Category: Reviews – Concerts

NZSM woodwind students at diverting lunchtime concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Pieces by Poulenc, Enescu, Weber, A Marcello, Louis Ganne, Sutermeister, Hindemith, David Ernest and Demersseman

Players: Arielle Couraud, Jeewon Um, Hannah Sellars, Vanessa Adams, Monique Vossen, Patrick Hayes, Ashleigh Mowbray, Andreea Junc, Katherine Maciaszec; accompanied by Kirsten Simpson (piano)

St Andrews on the Terrace

Wednesday 10 August, 12.15pm

Recitals by woodwind players, and even more perhaps by brass players, draw on a range of music that is not very familiar to the run of ordinary classical music followers. For some that may be a disincentive. For lots of others, myself included, it’s very interesting and satisfying, for the music often offers a chance to hear composers who are no more than names out of dictionaries of music or music histories.

This concert featured mainly first and second year woodwind students from the New Zealand School of Music and was a part of the assessment process for their course requirements.

My impression overall was of a group of very talented students who had already reached a surprisingly good level of skill and of interpretive insight into the styles of music they were tackling.

There had been a mishap in the transmission of the programme details and so the audience were offered the bonus diversion of testing their recognition skills as to the music they were hearing; for although the players were encouraged to introduce themselves and their music, most were not loud or clear enough.

I was a minute late arriving and so missed Arielle Couraud’s introduction to her own arrangement for soprano saxophone of an Élégie by Poulenc – presumably the one originally for horn. It worked admirably on the saxophone and her playing of the member of the sax family that is closest in sound to the older woodwind instruments such as clarinet, was lyrical and fluent.

The identity of the Cantabile et Presto by Enescu had quite eluded me, I confess, as I do not have a very clear aural impression of Enescu’s varied music; flutist Jeewon Um’s playing of it was quite romantic and warm, and a contrasting piano part of arpeggios and quick-witted modulations increased its interest.

Next was the clarinet’s turn: Romanze from Weber’s second Clarinet Concerto played by Hannah Sellars. Weber’s instrumental writing can be chameleon-like and I discovered that I did not know this piece though it was clearly enough from the early years of the 19th century. Hannah played it as it would have been loved by audiences of the 1810s, her tone carefully controlled yet happily romantic in its freedom of movement.

Alessandro Marcello was one of two notable Venetian brothers (the other, Benedetto), composers, contemporaries of Vivaldi, Caldara and Albinoni; Vanessa Adams began, not displaying a great deal of animation in the Allegro from the Oboe Concerto in D minor, but it took on greater interest and variety of articulation as her confidence increased.

Another flute piece followed, played by Monique Vossen. It was an Andante and Scherzo by a once well-known French composer of operettas, Louis Ganne; though a contemporary of Debussy, the music showed little affinity with his somewhat better known colleague. Nevertheless, this was a charming, melodious piece which the flutist played with a lively sense of enjoyment.

Patrick Hayes played a Capriccio for solo clarinet by Swiss composer Heinrich Sutermeister who lived through almost the entire 20th century. Patrick was one of the few who had worked out how to project his own voice as well as he did his instrument; he told us the piece was written in 1946, and he played it with a true soloist’s confidence, with perceptive dynamic contrasts – his pianissimo was impressive, as was a later brassy outburst.

Andreea Junc played the Sehr Langsam movement from Hindemith’s Flute Sonata; not only was it slow: in her hands it was languid and particularly attractive with none of its composer’s usual astringency.

Hindemith’s French near-contemporary, was Francis Poulenc, and he too wrote excellently for woodwind instruments. The Allegro Tristemente from his Clarinet Sonata is a characterful movement which Athene Laws played very confidently, capturing Poulenc’s very individual, enigmatic, extrovert style with considerable skill and feeling.

Another oboist, Ashleigh Mowbray, played a Sonatine by one David J Ernest whose name I cannot trace in the usual sources. The piece had a certain modal quality; Ashleigh began a little hesitantly but as the music got faster her playing gained in fluency, showing good control of the instrument.

The last piece was a Fantaisie for alto saxophone by Jules Demersseman who lived in the mid 19th century, born within a year or so of Saint-Saëns but he died young. He was primarily a flutist but, according to saxophonist Katherine Maciaszec, was one of the first composers to write for the saxophone – Adolphe Saxe had invented the instrument about 1840. It was a melodic piece, suggesting the spirit of French comic opera of the period – Auber, Adam, Halévy, Delibes…; well written for the instrument, avoiding any suggestion of self-importance, but rather a comic vein in a cadenza-like series of arpeggios, and later in the distinctly Waldteufel style of waltz, ending in an opéra-comique sort of cabaletta. Maciaszec was thoroughly on top of its technical challenges and musical style.

The versatile and always supportive accompanist throughout was Kirsten Simpson.

Delightful violin sonatas end Mulled Wine series at Paekakariki

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Mulled Wine Concerts
Violin and piano: Sonatas by Lilburn (in B minor played by Donald Armstrong and Mary Gow); Beethoven (in F, Op 24 ‘Spring’) and Fauré (in A, Op 13), both played by Donald Armstrong and Sarah Watkins

Paekakariki Memorial Hall

Sunday 7 August, 2.30pm

The last concert in this delightful beach-side concert series saw the unusual phenomenon of impresario turning pianist: Mary Gow. She had contributed as pianist to these concerts before but I had not heard them, and this audience was reminded again of her as a very fine pianist, playing Douglas Lilburn’s 1950 violin sonata with NZSO associate concert master Donald Armstrong.

The day was calm and sunny as we drove to Paekakariki, though the sea, at high water, was very rough. The concert began with sun pouring into the hall through the west windows, Kapiti Island floating out there. About an hour later eyes were drawn to the windows as they rattled and the sky suddenly darkened, and soon the sound of rain joined the sounds of violin and piano like brushes on a side drum.

Lilburn actually wrote three violin sonatas. In February 1943, he wrote one in E flat and later in the year, as a result of his association with Maurice Clare, who had been conductor of the Broadcasting Service String Orchestra, he composed another, in C, which was performed in December that year.

This was actually the second airing in two months of the third sonata, in B minor; it was played by Martin Riseley and Jian Liu at a St Andrew’s concert on 10 June marking the tenth anniversary of Lilburn’s death.

It was written in 1950, after Lilburn had become a lecturer at Victoria University College, for Frederick Page (pianist and head of the music department) and violinist Ruth Pearl; they premiered it at the university and then played it again three months later in Wigmore Hall in London.

This confident and resolute performance by Donald Armstrong and Mary Gow, alongside two famous and well-loved sonatas, revealed a mature work that seemed to have absorbed the character of European music of the time, tonal though with momentary dissident splashes. Cast in one movement, though with five distinct sections, it strikes me as interestingly different from the Lilburn who strives for an indigenous sound, or the one that remained too derivative of the English pastoral school. It is by no means avant-garde, nor is its lyrical character conservative; it is clearly a creation of the mid-century, comparable with the works of many other composers who stood aside from Darmstadt dogma. It is an impressive, vigorous, tightly argued work that should have become one of the leading chamber pieces of the New Zealand repertoire.

Beethoven’s ‘Spring’ Sonata was invested with similar energy, now with the piano part played by Sarah Watkins, pianist in the NZ Trio.  Its rising and accelerating phrases suggested a fast-emerging spring, blooming luxuriantly, as the sounds of the sea increased in sympathy with the performance. The two players made a highly attractive team, which could have suggested they’d been playing together for many years.

Fauré’s first violin sonata is one of his most lovely pieces, from the same vintage as the comparable, first piano quartet. It’s often compared to, and is almost as opulently romantic as, Franck’s violin sonata. It must be a joy for two good friends to play as the themes and motifs are tossed back and forth; the Andante, where the rhythm set up by pairs of quavers in four-beat time, seems to invite easy intimacy during a peaceful stroll. Then there’s the sparkling scherzo movement, Allegro vivo, in which both players’ dexterity, and especially Watkins’s, and ability to keep together was tested to the limit and not found wanting.

