Category: Reviews – Concerts

Delightful Dvorak excites at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

DVORAK – Piano Quintet in A Major Op.81

Cristina Vaszilcsin, Lyndon Taylor (violins) / Peter Garrity, viola

David Chickering, ‘cello / Catherine McKay, piano

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

Wednesday, 1st December 2010

At the end of the first movement of this performance of the Dvorak Piano Quintet I was flabbergasted – here was a group of musicians who had come together just for the occasion performing at a free lunchtime concert in Wellington, giving us playing and interpretation of a stature I was confident I’d not heard previously bettered in this music. I had heard the first violinist, violist and pianist play as a trio before, but within this extended configuration of performers Cristina Vaszilcsin, Peter Garrity and Catherine McKay seemed to me inspired beyond anything previously I’d heard them perform together – obviously the “enhanced” alchemy generated by the presence among the ensemble of Lyndon Taylor and David Chickering (playing violin and ‘cello, respectively) was working brilliantly.

Several things at once registered regarding the group’s playing: – firstly, the beautiful timbral focus of each instrument, at once distinctive and proportioned, each individual line a delight for the ear to follow. Then the unanimity of both attack and of phrasing, five instruments playing as one, yet each seemingly free-spirited, realized both the music’s strength and poetry. Whether one listened to each bar, or a phrase or succession of phrases, one felt the musicians had swallowed the music whole, finding both incidental delight in detail and long-term purpose and strength in the movement’s overview.

So every aspect of the music was given its place – the lyricism of the opening ‘cello-and-piano melody (beguiling tones from David Chickering and Catherine McKay, here), the vigor and point of the response, the depth of colour and texture in the middle voices, the distinctive tone of voices such as the viola’s, and the volatility with which things such as tempi, dynamics and textures would change – but it was the cumulative impact of the whole which truly galvanized our sensibilities as listeners. The quickening of tempi at the movement’s end thus seemed an entirely natural outcome of exuberant release from the energies the playing had built up throughout. Perhaps we in the audience should have forgotten our inhibitions and clapped and cheered at that point – instead we simmered with the excitement of it all, and waited impatiently for the next movement to begin.

The gorgeous viola solos in this work reminded us that the composer himself played the instrument – Peter Garrity’s open-hearted tones were set off beautifully by Catherine Mckay’s piquant piano-playing throughout the slow movement’s opening, one whose melancholy brought out the sunny remembrances of the con moto sections which followed. Here, rhythms were buoyed by enthusiastic pizzicati, with Cristina Vaszilcsin’s and Lyndon Taylor’s silvery violin duetting delightfully recalling happier times, the exuberance marred only by a brief moment of imprecision with the staccato downward phrase at the end. Although viola and violin soulfully revisited the opening, cheerfulness kept on trying to break in – there was a merry dance in whirling triplets begun by the viola, mischievously spiked by the piano in a two-against three game of chase, and a return to the con moto pizzicati impulses, with more cross-rhythms to keep the musicians on their mettle and beguile the listener’s ear – but a stoic sadness seemed to prevail and wander into lonely silence at the end.

As with Schubert’s music, tragedy often sits alongside exuberance and gaiety in Dvorak’s work – and the Scherzo of the Quintet immediately dispelled the previous movement’s sobriety with energies of the most infectious, almost unseemly kind, here brilliantly realized by the players, the “furiant” aspect readily recalling some of the most brilliant of the composer’s Slavonic Dances.  In the middle of it all, a gentle pastoral-like trio played engagingly with rhythms, suggesting a lovely ambiguity of trajection before skipping back into the dash and propulsion of the main dance. At the finale’s onset I thought the tempo a fraction too fast at first; but the players sustained both their articulation and ensemble, Lyndon Taylor’s violin getting a rare chance for its voice to shine alone by leading off the energetic fugal section of the movement, here especially relished by Catherine McKay’s piano-playing. Towards the end, the strings’ arched descent, echoing that of the piano a few bars before, gave regretful notice of the music’s conclusion, the musicians seeming reluctant to release those final graceful stepwise utterances, which grow inexorably into whirling flourishes of brilliance. These last sounds were greeted here with the utmost enthusiasm by a good lunchtime crowd, whose members seemed unanimously of the opinion that they had witnessed some extraordinary music-making.

Shakespeare in Song – choral settings by Cantoris conducted by Rachel Hyde

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Songs from the plays; Sonnet No 18; and other songs by Gibbons and Ramsey

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Saturday 20 November 2.30pm

Here was a most interesting programme, introduced in an engaging manner by conductor Rachel Hyde, who attempted to demonstrate the essential musical quality of Shakespeare’s language and the way in which music permeated Shakespeare’s work and Tudor society in general. For example, she said that someone had counted some 300 musical stage directions in the plays.

To her credit, Hyde kept away from the most common settings of the songs, though many might have waited for them: the agenda was choral settings, so no Finzi or Quilter, no Schubert or Brahms or Mendelssohn; no Tippett and Britten; or less familiar names like Frank Martin, Amy Beach, William Mathias; New Zealanders David Farquhar and David Hamilton are just two who have set the songs – the latter for choir; instead, American and Finnish composers seemed to dominate.

There was nothing from the huge number of operas based on the plays.

