Category: Reviews – Concerts

Mêler Ensemble: programme changes but all is forgiven

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Sunday Concerts (Wellington Chamber Music)

Halvorsen: Passacaglia in G minor for violin and viola after Handel; Janáček: Pohádka (Fairy Tale); Piazzolla: The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires; Brahms Piano quartet in G minor, Op 25

Mêler Enesmble (Josef Špaček – violin, Amanda Verner – viola, Aleisha Verner – cello, Andrew Tyson – piano)

Ilott Theatre, Wellington Town Hall

Sunday 21 August 3pm

‘Mêler? Bien sûr; les instruments se mêlent parfaitement, avec bonheur’.

As there was with the Mêler Ensemble’s concert at Lower Hutt, there was some disappointment that the programme had been changed, caused ostensibly by the late replacement of the original pianist (Tanya Gabrielian). Waikanae too had their promised Schumann replaced by Dvořák’s Piano Quartet in E flat. At Wellington the music of the first half was changed, from Schubert and Brahms to pieces by Handel/Halvorsen, Janáček and Piazzolla. The reasons for these late changes can actually have had nothing to do with the change of pianist, as he was named along with the advertised programmes.

Comments I heard at the end of the first half, however, suggested that all had been forgiven, so unexpectedly delightful most had found the unheralded and largely unknown music.

At this year’s Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson I had heard the variations by Norwegian violinist and composer Johan Halvorsen, drawn from the last movement of Handel’s Harpsichord Suite in G minor. Then it was played in the version for violin and cello by two members of the Hermitage Trio, one of the overseas guest ensembles that adorned the festival throughout. It was the only piece that was common to the programme played at Lower Hutt on 11 August.

This afternoon it was played by violinist Špaček and violist Amanda Verner – Halvorsen’s original version. Such a hybrid piece calls for a compromise between the performance style of the high baroque and that of the late romantic period and I can imagine performances that lean too far in one or other direction. Here, using ordinary modern instruments, and acknowledging the musical conventions of the turn of the century, long before any serious thought was given to period authenticity in performance, it would probably have been deadly to adopt an 18th century style.

Handel’s splendid theme was only enhanced by the arrangement and especially by this performance which was filled with all the richness, power and tonal variety available to players on modern instruments. Both players also happen to be superb musicians who created gorgeous ensemble, brilliant virtuosity, as well as occasional surprise with earthy and passionate passages. In true Romantic fashion, the piece built up to an exciting climax at the end that was brilliantly executed.

Janáček’s Fairy Tale (strictly, just ‘Tale’) might be a story told in music, but even paying no attention to the story, the music, as idiosyncratic as the composer normally is, stands on its own feet. It’s in three movements. Here the two instruments, cello and piano, play almost entirely different roles, the roles of the lovers in the story whose fate rests in the balance for most of its duration; and in this lies a good deal of the interest of the music. In the opening movement the cello play pizzicato for a long time alongside the piano that ripples with a sort of hesitating impulsiveness.

Anyone familiar with Janáček’s piano music such as In the Mists or On an Overgrown Path would have no trouble identifying this, with its mood of uneasy ardour, even in the happier last movement where a happy resolution can be foreseen.

Even though the second section is lighter, sunnier in tone, each instrument retains its separateness; the dialogue is conducted by players of very striking technical panache and the ability to invest music with drama and personality.

The third, and another very different, piece was Astor Piazzolla’s impressions of the four seasons in Buenos Aires. None of the pieces in the first half called for all four instruments; the Piazzolla came close, in an arrangement by one José Bragato for violin, cello and piano. Though it would be interesting to hear it first in the clothes Piazzolla gave it – the bandoneon quartet – this more European model, if not much suggesting the inimitable sound of the bandoneon, carried the essentials in terms of rhythms and melodic accents, the little rolling, chromatic left-hand motifs at the piano for example. Thus I might have been misled in sensing the flavour of a perhaps French chamber piece, such as Milhaud. At many points I felt I could hear the influence of his Paris teacher Nadia Boulanger, though she was famous for leading her students to discover, to cultivate whatever was their own essential voice as composer. The arrangement offered moments for occasional bravura display, for example in a small-scale, brilliant cadenza for Špaček in the first movement.

Even in the slightly surprising, Schubertian melody in the third, Spring, movement, where Europe seemed close at hand, the tango was always there, and the players, each exhibiting both individuality and a fine spirit of ensemble, let us hear their own delight in it.

The one piece remaining from the original programme was Brahms’s first Piano Quartet. It’s one of the best loved of his works, containing the sort of melodies that are found in the first Piano Trio or the Op 18 Sextet.

Great delicacy distinguished the opening of the quartet, with teasing hints of the sort of tunes that follow and which soon emerged with full-blown magnificence.

