of the reasons is the innovative programming.  The work by Douglas Mews I had heard before, by either the New Zealand Youth Choir or Voices New Zealand, and the Stanford I have on a record made by the Youth Choir in its early days.  Otherwise, the works on the programme were new to me, but all were inspiring and deserving of more hearings – which makes me think that this choir deserves its performances to be recorded for broadcast by Radio New Zealand Concert.

A striking opening was made by the choir processing in and placing themselves at the sides of the main body of the cathedral to sing the Sarah MacDonald work, Peter de Blois conducting, and singing the part of cantor in a firm, low tenor voice.  Although the sound was well-balanced despite the choir’s dispersed positions, some of the attacks were uneven, i.e. not always together.  Nevertheless, it was an attractive opening item.

Tavener writes very effectively for choirs, but this piece was something exceptional.  His writing used the style of Greek Orthodox chant, employing microtones.  The choir carried the piece off most effectively.  In places, it reminded me of Rachmaninov’s Vespers, which is based on Russian Orthodox chant (in turn based on Greek Orthodox music).  The singing included wordless vocalising in some of the vocal parts while other parts sang words.  There were some wonderfully delicate and ethereal sounds, and great attention to the words: this was sung in English, whereas the previous item was in Latin.

Pärt’s compositional style is quite distinctive and personal.   It was beautifully performed, and there was lovely tone, especially from soloists Christine Argyle, Inese Berzina and Emily Bruce (sopranos).  In some passages, the composer had written passages with the unusual juxtaposition of very low bass against very high soprano.   I did not find the work as interesting as the Tavener, but the sense of calm and timelessness typical of Pärt was certainly there.  The choir exhibited great control and smooth delivery.

Back to an English language Magnificat: that of Gerald Finzi, composed in 1989.  After three mainly quiet works, it was good to hear the robust fortes that this choir of 37 members can produce, not to mention the grand opening on the organ, and Michael Fletcher’s tasteful accompaniment throughout.  Again there was great attention to speech patterns in this thoroughly English setting.  It was very satisfying, and sounded as though it was fun to sing.  It was a convincing and successful performance.

After an interval long enough to enable some of the audience to enjoy the beautiful day outside, it was the turn of New Zealand composers to be heard.

First was Douglas Mews (senior), in his The May Magnificat, composed in 1977 (it was very good to have the years of publication in the programme.)  Here we had not the Biblical song of Mary, but a poem of Gerard Manley Hopkins, written in 1878.

Its short rhyming lines, some of them humorous (‘Is it only being brighter/ Than the most are must delight her?’) could have made for a rather staccato composition, but it was not.  The musical writing was very varied and engaging.  There were harmonic clashes, and quirky passages to match the words.  A soprano solo sung by Maaike Christie was challenging, but performed very well, while shorter solos from Patrick Geddes and Simon Christie were confidently sung.

There were moments of harshness and inaccuracy from the choir tenors, otherwise the timbre and tone were always good, and the unaccompanied performance precise and lively, with well enunciated words.

The short work by New Zealander Janet Jennings (written in 2008) was sung with organ, from the gallery at the back of the Cathedral.  The sound from here was quite lovely, even though my seat was only just forward of being below the gallery.  As the programme note described it, this was an exuberant setting in English, for women’s voices.  There was a notably unified sound.  Jennings’s was another apt setting, following the word patterns.  The organ part featured repetitive phrases, but it was varied by changed registrations and dynamics.

Stanford’s Magnificat is a major work; probably the longest in the concert, sung from the front of the church.  Its opening is akin to the opening of J.S.Bach’s Magnificat – this may have been a deliberate quotation on Stanford’s part.  There is a lot of complex inter-weaving for the eight parts, especially after “Fecit potentiam”, with wonderful points of rest here and there.

It is a work of great competence and inspiration, requiring considerable concentration and agility from the singers.  There is plentiful dynamic contrast, in sympathy with the words, and the piece is full of variety.  The writing of  “et exaltavit humiles; esurientes implevit bonis” is especially delicious. Elsewhere the music is lively, and always vital, and going somewhere.

Although Stanford composed in many genres, it is mainly his church music that is heard today.  This is a pity, for much more that he wrote is worth airing.

A feature of this performance was the rich sound from the men, especially the basses.  The tenors, again, had an unpleasant, nasal tone at times.  The women were universally euphonious and easy on the ear.

Peter de Blois is a very experienced musician, especially as an organist and singer, and his direction of the choir was sure.   The music was obviously well-rehearsed, and it was noteworthy how confident the singers were in the Tavener piece, with its microtones.  The audience was smaller that at the last concert of Nota Bene’s, before Christmas, but still respectable, given the amount of music on in Wellington currently – and the gorgeous day outside – and warmly appreciative of this diverse and interesting programme of twentieth and twenty-first century choral music.

 

 

 

Hutt Valley Orchestra – “What did you say they were playing?….!”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

RACHMANINOV – Piano Concerto No.3 in D Minor

MASCAGNI – Cavalleria Rusticana (Concert Performance)

Melanie Lina (piano)

Hutt Valley Orchestra

Brett Stewart (conductor)

(Cast of Cavalleria Rusticana: Ruth Armishaw (Turidda) / Sharon Yearsley (Santuzza)

Kieran Rayner (Alfio) / Jody Orgias (Mama Lucia) / Alison Hodge (Lola) / Chorus)

Expressions Art and Entertainment Centre

Upper Hutt

Saturday 5th May 2012

I must confess to surprise upon hearing about the Hutt Valley Orchestra’s proposed Sounds Expressions concert – the Rachmaninov Third Piano Concerto? And Cavalleria Rusticana? – the whole of it? Perhaps my response was due in part to my experiences as a player in an amateur orchestra in Palmerston North during the 1990s, though I must say we also attempted things of reasonable difficulty, like the Borodin Second Symphony and the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony, and had a lot of fun, and made splendidly outlandish and occasionally reasonably musical noises.

