Category: Reviews – Concerts

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.

Schubert’s “Winterreise” a truly unforgettable journey at St.Mark’s, Woburn for HVCM

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Hutt Valley Chamber Music presents:
SCHUBERT – Winterreise  (Winter Journey) D.911

Will King (baritone)
Nicholas Kovacev (piano)

St.Mark’s Church, Woburn, Lower Hutt

Friday 2nd July 2021

I was brought up to believe that Franz Schubert was one of music’s most tragic figures, one whose circumstances were marked by privation, neglect and suffering – his was the archetypal Romantic scenario, fuelled by conjecture and fantasy, and bolstered up with a certain emphasis on the “tragic” aspects of his numerous works. Consequently, his song-cycle “Winterreise” came to be regarded as the ultimate nihilistic will and testament of the suffering and misunderstood creative artist, an outpouring of despair and disillusionment fit to be compared with the visionary paintings of the last years of Vincent Van Gogh.

Though such a made-to-order recipe supporting this idea of incomprehensible genius spurned was taken up as proof of greatness and institutionalised as such over many years, the truth of the matter serves not to diminish Schubert’s creative stature, but to actually enhance it, and bring it closer in spirit and intent to life as we ordinary mortals understand it. Schubert was certainly known and recognised as a creative artist in Vienna during his lifetime (a letter apparently addressed to “Franz Schubert, famous composer in Vienna” has been documented as reaching him from Germany!).

He was for a long time considered Beethoven’s inferior – his symphonies and piano sonatas were unfavourably compared with those of the older composer, and even the stellar qualities of the songs seemed to reinforce the attitude that he was little more than a “miniaturist”. The piano sonatas particularly suffered from neglect – Sergei Rachmaninov was, in the 1920s, amazed to learn that Schubert had written any at all! Today we know differently – and we are able to “place” more significantly in the scheme of things the incredible emotional range of Schubert’s music, and its ambiguity of expression.  As with Beethoven, one is left with a “great divide” between works of geniality and great voyages upon a sea of troubles – the coexistence of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony and the Op.132 String Quartet, for example, can be equated in Schubert’s oeuvre with that of the “Trout” Quintet and, say, the String Quintet, or, again, with this great song-cycle Winterreise.

Schubert’s early death, as a result of syphilis and its horrific treatment, has also “coloured” his achievement as a composer (Franz Grillparzer’s much-quoted epitaph, “The art of music here entombed a rich possession, but even fairer hopes” encouraged the “tragic figure” image), one to which the subject of Winterreise has also contributed. Interestingly, Schubert had seen only half of the twenty-four poems by Wilhelm Müller when he began composing the cycle in 1827, telling his friend Joseph von Spaum when emerging from a period of self-imposed isolation that he had  written ”some terrifying songs”, and sang and played for his circle of friends the whole of the first book. Spaum recalled the disturbance created by the songs’ “black mood” as well as the composer’s Beethoven-like response to his friends’ bewilderment that they would eventually “hear and understand them”. The second group of songs were completed later that year; and in the time left to him afterwards Schubert produced some of his greatest works, including the String Quintet, the E-flat Piano Trio, the last three Piano Sonatas, and the remaining songs collected and published after his death as Schwanengesang.

Wilhelm Müller was, of course the poet whose verses Schubert had already set in his earlier song-cycle of 1823, Die schöne Müllerin, a group of poems which pursue a definite narrative and culminate with the hero’s death, Schubert’s music transforming the somewhat stock-in-trade sentiments of the German Romantic literary tradition into sound-vignettes of infinitely suggestive depths of emotional insight, culminating in the extraordinary Des Baches Wiegenlied (“The Brook’s Lullaby”), where the brook consoles the lifeless form of the hero beneath its waters with words of rest and peace. Here, in Winterreise, by contrast, there is no rest, no peace, merely loneliness and isolation, loss and bitterness for the  traveller. One of the main differences between the cycles is in the piano part, in the earlier cycle readily colourful, physical, descriptive and engaging, while in the latter disconcerting in its austerity (I found the comments reproduced in tonight’s programme attributed to Benjamin Britten regarding the piano part of Winterreise most illuminating, stressing the piano’s conjuring up of mood and detail with the use of so few notes).

I’d heard only one live Winterreise performance previous to this present one  from Will King and Nicholas Kovacev at St.Mark’s Church in Woburn, Lower Hutt – this was a sobering ten years previously, from tenor Keith Lewis and pianist Michael Houstoun, at Waikanae, a reading that was especially notable for its progress towards a transcendence that “caught” the music in a mesmeric spell over the last five songs of the cycle, the numbed, essential bleakness of spirit conveyed with a feeling of “other-worldliness” underlined at the end by the traveller’s “passing over” into the realm of the ghostly hurdy-gurdy man, a place where earthly considerations seemed no longer to matter. Lewis and Houstoun seemed to me able to balance the sense of a palpable journey made by the lovelorn traveller with the equally pressing idea of there being no resolution of the spirit’s predicament to hope for, the bleakness of such an outlook in line with Schubert’s reported words describing his “terrifying songs”.

After what I thought was a slightly tentative beginning to Gute Nacht (Goodnight) from pianist Nicholas Kovacev, the playing thereupon seemed hand-in-glove with Will King’s beautifully “sounded” opening phrase – there was intensity of focus from both musicians, with the singer able to “illume from within” a word or phrase whose expression coloured the whole line, whether in anticipation or following. The third verse’s emphasis at Was soll ich langer weilen  (Why should I stay longer) was beautifully countered by the fourth’s sweetness at its major-key beginning, and further thrown into relief by the darkened minor-key final line. Next, the agitated opening of Die Wetterfahne (The Weather-vane) brought forth plenty of give and take of vocal intensities, concluding with almost desperate anger, which took on different, more desolate forms in the two songs leading up to Der Lindenbaum (The Lime Tree), dark and melancholy for Gefrorene Tränen  (Frozen Tears), and unsettled and troubled during Erstarrung (Turned to Ice), King managing to convey distress while phrasing with such elegance and variety.

Der Lindenbaum is, I think, the cycle’s first great in-transit “signpost”, given here with tender loveliness from both singer and pianist, the voice opening and radiating as the line rises and reaches the light at the top. King doesn’t make a “meal” of the minor key-change, darkening his tone, and suggesting the heartbreak without coarsening his delivery, singer and pianist eloquently making the beauty of the music’s return to an equanimity of sorts the true moment of catharsis. All the more bleak then the following song Wasserflut (Flood), here, with its Denis Glover-like bird call (a more desolate “Quardle Oodle Ardle Wardle Doodle”) reiteration of the opening figuration. From soft beginnings, King arched the line beautifully upwards each time, varying the intensities of its climax, all the while haunted by the repeated piano motif. The following Auf dem Flusse (On the River) energised this bleakness with a stepwise tread, King and Kovacev making the most of its fearful progress, surfaces crusted with still ice, yet surging fearfully beneath.

Rūckblick (Looking back) was here a classic “longing to return” moment, King and Kovacev conveying the torn, distraught emotions of one who longed to escape while wishing to go back to a happier time, with “zwei Mädchenaugen glühten” (a girl’s two eyes sparkling). The contrast with the ghostly, fatalistic Irrlicht (Will-o’the-Wisp) – lovely breath-control from the singer at the song’s end – and the ritualistic Rast (Rest), with its dramatic crescendi moving from physical stillness to inner turmoil, brought the wanderer to exhausted sleep and to dreams (Fruhlingstraume – Dream of Spring), King and Kovacev here charting a course between escapist delight and bitter reality with strongly-characterised focus. The disconsolate trudge of the ensuing Einsamkeit (Loneliness) turned gradually to desperation, Kovacev’s piano agitated and King’s tones dramatic and laden, the voice searching for some relief from the gloom. With the cycle’s second great “signpost” – the song Die Post (The Post) – the gloom momentarily lifted, King’s Wanderer running the gamut of emotion from expectation to disillusionment as the song tripped bitterly and ironically onwards.

Der greise Kopf (The grey head) which followed caught the desolation of the singer’s feelings of age and mortality though still a young man, conveyed by emptied-out vocal tones most effectively and dramatically. And both the crow (Die Krähe) and the falling leaves of Letzte Hoffnung (Last Hope) brought a sense of the traveller’s abandonment by nature itself, the singer desperately beseeching the crow to remain faithful, and then despairing as the last leaf fell blithely from a tree to the ground, King’s long-breathed legato lines a dying farewell to hope. With Im Dorfe (In the Village) Kovacev’s piano phrases smugly delineated the sleeping villagers’ dreams as King’s bitter tones renounced their world before taking his leave, and, with the added weight of the piano’s vigorous gesturings confronting the winter (Der sturmische Morgen), with near-manic phrases and exclamations, for me the third of the cycle’s “signposts” delineating a change or intensification of direction.

A sudden contrast of mood with Tauschung (Deception) suggested the onset of delirium as the traveller pursued a “dancing light” to which he confessed abandonment despite its possible “trickery” – King’s voice brought out vagaries of hope and disillusionment, which the following song, Der Wegweiser (The Signpost) gently but sombrely corrected, taking him further into the darkness of forsakenness. I thought King and Kovacev did so well with the next song, Das Wirthaus (The Inn), the almost ritualistic splendour and sacramental peace of the graveyard’s surroundings richly conveyed by the singing and playing, here, the tones then taking on a feeling of hollow, empty grandeur as the traveller realised that there was nowhere for him to rest.