The beauty of this work rests for the most part on the ensemble writing where individual instruments, or rather their players, rarely draw attention to themselves. That’s not to say that Brahms doesn’t employ them to offer contrasting feelings, as happens in the Intermezzo, where slightly disturbed strings underlie a sunnier, more spirited mood in the piano. The gypsy-style last movement drew attention to the close accord between the sisters on viola and cello, very naturally pitted at times against the piano or violin.

It was wise not to have changed this item in the programme as it was undoubtedly the most looked forward to and the performance fulfilled every hope for this concert, ending with a marvelous joyfulness.

There was long applause at the end and it was rewarded by part of the last movement from Dvořák’s Piano Quartet in E flat.

A composer’s credentials – a clarification

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Re Grayson Gilmour:
Refer to the review of the New Zealand School of Music orchestra concert on Friday 12 August.

My review expressed a note of puzzlement that the one piece in the programme by a New Zealand composer seemed to be by a composer, Grayson Gilmour, with no connection with the school and, indeed, nothing indicated any connection with tertiary music education at all.

I have been enlightened.
Grayson Gilmour is a current student of the NZSM. He is enrolled in a Bachelor of  Music with Honours, studying with John Psathas and Dugal McKinnon. His work, Existence – Aether, was commissioned by the NZSM as a recipient of the Jenny McLeod prize (an annual commission for orchestra awarded by the school). Grayson completed his undergraduate degree at the NZSM, majoring in composition, about 3 years ago, before returning for postgraduate study.

Cantoris and Rachel Hyde take flight with Pärt

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ARVO PÄRT

Bogoroditze Djev  (O Mother of God) / The Woman With the Alabaster Box

Kanon Pokojanen (Odes 1, 7 & 9) / Nunc Dimittis

Cantoris, directed by Rachel Hyde

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

Wednesday, 17th August 2011

(review adapted from transcript notes of a review on RNZ Concert’s “Upbeat”,with Clarissa Dunn, 19.08.11)

Tell us about listening to Arvo Pärt in the middle of a wintry Wellington day!

Arvo Pärt’s music was, I think a wonderful choice of repertoire with which to finish one’s work with a choir. Pärt is a composer who’s contributed of late to a quiet revolution that’s taken place within the confines of contemporary classical music, turning his back on much of the avant-garde modes of expression in favor of something whose simplicity and beauty of utterance has won a huge following, including  many listeners who would have regarded most contemporary music as too elitist, difficult, austere, esoteric and frankly unattractive.

Was Cantoris’ programme a good representative selection of Pärt’s choral music?

Yes,I think it was – the choices were both vibrant and contemplative, outwardly expressive and inwardly mystical, simply beautiful and quietly austere – people who didn’t know the composer’s music would, I think, get a good idea of its salient qualities from attending this concert.

He’s a composer who’s undergone something of a journey to reach his present status.

Well, certainly a multi-faceted journey – inwardly and outwardly, as they say in analytical circles. In his youth Pärt was remarked of as a composer who “only had to shake his sleeves and notes fell out of them”. His early compositions followed the austere lines of Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Bartok, and then to the serialism of Schoenberg – this quickly got him into trouble with the Soviet Authorities (Estonia had been taken over by the Soviet Union) and performances of his works were actually banned. His response was to withdraw and study early music from Medieval and Renaissance times, the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church plainchant making its mark as well. He emerged from this silence with an entirely new compositional philosophy.

How would you describe this change?

Pärt has famously described his later music as “tintinnabuli” – like the ringing of bells, music characterized by simple harmonies, using single unadorned notes or triads, deriving from the music of medieval and renaissance times studied so intently by the composer. The interesting thing is that this music, like a lot of the early music that was Pärt’s inspiration, has such a powerful simplicity – using little rhythmic complexity, unselfconscious harmonic display using pure intervals and almost no dissonance, and a clarity of texture at all times. What comes from this is music that touches many listeners deeply and profoundly. Pärt’s own words sum up this new way of making music: “I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This one note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence, comforts me. I work with very few elements – with one voice, two voices. I build with primitive materials – with the triad, with one specific tonality. The three notes of a triad are like bells and that is why I call it tintinnabulation”.

Tell us about Rachel Hyde, who’s stepping down an musical director of “Cantoris” after this series of concerts.

Rachel is going to concentrate on finishing a law degree – in her own words “it’s now or never”! She felt that with all the things she wanted to do, her work with the choir was suffering, so it was better to relinquish that and let somebody else carry on with the good work. She’s going to continue working with her children’s orchestra, the Schola Sinfonica, and also, hopefully, will do the occasional public concert with groups like Bow, the String Ensemble she helped to found, and the Wellington Chamber Orchestra.