One of the curious sidelights to which Rachel Hyde drew attention was that almost all the songs in the plays were written for minor characters, whose role it was to entertain or divert rather than to advance the story; and she expressed doubt, in the event justified, about the success of setting the blank verse of some of the great episodes. She mentioned Komulainen’s ‘To be or not to be’, and I agreed – it quite lacked Hamlet’s profound self-questioning anguish. The only one of that group of four that found tolerable musical setting was ‘O weary night’ from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

All but one of the songs (William Schuman’s ‘Orpheus with his lute’) were unaccompanied; the Schumann sounded distinctly more secure than some the others, and it made me wonder about the usefulness of denying such support to amateur singers, especially when the choir is small.

Schuman’s fine song set words from Henry VIII, believed to be a collaboration between Shakespeare and Fletcher. The words struck me, indeed, as lacking Shakespeare’s verbal whimsy.

Many of the songs were either melodically devious with sequences of taxing intervals, or harmonically testing, all of which caused intonation difficulties and some less than precise ensemble and articulation, evident in songs like Lindberg’s ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’ (Sonnet 18), or Vaughan Williams’s ‘Over hill, over dale’ from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The more successful setting of Sonnet 18 was by Robert Appelbaum, capturing a sunny spirit, the music interesting but not too difficult so the choir sounded comfortable.

I approved of the decision not to print the words in the programme, which leads to the prospect from the choir’s side of the tops of heads buried in programmes. Instead, choir members read the lyrics before the performance, some well, some not so well. But it was an excellent idea.

Hyde warned us about the John Rutter setting of ‘It was a lover and his lass’ from As You Like It; it was a good start, sounding barber-shop, using bass voices to simulate a string bass underlay, singing ‘Doo-wa-doo’, the modern equivalent of ‘Hey nonny nonny’.

There were two probably non-Shakespearean songs. The first was by Orlando Gibbons, ‘What is our life?’ After the somewhat superficial group by Komulainen, it came as a piece of genuine musical inspiration, though the reduced, and so more exposed, choir did it less than justice. ‘Sleep fleshly birth’ by Jacobean composer Robert Ramsey was again accorded to a smaller ensemble which made intonation less secure and the pulse more difficult to maintain.

There were two songs by American composer Matthew Harris, one of the three settings of ‘It was a lover and his lass’. It, and his other song, ‘Take, O, take those lips away’ from Measure for Measure which brought the concert to an end, were among the more successful as music, and the choir delivered full, confident sound.

There were a couple of other groups, as well as the aforementioned Komulainen’s: Vaughan Williams’s three settings and four by Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi. The Vaughan Williams songs did not generally impress me, though ‘The cloud-capped towers’ from The Tempest captured its misty gothic turrents. Another was ‘Full fathom five’, also from The Tempest, but I enjoyed more its setting by Mäntyjärvi – the penultimate song in the concert.

‘Double, double, toil and trouble’ from Macbeth was also in this Mäntyjärvi group; its words were recited by a French choir member whose accent lent it a curiously covenish effect; and the music, too, caught its atmosphere most effectively.

Such an imaginative undertaking deserved good support and the audience of perhaps a hundred responded well.

Festival Singers delight with Rossini’s “Little, Solemn Mass”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ROSSINI – Petite Messe solennelle (for soloists, choir, harmonium and two pianos)

Lesley Graham, soprano / Linden Loader, alto / Jonathan Abernethy, tenor / Roger Wilson, bass

Jonathan Berkhan, Louisa Joblin (pianos) / Thomas Gaynor (harmonium)

Rosemary Russell, musical director

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Hill St., Wellington

Saturday 20th November 2010

“Good God—behold completed this poor little Mass—is it indeed sacred music [la musique sacrée] that I have just written, or merely some damned music [la sacré musique]? You know well, I was born for comic opera. Little science, a little heart, that is all. So may you be blessed, and grant me Paradise!”

With these words Gioachino Rossini prefaced his Petite Messe Solennelle, written in 1863, and called elsewhere by the composer the last of his “pêchés de vieillesse” (sins of old age). Characteristically, the music is neither “petite” nor particularly “solemn” – but there’s little doubt as to the work’s sincerity – an expression of faith and piety from one, in his own words, “born for comic opera”.

One of the most engaging aspects of Rossini’s work is its complete lack of sanctimoniousness – nowhere does one sense a feeling, emotion or impulse that doesn’t spring straight from the composer’s essential nature. As with the Stabat Mater, written in 1842, the music unashamedly evokes the theatre in places, an example being the “Domine Deus” section of the Gloria, which featured a ringing, heroic tenor solo reminiscent of the famous “Cujus animam” aria in the earlier work. Tenor Jonathan Abernethy made an excellent fist of this, singing with flair, accuracy and plenty of dynamic and tonal variation – his work featured some lovely high notes in places such as the concluding “Filius Patris”.

Immediately afterwards, soprano Lesley Graham and alto Linden Loader took us to more sombre realms with “Qui tollis peccata mundi”, piano and harmonium setting the scene with piquant and dramatic utterances (great playing from the instrumentalists throughout) leading to further heartfelt sequences such as beautifully essayed chromatic ascents in thirds by the two singers, and a lovely blend by the two at the haunting “Miserere Nobis”, which developed into some positively theatrical Verdian duetting throughout those same words’ final repetitions.

Always one to relish his opportunities, bass Roger Wilson, in resplendent voice, splendidly delivered the “Quoniam”, at once finding the music’s lyricism and energising the sequences up to “Jesu Christe” with the help of Jonathan Berkahn’s vivid, very orchestral piano-playing. With Louisa Joblin on the second piano deliciously bringing extra “galumph” to the accompanying textures, the choral fugue “Cum Sancto Spiritu” sounded simply glorious, director Rosemary Russell characteristically finding a “tempo giusto” which brought out a polka-like “schwung” to the music that even Smetana might have envied.