The biographical note reminded the audience of Armstrong’s role as director of the New Zealand (later the NZSO) Chamber Orchestra, founded in 1988 but, regrettably, disbanded few years ago: it was often recorded and the occasional broadcast of their recordings of 18th century works always strike me with their liveliness and polish. His talent for open, warm-hearted playing was very conspicuous in all three of the sonatas.

That is not to suggest that his was the dominant role, for Watkins playing is just as marked by its robustness and readiness to take the lead whenever it is called for.

The concert, and the series, ended with Mary Gow’s offering of one of Lilburn’s piano preludes which was followed by Armstrong and Watkins playing a quirky arrangement of the famous 1948 pop song, written by Ken Avery, Paekakariki (in the land of the tiki).

The audience at this concert was a little smaller than I’d expected. A pity, for it’s a long wait till the next season of concerts begins, which was outlined on the back of the programme. They start with the usual jazz concert in January and the five confirmed classical concerts start in March.

Bach Choir performs excellently in varied programme

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Victoria: Motet: ‘O quam gloriosum’; ‘Missa O quam gloriosum’
Britten: Prelude and Fugue on a theme of Victoria
Vaughan Williams: Mass in G minor
Bach: Chorales BWV 669, 670, 671; Chorale Preludes on the chorales: BWV 672, 673 and 674
Bach: Prelude and Fugue no.9 in E, BWV 854, from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I
Bach: ‘Ruht Wohl’ from St John Passion

Bach Choir, conducted by Peter de Blois with Douglas Mews (organ), Maaike Christie-Beekman (soprano), Katherine Hodge (contralto), Thomas Atkins (tenor, Simon Christie (bass)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday, 7 August 2011, 2.30pm

This was a concert that deserved to be better attended; an interesting and diverse, yet linked, programme was well thought-out and well performed. The music by Victoria music was sung unaccompanied; the Bach accompanied, and the Vaughan Williams had an ad lib organ accompaniment, contributing additonal variety.

It was a surprise to find young tenor Thomas Atkins singing solo, in the middle of a brilliant season of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the University Memorial Theatre, in which he has a leading role.

I was pleased at last to see printed in a New Zealand concert programme the paragraph from the printed programmes for concerts at the Royal Festival Hall in London, the piece about uncovered coughs giving the same decibel reading as a note played mezzo-forte on a horn, and the disarming suggestion “A handkerchief placed over the mouth when coughing assists in obtaining a pianissimo”. Certainly, I heard but little coughing at this concert.

The Victoria motet was sung with a good robust sound, but it was marred, as were other items (e.g. the Sanctus of both the Victoria and the Vaughan Williams masses), by a slightly dubious first chord, pitch and attack-wise.

The Prelude and Fugue on a theme of Victoria was to have been played on the main organ in the gallery of the church, but unfortunately that organ was found to be ciphering badly (that is, notes sounding by themselves, unbidden – usually pedal notes), and so the chamber organ had to be used. Perhaps the main organ was anticipating the damp weather which arrived dramatically half-way through the concert, flinging a side door open to enable us to hear and see the hail falling.

It was quite perplexing to decide where the home key for Britten’s organ piece was – there was dissonance aplenty, and ambiguous chord progressions, especially in the fugue. Douglas Mews appeared to be in a little difficulty at the beginning of the work, probably because of the small instrument he had to play on (which Peter de Blois unkindly referred to as ‘the sewing machine’).

The character of the mass by Victoria balanced ‘great simplicity with… controlled passion’, as the programme note had it. The choir produced beautifully blended sound, excellent matching Latin pronunciation, and good dynamic variation in unison. There were some rough sounds from the men at times early on, but this did not persist. A jubilant Benedictus showed that the choir could produce plenty of volume, while the Agnus Dei featured exquisite sustained tone, and in the final sentence, lovely soft singing. This movement was the best of the Mass, with singing of fine clarity, quality, and complete accuracy.

The style of the period of the composition was conveyed well; the counterpoint was clear and the tone was sustained well through the long vocal lines.

Vaughan Williams’s Mass was very animated, the Gloria being especially lively. Both Simon Christie and Thomas Atkins sang very well in their solos and ensembles, with admirable tone and clear enunciation. The women did not measure up quite as well, but were certainly much more than adequate. Katherine Hodge’s voice did not carry as well as the others; holding her head up more and out of her music would assist with projection. Peter de Blois himself sang the solo plainsong introits in both the Victoria and the Vaughan Williams masses where they were required; this was fine from where I sat, but I do wonder if it carried to the people sitting at the back of the church.

Douglas Mews’s tasteful and effective accompaniments added to the effect of the Vaughan Williams work, which was set for double choir. It is a thoroughly pleasing work, simpler in style and shorter in length than many masses written for choirs to sing outside of a church setting, though its relatively short duration suits it for liturgical performance also.

The first Osanna, following the Sanctus, was spoilt by some very strange tone at times; it did not appear to emanate from one voice part only. Again, it was the Agnus Dei setting that was perhaps the most effective. It is very dramatic for both soloists and choir.

The second half of the concert consisted of chorales by J.S. Bach, and his associated chorale preludes for organ. The reproduction of the title page of the published Clavier Übung and the portrait of Bach embellished a well-designed printed programme.

The first chorale was followed by the relevant chorale prelude: ‘Kyrie Gott Vater in Ewigkeit’. It was for manuals only, as were the two other chorale preludes. It was a relatively simple variation on the chorale melody. The second chorale and its prelude, ‘Christe, aller Welt Trost’, were more ornate, but also more meditative. The singing showed care over tempo, tone and dynamics, while the organ piece was also more intricate than its predecessor, with interesting harmonies.

Third were chorale and prelude ‘Kyrie, Gott heiliger Geist’. The chorale was a more substantial and more robust work than were the previous two. German pronunciation was good, but not as clear as the Latin had been.

The organist had a yet more complex piece to play, with elaborate counterpoint and ornamentation. The chorale prelude was followed by Prelude and Fugue no.9 in E from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I. We are more accustomed to hearing these pieces played on the piano or the harpsichord. Naturally, they are perfectly able to be played on the organ; perhaps the only reason we do not hear them more often from that instrument is because there is so much music to play that Bach wrote specifically for the organ. The warm flute sounds of the chamber organ and the clean and clear playing of both prelude and the faster fugue, with all entries of the fugue subject apparent, made this an enjoyable and satisfying performance.

The final item was the beautiful ‘Ruht wohl’ (Rest in peace) chorus that concludes Bach’s St John Passion. This chorus is a delight, but I though the performance a little disappointing; the choir sounded a trifle tired. The falling cadences of the music are more tricky to keep on pitch, and this did not always succeed, the intonation slipping a little. Nor was the choir quite as unified as it had been in the other works in the programme. Douglas Mews’s accompaniment was at his usual excellent standard.

All in all, this was an excellent concert. The attention to tone, pronunciation and detail were, on the whole, very good. This was the best singing I have heard from this choir for many years – which is not to say that recent concerts have not been good, but this one scooped them.

Pianistic plethora at NZSM’s Hunter

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Keyboard Inspirations

– presented by Dr.Jack C.Richards and the NZ School of Music

Music by JS BACH,  SCRIABIN, RACHMANINOV, SAINT-SAENS, LISZT, DEBUSSY, HAYDN, WANG

Pianists: Jian Liu, Tony Lee and Buz Bryant Greene

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University of Wellington

Sunday, 7th August, 2011

The pianistic feast provided by this concert was jointly presented under the auspices of the New Zealand School of Music and Dr.Jack C.Richards, an indefatigable patron of music performance and composition in this country. Compared with having the usual single performer at piano recitals, this triple presentation of keyboard talent had much to offer the listener, albeit at a somewhat disconcerting pace of change. Speaking for myself,  while I wouldn’t want every piano recital I attended to “mix-and-match” in such a manner, the variety of performance style and repertoire here made for a fascinating afternoon’s listening.