What, then, of the triumverate of deception, delirium and disillusionment embodied by the final three songs? King and Kovacev generated a desperate kind of  foolhardiness, a delusional heroism with the first of the three, Mut (Courage), the voice almost manic in its upward thrusts, an amalgam of defiance and desperation,  before the trance-like Die Nebensonnen (The Mock Suns) gripped the singer with its hymnal focus and vision, the voice expressing wonderment at first and then disbelief and sadness, the piano resonating with the singer’s feelings as the tones died away. All that remained was Der Leiermann (The hurdy-gurdy man), the encounter with the old street musician, the piano articulating the haunting repeated refrain, the singer’s tones bleached of emotion and feeling, the heartbreakingly naïve concluding plea to the old man to be his companion made so focused and resonant as to linger on in the silence that followed, until we in the audience were allowed by the musicians to break the spell and show our (by then) gobsmacked appreciation of what we had just heard and experienced! Very great credit to these two on the occasion of a stunning achievement!

Octogenarians make a splendid 17th-century pair

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Baroque Voices and Palliser Viols present:
17th Century Octogenarians
Music by Heinrich Schütz and John Jenkins

HEINRICH SCHÜTZ  (1585-1672)
(from the Symphoniae Sacrae III 1650)
Wo der Herr nicht das Haus bauet (Unless the Lord build the house)
Was mein Gott will (What my God wills)
Mein Sohn warum hast du uns das getan? (My Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us?)
(from the Geistiche Chormusik 1648)
Auf dem Gebirge (From the mountains)
Sehet an den Feigenbaum (Look upon the fig tree)
Ich Weiβ, dass mein Erlöser lebt (I know that my Redeemer lives)

JOHN JENKINS (1592-1678)
Pavan à 5 No.2 in G minor
Duet in D minor, No.3, for 2 Bass Viols
Fantasy à 4  No.6 in F “All in a garden green”
Fantasy à 5  No.3 in G minor
Fantasy à 3 for treble, two bass viols and organ
Fantasy à 5 No.5 in G minor

Baroque Voices – Pepe Becker, Rowena Simpson (sopranos)
Hazel Fenemor, Milla Dickens (altos)
Peter Liley (tenor)
Will King, David Morriss (basses)

Palliser Viols – Rebecca Struthers, CJ Macfarlane, violins
Sophia Acheson, Will King, treble viols
Kevin Wilkinson, tenor viol,
Robert Oliver, tenor and bass viols
Imogen Granwal, bass viol,
Malcolm Struthers, double bass,
Douglas Mews, organ

St.Mary of the Angels Church, Boulcott St., Wellington

Sunday, 20th June 2021

This concert gave cause for joy on a number of counts, not the least in providing a dry and relatively comfortable place in which to spend a couple of hours on a more-than-usually inclement Sunday evening – though not particularly warm temperature-wise, the interior of St.Mary’s Church worked its usual visual and atmospheric magic over the duration, adding to the beauty and variety of the sounds recreated for our pleasure by the two ensembles, Baroque Voices and Palliser Viols.  We were treated to a marked contrast of genres between the music of each of the two “Octogenarian” composers represented – though they were contemporaries, Heinrich Schütz and John Jenkins created vastly different sound-worlds by dint of their respective preoccupations. Schütz wrote practically no stand-alone instrumental music, and Jenkins no vocal music to speak of. And finally, augmenting the pleasure of our hearing such a variety of sounds, there were the informative programme notes written by Palliser Viols director, Robert Oliver.

Through Oliver’s notes we learned of the connections between Schütz and two of the other “greats” of his time, Gabrieli, and then Monteverdi, whose influences truly “informed” his own music. The notes concerning Jenkins are more to do with his upright character and complaisance as a human being, though his maintenance of the tradition of polyphony was fostered indirectly through Monteverdi’s example via various of the latter’s vocal works transcribed for viols by Jenkins’ colleagues, John (Giovanni) Coprario and William Lawes. Oliver remarked at the conclusion of his notes upon the overall achievement of both of the evenings’ composers, thus – “masters of counterpoint, sublime control of complex textures and structures, producing music of great integrity and beauty”…..

Opening the programme was one of three works from Schütz’s Symphonia Sacrae III of 1650 to be performed this evening, the first being Wo der Herr nicht das Haus bauet (Unless the Lord build the house), a setting of Psalm 127. A beautiful instrumental introduction heralded the singers’ opening, the sopranos entering in canonic imitation, Pepe Becker’s and Rowena Simpson’s lines resonating gratefully and vibrantly. Beginning in the low register bass David Morriss’s voice gradually blossomed at “Es ist umsonst” (It is vain) as the line rose, to sterling effect. Throughout , the contrasting  timbres of the two soprano voices were delightfully ear-catching, the ensemble bringing fruition at the final “Wohl den”, with the watcher secure, the citadel held against the enemy. A consort song from Geistiche Chormusik, Was mein Gott will (What my God wills) followed, for alto and tenor, the voices singing alternately rather than together, making an attractive blend in cross-patch places though with tenor Peter Liley’s voice predominant and sounding more engaged with the text, alto Hazel Fenemor’s delivery somewhat more contained than I would have wished. Beautifully rounded string-playing and organ continuum gave splendid support throughout.

Came the first of John Jenkins’ works of the evening, the Pavan No.2 in g minor. Involving 5 instrumentalists – including Will King, to my surprise, as a treble viol player! – the instrument propped up on the player’s lap, rather like a miniature bass viol! The Pavan made a gorgeously “layered” sound, the church’s acoustical “bloom” giving the sound an unearthly resonance, as if the gods were making music in Elysium. It all seemed bejewelled, kaleidoscopic and exquisite. Then we heard a Duet (No.3 in d minor) for 2 bass viols – an “Air and Variations”, the theme stately and melancholy, the three variations featuring both running figures and sombre variants of the theme, Robert Oliver’s and Imogen Granwal’s instruments expertly running the gamut of pleasingly- contrasted figurations.

Grisly stuff next, with Schutz’s Consort Song Auf dem Gebirge (From the mountains), the subject matter being the massacre of the “Holy Innocents”(male children under two years of age) ordered by King Herod in the wake of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem. A false start meant we heard the opening twice before the voices came in, the two altos, Hazel Fenemor and Milla Dickens, both with soft voices, though with tones that seemed to suit the sombre nature of the text, and the music. Again the instrumental consort gave a rich bed of sound for the singers,  the words “Viel Klagens, Weinens und Heulens” (Much Sorrow, crying and howling) more restrained and hollowed-out than strongly emoted. “Rahel beweinete ihre Kinder” (Rachel is weeping for her children) was similarly inward with a stark beauty, the voices almost instrumental-sounding in their blending – only the rising line at “den es war aus” (that it was over) animated the expression briefly at the end.

Two more Fantasies by Jenkins followed, the first enticingly titled “All in a garden green”, described by Oliver as “a catchy folk-tune”, played by four instruments, the second with a fifth player joining the group. The first of these in F major was the “lighter” of the two, the second by comparison far more melancholic and ritualistic, seeming to tap endless possibilities in its permutations of melody and harmonies, moving from minor to major mode in variously “shaded” ways, and often in unexpectedly fashion. By this time, with the concert’s interval upon us. we seemed to have come a long way from the weather we had left behind at the church door when first arriving.

A comely pastoral air greeted us by way of beginning the second half, sung in canon-like fashion to begin with by soprano (Pepe Becker) and tenor (Peter Liley), both voices forthright and winning, the dancing rhythms at “Das jetzt der Sommer nahe ist” (Summer is close) offset by the long lines and ensuing silence during and after “Himmel und Erde vergehen” (Heaven and Earth will pass), the voices imitating and echoing one another so very evocatively.

Up until encountering the first instrumental Fantasy that followed I hadn’t particularly registered the organ-playing of Douglas Mews in any way but with a predictable kind of enjoyment of the instrument’s “presence” in such tried-and-true hands – then, for some reason these distinctive sounds drew particular attention to themselves throughout the next two pieces – both at the opening and within the course of the Fantasy à 3 for treble, two bass viols and organ, Mews coaxed a particularly delightful figuration from his instrument, giving us glimpses of the “heavenly and Divine Influences” spoken of by one Thomas Mace, quoted in the programme notes. Curiously, I formed the impression that the following Fantasy à 5 No.5 in G minor was taking us on a particularly adventurous and even improvisatory course courtesy of the players, when suddenly the music was halted, the lines having gotten themselves temporarily jangled! – a case of spontaneity gone astray? – the lines of music certainly seemed for a few moments more-than-usually unpredictable as to their course, re their exploratory urgings and coalescent-points! – fascinating!