I hope these descriptions of “flow” throughout just one of the work’s many sequences  will give a sense to readers of the music’s dramatic coursings from episode to episode, with  every impulse the seeming result of the composer’s instinct to speak in a language that comes naturally, with nothing contrived or laid on for a generalised effect. I loved the Britten-like energies of the Credo’s opening, vigorously ascending piano figurations answered by the choir, with the soloists’ contributions dancing in and out among the exchanges. Another treat was the almost Wagnerian “descendit de caelis”, outrageously visceral downwardly-rolling sequences for choir and piano, relished with splendid elan by the performers . By contrast, the “Crucifixus” featured Lesley Graham’s soprano movingly evoking with piano and harmonium something of the awe and pity at Christ’s own suffering in sacrificing his own life for all mankind. Although the second fugue, at “Et vitam” was initially less than tidy between voices and instruments, Rosemary Russell and her sopranos pulled things together, with the cries of “Amen” at the end a grand focal point, before a brief hiatus and final shout of “Credo” ended things triumphantly.

What the sleevenotes of my old LPs refer to as a Prélude réligieux followed, played as a piano solo by Jonathan Berkahn (my recording features the harmonium at this point) – a mesmeric fugal keyboard meditation, beginning and ending with imposing, Beethoven-like chords. In its way, it made a telling prelude to the Sanctus, whose interchanges between soloists and choir had a kinetic energy as well as drama, finely sung, with the men in the choir especially strong. Lesley Graham then made the most of O Salutaris, her equivalent operatic “scene” for soprano, a big-boned and lyrical outpouring, whose mirror image was the contralto solo at Agnus Dei, introduced by portentous piano and harmonium tones, and simply and gravely sung by Linden Loader, balancing dignity with moments of theatrical expression – her cries of “miserere”, supported by lovely chorus work, were truly supplicatory, leaving Jonathan Berkahn to complete Rossini’s piquant piano solo farewell at the end – a wry gesture, entirely characteristic of the composer.

Immense pleasure was to be had from all of this, completing a concert and a year the Festival Singers can, I’m certain, be proud of.

Soprano, trumpet and organ aid lunchtime digestion

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Handel: ‘The Trumpet’s Loud Clangour’ (from Ode to St Cecilia’s Day)
Bach/Gounod: ‘Ave Maria’
Saint-Saëns: ‘Ave Maria’
Mozart: ‘Laudate Dominum’ (from Vesperae Solennes de Confessore)
Handel: Trumpet Concerto in G minor
Fauré: ‘Pie Jesu’ (from Requiem)
Stanley: Trumpet Voluntary
Handel: ‘Let the Bright Seraphim’ (from Samson)

Clarissa Dunn (soprano)
Paul Rosoman (organ and piano)
Andrew Weir (trumpet)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 17 November 2010, 12.15pm

With an interesting programme for an unusual combination, this programme had added appeal for the opportunity to hear and see someone we know as a disembodied voice on radio; Clarissa Dunn is a presenter for Radio New Zealand Concert.

The recital began and ended with performances from the gallery, using the fine church organ.  Clarissa Dunn proved to have a full, florid voice with a velvety quality except in the highest register.  She could hold her own against the organ; Handel did not make her compete with the trumpet part in the first piece.

The well-known Gounod arrangement of Bach’s prelude by the addition of a melody on the words ‘Ave Maria’ received a rather mushy organ registration – but perhaps that was appropriate for Gounod.  Unfortunately the singer sang some of the time just slightly under the note, spoiling an otherwise good performance, which ended with delicious pianissimo.

There were no intonation problems in Saint-Saëns’s setting of the same words.  This was sung from the front of the church, with a rather pedestrian and over-pedalled piano accompaniment – perhaps the sudden switch from organ affected the playing.  A good point was that the lid was down; often at St Andrew’s recently the sound from the piano has been too loud, due to the resonance from the varnished wooden floor.

The trumpet stood in for the mezzo-soprano of the original setting.  Andrew Weir’s control of volume when playing with the soprano was exemplary.  Both performers proved to have excellent control of breath and dynamics.  Flowing lines were beautifully carried on the breath by the singer.

The exquisite ‘Laudate Dominum’ of Mozart was sung admirably, given the limitations of performing with piano rather than orchestra.

A trumpet concerto by Handel followed (which I cannot find in Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians); this time the organ part was played on the baroque organ at the front of the church.  The balance between the instruments was splendid , and the use of a two-foot stop in the fast second movement gave a charming effect.  The playing was commendably light and baroque in style, making for a thoroughly enjoyable performance.

Now for something completely different: the delightful ‘Pie Jesu’ of Fauré, sung with organ from the gallery.  Again, some notes were a shade flat, and there was some unevenness towards the end, but on the whole the singing was most accomplished.

John Stanley’s piece showed both trumpet and organ off well, in its bouncy, eighteenth century manner, but it is a rather uninspired piece of music.

Handel’s ‘Let the bright seraphim’ made a rousing end to the recital.  At the beginning I found the organ a little too loud, but it soon modified, and Clarissa Dunn was vocally equal to it.  Both trumpet and singer had their trills all in place; the organ-playing was very fine also.  The words were not clear, but they a difficult to get over in such a florid work.