This series of concerts – where are they taking place?

The choir is giving two more concerts in this series – free of charge to the public, incidentally – the first tonight at Wellington’s City Gallery at 6pm and then on Sunday in Porirua, at the Pataka Arts Centre at 2pm.

I understand the weather has caused some performing groups some difficulties this week – what about Cantoris?

Rachel told me that the rehearsals hadn’t been without difficulties due to the weather – at least one rehearsal was called off entirely, and one of the choir’s strongest-voiced male singers has been left with next to no voice due to a cold – the entrails weren’t exactly propitious, one would have thought, and it’s a tribute to both Rachel and her choir that the music was delivered with such expertise and energy and beauty, despite all tribulations.

So, let’s look at the programme, six shorter pieces for choir – in general, how well did you feel the voices put across this music?

I’m pretty much a beginner listener, when it comes to Arvo Pärt’s music, and going to this concert and listening to the recordings we’re going to play has been a revelation for me, as I’m sure it will to others who go to any of the concerts. Compared with the singing on the recordings, Cantoris’s approach was gentler, less assertive than the singing of choirs such as the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, a group who would have been pretty well steeped in the composer’s music. In view of the difficulties experienced by the group in preparing for this concert, their achievement in making the music live and breathe the way it sounded to me is, I think all the more commendable.

The first piece, very short, was Bogoroditse Djevo (translated, it means “O Mother of God”) – here, a lovely, well-focused performance, not trumpet-toned in the big moments (as I’m sure the trebles of the Kings College Cambridge Choir were able to do when it was first performed by them in 1992 – Pärt wrote the piece for the Choir to perform at their Christmas Concert that year) but gentler-grained, like the pipings of woodwinds.

The Woman With the Alabaster Box (1997) came next – an interesting work, a setting of Matthew’s Gospel (from Chapter 26 Verse 7 onwards). Again, the piece was very nicely and ambiently sung, and somewhat more demanding to bring off compared with some of Pärt’s output, duet to the composer’s extending his harmonies to include some expressive dissonances. Interestingly, this was a setting of the words in English, the story of the woman who empties a box of expensive oil over Christ’s head, to the consternation of the disciples, who complain that the oil would have been better sold so that money could be given to the poor. In places the setting seemed almost deliberately unidiomatic, as if to avoid English speech stresses and render the words as pure sound – a kind of marmoreal effect, which I found was a bit alienating. I admired this work but didn’t fall in love with it!  Actually, I thought Cantoris’s performance was warmer than the one I heard on the commercial recording – here, we heard some lovely work in thirds from the men, well sustained, and carrying them through some uncertain moments later on. Throughout the concert, there was this imbalance between the men’s and women’s voices, the tenors and basses obviously missing strength of tone due to the effects from colds.

The next three items I did fall in love with! These were exerpts from the composer’s Kanon Pokajanen, written in 1995, an extended eighty-minute work in total, and dedicated by the composer to commemorate the 750th anniversary of Cologne Cathedral. This is a stunning work, and it features Pärt’s slow-moving triadic harmonies, intensifying in places into bell-like tones – a real embodiment of the composer’s idea of “tintinabuli”. The music has a strongly-flavoured Slavic tone, to my ears – I think you can hear that Russian Orthodox Chant tradition which the composer explored, very reminiscent, naturally of Rachmaninov’s writing for choirs in his Vespers – the same kind of sound, not like any other music I know. It places great demands on the singers, and Cantoris, again struggling in places with a slight imbalance between women’s and men’s voices managed to convey plenty of atmosphere and feeling. The women’s voices were particularly steady – very mesmeric and evocative. The occasional rawness of tone gave the performance an attractive “here-and-now” quality, rather than something that sounded as though it was being performed celestially or somewhere comparable on the other side of the Great Divide. While looking up information on the internet about recorded performances of this music, I read a heartfelt review of the work from a teenaged boy who described how he lay on his bed and sobbed at the music’s sheer beauty and expressive power – a life-changing experience, one would suspect. The work’s been famously recorded by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir on the ECM label – over eighty minutes of pure, simple other-worldly sound.

The concert finished with Pärt’s “Nunc Dimittis”, the well-known prayer for a soul’s departure*. Though not without some momentary unsteadiness in the voices at the initial cry, this was quickly corrected, and gave us that sense of humanity searching for the light – some lovely solo work from one of the sopranos, very secure in her pitching, creating a real feeling of frisson in places, and leading with surety towards the great moment of salutation of the light by the massed voices at the word “lumen”. Later there came more of Pärt’s tintinnabuli, bell-like oscillations from all parts of the choir, the men’s deep voices almost being felt rather than heard, and the women’s secure tones nicely pitched – the music seems not to resolve at the end, but simply stops, as if, in one’s mind the sounds repeat down the ages, representing humanity’s everlasting supplication towards light and goodness.

