Category: Reviews – Concerts

New Zealand String Quartet: Schumann put in the shade by Shostakovich……

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SCHUMANN AND SHOSTAKOVICH

The New Zealand String Quartet : Helene Pohl, Douglas Beilman (violins) / Gillian Ansell (viola) / Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

SCHUMANN – String Quartet in A Major Op.41 No.3

SHOSTAKOVICH – String Quartet No. 5 in B-flat Major Op.92 / String Quartet No.9 in E-flat Major Op.117

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

Saturday 28th August, 2010

Poor old Schumann! Of course he had no way of seeing Shostakovich coming when he wrote his quartets, and therefore didn’t feel the need to overtly externalise the flamboyant, turbulent side of his nature in much of his music, especially in a medium which was generally regarded as a vehicle for expression of a reasonably circumspect provenance. True, he had Beethoven’s magnificently virile example as a writer of quartets to refer to as exemplars of a more cosmic and elemental style and effect – but Schumann was no Beethoven, being a split personality far more seriously troubled by the demands of his muse and the disorders and conflicts of his inner being. His quartets are therefore imbued with quixotic contrasts between exuberance and poetic feeling, marvellously inventive, yet touchingly fallible – music very much at the mercy of performance sensibility, and thus needing from performers a sympathetic and sensitive attitude to interpretation for it to blossom and reveal its particular strengths and beauties.

These were the thoughts that coursed through my mind immediately after the concert given by the New Zealand String Quartet at which we heard Schumann’s Third String Quartet in A Minor Op.41, followed by two searing, dynamically-presented twentieth-century quartet masterpieces by Dmitri Shostakovich. On a certain level it was a case between the composers of “vive la difference!” (and the Schumann is, I admit, gradually “coming back” for me as a remembered concert listening experience), but at the time the Shostakovich works seemed to literally blow the Schumann Quartet out of the water. The group of people among which I sat were stunned at the end of the concert, by both the music and its realisation, our applause fitful to a fault, not because we didn’t appreciate the performances, but because we were more-or-less flattened by them, and wanted to sit in silence for a bit and let our sensibilities recover. Perhaps people who had heard ensembles like the Borodin Quartet play these works might have been more used to this feeling of being overwhelmed; but these were first-time concert hearings of these works for me, and I couldn’t imagine them being done more brilliantly than by this ensemble.

Some more information regarding the concert: this was one of two presentations designed to play homage to Robert Schumann during his two hundredth birth anniversary year, at which all three of the Op.41 Quartets would be presented. This being Programme One, our portion tonight was the third, and perhaps most elusive of the three, in A Major. Shostakovich was chosen by the NZSQ as a “foil” for Schumann as a quartet-writer, as there were several parallels between the two composers, which quartet-leader Helene Pohl talked eloquently about in between the two works presented in the concert’s first half. Pohl equated Schumann’s psychological duality as a personality with Shostakovich’s politically-enforced double-life, pointing out that both composers strove to reconcile these opposites in their music, while clearly and unequivocally acknowledging and characterising the differences, and the divide between them. I was intrigued at the choice of venue for this concert, wondering whether the ample acoustic of a sizeable church would tell against the characteristic intimacies of the string quartet medium, regardless of the beauty of the surroundings and the atmosphere engendered by the numerous candles placed around and about the sanctuary (this was advertised as a “quartets by candlelight” concert). I need not have worried unduly – after registering a certain “halo of warmth” around and about the sound when the performance started, I found I could discern the lines of the individual instruments quite clearly; and, in fact, I thought the Schumann quartet benefitted immeasurably from its textures being suffused with more glowing warmth than is usual.

Of Schumann’s three quartets, the Third has until now been a kind of “Cinderella” for me, one which seemed more than usually imbued by the composer’s rhythmic obsessiveness, to the work’s overall detriment. This being a judgement I made a good many years previously, I hadn’t sought out this particular work for listening to for some time; and was therefore charmed by my reacquaintance in this performance with the work’s ready lyricism and freely inventive juxtaposing of themes, skilfully realised by the players. They were able to balance most beautifully the tender lyricism of the themes’ expositions with their more forthright working-out, bringing considerable intensity and physicality to the development, but leavening the mood with their flexible and sensitive phrasings. I loved the “sigh” with which the group brought back the opening motto theme – a near-perfect encapsulation of a romantic composer’s world.

This time round I coped better with the scherzo rhythms, which were as obsessive as I remembered, but without being dry (the acoustic probably helping, here). I loved the triplets that came to the rescue of the music’s opening trajectories, and the frenetic contrapuntal energisings which threw more wistful and melancholic moments into relief. Altogether, the two middle movements I found surprisingly compelling, the slow movement quite gorgeously passionate at the outset, the viola leading the opening statements towards even more intense utterances of poetic feeling. The ghostly pulsatings that followed led to darkly-expressed agitations, so richly-coloured by the players, the acoustic imparting an almost “orchestral” ambience to the music argument, though perspectives such as the ‘cello’s wonderfully varied rhythmic pizzicati beneath the soaring lyrical lines remained in an overall “chamber” context. Perhaps the finale’s repetitive opening rhythmic motto runs the risk of becoming too much of a good thing, though Schumann contrasts the mood with tripping figures and a ritualistic round-dance, energetically characterised by the players here, who revelled in the alternations before dashing into a “last hurrah” with the motto rhythm, cranking up both its detailing and its energies for an exhilarating finish to the work.

What can one say about the performance of the Shostakovich works? – except that they were as committed and wholehearted performances of anything I’ve ever seen and heard the NZSQ do. The Fifth Quartet, completed in 1952, was one of a number of works written by Shostakovich over a number of years that had not been offered for performance until after the death of Stalin in 1953, due to the savagery of a previous attack on the composer’s music by the Soviet authorities. The Tenth Symphony was written at around the same time as the quartet, and the two works share a similar breadth and orchestral way of thinking, Shostakovich’s writing in the quartet in places creating a massive, orchestrally-conceived sound. Another link between symphony and quartet is the composer’s use of his motto, the notes DSCH (D/E-flat/C/B) which the viola plays repeatedly in the quartet’s first 12 bars.

At the outset, the NZSQ caught the droll, march-like sense of a long-breathed story about to be told. Episodes of furious activity which followed had an almost visceral, full-blooded quality, matched by the growing sense of unease and rising anxiety, like an approaching firestorm or imminent terror, relieved only by the lyrical waltz-like second subject. The conflicts and intermittent episodes of bleak calm were stunningly delineated by the players, whose focused concentration exerted a kind of surreal hypnotic trance over the auditorium’s listening body, a spell maintained without a discernable break throughout the work’s three continuous movements. Of particular note was the middle Andante movement, whose intensities were coloured by Shostakovich’s use of a melody by a student and fellow-composer, Galina Ustvolskya, with whom it was said he was “emotionally involved” – the NZSQ players demonstrated enormous physical and emotional resources energising these long-breathed intensities before hurling themselves into the final movement’s maelstrom of thematic interaction, and finally sustaining the violin-and-viola-led exhalations of bitter-sweet release that floated uneasily through and around the becalmed vistas.