Three pianists were involved, two of them linked by dint of association with the School of Music. Jian Liu is the recently-appointed Head of Piano Studies at the school (succeeding Diedre Irons, who retired last year). One of Jian Liu’s post-graduate pupils is Buz Bryant-Green, currently studying for a Master’s Degree in Piano Performance. The third pianist, Tony Lee, provided some trans-Tasman input into the proceedings, currently a student at the Sydney Conservatorium, but already an international performer and prize-winner in both European and Australian competitions.

After a welcome to the audience by the Music’ School’s Director, Professor Elizabeth Hudson, one which acknowledged the generosity of Dr. Jack Richards in providing a Music Scholarship for Overseas Postgraduate Study available to the School’s students, the musical program got under way with Buz Bryant-Green’s skilfully-wrought opening to JS Bach’s Fantasia in A-Minor BWV 922, the player’s impulsive and freely-applied sense of spontaneity surely expressing what the Master had in mind with this piece. Bryant-Green colored each episode freely in pianistic hues, as confidently pursuing his characterizations as any baroque keyboard virtuoso would have done. The pianist generally avoided too “monumental” a quality throughout, preferring to emphasize the element of spontaneous suggestion, which brought out the fantastic and volatile characteristics of the music even more. I thought it a bold, and confident performance.

This was followed by a pair of works whose composer’s intent, almost two hundred years later, was just as fantastical, Alexander Scriabin’s 2 Poemes Op.32, played here by Tony Lee. Straightaway one was drawn into a world where impressions flickered like candle-flame, the deceptive salon-type opening of the music leaning into and out of a Rachmaninov-like lyricism, with a “dying fall” reminiscent of the latter composer.Not so the demonic Second Poeme, biting and dramatic, almost feverish in its claustrophobic intensity – both pieces delivered with a mixture of rhapsodically free and tightly-wrought playing, impressing throughout by dint of the player’s unswerving focus.

It was Jian Liu’s turn to impress, with a beautifully-delivered, exquisitely-detailed “Reflets dans l’eau”, from Book One of Debussy’s Images. The pianist’s fine touch was evident throughout, as was a finely-judged ebb-and-flow of tone, playing which unerringly drew its audience into the composer’s unique sound-world. Interesting that, though his fine sensibility and acute touch was again evident throughout the Liszt Mephisto Waltz No.1 performance later in the program, Jian Liu’s  exposition of the tale of Faust’s rustic amour for me needed more storytelling “juice” in places, more interactive energy, both earthly and supernatural, to bring about a proper fusion of the details he laid out so beautifully with the growing drama and tension of the story. The rude vigour and abandonment of the dancing couples need to melt osmotically into Faust’s suggestive importuning of a village maiden, everything mocked by flickering scherzandi figures darting and sparkling like fireflies around and about the dance-ritual. I thought the most telling part of Jian’s performance was the song of the nightingale and the delicate arpeggiations suggesting Faust’s success with his seduction almost at the end – though Mephistopheles’ laughter could have been, I thought, subtler and more insinuating, leading into the brief coda.

Liszt’s hand was in the previous item as well, a transcription of Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre, but further edited for super-virtuoso effect by Vladimir Horowitz, and played with plenty of wizardry by Tony Lee. Those evocative midnight strokes gave rise to diabolical fiddle-tuning, the pianist surviving a slight mis-hit while tuning his strings (an interesting parallel with the beginning of the Mephisto Waltz that Liszt would have appreciated), then proceeding to deliver a powerfully muscular dance, with lots of diabolical scamperings sprinkling the sulphur in appropriate places. As I didn’t know the Liszt transcription, I couldn’t tell how much Horowitz had turbo-charged the virtuoso fireworks (most of Liszt’s transcriptions are remarkably faithful to the original), but whatever the composer, the transcriber and the super-virtuoso had done between them to the hapless “Danse Macabre” it emerged as a remarkably brilliant and atmospheric pianistic essay under Tony Lee’s expert fingers.

There was plenty of virtuoso “roar” at the outset of Buz Bryant-Green’s delivery of another Liszt work, the wonderful Ballade No. 2, a depiction of the “Hero and Leander” story from Greek mythology. I liked the way Bryant-Green balanced the outer and inner conflicts of the music, the pictorial aspects of the storm at sea, and the stern inward resolution of the lovers to be united come what may. A pity he then, playing from memory, lost his way mid-stream and had to dash out to get his music! – even so, I admired the way he was able to pick up the threads for us and continue. Away from the storms and stresses I felt the more “Italienate” aspects of the piece needed more focus and fullness, the beautifully “sung” lyrical theme delineating the lovers’ ecstasy here sounding a touch perfunctory, instead of being “owned” and deeply sounded and romantically celebrated (there was nothing half-hearted about Liszt, nor about the music he wrote). Something of the same dissociation of energy and lyricism marked Bryant-Green’s performance of Rachmaninov’s mighty B Minor Prelude, christened “The Return” by the composer’s contemporary Benno Moiseiwitsch. At first I thought the pianist was merely letting the agonized theme which dominates the piece simply “grow” at the start, and the impassioned central section was splendidly realized – but both the theme’s stricken return, and the cry of pain which concludes the piece didn’t, for me, pierce the heart as I wanted – instead, the voice was numbed and inward-sounding (admittedly, the interpretation made me re-think the music, though I wasn’t entirely convinced that Bryant-Green’s heart was completely at one with what was happening at those points). But still, here’s a musician to be watched and given all encouragement to further develop as a performer, in my opinion.

Jian Liu’s pianistic credentials were enhanced  further by a lovely performance of the first movement of Haydn’s well-known C Major Sonata Hob.XVI:50, the pianist still managing a sense of fun amid the athletic, no-nonsense approach. A pity we weren’t given the repeat, because there was so much to enjoy and so little of the sonata presented to allow the same! I liked the beautifully-pedalled touches of colour in the development, echoed in the recapitulation, and also the contrasting tenderness of the lyrical second subject (what a shame we could’t have had the whole sonata!). Jian also gave us an arrangement of a Chinese folk-song, Liu-Yang River, charming and suitably exotic. And to add to this panoply of pianistic riches, Tony Lee performed firstly the short but extremely volatile Sonata No.4 by Scriabin, setting the dreaminess of the opening movement against the positively volcanic irruptions of its companion (a wonderfully elemental experience) – and then the two very last of Rachmaninov’s Op.32 Preludes, firstly the chilling, Slavic water-crossing of the G-sharp Minor No.12, and then the grandly chordal D-flat Major homecoming of No.13, almost Musorgsky-like in its expressive power and suggestions of Russian soul. Both performances took us unerringly to these “other realms” of creative imagination, from a composer who’s still, I think to receive his full dues.

And, unexpectedly, there was more Rachmaninov right at the end, a work I didn’t know existed, written for no less than three pianists! – a Waltz and Romance, dated (so Jian Liu told me afterwards) from 1891, and with what sounded uncannily like a direct “crib”, in the second movement, from the composer’s yet-to-be-composed Second Piano Concerto! A lot of fun, for both musicians and listeners, not the least for that ghostly pre-echo of a famous and much-loved work.

Petrenko’s convincing rehabilitation of two great Russian works

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko with Michael Houstoun (piano)

Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No 4 and Shostakovich: Symphony No 7 ‘Leningrad’

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 5 August, 6.30pm

There was a near-full house for this concert that featured a conductor who’s achieved much real distinction, a relatively unfamiliar concerto by a well-loved composer and a symphony that had won fame even before it was first performed.