I had heard pianist Melanie Lina being interviewed on RNZ Concert, and liked what she had said about performing the Rachmaninov Concerto, and was impressed by the quiet confidence she exuded about it all. So I was intrigued, but thought that, however good the soloist might be, the work would still be quite a challenge for the orchestra, in fact, any orchestra. Again, I was basing these reactions upon what I knew of amateur orchestral playing, and wondered whether the Hutt Orchestra (whose work I didn’t know at all – in fact, I didn’t even know they existed!) was going to be up to the task – and then, after the Rachmaninov, there was Mascagni’s “Cav”, for goodness’ sakes!

It turned out to be an evening of surprises, involving a full gamut of reactions, a process whose exact order had considerable bearing on my own responses to the evening’s music-making. It was very much a concert of two halves – first up was the Rachmaninov Concerto, one which soloist Melanie Lina began confidently and nearly always securely, with steady, if rather muted support from the orchestra. I noticed from the outset that the orchestral winds seemed to find it difficult to actually “sound” their notes, though the violins were a little better – though somewhat “seedy” the first orchestral tutti had recognizable shape and form. And conductor Brent Stewart seemed to make all the right gestures and work collaboratively with his soloist throughout.

The only problem was that Stewart seemed to have considerable difficulty getting any actual tone from many of the players, who appeared for long stretches as if they were “cowed” by the music. It was left to Melanie Lima to make her own performance of the work for much of the time, because despite the conductor’s best endeavors, she got precious little help from the orchestra, save for one or two details, such as a sensitive horn solo answering one of the piano’s phrases in the second subject group. The horns actually seemed in places reasonably onto things, because I picked up some nicely etched-in muted notes from them just after the pianist’s reprise of the opening theme.

During the piano-and-orchestra exchanges that followed the players kept things rhythmically together,  though the lack of any impactful tone from the orchestra made the episode a one-sided affair, the brass hardly registering at all. I found it difficult to understand why the players didn’t seem to want to “play out” more – as I said earlier, my own orchestral experiences involved at least making with my colleagues plenty of noise, quite a lot of which was musical. I wanted these players to similarly hurl themselves into the fray, take more risks, and in the right places, roar, blare, rasp and bray, but at least give the soloist something reasonably substantial in places to actually play along with or against (this is a romantic concerto, after all!). Perhaps Brent Stewart had been reading Richard Strauss’s tongue-in-cheek essay “Advice to conductors”, containing statements such as “Never look at the brass – it only encourages them”!

The soloist made a good fist of her “dying fall” music just before the cadenza – she played the shorter of the two written by the composer (though probably the more difficult, less chordal and more quicksilver an affair),achieving real grandeur at the climax.Though entering late the flute sounded its solo evocatively, as did all the winds and the horn. In fact the horns again stood out, making the beautiful “sounds of evening across the meadow” sequence (my favourite bit in the first movement) just before the final reprise of the opening, really tell, with secure chording and nicely-floated tones.

I hoped that, with more room to breathe, away from the strictures of the first movement’s driving rhythms, the orchestral tones would sound more fully during the slow movement – but apart from a nice-phrased oboe solo, the rest of the orchestra, alas, sounded fairly inert and hardly preparing of the way for the piano’s tragic downward entry, here beautifully sounded by the soloist, moving from anguish to warmth as the music proceeded. What passionate writing here! – and how involved Lina sounded! To my delight she and conductor Brent Stewart kept intact the vertiginous passage that’s often cut, the sequence thus able to fully express the music’s somewhat Bronte-ish wildness and gradual descent into loneliness. I thought Lina everywhere had the full measure of the work’s emotional contourings, setting romantic sweep next to poetic expansiveness, but always with the music’s overall shape kept in hand.

Occasionally the winds would nose their way up and out of the misted orchestral textures and make a phrase “tell”, both clarinet and oboe managing to sound some of their counter-theme against the pianist’s skittery central-section waltz-like rhythms. And the strings did conjure up enough tone to recognizably sound the final tragic outburst of the movement, just before the soloist’s dangerous-sounding flourishes heralded the finale.

The “galloping horse” motive rang out splendidly from Melanie Lina’s piano throughout the finale’s opening, the violins actually managing to sound their counter-melody against the pianist’s forthright second-subject measures. Then, in the haunting nocturnal episode that followed the orchestral tones filled out and the players made something of the music’s dark pulsings underneath the piano’s quixotic chirruping. Another section sometimes cut in performance was here restored, with swirling figurations from the piano supported by strings, and with the flutes sounding their repetitions of the piano’s nocturnal birdsong.

A pity the violas and cellos couldn’t muster up enough tonal weight to help usher in the beautiful return of the first movement’s second subject – like an old friend returning after a long absence! Happily flute and horn amply supported the piano here, just like during the “old times”. For the rest of the work, the piano took charge, driving the music towards the “big tune” at the end, Lina phrasing her lines expansively and romantically, pulling the orchestra along with her, and achieving real grandeur to finish.