The Ninth Quartet, has its own peculiar engimatic character, not least because the composer had actually written an earlier version of the work, which he destroyed in what he called “an attack of healthy self-criticism” three years earlier. Where the Fifth Quartet had come across as a brooding work punctuated with powerful, uncompromising outbursts, the Ninth sounded rather more exotic throughout many of its episodes, and certainly in the opening movement. The players gave themselves wholly to a parallel sense of ritual and unease, with sinuous melodies and oscillations at the very beginning criss-crossing over the top of spacious pedal-points. That same intense concentration carried the music unswervingly through the somewhat charged pizzicato jogtrot rhythms, and into the long-breathed elegiac utterances of the second movement than followed. The composer’s penchant for near-manic energies was given full rein by the players in the polka-like dance that sprang from the music’s hesitant pulsings, before some superbly-projected pizzicati declamations (startlingly and effectively repeated at certain cadence-points) redirected our sensibilities into the strange and somewhat grotesque territories of the final movement. The NZSQ players seemed to take us into the heart of each phrase, each succeeding episode, each abrupt change of mood, colour and pace, before throwing everything into the wild concluding dance, with its abruptly sardonic concluding gesture.

The resulting audience acclamations were as much release of pent-up feeling as deep appreciation concerning the music and its performance. It seemed to me hard on Schumann at the time, but such was the visceral and emotional impact of the Shostakovich performances that it took this listener some time to work backwards through the whole worlds of intense feeling wrought by the Russian composer’s  sharply-focused and deeply-weighted evocations towards retrieving the erstwhile beauties of the Schumann quartet’s performance. One could, fatuously at this stage, suggest that Britten’s quartets might have provided a different, and more equally-weighted set of twentieth-century parallels with those of Schumann – but such metaphysical speculation shouldn’t get in the way of acknowledging the NZSQ’s stellar achievement in realising all the music in this concert so very completely and compellingly.

National Youth Orchestra in brilliant form

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (Vaughan Williams), Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (Stravinsky), The Chairman Dances (Adams), Symphonic Dances (Rachmaninov)

NZSO National Youth Orchestra conducted by Rossen Milanov with Jason Bae (piano)

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday 26 August, 7.30pm

The habit of reviewers reporting, in mock wonderment, that the concert by the current incarnation of the National Youth Orchestra has offered the most exciting and committed symphony concert of the year, or decade, has become traditional, almost a ritual. Such claims are made in all good faith and in the hope of being seen as friends of the young and apostles of hope that the mature population will follow the lead of youth.

To do otherwise is very difficult, especially when the facts obviously favour the tradition. Especially this time; for not only was this perhaps the most uniformly talented body of musicians that the orchestra has gathered together, their ages ranging from 12 to 24, but it was also guided by a conductor with a gift for inspiring his players with some kind of rare and profound spirit, and drawing from them revelatory and polished performances.

Fast-rising Bulgarian-born conductor, Rossen Milanov, had devised a slightly eccentric programme, yet one which I had imagined might have filled the Michael Fowler Centre. I am clearly not a good judge of the tastes of most of my fellow citizens, however, for the MFC was more poorly inhabited than I can remember for some years. Though I gathered later that it might have been flaws in the seat booking system.

Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis opened: it was a deeply reverent, delicate account that let us hear how the limited body of strings could play with a refinement and subtlety that one hardly expects from youth. The performance steered between an overtly English pastoral style and an overdressed metaphysical expression in a Germanic tradition. Punctuated early on by an unrestrained cough in the audience, it evoked the dim light of a medieval cathedral, its long polyphonic melody soon given substance by a gentle rhythm and harmonies that respected its origins.

The orchestra’s arrangement was interesting, reflecting baroque practice. The chamber sized ripieno ensemble was in a tight semi-circular phalanx at the front while the concertino of nine strings was spread out across the rear of the orchestral terraces; affording visual support to the arresting aural effect, which was to lend the small group a remote air, especially when playing with mutes, rather than giving prominence to such a solo-like group. In addition, the quartet of string principals played the beautiful prayer-like passage with a maturity and commitment that was typical of the entire concert.

The plan to give strings and winds distinct exposure in the first half might have been an ingenious one, with the first piece for strings alone and the second for winds and percussion; but the choice of Stravinsky’s piano concerto was unfortunate. It might well be the only work that features the piano with a wind band (though there are also six double basses and timpani), but it is a particularly tough and somewhat abrasive example of the composer’s neo-classical style. The brass players, mainly the horns and trombones, did not cope well at the start, though trumpets soon restored an equilibrium. Such a piece has to be played with tremendous musicality and accuracy, making musical what can otherwise sound chaotic. 

Pianist Jason Bae, an 18-year-old Korean studying at Auckland University, proved a remarkable executant, coping brilliantly with Stravinsky as if he had been living with this music happily for years. After the troublesome start, woodwinds were more successful in managing the tortuous rhythmic and harmonic hurdles.

The full orchestra came successfully together in the second half. John Adams’s The Chairman Dances, commonly thought to be drawn from his opera, Nixon in China, was not incorporated in it, but the association remains pertinent. It is a mesmeric piece that has its detractors, possibly among those who cannot accept that a 1980s piece can actually be, or alternatively, has any right to be, listenable.

It is a latter-day Bolero in its repetitiveness, in the way it slowly accelerates and increases in orchestral complexity and density. For me, this was a performance of huge delight, brilliant in every department, filled with virtuosic playing, colour, and infectious rhythms. The performance had every appearance of being huge fun for the orchestra.

Finally came the piece that I would have thought might have had the greatest pulling power: Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances. It had the stamp of a full-scale professional performance, by an orchestra fired up by a really gifted conductor.

It was an inspired choice, offering evidence of the orchestra’s mastery of biting staccato attacks, of spacious, long-breathed melodic lines, of moments of relaxation; and throughout, opportunities to hear some of the orchestra’s most conspicuously gifted players: the alto saxophone and the bass clarinet, the piano, the oboes and bassoons, the horns. The first movement has a particularly gorgeous passage where first violins and cellos lead other sections, not in any ordinary musical sequence, but heart-stopping, rapturous and eloquent.

In the waltz-tempo second movement, the sour, muted trumpets set the scene, another angle on Ravel’s ironic vision in La Valse. Here we heard a lovely solo from concertmaster Jessica Alloway, and later the big viola section – equal in numbers to the second violins – picked up the waltz tune darkly, capturing its sinister voluptuousness as if these young people had seen a lot more of the dark side of human nature than one hopes they have.

Here, as everywhere in the concert, one’s eyes, as well as ears, were transfixed by the conductor’s balletic performance on the podium; often, such movement can be more self-serving than musically useful, but Milanov is the real thing: a conductor whose gestures and foot-work seem to be intrinsic to the dynamic totality of music in live performance.

More percussion emerged in the edgy finale, hinting at a witches’ Sabbath, Berlioz or Liszt – tubular bells, eerie flourishes from clarinets and flutes, and Ravel again – La Valse, the Concerto for the Left Hand – in the jazzy rhythms, the skeletal clatter of the xylophone in its treatment of the Dies Irae. For those who didn’t know the piece, there could have been no more stunning introduction to one of Rachmaninov’s masterpieces.

Cook Strait Trio in distinguished performances

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Wellington Chamber Music Society

Turína: Piano trio no.2 in B minor, Op.76; Rebecca Clarke: Piano trio; Mendelssohn: Piano trio in D minor, Op.49

Cook Strait Trio – Blythe Press (violin), Amber Rainey (piano), Hugo Zanker (cello)

Ilott Theatre. Wellington Town Hall

Sunday, 22 August 2010, 3pm

It was a pleasure to hear this young trio again, albeit with a different cellist – this one from Canterbury, now playing in the Magdeburger Philharmonic Orchestra in Germany.  The other two are still studying, Press having completed his Bachelor’s degree at Graz, Austria, and now studying for a Master’s; Rainey is studying piano accompaniment at the Guildhall in London.

It was amazing that two piano trios made up of young players could be heard in Wellington in two days, the other being the Boyarsky Trio on Friday evening.

A confident start to the Turína work set the tone for the entire concert.  I was unfamiliar with this trio, but it had much charm in the first movement.  All three instruments were in complete accord, playing with full tone, and complete rhythmic and interpretative integrity.

