Category: Reviews – Concerts

Richard Apperley contributes to National Organ Month

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Wellington Organists’ Association

Kuhnau: Biblical Sonata – The combat between David and Goliath
Buxtehude: Fugue in C
C.P.E. Bach: Sonata in G minor
Kuhnau: Biblical Sonata – Hezekiah dying and restored to health
Buxtehude: Prelude, Fugue and Chaconne in C

St. Mary of the Angels

Monday, 6 September, 1pm

It is a pity that a mere 20 people came to hear Richard Apperley’s splendid recital on the superb, many-voiced organ at St Mary of the Angels.  Apperley is a fine performer with style and taste, and he chose an interesting programme.  There were no pot-boilers here, but seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’ music, well-suited to the instrument.

The first of two Biblical Sonatas by Johann Kuhnau (1660-1722) was ‘The combat between David and Goliath’.  This was delightful music, not too complex, employing interesting word-painting, or should we say ‘painting of ideas’.  It comprised eight movements, each depicting part of the story of David and Goliath.

First was The boasting of Goliath, suitably bombastic, followed by The trembling of the Israelites at the appearance of the giant, and their prayer to God.  This featured a quiet choral melody above a tentative accompaniment.  

The following movements were:
3. The courage of David, and his keen desire to repel the pride of his terrifying enemy, with the confidence that he puts in the help of God;
4. The combat between the two and their struggle; the stone is thrown from the slingshot into the brow of the giant; Goliath falls;
5. The flight of the Philistines, who are pursued and slain by the Israelites;
6. The joy of the Israelites over their victory;
7. The musical concert of the women in honour of David;
8. The general rejoicing, and the dance of joy of the people.

The playing featured attractive registrations; it was an excellent work to demonstrate a broad range of the sounds available on this fine organ, and also the excellent acoustics of the church.   No two movements employed exactly the same registration.  It was suitably pictorial, and very enjoyable.  (Richard Apperley is working on a recording of Kuhnau organ works, including this one.)

Still in the same era were Dietrich Buxtehude and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.  The former’s fugue was calm and gentle, but nonetheless quite intricate.  The latter was much more grand, and with more contrasts than the Buxtehude, being in three movements, and the organist used different manuals to express the contrasts.  It was melodically interesting, and while still basically baroque, there were elements which would not have been present in his illustrious father’s compositions.

After a quiet adagio middle movement, the allegro finale was dramatic, with many flashes of brilliance.  In the main, the articulation was precise.

The second of the Kuhnau works began with a sombre opening movement having a chorale in the upper part – a version of ‘O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden’ (known in English as the Passion Chorale because it was set by J.S. Bach in St Matthew Passion.  This illustrated the opening movement: Hezekiah’s lament for the death foretold to him, and his fervent prayers.  The chorale was followed by a fully worked-out set of variations.

The second movement was entitled ‘His confidence in God’, and the third and final ‘The joy of the convalescent King’; he remembers the ills that are past; he forgets them.  These moods were fully expressed in glorious music.

The second  Buxtehude work was quite well-known, and given quite a fast performance; the Prelude and Chaconne using dramatic reed registrations – including one stop a little out-of-tune in places.

It would have been useful, as is often done for organ recitals, if the printed programme had incorporated a list of the organ specification, so that the audience, who were mainly organists or organ aficionados, could understand the instrument’s dimensions and colorations, and pick the registrations being used.  This comment applies to the following day’s programme, at Sacred Heart Cathedral, also.

Magnificent Tudor Consort in Schütz and Domenico Scarlatti

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

The Tudor Consort: A German Requiem

Schütz: Musikalische Exequien, Op. 7
Domenico Scarlatti: Stabat Mater

St. Mary of the Angels Church

Saturday, 4 September, 8 pm

Despite the programme stating that the concert was at Sacred Heart Cathedral, it did take place in the suitably more ornate and comfortable (though cold) St Mary of the Angels, with its excellent acoustics.  There was a large and appreciative audience.

A small instrumental ensemble (Emma Goodbehere, cello, Richard Hardie, bass, Steve Pickett, theorbo, Douglas Mews, organ, and Donald Nicolson, harpsichord) accompanied the choir; the conductor was Matthew Leese (brother of Anna), who is currently studying and working in Illinois.  He is in New Zealand to conduct what is probably the first production in this country of  Monterverdi’s  Orfeo, widely considered to be the first genuine opera.  It is to be performed in Dunedin, where Matthew studied for his undergraduate music degree, as part of the Otago Festival, next month.

Before the concert began, Michael Stewart (the regular conductor of the Consort) gave a short talk about the works to be performed.   He discussed Luther’s reforms, and the difference between the latter’s view of death and the Catholic view (this in a Catholic church!).  He referred to the possibility that Brahms had modelled his Ein Deutsches Requiem on this work of  Schütz, the score of which Brahms apparently had in his library.

The Musikalisches Exequien were composed for the funeral of Count Heinrich Posthumous Reuss in 1635. The work intersperses Biblical verses with poetic meditations, alternately utilising chorale settings and solo passages with continuo.  The work consists of Kyrie and Gloria, Motet (‘Herr, wenn ich nur Dich habe’) and the canticle Nunc Dimittis.  The work was entirely in German,  including the introductory plainsong.

The work opened with the instruments, whose sound was quite gorgeous.  However, in this movement it took a little time for the ten singers to penetrate through the instrumental sound.  When they did, they produced a lovely sound.  A few notes were not quite spot on, but as the concert progressed, intonation and timbre were mostly perfect.  An unusual feature was that the conductor also sang, as one of the basses.

A solo section in the Kyrie, ‘Siehe, das ist Gottes Lamm’, was beautifully sung by tenor Dan Carberg.

The Gloria did not sound particularly gloryifying, being made up mainly of texts contemplating the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  Variety in expression was achieved by solos interspersed with choral sections, and some solos having organ and cello accompaniment only.

Another fine tenor solo, ‘Ach, wie elend ist unser Zeit’, was from Dan Carberg  from the United States, although there were a few rum notes.  (He will sing the main role in Orfeo.)

The motet, ‘Herr wenn ich nur Dich habe’ had the choir reformed into two choirs.  This was a lively rhythmically and harmonically strong piece, quite in contrast to the previous more contrapuntal music, that wove its way beautifully around the space.

The last part of the canticle ‘Nunc Dimittis’, (which in English would be ‘Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord’) was set for a main five-part choir, while two sopranos, one bass and the theorbo removed to the side-chapel to create a antiphonal effect, though their music was no mere echo.  It was inevitable that one would think of Brahms’s beautiful setting of these same words.