It was a pity to have neither programme notes nor brief biographies of the performers.  However, Clarissa Dunn gave spoken introductions to the works, in an informal, engaging manner.

I hope to hear more from these three accomplished performers, who are to be congratulated on their interesting and varied programme.

Caprice Arts Trust present saxophones and a fine wind quintet

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Altotude Saxophone Quartet: Pieces by Gershwin, Tchaikovsky, Paul Pierné, Bryan James, Piazzolla.

Lucy Rainey (soprano sax), Greg Rogan (alto sax), Amity Alton-Lee (tenor sax), Bryan James (baritone sax)

Quintet X: Nielsen: Wind Quintet – first movement, Armando Ghidoni: Adagio from Badaluk – Concerto for wind quintet, Poulenc: Sextet for winds and piano

Kirsten Sharman (French horn), Rachelle Eastwood (flute), Marianna Kennedy (oboe), Lucy O’Neill (bassoon), Taleim Edwards (clarinet), Paul Romero (piano)

St Mark’s church, Lower Hutt

Tuesday 16 November, 7.30pm

The Caprice Arts Trust continues to offer chamber music with a difference, generally taking concerts to two or three venues in the Greater Wellington region. This concert, shared by two groups, was first played at St Andrew’s on The Terrace on Friday 12 November: I caught the second performance at Lower Hutt.

I had previously heard – indeed, heard of – neither ensemble. The Altotude Saxophone Quartet which, I gather, draws on a variety of players, occupied the first half. They played the pieces in an order different from that in the programme.

As is to be expected. it was the pieces written originally for saxophone quartet that came off best, though an exception was the opening piece, an arrangement of part of Gershwin’s American in Paris, which the composer scored for full symphony orchestra including all four saxophones. That achieved a fusion of a jazz sensibility with French piquancy that lent itself readily to a saxophone quartet; and its essential character survived the transition.

But the second piece, the Andante cantabile from Tchaikovsky’s first String Quartet, was another matter. Though leader Bryan James claimed that its origin for four string instruments made it suitable for another family of four instruments, the music’s essence, so perfectly conceived for strings by a composer with an extremely refined ear, was simply lost. Almost every aspect of its articulation and dynamics, its sound world and emotion, was obliterated. Perhaps a listener who had never heard the original would not have had this reaction, but its familiarity, so rooted in the string quartet medium, excluded that possibility for me. In particular, the entry of the second theme seemed irredeemably crude.

A couple of pieces by Bryan James followed: Blue Pig and Desert Storm. In both pieces, the comfortable writing for the quartet was as successful as one might expect from a saxophonist. Blue Pig captured an idiomatic jazz feeling, in which individual instruments, starting with Amity Alton-Lee’s tenor sax, took effective solos. Desert Storm was inspired, not directly by the Gulf War, but simply by that landscape; its use of the whole tone scale was evocative but the melodic and rhythmic motifs eventually became repetitious.

The third part of Three Conversations – Animé by Paul Pierné (1874 – 1952 – a cousin of organist and composer Gabriel Pierné), emerged a lively piece that could be judged by normal early-20th century classical music criteria, sharp bursts by the chorus followed by ejaculations by individual instruments captured the air of dispute hat apparently inspired it.

The final piece, two parts of Piazzolla’s Histoire du tango, originally for flute and guitar but in many arrangements, is in a spirit not too remote from jazz, could well have worked for saxophones; Café 1930 was a comfortable fit, but Night Club 1960 suffered through an arrangement I found uncongenial, with uncomfortable tempo changes and uneven balances.

The talented wind quintet. Quintet X,  was the creation of Caprice’s Sunniva Zoete-West, especially for use in these concerts. The initiative was a triumph, and the quintet played all three pieces with taste, energy, accuracy and excellent ensemble. They began with the first movement of Nielsen’s wonderful wind quintet which offers no place to hide for any of the instruments: all justified their places in a performance that was generally very close to professional level. The choruses by the three high woodwinds were especially beguiling; the horn’s tone was velvety and elegant and the bassoon a highly polished performance from one of the school of music’s gifted students. O for the entire work!

Another single movement followed – the Adagio from a work called Badaluk-Concerto by the contemporary French/Italian composer Armando Ghidoni, which turned out to be a highly attractive piece that has ingested all that is best in today’s music, now freeing itself from the compulsion for self-indulgent avant-gardism. That’s not to say it’s easy to play; lamenting that we could not have heard it all, I was told that if I thought this ‘slow movement’ was pretty challenging, I should have looked at the other two: the players didn’t have a spare year in which to master it. I thought too that the name Concerto didn’t suggest its character as well as a word like Sinfonietta or Sinfonia might have, reflecting better its impressive textures and evident formal structure. It was a most accomplished performance.  I had not heard of Ghidoni, but intend to follow him up: his website looks interesting.

The last piece was the entire sextet for piano and winds by Poulenc. Written in 1932, Poulenc became dissatisfied with it and rewrote it in 1939/40. Typically with Poulenc, the music is an interesting blend of certain contemporary styles such as 1920s Germany, along with his individual melodic and instrumental characteristics. Each part is scored for the instrument in its most attractive and rewarding register, where it is most at ease, and though that does not imply that it’s an easy piece, the players were conspicuously comfortable in all aspects. The opening phase, typical of the mature Poulenc, demands emphatic playing, and the piano – a fine instrument – sounded somewhat muddied in the acoustic, but was happier when the dynamics became more calm.  The first movement, the longest and most varied, moved from phase to phase with a fluency that evidenced intelligent and thorough rehearsal; and the central Divertissement movement became a particularly joyous affair.