Robert Oliver mentioned in his notes, in relation to the dramatic nature of the concert’s next item, Schutz’s  Mein Sohn warum hast du uns das getan? (My Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us?), how music had acquired increasing expressive possibilities at the time due to the rise of opera, exemplified by the composer’s setting of the passage from St.Luke’s Gospel describing the aftermath of the twelve year-old Jesus’ disappearance of the during a visit to Jerusalem and the anxiety of his parents, Mary and Joseph. The dark and serious sounds of the opening set the tone before two violins enlivened the textures, opening up the spaces for the two voices, soprano and bass, to voice their anxieties, Rowena Simpson’s Mary leading off with “Mein Sohn”, followed canonically by David Morriss’s Joseph, the lines following some lovely downwardly chromatic figures on “Schmerzen gesucht”, the sorrow palpable and affecting. The mood lightened with Pepe Becker’s entrance as Jesus, the vocal line lively and the tones sunny, the instruments echoing the singer’s energies! – the two violins echoed her guileless explanation “Wisset ihr nicht?” with great satisfaction!

Schutz “rounded off” this piece with a setting of Psalm 84, “Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen” (How lovely are Thy dwellings), the ensembled voices relishing sequences such as “Mein Leib und Seele freuet sich” My body and soul are joyful”, with energetic and smiling tones, concluding with the richly-laden warmth of “Die dich loben immerdar” (They will praise Thee forever).

Concluding the concert as scheduled was Schutz’s setting of the well-known text, Ich Weiβ, dass mein Erlöser lebt (I know that my Redeemer lives), joyously dancing music, with the whole ensemble following on from the womens’ voices. At “Un er wird mich hernach” (And he will awaken me) the dancing rhythms gave way momentarily to declamation, the ensuing contrasts here and in other places enchanting! At the end of the piece the alternation of the declamatory “Und meine Augen warden ihn schauen” (And my eyes will behold Him), and the more excitable and joyous “Ich und kein Fremde” (I and no other) made for a both grand and excitable conclusion to a lovely piece. The ensemble, incidentally, encored the “Wie lieblich” section of “Mein Sohn, warum hast du”, at the concert’s end, bringing out the contrasting characters of the sections even more markedly and smilingly.

In all, a richly rewarding concert experience!

 

 

Supertonic conjures up arcadian realms for an evocatively-sung “Rest” presentation

Posted on by Anne French

Supertonic Choir presents:
REST: – Faure’s Requiem and Songs of Remembrance

Supertonic Choir
Music Director Isaac Stone
Soprano Nicola Holt, Baritone William McElwee,
Organist Michael Fletcher

Music by Herbert Howells, Elizabeth Alexander, John Taverner, Kurt Bestor, U2 (arr. Bob Chilcott), Gabriel Faure

Cathedral of St Paul, Molesworth St. Wellington

Saturday 19 June 2021

It was a drear Wellington night. A cold drizzle was falling. I expected to see a tiny dedicated audience huddling in the cavernous cathedral. I was wrong.

The church was a good two-thirds full, and the enthusiastic audience seemed pretty familiar with Supertonic. The choir was founded in 2014, and by my estimation is one of the youngest choirs in Wellington, as well as one of the larger choirs, with 64 singers. The average age seems to be under 30. The sound they make is zingy with youth.

The Music Director, Isaac Stone, is a well trained singer and choir director with a deep background in barbershop and consequently he has an exquisite sense of pitch. For a large choir, Supertonic is gloriously in tune; precise and clean. Isaac Stone is a confident but not ostentatious conductor. He gets exactly what he wants, because all eyes are on him.

The programme was built around the Fauré Requiem and comprised six smaller a capella elegiac works, with the Fauré placed second to last. (More of this later.)

The concert opened with a beautiful and well known work by the English composer Herbert Howells, ‘Take him, earth, for cherishing’. Written in memory of John F. Kennedy, it has the fresh lyrical beauty typical of Howells. The text is from a poem by a fourth-century poet, translated by Helen Waddell, beginning:

Take him, earth, for cherishing,
to thy tender breast receive him.
Body of a man I bring thee,
noble even in its ruin.

All of that is sung by the three lower parts, piano, in a beautiful legato, until the soprano entry on the second page. The soprano sound had a passionate quality over more complex rhythms in the lower parts. The divisi sopranos produced a beautiful bell-like sound in the con anima section. The semi-chorus a little later sounded a tad untidy, as though the dotted rhythms were under-rehearsed; but the next divisi section was confident and together.

It is the sound of Supertonic that is so delightful: the freshness of youth plus the smoothness that is achieved with 60 singers. This was evident in the next work, ‘Y Comienzo a Bailar’, by Elizabeth Alexander, with piano accompaniment. The Spanish text is a soliloquoy of a woman preparing for La Dia de los Muertos, and includes a ravishing soprano solo, sung by Karishma Thanawala, one of the sopranos, with the choir sotto voce underneath.

Tavener’s ‘Song for Athene’ is also well known. Typical Tavener, using minimal material, and requiring utterly precise tuning over a bass drone. The work was most famously performed for the funeral of Princess Diana, sung as her coffin was carried out. Supertonic sang it splendidly; the dissonances were not labored, and the sustained singing built steadily to the crescendo, an outpouring of grief.

This was followed by a work called ‘Prayer of the Children’ by Kurt Bestor, an American composer of new age music and film scores. This is his best-known work, written in response to ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, and intended to be used to commemorate tragedies involving children. The words are banal, and the music not to my taste, but the choir sang it as though such thoughts had not occurred to them.

Yet the next work, MLK by the Irish band U2, arranged by Bob Chilcott (a former King’s College chorister), was the exact opposite: simple, direct, moving. It opens with a tenor solo (sung by Joel Miller, one of the tenors) with the choir backing him, and takes on a gospel feel, with a terrific low bass part. Coming after a lot of truly excellent singing, it was the stand-out piece of the first half of the concert.

The stage was reset during a short interval, with five string players and two soloists, soprano Nicola Holt and baritone William McElwee. The Cathedral organ is currently out of commission, so Michael Fletcher played the digital organ, which proved to be a mixed blessing (though the sight lines were good). The organ sound was too dominant in the first two movements, and overpowered the first baritone solo (‘Hostias’). But the choir! Such beautiful singing, with purity of tone and precise intonation.

The Sanctus was almost ruined before it began with an unscheduled ugly blurt of sound from the organ, but the choir’s entry was perfect. The entry of the men at the Hosanna was exciting, but the organ couldn’t match the choir’s volume at the first diminuendo and spoiled the effect.

Soprano Nicola Holt had to do only one thing, to sing the Pie Jesu, and she did it beautifully. She gave it the glorious full Aled Jones treatment and filled the cathedral.

The Agnus Dei had some splendidly sensitive accompaniment from the strings, but too much organ volume both there and in the Lux Aeterna. William McElwee’s Libera Me was assured and sat well in his voice. The organ’s Last Trump was almost too much, but the choir’s crescendo was magnificent, full and urgent. The women’s tone in the In Paradisum was light and ethereal, exactly as required –but once again the organ was just too dominant.

All in all, a gorgeous performance of a very well known and much loved work from choir and soloists with lovely string accompaniment.

And then… one last work. In this case it was an arrangement of a traditional South African song, and it is a pleasing work, well sung. But not well placed after the Fauré, which is after all a sublime piece of choral writing, and next to the plainchant Missa Pro Defunctis, the most perfect setting of the Requiem Mass text.

The Capital Band’s “Strange Meetings” a resounding musical success

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Capital Band presents:
STRANGE MEETINGS
Music by Hindemith, Haydn and Vaughan Williams
Poems by Wilfred Owen

The Capital Band
Musical Director: Doug Harvey
Concertmaster: Nick Majic
Poetry Reciter: Doug Harvey

HINDEMITH – Trauermusik
HAYDN – Symphony No.45 in F-sharp Minor “Farewell”
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS – String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor (arranged for string orchestra by TCB)

Vogelmorn Hall, Vennell St,.Brooklyn

Saturday 19th June, 2021

In contrast to the evening’s dark, clammy, out-of-doors ambiences generated by the drizzing rain, the warmth and vibrancy of Brooklyn’s Vogelmorn Hall’s son et lumiere  and pre-concert bustle was a positive pick-me-up for this audience member, generating a palpable sense of something special about to happen far removed from the privations of the weather!

As with some of its previous concerts, the Band on this occasion offered an enticing mixture of standard, regularly-presented repertoire and an intriguing transcription for orchestra of a chamber work, in this case a seldom-performed string quartet by Ralph Vaughan Williams. I’d head the first of the string quartets via a recording, but hadn’t “graduated” to the second – and the Band’s heartfelt musical presentation of the work underlined my wonderment at its relative neglect (but more of that later).

Though the other two works were better-known, neither could be said to be regularly-programmed items at orchestral concerts, in particular the Haydn Symphony, which tends to be a work more talked about than played, even if I have from memory seen at least one other performance, and one which, as here, added the “theatricality” of the players departing one-by-one during the last movement – which is the whole “point” of the piece, of course!