The choir was accomplished as always, but there was not a lot of dynamic variation in the music, compared with the Scarlatti that followed.  Matthew Leese’s beat was clear, and the blend of the voices excellent.  I felt that some of the bass parts were a little low for his voice and also for that of the other bass, meaning that the sound was not the best quality that they were capable of.

The Stabat Mater was surprisingly cheerful, given its subject, compared with those of Pergolesi and others.   The second movement, ‘Cujus animam’, featured gorgeous harmonies and a lovely organ part played by Douglas Mews.  The balance of the instruments was somewhat of a difficulty throughout the work.  I could sometimes hear the cello when all instruments were playing, because often its part was doubled on the bass, but not always.  The harpsichord came through quite well (it was not used in every movement), but despite my sitting almost at the front of the church, I very seldom heard the theorbo.   Its quiet timbre simply did not penetrate through the sound of the other instruments and the singers – or through the music stand.

The choir produced superb tone in the third movement, ‘Quis non posset’, depicting the feeling of the words, describing Mary seeing her son scourged and dying.  This was especially true of the tenors.  Soaring contrapuntal lines seemed to weave in and out of the architecture of the church, with its arches and pillars, in the fifth movement ‘Sancta mater’; it ended with an exquisite cadence.

The ‘Inflammatus’ eighth movement excitedly demonstrated the theme.  Tenor Carberg and soprano Erin King were very accomplished, singing these fast passages.  The complex final movement was a tour de force of 10 solo singers rather than choir.

Balance was good through most of the concert, though in the last two movements, two sopranos were a little too strong for the rest of the choir, at least from my position.  Another disadvantage was that since Matthew Leese was both conducting and singing, his position meant he had his back to people on the right-hand side of the church a great deal of the time.

Heartfelt applause greeted the end of the concert; one could only say ‘Bravo!’ to another magnificent performance by the Tudor Consort.

Percussionist Currie dazzles in brilliant NZSO concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Appalachian Spring Suite (Copland), Percussion Concerto (Jennifer Higdon), I paesaggi dell’anima (Lyell Cresswell), Symphony No 6 ‘Pastoral’ (Beethoven)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alexander Shelley with Colin Currie (percussion)

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 3 September, 6.30pm

Are Wellington audiences losing their taste for adventure? What was it that led to so many empty seats at Friday’s concert, which turned out to be one of the (if not THE) most exciting concerts of the year so far. I too had wondered about the programme, but that would certainly not have stopped me going. My main thoughts were, how would the Copland ballet score (well, most of it) stand up in the concert hall, and would I find that I had heard the Pastoral Symphony once too often?

I was at a slight disadvantage, not having heard the 2008 concert that Alexander Shelley had conducted in Wellington, and was thus not as certain about the sort of performance he would deliver.

In 2008 Shelley conducted one of the orchestra’s regional tours, and a special Wellington concert with cellist Maria Kliegel that included performances of Messiaen’s Les Offrandes Oubliées and both the suites from Daphnis et Chloé. He had made an impression then. Two years later his achievements are highly impressive, and his presence on the podium spoke of confidence but also of a concern to communicate, not to mention the energy, delicacy and vividness of the orchestra’s response to his leadership that made an immediate impact.

Appalachian Spring is enchanting ballet music, probably most people’s favourite Copland piece. But I was not expecting to be so enchanted by its exquisiteness as a concert piece (the Suite contains 80 percent of the music). That was brought about to a large extent by the performance, starting with by series of gorgeous, lyrical solos; first by clarinet, then flute, followed by shimmering cellos, evoking the day’s dawning. And a little later there were more beautiful solos from oboe, bassoon and horn, not to overlook the brilliant little xylophone episodes.

The entire orchestra was vitalized to play with a special sense of delight. It was at only classical strength for most of the programme, with double winds and string strength at 12, 10, 8, 6, 5; fewer than 60 players, but let’s confess: most orchestral music can be played wonderfully with that sized orchestra. Only the percussion concerto required a larger orchestra, with triple winds and tuba.

Copland’s music is not just endlessly varied; any competent composer can do that, but few can create the endless surprise and delight through beguiling melody, at every turn, even when one knows it all. The players found its magic with the help of a conductor whose movements, and physical grace inspired such vivid aural images, through its momentum and an awareness of its architecture.

I can’t remember my last live hearing of the Pastoral; but I should have been prepared to be surprised at the excitement and wonder that a really fine Beethoven performance can produce. The classical size of the orchestra was absolutely right; some might say it would have sounded even better in the Town Hall, but from my seat, this was pretty vivid, with particularly opulent cellos and basses, that have such an important role filling Beethoven’s aural spectrum.

Shelley is given to brisk tempos and there could be argument about the ‘ma non troppo’ of Beethoven’s first movement, but the momentum quickly came to feel perfectly right as a depiction of the ‘awakening of joyous feelings on arrival in the country’. The tempo was very consistent too: the human pulse was present more in the undulating dynamics and an imperceptible rubato.

Here again, solo woodwinds, particularly Philip Green’s clarinet, offered elegant yet earthy beauty in the Andante con moto, and the dance-like third movement was particularly enriched by cellos, bassoons and double basses giving it a roguish, peasant quality.

There is a repetitiousness in this music that exposes a lesser conductor. On Friday evening every one of the five or seven or nine repeats of a phrase sounded fresh; I never waited for a movement to finish, as I confess to feeling occasionally in the past.

The party piece was Jennifer Higdon’s percussion concerto.

I confess to not being especially attracted to percussion en masse, apart from the tuned instruments, and often feel that their over-use can too easily disguise the absence of real musical creativity. The same goes for any music that relies greatly on heavy, complex scoring and massive orchestral variety. The marimba, in fact, took a leading role in the huge battery of percussion spread from one side of the stage to the other, starting with four sticks in a scarcely audible tremolo.

Higdon, one of the United States leading young composers, knows how to woo her players; Colin Currie may have been the star, but unusually, the orchestral players of these instruments were accorded comparable tasks that taxed their skills to the extreme as well as permitting the real musical quality of many of the percussion instruments to emerge. There, at the back of the orchestra, unfortunately invisible to scores of people in the front rows of the stalls, were Leonard Sakofsky, Bruce McKinnon, Thomas Guldborg and timpanist Laurence Reese, echoing or playing along with Currie.  (The orchestral layout bosses need to pay more attention to this weakness of the MFC).