In spite of publicity efforts however, audiences have generally remained shy for the excellent concerts that Sunniva Zoete-West and Caprice have promoted – no more than a couple of dozen were at St Mark’s – and she is threatening to abandon the undertaking. The concerts which have typically presented interesting contemporary music and music for wind instruments, of which there is a quite substantial and excellent quantity, fill a niche that other chamber music promoters tend to neglect.

It is well to remember that the Wellington Chamber Music Society’s Sunday afternoon chamber music series, now at the Ilott Theatre, began life (in the University Memorial Theatre) with the aim, in part, of employing young Wellington musicians in music that was ignored by the then Chamber Music Federation (now Chamber Music New Zealand), particularly wind ensembles such as the great Mozart wind serenades.

Pianist Nicole Chao in adventurous lunchtime concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Bach: Toccata in C minor, BWV 911; Scriabin: Piano Sonata No 2 in G sharp minor, Op 19 – first movement; Chopin: Barcarolle, Op 60; Dutilleux: Sonata, Op 1 – third movement: ‘Choral and variations’

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 10 November, 12.15pm

This was one of the more arresting of recent lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s, both on account of the interesting programme that Ms Chao offered, and the accomplishment of her playing.

One of the concert’s characteristics, whether consciously planned or not, was that all but the Chopin were very early works; yet all showed impressive evidence of their composers’ later greatness.

The Bach toccata is one of seven harpsichord toccatas that Bach wrote in his youth, though this one was probably from his twenties. A Bach scholar would probably find things that demonstrate the composer’s immaturity, but to one who does not lay claim to special perceptiveness in that field, the musical inventiveness and technical command of the keyboard and the music’s formal structure leave by far the greatest impression.

Elsewhere among Bach’s works, such a substantial piece would have been called a toccata and fugue – in fact two fugues, the second of which is a massive double fugue. Nicole Chao opened it powerfully, resolutely, making full use of the piano’s dynamic range, then dropping  suddenly to a quiet, delicate phase such as a harpsichord could not produce. The fugal sections presented an interesting range of keyboard colourings and articulations which Chao handled skilfully, never mind a slip in the second fugal secion. She turned it into a piece of some consequence, clearly the product of high musical intelligence.

Chao played the first movement – Andante – by far the largest of the two movements of Scriabin’s second sonata which he wrote aged about 20. In complete contrast to the Bach, this is high romanticism, wayward in spirit, its yearning melodic line ranging widely, employing already the intervals that are so typical of Scriabin. In playing of ever-changing colour and rhythmic variety, Chao evoked in its glittering hands-full of notes, the marvellous, moonlit seascape that Scriabin described in his notes about the piece.

Chopin’s Barcarolle, though the most familiar piece in the programme was the least successful in capturing the music’s complex, indefinable spirit, its sense of direction. With rather prolonged fortissimo passages, even with careful use of rubato,  it seemed not to capture the subtlety and tonal refinement that she brought to Scriabin and to the concluding Dutilleux sonata.

Dutilleux is now in his 90s, yet his oeuvre of major works is small. This sonata written when he was about 30 was the first to which he gave an opus number, so self-critical has he been throughout his life. Again, Chao chose to play the longest movement, the last; it stands on its own feet remarkably well, and Chao led an audience that was probably hearing it for the first time through a very able performance. Its opening rhetorical call to attention mirrored in a way the Bach Toccata (did that occur to her?), but there was no immediate fading to a pianissimo; instead the first and second variations drove forward with great speed demanding playing of impressive virtuosity. Only in the third variation does a meditative quality arise, and Chao demonstrated an appreciation of the structure, and the carefully thought-out evolution of the themes underlying the whole movement. A fine performance of the sonata was recorded by John Chen for Naxos about five years ago. It’s worth getting to know.

Nicole Chao however, gave an authoritative performance, persuading me that she might well reward us with further performances of music in the late Romantic and non-serial 20th century styles.

Sacred Heart Cathedral Choir sings Victoria – a moment in time

Posted on by Peter Mechen

A Requiem for All Souls

Tomás Luis de Victoria – Mass for the Dead

Sacred Heart Cathedral Choir

Michael Stewart, director

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Saturday, 30th October 2010

I ought to confess right here and now to having a bias towards presentations of liturgical plainchant, as it was very much the kind of church music I grew up with, being a Catholic and a New Zealand child of the 1950s. So, of course, this concert touched so many of my points by dint of sheer content, the effect immeasurably augmented by the general excellence of the singing and the music’s direction throughout. This was a reconstruction by Michael Stewart and the Cathedral Choir of Renaissance Spanish composer Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Mass for the Dead, or Requiem, in a proper liturgical setting – that is, in the context of the Catholic Mass. The placement of Victoria’s beautiful polyphony amidst the plainer and starker liturgical chants worked to the advantage of both, creating a well-nigh unique ambience, one to which the Cathedral surroundings gave even more atmosphere and impact.