First to be performed was the Hindemith work, the Trauermusik (in English, “Funeral Music” or “Mourning Music”), a piece for viola and string orchestra, written at short notice by the composer in a single day (21st January 1936) as a tribute to King George V of England, who had died the previous evening. Hindemith, who was himself a violist, was in England for the purpose of performing the English premiere of his Viola Concerto, Der Schwanendreher, but when the concert was cancelled because of the King’s death, was asked if he would in its place write a short commemorative piece instead.  Hindemith completed the work in just six hours that day, and with the string players from the same orchestra and conductor (the BBC Symphony and Adrian Boult) was the soloist in a live broadcast of Trauermusik that same evening – a premiere of a different kind!

The presentation throughout the whole concert was nothing if not theatrical, as if “leading on” from the worlds-within-worlds contrast between the rawness of the elements without and the warmth and geniality within the venue at the start; with atmospheric lighting at the performance’s beginning, adding focus to the welcome in Te Reo given us by one of the players, and indicating something of the solemnity of the music’s occasion. Conductor Doug Harvey got a warm, rich sound from his players at the music’s outset, one which brought out a homogeneity of solemn feeling while keeping the individual lines clear. I thought the lower and deeper of the viola soloist’s lines were delivered more warmly and securely, his intonation showing some strain here and there as his line rose, though the accompanying figures gave him plenty of unfailing support. This music always surprises me by its brevity, its sense of “not a note wasted” seeming to defy normal time in a trance-like manner, and awaken us from the spell at the end most unexpectedly – here, the ensemble’s playing readily took us to those realms, and evoked a moment in time, a quiet frisson of valediction.

We are a bit “spoiled” for the “first fifty” Haydn Symphonies in Wellington at present in relative terms, most recently with this performance of No. 45, and the ensemble Camerata gradually working through the earliest essays by the composer in this form, hopefully about to take on No.14 at an as yet undisclosed date! I was sure I’d seen a performance of the “Farewell” elsewhere here in Wellington over the last dozen or so years, but the Middle C search engine (since 2008) has come up empty-handed! Whatever the case this performance made up in spadefuls for the omission with both interpretative focus and performance commitment from the Band, the occasional roughness around the music’s edges mattering not a whit amid the excitement, humour and gracefulness of the playing overall.

At the beginning the vigorous driving rhythms sharply underlined the music’s dynamic contrasts, with horns and winds colouring the textures most evocatively, setting the initial urgency against the grace and good humour of the second subject group. Throughout, the musicians did their best to “fill out” the hall’s somewhat dry ambiences and impart some bloom to the sounds. The second movement tempo adroitly caught the music’s grace and gentle humour, the winds’ entries particularly “pointed” following the gently “covered” tones of the strings. I enjoyed the floated string lines over the deftly “etched-in” accompaniments at the beginning of the music’s middle section, as well as the horns’ beautifully-voiced call in thirds at another point, the enchantment of it all coming from the musicians seeming to really “care” about making their notes speak to us.

The rapid tempo for the minuet took me by surprise, but conductor Harvey and his players made it work, uproariously sounding the tutti sections in contrast to the “Jack, be nimble” feetwork of the surrounding sequences. By the time the horns had gotten to introduce the Trio, I was grooving along with the music most happily, and chortling, albeit unobtrusively, at the music’s “throwaway” ending!

The fourth movement’s allegro wasn’t rushed off its feet, here, but allowed some girth, while still able to scintillate in the quick-moving passages, the dynamics strongly-focused with terrific ensemble-playing. At the opening’s reprise,  the horns and winds sounded out splendidly, holding their lines amid the growing agitations, leading up to the dramatic luftpause. The adagio which followed featured the gradual exit of all the players (and the conductor), and a “thinning-out” of the orchestral textures, finally leaving but two of the first chair violinists, who, sweetly and demurely, finished the work.

Haydn diplomatically devised this composition “scheme” in response to his musicians’ pleas for the composer to intercede with their employer, Prince Esterhazy, to grant them a “break” after a protracted stay at the Prince’s summer palace in the country, a day’s journey away from their families in another town. Apparently the message was understood by the Prince, as the entire court returned to the town the day after the symphony’s performance! It was all beautifully done, with  straight faces from the players and wry amusement amongst the audience!

However, the theatricality of all of this was nothing compared with what awaited us throughout the concert’s second half. Vaughan Williams wrote two string quartets, the second of which dates from the years 1942-44, over thirty years after the earlier work was completed. Consequently the two quartets are literally worlds apart, the Second containing elements relating to both the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, which were composed at around the same period. The first three movements owe more to the post-war Sixth Symphony (though the slow movement touches on the earlier Symphony in places), whereas the finale appears to revisit the relative peace and serenity of the earlier(wartime) Fifth Symphony. It’s a work whose neglect in the chamber music repertoire is difficult to understand – and the Capital Band’s transcription of the work for string orchestra splendidly conveys the music’s character in all of its aspects

A feature of the work is the prominent writing for the viola, fruit of the composer’s friendship with a young violist, Jean Stewart, whose quartet, the Menges Quartet, gave the premiere performance of the work in 1944. The first movement sounds very VW, with terrific tension and conflict between upper and lower voices,  the figurations in each register obsessively “at odds” with each other, culminating in a ferocious tremolando outburst which exhausts the combatative instincts of the voices, and imposes a semblance of order upon their interaction, presided over by the viola, again, more reliable in the instrument’s lower register.

Solo strings began the slow movement, a lovely, intimate effect which continued up to the wider-spanned choral-like writing, when the whole ensemble joined in, the contrasting passages between solo strings and larger ensemble recalling similar moments in the composer’s “Thomas Tallis Fantasia”. I found a further extended passage for the quartet alone very moving, the violins especially lovely, the viola and ‘cello properly supportive.

The Scherzo returned us to the eerie, more nightmare-like quality of the Sixth Symphony’s Scherzo. The “haunted flight” of the rapid figurations was readily conveyed by the string body, although again, the viola soloist struggled with his intonation in places. And then, as if by magic, the music “found” a different voice for the work’s finale, the ensemble conjuring up wave upon wave of positive emotion and banishing the darkness – I thought the playing of the more “restrained” lines incredibly moving, here, readily conveying to us the sense of a journey undertaken from darkness into light.

Readers of this review who were at the concert may be wondering why I’ve not until now mentioned the conductor Doug Harvey’s “dramatized” readings of several poems by Wilfred Owen, interspersed between the quartet’s movements. Conscious as I am of the amount of sheer hard work that must have gone into memorising the words and sentiments of these poems and their “enactment”, I simply didn’t feel justice was done to them by Harvey choosing to overtly “dramatize” the narratives with extended movements and marked changes of voice-level for dramatic effect which resulted in a lot of the words losing their clarity and coherence. Someone I didn’t know who was sitting beside me confirmed afterwards that she too had struggled to make out many of the words for exactly the same reasons. Spoken words need clarity and focus in performance as strongly as music does; and I thought the clarity and focus of enunciation and meaning that was lacking in Harvey’s somewhat over-wrought verbal deliveries and depictions, were qualities that he and his musicians readily brought to the music throughout the concert, resulting in that side of things being a resounding success!

Amalia Hall splendidly embodies Virtuoso Violin with Orchestra Wellington

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Orchestra Wellington presents:
Virtuoso Violin

Frédéric Chopin Polonaise Op. 40 No.1 “Militaire”
Nicoló Paganini Violin Concerto No. 2 “La Campanella”
Franz Liszt Mazeppa
Franz Liszt Les Prêludes

Amalia Hall (violin)
Marc Taddei (conductor)
Orchestra Wellington

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 12 June, 2021

Marc Taddei introduced the concert with a few words of explanation. This programme reflected a significant change in music history, the dawn of a new era, the shift from concerts performed in salons in aristocratic palaces to concerts performed by widely celebrated virtuosos in concert halls to large audiences. It also reflected the changes in instruments, violins with longer necks and strings and pianos with stronger frames that could produce sounds that could fill the larger venues. It was about the rise of the artist as a hero, a celebrity, not a mere servant of some nobleman, like Haydn, who was in the house of Eszterházy, or Mozart, in the employ of the Archbishop of Salzburg. This change called for a large orchestra with a full complement of brass, winds and percussion. It is the story of the rise of the virtuoso. It was innovative and interesting programming, as we are now used to from Mark Taddei.

Frédéric Chopin Polonaise Op. 40 No.1 “Militaire”

This was an orchestral arrangement by Glazunov of one of Chopin’s most popular works. It was part of a suite of arrangements of four pieces he called Chopiniana, written 1892-93. The work was subsequently choreographed by Mikhail Fokine 1907 and was taken to Paris under the umbrella of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe season in 1909 and was renamed “Les Sylphides”. I am sure that as ballet music it works well, but the subtlety of Chopin, which was one of his hallmarks as a composer, was inevitably lost. As a work for a large orchestra it is very different from the original piano version, with too much brass, too much bombast. The noted pianist, Anton Rubinstein described this piece as the symbol of Polish glory. Whatever Chopin intended, Glazunov turned the orchestral version into something triumphal.