It was a worthy tribute to the strength of the orchestra’s percussion section. But in a piece of this kind, much of the entertainment value, and let’s not be pretentious about that, rests with the sight of the percussionists, both soloist and those at the back.

Though at first hearing I took some time to identify threads of music, the last ten minutes persuaded me that the music would survive and gain appeal with further hearings. Showpiece for sure, there was also a lot of real music in there, being magnificently played.

Lyell Cresswell’s 2008 piece for string orchestra, I paesaggi dell’anima (Landscapes of the Soul), after I had set aside thoughts about the pretentious title, proved a work of extreme fastidiousness as well as robust structure. I have not always warmed to Cresswell’s cerebral scores that can seem overburdened by intellectual concepts and elaborate musical textures, but Shelley’s success in drawing an extremely refined performance from the strings was the kind of advocacy that any composer would dream of.

It was indeed a complex piece, each string section often subdivided to obtain a richly luminous, if sometimes a rather too detailed and dense harmonic fabric, but the musical ideas were often lyrical, somewhat enigmatic, even droll, enlivened by Messiaen-like twitterings, tremolos, staccato passages, all of which coalesced to create an impression that was ultimately both satisfying and intriguing.

So four very different pieces, two of them very new and one 70 years old, all flourished in most persuasive and distinguished performances.  Those ill-advised enough to have stayed away missed a great concert.

Thomas Gaynor opens National Organ Month

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Pieces by Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Lemare, Bonnet, Widor and Vierne

Thomas Gaynor – Organ

Cambridge Terrace Congregational Church, Wellington

Thursday 2 September, 12.45pm

September is National Organ Month and Wellington organists have filled the first fortnight with performances on several of the city’s most interesting organs.

Though there had been a recital on Tuesday the 31st, on the organ at Old St Paul’s, a little light-weight recital by Ken MacKenzie, the month began on the remarkably good organ in what is now the Cambridge Terrace Congregational Church. The organist was Thomas Gaynor, one of the more talented students at present studying at the New Zealand School of Music where he is in the second year of a B. Mus. At 13 he was Junior Organ Scholar at the Cathedral of St Paul, and is now Richard Prothero Organ Scholar at the Cathedral. Last year he won the New Zealand Association of Organists’ competition and the intermediate section of the Sydney Organ Competition; he has toured to Europe with the cathedral choir, playing and singing at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, Westminster Abbey and Saint-Eustache in Paris.

His programme opened with the first movement  from Elgar’s Organ Sonata, which I missed most of. Then I was a little disconcerted when his next piece was a famous organ lollipop by Edwin Lamare, Andantino in D flat, Op 83 No 2 (aka Moonlight and Roses, from the words later attached to it by someone else). Lemare (1866-1934) was a distinguished English organist and composer who toured widely through America, coming to New Zealand where he had a hand in designing the Auckland Town Hall organ, according to Wikipedia.

Gaynor told us the story of Lemare’s battle to get a share of the royalties from the published song which sold millions of copies, and which he eventually won. As well as making impressive demands on the organist’s technique, the piece lends itself to gross sentimentalizing, but by honestly acknowledging that, Gaynor drew out its plain musical quality, investing it with some charm.

Gaynor also drew attention to another technical quirk: a technique known as ‘thumbing down’ where the left hand plays an accompaniment on the Choir manual, while the fingers of the right hand play the tune on the Solo manual, and the thumb of the right hand simultaneously plays the tune on the Great manual, which is below the Solo manual, in parallel sixths. He thus played on three manuals at once.

We were all enthralled.

Vaughan Williams followed – one of the Three Preludes on Welsh Hymn Tunes: Rhosymedre. Though this too risks sentimental handling and he did not refrain from using heavy diapason stops, his skilled and discriminating playing made it a small piece of some consequence.

I might be revealing, again, Francophile prejudice, but I felt that the rest of the programme was what an organ recital should focus on, if it’s not to be Bach. Gaynor chose three of Franck’s pupils/successors: Widor, Vierne and Bonnet.

Bonnet’s Op 1, Variations de concert, is not a complex or particularly ambitious work; beginning with a splendidly arresting introduction on the full organ, it proceeds to lay out the tune which is followed by three pretty and well contrasted variations. The third is the show-piece, a stentorian beginning, then a spectacular solo for the pedals in which the audience’s attention was entirely on what was visible below the bench, and a peroration, again displaying pedal bravura with equally virtuosic handling of the manuals.

Widor is known mainly for one famous movement, from his Fifth Organ Symphony. Its fame is not unjustified; however, the virtues of his other music – and there’s a lot of it – are not immediate. On the one hand, it can sound facile and merely pretty; on the other hand, that superficial character works its way with you and seems misleading; unlike some music of apparent profoundity which comes to seem boring after a while, one’s respect for much of the French organ school increases with familiarity and it soon gains a special life of its own.

There’s no doubt that the organ repertoire can seem too dominated by technicalities and by organists’ skills, as distinct from musicality. Simply because of the considerable amount of knowledge that has to be mastered, of registrations, which vary from instrument to instrument, as well as the focus on technique, music-lovers from other areas often feel alien. The Andante sostenuto from Widor’s Symphonie Gothique exemplifies concern with the player’s skills, particularly in the pedal department. Gaynor succeeded in making real music of it.

Lastly, Gaynor played two of the pieces from Vierne’s collections of Pièces de fantaisie: Naïades and Carillon de Westminster. He played the first with scintillating delicacy, light-weight I suppose, but not vacuous. The Carillon finds its way into many CD organ anthologies and is certainly an entertaining and hypnotic piece, given to insistent rhythms and ostinati. It provided Thomas Gaynor with a splendid chance to demonstrate his ability to handle the instrument, and it’s an excellent instrument, with wonderful skill but to discover the real music within these attractive and flamboyant works.

Memorable and commanding Schumann and Shostakovich string quartets

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The New Zealand String Quartet

Schumann: String Quartets Nos 1 in A minor and 2 in F; Shostakovich: Nos 13 in B flat and 7 in F sharp minor

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University

Tuesday 31 August, 7.30pm 

This was an important series of ten concerts by the New Zealand String Quartet, in five centres nationwide; it included two different programmes, of all three of Schumann’s quartets and four of Shostakovich’s 15.

I heard the first of the two programmes at the church of St Mary of the Angels on Saturday the 28th, which my colleague Peter Mechen has reviewed (that programme had also been played a week earlier in the Hunter Council Chamber at Victoria University) and the second on Tuesday 31 August, also in the Hunter Council Chamber. There were probably round 200 at St Mary’s and a full house (about 160) at the Hunter room.