The second movement featured vivace opening and closing, with a slow section in the middle.  Despite much repetition in the string parts, the piano never dominated.

The final movement was stirring and vigorous, and played with a panache which the solid technique of each of the players permitted.

Pianist Amber Rainey spoke before the Rebecca Clarke work, in which it was revealed that Hugo Zanker had only played with the other two musicians for a month.  She continued with an informative introduction to the Rebecca Clarke work, asserting that it should be played more often.  She described it as impressionistic and dissonant.  However, I didn’t entirely agree with her remark about the status of Clarke; what about Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann?

Two years ago we heard the Tawahi Trio play Rebecca Clarke in the WCMS Sunday afternoon series.  That time, it was Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale, which made a very favourable impression.  Since then, I have heard Clarke’s works on the radio a number of times, and I find that there is a Society recently created in her name, to promote her works.  Grove dismisses her as a violist, married to the pianist James Friskin.  (Probably only in the case of Schumann is a wife ever noted in writings about the husband!)

The first movement featured abrupt mood changes, and lower register passages for both strings, which produced lovely tone.  This was true in the second movement also, yielding a mysterious quality. In the third movement a sonorous piano solo was underpinned by delicate string accompaniment.  In this movement particularly, there were intriguing figures for all the instruments.  The middle section had a dreamy quality, then it was back to the sparkling opening.

The piece was interesting and skilful, and played by a group of talented young musicians, but I did not find it an endearing work.

Endearing and entrancing are, however, the words for Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in D minor.   There was plenty of warmth and depth to this playing.  The opening agitato movement was not uneasy, like Clarke’s appassionato.

The soulful second movement was notable for the many changes in dynamics, always appropriate.  Listening to these performers, one would not guess their youth.  Amber Rainey has a compact, unfussy style of playing, and is always totally in accord with her colleagues.

The Scherzo and Finale exhibit Mendelssohn’s delightful treatment of his themes.  The latter’s ending was brilliant, especially from the piano.

This was thoroughly delectable playing of a wonderful work, completing a concert of distinguished, finely crafted performances.

All present would wish the trio well in their continuing studies.

“Johann Sebastian – Mighty Bach!” from Orpheus

Posted on by Peter Mechen

J.S.BACH – Mass in B Minor

Madeleine Pierard, Lisette Wesseling (sopranos) / Christopher Warwick (counter-tenor) / Paul McMahon (tenor) / Daniel O’Connor (bass)

Orpheus Choir

Vector Wellington Orchestra

Michael Fulcher (conductor)

Wellington Town Hall

Sunday 22nd August, 2010

Because JS Bach’s Mass in B Minor is such an established part of the choral repertoire, it’s interesting to reflect on the somewhat piecemeal origins of the work – as an entity it was assembled by the composer in 1749, one year before his death, but parts of it were actually composed up to almost thirty years before, with some of these parts intended for other works – the Sanctus dates from 1724, and the Kyrie and Gloria come from 1733, used by the composer in one of his “Lutheran” Masses – though ironically the Latin settings suggest the Catholic liturgy as much as the Lutheran. Bach had composed this earlier Mass for the new Catholic Elector of Saxony, at whose court he had hoped to get an appointment as court composer (he got the job!). Opinions among scholars differ as to the likely dates of composition of the rest of the B Minor Mass – most are agreed that the work took its final shape throughout the 1740s, though the Credo setting continues to divide opinion regarding its origin in time and place.

What has all of this got to do with the performance we heard on Sunday of the Mass given by the Orpheus Choir and the Vector Wellington Orchestra, with an excellent team of soloists, all directed by Michael Fulcher? Well, it’s just that, despite this somewhat checquered compositional assemblage, the mighty work continued to amaze and inspire and profoundly satisfy on practically all counts. The performance was a splendid achievement, taking into account the usual “settling-in” period from both choir and orchestra, and a few glitches of the kind readily associated with live performance – once things started coming together there were places when a burnished glow came over both singing and playing. I thought the choir particularly good at maintaining those long-breathed sonorous melodic lines in the grander, more declamatory music – so the openings of each section of the work sounded particularly resplendent, with the women’s voices particularly strong and focused, and the men’s invariably characterful and accurate, though not as full-sounding. The orchestral soloists were, without exception a joy to hear; and once the rest of the players got into their conductor’s vigorous stride (the opening of the Gloria was a particularly breathless affair, especially for the brass), they were able to articulate the music with precise attack and homogenous tones.

What the work really does is present the listener (and performers) with a kind of compendium of Bach’s compositional styles and techniques, an assemblage that, thanks to the sheer composer-craft of technique and imagination of invention, sounds as though its constituent parts flow from one to another as if conceived in the same melting-pot at the same time. Neither its composer nor the performers or audiences of the time thought there was anything unusual about it or about how it was put together – baroque composers were so much less “purist” about their own music than we are about it, and Bach was no exception, if the genesis of this Mass is anything to go by. While the work doesn’t in my view achieve the variety of invention and profundity of feeling that do the two major Passions, St.John and St.Matthew, it still tests the technical skill and interpretative depth of any musician involved with its performance.

A lot of focus was centred on soprano Madeleine Pierard, whose activities overseas, particularly in the operatic field, give an impression of a career developing steadily and rewardingly. She made a delightful impression on a previous return visit to Wellington in 2008 to sing in “Messiah”, and was just as vocally attractive and interpretatively insightful on this occasion. The singer gave Bach’s lines a wonderful mixture of strength, purity and emotion that really made the music come alive, the technical accomplishment she’s already achieved allowing her to concentrate on the text and the line and their interaction to make an expressive effect.The difference this time round, apart from that of the music, was in the quality of her soloist colleagues in this concert, enabling her as a matter of course to engage with them in equal partnerships, true give-and-take affairs that brought out the best in the participants.

As second soprano, Lisette Wesseling brought her own distinctive tones to both ensemble pieces and solos, making a fine job of the lovely “Laudamus te” from the “Gloria” (even at Michael Fulcher’s lively tempo, phrasing her lines with elegance and grace), and earlier blending characterfully with Madeleine Pierard in the “Christe eleison”. Australian tenor Paul McMahon contributed a similarly interactive role with Pierard in a gorgeously-sung “Domine Deus”, also from the “Gloria”. Here, and also with McMahon’s lovely singing of the “Benedictus” from the “Sanctus”, flutist Karen Batten won our hearts with some lovely, limpid playing, generating with the singers many subtle light-and-shade gradations of tone and phrasing.

I recently heard counter-tenor Christopher Warwick sing in the Wellington performance of the Monteverdi Vespers, and was impressed on that occasion by his ability to hold long lines of true tone with real quality – and it was that ability he brought to his singing of the “Agnus Dei”, as well as contributing, plangently and long-breathedly, to the duet with Madeleine Pierard from the Credo “Et in unum Dominum”. He was less comfortable with his first solo, “Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris”, one whose slightly awkward intervals gave him the occasional pitching problem – but his contribution to the general ensemble was most estimable.

Yet another soloist to give pleasure was the bass Daniel O’Connor, whose focused, agile singing was nicely set off by the horn obbligato in the Gloria’s “Quoniam tu solus sanctus”, and again by some lovely instrumental work in “Et in spiritum sanctum” from the “Credo”, this time with a pair of oboe d’amore adding their lines in thirds and carolling a memorable refrain. It was somewhat diverting to experience such deep, sonorous tones coming from so youthful-looking a figure, but nevertheless one who obviously has great potential as a performer, and who can already hold his own in more experienced company.