(*not “Out of the Depths” as I blurted out on air unthinkingly, which was, of course “De Profundis”)

The Plight of the Dischords, aka, New Zealand Clarinet Quartet

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Music by Natalie Hunt, Iain Matheson, Evan Ware, Philip Brownlee, Jenö von Takács

The New Zealand Clarinet Quartet (or The Plight of the Dischords) (Debbie Rawson, Tui Clark, Hayden Sinclair, Nick Walshe)
(New Zealand School of Music)

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University of Wellington

Thursday 18 August, 7.30pm,

For the approximately 30 souls who braved yet another night of freezing temperatures, strong winds and driving rain, this was a rewarding occasion. The acoustics of the relatively intimate Council Chamber seemed just right for this combination of clarinets, played by such proficient performers. Despite the group’s subtitle, this was a demonstration of the euphonious and very flexible instruments that are clarinets.

Being a concert of contemporary music, with the oldest piece having been composed in 1975, a number of techniques were employed that were different from those one usually hears. The performances of works by New Zealand composers were premieres.

Interspersed through the programme in three groups were Natalie Hunt’s ten pieces named for birds – mainly New Zealand native birds. The composer, who was present, is herself a clarinettist, as well as an honours graduate in composition. The first, ‘Kawau’ [shag] was titled ‘Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar’. The printed programme did not divulge whether these phrases in quotation marks were written by Natalie Hunt, or by some other person.

This first piece began with breathing – the four players breathing through their instruments in contrasting rhythms. This was followed by a bird sound made through a clarinet mouthpiece only, and then all the players joined in. ‘Raven’ featured harmony; four clarinets in harmony, one being a bass clarinet, made a gorgeous sound.

The ‘Kaka’ began with a passage that interspersed vocal sound, breathing, and instrumental sounds. This time, the soprano clarinet was one of the instruments, and some delightfully unusual tones were emitted.

Iain Matheson is a Scotsman who studied with New Zealander Lyell Cresswell, in Edinburgh. His piece ‘And Another Thing’ was quirky, with bird-like sounds. There was great use of the various timbres the clarinet is capable of, but to my mind a little too much repetition.

We returned to Hunt’s ‘real’ birds, firstly ‘Flamingo’. This employed four ‘normal’ clarinets, one player making unusual sounds through his instrument rather than playing it in the usual fashion. These sounds were mysterious, rather like a marimba being played in the distance. ‘Toroa’ [albatross] featured breathing through the instruments once again, this time while two of the instruments, including the bass clarinet, playing conventionally, before all joined in. There were similarities with the ‘Raven’ piece heard earlier. The last in this group was ‘Piwkawaka’ [fantail]. The piece was appropriately flitty, with a jazzy rhythm.

The final piece in the first half was ‘Returnings’ by Evan Ware, an American composer influenced by John Adams, we were told. Apparently this composition was first created for Facebook – the medium becomes the message. It was certainly a minimalist work, but the sounds produced were enjoyable, including oscillations and high-pitched notes. The bass clarinettist conducted at several points – presumably when it was time to move on to the next section of music after reiterations of phrases.

After the interval, the first piece was ‘The stars like years’ by Wellington composer Philip Brownlee, who was present. The programme mentioned ‘an elongated sense of time and space’; certainly much of the music was reminiscent of the music used in space movies. The oscillations reminded me of ‘the music of the spheres’ which has inspired numbers of composers, based on the theories of the Greek philosophers up to and including Plato. Once or twice the instruments appeared not to be quite in tune with each other on unison notes – or was this deliberate? Certainly there were some very astringent discords. It is quite amazing what you can get out of a clarinet – not all of it easy on the ear. There was plenty of minimalist fabric in the piece, some of which was improvised ‘using sets of notated gestural materials’.

The programme returned to the last four of Natalie Hunt’s birds. ‘Swallow’ began with a solo that was evocative and attractive. The bass clarinet also had interesting and pleasing passages. The next bird was mythical: ‘Phoenix’. The phrase read ‘The rain washed you clean’ – was this from the ashes out of which the bird arose? This featured a solo also, and more oscillations (of which I was tiring by this time). Here, the bass clarinettist played an even smaller clarinet than Tui Clark’s soprano: sopranino?

The ‘Kahu’ (hawk) spoke in close harmony – and disharmony, while the last bird, ‘Kereru’ (pigeon) had a very active piece, with an authentic bird call, and fluffing sounds like the bird’s wings. This was a charming composition.