The quartet’s challenge was to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Schumann who wrote only three string quartets, by putting them with another composer whose music might complement it in some way. At first glance, Shostakovich looked an odd choice, and though Helene Pohl made a reasonable case in her introductory remarks, the connections were rather tenuous: Schumann’s personality dichotomy: his imaginative creations Florestan and Eusebius, and Shostakovich’s two faces – the public one acceptable to the Soviet authorities and the private one which expressed his inner self.

In the end I felt Schumann had paid the bigger price, for there is hardly any music written in any age that equals Shostakovich’s intensity, anguish and profound personal self-revelation in a fearful political environment. Most composers in past eras have lived under repressive regimes of various kinds, but they were the norm; social barriers, lack of freedom and extreme inequality were everywhere; it did not occur to them to depict it in their music.

But Shostakovich’s fate was to live in a place which had declined into a condition that had become much more repressive and dangerous than the rest of Europe (give or take Fascism).

Alongside Shostakovich’s, some of the Schumann music sounded to me emotionally lightweight, as if he was trying to write music that would entertain rather than what was genuinely spirited, with integrity and genuine expressive power.

That struck me particularly in the F major quartet, played last. In the second movement Schumann seemed to be putting on the mask of a happy face to please Clara, who had urged him to write music that audiences would understand. While the Scherzo appealed strongly as one of the most interesting movements, of variety and confident handling, I felt that in the finale, Schumann reverted to his jolly mask, writing music that was more conventional. The real Schumann, on the other hand, wrote music that was joyful, spirited which, up to a point, becomes more exciting the faster it is played, such as the March of the Davidsbündler in Carnaval or the finale of the Piano Concerto, or the Piano Quintet.

Though I had had similar feelings about the last movement of the A minor quartet, its minor key succeeded in keeping Schumann from conventional temptations in the three earlier movements, and the players always exploited in the liveliest way his inventiveness and impressive competence of writing for the four instruments.

What was striking about all Schumann’s quartets however, was both the warmth of the tutti sound, and the interesting music given variously to all four instruments; and I heard more arresting individuality from Gillian Ansell’s viola and Douglas Beilman’s violin that one often hears in quartet context.

Though it was Schumann’s birthday, it was Shostakovich who really stole the limelight. Again, we had the pleasure (if that is in any way the word) of two more of the little-known quartets of Shostakovich. If there were rewarding passages for the viola in Schumann, Shostakovich could be accused of having a torrid love affair with it.

No 13 is an extraordinary piece, written in 1970 when the composer was ill, and at its opening the viola carries most of its unrelenting bleak view of the world – of his world at least. It is in one movement, though there are several contrasting episodes that do offer sufficient variety and structural character to justify its formal status as a quartet. Rolf Gjelsten’s cello also has a major role in the music’s landscape.

Though Shostakovich’s language is essentially tonal, dramatic use is made of pointed discords, that might be followed by high, marcato notes from the violins. Above all, if one does not succumb to the outward pessimism, there is dark and tragic beauty in this piece, which ends with a series of rising harmonics that might suggest either some kind of spiritual aspiration or merely life evaporating to nothingness.

In the second half, they played the more conventionally ordered No 7; three movements following the normal pattern, through a dark liveliness in the first movement, to which the players brought a fierce energy and a thrusting sense of momentum; the change in the Lento movement to Doug Beilman’s angular violin arpeggios, soon joined by Helen Pohl’s febrile first violin. The last movement opens with stunning violence that Gillian Ansell diverted to hollow rhetoric with her beautifully resonant viola; and the piece ends with the violins and viola in flighty ascending scales that seemed to offer solace or consolation.

A Shostakovich Quartet Series
That the quartet has got nearly a third of Shostakovich’s quartets under their collective belts for these two concerts prompted the rather obvious thought that they should be encouraged to master them all and offer them as the musical highlight of the 2012 New Zealand International Arts Festival. It is time for a musical renaissance at the festival.

I was at the wonderful Verbier Festival in Switzerland in 2007 where, at 10pm every other night in the alpine village’s minuscule protestant church, the Israeli Aviv Quartet played them all, not in order but in groups evidently guided by length and contrast. During a week’s stay I heard seven quartets in three concerts (Nos 4 and 14, 1, 12 and 8, and 3 and 7).

The performances captured the more dedicated chamber music lovers and there were struggles to get inside the church, all successful, overcoming any scruples by the local fire department or festival administrators.

These concerts have proved that we have a string quartet capable of interpreting these works with a passion, ferocity, and depth of musical and political insight that is rare. They should be encouraged to undertake the entire Shostakovich quartet canon, some of the greatest music of the 20th century.

Sunday evening with Moky Gibson-Lane – a ‘cello and piano recital

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Mok-hyun Gibson-Lane (‘cello)

with Catherine McKay (piano)

JS BACH – Suite No.1 in G Major, for Solo ‘Cello / GYORGY LIGETI – Suite for Solo ‘Cello

LUIGI BOCCHERINI – Sonata for ‘Cello and Piano in C Major

MAX BRUCH – Kol Nidrei Op.47 / DAVID POPPER – Elfentanz (Dance of the Elves) Op.39

Central Baptist Church, Boulcott St., Wellington

Sunday 29th August 2010

Moky Gibson-Lane, visiting home in New Zealand from her various commitments as a performer in Europe, gave a delightful recital in Wellington’s Central Baptist Church, one which stimulated as much audience pleasure as a similar concert she gave on a home visit a year previously. She’s currently playing with the Berlin Staatskapelle, frequently conducted by Daniel Barenboim, and is a foundation member of the Stabrawa Ensemble, led by the Berlin Philharmonic’s concert-master, Daniel Stabrawa. She makes frequent Arts Channel television appearances in Germany, and has recently taken part, with Barenboim, in the Berlin premiere of Mosaic, a new work by Elliot Carter. The prospect, therefore, of hearing a musician with such credentials was too good an opportunity to miss; and, happily, as with last year’s recital, the young ‘cellist amply demonstrated with her playing why she’s such a sought-after musician in one of the world’s musical capitals.