Petrenko and the young conductors
Vasily Petrenko follows in the footsteps of several young conductors who have been given the direction of orchestras that were not at that point, particularly renowned. He took charge of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic in 2007 aged 31, rather as Esa-Pekka Salonen with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1978, at 26, or Simon Rattle who took over the City of Birmingham Symphony in 1980 at 25.

Our own Pietari Inkinen took over the NZSO at the age of 27 in 2007, and he has made it a highly polished ensemble capable of responding to another young conductor like Petrenko, not only with finesse and refinement, but also with huge energy.

There is irony in the widespread feeling that not enough young people are coming to concerts, while orchestral players and soloists as well conductors seem to be getting ever younger. (*See below for more on young conductors)

It goes without saying that the demographic of pianists and violinists is, and always has been, very young, given the world’s propensity for wonder at spectacular performance by highly gifted Wunderkinder who have to make it by 20 if they are to make the grade at all.

That brings us to Michael Houstoun who was of course one of them, winning prizes in the Van Cliburn and Leeds competitions at about that age.

Rachmaninov’s Fourth
Rachmaninov’s last piano concerto is considered the hardest of the four to bring off, for the whole score presents problems on account of orchestral writing that is often rather dense, many-layered and so profoundly integrated with the piano.

Petrenko led the orchestra by encouraging the feverish series of rising brass-led chords, that promises both grandeur and emotional depths. Perhaps I was initially worried at Houstoun’s ability to assert the piano’s role in the face of the orchestra’s authority; but he quickly established and maintained a steady pace and authority of his own that was never splashy or egotistical and he quite matched the orchestra at telling moments with powerful and reciprocating statements and elaborations,

The common criticism of denseness really relates to very few moments, and they are no more conspicuous than in most concertos. More to the point was the poetry and glittering bursts of bravura scales and ornate arpeggios that Houstoun enriched his performance with: occasionally purely decorative, but generally with an eye steadily on the organic purpose.

The new element in Rachmaninov’s writing that everyone notes is his digestion of the influence of Gershwin and the jazz that he was hearing in America at the time, and its harmonies do at times suggest the indeterminate blues sounds that sometimes render big-band jazz sounds murky and rootless. These are only moments for Rachmaninov and he maintains attention through rising and falling dynamics and emotional intensity.

As for the riot of colour and speed of the piano, Houstoun’s playing, clean and finely focused, kept it taut and relevant.

The concerto’s problem, its lesser popularity, is due quite simply to the shortage of rapturous and memorable melody such as guarantees the hold of the second and third concertos; and that in spite of the pretty little tune in the slow movement that echoes a popular music-hall song published in the 1880s. ‘Two lovely black eyes’ which was a parody of ‘My Nellie’s blue eyes’. I have never read speculation as to how this came to be planted in Rachmaninov’s subconscious.

But perhaps it was this that prompted a contemporary critic, after the premiere in 1927, to write of the work: “…now weepily sentimental, now of an elfin prettiness, now swelling toward bombast in a fluent orotundity. It is neither futuristic music nor music of the future. Its past was a present in Continental capitals half a century ago. Taken by and large—and it is even longer than it is large—this work could fittingly be described as super-salon music. Mme Cécile Chaminade might safely have perpetrated it on her third glass of vodka.”

Whatever the connection of that tune, it does seem to be resistant to much interesting development; the music does rather fail to develop, apart from the unexpected, threatening episode about four minutes into it.

There are areas of the Michael Fowler Centre where the sound is not clearly represented or becomes muddied or unbalanced as between certain instrumental sections. I was in one of them, near centre stalls, and while my ears allowed me to hear the energy and the emotional force of the performance, the louder passages were too dense and sounded more muddied than I’m sure was experienced elsewhere. It left me, nevertheless,  in no doubt that the fourth is a much finer composition than its current popularity would suggest.

The truth about the Seventh
While the concerto was a big enough draw-card for a full house (which we had) the famous symphony was probably an even greater attraction. It is still rather belittled by the more severe critics and those who tend automatically to denigrate 20th century music with tunes, so running the risk of popularity. But now the seventh’s remarkable origins and its hundreds of performances during the war has been endorsed by the revival of interest in the past three decades (a seminal recording was Haitink’s with the LPO in 1980). Friday’s performance inspired me to dust off others on record, only to have the unsurprising result of persuading me that the years of ignore were driven not by sensitive musical ears but by dogma, pedantry and, especially among the musical critical fraternity, scorn for music containing tunes that made a big impact on thousands of people: that just had to be proof of vacuity and worthlessness.

Ian MacDonald (The New Shostakovich) puts the stimulus for its revival down to the publication of Volkov’s Testimony in 1979, where Shostakovich is quoted as saying the symphony was “not about Leningrad under siege; it’s about the Leningrad that Stalin destroyed and that Hitler merely finished off”. Such revelations were widely resisted when Testimony was first published and Volkov was dismissed as a plagiarist who’d made it all up. But later events conspired to validate Volkov’s memoir.

Volkov notes that the Seventh had been planned before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, and could thus have nothing to do with the Nazi invasion; that the ‘Invasion’ theme had nothing to do with the attack; “it had to do with other enemies of humanity … not only German Fascism … Hitler is a criminal, that’s clear, but so is Stalin”, Volkov quotes Shostakovich saying.

It was this symphony in which Shostakovich found his true voice after the terrible years of repression in the late 30s. The war, engendering a sense of patriotism and shared perils, brought a halt to Stalin’s murders and removed the danger of writing music that came from the heart and allowed the composer to express something of the plight of the Soviet people faced with Stalinist terror, which could be now be disguised as something else.

That is the way the performance of the central part of the first movement unfolded, with its mighty outburst of determination to confront evil. Yet the ambiguity threads its way throughout the movement; nothing could be as heart-easing, superficially at least, as the peaceful tune towards the end, but it’s quietly overtaken by the recurrence of the ominous earlier tones; MacDonald describes “a strange glassy smile and the banality of the things it says”.

Nevertheless, the latter account leaves a question-mark over the significance of the trite little ‘Invasion theme’, echoing The Merry Widow aria, ‘Da geh ich zu Maxim’. MacDonald notes however that a version of the tune also existed in Russia, and was jokingly sung in the Shostakovich household to the composer’s son, whose name, of course, was Maxim.

The message?
This performance perhaps risked obscuring the overall message of submission and despair through the sudden shifts between varied moods and styles, the oppressive opening fanfares, the simple tunes, the ambiguities that make credible either its Soviet interpretation or the post-Volkov understanding.

Similar alternations of calm, perhaps self-deluding, and unease, fear, evil, permeate the other three movements and conductor and orchestra drove their way through its epic portrayals with tireless determination.

At the end, applause was prolonged and a (for Wellington) rare standing ovation revealed the extent of the work’s power to move a generation in which only the oldest (myself included) have clear memories of the course of the war, particularly on the eastern front, by far the most important in scale and in human and material destruction.

As an eight-year-old in the worst war years, I remember studying with intense interest the map of Europe on my grandfather’s wall, on which he shifted scores of pins day by day, following the progress of the allied armies that were closing in on Nazi Germany from all sides; his then commonly-held pro-communist feelings naturally left a deep impression on me, not really dispelled till the revelations after the death of Stalin in my first year at university. So this great performance did much more than tell the tale of a remote bit of history that I was, even at the time, very alert to: a great musical composition by a composer alert to international political realities, as virtually none had been before, had arrived. He was spurred by a regime that sought to control the political colour of its arts; ironically, the political awareness it stimulated was very different from what the Party intended.

This was a great concert that presented us with the most convincing performances of two masterpieces that have for different reasons been looked at askance by critics, or the public, or both, for many decades. Both works are surely fully rehabilitated now.