The performance took place in the Wellington Town Hall, which couldn’t be a better venue as regards sound. Bach would have written this music for performing in a church, but one suspects that he expected the focus to be well and truly on the music, considering the care he took and the intricacies that he created – he obviously meant these to be heard rather than delivered in a matter-of-fact way as a background to something else happening. In the Wellington Town Hall the acoustic was perfect for the work – a warm and rich sound that nevertheless allowed detail to come through. And there’s something about the venue – I think it’s partly the sound, but also the  “shoebox” shape of the auditorium – that encloses you and makes you feel as though you’re in the same performing space as the musicians, which gives the music-making a greater sense of intimacy. The Orpheus Choir’s performance was one that first and foremost sounded good, given that Bach’s part-writing is extremely demanding, and often written for voices as though he didn’t expect them to need to breathe – so the occasional loss of tone in the more torturous contrapuntal part-lines was something which a lot of performers experience when undertaking this work. And the Wellington Orchestra, after a bit of a scratchy start, gave the music a warm, richly-toned instrumental response throughout. Michael Fulcher kept everything together with great skill – he liked swifter speeds in places than I wanted, most notably in the “Laudamus te” which almost EVERYBODY I’ve heard, both in live performance and on record, goes too fast (Mathew Ross, his violin soloist for this performance, coped with the tumbling figurations most skilfully) – but his choir and his singers and players were almost invariably equal to the task, giving us a strong and direct realisation of this marvellous, somewhat quirky work of “Johann Sebastian – mighty Bach!”.

Trio Boyarski (Ben Baker – violin) entertain with food, drink and strings

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Schubert: String Trio in B flat, D 581; Beethoven: String Trio in G major, Op. 9, no. 1; Dohnanyi: Serenade, Op.10; K. Boyarski: Mosaique Musicale

Trio Boyarsky: Ben Baker(violin), Konstantin Byarsky (viola), Amelia Jakobsson-Boyarsky (cello) – Capital Theatre Productions

Old St. Paul’s, Mulgrave Street

Friday, 20 August 2010, 5.30pm

About 90-100 people attended the concert; the rather odd hour prompted the organisers to sell drinks, sandwiches, muffins and chocolate bars before the concert and during the interval – an excellent idea.

While the printed programme gave plenty of information about the young performers (Ben is just 20),the works played were simply listed, with no programme notes, and not even the tempi markings of the movements.  Ben Baker gave spoken introductions to the items – very brief in the case of the Schubert, longer for the Beethoven including historical background.  The Dohnanyi and the work by the violist in the trio both received good introduction.

The concert opened with a truly lovely sound, right from the first chord of the Schubert, partly at least due to the warm wooden acoustic of the building.  There followed beautiful phrasing and shimmering tone throughout the trio.

Boyarsky’s rather small viola did not have the effulgent resonance of the violas in the NZSO, which were so highly praised by conductor Richard Gill in the Town Hall last night, but the playing, as of all three musicians, was of a very high standard indeed. It was a very enjoyable rendition.

The Beethoven began with a little more vibrato than I would have liked, in the dramatic opening chords.  But it grew into a very fine performance; assured, accurate playing. Each player had impressively fluent bowing action.

It was strange that there was little eye contact between the performers, but it didn’t seem to matter: nuances were faithfully observed.  The first two movements are sombre in mood, and if there was not always a depth of feeling apparent, this will come as the players mature.

The melodies the composer assigned to the different instruments were effectively given prominence, especially in the third movement.  In the quick finale there were beautifully graded dynamics, before the spirited ending.

Dohnanyi’s romantic Serenade contrasted with the previous two works, and the style of playing reflected this.  There was lovely tone, and good dynamic contrasts.  As in the other works, these talented young musicians were technically accomplished.

Boyarski’s work, dedicated to his wife, the cellist, made a slow build-up through low notes, followed by repeated, rapid passages leading to a slow melody, then through slow modulations to a violin melody with pizzicato accompaniment.  It traversed many moods.  There was extensive and interesting use of harmonics, and a robust cello solo.  It then livened up and became frenetic and discordant.

I wasn’t sure if ‘Mosaique’ in the title meant ‘to do with Moses’, or Mosaic as in a pattern of coloured tiles or gems – I suspect the latter.

Towards the end, the piece seemed to get bogged down, but it was an interesting and worthwhile work.

Although the addition of continuous seat cushions has made the pews in Old St. Paul’s somewhat more comfortable, the minimal depth of the seats (fine for Anglican services, where standing and kneeling are intrinsic) means they are not ideal for a full-length concert – at least, not for anyone over about five feet tall (or should that be 1.5 metres?)

Another matter to do with the audience rather than the players is the perennial one of coughing.  I would have thought that open-mouthed coughing at concerts would be a ‘no-no’ on health risk grounds as well as those of being disruptive of the music.  Cloth handkerchiefs (better as stifling tools than paper tissues) are not expensive, nor is the crook of one’s elbow.  If I can’t suppress a cough I normally endeavour to cough with a closed mouth.  It can be stressful, but it can be done, with greatly reduced volume the result.

Close Encounter with Dvorak – Richard Gill and the NZSO break it down….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Close Encounters – NZSO breaks it down

Richard Gill (conductor and presenter)

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Wellington Town Hall

Friday, August 20th (Dvorak – Symphony No.9 “From the New World”)

(Review also by Julia Wells)

Australian conductor Richard Gill runs a series of educational-cum-entertainment programmes with the Sydney Symphony, called “Discovery”, making classical music more approachable for people who perhaps haven’t had musical backgrounds or previous exposure to what’s commonly called  “classical” music. He recently brought this idea to Wellington, working with the NZSO over two evenings and concentrating on two of the most popular symphonies in the whole of the classical music repertoire, Bethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony on the first night and Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony the following evening. I attended the second of the two evenings, devoted to the Dvorak Symphony, and enjoyed it immensely on a number of counts, the first being that I was re-acquainted with a work I had previously heard so many times I thought I’d gotten tired of the music, and fell in love with it all over again!

Many people will recall those early television programmes featuring Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic presenting a series called “Young People’s Concerts”. Richard Gill’s brief was different in that his presentation was designed for a much greater age-range of people, perhaps more specifically adult- than child-oriented, though his out-going, easeful manner and the direct, uncomplicated style of his delivery made what he was saying readily accessible to children of about ten years and over. Of course, it’s many years since I saw and heard Bernstein’s television broadcasts, so comparisons are even more irrelevant – but without having quite the charisma of Bernstein, I thought Richard Gill a charming, personable and informative guide, one who took pains to emphasise that we were entitled to think what we liked about the music that we heard, and let our own intelligent imaginations work on the sounds and come up with their own valid impressions. For many people I’m sure this would have been something of a revelation, quite a liberating and empowering attitude with which to approach this “thing” called  “classical music”.

Gill had the inestimable advantage of working with the NZSO, whose playing he praised highly at the conclusion of the evening, calling the band a “national treasure” and imploring his audience to support the orchestra “by buying lots of tickets to its concerts”. Throughout the evening the rapport between conductor and players seemed excellent, judging from the quality of the playing, a couple of ensemble slips apart, which could have been put down to the “stop-go” nature of the demonstration – when it came to the performance of entire movements, the playing was of an excellent standard throughout.  I myself would have thought, however, that the music would have been better served had the orchestra played the entire symphony, for people to get the range and sweep of the whole, and for the players to be able to generate something of what was understandably lacking in the performance – a sense of line which would have resulted in greater rhythmic character in places and even better-defined episodes along the way. Overall, the conductor’s stop-go analysis of the work needed, I think, to coalesce into some kind of fruition by the end, and the concert’s format was in many ways the ideal platform on which to do this. However, opinions concerning the purpose and scope of the presentation will vary; and certainly people will have at least come away from Gill’s presentation with a better understanding of the origin and nature of this, one of the most famous of all symphonies.