Her recital was half-solo, half ‘cello-and-piano partnership, beginning with two major solo works, one a standard classic, and the other a contemporary masterpiece. Just what it is about JS Bach’s music that enables one to listen to countless performances of it without tiring I’m not quite sure (an exploration beyond the scope of a recital review), but the perennial freshness of the notes invariably seems to re-kindle from various musicians the same sense of re-awakening, of re-discovery, one which Mok-Hyun conveyed in her performance of the G Major Solo ‘Cello Suite from first note to last. From the expressive sonority of the Prelude, through the Allemande’s stately ornate decorations (very baroque-defining!), and the wonderfully spontaneous mixture of freedom and constraint with which she propelled the lively angularities of the Courante,  the ‘cellist proceeded to make the work her own. Her Sarabande had beautifully-focused dignity, contrasting beautifully with the energies of the two Minuets, the first cheerful and forthright, the second wistful and circumspect; while her “lightness-of-being” touch with the concluding Gigue brought out all of the music’s life-affirming buoyancy.

I’d never heard the Ligeti Solo ‘Cello Suite before, and was prepared for something a lot more acerbic and uncompromising than what was presented. The work itself had an interesting, and somewhat fraught genesis, being originally inspired by Ligeti’s unrequited passion for a female ‘cellist and fellow-student at the Budapest Music Academy in the late 1940s. Ligeti was then asked, a few years later, by an older, well-known female ‘cellist, Vera Dénes, for a piece she could play. The composer expanded his previous one-movement work into a two-movement Suite; but with Hungary under Soviet control in the 1950s, the piece had to be submitted to the all-powerful government-controlled Composers’ Union for acceptance. Interestingly, the committee allowed Vera Dénes to record the work (for a planned broadcast which never took place), but refused its performance in public, on the grounds that its second movement was “too modern”. It wasn’t until 1979 that the piece was performed again. Ligeti called the first movement a “dialogue”, intending (no doubt with his youthful student amour in mind) a man and a woman conversing. He remarked also that this music was “heavily influenced” by the works of Zoltan Kodaly. A sense of something tender and heartfelt awakening was conveyed by the soft strummings of the opening, alternating with measures of full-throated melody, the strummed notes “bent” to give a heightened emotional effect. An impassioned middle section alternated between low and high lines, and brought out powerful playing from Mok-Hyun, the “Hungarian” melody then giving way to further soft pizzicato chords that ended the movement.

Ligeti aimed for contrast in the virtuoso second movement, modelling the title Capriccio on Paganini’s well-known Caprices for solo violin. The “Presto con slancio” directive for the performer means “‘very quick, with impetus”, and produced here an extremely exciting performance, running figures, trenchant attack, and tortured, agitated lines – a wonderful volatiity, almost an expiation of the heart-on-sleeve feeing evinced in the first movement. The exuberant final bars brought out an enthusiastic audience response to some great playing.

Moky Gibson-Lane was joined by pianist Catherine McKay for the second half, beginning with a Sonata by Boccherini which sounded like Haydn at the beginning, the music having plenty of muscularity and sprightliness. It was mostly ‘cello with dutiful piano accompaniment in this movement, really, with the development bringing out a more colouristic and in places even sombre mood, though nothing too tragic or heart-rending. The slow movement brought out the ‘cellist’s beautiful cantabile, rich and low in places and decorated occasionally with melismatic impulses; while the finale began as a good-natured jog-trot, but with demands on the soloist involving spectacular high finger-board work – not always DEAD in tune, but impressively virtuosic, nevertheless.  Rather more musical substance was provided by Max Bruch’s lovely, lyrical “Kol Nidrei”, the opening exchanges between piano and ‘cello long-breathed and full of feeling. Here, the rhapsodic melodies became big-hearted, committed statements, but with both ‘cellist and pianist preserving a ritualistic, almost ecclesiastical feeling about the exchanges, before relaxing into the rapt, hymn-like romantic dialogues of the work’s final section. Mok-Hyun celestially floated the last few measures of her line, the final ascent perhaps not ideally pure of tone, but nevertheless, together with Catherine McKay’s angelic support, a beautiful supplication.

We sinners needed bringing down to earth again after experiencing such stratospheric evocations; and the final item did just that – Czech composer David Popper’s sprightly, and in some places somewhat manic “Elfentanze” (Dance of the Elves) was a kind of  Bohemian version of “Flight of the Bumble Bee”, featuring plenty of rapid figurations from both ‘cellist and pianist, and some hair-raising, right-off-the-fingerboard bedazzlements from the ‘cellist at the end, which, to use the classic phrase, brought the house down. At a supper straight afterwards most people were happily able to more fully extend those gestures of appreciation that we readily and enthusiastically showed both musicians at the end of the concert.

Good Taste in the Art of Musick: Geminiani at St Paul’s Lutheran

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Songs and sonatas from Scotland, by Geminiani

Musica Lyrica: Dougals Mews, Rowena Simpson, Kamala Bain, Brendan O’Donnell, Shelley Wilkinson, Peter Walls, Ann Goodbehere

St Paul’s Lutheran Church, King Street, Mount Cook 

Sunday 29 August 5pm

This concert was advertised as part of St Paul’s Lutheran Church’s regular concerts, many of them associated with the church’s normal vespers services, when Bach cantatas, eventually all of them, are performed.

But this was different.

Peter Walls (in other lives, Professor of Music at Victoria University and now CEO of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra) had talked during the week on RNZ Concert’s Upbeat, and in his introduction to the concert, about its nature and aim, offering interesting bits of scholarship about violin practice as well as about the byways of music in 18th century Britain.

The great Italian violinist and composer, Geminiani, a leading pupil of Corelli, had moved to London in 1714 and developed an interest in Scottish folk music. As well as his treatise on violin playing, which gave its name to this concert, he collected a large number of folk songs in a volume called Orpheus Caledoniensis.

But before the concert could start, cellist Emma Goodbehere, had a mishap with her baroque cello, damaging the finger board, and she had to withdraw from the performance. It left a number of the songs and instrumental pieces short of bass substance, and caused the dropping of the Cello Sonata, Op 5 No 2, which would have been the major instrumental piece.

But the rest of the concert was pure delight. Soprano Rowena Simpson took all the song parts, and she decorated her lines with the most natural sounding ornaments as her voice proved an idiomatic vehicle for these fresh and melodic songs. They made it easy to understand how the folk songs of Scotland later became such hot property, encouraging publishers to commission composers like Haydn and Beethoven to make arrangements of them. 

Typically, the song was performed first, and then followed by a sonata based on it, using Peter Walls and Shelley Wilkinson on violins, or treble recorders* (Kamala Bain and Brendan O’Donnell) plus a continuo that was provided by Douglas Mews at the harpsichord and Ann Goodbehere on the viola.

Kamal Bain played a descant recorder* with  a couple of items and these were quite disarming, especially for one who has never felt very drawn to the instrument.  Her playing was fluent and utterly charming; without too much effort the sound of the bagpipe could be imagined.