Throughout the opening Introit Requiem I got the impression that these choir voices hadn’t been overly-moulded and honed into an excessively homogenous blend, a quality which I liked in this circumstance, as it gave to my ears a plainer, more direct and accessible feeling to the singing, almost as if the music was something one could oneself join in with. Having said this, in no way do I want to give the impression that the singing was anything but beautiful throughout – if the lines were not always ideally pure, they were still in tune; and invariably made up in focus and fervour for what they occasionally lacked in elegance. The middle voices gave consistent pleasure at the outset, with “et lux perpetua luceat eis”, bringing into relief moments such as the sopranos’ strongly-etched “et tibi reddetur” which followed. But most telling was the reprise of Requiem, which had a wonderfully charged devotional quality, an evocation whose intensity set the tone for everything that was to follow, such as the succeeding Kyrie, beautifully blossoming upwards from its first phrase, and contrasting nicely with its hushed, ethereal companion Christe.

Choir and conductor brought out the beauties of the Graduale, with its flourishes at “dona eis Domine” and timelessly-wrought cadences at the word “perpetua”. There was delight at a single soprano voice at “In memoria” being joined by others and reaching full resplendent tones at “mala non timebit”, the latter sequence  all the more wondrous through being “ritualized” by the plainchant exchanges between celebrant and choir. But what really set my pulses racing was the singing of the Dies irae, all eighteen verses of it, each poetic metre of three lines a self-contained meditation or beseechment regarding the Day of Judgement. When I was at school, we sang this alternating verses between small group and larger choir; but here, tonight, this was performed with full choir throughout, each verse given subtle variations of colour and emphasis depending on its content. The last, Lacrimosa, breaks the metre somewhat and features a new melody, which releases the tensions built up by the previous repetitions and their ever-growing emphasis, here realized by Michael Stewart and his choir in a profoundly satisfying way, at once sturdy, resigned and aspiring to the celestial.

And so it all proceeded, ritualistic gestures of exchange alternating with Victoria’s exquisite word-settings, such as those of the Offertorium, allowing us to relish the choir’s surge of emotion at “de poenis inferni”, and the luminous soprano lines at “repraesentet eas in lucem sanctam”, both moments to be treasured. And I enjoyed the celebrant’s intoning of both “Vere dignum et justum est” at the Preface and the Pater Noster, once again losing myself in remembrances of the patterning of the chants and their variants. Alternatively, Victoria’s treatment of the Sanctus put me in mind of Thomas Tallis in places, while the Lux aeterna again featured a nicely-distilled soprano line at the outset, and a properly devotional “quia pius es”, though I did register a touch of “hooted” tone from those same sopranos in the “Requiem aeternam” section. With the Libera me, the Proper of the Mass concluded, Victoria leaving the opening line as plainchant before developing “Quando caeli movendi sunt et terra” into vivid descriptions, tenor, alto and bass lines standing forth at “Tremens factus”, and with the whole choir excitingly igniting the textures at the point of return to the “Dies irae” text. As was fitting, the lovely cadential resolutions at “Requiem aeternam” worked their spell alongside the varied reprise of “Libera me”, extending the music’s mood, colour, declamation and harmony, and leaving the plainchant Antiphon to bring things to a properly poised and dignified end.

Given that my appreciation of this concert was undoubtedly coloured by my own history and experience of the music’s liturgical context, I felt confident nevertheless that my enthusiasm for the singing and conducting, as well as for the overall conception of performance, was well-founded. I’m sure my enjoyment would have been shared by all at the Cathedral that evening.

Chamber Music New Zealand’s Schubertiade at Sixty

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SCHUBERT – Notturno Movement in E-flat D.897

String Quartet No.15 in G D.887

Piano Quintet in A D.667 “Die Forelle” (The Trout)

New Zealand String Quartet (Helene Pohl, Douglas Beilman – violins,

Gillian Ansell – viola, Rolf Gjelsten – ‘cello)

Michael Houstoun (piano), Michael Steer (double bass)

Wellington Town Hall

Thursday 28th October 2010

Sixty years ago in Wellington, in 1950, the ubiquitous “Trout” Quintet was performed by members of the Alex Lindsay String Orchestra with Frederick Page at the piano. This was one of the highlights of the very first season of concerts organised by the New Zealand Federation of Chamber Music Societies that year; and so it seemed more than appropriate that this same work would feature in an anniversary concert this evening devoted to one of the most beloved of composers of chamber music. Called a “Schubertiade”, the concert was a grand celebration of sixty years of fine and auspicious music-making, as indicated by the many world-wide household names appearing among the “historical” lists of contributing artists printed in the programme.

What better way to open an evening devoted to Schubert’s music than with the adorable Notturno, that mysterious fragment of an uncompleted Piano Trio whose serene beauty has given it a life of its own as a concert piece? Michael Houstoun’s first gently undulating piano notes were the waters on which the beams of light from the strings played, long-breathed and with graceful turns, the music’s shape nicely choreographed by the players’ physical gestures, the string players’ bows delineating the pizzicato notes like rippling, scintillating light-shafts. Throughout, the trio of musicians went to the places that the music did, revelling in the ebb and flow of lyricism and intensity, and characterising the different episodes with, by turns, colourings rich and subtle and rhythmic impulses strong and delicate.

Having confirmed Schubert’s credentials as a lyricist, the musicians realigned their forces for a performance of the greatest of the composer’s string quartets, No.15 in G Major, D.887. This music poses huge interpretative challenges, physical, intellectual and emotional, not the least of which is how to establish a “through-line” across four markedly diverse movements. My feeling was that the New Zealand String Quartet characterised the first three movements wonderfully, but then took a rather lightweight view of the finale, which seemed not to invest the music with enough “demon” at the outset for the drama of the  major/minor key contrasts to tell.  This music shares with the first of the same composer’s D.946 Piano Pieces a series of “dark flight” sequences set against grittily determined major-key pushes towards the light, generating a feeling of unease masking something not far removed in places from fear and desperation. I thought the playing needed more of an edge, such as the NZSQ was able to amply demonstrate during their recent Shostakovich quartet performances – in this instance, for my liking, the music was allowed a little too much respite.