The true star of the evening was probably the NZSO’s cor anglais principal, Michael Austin; and it was Richard Gill who facilitated the limelight to which he subjected this normally self-effacing player. The conductor began his analysis of the symphony with the Largo (for so many people, the ‘way into”  this symphony), and asked Michael Austin to come forward and take a concerto soloist’s prominence, so that people could watch as well as hear him play. The player’s tone and his phrasing of the famous tune was exemplary, truly lump-in-the-throat stuff for at least one listener; and the orchestral accompaniment had that hushed, concentrated quality that’s so easily given scant attention, but appreciated all the more when, as was done here, broken into its constituent parts and analysed. As anybody knows who tries to play on a piano or any other instrument transcription of a well-known piece of classical music, the art of composition is often one which conceals art; and Gill was able to alert us as to the extent of Dvorak’s artistic achievement in creating those sounds that over-familiarity often leads us to take for granted.

Gill made many interesting and entertaining observations during his presentation – some of which had the orchestra players laughing out loud along with his audience – rounding out the nature and context of Dvorak’s most famous Symphony, talking about the composer’s American connections, the influence of Wagner’s music on the symphony and the ultimate faith Dvorak had in the more “classical” examples for composers set by people such as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.  Gill touched briefly on what I thought was a very important point, one that he could have developed and cited elsewhere in the symphony, the use of recurring motifs throughout the work, a practice that, of course scholars and traditionalists of the time frowned on, as it contravened “the classical rules” – we were told that Dvorak was considered as “showing off” in doing this by the music establishment, which was a nice way of putting it. Gill talked a lot about the music’s “Czech” character, intending to put into perspective the ideas that were held for many years held about this symphony, that the tunes were American Negro or Indian melodies which the composer was either quoting or copying. A pity nothing from the work’s Scherzo was played, a brilliant demonstration of both the composer’s use of national Czech dance-forms and his fondness for cross-rhythms.

However much I thought that the overall approach to the work was a little chaotic in terms of its analysis, my own experiences of getting to know new music bore out Richard Gill’s way with his presentation – often there’s a single idea, either melodic or rhythmic, that for some reason impinges in the memory of the listener, resembling a seed around which the rest of the organism gradually takes shape. After all, the purpose of the evening’s presentation was to facilitate this very process, in fact to fulfil the conductor’s own stated dictum that “this music is abstract art – it isn’t ABOUT anything concrete, but depends entirely for its effect on the listener’s very individual reaction to the sounds used by the composer” – or words to that effect. I was sorry that I’d missed the previous evening’s analysis of the Beethoven symphony, and can only congratulate Richard Gill and the members of the NZSO for giving us such a delightful and resonating musical experience.

As if to further ‘validate” the event’s degree of communication between performers and audience, I asked eighteen year-old Julia Wells, a piano student and first-year tertiary student, who also attended the concert, for her impressions; and received the following evaluation of the experience:

“Overall I found the performance very enjoyable. There was a good balance between Richard Gill’s discussion of the music and the actual performance, although at times I felt like hearing slightly more of the actual piece. My favourite part was his demonstration of the layering of sounds in the orchestra. He brought out the difference of sound when the flute combined with the oboe and the effect of them combining with brass instruments. This was shown most clearly in the second movement, which I thought was the strongest part of the presentation. One thing I would have liked more of was contextual information – Gill’s comments on the work’s reception, and also about Wagner’s influence on Dvorak, were interesting; and I would have appreciated more information about other contemporaries and the musical context, and also about the Czech tradition Dvorak was drawing on.”

This was an NZSO Community Programme, “proudly supported” by The Community Trust of Wellington. It’s something that I think the orchestra could look at doing more often – provided the right person was found for the job. Richard Gill obviously had the necessary communicator’s touch, and the musical skills to demonstrate what he was trying to express with the orchestra. All we need, really, is somebody like him, or else an embryonic Leonard Bernstein…….

Die Fledermaus – quintessential operetta

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington G&S Light Opera

DIE FLEDERMAUS  :  JOHANN STRAUSS Jnr.

Operetta in Three Acts

Director: David Skinner

Cast:  Malinda Di Leva (Adele) /  Helen Lear (Rosalinde) / Jonathan Abernethy (Alfredo) / Chris Berentson (Eisenstein) / Kieran Rayner (Dr Falke) / Kevin O’Kane (Dr.Blind) / Derek Miller (Frank) / Megan McCarthy (Ida) / Alison Hodge (Prince Orlofsky) / John Goddard (Frosch)

WGSLO Chorus and Orchestra

Hugh McMillan (conductor)

Wellington Opera House

Thursday 19th August 2010

Mention the word “operetta” to most members of the theatre- and concert-going public, and probably one of two works will most readily come to mind, either Johann Strauss Jnr’s “Die Fledermaus” (The Bat), or Franz Lehar’s “Die Lustige Witwe” (The Merry Widow). None of the Savoy operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan can match their Viennese counterparts for charm, glamour and romance, and of the French equivalents, only Jacques Offenbach’s “Orphée aux enfers” (Orpheus in the Underworld) has made a comparable impact on the English-speaking world. For general all-round appeal, and an attractive musical style which occasionally suggests “grander” opera, the two Viennese classics are certainly hard to beat.

All credit, then, to the Wellington G&S Light Opera for presenting “Die Fledermaus”, the younger Strauss’s light-hearted and affectionate “take” on the finer points and foibles of Viennese society, a production whose musical virtues carried the day, even if some of the acting and stage business was occasionally somewhat pedestrian (Act One suffered the most in this respect, with the characters often slow to take up their cues, or indulging in too much unfocused movement). Best in terms of dramatic impact was the Second Act, the party at Prince Orlofsky’s, where the chorus work diverted our theatrical sensibilities, and the superbly-projected “presence” of the Orlovsky, mezzo-soprano Alison Hodge, commanded the stage with a worldly-wise delivery of her imperiously droll directive “Chacun au son gout!”. Another star turn (non-singing) was the scene-stealing tipsiness of Frosch, the drunken jailer, played by John Goddard, whose monologues at the beginning of Act Three in the town jail were richly fortified with comic timing and an engaging plausibility.

In general, though, it was the singing and orchestral playing which better-defined the ebb and flow of the story and the interaction between the characters – thus the opening scenes between Helen Lear’s Rosalinde, Jonathan Abernathy’s Alfredo and Malinda Di Leva’s Adele truly sparkled when they were singing, each having the ability to use the energised quality of their voices to give force and complusion to the drama. Helen Lear’s Rosalinde was attractive, and alternately vivacious and winsome, while her would-be lover Jonathan Abernathy used what sounded like a lovely lyric tenor voice to mellifluous effect. And Malinda Di Leva’s Adele made an initially lovely vocal impression during that opening scene (a gorgeously-delivered duet between her and Helen Lear), even if, in the Third Act’s “Talent” aria her tone seemed to slightly harden in places, though she was never less than accurate and musical. Both Chris Berentson as Eisenstein and Kieran Rayner as Dr.Falke, though generally seeming less at ease dramatically, were again able to flesh out their characters via their singing (making a creditable job of their “plotting” duet), even if their dialogue and stage movements didn’t have sufficient liquid flow for the comedy of their intrigue to properly ignite.