The last of the Sonatas, based on ‘The last Time I came o’er the Moor’ used the two violins which elaborated on the song even more that the voice itself had, and it ended with a postlude the led to a graceful slow dance.

Bear these concerts in mind for a late Sunday afternoon: the standard of music making is very high.

*We had the sizes of the recorders wrong in the original review. The sizes here are now correct (L.T. 3.09.10)

Michael Houstoun in recital – in Wellington!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Michael Houstoun (piano)

JS BACH – Prelude No.1 in C Major BWV 846 / SCHUMANN – Arabeske Op.18 / Kreisleriana Op.16

CHOPIN – Sonata in B-flat minor (“Funeral March”) Op.35 / Two Nocturnes Op.37 / Four Etudes Op.25 Nos 1, 5, 7, and 12

Ilott Theatre, Town Hall, Wellington

Sunday 29th August 2010

Who says piano recitals can’t pack ’em in any more? True, if any pianist can here in Wellington, Michael Houstoun can, and especially so when the programme features the music of two composers whose spirit seems to exemplify music’s Romantic Age. This concert was a celebration of the year 1810, during which both Chopin and Schumann were born, Michael Houstoun unexpectedly and cleverly drawing these otherwise disparate figures together by way of JS Bach, whose music both of these composers revered. So we were given Bach’s celestial C Major Prelude from Book One of the Well-Tempered Clavier by way of introduction to the recital proper, the music pausing briefly to draw breath at the Prelude’s end before Houstoun continued with the equally radiant opening to Schumann’s Arabesque.

One of the characteristics of Schumann’s music is its extraordinary pliancy, so that, more than many other composers’ music, his responds equally well to so many different interpretative viewpoints. Perhaps it’s the subjective nature of much of it, to which musicians connect more on an individual and spontaneous basis than a preconceived and predictable one, resulting in wider performance parameters being explored regarding the music’s interpretation. Consequently, there emerges no “way” to play Schumann, other than to convey a sense of identification and engagement with the composer and his world. Reading between the lines of Michael Houstoun’s thoughtful programme notes for the recital, one senses, intriguingly, on his part a slightly more ready inclination to “connect” with Schumann than with Chopin, though in practice it’s a near thing. I would have hazarded a guess that Houstoun might have felt more at home with the Polish composer’s ultra-refined syntheses of structure and feeling than his German contemporary’s often abstruse flights of fancy – so I was delighted to find myself drawn in to many of the moods he evoked with his performance of Kreisleriana, one of Schumann’s most enigmatic creations.

Expertly played though it was, I didn’t immediately warm to the pianist’s way with the Arabesque which almost immediately followed the Bach – though he exhibited great control and evenness of touch, he didn’t for me “dream” enough of the music, giving us a strong, unequivocal opening, but not seeming interested in bringing out the almost “question-and-answer” manner of the phrases, the poetical ruminations, as it were. The first interlude was strongly, almost passionately voiced, and did relax for a few measures just before returning to the main running theme, the two impulses beautifully married for the reprise. I liked the “kick” with which he brought the second interlude into being, though his tone hardened in places of emphasis, too much so, I thought, in relation to the gentleness of the whole work, though his return to the main theme was again finely-judged, and the coda of the piece was given a winning mix of strength and poetic feeling.

Kreisleriana was, of course, an entirely different matter; and I thought the pianist’s almost headlong plunge into the tempestuous opening an approach the composer would have approved of, the occasional split note adding to the sense of wildness, the music seemingly unnerved by its own evocations, and wanting to climb upwards out of the maelstrom of raw emotion towards the light. Houstoun’s way with the wondrous contrasting second piece, marked “Very inwardly and not too quickly”, gave the poetical atmosphere enough space to generate a rich, warm ambience via the wonderful forest-echoing “hunting-horn” theme, and the beautifully harmonised scale passages growing out of the theme’s resonances – though the brief intermezzi which punctuate the mood kept their energies within bounds, suggesting more an architect’s than a poet’s view of the whole structure. The pianist also found a telling contrast between sections three and four, the pure emotion of the latter beautifully breathed after the previous piece’s agitations, and the subsequent quickening of the pulse nicely judged – for me, one of several interpretative highlights of the performance.

Schumann’s dogged insistence dominated the next episode, Houstoun controlling the composer’s obsessiveness judiciously so that none of the repetitive figures outstayed their welcome. Another beautifully-realised piece was the following folkish lullaby (sehr langsam – very slowly), the achingly nostalgic left-hand theme seeming to grow out of the earth, as it were, Houstoun giving the ambience the dark, rich tones requited by the music’s suggestiveness. After the next piece’s wild, headlong opening, galloping through tempestuous storms, Houstoun brought the agitations under control with some nicely gradated chords, leading to the work’s final, most enigmatic section, the composer’s marking schnell und spielend (fast and playful) barely hinting at the music’s darker, more equivocal undercurrents. Houstoun brought these out beautifully, giving the elfin melody a slightly disembodied tonal character, and beautifully weighting the left hand so that the often maverick rhythmic stresses of the bass notes had a properly disturbing effect. In general, I thought the interpretation of the whole very satisfying, more thoughtfully and subtly realised by the pianist than given by him overt extremes of mood, colour and energy.

In a sense, the Chopin “Funeral March” Sonata which followed after the interval posed similar interpretative problems to Kreisleriana – the difficulty being how to bring some kind of coherence to a series of overtly unconnected “episodes” strung together to form an overall scheme – though Michael Houstoun hit the nail fairly on the head in his notes when he spoke about “a certain spirit or tone which serves to unify” in relation to both works. Somewhat ironically, it was Schumann who complained in a critical notice about Chopin’s Sonata that “he has simply yoked together four of his wildest offspring”; although it was the bestowment of the title “Sonata” on the work that gave the hypersensitive critic of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik misgivings, not the music itself. Houstoun sought to keep the music directional by refusing to make too much of any contrasts of tempo or dynamics throughout the first movement, the most surprising aspect of which was the pianist’s incorporating the very beginning of the work in the repeat, something which I’d not heard done before. The music’s strong undertow was maintained throughout, reducing the work’s propensity for dramatic contrast, but tightening the musical argument and keeping a sense of purposeful forward motion paramount.