An Pan (To Pan) by Takács was in two movements: Pastorale and Bagpipes (Dudelsack). In this piece the four regular clarinets were used. Again there was oscillation, but also pastoral melodies, and shrieking discord on intervals of a second. The second movement carried the traits of the instrument described, being loud, even raucous.

It was an innovative concert, with a variety of new or nearly-new music performed with great skill and élan. The pieces by Natalie Hunt were particularly skilled, varied, descriptive, and thoroughly musical.

Overwhelmed by the splendour of it all – Latitude 37 in Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

STILE MODERNO – the genesis of the Baroque

Latitude 37

Julia Fredersdorff (baroque violin)

Laura Vaughan (viola da gamba/lirone)

Donald Nicolson (harpsichord)

Chamber Music New Zealand 2011

Ilott Theatre, Wellington

Monday 15th August 2011

Perhaps it was the fault of the snow that had been falling in Wellington for the first time in years – part of the extreme weather which had been causing all kinds of disruptions to musicians and their activities, with rehearsals having to be being cancelled and transport arrangements rethought. Even as Chamber Music CEO Euan Murdoch was introducing the concert (which was being broadcast nationally) the lights in the Ilott Theatre were flickering disconcertingly – of course the sounds of audience laughter had to be then explained to radio listeners, some of whom might have well been experiencing power surges and even failures of their own.

What about the snow, then, you may by now be thinking? Well, it must have transported a goodly proportion of my listening sensibilities to the state of “dreaming of a White Christmas”, because I simply couldn’t keep pace with the rapidity of change during the first half of Latitude 37’s richly-conceived and beautifully-played programme. I was following what I imagined was the order of listed items, and keeping up with things most satisfyingly (or so I thought) – when to my horror, after the three musicians had bowed and walked off the stage, up came the lights for the interval, leaving my expectations of more first-half music stranded somewhat at the Violin Sonata Seconda of Dario Castello, little more than halfway through the promised order!

When I looked around, nobody else in the audience seemed to be distressed or disconcerted or bewildered – everybody, it seemed, except for yours truly, was up with the play. Or were they? – I espied somebody I knew sitting a couple of rows away, somebody to whom I didn’t mind confessing a degree of appreciative ineptitude (I was hoping she wouldn’t spontaneously ejaculate the words, “Good heavens! – call yourself a critic?” or something similarly embarrassing). After furtively whispering my predicament to her, she reassured me by confessing that she, too, had gotten a bit lost with the order. I could have hugged her, but then that would have had to have been explained as well! – so I contented myself with a murmured “Well, thank goodness I’m not the only one….”

What the players had, in fact, done, was to run the endings and beginnings of different works so closely together as to make it difficult for the uninitiated ear to distinguish them from one another. As practically none of the music was familiar to me (though I thought I “knew” the baroque style sufficiently to be able to make distinctions between movements and, indeed, different works) I had gotten myself horribly lost, left behind in an ensnarement of lavishly-decorated and stunningly realized cornucopia of baroque splendor. I had taken notes on what I thought were individual works along the way, but upon reading them, realized that I had myself “run the movements together” and ascribed different strains of the music to the wrong works – and so on.

Why am I confessing up to this? Why would I want my incompetence as a listener, moreover, a self-appointed ANALYTICAL listener revealed to the world? Do I have some “hidden agenda” in mind, such as a kind of “did he fall or was he pushed” early retirement from “Middle C”? I must confess , it was, in retrospect, a delight of a concert from beginning to end, my confusion as to its exact provenance at any given time mattering not a whit to the spontaneous and incidental pleasure the musicians were generating around and about my receptive, if undiscriminating ears. Did I HAVE to know exactly where we were at any given point in order to appreciate the music’s and the performances’ qualities?

Sir Thomas Beecham was quoted once as saying that “The English may not like music, but they simply LOVE the noise it makes”.  After the experience of “losing my way” in both halves of this splendid-sounding concert of Baroque music, I’ve come to the conclusion that mine could well be a very Beechamesque appreciation of the same. Still, I figured that the experience of being “humbled” in a music appreciation sense, and confessing to it all in public is ultimately a valuable one for a critic. Apart from the “keeping me in my proper place”  process, it’s demonstrated at first hand to me what many people possibly feel when confronted with unfamiliar music at concerts in general. However much some concertgoers may “love” the sounds, they may simply not have the time for anything more than a cursory listen to music outside the live concert experience, so that the sounds do seem to run together for them, in a pleasing, but relatively undifferentiated way.