Nicoló Paganini Violin Concerto No. 2 “La Campanella”

Amalia Hall (soloist)

Hearing the Paganini Concerto was a once in a lifetime opportunity. In many years of concert going I don’t recall ever hearing it played live. It is undoubtedly a showy vehicle for a violin virtuoso without the substance of the great concertos of the repertoire, but it was written in a different age with different expectations. Above all, it was written by Paganini, the first international celebrity, a star, to show off his amazing skills as a violinist, and perhaps to put his rivals, other great violinists of his age, in their places. This concerto was born in the age of Rossini that soon yielded to more profound composers, Weber, Wagner, and Verdi. The work starts with an orchestral tutti which announces the main themes to follow, builds up an expectation and then lets the soloist take over like a great tenor with his signature aria. It is very vocal writing, with the custom of the earlier generation of singers and violinists to elaborate and ornament the melodies. Amalia Hall asserted her mastery from the very moment of her entry. Her fiddle sang with a penetrating beautiful tone, the melodic line flowed gracefully. She sailed over the great technical challenges that Paganini placed in the concerto to discourage the faint-hearted. Her phrasing was beautiful, clear, her tone dominating, but singing. Her cadenza established that she was a master of her instrument.

The second movement started with the horns, the hunter lurking off stage, birds chirping until the violin took over with an ever so beautiful melody, like a tenor coming in, singing a soulful serenade. Amalia Hall played this with freedom, as if playing this aria for every individual member of her large audience. And then La Campanalla, like a sudden burst of light, the piece de resistance that we were waiting for, joyful, playful, such an irresistible captivating tune that Liszt transcribed it and embellished it for the piano, one of his most popular studies. Paganini used this theme to demonstrate all the tricks that he could show off on the violin, double stops, harmonics, spiccatos, left hand pizzicatos. It is a great challenge for the soloist, and a credit to Amalia Hall that she took it all in her stride. The audience responded at the end of each movement by the now unusual, but very appropriate applause, and a tumultuous ovation followed at the end of the concerto. Amalia Hall rewarded the audience with a solo for violin, Orange Blossom, an American barn music theme, all great fun.

Franz Liszt:  Mazeppa
                         Les Prêludes

These two symphonic poems presented huge challenges for the orchestra. Tone poems were an innovation in Liszt’s time. They are, unlike symphonic movements, not constrained by traditional musical forms. They set out to evoke in the minds of listeners specific scenes, moods, images, stories.

Mazeppa was inspired by Victor Hugo’s poem of the story of Ivan Mazeppa, who seduced a Polish noblewoman. As punishment he was tied naked to a wild horse that carted him to Ukraine. There he was released by the Cossacks, who made him a hetman, a leader. Strings suggest a wild gallop, which is transformed and distorted with six strokes of the timpani that evoke the fall of the rider. Strings, horns and bassoon express astonishment at the injured man who is then raised, as depicted by the Allegro Marziale on the trumpets. The constantly recurring motif announced by the massed brass suggests a spirit not easily overcome. The final theme signifies the return of the hero and his end in glory.

Les Prêludes is Liszt’s interpretation of Lamartine’s poem, though it was originally conceived as an overture to settings of four poems by Joseph Autran for choruses. It is the earliest example of an orchestral work that was performed as a “symphonic poem”. The purists, believing in absolute music, found music that tried to describe anything other than music a contradiction in terms. Yet it became the most popular of Liszt’s thirteen symphonic poems. It uses a large orchestra and evokes a wide range of sounds. It is a challenge to blend these themes and sounds for an orchestra. Orchestra Wellington, with its part-time structure may not always rise to the height of the great orchestras that one can hear on recordings, but it was a brave attempt by them to showcase these key works in the development of romanticism in music.

It was a fine, enjoyable concert. Well done Orchestra Wellington!

 

 

 

New Zealand String Quartet at Lower Hutt – three views of Beethoven

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand String Quartet presents:
BEETHOVEN – String Quartets for the Ages

String Quartet in C Minor, Op. 18 No.4
String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op.74 “Harp”
String Quartet in C-sharp Minor. Op.131

The New Zealand String Quartet –
Helene Pohl, Monique Lapins (violins)
Gillian Ansell (viola), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

St.Mark’s Church, Woburn, Lower Hutt

Thursday, 3rd June, 2021

I remember reading an interview many years ago with one of the great Beethoven interpreters of recent tines, Alfred Brendel, and warming to him all the more when he responded to a question regarding his “hobbies” by listing one of them as “collecting unintentional humour”. Brendel would doubtless have relished the unexpected “cyber-glitches” experienced by violinist Helene Pohl and ‘cellist Rolf Gjelsten relating to their respective electronic page-turners’ charmingly (and perhaps appropriately connubial) interaction, just before the music got under way, Helene remarking of Rolf’s device at one point, “His machine keeps turning MY pages!”

Of course there was no ice needing to be broken, no frigid formality here –  the NZSQ’s characteristic “instant engagement” with whatever music the group performs invariably does the trick with audiences in a flash – nevertheless the momentary malfunctionings and the ensuing banter meant that we were this time even more-than-usually “primed” for enjoyment and wide-eared appreciation of what we were about to hear. And, such was the music’s expressive capacity and the players’ involvement with the sounds and their interaction, we were able to truly savour Rolf Gjelsten’s post-performance comments regarding Op.18 No. 4 as a satisfying retrospective of the music, the players having borne out to a tee his references to things such as Josef Haydn’s influence, and the younger composer’s avowed determination to match, if not outdo his great mentor’s achievement in this form.

Being in C minor, a key marking a significantly expressive world of feeling for Beethoven, the Op.18 No.4’s dark opening demeanour made its mark, while being cross-currented with mellowness in places, some especially lovely duetting between first and second violins a delight, and a graceful return to the opening throwing the darker-browed moments into bolder relief. I loved the expectation engendered by the playing of the development, the emotions unerringly terraced with crescendos of feeling, the ‘cello enjoying the same thematic material as the two violins in the exposition, the violin responding with a minor-key version of the same (“Anything you can do, etc…”), before a stepwise progression of the themes brought us to the recapitulation with great theatricality and presence, whose drama of “working out” the material left us humming at the end.

Unusually for the time, a scherzo-like allegretto followed, the daintiness of the fugato entries countenanced by the gruffness of the cello’s entries, the two “modes” playfully snapping at one another’s heels during the exposition. How intently the players made us listen to the development with its hushed, tongue-in-cheek gestures, pinning our ears back with the occasional sforzando and delighting us with moments of rustic gallantry augmenting the delicacies, the interactions having a quality here of such spontaneous enjoyment as giving an almost improvisatory feeling to the working-out.

There followed an amazing third movement! – a Menuetto almost to be “imagined” rather than realised, the chromatic writing enabling the music to appear to change from darkness to light and back to darkness almost within the space of a phrase, Beethoven drawing from Haydn’s example with fanciful exploratory impulses. The players wafted the Trio’s roulade-like figures skywards like flights of ecstasy, making the Menuetto’s return all the more “spooked”-sounding for its urgencies. The finale impishly suggested a minor-key version of Haydn’s “Gypsy” Piano Trio at the outset, but what most tickled the ear was the “give-and-take” treatment of the flowing contrasting theme’s voicing, and then the rapid-fire repeated-note versions of the opening, with first and second violins “juggling” the same theme to delightful effect. And the prestissimo ending here set high spirits against insouciant humour with real aplomb – splendid!

It was a pleasure to listen to Rolf (and, later in the concert, to Helene Pohl), talk about music the players obviously know so well and convey so much affinity with, Rolf placing the Op.18 work we had just listened to in the context of Beethoven’s three “periods” as a composer, and suggesting that here, in effect, would be three different people represented by the evening’s music – firstly the young, thrusting Beethoven, conscious of his influences and wanting to match and even surpass them in his own music, followed by a period during which he  grappled with debilitating deafness, striving to counter and overcome fate, hence the “heroic” aspect of works like the Fifth Symphony and the “Emperor” Concerto, one of which was the Op.74 “Harp” Quartet. Rolf indicated that Helene would later introduce the great Op.131 Quartet, one of those handful of works in which Beethoven seemed almost to transcend human existence in the creative sphere.

Innovative though certain aspects of the Op.18 quartets were, Beethoven’s “usual” quartet of string players (led by the wondrously-named Ignaz Schuppanzigh) seemed by all accounts equal to any technical difficulty in performance, though it was a different story with the later quartets, Schuppanzigh telling the composer that Op.59 (Razumovsky) and Op.74 (Harp) were “too unusual and challenging” to be accepted by the public. And, of course, Schuppanzigh was to dismiss the late quartets as impossible to play at first, eliciting the composer’s famously scathing remark concerning the former’s “miserable violin” (Schuppanzigh and his quartet subsequently “knuckled down” and played them anyway, revolutionising chamber music performing practice in the process, his quartet’s subscription concerts the first to be devoted entirely to instrumental music, and to focus on a single genre in a concert series).