*Other conductors who made waves in their early years include Claudio Abbado at La Scala aged 35, Barenboim the Orchestre de Paris at 33, Seiji Ozawa at San Francisco aged 33, Bernstein debuted with the New York Philharmonic at 25 and became music director of the Toscanini-founded orchestra, the New York City Symphony aged 27, Gergiev was a mature 35 when he took over at the Maryinski Theatre in (then) Leningrad; the young Latvian Mariss Jansons began his triumphant years with the Oslo Philharmonic in 1979 aged 36; while his compatriot Andris Nelsons took over the Birmingham orchestra in 2008 when he was 29.

A recent issue of Gramophone celebrated 10 of a new generation of rising stars (not counting Dudamel who, at 30, is regarded as well-established now). One of them is Petrenko, while on the cover was Yannick Nézet-Séguin who conducted our National Youth Orchestra a few years ago. Interestingly, an accompanying article noted the continued absence of women conductors. It looks as if the advent of such fine conductors as Jane Glover, Simone Young, Marin Alsop, Julia Jones, Xian Zhang, JoAnn Falletta, Odaline de la Martinez (not forgetting Herbertina von Karajan or Georgina Solti) has not really created a well-marked career path for women.

Two former schools chamber music contest winners return in international roles

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Chamber Music New Zealand

Alwyn Westbrooke: “?”, or: Why Gryphons Shouldn’t Dance
Ravel: Trio in A minor
Schubert: Piano Trio no.2 in E flat, Op.100, D929

Saguaro Trio (John Chen, piano, Luanne Homzy, violin, Peter Myers, cello)

Wellington Town Hall

Wednesday, 3 August 2011, 7.30pm

It cannot be too often that two young people who both played in the Schools Chamber Music Contest in the same year appear on the same top-flight CMNZ tour merely ten years later, one as pianist and the other as composer.

Yet that was the case in this CMNZ programme in Wellington, part of a tour of ten centres in New Zealand, to be followed by a five-city tour in Australia. In the local tour, the Saguaro Trio will perform in both the Taranaki and the Christchurch Music Festivals (good on Christchurch for going ahead with their Festival!)

The Trio has had great success since it formed in 2007, the very next year winning competitions in Japan, and in the USA, where all three were then based, and an important competition in Hamburg, where all three now live, in 2009. (The photograph in the CMNZ subscription brochure for this year shows a different cellist.)

In the Hamburg contest, eight different trios were required to be played – a very demanding programme. On this tour, six different works are being performed.

The work by Alwyn Westbrooke, who was a student at Burnside High School in Christchurch when he had success as both composer and performer in the Contest, and uniquely won both the performance first prize (as a violinist with his quartet) and the composition prize, was a commission by CMNZ. Its composer heard it for the first time at the beginning of this tour, in Invercargill.

His work opened the programme. It came over as an experiment in sounds, but with coherence. The word ‘beauty’ does not come to mind, however. Various unusual techniques were applied to the string instruments. I thought ‘There must be some plucking of the piano strings soon’, and sure enough! It seems to be obligatory these days. There was extraordinary playing from all three performers, but especially from John Chen. However, I did not find the work engaging.

The Ravel trio has a very gentle, vague opening, evoking thoughts of ‘Where are we? What key are we in?’ It received strong yet subtle playing. The delicious reverie, particularly in the piano part, summons idyllic thoughts and images. This movement calls on Basque folk dance, and evokes a mysterious atmosphere. As the programme note put it “…a wistful movement… dominated by rhythmic fluctuations and hypnotically shifting harmonies.”

The second movement was quite lively and exotic, yet enchanting. Then came the more contemplative Passacaille third. It was played with fluidity, fluency and finesse. It even became solemn, with use of the lower register of the piano. The final movement gradually livened up – but this is predominantly a mellow, graceful work.

These performers demonstrated first-class balance and blend. Their ensemble was near-perfect in timing, intonation, dynamics, expression and interpretation. Only a couple of times towards the end of the final work did I hear a couple of rum notes.

In the Ravel work the strings tend to work as a pair. The Canadian violinist was a semi-finalist in the Michael Hill Violin Competition in New Zealand last year; both she and the American cellist had thorough techniques and grasp of the music, but both were undemonstrative performers. The deft, accomplished playing of the whole trio made it clear why they had won in Hamburg – and why there was no second place-getter to rival their achievement.

However, the pianist has probably the greater say in the Ravel trio, and John Chen’s playing had assurance yet sensitivity.

Like all of Schubert’s major works the Trio in E flat is quite long – and quite delightful. It is full of fertile melodies and lovely harmonies. Its mood is happy, sombre and exultant by turns.

Listening to the Saguaro Trio, one would think that they had been playing this music together for years, and it reminded me of hearing the great Beaux Arts Trio play it in Wellington years ago; it left a permanent impression. (Menahem Pressler, the pianist in that group, was chair of the judging panel at the Hamburg competition that the Saguaro Trio won.)

A fiery, passionate, yet at times romantic allegro opens the work. ‘…Schubert managed to achieve balance between the instruments, never allowing the piano part to dominate’ as the writer of the programme note said; the performers achieved this equality.

The andante second movement opens with a sombre cello them which is then taken up by the piano; here and elsewhere in the movement the pianissimos were gorgeous. The vigorous scherzo is partnered by a chorale-like trio, of much heavier mood and expression, then the cheerful, extravert finale arrives, thoughtful as well as animated. It returns to the melody of the second movement, played lyrically with rich, sonorous tone by Peter Myers.

The Saguaro Trio is a consummate ensemble; a combination of superb musicians in complete accord. I will be most surprised if they don’t hit the ‘big time’ quite soon.

There was a reasonably good house, but I thought there would be more people come to hear well-known New Zealander John Chen play, and to experience the interesting programme. It was pleasing to see a considerable proportion of young people attending; appropriate, since the players themselves are all young.

New Zealand Trio in beautiful Upper Hutt recital

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Brahms: Piano Trio No 2 in C, Op 87; Chris Adams: Jekyl Rat; Kenji Bunch: Swing
Shift; Schubert: Piano Trio No 1 in B flat, D 898

New Zealand Trio (Justine Cormack – violin, Ashley Brown – cello, Sarah Watkins –
piano)

Expressions Arts Centre, Upper Hutt

Thursday 28 July, 8pm

I have been sorry to miss the first two concerts in this year’s Classical Expressions series at Upper Hutt’s so agreeable arts centre.

Unfortunately, neither of my colleagues had been able to get to them either.

For the record the earlier concerts were by the Amici Ensemble, which comprises leading players from the NZSO, who played, inter alia, clarinet quintets by Brahms and Anthony Ritchie; and the violin and piano of Martin Riseley and Diedre Irons, whose recital included Schubert’s Fantasie in C (D 934 presumably) and Strauss’s Violin Sonata.

It was a calm and cool (not cold) evening and I’d have expected a big turn-out on account of the trio’s programming of two of the most glorious piano trios, by Brahms and Schubert. But the auditorium was little more than half filled; though one has to recognize that these concerts are a little more expensive than comparable concerts elsewhere.

Brahms
That didn’t lead to performances of any less warmth and richness however. Helped very significantly by the luxurious tone of the piano, this was music, from the very opening unison chords, in the high Romantic tradition, revealing all the emotion and profundity of spirit that Brahms had at his command: the players sounded fully in sympathy and  captured all its opulence and grandeur.

What intrigues me about the slow movement is Brahms’s rhythmic ambiguity which, if not handled with an unerring instinct, can sound uncertain and irregular, but the trio unraveled it all while not losing sight of Brahms’s pleasure in posing little enigmas throughout the course of the several variations which comprise the Andante. Ambiguity is one of the essentials of a work of art.

I was often struck by the happy blending of tone and spirit by violin and cello, and Sarah Watkins’s piano playing was the very essence of the chamber music style, both supportive and illuminating.