The pianist was accorded a great ovation, and, I thought, deservedly so. I wondered in fact whether it was I who was at fault here, underestimating the demands made of the players by the sophisticated nature of the work’s sinuous, often somewhat elusive orchestral quality. Still, even so, I found it hard to understand the lack of sheer orchestral NOISE in places where surely the musicians would have “felt” the need to fill out tones and expand phrases naturally.

Judge of my surprise after the interval, when, right from the beginning of Mascagni’s score, the orchestra came alive! The strings dug into the melody and actually made it sing, while the winds and harp made a lovely impression, leading up to the first singer’s entry. This was Turidda (not Mascagni’s original “Turiddu”), sung by Ruth Armishaw, the character’s sex-change presumably the company’s response to the lack of an available tenor for the part. At least one hoped so, because despite one’s most liberated and politically-correct instincts, the scenario was always going to flounder spectacularly with the so-called “duel to the death” between the wronged husband and his wife’s lesbian lover at the story’s denouement – even in an age ridden with wholesale scuppering of traditional operatic presentations, this seemed a more than particularly perverse way of rearranging things.

Though obviously a concert performance, surely it would have been better to present the character as a “trouser role” in this case, a la Baroque opera, or one of the Richard Strauss stage works such as “Rosenkavalier”? Still, all credit to Ruth Armishaw, whose stylish singing certainly didn’t lack ardour – whether or not it was latent homophobia on my part, or merely my inability to make the “leap of imagination” required, I must confess I found myself ignoring her feminine attire, and responded to the strength of her commitment to the role as if she was a “Turiddu”.

Once again, the “second-half” orchestra amazed me with its energy and fullness of tone after the bells sounded, and the waltz tune took up its insinuating gait – the Italianate winds did exceedingly well, especially the piccolo. The chorus, seriously lacking weight of numbers, made up for a lack of tonal splendour with energetic and accurate singing. The brass seemed to have found their voices, and with the timpani, made telling contributions to the cadence-points. Everything had the kind of “schwung” (yes, I know, this isn’t German opera!) that one imagines one would find in the average Italian provincial opera house in this repertoire.

Sharon Yearsley (as Santuzza, the would-be lover of Turidda) and Jody Orgias (as Lucia, Turidda’s mother) made the most of their exchanges in their somewhat fraught opening scene – both alive to their characters’ dramatic possibilities and using their voices accordingly, Yearsley’s particularly heartfelt. Also right into his part, as with almost everything I’ve seen him do, was baritone Kieran Rayner as Alfio, the village carrier, his voice bristling with energy and rustic directness, unaware at this stage of his wife Lola’s affair with Turidda, and single-mindedly intent about his business.

The whole Easter Hymn sequence that followed swept us up satisfyingly and carried us along – it’s music that almost blackmails the listener emotionally, so direct is its lyrical and cumulative appeal. Everybody on the performance platform seemed totally committed and involved, at one with conductor Brent Stewart’s impressive control of the buildup to the soprano’s’ thrilling climactic note at the chorus’s end.

Wholly admirable was Sharon Yearsley’s pacing of her role, outlining the complex history of the knot of relationships between the main players in the story to Jody Orgias’s patient and responsive Mama Lucia, then pulling out the stops with Turidda’s entry. With two women singing the impassioned encounter between them that followed, the scenario seemed almost to transcend time and place and take on the power of an opera seria scene from a work by Handel – great singing from both Armishaw and Yearsley, nicely interrupted by the flirtatious Lola (Alison Hodge oozing charm and insouciance with her Waltz-Song), but rising again to a furious climax as Turidda rejects Santuzza and follows Lola, voices and orchestra again delivering plenty of raw power.

More goings-on bubbled up with Alfio’s arrival, Yearsley and Kieran Rayner making the most of their dramatic exchange, as the hapless Alfio was told by Santuzza of his wife Lola’s renewed involvement with Turidda. Not surprisingly, at one point Yearsley almost faltered, but rallied splendidly – throughout, the orchestra surpassed itself. with splendidly baleful tones. What an emotional contrast provided by the famous Intermezzo! – the violins struggled a little at first, but were more securely-toned when doubled by the lower strings for the “big” melody – the whole nicely shaped by Brent Stewart, and marked by some sensitive harp playing.

The few bars of waltz music that follows always makes the hairs at the back of my neck stand up, for some reason, and this performance made no exception – Ruth Armishaw, chorus and orchestra tore into the Drinking Song with gusto, despite a few scratchy ensemble moments, and caught the excitement of the last few bars with a will. The baleful brass accompanying Alfio’s entry, and the subsequent viola solo  (so darkly poised) helped create real menace, even if the ‘cellos couldn’t advance the feeling with the same surety.

Plenty of support was forthcoming from the strings for Turidda in her impassioned “farewell” aria, and the orchestral energies continued right to the end – here was the “noise” that was wanted so badly earlier in the concert. Throughout the fateful offstage cries announcing Turidda’s murder and the subsequent whiplash chords, the sounds struck home splendidly.

So, very much a “tale of two halves” here, I felt, as far as the orchestra was concerned. Perhaps most of the rehearsal time was taken up with the opera (in which case it certainly showed) – but there again, perhaps it was the music. Mascagni would have had a fair idea of what the average Italian opera orchestra could play and tellingly deliver – raw emotion taking precedence over subtlety and shades of expression – and so his music would have probably been an easier proposition, especially for non-professionals, than that of Rachmaninov’s. Whatever the case, all credit to pianist Melanie Lina for her marvellous exposition of a redoubtably difficult work, both technically and interpretatively – I hope we see her back in the Wellington region before too long – and to the concert’s second-half singers, players and conductor for a thoroughly invigorating “slice of Italian verismo life” (with intriguing variations) – hugely enjoyable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NZSO’s welcome exposé of Schumann symphony and Elgar’s cello concerto

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Grams with Lynn Harrell (cello)

Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, Op 26; Elgar: Cello Concerto in E minor; Schumann’s Fourth Symphony, Op 120

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 4 May, 6.30pm

Lynn Harrell and the Elgar Cello Concerto brought about a full house, not as common an event for the NZSO as it once was.