Even to today’s sensibilities, the Poco Adagio  beginning of the Op.74 quartet seems to have an extraordinary and unpredictable expressive reach, the material inhabiting territories whose vistas keep their mystery intact through two sudden separate sforzando chords, as if saying to us “Are you listening?”. Then, with the allegro, the fully-formed composer comes into the light like a force of nature! – here, some remarkably flexible playing took us to the distinctive repeated-note motif that closed the exposition (the repeat eagerly plunging us back to the allegro’s beginning), before entering into new and unnerving realms – where were we going? Those seemingly-spontaneously-wrought modulations, stretching the allegro theme almost to breaking-point brought about a pizzicato-to-arco crescendo in which the players wrought expectations almost to fever-pitch – so exciting! The recapitulation seemed here to give us a kind of looking-glass view of the way we’d come, taking us back to the repeated-note motif, but then, amazingly, drifting into a hitherto unexplored state of consciousness, the players timing it all so deliciously, allowing the impulses to swell and grow before igniting as scurrying violin figures, excitable pizzicati and echoing figurations, eventually bursting out with the properly-conclusive repeated-note motif proclaiming the music’s true destination in (dare one say) almost orgasmic fashion, interactive and exhilarating!

Some beautiful violin-playing began the Adagio ma non troppo, with similarly-voiced support from the others, a hymn-like outpouring whose heartfelt warmth seemed to suddenly fall away and expose a loneliness within, a mood-shift Beethoven seemed to consider deeply, then turn into some kind of ritual, with each instrument adding its warmth and resonance, until, again, the depths were uncovered and we were made to feel the extent of the darkness – enthralling, sotto voce playing, here, then beautiful duetting between the violins, rich tones leavened by birdsong, and a return to the tragic theme, as if the composer was audibly “wrestling” with it all – such a “layered” outpouring of emotion, here so movingly felt and enacted.

From deep feeling to blood-pulsating activity! – the scherzo’s Presto burst out of the blocks, racing at what seemed like top speed, the sounds incredibly energised and varied in dynamic range! And what an explosive Trio section! – a jumble of conflicting emotions caught up in a vortex of ceaseless movement! The repeat asked for more and got it, as wildly and frenetically as before! I loved the fantastical, Berlioz-like arrivals at the sustained open-string-sounding note just before the scherzo’s returnings, the final reprise a ghostly, and fantastical experience, the muted tones as unnerving as the previously impetuous trajectories of the music had been.  From the mutterings grew up a carefree-sounding three-note figure strung together in a step-wise way, the seemingly-innocent chant-like theme giving rise to worlds of kaleidoscopic delight in the variations which made up the work’s finale, the ensemble bringing it all to life – a canonic-like echo-game, a viola-led serenade (the instrument most beautifully allowed to sing in its upper register) and a burst of running activity punctuated with angular off-beats, leading to a soulful, almost hymn-like  a section which gave way to a jolly jot-trot, one during which one could see and feel the players’ involvement with the fun of the accompaniments as much as with the rallying-call of the melody!

But then, what a feat of imagination was the composer’s fusion of varied impulse which led to the work’s conclusion – the repeated cello notes pulsating the music’s life-lines beneath the sotto voce voices of the other instruments, the blood-flow maintained by other voices as the excitement intensified, the opening three-note figure energised and the pulsations swelling (we were all on the edges of our mind-seats by this time!), until the “running” variation burst upon us once again, carrying all before it in triumph, and concluding with a droll “that’s that!” gesture at the end!

What it was about this particular quartet and its performance that has given rise to my writing all of the above, I don’t fully understand! – except that I had heard the NZSQ  players “unlock” the music with such heartfelt commitment as to freshly awaken for me the delight of unlooked-for rediscovery, a realisation that this work wasn’t merely a “prelude” to greater achievements in the genre by its composer, but a universe in itself, a “world in a grain of sand”. I briefly and unexpectedly spoke with Rolf Gjelsten in the foyer during the interval, but wouldn’t have made much sense to him in my somewhat dazed state following such a performance! And still we had, waiting for us in the concert’s second half, Op. 131!

Having fallen under the spell of Op.74, I simply couldn’t escape similar immersion in this later work,  reputedly the composer’s favourite of all of his string quartets. Helene Pohl talked with us not only about the uniqueness of the world inhabited by these late works, but also about Beethoven’s fascination with and study of Jewish themes at this time, illustrating the influences on this particular quartet with some examples from Kol Nidrei (a traditional Jewish declaration of “cleansing” before prayer), citing and illustrating their use by Beethoven in the Quartet, particularly in the sixth movement. What struck me anew at the music’s beginning was the indescribable sadness of the opening theme, played on the solo violin and continued in fugal form by all of the voices, taking the listener into realms of wonderment, everything further intensified by the instruments’ different timbres, each crescendo of intensity exquisitely realised. I was put in mind in places, also, of Tchaikovsky’s music at its most “stricken”, the players adding breadth of expression to the music’s depth, “leaning” almost pathetically into each chord at the end and allowing the resonances their full countenance….

Out of the gloom a number of impulses lit up, gently dancing, the 6/8 rhythm as spontaneously playful and angular as those similarly-wrought gestures in the composer’s Op.111 Piano Sonata’s Arietta – the brief allegro moderato movement, filled with improvisatory musings and flourishes seemed to proclaim something new and unchartered was afoot, the theme’s serenity and full-throatedness attesting to Beethoven’s unswerving focus and determination to put across “what the spirit told him”, the gentle march-like rhythms engaging violin and cello, then viola and cello, and finally all the instruments in a swinging unison, the “improvisatory” nature of it all captured both compositionally and interpretatively by the players, to enchanting effect. Here were the duetting lower strings daring one another to continue, the violins in ecstasy together, with their flights of fancy, and we in the audience spellbound throughout it all!

Too rich to fully document, though too significant to let pass, the remaining variations seemed to generate themselves from what had gone before in wholly alchemic ways, the rapt textures (again to my ears anticipating Tchaikovsky’s, and Borodin’s sound-worlds) giving way to a ritualised, chant-like treatment energised by the cello with a brusque figure that increasingly impinged, goading the first violin into a reply, while the volatile Allegretto stretched the material every which way, before withdrawing into enigmatic, though momentary, silence….

Immediately, the Presto was upon us, a repeated two-note figure tumbling through the ensemble and tossed backwards and forwards like a slippery ball – the ensemble had great fun with the pizzicato exchanges, which intensified with each repetition, the players’ control allowing them a real sense of abandonment, creating a kind of illusion of a capricious spirit directing the music to speak, exuberance jumbled up with mystery, the ponticello playing near the end properly sending the shivers up one’s spine! What a dramatic switch, then, to the Adagio quasi un poco andante, brief, but abyss-like in its potential for grief and despair! – and how unequivocally the succeeding  Allegro turned the focus around, away from despair to determination, the music “taking arms against a sea of troubles” with the utmost vehemence, the players here viscerally conveying the music’s conflict, courting the occasional tenderly-consoling sequence, but then building up further heads of steam. And the ending (a scalp-tingling “tierce de picardie”, or major-key ending to a piece in a minor key) featured emphatic C#MAJOR chords! – the perfect rebuff to the “sea of troubles!”

I walked out in a daze, afterwards – fortunately, my car seemed to know the way home that evening!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stylish, varied and compelling – Inspirare’s tribute to Great Britain’s music

Posted on by Anne French

Great Britain: Five centuries of British music

Inspirare

Mark Stamper, Artistic Director

Heather Easting, organ and piano

St Andrew’s on the Terrace,

Saturday, 29 May 2021

This concert was billed as ‘five centuries of British music’, but in truth it was two and a half centuries plus Tallis, or even one and a half centuries plus Handel and Tallis. Nonetheless, it was a stylish concert.

Inspirare is a small choir (18 voices) of mostly soloists. Founded by Mark Stamper five years ago, it gave its first concert on 4 September 2016. Known for its polish, the choir did not disappoint.

The concert began with a work for organ, Herbert Howells’ Rhapsody No 1 in D flat major, played with consummate style by Heather Easting. This showed off the recently refurbished organ nicely, and set the style for the programme to follow.

As was appropriate for a concert featuring so much organ music, the choir sang from the gallery, and the audience was arranged on the usual seating in the body of the church, but facing backwards. This arrangement worked beautifully, ensuring that there were no awkward timing delays between choir and organ. The only downside was that some of the singers were not visible, and the usual rapport between choir and audience was missing. But the sonic advantages made up for that. Placing the choir high in the church, close to the ceiling, meant that the sound was focused and clean, exactly as the music required, rather than becoming muddied between the front of the church and the back wall.

Britten’s Jubilate Deo – what an ohrwurm! – demonstrated a very nice balance between organ and choir, and showed off the fresh, young sound of the choir. They sounded like much Viva Voce in the early years: half the size, but with the same freshness and flexibility, precise tuning, and clear diction.

Thomas Tallis’s slender four-part motet, If Ye Love Me, showed a lovely sustained legato, clean and crisp at the ends of phrases. If it had any fault it was a lack of emotion. The overall effect was beautiful but not fervent, straightforwardly sung as though it was simply a piece of music rather than a musical prayer.

The Tallis was followed by Handel’s monumental Let thy Hand be Strengthened. Like a Ferrari on the open road, the choir responded to Mark Stamper with a full-throated roar, sounding like three times the number of voices. They gave a full Handelian sound, yet were precise in the runs; never florid, always stylish, with superb organ support (standing in for the whole orchestra). Heather Easting’s registrations were delicious, especially in ‘Let Justice and Judgement’, where the pedal line must not overpower the delicate upper register. The altos and basses came in with a smooth legato, and the silvery soprano entry demonstrated perfect balance.