Contrast was the order of the day with the Scherzo, in Houstoun’s hands the opening section big, energetic and darkly-wrought, before being almost completely disarmed by the sweetness of the ballade-like Trio, with only the occasional left-hand trills suggesting any hint of continuing unease. I fancied I heard some kind of momentary harmonic re-arrangement at the agitated opening’s reprise, though it may have been my ears playing tricks with my memory – in any case, a mere detail, swept away by Houstoun’s bringing out of the power and purpose of the whole. Some extraneous deep-toned thuds from without accompanied the hushed opening of the famous “Funeral March”, to no matter – the pianist’s power and concentration carried the day, the playing perhaps less antiphonal than some performances I’ve heard, but just as telling in effect. Houstoun seemed to integrate the Trio into the March, making it less of an inward escape to another realm than a more lyrical manifestation of the same force propelling time and life onwards, the repeats helping to intensify this feeling. Upon the march’s return, one realised how differently Chopin felt about life and death – Houstoun’s control made the reappearance of the cortège and its ghostly dissolution a salutary experience.

What Houstoun then did with the finale was interesting – played attacca, the sinuous strands of agitation were kept clear and largely unpedalled, refusing the music any kind of impressionistic wash or colouristic atmosphere, making the notes themselves do the work and create the musical effect. Those used to listening to the highly theatrical realisations of people such as Cortot, Rachmaninov and (more lately) Martha Argerich would have found Houstoun’s determinedly unvarnished realisation either rather too earthbound or remarkably singular in effect – rather like a long-forgotten extra item from out of Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition, or something. Here, it was of a piece with the rest of the sonata – coherent, focused, and cumulatively powerful in effect.

Strangely I enjoyed Houstoun’s playing of the two Nocturnes for probably quite perverse reasons – in a sense I would rather have a more instinctively poetic player to be my guide were I wanting to hear these extraordinary pieces; but I was amazed, especially in the case of the second of the two Op.37 Nocturnes, as to how “modern” the composer’s harmonic progressions sounded when laid bare by playing which emphasised the piece’s structure and inner constituent workings, rather than colour and a singing line. I would use the word “chiselled” to describe the way the opening of Op.37 No.1 was presented, the contourings very precise, and the sonorities in the trio section seamlessly organ-like. But surely the dynamic contrasts were raked too steeply at the reprise of the main theme – does moonlight come from behind the clouds as abruptly as that? Even so, I was made to listen to the barcarolle-like No.2 with what seemed like freshly-programmed ears.

Four Etudes from the composer’s Op.25 concluded the recital, judiciously chosen by Michael Houstoun to give a kind of “sonata” effect, perhaps (four more of Chopin’s wildest?), the first the beautiful Aeolian Harp in A-flat, the pianist getting a lovely “rolling” effect with the notes, and an especially feathery quality at the end. The C-sharp Minor No.7 followed almost without a break, its  melody beautifully “terraced” between the hands, building up an almost orchestral effect on places, with swirling figurations and massive chordings. The oddly “galumphing” No.5 in E Minor was the “scherzo”, with its Lisztian trio, Houstoun’s brilliant filigree right-hand work set against sonorous left-hand melody to great effect; while the final etude’s great ferment of whirling “Rachmaninovian” C Minor arpeggios glinted and flashed their melodic notes in truly virtuoso style.

All credit to Michael Houstoun for celebrating Schumann and Chopin so resplendently, and to Wellington Chamber Music for bringing to Wellingtonians that sadly diminishing rarity, a full-blooded piano recital. Some of the world’s greatest music (such as we heard this afternoon) deserves much more of Houstoun’s kind of advocacy and his near-capacity audience’s whole-hearted support.

Piers Lane entertains at the piano at Waikanae

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Piers Lane (piano) – Waikanae Music Society

Schubert: 12 German Dances, Ländler & Valses Sentimentales, D779, D783 & D790
Brahms: Intermezzi in B minor, E minor, C; Rhapsody in E flat; Op.119
Beethoven: Sonata no.31 in A flat, Op.110
Chopin: Ballade no.1 in G minor, Op.23; Four Nocturnes,  Op.27, Op.48 & Op. Posth.
Schulz-Evier: Arabesques on the Beautiful Blue Danube

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 29 August 2010, 2.30 pm

What a well-constructed programme this was, celebrating Chopin’s bi-centenary, other supreme composers for the piano, plus a dazzling finale.  This was real pianists’ music: not out to be showy (with the exception of the final piece), but to be expressive.

Using a microphone, Piers Lane interpolated remarks between the groups of items.  These were informative, and sometimes humorous, such as when he told us that the words of the folk-song on which the second movement of Beethoven’s sonata was based had been translated as “You are a slob”!

The Schubert Dances he played, the pianist informed us, were made into a collection for performance by Dame Myra Hess.  He told us that he had created a show in memory of the great pianist, and performed it with actress Patricia Routledge as Myra Hess, the words being excerpts from her books, letters and interviews.

It was good to hear these pieces – it is rare these days to hear relatively slight items (in terms of length) in a recital.  Put together as a set with little or no break, the dances gave opportunity for great vigour and steady rhythm – one could have danced to them.  The result was delightful, though perhaps of  all Schubert’s works for piano, these would be more effective on fortepiano.

The Brahms pieces received masterful but sensitive readings from Lane.  He indeed, to quote the programme note quoting Brahms ‘luxuriate(d) in dissonances’ in the first Intermezzo.

There was great contrast between the second and third Intermezzi; the first was sombre while the next one was lively.  The heroic Rhapsody was just that.

Beethoven’s second-last sonata has a wonderful opening.  As Piers Lane expressed it in his introductory comments, the work proves that ‘one can have joy after suffering’.  Every note was distinct; pedal use was judicious and never blurring.

Contrasting with the poetry of the first movement, an energetic declamation of an allegro followed.  Then there was pathos in the exquisitely worked-out adagio.   This was thoughtful and expressive playing, by a pianist fully in command technically, and who has the piano at his fingertips physically, mentally and emotionally.  It was a joy to hear him play.

The first Ballade of Chopin becomes graceful and delicate at the second theme, yet there is great force and energy towards the end.  It was a feast of brilliant and virtuosic performance, demonstrating to the full the sheer inventiveness of this piece.  We were informed that the Ballade was dedicated to Schumann, and that both he and its composer loved it most of Chopin’s works.

It was a delight to hear the Nocturnes.  After the meditative first one, dark like a nightmare, broken by a bright middle section, the second was notable for the lovely singing tone and cheerful mood.  We were gliding by night on glistening waters.

The third, in C minor, has been described as imperious.  It was played more slowly than other performances I have heard, but seemed to gain effect from this tempo.  There was beautiful articulation in the last of the set.  Every note had its own piece to say, yet was part of the general flow.  It was mesmerisingly lovely.