Naturally, there is some falling-off of profundity in a scherzo movement, and though the players threw themselves vigorously into it, the music becomes a bit routine (but in a sense that is strictly relative only to Schubert’s finest compositions); the more soulful trio section of the Scherzo, between outer tremolando passages, was played with particular relish. A deep contemplative spirit is replaced in the Finale by something Brahms does well –a certain daemonic flippancy, alternating light and shade, the full-bodied and the ghostly.

Schubert
Schubert’s B flat trio ended the concert. In this, more than in the Brahms, I felt, the players, while never faltering in their ensemble, found ways to differentiate their parts that made you pay particular attention to them as individual players. Though it is a remarkably balanced group in terms of musical skill and interpretive faculty, I found my attention drawn very often to Ashley Brown’s cello (perhaps through being a cellist of the 5th class myself); for example in the slow, emotionally strong crescendo bowings in the Allegro.

Schubert’s slow movements are usually at the heart of his music, and the impression is easy to conjure up in the late works, in this case, suffering advancing illness, just a year before his death. it seemed to dramatise the lyrical, the emphatic, the meditative, the
despairing even, with special force.

Again in the Scherzo I sense a certain striving for jollity that, on an uncharitable day, might seem a bit false, and I felt the players did hint at a little of that in the playing. The middle Trio section was allowed to be more soulful.

Music as politics
In between these two masterpieces were two contemporary pieces that reflected places and people in a very particular way, a way which might have raised eyebrows in earlier periods when music was expected to be mainly abstract, translating stories or characters through means that were formally and primarily musical. There seems to be no widespread disapproval of ‘programme’ music these days, and a great deal of music is conspicuously inspired by and intended to evoke extra-musical ideas, images, narratives.

Chris Adams’s Jekyll Rat, in spite of Ashley Brown’s elaborate avoidance of naming the MP hidden in the score, was pretty transparent, especially in the second section, Sycophant’s Dance, a sort of Tango in which one could easily conjure the deputé in a TV show dropping his partner on the floor.

It’s curious that so few composers of the past have felt inspired to represent political issues in music; some opera composers did, certainly – Beethoven, Verdi and Wagner in particular – but how many chamber music composers did?. One gets no impression of the political views of Bach, Haydn, Mozart or Schumann…

Having remarked on the ‘programmatic’ nature of the piece, one must observe the clear
marks of a careful and imaginative musical structure, with rather recognizable musical signposts. It was in three parts: ‘Me ne frego’ – ‘I don’t give a damn’; ‘Sycophant’s Dance’; and ‘Insanity represented by Mustard Yellow’ (a remarkably clear clue). The wit lay in the musical invention, as much as in the non-musical aspect: in the scoring for the three instruments, during which I was often conscious of a smile on my face. It led the listener along unexpected paths, to surprising conjunctions of ideas, and it concluded in a diminuendo, disappearing in a puff of smoke or, if you like, up the subject’s hidden orifice.

For all its splendidly overt political message, I felt it also stood on its own feet as a quite extensive piece of music.

Night Flight in New York
The other contemporary piece was by Kenji Bunch, an Oregon-born composer, said in the notes to have emerged as one of America’s most prominent composers of his generation (he’s in his late 30s), but this puzzled me as I could find no website devoted to him and only very odd references to his music: none at all to Swing Shift, which turns out to be the name of a 1984 film, an American big band, an album by an Australian pop group, and so on. No mention of Bunch.

However, the players have supplied interesting background. Sarah sent me Bunch’s website (don’t be led to think Google or Wikipedia are exhaustive reference sources). He’s written a symphony, a great variety of music for large and small forces, been commissioned, inter alia, by the English Chamber Orchestra, St Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, the Naumburg Foundation, and has been broadcast on the BBC and NHK, Japan.

The trio played one movement, Night Flight, the second of the six-movement suite, Swing Shift, comprising three lively and three calmer movements, by Kenji Bunch. Last year they played the sixth movement, Grooveboxes, at Paekakariki. This year the trio are playing movements from Swing Shift at their Auckland Museum concerts this year and Justine says they might play the entire suite some time. Both the movements played so far have been feisty, jazzy and strongly rhythmic. Night Flight is written in a reasonably conventional idiom, strong four-in-a-bar rhythms, with stretches of piano arpeggios and ostinato-like motifs.

The piece was personable, lively and colourful and suggests that the opinions recorded about Bunch are just.

I can imagine a performance of the whole work in a venue like a museum. It’s a pity that none of Wellington’s museums appear to be aware of the common world-wide practice of presenting good music. Sure there is music, but very little evidence of its selection by people with cultivated musical taste or knowledge of the all-important classical repertoire.

A chamber ensemble’s environment
The NZ Trio is among the most accomplished full-time professional chamber groups in New Zealand. While there is a large repertoire for piano trio, much of the 18th century is domestic or salon music, even that of Haydn and Mozart; almost all the relatively few great works are of the 19th century. Thus a piano trio is right to devote a lot of effort to exploring contemporary repertoire, and particularly to commission New Zealand music.

All these things the NZ Trio does splendidly, and it’s to be hoped that the unhappy political and economic environment will not affect the survival of the group. The fresh decision by Radio New Zealand Concert to cease paying fees (forced by frozen funding from New Zealand on Air) to concert promoters for broadcasting rights will have a serious impact on most chamber music groups. However, in the meantime, it will not stop the recording and broadcasting of concerts, though reductions in their numbers might be imposed in due course, as political ill-will towards state-funding of the arts is like a cancer.

NZSO Soloists – becoming as sounding brass

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BRASS SPLENDOUR from the NZSO Soloists

ELGAR (arr. Wick) – Severn Suite Op.87 / GRIEG (arr. Emerson) – Funeral March in memory of Rikard Nordraak

HANDEL (arr.Maunder) – Music for the Royal Fireworks / GABRIELI – Sacrae Symphoniae: Canzon 10

BRUCKNER (arr.Rose) – 2 Motets / R.STRAUSS (arr. Maunder)- Festmusik der Stadt Wien

NZSO players:

Michael Kirgan, Cheryl Hollinger, Mark Carter, Thomas Moyer (trumpets)

Peter Sharman, David Moonan (horns)  / David Bremner, Peter Maunder (trombones)

Andrew Jarvis (tuba) / Bruce McKinnon, Leonard Sakofsky, Thomas Guldborg (percussion) / Laurence Reese (timpani)

Guest players:

Andrew Bain (horn, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra) / Elizabeth Simpson (horn, Ottawa National Arts Centre Orchestra)

Tom Coyle (trombone, Queensland Symphony Orchestra) / Scott Kinmont (trombone, Sydney Symphony Orchestra)

Town Hall, Wellington

Thursday 28th July, 2011

The irony of former Principal Horn Ed Allen’s retirement from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra virtually on the eve of the Orchestral Brass Soloists’ Tour wasn’t lost on the writer of a section of the concert program, the part entitled “Musical Chairs”. Replacing Ed Allen for the four-concert tour was Andrew Bain, (sporting the title “Guest Principal Horn”), in fact Principal Horn of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. But there’s more – compounding the musical “exchange rate” were three other “guest musicians” featured on the “Brass Splendour” tour – the Queensland Symphony Orchestra’s Tom Doyle sat in for NZSO Principal Bass Trombone Graeme Browne (on leave), while Canadian Elizabeth Simpson (from the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Ottawa) swapped places with NZSO Sub-Principal Horn Heather Thompson, who’s enjoying a Canadian summer playing Fourth Horn with the Ottawa NACO. As well, Sydney Symphony Orchestra Associate Principal Trombone Scott Kinmont was invited to join the tour. I’m put in mind of what comedian and raconteur Michael Flanders once said, introducing a performance of his and Donald Swann’s show “At The Drop of A Hat” – “Right! – double bookings sorted out, are they?” However, despite these changes having been rung, the ensemble looked and sounded confident and stylish as its members filed onto the Wellington Town Hall stage and began the concert.