If the concert had finished at that point, I would have gone home satisfied, but the best was still to come. Britten’s Festival Te Deum followed. The work was written in 1944 for the centenary of St Mark’s Church, Swindon, and first performed in 1945. There was a finely graduated crescendo held against the full organ, and the subito piano entry was magical. The tenors sounded young and fresh. The athletic middle section is fast, with a wide tessitura, followed by some jolly vehement singing. The treble solo part was taken by Simon Hernyak, one of the altos. The highest notes were just a fraction too high for her, but Stamper’s choice of an alto soloist was exactly right, because the Inspirare sopranos have a fuller sound than the English cathedral treble.

Staying cheerful, Parry’s I was Glad succeeded Britten. It was written for a coronation and has a big organ introduction. The choir that entered sounded more like Westminster Abbey than a chamber choir. Majestic singing. At times I wondered whether the choir could hold its own against the organ, but they did, with some glorious soprano top notes. Lovely vocal technique throughout.

And then a change of pace. Heather Easting came downstairs to play the piano for the setting of In Flanders Fields by Welsh composer Paul Mealor. This was the highlight of the concert for me. A perfect marriage of music and text, written with directness and simplicity. Inspirare did a splendid job, from the first male entry, tenors joined by the basses singing lightly in the upper part of the voice, and then a ravishing bell-like sound from the sopranos. Wikipedia says that Mealor is ‘considered one of the world’s most performed living composers’, and I understand why. More Mealor, please!

After the Mealor, some Stanford. And I Saw another Angel featured tenor James Asquith as soloist, with a lovely light Evangelist sound, and powerful singing by the women in particular.

This was succeeded by an organ piece by Vaughan Williams, Rhosymedre, placed here to give the choir a short breather, since there was no interval. And straight on into a melodious work by the contemporary Scottish composer James Macmillan, A New Song. There were pretty fluttering and trilling figures in the organ part, with a thicker harmonic texture once the choir entered, with sopranos dominant. The sopranos sang trills against a sustained bass pedal line; then the tenors imitated the effect against the organ’s pedal notes. The structure is strophic, but the changes of texture made it thrilling. The lower soprano sound, once more with that Viva Voce freshness, was beautiful. Like the Mealor, this is a work that deserves to be performed widely.

David Bednall is a prolific young contemporary Brit who has been educated in the English Cathedral tradition and has written many works for church choirs. His 8-part Easter Alleluia featured bass soloist Joe Haddow, who made a gorgeous sound. Bednall cites his love of ‘late twentieth century music’ as an influence on his composition, but though the tonality in this work was complex, the effect was riveting, with lively compound rhythms and some punishingly high soprano notes.

Jonathan Willcocks’ Lacrymosa set a movement from the Requiem Mass text (‘Lacrimosa dies illa’) and did it full justice, with Messiaen-like tonality, lovely text-painting, and a beautiful Pie Jesu for tenors and sopranos. Inspirare did the work full justice.

The last work was by the Welsh Anglican composer Willian Mathias (who taught Paul Mealor), Let the People Praise Thee (Op. 87). Written for the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, it started with fanfares from organ and choir and built to a huge crescendo.

And that was it. A most stylish concert of interesting works, well chosen, and presented with exquisite attention to detail. Inspirare’s next concert will be on 4 September in St Teresa’s Church, Karori. Put it in your diary now.

 

Monique Lapins and Jian Liu give consummate performances of Bartok and Debussy at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Steven Sedley

St.Andrew’s on-The-Terrace Lunchtime Concert Series presents:
Monique Lapins, violin, and Jian Liu, piano

CLAUDE DEBUSSY – Violin Sonata in G minor L148
BÉLA BARTÓK – 6 Romanian Folk Dances
BÉLA BARTÓK – Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1, Sz 75

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

Wednesday, 26 May 2021

How privileged we are in Wellington to be able to go to a lunch time concert on a beautiful Wednesday and hear such consummate artists as Monique Lapins and Jian Liu of the NZ School of Music. They presented a challenging programme of Debussy and Bartók. The two violin sonatas were written within a few years of each other, Debussy’s in 1917 in the middle of the war, Bartók’s in the aftermath of the war and in the shadow of the Hungarian Commune. Both were groundbreaking works.

Debussy was very ill, dying of cancer when he wrote his Violin Sonata. It was his last composition, planned as one of six instrumental sonatas, of which he completed only three, his Cello Sonata, his Sonata for Flute Viola and Harp and this Sonata for Violin. It is in classic sonata form in three movements, but there the comparison with the great sonatas of Beethoven or Brahms ends. It is a short work, a third of the length of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, but though it is short, it is concise with a wealth of material. The first movement opens with chords on the piano which are then deconstructed, fragmented. The beautiful haunting melody, played on the violin has an oriental flavour with a tinge of sadness The second movement starts with a violin solo which breaks into a jocular passage that alternates with dark melancholy and then sarcasm as if saying ‘don’t take me too seriously’. The opening of the final movement starts with a nostalgic melody, then becomes triumphal with high spirits and playful accompaniment. The work lasts less than a quarter hour, yet it is full of contrasts, wit, charm, and transparent filigree passages, but also a sense of loss. It is a fragile piece that requires sensitive reading and Monique Lapins and Jian Liu did justice to this most beautifully.

Bartók’s Six Romanian Dances were an appropriate contrast to the Debussy Sonata. These are boisterous, folksy, a product of Bartók’s travels through the Balkans, collecting folk music with his fellow composer, Zoltán Kodály They are immediately approachable. They also present technical challenges, difficult double stops, harmonics, unrelenting strong rhythms. They also served as a bridge to Bartók’s musical world, his search for a musical language that broke away from the musical language that he was reared on, the language of Brahms and other great German composers. I couldn’t help thinking Monique Lapins and Jian Liu’s playing here perhaps a little TOO “masterly”, too controlled, in places needing more sense of the dances’ gay abandonment.

Bartók’s Violin Sonata No. 1, by contrast, is a difficult work, both technically and musically. Unlike the Debussy Sonata, which is brief, concise and at times whimsical, the Bartók Sonata is a long, passionate, disturbing piece. The first movement opens with rich chords on the piano, then the violin enters with a plaintive if discordant melody. The piano and violin complement each other with contrasting voices, but they don’t echo each other or share melodic or rhythmic themes. The piano captures the sound of the cimbalom, the violin the crying human voice. The strained harmonies highlight the tension between the two instruments. The second movement opens with a beautiful if discordant gentle violin solo that Monique Lapins played as beautifully as you are ever likely to hear, before the piano took over with sombre pensive chords. Jian Liu produced a rich palette of sounds on the piano, percussive when it was required, gentle, lyrical with a warm tone when that was appropriate. The mood of the movement was one of longing, heart rending sadness, played by the violin and supported by harp-like chords on the piano. The final movement opened with harsh percussive chords on the piano and this percussive beat continued to appear right through the piece, while the violin played with manic energy. Hungarian rhythms intruded in the midst of the seeming mayhem. Then the piece broke down into grotesque dance rhythms interrupted by brief lyrical episodes on the violin. The work ended with passionate energy. This energy and passion carried the audience with it, reflected by the wild applause that followed, an applause seldom heard at the end of a lunch hour recital.

This sonata is a challenge for violinist and pianist alike. It is a difficult monumental work which Monique Lapins and Jian Liu played with rare zest.

It was a memorable recital. The Bartók Sonata is rarely heard, perhaps because of its exceptional difficulties. Those who were at the concert were fortunate have had the opportunity to hear it in such an exceptionally fine performance.

 

 

Orchestra Wellington and Orpheus Choir adventurous in Bartok, irresistible in Orff

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents:
VIRTUOSO VOICES

BARTOK – Cantata Profana
ORFF – Carmina Burana

Amelia Berry (soprano), Amitai Pati (tenor), Christian Thurston (baritone)
Orpheus Choir of Wellington (Brent Stewart, director)
Wellington Young Voices (Mark Stamper, director)
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 22nd May, 2021

Encountering a work in concert every now and then that has somehow “slipped through the net” of my musical experience sometimes results in a bit of a “juggle” of contrasting feelings, and especially when one is a reviewer – I get enormous pleasure in the discovery of something new, but also feel a degree of guilt at not having come across the “something” earlier, and especially if it’s a work by a well-known composer! Bartok’s “Cantata Profana” fell into this category – a work that was new to me, and one which needed some familiarising on my part via recordings before I felt better prepared for the “Virtuoso Voices” concert, so as to get at least some of it already playing in my head.

I confess I didn’t really know what to expect, though having seen and heard Bartok’s opera “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle” I was familiar with something of the composer’s vocal writing style, one which reflected his preoccupation with Hungarian and Roumanian folk-tunes and their idioms, a process akin to what Musorgsky had attempted to do a few years earlier in Russia, by reproducing idioms and accents of native speech in his music in search of something “Russian”. Bartok had collected the two poems in the form of Roumanian colinde or carols, on which he based his cantata’s story, in 1914, at first assigning the Roumanian texts to a Hungarian poet for translation, but eventually using his own Hungarian translation. He then entrusted a German translation to Bence Szabolcsi, a Hungarian musicologist, and an English translation to the polygot Michel-Dmitri Calvocoressi (whose translation, ironically, was used at the work’s premiere performance in London, in 1934, the first printed edition of the score using the German and English texts!). Fascinating!