Enough of this self-flagellation – (my continuing in this vein might persuade some readers that I’m actually ENJOYING the experience!). So, what can I impart, in a critical sense, of what I heard in the Ilott Theatre that evening? This was one of two programs being toured by Latitude 37, as far as I was concerned, for me the more obscure of the two, as I knew not a single note of any of the composers’ music. The “other” concert featured music by Buxtehyde, Biber, JS Bach – to mention only one letter of the alphabet – and Pachelbel (yes, the Canon, but accompanied by its Gigue!), so Wellington was favored with the more esoteric-sounding program. Still, as I’d heard the group previously in concert, and knew just how inspiring and involving their music-making could be, I expected that, well-known or otherwise, the works featured would exert their own unique magic – and thus it proved.

On paper, what would one make of Canzon a due by somebody called Bartolome de Selma y Salverde, whose music began the concert? Apparently the composer’s only work ever published, it possessed an attractive initial melancholy before quickening in pulse, demonstrating plenty of flexibility and impulsive volatility (well, with a name like his, the composer was obviously a Spaniard). The players talked about the music – Laura Vaughan, who alternated between her viola da gamba and a smaller, more exotic-looking multi-stringed instrument called a sirone, talked about composers “freeing music from Renaissance polyphony, and expressing more individual emotion” as well as emphasizing the aspect of performer improvisation. This was a theme further developed by harpsichordist Donald Nicolson, who spoke about the phenomenon of much of the music we were to hear not actually having been written down – his own playing had a number of instances of seemingly-spontaneous impulses of melismatic energy, which invariably set the textures of the music fizzing and crackling. Violinist Julia Fredersdorff talked about the interchangeability of much Baroque music, citing Dario Castello’s Quarta Sonata a Due, Soprano e Trombon over Violetta as a work that was here transcribed for violin and bass viol, the different instruments bringing their own qualities to bear on the written (and improvised) notes.

Throughout the concert I was much taken by the music’s extraordinary freedom of expression within the prescribed boundaries of performance. The players were able to explore what seemed like vast potentialities of elaboration, but as individuals in dialogue with one another, not merely reproducing aimless, elaboration-for-its-own-sake activity. I could occasionally feel points of saturation being explored, which led me to imagine how such a style of playing and composing, if carried to extremes, could actually collapse under its own weight of elaboration – which, of course, was what happened to the Baroque style, eventually pushing succeeding composers in new, rather less over-laden directions.

I was perhaps more successful in “keeping up” with the item changes in this half of the concert, though finding that, towards the end, I couldn’t vouch for surety as to which item we’d reached (completing my humiliation). I like to think it was my survival instinct rather than a prurient streak in my makeup which, towards the end of the concert, quickened my interest in the music of one Tarquinio Merula, whose brief program bio-sketch had him “dismissed for indecency” from a position he held in Bergamo. His Ciaccona sounded anything but indecent, instead graceful and dance-like, featuring viola and violin playing in the same register to an interesting coloristic effect, the manoeuvres demonstrating great teamwork and beautifully-shared inflections of the music’s lines (mind you, I could have been describing either Claudio Merulo’s Toccata Terza or Maurizio Cazzati’s Balletto Quarto – but I hoped not).

Far more importantly than any self-consciously scholarly summation of the concert’s fine detail I might have pursued, I felt by the concert’s end as if I had been completely immersed in a whole era’s bevy of musical sounds and achieved a greater understanding of and love for the generous-cum-self-indulgent excesses of the baroque composer. No better advocates of a highly distinctive and inescapably grand period of music-making would I have wished for than Latitude 37, that evening.

Showcase for winner of NZSM concerto contest

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand School of Music Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Young

Bruckner: two motets arranged for trombones: ‘Locus Iste’ and ‘Vexilla regis’
Grayson Gilmour: Existence – Aether !
Milhaud: Saudades do Brasil
Pierre Max Dubois: Concerto for Alto Saxophone and orchestra (soloist Reuben Chin)
Beethoven: Symphony No 2 in D

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Friday 12 August, 6.30pm

This outing by the orchestra of the New Zealand School of Music (NZSM) was the opportunity to celebrate the winner of the school’s annual concerto competition. Curiously, nowhere in the programme was that fact recorded, even in the short biographical note about the saxophonist. The final round of the competition took place in the Adam Concert Room on 25 May when the four finalists played with piano accompaniment (see Middle C review of that date).

The timing of the present concert was perhaps a little unfortunate as half the school’s instrumentalists were involved in the orchestra that accompanied the NZSM’s production of Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream at the beginning of the month. I assume most of the best players had been employed there; while there were times when that might have been evident, that fact that two very accomplished orchestras could be put together also served to demonstrate the depth of talent available. *(see below)

I must here make a disclosure. I had mistaken the starting time of the concert and missed the first 40 minutes; happily Radio New Zealand Concert recorded the concert and I am grateful for their supplying me with a recording of the performances.