Elgar’s Severn Suite was first up, an arrangement for brass ensemble by Dennis Wick. The original brass band version, sketched out by Elgar and orchestrated by one Henry Geehl (over which result there was trouble between arranger and composer) was dedicated to George Bernard Shaw, who declared that the music “would ensure my immortality when all my plays are dead and damned and forgotten”. Amusingly, Shaw suggested to Elgar that he ought to use bandsmen’s language in the score instead of the usual Italian: – “For instance, remember that a Minuet is a dance and not a bloody hymn; or, steady up for artillery attack; or now – like Hell!” Shaw claimed his suggestions would help some of the modest beginner players.

Perhaps this ensemble’s members had read Shaw’s advice to Elgar as well – because they tore into the opening “Worcester Castle” almost unceremoniously, leaving behind any notions of Elgarian “nobilmente” in favor of urgency and energy – too much so, for me, though plenty of others would have found it exciting. I thought the lack of pomp and grandeur at the beginning made an insufficient tempo contrast with the following “Tournament” which was where the true excitement needed to happen. As it was, the drum-taps beginning the “Tournament” episode didn’t have the sense of pent-up expectation they ought to have generated, largely because a lot of rhythmic impetus had already been spent by the playing throughout the opening. I wondered whether this was a factor in the noticeable proportion of mis-hit notes we heard early on, the players certainly taking some time to “warm up”. As well, I wondered whether for this particular work the ensemble actually needed the guiding hand of a conductor, someone who could have helped bring out the “swagger” of the off-beat rhythms, so difficult for an undirected group to bring off. In fact, at one point during the “Minuet”, I did notice trombonist David Bremner (I think it was) making conducting gestures, lending the group a pre-arranged hand, no doubt. By the time the opening music had returned (still a shade too fast for me – Elgar’s music has to have, I think, a certain “stride” in which both energy and solid girth have a part to play, with every footfall cogently advancing the argument in its own way) the playing had settled and the attack and intonation were more secure.

Things came together wonderfully for the players’ heartfelt rendition of a Grieg rarity, Funeral March in Memory of Rikard Nordraak. (Nordraak and Grieg were fellow-composers, the former inspiring the latter to make as his life’s work the cause of Norwegian music). Giving the music time for the tones to amply fill both physical and temporal spaces, the ensemble literally rose to the occasion in delivering a full-blooded,percussion-supported climax to a sequence that began with such wonderfully hushed, expectant melancholy at the outset. The players brought out the different instruments’ timbres, in particular making much of the contrasts in softer passages between trumpets and horns, and enjoyed the major key change in the “Trio” section of the music, Grieg interrupting the more cheerful, if piquant mood with a great horn outburst at the music’s heart, extremely forthright, but both brazen and noble by turns. This being a new work for me, I was impressed at the range, depth and darkness of emotion wrought by the composer, and thrilled and moved by the performance.

Trombonist Peter Maunder certainly had been busy for this concert, rearranging a lot of music for this particular ensemble, including Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks (the programme’s playing order said Richard Strauss’s Festmusik der Stadt Wien would follow the Grieg, but the Strauss and Handel items were swapped around). So it was Handel in Peter Maunder’s skilful realization, the playing here seeming to me influenced in style and sharp focus by the “authentic” school of Baroque performance – admirable in terms of clean, lean lines and sharply-defined rhythms, but somehow lacking a real sense of “occasion”. It’ll be considered heresy of me to say so, but I’ve always loved Hamilton Harty’s full-orchestra arrangements of this music, simply because they always sound so grand and ceremonial. On the other hand, I’ve also dearly loved for years my old Pye recording of Charles Mackerras’ “ultra-authentic” recreation of one of those first London performances of this music, with every available wind player in London at the time seemingly brought into the fray. Neither of these examples have much to do on paper with what we heard in concert, except that, expert though the playing was, I simply wanted, I think, more out-and-out performance flair and panache (again, a conductor might have helped) – more grandeur in places, and energy in others, more abandonment on the part of the percussion, more space in and around the music (almost anything goes with Baroque realizations, judging by how readily the composers borrowed their own and each others’ music for whatever purpose which suited).

As if putting my thoughts and feelings into “demonstration mode” the first item after the interval provided all the “frisson” of spectacle one associates with ceremonial brass, one of Giovanni Garbrieli’s joyous Sacrae Symphoniae, the Canzon 10. With the players exploiting the antiphonal potentialities of the playing-space by standing in two rows at the top of each half of the “organ gallery”, the Hall was, literally, saturated with resplendently produced sounds, readily evoking old-world ritual and sensibility – we in the audience loved it (because of my relative unfamiliarity with much of Gabrieli’s music I felt at one with those caught up by Sir Thomas Beecham’s well-known remark pertaining to English audiences, who “don’t know much about music, but like the noise it makes”). More unfamiliar music of a beguiling aspect was to follow, unscheduled as per program, but readily welcomed by an intrigued audience – two of Anton Bruckner’s Motets, played by four trombones – in a way, the antithesis of the Gabrieli we had just heard, but at the same time the beautiful solemnity of the sounds (gorgeous playing) presenting the perfect foil for the Italian’s fulsome brilliance.

Exuberance and excitability marked the opening of Richard Strauss’s Festmusik der Stadt Wien (another splendid arrangement for the ensemble by Peter Maunder), the music then characteristically going on to a more nostalgic vein, with evocative modulations (nice trumpet work in thirds and sixths – definitely the former, the latter being a keen listener’s guess!) the sound of an “Imperial Vienna” provenance. With the players really hitting their straps by this stage of the evening, there was page after page of “on-to-it” music-making, the whole casting a refulgent glow, leading up to a grand Straussian build-up and a vigorous coda, filled with virtuoso writing for the instrumental combinations, before the music touched our hearts with parting-shot nostalgic promptings of imaginings of a world forever disappeared. What we expected to have been a rousing finish to an evening was then delightfully augmented by “something completely different” – firstly, the spectacle of Lenny Sakofsky being pushed to centre-stage, sitting amidst a drum-kit configuration of “splendiferous magnitude” (in fact it seemed as though he might at any moment have kick-started the monster with a roar and a cloud of blue smoke and disappeared up the aisle and out the Town Hall doors!), and then the mellifluous strains of Duke Ellington’s Do nothing’ till you hear from me, the players “swinging” with what seemed to me like total identification with the idiom.

Delightful lunchtime recital from violin and guitar

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Unfamiliar music for violin and guitar works charms

Music by Almer Imamovic, Anthony Ritchie, Ciprian Porumbescu, and Ian Krouse

Duo Tapas (Rupa Maitra – violin; Owen Moriarty – guitar)

Old Saint Paul’s, Mulgrave Street

Tuesday 26 July, 12.15pm

A concert like this usually offers a variety of surprises: there’s the unexpected delight from particularly charming pieces of music, and there were several such instances; the experience of an unusual instrumental combination and the way music originally for others has adapted so well; and the realization that the world has never been so overflowing with beautiful, rewarding music – most of it, naturally, to be broadly labeled as ‘classical’.

The uncovering of hundreds of gifted composers of earlier times, who have come to be overshadowed by a handful of geniuses with names like Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz, has given classical music a very different look over the past half century, with the realization that many of them sometimes produced better music than the ‘great’ ones did, on their off-days.

And in our age, there are so many talented composers in every country that no one could even claim familiarity with the names of many of the best of them.

Almer Imamovic is a good example: a guitarist and composer from Bosnia whom Owen Moriarty came to know when both were studying in Wales.