Which was a pity, because the musicians had dug in boldly right at the quartet’s beginning – again, not the most searing of accounts that I’ve heard, but whose control and command in itself created tensions associated with a sense of chaos barely held at bay. Here, and in the almost schizophrenic second movement, the quartet’s workings-out explored every nuance of feeling, every impulse of contrast, the playing very “integrated” and coherent. One was tempted at first to blame the ample acoustic of the Town Hall for what seemed like a certain lack of immediacy – but these same players had in no uncertain terms filled out the comparable vistas of the Church of St Mary of the Angels not long ago with Schumann and Shostakovich; so one’s conclusion was that their response to this music was here being more-or-less truthfully conveyed.

Rightly or wrongly, one tends to associate the historical Schubertiades with more gaiety and conviviality of utterance, than the angst and astringent feeling generated by this quartet. What happened next was far more in accord with this rose-tinted view, with the appearance of baritone Roger Wilson making a dapper figure in cloak and gloves, accompanied by Michael Houstoun, to perform the song that both inspired and gave the eponymous Quintet its name, “The Trout”. Chamber Music Chief Executive Euan Murdoch had seated himself on the stage ready to welcome the singer and his pianist (a few more staged “bodies” gathered to listen would have engendered even more of a Schubertiade atmosphere, methought – but nevertheless the feeling of it was right). Roger Wilson delivered a pleasantly-modulated, if somewhat understated performance of the song, as if he was, surprisingly, a little overawed by the occasion (I’ve heard this singer deliver a number of splendidly characterised performances on the recital platform in the past, and was thus a tad disappointed…) After he had finished and departed. Euan Murdoch welcomed the audience to the concert, spoke briefly about the Society’s sixty years of history, and wished all of us many more years of listening to great chamber music played by more wonderful artists.

For such an occasion, the “Trout” Quintet was an obvious choice – more reconfigurations of personnel saw Douglas Beilman take the leader’s position, Michael Houstoun rejoin the ensemble, and double-bass player Michael Steer, late of the NZSO and currently based in Dunedin for post-graduate study make his first appearance of the evening. I thought the performance was beautifully held together by Michael Houstoun, who proved to be an excellent chamber musician (not always the case with star virtuosi). His contributions surged outwards, or melted into the ensemble at appropriate moments, the rest of the time maintaining the flow and upholding what the other musicians were doing. It wasn’t Michael Steer’s fault that he looked far more impressive than he sounded – the music was obviously written for an amateur performer – but I still felt a bit more temperament in places wouldn’t have gone amiss. The other string players made the most of their opportunities for ensembled give-and-take, though I felt leader Douglas Beilman wasn’t having the happiest of times with some of his ascents on the e-string. I did like his trilling during the Variations movement – these were no caged birds whose song we heard, but sounds that were wild and free.

Despite the ‘chalk-and-cheese” effect of the concert’s two halves, I thought the “Schubertiade” concept was a wonderful idea. The Society’s many supporters made obvious their enjoyment of and delight in the concert in a way that would have heartened those who work to foster the continuance of chamber music in all parts of the country. Birthday congratulations to the Society are definitely in order.

Israeli cellist with a short programme in the Hunter Council Chamber

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Inbal Megiddo – cello and Diedre Irons – piano

 

Shostakovich: Cello Sonata, Op 40;  Brahms’s Piano Trio No 1 in B Major, Op 8 – first movement, with Martin Riseley (violin); Schumann’s Fantasy Pieces, Op 73; Popper: Hungarian Rhapsody

 

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University

 

Wednesday 27 October, 7pm 

 

A century ago, perhaps, a player with the talent of Inbal Megiddo would have been a household name by now – she’s 33 and her early career was phenomenal. She was born in Israel and is now resident in the United States. Picking up on the example of Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, her regular recital accompanist is Palestinian Saleem Abboud Ashkar.

 

After a prodigious rise to youthful eminence, however, her career has settled into something a little short of that of an international star; she appears to have played with none of the top symphony orchestras, and has recorded with none of the major labels. Yet she has played at the Lincoln Centre and at Carnegie Hall, New York, and in the Kennedy Center in Washington. She played recently with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and in recital at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin; with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, and with the Lithuanian Philharmonic Society. She has toured and recorded with The Yale Cellos and recorded with the Yale Philharmonia.

 

That famous orchestras do not feature on her CV is much more a commentary on the bewildering numbers of brilliantly gifted musicians competing in a frighteningly crowded profession, than on her musicianship.

 

For the evidence offered at this recital at Victoria University was of a mature cellist whose technical prowess, in Popper’s Hungarian Rhapsody for example, is prodigious, and whose interpretive powers are guided by a profound feeling for the composers’ nature and intentions.

 

Shostakovich’s only cello sonata makes huge demands of both technical and intellectual resources, even though a relatively early piece; yet it seems not to be unified by a particularly coherent structure: the normal disparate character of the four movements are without the feeling that they are inevitably parts of a whole.