It opened with a most attractive arrangement (unnamed) for trombones of two motets by Bruckner. Whether that was inspired simply by the presence of five excellent trombonists or by some other reason, it was a very engaging way to open things. Perhaps no instruments are better adapted to suggest the warmth and organic richness of the human voice; the sounds supplied a deeply meditative quality to these beautiful pieces, leaving me with not a scrap of dissatisfaction at the absence of voices. Articulation and ensemble were admirable.

It was followed by a piece by 25 year old Grayson Gilmour. I hadn’t heard of him and so enlightened myself in the way of the 21st century, to be somewhat engaged by his zippy, zany website with a range of video and audio clips; pop style sounds, images and vocabulary, with drollerie and a heart. Though he allowed himself to write a rather pretentious programme note invoking musical exoterica (Dérive – viz. Boulez). Gilmour’s piece, Existence – Aether 1 (are there other parts?), is remote from the precise, hard-edged sound world of Boulez however, and he employs the word not in the French – Boulez – sense of ‘deriving from’, for example, earlier pieces of music, but to mean exploring, discovering, drifting. The latter word certainly characterizes the actual music, a post-modern, dreamy character that makes an immediate appeal through slowly evolving sequences, carefully orchestrated over long-held flute or string notes. Nothing in the website references discloses any tertiary music study, or mentions pieces such as this. Is he perhaps an interesting example of the irrelevance, up to a point, of academic study in the evolution of a real composer?

Interesting, if this is the case, that the School of Music’s orchestra should choose it in favour of a piece by one of their many student composers.*

The orchestra’s qualities were more tested in the nine pieces from Milhaud’s Saudades do Brasil (there are twelve altogether). Milhaud is famous among other things, for his ’polytonal’ phase and these pieces represent that, following his years at the French Embassy in Rio de Janeiro. They are polytonal in a cheerful manner, but here was the rub. If one is to avoid the impression of reckless and joyous dissonance, rather more precision and tonal finesse is probably needed; the more brassy moments were a bit blousy, while the calm pieces were successful. It might have been auto-suggestion, but the orchestra seemed to gain in idiomatic confidence as it went along and by the second-to-last piece, Laranjeiras, there was a real confidence which engaged most sections of the orchestra, I recalled, apart from the May concert where Ruben Chin won the school competition, that the name Dubois as composer had featured in a students’ concert at St Andrew’s in 2010: I looked it up and found it was his À l’Espagnole. (Searching on the  internet, you also find another: Théodore Dubois, well known to organists).

A contemporary of Boulez perhaps, but Pierre Max Dubois’s inclination and that of many others who did not fall in with the alienating rites of Darmstadt, led him to writing music that was accessible to the generality of music lovers. Its accents were still contemporary but they had not been cut so totally adrift from tradition. This concerto, for saxophone and strings, is a delightful example of good music of the mid 20th century.

The concerto is colourful and varied, its three movements used in the way the three movements had been used for three centuries; and the playing was filled with energy and dance and subtlety; though the outer movements have jazz accents, it is by no means a jazz-inspired work. Its ancestry is distinctly that of Ibert, Milhaud and further back perhaps to Chabrier; thus the saxophone’s sound removes it entirely from the jazz world.

The second half was devoted to Beethoven’s second symphony. While St Andrew’s is a good venue for smaller ensembles and had been a good space for the saxophone concerto, full orchestras don’t sit well there (part of the reason for problems with the Milhaud). More experienced players would have found ways to refine their sounds which were often uncomfortably loud and confused. Nevertheless, much of the playing was marked by careful dynamic control – the second movement was sensitively played; what one had to concentrate on was the energy the orchestra brought to the performance and the generally accurate playing. I was particularly interested, being able to listen later to the recording, how much of the acoustic failings of the live hearing had disappeared on the recording and I could hear more clearly the careful detailing of much of the playing, especially of the strings and, in the boisterous last movement, even in the brass. Sure, the absence of a spacious acoustic was still obvious, but the quality of the playing was much more evident.

*  We were later offered an explanation:
Grayson Gilmour is a current student of the NZSM. He completed his undergraduate degree at the NZSM, majoring in composition, about 3 years ago, and is now studying for a Bachelor of Music with Honours, studying with John Psathas and Dugal McKinnon. His work, Existence – Aether, was commissioned by the NZSM as a recipient of the Jenny McLeod prize (an annual commission for orchestra awarded by the school).

Unfortunate programme change does ensemble no favours

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Chamber Music Hutt Valley

Mozart: Piano quartet in G minor, K.478
Rachmaninov: Andante from cello sonata
Handel – Halvorsen: Passacaglia in G minor
Antony Verner: The hill where the wind dances
Dvořàk: Piano quartet in E flat

MELER ensemble: Josef Špaček (violin), Andrew Tyson (piano), Amanda Verner (viola), Aleisha Verner (cello)

Little Theatre, Lower Hutt

Thursday, 11 August 2011

There was much to delight in Chamber Music Hutt Valley’s last 2011 concert. Unfortunately, there were matters to be less pleased about, also.