The pieces by Imamovic were originally written for flute and guitar, but the violin seemed the perfectly natural voice for the melodic lines. The Song for Marcus opened in up-beat style, bearing more sign of Turkish origin than of the Balkans, though of course most of the region was part of the Ottoman Empire for many centuries and there is a sizable Muslim minority in Bosnia. Based on two related tunes in the energetic opening section, then passing to a calmer middle section, the two instruments were in perfect balance and made one oblivious to the quite other character of the timbered gothic church where we sat.

Their final offerings were Theme for Caroline and Tapkalica, clearly from a similar source, the first a charming, simple melody which evolved very interestingly to subtly syncopated rhythms. In the second, the guitar began alone, with rhapsodic cadenzas which came to be a fine show-piece for the lovely musicality of violinist and the fleet-fingered guitarist.

The only piece from a dead composer, who came from the same part of the world, was that of Cyprian Porumbescu (from Romania: 1853-83). His Balada was filled with a Balkan nostalgia, exquisitely soulful but in music that found an equally captivating way to express quiet passion.

Ian Krouse is a Californian composer for guitar and other instruments (Wikipedia reveals an opera on Garcia Lorca); evidently eclectic, as his Air had an Irish tang in the lie of its melody; this too had its origin for flute and guitar and was more than comfortable in this perfectly idiomatic and charming account for violin and guitar.

Pieces by Anthony Ritchie occupied the rest of the programme. There are five parts to his Pas de deux, Op 51a, originally scored for two guitars; they chose Au revoir, evidently inspired by the end of a relationship which it described in lamenting but not lugubrious terms, using quite simple means to create an elegiac spirit; again, like the Balada, with a degree of suppressed passion.

It was not always easy to hear the remarks by the performers and I’m not sure whether it was pointed out that the Three Songs were a transcription of Ritchie’s Op 118 (Three pieces for viola and guitar). The title as given in the programme does not appear in his list of works.

Never mind.

Ritchie is one of those happy composers with sufficient self-confidence to allow tunes to appear in their music on a regular basis, and Au revoir and the Three Songs for Violin and Guitar (‘Song – Stone woman: a sculpture in Ilam Road, Christchurch’; ‘Tomahawk Sonnet’ and ‘Lovesong’) were so blessed. I had awaited a touch of Maori ferocity in the Tomahawk piece, but was later told it was the name of Ocean Grove, a suburb of Dunedin on the south coast of the Peninsula. It suggested a peaceful day. And the same went for Lovesong in which Ritchie seemed to be showing evidence of a heart repaired from the grief of Au revoir.

I’d heard none of this music before and the whole recital proved a delight, thanks to composers who knew their business and players who absolutely knew theirs.

Michael Endres – pianist, plays Schubert’s D 959, Farr, Carnaval and Godowski

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Schubert: Piano sonata in A, D 959; Gareth Farr: Sepuluh Jari; Schumann: Carnaval, Op 9; Godowski: Concert Paraphrase on Strauss’s ‘Wine, women and song’

Ilott Theatre, Wellington Town Hall

Sunday 24 July 2011, 3pm

The middle of the second movement of Schubert’s penultimate piano sonata should not really come as a surprise if you have listened openly to the very opening of the first movement.  Not perhaps from just any pianist, but certainly from Michael Endres whose view is clear at once through the heavy, threatening, plain loud chords of the opening phase.  Alternating shafts of sun with heavy threatening storm clouds: fortissimo and pianissimo; Schubert has absorbed all Beethoven’s awakening to the potential of the iron framed piano, and he quickly understood its ability to express visceral excitement and fear as well as man’s compulsion to seek peace and happiness. Endres imbued the sonata with drama and menace. His fleet and light descending arpeggios are not the airy flights that I’ve heard from some players, but warn us of what lies ahead.

I have to admit to finding some of Schubert’s major works overlong, burdened by too many repeats of themes, too little modified, and repeats of entire sections which have fulfilled their purpose through a single playing, but such was the impact of Endres’s dramatic gift that there seemed not a moment too long in the quarter-hour first movement.

So we have been warned of the likely character of the next movement even though the first ends in a singular air of content. From its very opening, Endres somehow invests the Andantino which he played a little quicker that some pianists do, with a feeling of unease. Nevertheless, the rhapsodic middle part though it begins pianissimo soon became more violent and tempestuous, more like an improvisation inspired by terror, more unrestrained than I can remember hearing it before. The opening mood returns but calm has not come, rather it’s despair, not just for the composer’s own plight but perhaps for the world.

It made the Scherzo so much harder to accommodate though, for it is hard to hear this a anything more than a typically dance-inspired interlude. How have we deserved this after the terrors of the Andantino?

Something of the answer lies in the Rondo which begins as rondo finales do, but in the middle again there’s a stormy passage that recalls the terrors of the second movement. But both the third and fourth movements are filled with such glorious melody and inspired by such intense vitality and courage that we can be persuaded that life is good and that Schubert will live into old age.

Endres has been professor of piano at Canterbury University for over a year and has taken an interest in New Zealand music.

Gareth Farr’s 1996 piano piece has established itself in the repertoire, and with justification. The roots of the opening phase, in the 19th century, are a comforting element, for one soon loses the way with music that strives for ‘originality’ at all costs. There’s a Brahmsian density, there are Russian emotional depths, and there’s also, as it goes along, Farr’s own voice, a voice that has somehow made the gamelan his own, and has found an authentic way to recreate it at the piano.

Most importantly, there’s more than a trace of melody or motif which is the vital recognition element that attracts further listenings.

Endres tackled it (this one with the score before him) with a gusto and bravura that perhaps turned it into a Lisztian travelogue. His playing persuaded me of its legitimacy.

Carnaval might well be Schumann’s most popular piece. It’s certainly one that I discovered early and whose technical impossibilities I have struggled with over the years. Was the opening of the Préambule too loud? Not to me; double forte means pretty loud, and the whole of this section is marked ff with nothing but crescendo marks until the third page when p and pp are to be found. The contrasts as Endres forged them were very rewarding and they sounded right to me. The emphatic forte chords in Pierrot were robustly planted into its otherwise calm promenade.

Carnaval is simply a brilliant sequence of infectious tunes in highly contrasted sketches and portraits of the unique creations that Schumann evoked from many aspects of his life and imaginings: in part from Italian commedia dell’arte, in part from creatures of German Romanticism, in part Schumann’s friends, loves and objects of admiration (Estrella, Chiarina, Chopin, Paganini), and his own inventions like Eusebius and Florestan, and the Davidsbund. And Papillons are recalled from his own similar suite of pieces, Op 2.  As with much music that has some kind of programme or reference, the riddle is interesting but the solution is unimportant.

They all came off the page in vivid colours, filled with wit and boisterousness, with moments – some quite prolonged – of sentimentality-with-a-backbone (Eusebius), or mock grandeur. Rhythms were totally infectious and I felt that here was a German who felt a real affinity with Schumann (though Endres comes from southern Bavaria while Schumann was a Saxon).

The last item was one of those exercises in flamboyance and OTT virtuosity that actually surpasses the expectations even of the severest pedants. Most of the wonderful dances by Johann Strauss and many of those by his father and brothers are such that life might seem incomprehensible if they didn’t exist, like all great masterpieces. Wein,Weib und Gesang is one of the best Strauss waltzes; there are about eight great melodies which Godowski had great delight with, embellishing them impetuously, extravagantly, combining them into canons or counterpoints. Wonder if Godowski himself had anything of a melodic gift. If one doesn’t, what he did is the next best thing, and it would surprise me if Johann, in his Viennese grave, would have been anything but hugely delighted at the outrageous liberties taken, and he’d have loved Endres’s performance.

As if that wasn’t enough, we got an encore of more of the world’s irrepressible tunes from Gershwin’s Songbook.

In all it was a splendid recital that would have offered something to most classical music tastes.