Of the others, Kevin O’Kane acquitted himself with appropriate bluster and energy as the incompetent lawyer Dr. Blind, while Derek Miller’s jail governor Frank spoke, sang and acted with spirit and character (the energetic “leave-taking” trio was superbly sung by the bogus husband, distracted wife and bemused prison governor!) Again, the stage business, both dramatic and technical, didn’t have the sweep and elan to match the singing – the “farewell kiss” was somewhat inconsequential, and the end-of-act curtain was much too slow in falling! Things improved markedly during Act Two, as the Chorus provided a well-rounded focus with their singing and deportment, and the principals taking part in the opening exchanges gave their characters plenty of energy and projection – great acting from both Malinda Di Leva and Megan McCarthy as none-too-affectionate sisters at a society party, got the Act away to a spirited start, and of course Alison Hodge as Orlovsky was a tower of strength. As well, Adele’s famous “Laughing Song” was delivered by Malinda Di Leva with just the right amount of corresponding control and panache – a nice perfomance.

I did think Helen Lear less characterful as the “Hungarian Countess” both singing and acting-wise, than in the First Act, which surprised me – I thought she might have brought more theatrical sultriness to the deception, instead of the relative inertia which overtook both her and Chris Berentson in the watch-seduction scene, one that needed far more life and sparkle between the characters. Fortunately, there was plenty of spirit in the salute to the efficacies of King Champagne, with both Adele and Eisenstein bringing energy and gaiety to their contributions; while Kieran Rayner’s Falke came into his own with a confident, and tenderly-phrased “Brother dear, and Sister sweet”, the ensemble bringing some lovely nuances and colourings to their delivery of the vocal lines.

Act Three’s opening was very properly dominated by John Goddard’s comical Frosch, the drunken jailer. Malinda di Leva, despite a touch of stridency here and there, made a fine job of Adele’s “talent” song, and, as the characters arrived in various states of compromise, both Helen Lear’s Rosalinde and Chris Berentson’s Eisenstein moved up dramatic notches from the Second Act in the denouments of each deception which followed. Spirited singing from the company brought the show to a proper whirlwind of a conclusion.

Despite the occasional unevennesses of pace, moments of non-synchronised theatrical interaction, and some lack of polish to detail, there was sufficient impetus generated on stage for the story to hold together, generated largely by singing and orchestral playing that provided a focus and an undertow of movement which helped energise people. Director David Skinner may not have replicated quite the frisson of theatrical delight he witnessed in Vienna in 1970 (a well-told story among the programme notes), but he was able to generate plenty of enthusiasm among his company, which, along with energy and purpose from the orchestral players and conductor Hugh McMillan, was enough for the show to be an evening’s worthwhile entertainment.

Bowing and blowing – Orchestral Concert from NZSM Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NZSM Orchestra Series – Concert Five

Strings, Winds and Brass

MOZART – Divertimento for Strings in D Major / JS BACH (arr. REED) – My Heart is Filled with Longing / REED – First Suite for Wind Band

ROSSINI (arr.BRITTEN) – Soirées Musicales / TCHAIKOVSKY – Serenade for Strings in C Major

New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

Conductors: Martin Riseley (Mozart, Tchaikovsky)

Kenneth Young (JS Bach, Reed, Rossini arr.Britten)

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

Tuesday 17th August 2010

A lovely concert – framed by two adorable works for string orchestra, with centres spliced by plenty of tangy wind-band textures. One of those tangy centres was a work I had not heard for some years, Britten’s Soirées Musicales (orchestrations of Rossini’s music), and never as a work for winds only, as here (the arrangement made by the composer). Another work, the Tchaikovsky Serenade, I had never actually heard live in concert (hard to believe, really, especially considering how well I know it!). So, there was plenty of interest there for me, and, I would have thought, for others, though, alas, not so!  It’s true that Tuesday evening tends not to be a popular concert-going night; but Wellingtonians were more-than-usually conspicuous by their absence from St.Andrew’s Church, which would have been disappointing for the concert’s organisers. I can only repeat Henry V’s words from Shakespeare, by way of admonishing people for their non-attendance at such an attractive-sounding and enjoyably musical affair – “And gentlemen of England now a-bed shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here” (pace Shakespeare, I would amend the admonition to include BOTH sexes, together or separately!).

Martin Riseley, in the relatively unfamiliar role of conductor (at any rate for Wellington audiences), directed the School of Music’s strings in a performance of one of Mozart’s utterly delightful Divertimenti of 1772. written during the composer’s Salzburg years. One would never know from the music that the composer was under the baleful jurisdiction of the autocratic Archbishop Colloredo, who had very little regard for musicians and their works. This particular work, in the sunny key of D major, simply bubbles with infectious energy and gaiety in its outer movements, framing an Italienate operatic-like slow movement featuring one of the composer’s loveliest tunes. Altogether it’s an attractive, if deceptively fluent-sounding work, the opening of which the NZSM string students addressed with bright, rich tones and fluent dynamic shadings. Some of the quicker articulations were a bit blurred, though the music’s inner voicings remained nicely discernable, even if the occasional worried looks on some of the players’ faces while addressing Mozart’s running figurations betrayed the ensemble’s intermittent unease. Generally, the Andante’s slower music brought forth a more sonorous, true-toned response, a lovely violin ascent in thirds characterising the generally sensitive playing throughout. The feathery touch at the beginning of the finale was also beautifully brushed in, and the more brilliant running passages that followed were splendid. The first-time-round six-note ascents in thirds were a shade untidy, the ensemble making a much neater job of the same passage later in the movement, and rounding the exhilarations of the music off with some sharp chording at the end.

Strings made way for winds, including brass and percussion, for the next bracket of items, along with a change of conductor, Kenneth Young for Martin Riseley. Two of the pieces were arranged or written by Alfred Reed, a name new to me, but well-known in the United States for his composing activities, primarily for wind ensembles. Reed’s arrangement of JS Bach’s Organ Prelude BWV 727 “Herzlich tut mich Verlangen” (My Heart is filled with Longing) for wind band brought out a beautiful liquid-toned sound, with enough of a plaintive edge to the tone to give it a most attractive plangency, a very clarinet/saxophone-coloured sound throughout the first refrain. An added array of flutes gave the tune a light, frothy descant the second time through, one or two stumbles of little matter; while the timpani and brass which subsequently joined in sounded amazing! – almost too much so, in those confined St.Andrew’s spaces, which, however, after the deluge of sounds had quietened, imparted a glowing ambience to the hushed postlude.  Reed’s First Suite for Wind Band followed, the four movements vividly played and characterised by the ensemble – the opening march had real bite, everything skirling and stirring, with saxophones adding jazzy impulses, while by contrast the following Melody movement relied on colour and atmosphere to set off the various lyrical solo instrumental lines, with beautiful contributions from horn, oboe and euphonium. Both the Rag and the Gallop were tremendous fun, with some droll percussion touches in the former’s trio section, and Young encouraging his players to abandon caution and go for it in the crackling finale, the building’s spaces rattling and resonating with the riotous sounds.

But for me the real delight from the wind band’s contribution to the concert was Britten’s Soirées Musicales, Kenneth Young communicating to and bringing out a real sense of enjoyment of the music from his players – to begin with, a snappy, cheeky March, with nicely articulated solos, spiced by delightful contributions from piccolo and xylophone, among others. Then came a sweetly-sung Canzonetta, a pastorale with a “yodelling” figure reminiscent of Walton’s”Facade”, with the trumpet adding to the gorgeously sentimental flavour, one which the subsequent “Tirolese” number sought to cheer up with hearty beer-hall oom-pahs, gurgling chuckles and irruptions of semi-intoxicated “frohlichkeit”, impulses that one expects would come naturally to most music students worth their salt. The half-ghostly Bolero, with its opening Schumannesque figures wove a sultry spell, its sinuous exotic strains beautifully ritualised by deftly-applied touches from the percussion; while the concluding Tarantella whirled vertiginously and deliriously – perhaps a trifle too fast for the dance-triplets to properly “tell”? But overall, there were transports of delight for this listener, and reactions along those lines at the piece’s end from others present as well.