The programme was changed without notice; the audience was told of the changed items just before they were played. If there were extenuating circumstances, we were not informed of them. I’m sure most of the audience were as displeased as I was not to hear the Turina piano quartet that was advertised. I was particularly disappointed not to be able to hear the Schumann piano quartet Op.47 played; I am particularly fond of it, and was looking forward to a rare opportunity to hear it live.

Coming on top of a radical change to the advertised programme this group was to play for the Wellington Chamber Music Society on 21 August (originally to have been with a different pianist), this seemed unprofessional.

The second problem affected the Mozart work particularly, but also others. The floor of the stage is varnished and quite highly polished, making the tone from the piano often far too percussive. The players didn’t adjust their sound to the small venue, and I found the piano really hard on the ears sometimes. This problem can occur at the Adam Concert Room and St. Andrew’s on The Terrace, too. In those two venues some performers (the more perceptive ones, in my view!) use a large cloth directly under the piano. Perhaps the problem could have been lessened in this bright, dry acoustic by having the piano lid lower.

The familiar Mozart quartet suffered from the piano being too dominant, meaning the ensemble frequently did not jell; the strings were too submissive to the piano. One could hear too much of the mechanics of the piano. Andrew Tyson could play quietly; when he did, the ensemble was fine, barring a few deviations in intonation from the strings in the first movement But the loud was too loud, even in the andante movement. Here, Josef Špaček had more opportunity to shine than in the first movement, and the ensemble was better.

This performance did not seize me with the beauty of Mozart’s music.

Rachmaninov’s andante proved to be very romantic, especially for the cello. Again the piano was clattery, detracting from the beauty of the music and from Aleisha Verner’s performance of it.

This was followed by Halvorsen’s Passacaglia on a theme from Handel’s Harpsichord Suite in G minor, HWV 432, for violin and viola duo. The work develops into a virtuoso effort for both instruments, incorporating double-stopping, spiccato, sul ponticello, and other techniques. Despite its brilliance, it does not lose the subject theme, and is always expressive. There was a strong, warm sound from the viola; in this acoustic, the violin sometimes sounded squeaky in the upper register. The accord between the two players was excellent (they played standing, which seemed to give them greater freedom), and strong chords in harmony towards the end were most striking. This was very fine playing from both performers. Of course, there were no programme notes for these two pieces, nor for the last item on the programme. The excellent notes on Turina and Schumann were wasted.

It was intriguing to have a piece from the brother of the two New Zealanders in the quartet (Antony Verner). Based on the experience of Wellington weather, as outlined in the elegant programme note by the composer, the piece was mainly gentle (now, don’t express surprise!). It opened with the strings describing the wind, then the piano joined in with raindrops. The string parts were quite adventurous, the piano less so. There were no piano chords, so is was neither percussive nor too loud. Tyson played with great delicacy. Although the notes described a “clima[c]tic point where you feel the wind buffeting all around you, before it dies away slowly moving back to the still calm after a storm”, the storm was very mild compared with some literal storms we have experienced recently. It was a very pleasing piece of music, superbly played.

The Dvořàk piano quartet was not a work I was familiar with. The mellow sound from the strings was again, from time to time, overcome by ear-shattering sounds from the piano. The second movement featured a beautiful cello solo with piano while the other instruments played pizzicato. When the other strings began their bowed passage, cello and piano played pianissimo. This was followed by an exciting fast passage, before the solo cello sequence returned. Here, there was great delicacy on the piano.

This was followed in turn by a very rhythmic passage of some complexity, with the piano playing forte again, before it all subsided at the end of the movement.

The third movement opened with a waltz-like dance, including some interesting passages with the instruments interspersing. The use of other than diatonic scales recalled the Czech folk music which the composer often incorporated in his compositions. Then the waltz was decorated on the piano, with pizzicato accompaniment from the strings. The dance changed to a jolly, rustic one, then returned to the original theme, with variations.

The finale was a fast and furious jig, incorporating much interplay between instruments, and some delightful piano passages. There was much variety, and some superb violin playing. A change to a minor key gave way to the bold, sparkling ending – again overwhelmed by the piano.

It is great to hear such young people as these playing at a high level of excellence. In another venue they will doubtless be heard to better advantage, and their true skill and excellence should reveal themselves fully.

A better attendance would have gratified both the players and Chamber Music Hutt Valley. The Melers play again on Sunday, 14 August in the Memorial Hall, Waikanae at 2.30pm, and in the Ilott Theatre in Wellington on Sunday, 21 August at 3pm.


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.