As I’d heard only Hungarian texts in the recordings I’d listened to, I couldn’t help registering the difference made at the concert itself by the relative “softness” (almost to the point of “blandness” in places) of the English works, which presented for myself and people who sat nearby to me at the concert the performance’s only drawback – the unintelligibility of most of what was being sung. For all the Michael Fowler Centre’s qualities as a musical venue it tends to blunt and blur word-detail – vowel sounds and tonal colour do well, as here, but consonants and sharper detail get lost in the spaces without extra emphasis given their articulation – even when words are in English! Had we not had the general outlines of the cantata’s story written in the programme notes we would have been completely lost! – I wondered whether the cantata’s English text might have been somehow projected for all to see?

A good thing it was that the performance was so very atmospheric in an overall sense, its sequences so convincingly characterised, with the musicians conveying to us the different moods of the action and the feelings of the characters, albeit in a somewhat generalised way. From the beginning the story’s mystery and magic was conjured up by the dark sounds, the swirling mists and eerie lines preparing us for the strangeness of the events about to unfold, singers and players held in firm dynamic control by Marc Taddei’s direction, the lines replete with the composer’s characteristic rhythms and folkish figurations, then bursting into action as the hunt was portrayed by the fugal writing, with the story’s “nine sons, splendid offspring” whom their father had brought up and trained “for the savage mountains, with hunting skills”. As the sons pursued their quarry, the music underwent a wondrous change – “….they found “a graceful bridge showing magic deertracks” –  in crossing the bridge, the sons were changed by this same magic into stags – “the splendid hunters thus became the hunted”.

When the father, searching for his lost sons, found the stags, he raised his rifle to shoot one of them, the music agitating as the choir cried out repeated warnings, prompting the stag to speak with the voice of the son to his father, cautioning him not to shoot – such splendid singing, here, from tenor Amitai Pati, fully equal to the demands of the writing, with the ringing, heroic tones required from the character. The choir introduced the bass soloist Christian Thurston’s softer-grained voice as the father, pleading for his sons to return home to their mother, to “lanterns lit”, and to “goblets of wine” – but the son replied that they could never return home to these things, as their antlers “are wider than your doorway” and that now “they can drink their fill only from clean mountain streams”.

The text then reverted to the story’s beginning for the choir to tell the narrative once again, the voices producing some beautifully-modulated phrases, conveying such longing, and (as on every occasion I listened to a recording) bringing tears to the eyes of this listener as the fate of both the nine stags and their bereft parents were so very movingly reiterated. Though Bartok described this music as embodying “his most profound credo”, he left others to wonder at what he might have meant to convey through the story……he was evidently very much at home with nature, spending a good deal of his time out of doors, avowing nature’s freedoms as opposed to the different kinds of cruelties of civilisation – in this respect the story was a kind of “cautionary tale”, the sons becoming the hapless victims rather than the perpetrators of crimes against living things, and against nature in general, and the father reaping the pitiless price of his own exploitative attitude towards creatures in the wild.

Despite the difficulties concerning the text, the overall impression conveyed by the performance to this listener gave the experience of hearing the work a lasting value beyond words. And it was a perfect foil for what followed in the concert’s second half – nothing less than Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, the composer’s marvellously uninhibited settings of a hedonistic paean to life’s pleasures and sorrows in the form of a collection of anonymous medieval verses which have survived the ravages of time and circumstance in order to delight present-day sensibilities and (in places) console vissicitudes alike!

Having reviewed an Orpheus performance of this work as recently as September 2019 –

https://middle-c.org/2019/09/percussion-driven-carmina-burana-with-the-orpheus-choir-a-triumph/

I’m finding it hard to escape the feeling (from memory) that there could be a lot of repetition in my comments regarding the singing, though as the previous performance involved the Orchestra Wellington Percussion Ensemble rather than the full orchestra, there will be “tweaks” of different emphasis here and there. One detail I had forgotten until I accessed the earlier review was that a SCREEN was used on that occasion to “project” the English translations of the words during the Orff! – I rest my case regarding the Bartok (see paragraph 3 above), this time round!

Another repetitive refrain from yours truly concerns the tempo taken by Marc Taddei for the opening “O Fortuna” on this occasion, something about which I find myself seemingly pushing a fairly lonely critical furrow in opinionating that most conductors take the sequence excessively quickly, given the out-and-out “lamenting” nature of the text! – however, the sheer energy of Taddei’s and the orchestra’s performance on this occasion was admittedly breath-catching, and impressive in its way! Still, the real enjoyment of the performance for me began with “Primo vere” (In Springtime), the bright, piping percussion and silvery winds framing the singing so fetchingly, and the ambience wonderfully spacious in the wake of the work’s almost “blitzkrieg” opening! I liked, too, Christian Thurston’s world-weary baritone solo “Omnia Sol temperat “, the character perhaps seeming a little tired of excessive drinking and whoring, and looking to the spring for renewal!

After the bell had resoundingly lingered at the conclusion of “Ecce gratum”, great percussive crashes heralded the “Dance”, played with a rhythmic verve that almost lifted us out of our seats with the energy of it all. Following the imposing beginning to “Floret Silva” the charm of the subsequent exchanges sounded well-nigh irresistible, as was the women’s plaintive singing in the “Shopkeeper, give me the colour” plea for an “aid” with which to capture a younger lover. The “Slow Dance” wove its spell of sensuous languidity, complete with nostalgically-sounding brass, which left us, like the hapless Faust, about to exclaim “How fair this spot” and looking to remain in damnation! – however the strumming strings woke us from the dream (the men’s voices, too, were a bit slow on the uptake at first with their “Swaz hie gat umbe” at the start of the Round Dance!) But what balm for the senses were the women’s voices in the interlude, before the strings took up the strumming once again! And what brilliant brass playing with which to conclude the sequence, as befitted the “surprise appearance” of the Queen of England, which concluded the first part!

Christian Thurston’s soft-grained voice did its best with “Estuans interius”, and “Ego sum abbas”, both sections calling for fiercer declamations, though he did better with the Abbot of Clucany’s piteous cries of “Wafna!”, accompanied by earth-shattering percussion outbursts! In between came the heart-rending “Song of the Roasted Swan”, with tenor Amitai Pati reappearing, and straightaway “nailing” the unfortunate bird’s anguish, though I thought the men’s voices a tad reticent in their ”Miser, miser!” rejoiners at the end of each verse.  Fortunately they moved their throttle up several notches for the incredibly vigorous “In taberna quando sumus” – the drinking song to end all drinking songs! Especially telling, I thought, was the darkness of it all, with the more sinister utterances as compelling as the clangorous ones!

What a change, as the scene shifted to “The Court of Love”, with everything cool and fresh once more – a superb evocation! The Wellington Young Voices sounded as they looked – bright, eager and innocent, followed by Amelia Berry’s silver-toned “Siqua sine socio”, beautifully supported by the winds. Christian Thurston’s soulful “Dies nos et omnia” came over well, with a properly pathetic-sounding  falsetto and a po-faced descent at the end, the self-communing aspect ruefully conveyed.

As for Amelia Berry’s “Stetit puella”, with those melismatic “Eias’ at the end of each verse, well who would not have fallen in love with her by the time she had finished floating the second one towards and all around our helpless sensibilities? Marc Taddei then took “Circa mea pectora” at a tremendous lick, the repeated Mandaliets almost whizzing into orbit at the end of each verse! The men-only chorus “Si puer cum puella” got a terrific response from the voices here, vigorous and clear-toned, with baritone Christian Thurston characterfully spurring them on, the succeeding “Veni, veni venias” giving the sequence even more visceral excitement, the conflagration spreading from the voices to the orchestra with what seemed like animal energy!

We needed settling down for a moment after that, Amelia Berry’s “In trutina” giving us a precious sequence of gorgeously-shaped singing, the top notes perhaps not as free as in the previous solo, but the descents as graceful and seductive as could be. “Tempus est locundum” then burst in, the children’s choirs (in two parts on either side of the platform) bobbing up and down to sing their refrains by turns with the baritone, the final time all together! This time, at “Dulcissime”, Amelia Berry’s ascent was breath-taking, the line positively snow-capped! – and her final phrase, dream-like and enraptured, immediately put me in mind of soprano Emma Fraser here in the same hall in 2014 who had at that time put me in mind of the incomparable Lucia Popp! What more can one say?

The penultimate “Blanchefleur and Helen” from choir and orchestra made an overwhelming impact straight afterwards (but I forgot to listen for the ringing bell, of which I’m terribly fond!). Whether there or no, we were summarily returned to the mercies of the Empress of the world, “Luck”, with the same massive percussive chords and driving energies as the work had begun with, what now seemed an age ago! Naughtily, but forgiveably. Marc Taddei “held onto” the work’s final chord, asking for more from his singers and players, and, excitingly, getting what he wanted! – a resplendent ending to a remarkable performance and a wonderfully adventurous concert!