The concerto certainly worked its spell and the audience was satisfied, but it was Schumann’s symphony that would surely have been the revelation. Half a century ago Schumann was probably among the top ten composers while, in New Zealand at least, Berlioz, Liszt, Mahler and Bruckner, Strauss and Sibelius would have been somewhat more marginal.

Now Schumann is seen primarily as a composer of piano music and songs, plus a few chamber works. But the fierce commitment to this symphony that Andrew Grams managed to communicate to the orchestra, and so to us, changed all that. The slow (Ziemlich langsam), atmospheric introduction with its arresting cello and bass underlining offered the hope of a thoroughly convincing performance, as Grams’s clear, incisive body language seemed to convey a spirit that energised the playing.  Nevertheless, one could be excused for feeling now and then that, in spite of the careful dynamic and tempo shaping that characterised his clear-sighted interpretation, certain musical gestures were repeated too often.

The very short slow movement, marked Romance, which follows the first movement without a pause, received a sensitive performance with attractive oboe and violin solos. I never expect its unheralded end and the following Scherzo is unexpected; it might be one of Schumann’s less subtle, less happy conceptions with its pauses that seem merely mechanical, but the performance offered a charming balance between resolute outer section and the twice-over trio.

A slow, imposing introduction created an air of expectant mystery, as with the first movement; again precedes the last movement which Grams attacked with visual flamboyance and energy that the orchestra responded to energetically. One is grateful, however for the arrival of the lyrical second theme to temper the somehow forced feeling of the main theme and its working out. There was no doubt that the conductor believes in Schumann’s orchestral works, and let us remember that this was the second he wrote immediately after his outpouring of song, and just after his rapturous Spring Symphony; not in his last troubled years when his inspiration became more fitful; Grams’s enthusiasm generated an ardent conclusion that touched both players and audience.

The concert had started with Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, one of those pieces very familiar to my generation – I remember it from 78 rpm recordings that we heard in music classes at college – but rarely played today. It is of course a small masterpiece. Its performance was atmospheric, the timpani and strings held in careful check till the moment when sunlight bursts forth. A fine clarinet solo lit the middle section and it subsided with a careful diminuendo.

The Elgar, which for some of the audience was the only reason to be there (several seats fell empty after the interval – poor misguided souls!), was a rendering that might have divided those of the audience who have allowed themselves to become devoted to particular performances. It is not necessary to hear Jacqueline du Pré’s as the only possible interpretation, especially in a work where the composer’s emotions are so close to the surface and so invite cellists (and orchestras) to explore those emotions, inevitably through their own instincts.

Obviously Lynn Harrell comes from a different social and musical background from some of the famous interpreters, and one might have expected a somewhat less emotionally wrought performance than what we had. But in fact I felt his playing pushed occasionally towards sentimentality, elongating phrases, indulging rubato generously, yet he was also sparing with vibrato and he always judged his balance with the orchestra astutely (and the orchestra with him). In the more overtly virtuosic passages his playing was fluent and agile, musical above all. The concerto is nevertheless given to certain rhetorical touches that are a bit wearying – those big chords that punctuate the lines of the last movement, rather like those in the first movement of the Lalo concerto.

The audience responded with great enthusiasm and he rewarded them with an arrangement of Chopin’s Nocturne in E flat (Op 9 No 2), overacted somewhat, but an attractive, well-received encore.

The concert was at least as important for its orchestral contribution under this youngish American whose extrovert and clearly delineated command brought energy and varied colour to the entire concert.

New Zealand String Quartet continues Beethoven cycle with magnificent pair from Op 59

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

‘Beethoven Revolution’: The second phase of a complete cycle of the string quartets

Op 59 Nos 2 & 1 (of the Razumovsky Quartets)

Wellington Town Hall

Thursday 3 May, 7.30pm

The programme listed the pieces to be played in this first of two concerts devoted to the ‘middle’ period of the quartets, from the three Razumovsky quartets, the ‘Harp’ (Op 74) and Op 95, showing the two at this concert as Op 59 Nos 1 and 2 in that order. Gillian Ansell spoke at the beginning and evidently told us that they would be played in reverse order, but the sound system (or my sound system?) was not good enough for me to hear that.

(By the way, though the common English spelling is ‘Rasumovsky’, the name in Russian is spelled with a ‘z’ in the first syllable – Разумовский; it’s transliterated in German with ‘s’ since ‘s’ is pronounced ‘z’ when between two vowels. Thus, since he was not a German, it should be represented in English by the equivalent letter – ‘z’).

I had not looked at the programme and when, in the second half, I opened it to check on the markings of the movements that I realised that the programme had the two quartets in the wrong order.

It made excellent sense, for the E minor quartet (No 2) is more powerful, sombre and dramatic than No 1, and thus made an arresting start. And incidentally, I noticed that my old set of LPs by the Gabrieli String Quartet also arranges them 2, 1 and 3.

The first two movements of No 2 in E minor are the longest of any of the Razumovsky set, and their placing at the concert’s start made a resolute and arresting opening to the concert

But the players did not allow those moments of particular force to dominate, and for the most part there was an airy, open feeling in the music, varied with the most tender pianissimo that grew entrancingly in slow crescendi.