Finally, strings again for the Tchaikovsky Serenade; which began with a lovely, rich and full-blooded opening chord from the players, conductor Martin Riseley encouraging a string sound with plenty of body, which eminently suited the work. The allegro wasn’t pushed, giving the music plenty of room to point and phrase, the ‘cello’s articulations particularly eloquent. I thought the playing had an attractive out-of-doors feel to it, the players  “tightening up”, and losing their tone and ensemble only when a degree of anxiety pushed the tempo along a bit too much. The second-movement Waltz sounded gorgeous at the beginning, the music nicely maintaining its poise until those repeated Italienate ascents in thirds were reached, when the ensemble became unstuck – however, the ‘cellos and violas sounded rich and full in their repeat of the big tune shortly afterwards. The beautiful Elegy featured songful violin lines over pizzicati accompaniment, a touch of strain from all departments during the violin’s descant over the lower strings, but a sonorous coming-together for the big tune afterwards, the pleasure disturbed only by a slight scrappiness at the tops of phrases in the movement’s coda. That out-of-doors ambience returned for the finale’s introduction, even if the atmosphere of expectation was slightly sabotaged by players and conductor having to turn over a page of score just before the beginning of the allegro (grins all round from both musicians and listeners). The players generated plenty of energy, their finish a bit raw in places, but perhaps appropriately “pesante” – again, the lower strings shone with the beautiful second subject, encouraging matching fervent tones from the violins. The coda caught the sense of festive closure exactly – Martin Riseley would surely have been pleased with his players’ warmth and energy in realising such an enjoyable performance of the work.

Two choirs join to expose Salieri the choral composer

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Mass in D (Hofkapellmeister Messe) and Te Deum for the Coronation of Emperor Leopold II; La tempesta di mare and Overture: Armida

The Festival Singers and the Wainuiomata Choir, and orchestra, conducted by David Beattie

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart

Sunday 15 August at 2.30pm

My colleague Rosemary Collier allowed herself to lament that so many choirs had scheduled their concerts in such a short span this month; and the overload continues. On Wednesday 11th there was a concert by the choir of Sacred Heart Cathedral, augmented by singers from Christine Argyle’s Nota Bene, who had joined forces with the Choir of Christchurch Boys’ High School, conducted by Don Whelan. They sang Widor’s Mass for Two Choirs and Two Organs; I heard about it too late and was very disappointed to have missed it.

This past weekend, there have been two performances of Monteverdi‘s monumental Vespers of 1610 by Musica Sacra at St Mary of the Angels, and this concert under review of choral and orchestral music by Salieri.  Next weekend comes Bach’s B Minor Mass from the Orpheus Choir (Sunday 22 August); the following Sunday, the 29th, the Bach Choir tackles two great liturgical works: Cherubini’s first Requiem (C minor) of 1816 and Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir; and on Saturday 4 September the Tudor Consort sings major works by Schütz and Domenico Scarlatti.

The Salieri concert involved two choirs; choirs that, like so many others, struggle to attract male voices, and they made an excellent decision to combine for a particularly interesting concert. It was given entirely to the compositions of one of those well-known but little heard composers that populate the pages of music history.

Thanks to that popular but disgraceful film Amadeus, the 19th century myth about Salieri’s role in Mozart’s death, together with an almost entirely false representation of Mozart himself, did serious damage to music history and to the reputations of two composers. They left the impression that Salieri might indeed have been a murderer.

But it has also stimulated curiosity about Salieri and has led to the exploration of his music by orchestras, choirs and opera houses around the world. Opera Otago produced his Falstaff in 2006.

In fact, the two composers were quite close, and though Mozart was disappointed not to get the position of Hofkapellmeister to the court of Joseph II, which was given to Salieri and for whose coronation he wrote this Mass in D, there is plenty of evidence of a normal friendly relationship.

In his last surviving letter from 14 October 1791, Mozart tells his wife that he collected Salieri in his carriage and drove him to the opera, to see The Magic Flute, and he writes that Salieri was enthusiastic: “He heard and saw with all his attention, and from the overture to the last choir there was not piece that didn’t elicit a ‘Bravo!’ or ‘Bello!’ out of him”.

If there had been jealousy on either side, it was much more likely to have been on Mozart’s, for Salieri was by far the more successful composer in Vienna for most of the 1780s.

For example, when Salieri was appointed Kapellmeister in 1788 he revived Figaro instead of bringing out a new opera of his own; and when he went to the 1790 coronation festivities in Frankfurt for Leopold II as Holy Roman Emperor he had three Mozart masses in his luggage. Mozart was passed over for any official role at the coronation, but he went at his own risk and expense, played his piano concerto in D, K 537 but failed to make much impact.

The Te Deum performed in the second half of this concert was Salieri’s offering for Leopold’s coronation in Frankfurt.

Though the orchestra, drawn mainly from players in the Wellington Chamber Orchestra, announced itself with a degree of uncertainty in the first bars, the entry of the full choir in the Kyrie of the Mass in D reassured me that I was in for an interesting time. The tone was serious without pomposity, revealing a work furnished with attractive and original melody, and put together with taste and polish. It was imposing, and could easily have been mistaken for a liturgical work of Mozart or Haydn. But the musical quality was not uniformly maintained, for example in the rather more routine Credo, though its ‘Et Resurrexit’ was jolly enough. Its virtues lay in its sheer compositional skill and variety, and Salieri’s flair for dramatic colouring.

That the music’s strengths were so clear was due in some part to the performance. Though the orchestra had its weaknesses, a concertato string group in single parts contributed happily; a cello solo in the Gloria, and violin and cello in the Benedictus, acquitted themselves capably in charming episodes. On the whole the festive orchestration, with prominent trumpets and timpani, created the sort of ceremonial effect, including a quotation from the Austrian National Anthem in the Agnus Dei, not far short of comparable works by Mozart.

On the other hand, the decision to draw solo voices from the choir itself was generally less successful: better trained voices were needed, or these episodes should have been left instead to small ensembles. However, the full choir, even on occasion, a cappella, excelled themselves and the effects were often exciting. The Agnus Dei with its arresting pauses, the dramatic impact of ‘Dona nobis pacem’ spoke of a composer of great skill and considerable gifts.

The second half was taken largely by the Coronation Te Deum. The church’s organ (Jonathan Berkahn), together with the orchestra, provided the accompaniment for the full choir, with conspicuous attention to balance and phrasing by David Beattie (conductor of the Wainuiomata Choir); the result was an opening of considerable grandeur. If not impeccable, the orchestra again gave the performance all the colour and rhythmic élan needed; distinguished by a high trumpet at the words ‘Dignare, Domine’. Although Salieri demonstrated his confidence by employing nothing but a plain major triad as pivot for the final section, ‘In te Domine’, a composer of greater genius was needed to carry off such a self-imposed challenge.

The second half had begun with two opera overtures: Armida and La tempesta di mare. I can find no corroboration of the programme notes’ statement that it was the overture to the opera Europa riconosciutta (though that opera opens with a storm) which Salieri wrote for the opening of the La Scala theatre in Milan in 1778; it was also used to re-open La Scala in 2004 after major restoration.

Both overtures were products of the Sturm und Drang era – a reaction against the Enlightenment, Classicism and the rationalism of the earlier 18th century, a precursor of Romanticism – that produced Haydn’s symphonies of the early 1770s, like Il Distratto, and Schiller’s play Die Räuber which Verdi turned into I Masnadieri:.rhetorical, expressing extreme emotion, imitating noises of nature, rising and falling scales and arpeggios, ostinati, drones, dramatic percussion, and… some iffy wind intonation.