 

The performance, by both pianist and cellist, was full of dramatic variety, thrusting and energetic, agitated at the start and melodious later in the first movement; particularly arresting was the music’s rallentando and transformation into a sort of intermezzo before the second movement starts. Again, in this triple-time Allegro, the sense of unity between the instruments, supported by Diedre Irons’s astringent piano and the big robust sound of the cello with its ostinato motifs, was a hard-hitting experience. The Largo was the main opportunity to enjoy Megiddo’s rapturous, deeply expressive playing, particularly as the movement ended in beautiful calm, and she repeatedly sought out Diedre Irons’s eyes to ensure an ideal rapport.

 

One has always to regret the truncating of great music, and even if Brahms’s first piano trio, its first version written aged 20, is not one of his greatest works, the end of the first movement left us up in the air, waiting for the staccato, mephisto-dance of the Scherzo. But that wasn’t the main problem.

 

Martin Riseley, the head of string studies at the school of music, took the violin part; perhaps I was not sitting in an ideal position, but the balance of the three instruments was defective. Riseley’s sound was not the equal of either cello or piano, though when I made an effort to exclude the other instruments, his playing was unexceptionable, even if not as voluptuous as it is in my head.

 

My colleague Rosemary Collier recently lamented the frequency with which cellists put Schumann’s Fantasiestücke in their programmes. Though I have a special love of Schumann and also of the cello, I have to agree. There were dozens of pieces in her repertoire, to be seen on her website, that I’d have been delighted to hear. The duo made a nice job of the Schumann, but it was not a highlight.

 

David Popper is one of those composers known mainly to cellists, for that was the tool of his fame in the late 19th century. His Hungarian Rhapsody, drawn from several of Liszt’s eponymous pieces, was great fun as well as the predictable opportunity to demonstrate a lot of hair-raising pyrotechnics, brilliantly supported by the pianist whose task was hardly diminished as a result of the limelight being removed from her.

Wind and water in accomplished concert from the School of Music

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Frank Martin: Ballade for flute and piano; Giovanni Bassano: Ricercata Quarta and Frais et Gaillard; Saint-Saens: Sonata for bassoon and piano; Ryo Noda: Improvisation 1 for solo alto saxophone; Telemann, arr. H. Roud: Fantasie for solo contrabassoon; John Steinmetz: Fish Phase for 2 contrabassoons and goldfish; Brahms: Scherzo from Trio in E flat, Op.140, for violin, horn and piano

Woodwind Soloists from the New Zealand School of Music

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 27 October 2010, 12.15pm

The players were accomplished performers, though whether the two (?) goldfish (complete with bowl and water) in the New Zealand premiere of Steinmetz’s work were moved by the music, we could not tell; they certainly could be seen moving. I’m not sure how often animals are involved in music-making (though in opera they sometimes are – many years ago I saw Bizet’s Carmen at the Paris Opera, and counted 13 different horses in the production – though not all on stage at once!). But I would be fairly certain that Steinmetz’s work was the first involving goldfish on stage.

Steinmetz, I gather from a brief Internet search, is an American bassoonist and composer who specialises in comic works; the work with goldfish is listed on his website as one of these.

However, the concert began in more serious vein, with a brilliant piece by Martin, played by Chloe Schnell, accompanied by Douglas Mews on piano. A clear spoken introduction preceded a work full of dynamic and mood changes, with many technical demands on both soloist and accompanist. It was executed very well, and set a very high standard.

Following that, we travelled back several centuries to hear two pieces for recorder, played by Brendan O’Donnell, with the versatile Mews now on the stool of the chamber organ, for the second; the first piece was unaccompanied. The spoken introduction stressed again that the students need to be taught to speak loudly and slowly enough to be heard in a large and resonant auditorium, and not to say ‘um’.

These were attractive pieces, superbly well played. Recorder and organ were in absolute accord in the second piece, and the playing was uniformly clean and articulated well.

Saint-Saens’ late sonata was performed by Kylie Nesbit, bassoon, with the ubiquitous and highly competent Douglas Mews, back at the piano. It was a delightful and charming work, tuneful and interesting, in Late Romantic style. A lilting accompaniment in the first movement (allegro moderato) contrasted with long melodic notes from the bassoon, at times reminiscent of the composer’s much earlier opera, Samson et Dalila.

Nesbit is a superb and experienced player, and like the composer, knew how to make the most of her instrument. The second movement, allegro scherzando, was very fast, with all notes articulated well – as was the performer’s clear (an sufficiently loud) spoken introduction. The final movement, molto adagio leading to allegro moderato, featured lovely variation of tone and dynamics.

What would Telemann have thought? A Fantasie for solo bassoon, originally written for the flute! I can’t say it improved in the transcribing – but what is there to play as a solo on the contrabassoon? Hayley Roud deserves marks for transcribing the piece.

The Fish Phase was performed by Hayley Roud and Oscar Laven, on two instruments constructed differently; Laven’s had a long extension on the top ending in a small horn, while Roud’s was more conventionally given an extra turn to make the greater length in more compact form. Unfortunately, the full spoken introduction was spoken too fast and too quietly for most of it to be heard. I gathered that there were alleged to be shades of Stravinsky’s Petrouchka in the piece, but I couldn’t really confirm that at this profundity of pitch. The piece was rather repetitive. Whether this reflected the behaviour of goldfish, I do not know.

The Brahms Scherzo took the concert considerably over the normal allotted time for these concerts. In this resonant acoustic, the horn was often too loud for the violin; the latter’s intonation was sometimes off-centre. However, the lyrical middle section of the movement was very well played.

A very varied programme displayed the considerable skills of NZSM students on a variety of instruments and from a huge range of composers.