The second movement, Molto adagio, with the added injunction to play it ‘con molto di sentimento’, is a remarkable piece of music which sounds prescient of the quartets of 15 years later, so unusual in its otherworldliness even though it breaks into the tonic major key, from the E minor of the quartet as a whole. The performance, particularly Helene Pohl’s high-soaring violin, was deeply affecting; and one cannot help but think of the interest Beethoven is said to have taken in Kant’s early Theory of the Heavens written half a century before.

The third movement was captured by it spirit as a haunting, disembodied dance, with important contributions by Gillian Ansell’s viola soon echoed in an uncanny stillness from Doug Beilman’s violin. The entire movement reflected a masterly distillation of feeling.

The F major quartet is not of the transcendental character of the preceding one. F major, which is heard by Beethoven, and others as a sanguine and human scale key, is the key of two other major works of the middle period: the Pastoral Symphony and the Op 54 piano sonata,. Yet it still sets a new benchmark; in contrast to the Op 18 set each of which lasts less than half an hour, both these are around 40 minutes in length and speak in a different language, that is spacious, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes soul-searching, routinely profound.

Here it was Rolf Gjelsten’s cello that made the first statement over a staccato accompaniment with a tremolo quality. Startling phantom chords lead to a rather grand melody, all making plain the distance the composer has come in just a few years.

The Scherzo – or scherzando in this case – second movement was wittily handled with a droll tune in a mocking dance rhythm, each instrument taking its turn in a staccato passage, then a very contrasted second subject that soon emerges as a surprising fit with what has gone before.

The slow movement was played for all its poignant, elegiac feeling, each instrument making the most of every individual phrase, emotional but never cloying. That runs straight into the finale – Allegro which is famously built on a Russian folk tune, a gesture to Count Razumovsky.  Though the music follows sonata form, the strength of the tune which has the feel of a rhetorical ending, repeated many times, seems to me like a study in ‘coda-as-substantive movement’, a series of admittedly quite elaborate and fugally-rich perorations that resume after a moment’s pause. The quartet might well have exhausted Beethoven’s disposition ever to write a rhetorical coda again.

The quartet is at present at the very top of their game – well, they’ve been there for quite a while – and I look forward to the next concert, containing the third of the Op 59 as well as Opus 74 and 95, which, oddly, will not be performed in Wellington – but at Upper Hutt on 11 June  and Waikanae on 17 June.

Especially, the profound insight, the maturity and the ability to illuminate the infinite variety of Beethoven’s invention that the players have displayed so far makes the performances of the late quartets in September a more than ordinarily exciting prospect.

 

 

Diverting wind trio in delightful programme at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Rameau: Gavotte et Doubles
Françaix: Divertissement
Beethoven: Variations on a theme ‘La ci darem la mano’ from Mozart’s Don Giovanni
Schulhoff: Three movements from Divertissement for oboe, clarinet and bassoon

Wild Reeds: Calvin Scott (oboe), Mary Scott clarinet), Alex Chan (bassoon)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 2 May 2012, 12.15pm

The playing of the ‘Wild Reeds’ was wonderfully uplifting right from the start of their programme.  It may have been a wild wind with rain outside, but this ensemble, far from being wild, was precise and euphonious.

The Rameau work was delightful in its several contrasting movements that contained solos, with mainly harmony on the other instruments.  The pieces were an arrangement of a Rameau keyboard work.

The printed programme had excellent notes on the works, and on the history of this combination of instruments.  The Trio des anches de Paris was evidently formed in 1927 by a bassoonist; he and his colleagues believed that the flute and horn did not blend well with reed instruments. It was good, too, to have the dates of composition of the works.

The Françaix piece featured tricky timing in places, especially in the second movement, but these players were always together; their expertise as performers was not in question at any point.

This was quite unconventional and quirky music, reminding me of the writing for woodwind of Françaix’s fellow-countryman and near contemporary, Poulenc, not to mention the slightly earlier Ravel and Satie.

The third movement, Élégie, of this four-movement work was not as peaceful as one might expect a work having this title to be. The Scherzo could have been depicting birds having a squabble, at the start.  Then they make up, yet there was still the odd disagreement before they went their separate ways and did their own thing, stopping just to say a spiky ‘good-bye’.

Beethoven’s Variations reveal masterly treatment of this great melody from Mozart.  The first variation gave the solo writing to the oboe, the second to the bassoon – who would have imagined that this instrument could be so rapidly talkative?

The third was slow and harmonic, while the fourth provided rapid passages for all three instruments at first, followed by some that were mainly for oboe.  The fifth was a contrast, being in a minor key, while the sixth had the clarinet leading the variation.  Variation seven had the lower tones on the clarinet playing along with the bassoon, which had solo sections, while rapid passages were played by the clarinet.  Finally, we had a slow, languid ending restating the theme.

The last item on the programme consisted of three movements (Charleston, Florida and Rondino) from the Schulhoff Divertissement.  The lively Charleston had the instruments sometimes almost seeming to be at one another’s throats!  Florida was a more lyrical piece, with a surprise ending, and Rondino was fast – a sort of perpetuum mobile, with a few stopping places along the way, and a sudden ending.

This programme seemed slightly short, but the players obliged with an encore: a trio that follows a soprano solo in J.S. Bach’s Cantata no.68.  The original instrumentation was violin, oboe and bassoon. The instrumentation of Wild Reeds sounded quite spiky, but very effective.