Armida was one of Salieri’s most important Italian operas, dated 1774, as a protégé of Gluck whose influential Iphigénie en Aulide appeared in that same year. The story, taken from that fertile Renaissance source of theatre stories for the next three centuries, Tasso’s La Gerusalemme liberata, was also set by composers from Lully and Vivaldi, Handel, Gluck, Jommelli, Mysliveček, Sacchini, Haydn, Rossini (his gained attention through a spectacular production this year by the Metropolitan Opera, New York), and, most surprisingly, Dvořák. The overture was a little more substantial than La tempesta di mare, with again, clear signs of Gluck’s influence. The depiction of the magic in the story took a form that suggested to me pantomime rather than anything more supernatural.

These pieces did less to enhance Salieri’s musical reputation than the two choral works, but were nevertheless interesting in fleshing out one’s view of opera in the 1770s.

The concert was a welcome adventure, carried off with sensibility and musical diligence.

Resplendent Monteverdi at St Mary of the Angels

Posted on by Peter Mechen

MONTEVERDI  – Vespers 1610

Baroque Voices / St.Mary of the Angels Choir /  Academia Sancta Mariae Ensemble

Robert Oliver (director)

St. Mary of the Angels Church

Boulcott St., Wellington

Saturday August 14th 2010

No work has inspired more disagreements among both scholars and musicians regarding both its history and performance practice than Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610. The British musicologist Denis Arnold once wrote about the work, “To perform it is to court disaster. To write about it is to alienate some of one’s best friends”. Happily for Wellington audiences, no such strictures seemed to hang over the head of Musica Sacra concert series director Robert Oliver, who organised and directed two performances of the work in the splendidly atmospheric precincts of St Mary of the Angels Church, marking the 400th anniversary of the music’s publication in Venice. Oliver took what some people still considered to be a courageous step by performing the work with ten solo singers, one to a part, drawn from Pepe Becker’s Baroque Voices group, and accompanied by an ensemble of baroque strings, cornets and sackbuts, two organs and two theorbos. I was told by one of the singers that a friend’s reaction to the “one-singer-to-a-part” idea was expressed in tones of sympathetic disbelief. However Oliver’s faith in his “virtuoso singers and players with a brilliant command of all the instruments and techniques” (a quote from the programme notes) was richly vindicated by the splendours of the ensuing performance.

Oliver had directed a version of the work previously in Wellington a number of years ago with a choir of nearly thirty singers and a mixture of baroque and modern instruments, but felt that, with the advantages of more recent research into Monteverdi’s original intentions, plus the increased skills of early instrument players, the time was nigh to tackle the work afresh with up-to-date knowledge and performance practices. The aim was to reproduce more closely the sound that Monteverdi was believed to have had in mind for the work. The result was, in a word, stunning – singers and instrumentalists surpassed themselves in evoking a sound-world that seemed at one and the same time of the period and timeless, casting a potent spell over the  imaginations and sensibilities of the audience members throughout the evening. Such occasional roughnesses as there were seemed so infrequent as to be of little consequence when set against the sweep and power of the whole, qualities which continually transcended the earthly and invoked the divine.

The church’s antiphonal potentialities were nicely realised right from the beginning, the St Mary of the Angels’ tenor choir voices intoning the opening “Deus in adiutorium” from the choir-loft at the rear of the church, to which the full ensemble of singers and instrumentalists replied from the front across the spaces, investing the words “Domine ad adiuvandum me festina” (Lord, make haste to help me) with truly age-old fervour and exotic colour. From this moment on the performance never flagged, the solo singers confident and nearly always accurate and secure with both their soaring lines and their often treacherously decorative impulses of melismatic energy, and the instrumental playing lustrously-toned and scalp-tinglingly characterful. Having solo voices gave the vocal lines such creative character, in the slower polyphonies the strands both blending and activating each other’s timbral differences, while in the quicker music the flavours and colours of the combinations produced occasionally an almost kaleidoscopic effect.

Sopranos Pepe Becker and Jayne Tankersley relished both their duet-style combinations and the more antiphonally-placed exchanges, their very different voices producing a real frisson of interaction, very marked, naturally enough, in their big duet Pulchra es, whose music I thought had a wonderfully charged eroticism. Pepe Becker floated her voice gloriously at “Averte oculos”, and Jayne Tankersley, so physically expressive by way of response, brought a sense of urgency to “Me avolare fecerunt”, her body appearing to physically choreograph the intensities of what her voice was doing in an extremely involving way. In other places, such as during Psalm 112’s Laudate Pueri Dominum (beautifully-sustained tones from both singers at “Ut collocet eum cum principibus”) and also throughout Lauda Jerusalem (Psalm 147), the antiphonal interactions and dovetailings of the sopranos made for a wholly sensual sound-effect, in fact highlighting what the rest of the ensemble was also doing so delightfully. Altos Andrea Cochrane and Christopher Warwick had fewer exposed lines, but made the most of their opportunities, most notably in the Hymn Ave Maris Stella, where each sang a verse most mellifluously, and also within the concluding Magnificat, where their steady, sustained tones provided a perfect foil for the more energetic and decorative lines of the tenors and basses.

The last-mentioned played their part as well, with the tenor parts particularly prominent. Both John Beaglehole and John Fraser contributed strong, sonorous tones to the many ensembles, and fearlessly tackled their various solos, most of which were resplendent with decorative detail. John Beaglehole made a strong beginning to the motet Nigra Sum, his voice confidently projected and nicely focused, surviving an uncomfortable patch of intonation at “Flores apparuerunt” to recover his poise somewhat for “Tempus putationis advenit”. Beaglehole and Fraser brought the two questioning Seraphims beautifully to life at ‘Duo Seraphim” before being joined by a third tenor, Philip Roderick, for the affirmation of the Blessed Trinity in heaven. And in the Motet Audi Coelum Beaglehole’s ecstatic phrases praising Mary, Mother of God, were echoed by Fraser off-stage to evocative effect amid tumultuous interjections by half-a-dozen of the soloists with continuo (it sounded as though there were more), beginning at the word “Omnes”, and continuing to the end, including the gentler “Benedicta es”, sung here with richly-focused tones and finely-honed ensemble. If basses David Morriss and Chris Burcin, along with baritone Dimitrios Theodoridis, had less spectacularly exposed material to sing, they still registered a powerful presence, blending beautifully in Dixit Dominus (Psalm 109) at “Judicabit in nationibus”, and contributing strongly-etched lines to Laudate Pueri Dominum (Psalm 112) as well as displaying some thrilling muscularity at “Quia fecit” in the concluding Magnificat.

With true-toned contributions during the Antiphons from the St.Mary of the Angels Choir, directed by Stephen Rowley, a feast of resplendent singing was dished up for our delight throughout, happily matched by the burnished splendour of the instrumental playing from the Academia Sanctae Mariae ensemble, and associated players. Earlier in the year at a Te Papa concert which featured Renaissance madrigals we’d had a taste of Peter Reid’s evocative cornetto playing – but here, with two other cornetto players, as well as sackbuts, recorders and theorbos (enormous lute-like fretted instruments), along with strings and two organs, the potential for instrumental colour and visceral excitement seemed almost too good to be true. The standing ovation which greeted the performers at the end of Saturday evening’s performance well-represented the audience’s astonishment and delight and deep enjoyment at the stellar efforts of singers and players alike. Musica Sacra concert series director Robert Oliver brought to bear his enormous skill and experience in this repertoire with vision and intensity, and in doing so inspired a performance of this legendary work which will surely be talked about in Wellington for years to come.