The piece by Adolf Schulz-Evier (1852-1905) was quite amazing; a highly decorated paraphrase of Strauss’s famous waltz, that required great virtuosity.  It was a fast waltz, although slight rubati in the restating of the melody added interest.  It may be considered OTT, but what a triumph of invention, and of pianistic prowess.

The encore was by ‘a twentieth century British composer you may have heard of – Dudley Moore’!   It was the latter’s tribute to Beethoven.  Whether Beethoven would have been as amused as we were, we cannot tell.  The theme was the first part of the well-known ‘Colonel Bogey’ (of ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’ fame), and it was treated to many of Beethoven’s characteristics of composition – exaggerated, of course.  There was a touch of ‘Hernando’s Hideaway’ from ‘The Pajama Game’, even a fugue, and at the end of the numerous near-endings, touches of the Moonlight Sonata.  It was extremely clever, brilliantly played, and with some humorous gestures – though not as many as its composer would have employed.

We were treated to a demonstration of first-class pianism.  Piers Lane never came between the music and the large audience.  The composers were admirably served, and everyone present must have been supremely delighted.

Great liturgical works from the Bach Choir

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Bach Choir conducted by Stephen Rowley

Frank Martin: Mass for Double Choir; Cherubini: Requiem Mass in C minor (1815)

St Mark’s Church, Basin Reserve

Sunday 29 August, 2pm

The Bach Choir has a distinguished history in Wellington since 1968, when it was founded by the gifted organist and musical scholar Anthony Jennings. Like all choirs, its fortunes have fluctuated: for the past two years it has regained its position, directed by Stephen Rowley; its recent achievements have included the B Minor Mass, Elijah, a concert of Handel and Purcell, and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.

It was an adventurous concert. In Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir the two choirs of about 20 singers each, were placed diagonally, at right angles to each other, facing the conductor.

But ideally it needed more singers to give a more homogeneous sound to each section; among other things, there were too few altos and tenors to provide a uniform carpet of sound. Whether that realisation was what caused the evident shakiness at the beginning, and which recurred quite often, I cannot say; another blemish, quite early, was a worrying abrasive sound from one or more male singer, perhaps pushing too hard and high at fortissimo. However I was told that the dress rehearsal had gone very well.

One of the most rewarding books on music of the past few years is Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise. He remarks that Martin’s Mass has been “entrancing audiences with the archaic majesty of its language. Martin had a gift for immersing himself in styles of the past without seeming to imitate them.” That is nicely put. It is not to say the music is easy to sing or to ingest. The Kyrie begins with an indeterminate plainsong-like prelude that may not be hard to sing, but seems hard to place before the bolder polyphonic entry by the full choir. The sound might be Palestrina or Victoria.

The antiphonal possibilities of writing for two choirs were notable, using, say, sopranos on one side and basses on the other, or using entrances of various sections, aurally spaced, with striking effect. The contrasts between somber passages in the Gloria such as ‘Domine fili unigenite’ and the more excited ‘Quoniam tu solus sanctus’ were examples of the composer’s detailed conception of the mass, which the choir dealt with scrupulously. Later, in the Credo, I enjoyed the onomatopoeic rising and falling scales that illustrated ‘Et ascendit in coelum’.

Stephen Rowley succeeded very well, given the music’s difficulties, in expressing the varied emotions and religious sentiments, the sense of the words and the contexts of Martin’s very meticulous, intricate scoring that so rewards careful study and rehearsal.

Martin’s view of religion was nowhere more clear than in his setting of the Sanctus: reverent and sober; compare with the almost ecstatic Bach, heard only a week earlier.

It was only when I looked into the music itself that I realized why Douglas Mews’s organ accompaniment was so tentative: it was simply to support the choir in an otherwise a cappella work.

I was looking forward even more to hearing live for the first time, Cherubini’s Requiem for mixed choir; he has always interested me for his place in music history, bridging the classic and romantic eras, and the Italian, the German and the French, as well as for the real strength of his own music.

He was commissioned to write this one to commemorate the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, following the defeat of Napoleon in June 1815, when Louis XVIII returned to Paris in July, evidently to Cherubini’s relief. Later, the forces of conservatism throughout society, unleashed in the backlash to the ‘radicalism’ of the Napoleonic era, brought back a ban on women singing the liturgy, and Cherubini wrote a second requiem in 1836 in preparation for his own funeral, for men’s voices only.

On the whole, this was easier for the choir to sing. Though the electronic organ hardly offered the supporting grandeur of a pipe organ, let alone the original orchestral accompaniment, Douglas Mews supplied valuable sonorities.

The Requiem is a remarkably strong work without being adorned with particularly memorable melodies. It has the character of the quintessential requiem, having absorbed that of Mozart and probably the liturgical music of Zelenka, Haydn and Salieri, but before Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and the requiem’s secularization by Berlioz and Verdi. It sounds rather like what Beethoven might have written if he had decided to (and he admired Cherubini, especially this work).

The dramatic character of the work, to be expected of a composer whose career till he was over 40 had been dedicated mainly to opera, though only occasionally with great success (particularly Lodoïska, Médée and Les deux journées), is part of its strength.

It pays close attention to the sense of the text, starting the Introit in a very subdued manner, allowing a subtle crescendo with the words’Exaudi orationem meam’ which the choir handled carefully. But soon, in the tutti sections, one rather longed for the richness and sustained body of voices in a bigger choir.

A more sanguine tone flourished in the Graduale however, but the ferocity of the start of the Dies Irae was a little subdued, though there was more venom towards the end in ‘Confutatis maledictus’. However, other parts of the Dies Irae where Cherubini typically overlaps phrases and divides words between sections of the choir for narrative purpose, and  through the more emphatic ‘Mors stupebit’, were effective. The change of style in the ‘Recordare’ hinted at Cherubini’s opera habits, to handle the tripping trochee meter of the liturgy in this section, and it might have benefited from greater rhythmic vitality.

The long Offertorium was kept alert with a quasi-marching, open-air, staccato tread, here conspicuously supported by the organ.  After the gentle Pie Jesu faded away, the final, momentarily forceful Agnus Dei and ‘Lux aeterna’ (left out of the programme), lent renewed vitality that ended with the prayer for eternal rest. Again, a smallish choir fell a shade short in creating a profound sense of peace through the music’s long-sustained harmonies.

Given that ideally both works would have gained so much from a rather larger body of singers, I was very glad to have heard these admirable live performances, a real credit to conductor Stephen Rowley.