The delight the audience obviously had in this highly skilled group’s performance demands that St. Andrew’s must schedule them again.  Its programme selection was interesting, and the combination of instruments refreshing; the players were expert musicians indeed.

Halida Dinova – Russian Soul from Tatarstan

Posted on by Peter Mechen

HALIDA DINOVA – Piano Recital

Chamber Music Hutt Valley

Music by JS BACH, LISZT, DEBUSSY, MENDELSSOHN, SCRIABIN, RACHMANINOV,  BALAKIREV, SCHUBERT and CHOPIN

Little Theatre,Lower Hutt

Wednesday, 2nd May 2012

It seemed as if I had barely recovered my poise and equilibrium in the wake of Sofya Gulyak’s stupendous recital at the NZSM’s Adam Concert Room in Wellington not a week beforehand, before encountering another wonderful pianist from the Russian Federation.

This was Halida Dinova, originally from Tatarstan, and currently living and teaching in Cleveland, USA, where she studied at the Institute of Music. From these somewhat far-flung worlds she had come here, and was giving a recital under the auspices of Chamber Music Hutt Valley at the Little Theatre in Lower Hutt.

I neither understand, nor wish to question whatever constellations in the firmament whose movements shape and influence our musical lives conspired to bring such an overwhelming juxtaposition of pianistic talent within our spheres. But all I know is that, within the space of a few days we had been presented with two opportunities of directly experiencing a “grand manner” of piano-playing one can normally only read about or experience second-hand through recordings.

So, at this point in my review, I propose to declare my intention to write about Halida Dinova’s playing as a “stand-alone” experience, and not get bogged down in a morass of comparisons between her and her compatriot, Sofya Gulyak – suffice to say that, as with Gulyak, Dinova had only to play a phrase for the listener to fairly guess that she had been brought up in a pianistic environment which favored a distinct style of playing and attitude towards interpretation.

This was playing in that “grand manner” I spoke about earlier – playing which demonstrated whole paradoxes of intensity and imagination, focus and colour, sharply-drawn edges whose parameters took in what seemed like limitless possibilities of fancy. Dinova’s sound seemed at once to speak to us directly, and yet suggest much more than what we heard – as if the music she made was presented as sound and then turned into poetry.

Her opening measures of the Bach/Busoni transcription of the Adagio from the C Major Toccata and Fugue BWV 564 which began the recital said it all, really – big, resonant, long-breathed playing, both disciplined and romantic, superbly coloured and finely nuanced.

Dinova’s own transcription and playing of the well-known Toccata and Fugue in D Minor BWV 565 was what the French call a “tour de force” – I scribbled in my notes “Stokowski on the piano!”, so orchestral and impactful was her playing. For some reason she omitted Bach’s notorious “horror arpeggio” on both of its scheduled appearances in the introduction, but her playing was of an order that swept away any such incidental considerations in a torrent of sound-impulse which broke over the listener like oceanic waves. Her playing of the fugue stupendously achieved with two hands and the pedal what organists normally need their two feet for as well!

After these musical avalanches, it was somewhat ironic that we found in the music of Liszt some lighter contrast – though Dinova’s birdsong at the opening of the first of Liszt’s Two Legends, during which we heard St. Francis of Assisi preaching to an avian audience, was more than usually forthright – obviously there were skeptics in the feathered ranks, needing all the Saint’s powers of eloquence and persuasion to put across his message of love and salvation for all creatures.

For a piano supposedly on its last musical legs, as we were told by Chamber Music committee member Mike Rudge in his welcoming speech, the instrument was nevertheless made by Dinova to tingle with whatever life its strings, mechanism and frame still possessed. In fact, after the recital, she told me that she thought the society ought to get the piano reconditioned, rather than purchase a new instrument, as she really liked what it did for her!

To reproduce all the notes I scribbled while listening to Dinova play would be to try readers’ patience – enough to say that she brought to a wide-ranging program this distinctive “way” with piano-playing alluded to earlier, while realizing all and more of what one thought of the possibilities suggested by the names of these pieces and their composers.

Only during the bracket of Debussy that she played did she seriously part company with my feelings about the music – her performance of the admittedly difficult “Poisson d’or” from Book Two of Images I found oddly “rubbery” and unatmospheric, as though she was suddenly a child playing with toy fish in a bath. Doubly odd, because she had just given us a “Reflects dans l’eau” from Book One which was purely magical evocation, as watery a texture as could be imagined, but with plenty of glint and sparkle in the flourishes, a wonderfully iridescent sound-picture, at once warm and transparent. And I have never heard anybody lavish so much love and care on the salon-like Waltz La Plus que Lente, enough to transform it into something that sounded like a masterpiece (as well, Dinova was completely unfazed by a door noisily opening and shutting at one point in the proceedings!).

Dinova gave us a sharply-etched, glint-eyed Mendelssohn E Minor Scherzo, the music tripping deftly between faery and demonic mode, the pianist surviving a ‘splash” at the end of one of her runs which occasioned a wry, self-deprecating look at the keyboard from the pianist at the end of the piece, something which mattered not a whit in the context of such amazing overall dexterity. By contrast, the Scriabin left-hand Nocturne conjured up whole worlds of enchantment, the playing without smudging or clouding, but resonating beautifully throughout.

One expects, not unreasonably, to hear Rachmaninov from a Russian pianist, and Dinova’s way with two of the Op.23 Preludes reminded me of the composer’s own sharply-etched playing on his recordings. In reverse order to the programme’s listing she played the well-known G Minor with plenty of impulsive thrust, spiking the rhythms with accented notes in a way that added an element of menace to the momentums. And (bless her!) she played the throwaway ending, instead of the loud concluding chord that the composer unaccountably put into a later edition of the score! The E-flat Major she adroitly wove into a seamless surge, the central climax melting into delicacy at the end, the line, as always, both intensely-focused and pliable.

As for Balakirev’s notoriously challenging Islamey, which closed the first half, Dinova engaged with the piece on all fronts, relishing the rapid-fire toccata-like passages, whirling figurations, fistfuls of chords and sudden changes of rhythm, texture and dynamics than make this work one of the showcases for virtuoso pianists strutting their stuff. But nowhere did Dinova make us feel she was simply displaying her pianistic wares – she was too intent on bringing out the character of the different parts of the music, my favorite moment in her performance being the reprise of the toccata-like rhythms after the more lyrical central episode, where her out-and-out keyboard physicality took both music and listeners for an exhilarating bucking bronco ride – a breathtaking experience!

Being a sucker for Liszt’s Schubert Transcriptions, I enjoyed Dinova’s playing of them unreservedly, the beautiful Auf dem Wasser zu singen contrasting most tellingly with the spooky Erlkönig. In the context of this recital they made a fitting introduction to the remainder of the second half, which was taken up with Chopin’s 24 Preludes Op.28.

Pianist and pedagogue Hans Von Bulow (whom history unfortunately remembers most readily as the man whose wife Wagner stole) famously wrote a “program note” for every single one of these preludes, some of which are fanciful to the point of surrealism. His actions,of course, reflected the desire of musicians of his age to characterize the music that they played, for the benefit of their listeners. To my delight, Dinova’s programme printed Bulow’s titles for each of the Preludes.

One wasn’t aware of a specific program as such while listening to Dinova’s playing of these pieces, but such was the power of her musical “imaging” one could without too much trouble bring to mind pictures or words or both in response to what she was doing and how. They weren’t, I felt, offered by the pianist as abstracted pieces, though one could undoubtedly treat them as such if one wanted to, and resist the blandishments of the extremely vivid playing. As with nearly everything she gave us throughout the recital Dinova’s identification with Chopin’s sound world seemed at the time entirely appropriate as a synthesis of mind and heart, intellect and feeling.

Throughout the recital, but especially throughout the second half, Dinova proclaimed her allegiance to an older, more traditional manner of playing by consistently allowing her left hand to rhythmically anticipate the right, as many of the generation of pianists who made the earliest recordings known did as a matter of course. Also, from the outset the depth of tone and sense of “communing” with each of the Preludes added to a sense of their integral power – here they seemed more than usually “knitted together”, each one greater for the company of its fellows. Having said this it seems hypocritical of me to single out any for special comment – but I particularly loved her light, airy, out-of-doors way with the Lisztian No.23, which Bulow called “A Pleasure-Boat”, here, sounding like something out of the first Book of Liszt’s  “Annees de Pelerinage”  (Years of Pilgrimage).

As if she hadn’t done enough to satisfy, Dinova generously gave us both Scriabin and Rachmaninov as encores, setting the seal on what was a recital to remember. And, as with Sofya Gulyak, let’s sincerely hope we in New Zealand haven’t seen the last of her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An overwhelming Missa Solemnis from the Orpheus

Posted on by Peter Mechen

PSATHAS – Luminous

BEETHOVEN – Missa Solemnis

Emma Fraser (soprano) / Bianca Andrew (mezzo-soprano)

Cameron Barclay (tenor) / Kieran Rayner (baritone)

Orpheus Choir

Vector Wellington Orchestra

Marc Taddei (conductor)

Welliington Town Hall

Sunday, 29th April 2012

Along with his last symphony, which he finished at about the same time, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, completed in 1824, is justly reckoned to be the finest and grandest of his public utterances as a composer. One commentator went so far as to term the work  a “sacred symphony, one whose secular counterpart (the Ninth Symphony) followed shortly afterwards”.

The composer called the Mass “my greatest work”, which perhaps explains in part the somewhat bewildering duplicity with which he arranged to receive advances for the work from at least six publishers before settling on a seventh, as well as privately selling ten prepublished copies to various royal patrons. Obviously Beethoven wished that what he held so dear ought to be similarly regarded by the outside world, more especially so as his financial circumstances at the time of writing the Mass were even worse than usual.

Financial considerations aside, Beethoven’s intention, according to letters written to his patron, the Archduke Rudolf, was “to awaken lasting religious feelings both in the singers and in the audience…..there is nothing loftier than to come nearer the Deity than others and, and from here to distribute the heavenly rays among Mankind….”. With these sentiments firmly in mind, the words “Mit Andacht” (With devotion), found written over the opening of the score, is the overriding instruction for the performers.

Which is all well and good, except that those same performers are confronted with a work bristling with difficulties, one whose composer demonstrated little concern at various places throughout the score for ordinary human capabilities. At almost any stage in the work’s performing history, it seems as though its challenges have been emphasized almost to the exclusion of its actual content – thus the Musical Times of 1882 pronounced in no uncertain terms that “The work is impossible. No human lungs can withstand the strain imposed by it.”  And despite today’s orchestral and choral standards being of the level of technical excellence hitherto undreamed of, critics and listeners continue to report performance woes and mishaps – this from a review of a recent London performance, for example:

“Time and time again could be heard many of the soprano singers striving to meet Beethoven’s very severe demands on them, only to be undermined by a substantial number of their colleagues merely screaming at the note and missing. The tenors too were often wild, with individual voices coming through. That Beethoven’s demands are severe should not mean that listeners have to make allowances……”

Of course, Beethoven’s score for the Missa Solemnis has long been cited, along with various of his “late” works as embodying the idea that the composer refused to compromise his artistic vision to the limitations of instruments and musicians of his era – – hence his oft-quoted reply to a violinist who complained that a passage in one of his last quartets was virtually unplayable: – “Do you think I care about your miserable violin when the Spirit speaks to me?” – in other words, the idea counted far more than its execution.

All of which gives the impression to the uninitiated listener that the Missa Solemnis is a kind of intractable musical monster, created by a somewhat deranged creative spirit – certainly some of Beethoven’s contemporaries were shocked by what they actually heard of it, particularly the militaristic interpolations towards the end of the work’s final movement, the “Agnus Dei” –  a hapless critic lamented “what these strange trumpet-fanfares, the mixing in of recitative, the fugued instrumental section, which only destroys the flow of ideas…..what the hollow, unrhythmical bizarre timpani strokes are intended to mean, only dear Heaven knows…”. Of course, succeeding generations of music-lovers have more readily accepted Beethoven’s revolutionary attitudes to traditional form and expression – writing as early as 1861 the acerbic critic Eduard Hanslick, after hearing a performance, wrote about the work’s “sublime ideas” and admired its creator’s “double majesty of genius and adversity”. In this sense the composer was correct when he remarked to a friend “my music is not for this, but for a later time”.

Even in our time the work has the power to startle and surprise listeners unprepared for its boldness and daring. And these were precisely the qualities which were brought to the fore by the Orpheus Choir, the Vector Wellington Orchestra and four radiantly-voiced soloists under Marc Taddei in the Wellington Town Hall on Sunday afternoon. The concert actually featured another, shorter work as a kind of prelude, John Psathas’s fanfare Luminous, one whose intensities, though very different to those of the Missa Solemnis activated both our sensibilities and the sound-vistas of the hall, and put us in a “tingling” frame of mind, ready for the coruscations of  the Beethoven work. I thought that, in this respect, it was good programming, even if I for one would have been happy with having the Mass as a “stand alone” experience.

Throughout the whole of the first part of the work, the Kyrie, Gloria and Credo, Beethoven is in his grandest, most imposing mode, with energy and drama to the fore, and frequent contrasts between fast and slow, loud and soft, music with “attitude writ large”. By contrast, the two following movements, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei, are generally more intimate and personal-sounding, apart from a few irruptions of energy (at the words “Pleni sunt coeli in terra” during the Sanctus, for example, and during the latter part of the Agnus Dei, when the composer reminds his listeners all too palpably of the horrors of war).

I would doubt that there’s another work in the standard repertoire that puts a choir through its paces to the extent that this one does – throughout these first three movements the energy levels of the singers are taxed to an incredible extent. Very wisely, Marc Taddei called for a “tuning-break” between the Gloria and the Credo, one which I appreciated as well, as one is otherwise literally bounced by the composer from one alpine peak to another, between the two sections. But in general, I could have wept for joy at the strength, power and beauty of the Orpheus Choir’s  singing throughout. Such a great deal is required by the composer of his singers, and I thought the choir’s stirring commitment to the task was as much a tribute to its Music Director Mark Dorrell as to the other “Marc” who directed the performance with such inspirational élan and all-encompassing energy.

As for two or three places where the choir was pushed fractionally beyond its limits by the conductor, such as the fugal conclusion of the Credo and the aforementioned “Pleni sun coeli” in the Sanctus, the momentary ensemble imprecisions proclaimed a certain spirit of risk-taking, of going to extremes entirely appropriate for such a work in performance – a case, perhaps, for the idea that the pursuit of perfection is in itself a greater undertaking than its actual achievement. Conductor Marc Taddei certainly seemed like a man possessed throughout, inspiring his musicians to put themselves on the line and give it all they had. At the same time, his sense of the work’s overall structure remained admirably clear-sighted, so that, in his hands the work sounded every bit like the masterpiece that it’s reputed to be.

Heroes of equal standing were the orchestral players, every section covering itself with glory, realizing all of the work’s demands throughout – the brass I thought were outstanding, the horns in particular – and of course they all had a fine old time during the Agnus Dei, putting across Beethoven’s militarist evocations of the perils and sufferings of war. What an extraordinary sequence this made,  the raw force of the composer’s message here given plenty of power and intensity by singers and players alike, right up to the work’s somewhat abrupt ending.

Pivotal in this scheme of things were the four young soloists (all of whom, in a context of such awe-inspiring grandeur of expression, looked excessively youthful!). As it turned out, Emma Fraser, Bianca Andrew, Cameron Barclay and Kieran Rayner made a veritable dream team of voices. They were placed at the back of the orchestra and in front of the choir, as though they were singing in an integrated space, rather than “out the front” – and this worked well because their voices had the heft to be clearly heard. Baritone Kieran Rayner had a little difficulty in this regard because of the lowness of some of his notes, although higher in his range the voice “told” with no impediment. All made a beautifully blended sound as well as handling their individual lines with great aplomb. Especially affecting was their singing in the Sanctus and Benedictus, sounded in tandem with the orchestra’s concertmaster Matthew Ross, whose violin solo triumphed over a couple of uncertain moments to contribute to the work’s most sublimely beautiful passages.

This was a performance that I’m sure will be talked about for a long time to come – all credit to conductor, choir, orchestra and soloists for their part in creating our very own and much-cherished version of the stuff musical legends are made of.